Codex Alera (Literature)

Yes, that is a Roman Legionary face-to-face with two spirit lions made of water.

"There's something broken inside your skull, [Tavi]. You do all your thinking sideways."

— Antillar "Max" Maximus, Princeps' Fury

Magical Roman Legionaries straight out of Avatar: The Last Airbender versus the Zerg, wolfmen with Blood Magic, telepathic yetis and white-haired elves. Riding ground sloths and terror birds. Sometimes, the Legionaries fight each other, too.

A high fantasy/intrigue series written by Jim Butcher (of The Dresden Files fame), the Codex Alera is set in a world that is populated by the descendants of the IX Roman Legion (according to the Word of God). They have carved out a massive empire led by the "First Lord" and they all have magic — specifically, they all bond with one or more "furies", elementals of air, water, fire, earth, wood, or metal. Those who control enough furies can become Citizens, with increased privileges and obligations above the common freeman, but everyone has at least one fury. Well, everyone save one.

Young Tavi is the only known Aleran who does not have access to any furies. At best, he is treated like a special needs child. However, since he cannot rely on furies, Tavi uses something that many of his countrymen fail to utilize: his brain.

Shortly before Tavi was born, the only son and heir of the aging First Lord of Alera was killed in battle, causing the various high nobility to scramble and plot to position themselves to take power when the First Lord dies (or, in some cases, to expedite that event). Chief among them are Aquitainus Attis, the High Lord of Aquitaine, and Kalarus Brencis Majoris, the High Lord of Kalare. As Alera falls into civil strife, the various non-human enemies of Alera prepare to take advantage of these divisions while a far more dangerous threat lurks in the shadows...

Standing with Tavi are his uncle Bernard (an Earth- and Woodcrafter), his aunt Isana (a very powerful Watercrafter), the young Cursor Amara (a Windcrafter), and the half-wit slave Fade, along with the other friends and allies he makes as he is swept up in the battles to save Alera.

The series consists of:

Furies Of Calderon (2004)
Academ's Fury (2005)
Cursor's Fury (2006)
Captain's Fury (2007)
Princeps' Fury (2008)
First Lord's Fury (2009)

The Codex Alera series provides examples of:

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A-D

Abnormal Ammo: A few books into the series, Bernard begins replacing the metal tips of some of his arrows with chunks of rock salt. Since salt is the bane of wind furies, this renders them effective at dispersing windmanes and disrupting the furies of anybody flying.
Above the Influence: When Bernard saves Amara from the frozen, flooding Rillwater river, she leans in to kiss him, but he pulls away since she is cold and hurting, and it would be taking advantage to move forward.
Absurdly Sharp Blade: Metalcrafters can sharpen and harden the swords they are using, to the point where they can easily slice through stonework, armor, and other swords.
Abusive Parents:
- Kord is a horrible father on general principles, and mistreats Aric while spoiling Bittan, his favorite.
- High Lady Dorotea Antillus had her step-son, Antillar Maximus, viciously whipped at the slightest provocation. When it looked like he would be able to stand up to her and potentially outshine her son, Antillus Crassus, she moved on to more drastic measures. And, for all that she loves Crassus, she isn't above mistreating him too; Crassus reveals that some of Max's scars came from shielding his little brother from her temper.
Accidental Marriage: Tavi attempts to claim that he and Kitai have been accidentally married for years in order to reassure Kitai of the nature of their relationship and, more importantly, the legitimacy of their child.
Achievements in Ignorance:
- In Academ's Fury, Tavi and Max discuss the various theories that Alerans have on the true nature of furies — whether they are truly living creatures or just part of the person doing the crafting. When Max asks why frontier furies seem to be so much stronger than city furies, Tavi explains that, according to one theory, since the frontier holders who claim them think that they are wild and strong furies, that makes them stronger than they actually would be than if the frontiersmen knew they were just relying on their own strength.
- To quote Maximus:
  Maximus: In the course of my life, I have more than once been too ignorant to know that something was impossible before I did it anyway.
- Most Aleran scholars believe that furycrafting does not work if the crafter is not connected to Alera itself; for example, it is suspected that earth- or watercrafting would be impossible on the foreign continent of Canea. Thankfully, when they actually end up in Canea, nobody thought to inform the first crafters ashore, who went ahead and crafted anyway. Surprisingly, it turns out that Max was aware of this theory while Tavi was ignorant of it. Tavi invokes this trope by telling Max to forget everything he knows and just do it anyway.
Action Girl:
- Amara is the first introduced character of the series and, though she never has the same power as the various High Lords of Alera, she has the training and skill (and exceptional speed due to her windcrafting) to hold her own throughout all six books.
- Kitai, as one of the Marat, does not have any furies to lend her super-human strength or speed (well, not until book 3, at least), but her life as a "barbarian" has given her the martial prowess of a legionare nonetheless.
- High Lady Aria Placida is one of the most powerful beings in all of Alera, only explicitly outmatched by the First Lord himself and the Vord queen.
Action Mom:
- Isana gets more involved in the direct action starting in Captain's Fury.
- Rook a.k.a. Gaelle is not only a mother, but a skilled spy and assassin.
- Amara becomes an adoptive mother by the final book and doesn't shy away from combat.
- Though it's more like Action Expecting Mother, Kitai spends the last half of book six pregnant. Doesn't stop her from tag-teaming with Tavi to destroy the Vord Queen.
Actually Pretty Funny: Aquitaine actually laughs — albeit weakly — when reflecting that Ehren has successfully assassinated him.
Ad Hominem: Lord Aquitaine, in his first appearance, points out that ad hominem "is a notoriously weak logical argument. And is usually used to distract the focus of a discussion—to move it from an indefensible point and to attack the opponent."
Aliens Speaking English: Each sapient species on Carna has its own language or non-verbal means of communication, but the Marat and many of the Canim speak the Aleran language. The Marat, who have multiple tribes that each have their own tongue, explain that they use Aleran to speak amongst their different tribes as a diplomatic and trading language. The majority of the Canim do not speak Aleran, but their leaders and ambassadors do because they expect to talk to Alerans.
Alas, Poor Villain: At least three different examples occur over the course of the novels.
- A downplayed case is seen with Phrygiar Navaris in Captain’s Fury. Tavi isn't particularly devastated by her death, but he's not very proud of having used her Freudian Excuse to induce a Villainous Breakdown and takes the time to gently close her eyes after she dies.
- In First Lord’s Fury, High Lord Aquitaine Attis dies a slow, lingering, and excruciatingly painful death, having executed the duties of his office with both great dignity and relatively conscientious, selfless regard.
- And the third and most surprising time is the Awakened Vord Queen, having shown an increasing fascination with human customs and mockingly called Tavi and Kitai her parents, admits before her certain death that she learned much from humans, that they were stronger than the Vord, and that her battle against them was never personal; she was just trying to do what she was supposed to do as a queen. She also asks if Tavi will make her suffer; he says no.
- Briefly discussed by the Great Fury Alera. While they were never really “villains” to begin with, she expresses sorrow for the other sapient races on the continent that were wiped out by the ancient Alerans before the present day, referring to them as having been just "lost travelers" like the Romans/Alerans, Marat, Canim, Icemen, and Vord all are.
All for Nothing: The Forever War between the Alerans and Icemen is revealed to be this in Princeps’ Fury. The war is almost entirely the result of a Hate Plague unintentionally caused by the mutually inimical interactions between Aleran firecrafting (used to help keep their soldiers alive in the Grim Up North of Antillus and Phrygia) and the watercrafting-based Telepathy practiced by the Icemen. The two sides have fought each other to a bloody standstill for countless centuries with no benefit gained, resulting only in an ever-mounting body count and mutual hatred.
The Alliance: By the end of First Lord's Fury, all of the non-Vord races are getting along reasonably well and the New Academy will be open to all species with a variety of talents. Tavi even refers to it as "the Alliance" in the epilogue.
Alien Invasion: It's not explicitly discussed since none of the characters have the proper frame of reference, but there are hints that the Vord are an alien species (possibly engineered for terraforming) who crashed on Carna in the crater that became the Wax Forest.
Jim Butcher: invoked No one in Alera has the phrase "impact crater" in his vocabulary, but if they did...
Alien Kudzu: Wherever the Vord spread, the croach grows as well. Described as a waxy, leathery substance covering a gelatinous liquid, it completely covers not just the ground but also all buildings and trees in the regions that the Vord occupy. It serves as both a food source for the Vord (the croach subsumes organic matter to provide nutrients) and a sentinel; whenever its surface is broken, the Vord know that an enemy is walking upon it.
Allohistorical Allusion: Multiple sneaky references are made to various famous events from Roman history throughout the series, despite it technically being set in a Portal Crossroad World different from Earth. Easily the most obvious is how virtually every Aleran city and landmark is named after a Roman territory or deity.
- The Icemen are at least in part meant to represent the various "barbarians from the north" that the Romans fought against, with the Shieldwall built to defend Antillus and Phrygia from their rampages being an analogue to Hadrian's Wall being built to defend Roman Brittania from the "northern barbarians" from Caledonia (now modern-day Scotland and northern England).
- One of the more overt examples is Gaius Sextus unleashing Mount Kalus on the city of Kalare, which is described in a manner reminiscient of how Mount Vesuvius is thought to have destroyed the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
- Finally, each of Alera's recurring foes (minus the Vord, who are intentionally written as an Outside-Context Problem) can be seen as a loose analogue to recurring foes of Western Rome. As an example, the Canim represent the "more technologically advanced" recurring foes of Rome, such as the Persians and Carthagians, with the latter being made particularly blatant in how the Narashan Canim's invasion of the Amaranth Vale provides a loose parallel to the Punic Wars. Meanwhile, the Marat and Icemen each represent different versions of the "horde of hostile barbarians" Rome often fought border conflicts with, with the Marat being more coded to resemble the ancient Germanic peoples while the Icemen are analogues to the Caledonian peoples of ancient Britannia.
- The Vord represent what the Romans were to their enemies. When Carthage, with its colorful mercenary armies wearing a variety of arms and armor from all over Africa and the Mediterranean, faced legions in standard, regulated and somewhat subdued equipment, they must have seemed like a faceless mass. When Caesar surrounded the Gauls at Alesia by building a double encirclement of walls, they must have seemed like an implacable hivemind. When 40-50,000 were annihilated in a single day at Carrhae, the Romans just replenished their ranks and washed over Carthage destroying it completely. Without killing Rome's "queen" - that is, the city itself - they would always come back, a faceless enemy that felt no fear and had no "honor" the way the Celts, Gauls and Germans saw it, that destroyed and consumed everything in its path. And the Vord's rationale is a twisted mirror of Rome's: bringing "civilization" so far as they considered it
- Arnos' Senatorial Guard Legion receive severe casualties against the Canim wielding large, inwardly-curved swords against them that are capable of cutting through the legionaries' shields and then piercing their helmets, while Tavi's legion is somewhat alleviated because their helmets' designs are more recent. This references Roman legionaries' galea helmets being reinforced with metal bands around their skull to help protect their heads after previous battles against the Dacians saw their shields cut through and their helmets pierced by the Dacians' falx swords.
Almighty Janitor: The Cursors are, technically, only the messengers of the First Lord. However, since everybody "knows" that they are just glorified mailmen, they are also used as spies, saboteurs, assassins, infiltrators, and anything else the First Lord requires. Most of the High Lords and Citizenry seem to be aware of the truth, giving them de facto authority when they speak for the First Lord.
Alternative Character Interpretation: invoked Discussed in Princeps' Fury. When Isana is looking at the great Shieldwall of the northernmost Aleran cities, she muses how the Alerans themselves see it as an immense defensive construct, but from the perspective of the Icemen it could look more like a prison wall cutting them off from the rest of the outside world.
Amazonian Beauty: Mistress Cymnea is described as being taller than most men with broad shoulders and looking like she could physically hurl an armored legionare out of her tent if she had to, but that she retains curves that are emphasized by her gown.
Ambadassador
- The Canim Ambassador Varg holds the rank of Warmaster amongst his range (read: nation) and killed a Vord-controlled Cane (with superior strength and resistance to pain) singlehandedly and unarmed.
- Kitai is technically the Marat Ambassador, due to some quick thinking (and quicker lying) on Tavi's part. She is a powerful Action Girl who won't stay away from a fight (unless she loses a coin toss).
An Ice Person:
- Watercrafters can craft snow and ice just as easily as they can liquid water. Isana makes good use of this when fighting a duel in the Grim Up North.
- The Icemen are an entire species of this as part of their watercrafting-based Telepathy. Doroga specifically comments on the incorrect Aleran theory that the Icemen follow the winter storms south when attacking the Shield Cities — in reality, the storms follow the Icemen.
Annoying Arrows:
- Averted for humans, Marat, Icemen, and Canim (though downplayed with the latter due to their huge size), as arrows are just as much of a threat to flesh as the more powerful furycrafted attacks. Stone-headed arrows are the bane of metalcrafters, as the lack of any metal makes them impossible to track with their metalcrafting powers.
- The Vord generally shrug them off, but their armored hides also shrug off furycrafted attacks.
Another Dimension: invoked According to Jim Butcher, Carna is another dimension that has wormholes pop up in other dimensions and suck beings in. This is why there are so many different intelligent species (humans, Icemen, Canim, Marat, Vord) on the planet, as well as why some descendants of extinct Earth animals (Megatherium and Terror Birds) are roaming around. The most well-known tear leading to Carna from the "real world" appears intermittently in The Bermuda Triangle.
Answers to the Name of God: When Amara sees the full fury of Garados and Thana, she expresses her shock in the standard Aleran swear of "great furies." Placidus Aria simply responds with, "Two of them."
Anti-Villain: High Lord Aquitaine feels that Gaius Sextus is going to lead the country into a bloody civil war with his political machinations and refusal to name an heir, which is why he is planning to overthrow him and seize the throne for himself.
Anyone Can Die: Flirted with, but ultimately averted. Some supporting characters, like Serai, are Killed Off for Real, and some theoretically important High Lords die in the last two books, but all the heroic characters survive to the end.
Appease the Volcano God: Inverted. High Lord Kalarus deliberately provokes the Great Fury Kalus into a murderous rage in order to take as many Alerans with him as possible when he is finally killed. Gaius Sextus intends to thwart Kalarus' plan but does so by detonating the volcano himself before the fighting reaches Kalare.
Appropriated Appelation:
- The Knights Pisces, who are dubbed such when Tavi notes that the newly formed First Aleran Legion's entire complement of Knights are "fish" (barely competent recruits). After taking several collective levels in badass, and seeing how badly "a bunch of fish" can hurt someone^note, they embrace the name and use it for the rest of the series.
- The Battlecrows, from the same book, sort of. Instead of taking their name from an insult, they take it from the burned and blackened standard that Tavi carries into battle after it is struck by lightning.
Arc Words: The admonition to 'finish what you begin' is given to Tavi repeatedly throughout the first novel by multiple different characters. It forms a basis for his personality throughout the series, and receives several callbacks in later books.
- From Captain's Fury: Hail, Gaius Octavian.
Arranged Marriage. There are several in the series, and not one of them ends well.
- Gaius Sextus and his considerably younger wife Caria, which ends with Caria slowly poisoning Sextus for years.
- Antillus Raucus (Max's dad) and his wife Dorotea. Max believes that Dorotea killed his mother due to her status as Raucus' beloved concubine, and that she is trying to kill him, too, to remove potential threats to her (legitimate) son.
- It is ultimately revealed that there was a planned marriage between Gaius Septimus and Invidia, but Septimus broke off the engagement when he met and wed Isana. This leads to the start of much of the plot of the series.
Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Tavi lists off his exploits, pointing out that he killed Sarl, held off a massive army that vastly outclassed his own, beat said massive army, and... beat Nasaug at ludus.
Artificial Limbs: In Captain's Fury, it is mentioned in that Sir Cyril has a metalcrafted prosthetic leg to replace the one he lost in the previous book.
Artistic License – History: While most of Aleran society is coherent to what a displaced Roman colony from 100AD would look like, there are a lot of minor inconsistencies. Some jokes clearly make sense only if the characters are speaking english, everyone wears pants ^note, gladii are always used as slashing weapons ^notewhile they were built to stab upwards, no one ever consider adopting an heir ^note, and so on. Justified, as it's been over a thousand years since the legion was displaced and they've adapted since then.
Asskicking Leads to Leadership: An Aleran freeman can become a Citizen through several different means, but all of them (with the exception of appointment to a government position or marriage to a Citizen) involve combat in some way. The laws of the land ensure that the most capable and most powerful furycrafters end up at the top of the social order.
As You Know: When Doroga is appointed Master-at-Arms for a juris macto, he has to read out the rules of the contest; he makes sure to point out that everybody there knows the rules better than him.
Attack! Attack! Attack!: The Vord specialize in this. Though they can demonstrate considerable subtlety, they usually do not bother if they have an overwhelming numerical advantage (which they usually do).
Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Wind furies have very short attention spans unless under the control of an exceptionally talented crafter, which can make long-distance flight problematic.
Ax-Crazy:
- Odiana. Best seen in Furies of Calderon.
  Odiana: If you go and kill the ugly little girl right now, won't the Steadholder object? And then you'd have to kill him as well. And anyone else upstairs. And all these people here... Why shouldn't we do this again?
- The "cutter" Navaris; she has a three-figure body count behind her, and that's only counting the legal duels and cases of "self-defense." Add in all of the suspected killings and the like and the number is in the four-figures range. Plus, anyone with the slightest ability in watercrafting (or eyes) can see that she is really not right in the head, especially where violence is concerned.
Babies Ever After:
- Tavi and Kitai's son is born just before the epilogue starts. They name him "desired one".
- Isana feeds Amara a powerful healing mushroom to help her recover from her wounds given by the Vord Queen; this also fixes her reproductive system, which was damaged years ago by a blight. At Tavi's wedding, she is six months pregnant.
Back for the Dead: Aric, son of Kord, returns for a single scene in Academ's Fury before being Taken by the Vord.
Badass Army: The First Aleran, particularly the Battlecrows. They started out as a bunch of half-trained recruits and "veterans" that no one wanted in their army, and eventually became the single most competent Legion in Alera (excepting maybe the Antillan and Phrygian Legions).
Badass Boast: When he is pushed to the point, Gaius Sextus drops all pretense of diplomacy for a show of unquestionable power.
"Boy," Gaius said, his tone growing gentler, even compassionate, "you have a choice. You may chose to stand with your father against me. Or you may choose to live."
Brencis let out a few small, breathless sounds. Then he said, "I'm not afraid of you."
"Of course you are," Gaius said, "and should be."
Badass Bookworm:
- Tavi. The boy has no furycraft (well, at least until the end of book 3), so he has to use his mind. He adapts new strategies and fighting tactics (some even based on ancient Roman history) and fully embraces all the lessons he has been taught.
- Ehren presents the appearance of a scribe or accountant — and in fact works as a scribe in his duties as a Cursor — but is adept at taking down plenty of people with his many, many, knives. He ultimately arranges Aquitaine's assassination to clear the way for Tavi's unchallenged rise to the throne.
- Gaius Sextus' private study is described like a hunting lodge, but with walls of books instead of hunting trophies. It wouldn't be out of character for him to have devoured each book many times to see what new things he could take from them.
Badass Family:
- Not a single member of Tavi's family fails to impress.
  - Tavi, despite having no furycrafting, has a sharp mind and grows to be an impressive fighter.
  - Bernard is former military and is also an exceptionally skilled archer and woodsman, being able to lead a small group through rough ground and swamps, even when one is critically injured.
  - Isana is a very skilled healer who is also capable of flooding a river to take care of some mercenaries threatening her family.
  - And of course there's Gaius Sextus, Tavi's paternal grandfather and First Lord of Alera.
- Kitai's family is also fairly badass.
  - Kitai is a barbarian and master thief, able to hide out in the capital of Alera without anyone catching her despite being easily identifiable as a Marat. Bonus points for eventually marrying Tavi.
  - Doroga is clanhead of the Gargant trbe. He rides into battle on his chala Walker, wielding a club so heavy a High Lady has to visibly use earthcrafting to move it. He swings it with ease and has no crafting whatsoever.
  - Hashat, Kitai's aunt on her mother's side, is headwoman of the Horse Clan and was at First Calderon, Second Calderon, and the final battle against the Vord. It's implied that she personally defeated some of Princeps Septimus' singulares at the battle of First Calderon.
Badass Normal: Tavi and Kitai. Played with in that the pair of them are abnormal by their respective societies' standards. One is furyless, the other has Tavi as her totem. She wanted a horse.
Battle Couple: Bernard and Amara, Tavi and Kitai. In First Lord's Fury Lord and Lady Placida and Isana and Araris get in on some action.
Be Careful What You Wish For:
- In the beginning of Academ's Fury Tavi thinks about how the universe played a cruel trick on him by giving him exactly what he wanted. His life's dream in Furies of Calderon was to attend the Academy in Alera Imperia; now that he's there, he gets to see that pettiness and cruelty are a fact of life that he cannot escape.
- Isana wanted Tavi's growth stunted so people would think him younger than he actually was and would therefore never make a connection with his father, Gaius Septimus. She got what she wanted, but it also delayed Tavi's ability to use furycrafting until he was in his twenties. It caused him much pain and anger after he learned Isana had done it to him.
Becoming the Mask: Fidelias/Marcus has a complex relationship with this trope. "Marcus" was an alias of Fidelias created before the events of the story, but had been abandoned for decades until he reclaimed the identity to infiltrate the First Aleran. Once he realized that Tavi was the son of Gaius Septimus and thusly there was no need to place Aquitaine on the throne since the House of Gaius had a legitimate heir (and more importantly, a legitimate heir who was worth following), he decides to remain in the role of Marcus to look over and assist Tavi in any way he could. After he assumes the identity, and after it has been revealed to the reader who he really is, Butcher only writes him as 'Marcus' until he re-accepts the name Fidelias.
Bed Trick: Played with. When using watercrafting to disguise himself as Gaius Sextus, Max has to deal with the First Lord's suspicious wife. He does so by hitting her with enough sexual earthcraft to scramble her brains, setting this trope up, but doesn't actually sleep with her. Gaius was not entirely amused when he learned what had happened after he recovered - specifically, when Caria unexpectedly joined him in the bath. While, as he puts it, 'he rose to the demands of his station', he remarks to Tavi that, should a similar situation arise in the future, he would prefer if Max didn't resort to seducing his wife.
Beneath Notice:
- Amara spends much of the first novel undercover as a slave in order to be ignored and unobserved. Though it does not work well for her (everybody either already knows who she is or is thrown into deadly peril with her), the concept is theoretically sound. Bernard discusses the idea with her when he begins to suspect that she is in disguise, commenting that very few people are willing to take the risk of not being able to get out of the disguise once people begin thinking you are a slave. He points out that only the foolish and the desperate go through with it.
- Tavi was supposed to be Beneath Notice in Cursor's Fury when he goes undercover in the First Aleran Legion as the Third Subtribune Logistica (the assistant to the assistant of the assistant quartermaster), a position no significant power or authority in the Legion's command structure. Gaius wanted him attached to the Legion so he could monitor its activities without arousing suspicion himself. Unfortunately, the events of the novel soon thrust him into the (very public) spotlight.
- Ehren spends much of his time beneath notice. His weak furycrafting helps people underestimate him and not think of his actions. He subtly maneuvers High Lord Aquitaine into embarking on a suicide mission; on his deathbed, Aquitaine bemusedly remarks, "I think that little man assassinated me".
- "Captain's Fury" reveals that Araris Valerian branded his own face with a coward's mark and sold himself into slavery so that he could watch over Tavi without anybody noticing.
Best Her to Bed Her: The Marat, as a culture, have this in terms of their courting rituals. The man must win over the woman he wants in some competition of her choosing. So, if a male of the Wolf tribe seeks to court a lady of the Horse tribe who isn't interested in him, she can challenge him to a horse race, knowing full well she has the clear advantage and will likely win. In the end, Kitai challenges Tavi to slay the Vord Queen before she does.
Best Served Cold:
- First Lord Gaius Sextus is an extremely patient man who waits twenty-five years to enact the full extent of his revenge against the High Lords who conspired to kill his son. The first he kills personally by blowing up a volcano near his city. The second he convinces to lead an attack against the oncoming Vord menace; he is overcome and devoured by the monsters (not unlike the Marat doing Septimus so much harm no body could be reasonably recovered).
- Fearing this, the Vord Queen does not kill Isana when she captures her, as Tavi might share his grandfather's pragmatism and put off their encounter, remarking that their bloodline 'does not do things in hot blood'. Having live bait, however, might motivate Tavi to move faster and hopefully make more errors.
The Bet:
- The series was originally written on one. Jim Butcher was in a debate over whether a good story required a good idea, or if a good story could be written with a bad idea. The other member of the argument, whose name has now been lost to time, bet that Butcher could not write a good story based on a terrible idea he came up with. Butcher responded that he would take two. The ideas were the Lost Roman Legion... and Pokémon.
- By Princeps Fury, the Cursors have a pool on who will be the victor when Lord Aquitaine and Lady Aquitaine inevitably turn on each other. Ehren gets in on it and bets on Lady Aquitaine; this turns out to be the correct choice.
Better to Die than Be Killed:
- Kestus, wounded while trying escape after seeing Tonnar ripped apart by the Vord, turns to Ivarus and says that he does not want to be killed by those creatures. Ivarus, understanding what he means, nods once, and Kestus thanks him before the chapter cuts out.
- When Amara and Bernard are spying on the Vord, Amara says to Bernard that whatever happens, she does not want to become one of the mindless Taken. Bernard, however, refuses to consider it, instead saying that they are going to live. Period.
BFG: The Balest, the first crossbow in the Codex Alera world: invented by the Canim and the size of a cart horse's yoke. It shoots bolts with enough force to punch straight through a fully armored legionare and still be moving fast enough to wound the man behind him.
BFS:
- Justified by the Knights Terra, who use earthcrafting to boost their strength enough to wield them.
- High Lord Placida carries a sword that is actually described in the text as a "monster," large enough to kill gargants and fell trees in a single swing.
Big Bad Duumvirate: Attis and Invidia Aquitaine married for purely political reasons and both are well aware that they are using one another. Invidia is actually the driving force behind most of the plots that would see Attis get the throne, and is more active in the main story.
Big Bad Ensemble: Attis Aquitaine and Invidia Aquitaine, both of whom are arguably separate threats despite being husband and wife, are villains of the first book and have a presence in all the rest; Kalarus is part of three different Big Bad Ensembles in books 2-4, and Sarl is mostly a separate threat in book 3 despite his treacherous and tenuous alliance with the former, as is arguably Big Bad Wannabe Senator Arnos; however, the Vord are the Big Bad of the overall story, both as a species and in the form of the primary Vord Queen, who is involved in an Enemy Civil War with the other Queens.
Big Damn Heroes:
- In Furies of Calderon when hope against the Marat horde is fading and defeat seems likely, Tavi arrives supported by two other Marat clans to help fight the first attackers and protect his home.
- Later, when Aldrick has struck down Bernard, Amara, and Tavi in turn, and is getting ready to kill Tavi and take back the MacGuffin, Fade finally drops his Obfuscating Stupidity pretense and reveals himself as Araris Valerian, facing and defeating Aldrick in a metalcrafting duel.
- In Cursor's Fury, Tavi, Max, and two hundred Legion cavalry save a refugee column from a horde of Canim raiders coming from the other direction.
  They closed on the refugees faster than Tavi could have believed, and when they saw Aleran cavalry riding down upon them, the refugees' expressions of terror and despair filled with sudden hope. Arms lifted in sudden shouts and cheers and breathless cries of encouragement.
  - Later in the same novel, Max and Crassus save Tavi's ass by sending two water lions against the Canim ritualists trying to kill him.
- In First Lord's Fury Tavi arrives with two full legions and two armies of Canim Warriors on the vord's aft, drawing attention and placing themselves in a key position to finally kill the Queen.
Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The descriptions given of the Icemen in first Furies of Calderon and later Princeps’ Fury shows that they strongly resemble the archetypal Bigfoot.
Bishōnen Line: Or, more specifically, Bishojo Line. The Vord Queen goes through several forms as she matures; the first few are clearly monstrous and insectile, but her ultimate form looks almost exactly like a cross between Isana's sister and Kitai. In other words, like the daughter of Kitai and Tavi. This makes sense, as the Vord Queen absorbed both Tavi and Kitai's blood when they were in the Wax Forest in the first book.
Bittersweet Ending: Alera is saved from the Vord and has crafted a new Alliance with all of its former enemies. Tavi takes the throne with his newly wedded wife Kitai and their son Desiderius and already has set plans into motion regarding the reconstruction of Alera, aiming to make it stronger and fairer-minded than ever before. Additionally, Alera's corrupt Might Makes Right Fantastic Caste System based on furycrafting has been permanently broken by Tavi, who had the Great Fury Alera "alter" the system so that furycrafting is now based on merit and not inheritance. However, nearly half of the Aleran people were killed in the war, and the scars left behind by the conflict will be truly devastating. Weather patterns are thrown into flux by the eruptions of Mount Kalus and the volcano Gaius Sextus created beneath Alera Imperia, along with the icy weather Tavi brought down from the north for his ship-sleds (in fact, it's mentioned that because of Tavi's actions, a new ice age will begin in "only a few" millennia). The Great Fury Alera's death will cause even more chaos: furycrafting itself may become unpredictable, wild furies will become more prevalent, random surges of plant growth and death will occur, animals will behave oddly, and the weather will become even more turbulent. On a more personal level, Crassus is still angry at Tavi keeping the truth of his mother's survival from him, and their friendship may not recover. And most worrying of all, the Vord still control Canea, having killed most of the population - Tavi and crew were only in time to save about sixty thousand Canim - and will spend the next few decades fortifying and consolidating the continent. They will be ready to attack Alera again within roughly a century and a half, and Alera needs to be ready to meet them by then. On the other hand, the Vord controlling Canea provides sufficient motive for the peoples of Carna to maintain their Enemy Mine situation, which Tavi fully intends to leverage as much as possible.
Black Eyes of Evil: The Awakened and Canea Vord Queens have them, with them being described as being mult-faceted like a dragonfly's.
Black Swords Are Better: Pirellus, known as Pirellus of the Black Blade, wields a sword with a black blade. He is a renowned swordsman and is the first person to match Aldrick ex Gladius with a blade since the latter's famous duel with Araris Valerian. Unfortunately, despite Pirellus' skill, he is defeated and killed by Aldrick.
Blade Enthusiast: Ehren hides such an extravagant number of knives on his person that it becomes a Running Gag, and at least one person deduces that he is a Cursor based solely on how many he has.
Blatant Lies: After deliberately breaking his own leg, Tavi calmly explains that the cart horse spooked and ran him over, while a large forge hammer is lying next to him. With the horse asleep, right there. And snoring.
Blood Magic: The Canim ritualist caste uses powerful magic that can be on par with Aleran furycrafting. Unusually, it is not inherently evil, and while there are quite a few Evil Sorcerers, a number of ritualists are surprisingly decent. Originally, Canim ritualists used their own blood to fuel their magic — they only started going evil when they realized the blood of others worked just as well, and could be procured in larger quantities.
Blue-and-Orange Morality:
- In the first book, Fidelias repeatedly points out to Aldrick that the Marat have a different way of thinking than Alerans. Things that make no sense to Alerans are perfectly logical to the Marat, and they cannot be expected to react to stimuli the same way an Aleran would.
- Tavi explains to other Alerans throughout the latter four novels that the Canim are reasoning, intelligent beings who have plans and goals, that they are not mindless brutes or insane, but also that their manner of thinking is different. Several of the conflicts with the Canim come from Alerans interpreting their actions from an Aleran mindset and refusing to allow for an alternate goal, and/or the Canim doing likewise.
Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: This is what scenes involving High Lords Antillus and Phrygius turn into. Antillus says something dim-witted or obvious, Phrygius makes fun of him for being an idiot. They are best friends. The whole setup is only made funnier by the fact that both lords are in their late forties/early fifties, are members of the absolute highest social and political echelon of Aleran society, and are powerful enough furycrafters to level cities on their lonesomes.
Book Ends: Very near the beginning, Tavi and Amara take shelter from a furystorm caused by Garados and Thana in the Princeps' Memorium. At the end of the series, Tavi kills the Vord Queen there in the middle of a furystorm caused by Garados and Thana.
Boring, but Practical:
- Both Doroga and Kitai remark that Alerans must get bored out of their minds repeatedly practicing their maneuvers (for combat and singing) over and over again, but Bernard and Tavi point out that they seem impressed by the results.
- When Tavi questions why he needs to learn the basic, clumsy combat techniques of the Legion when he is already a rather skilled swordsman, Max points out that the entire reason the Legions are able to stand off the larger, stronger Canim and the more numerous Marat is because of their coordination and basic efficiency. Dazzling swordplay is nice on an individual basis, but it is useless when fighting in concert with others, where learning the basic interlocking formations is what makes a Legion infinitely stronger than the individual swordsmen composing its ranks.
- The Canim have simple but effective crossbow-like weapons which can be almost as deadly as a Knight Flora, and use simple slings to hurl boulders further than a Knight Terra could. Worse, most any of their kind can learn to use either technique.
Bothering by the Book: In Captain's Fury, Ehren mentions dealing with Senator Arnos earlier in the book had him studying of Aleran law and procedure to help outgambit the man. In the end, Ehren writes documents to not only validate Tavi's title of Octavian, Prince of the Realm, but for Tavi to give himself the authority to free himself from prison on his own recognizance to defend the honor of the Realm. It all stands up to Arnos' legal expert.
Breaking Speech: The Vord Queen uses watercrafting to send a message to all of Alera, telling them that their efforts are futile and the Vord are undefeatable, but that the Alerans need not die fighting in the war. She offers any who wish it amnesty if they come to her lands; the only condition is they cannot have any more children. It nearly works and even gets to Tavi's men. Then Varg responds. And not many moments later, Tavi ripostes.
Bribe Backfire: In Alera Imperia, the Grey Tower is a formidable prison designed to be able to hold the most powerful crafters. The guards assigned there are recruited not only for being some of the strongest swordsmen in the nation, but also for their high degree of integrity. It is virtually impossible for anyone to bribe them. If someone even tries to bribe them, they can report the bribe to their superiors and the Crown will pay them triple the bribe amount as a bonus.
In the past five hundred years, not one Grey Guardsman has taken a bribe, and only a handful of idiots have attempted to give them one.
Brick Joke:
- Furies of Calderon begins with Tavi and Bernard searching for a lost flock of sheep near Garados, where they run into Atsurak. The last scene of the book is Tavi returning home with those lost sheep.
- Kitai's dry-witted comments with Isana in Captain's Fury regarding Tavi's skill with his mouth are referenced twice again later in the book; first when an irritated Tavi makes an idle remark about how Araris and Ehren are complaining about him "running [his] mouth" (causing Isana and Kitai to break down laughing for several minutes), and later when Kitai recognizes Araris and Isana are now an Official Couple, and she expresses curiosity over how skilled Araris is with his mouth.
Bring It: Pirellus does this gesture to a crowd of Marat toward the end of the first book.
Bring News Back:
- When Ivarus, Kestus, and Tonnar are ambushed by the Vord, Ivarus says that it is more important for Kestus to escape and warn Alera than it is for him to stop and assist Ivarus, whose horse has been killed.
- When Amara and Bernard are spying on the Vord, they debate whether or not they should go further into Vord territory or leave now and bring their discoveries to the First Lord. They ultimately agree to continue deeper into enemy territory, but Bernard makes Amara promise to return directly to the First Lord, without him if need be, once they complete their mission.
Bug Caste System: There are lots of different kinds of Vord. Queens, Warriors, Takers, and Wax Spiders seem to come standard, but more specialized castes such as Vordknights, Vordbulks, mantises, and Cane-forms pop up, too, depending on the needs of the situation and which enemies are available to copy.
Burning the Ships: In Cursor's Fury, Sarl, the Canim commander, burns the Canim fleet, as otherwise the warrior caste (who are there under duress and passionately dislike the ritualists) might be tempted to just sail back to Canea.
…But He Sounds Handsome: Inverted. In Cursor's Fury, Max and Tavi briefly discuss the reported assault on a slaver and the freeing of all his slaves, congratulating and praising the mysterious man who did it. They are each very surprised to learn that it wasn't the other one who did it.
But I Can't Be Pregnant!: Kitai is shaky on the details of her pregnancy, as she and the father aren't quite the same species.
But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Princeps Septimus was known among the Citizenry for going against the flow and would get involved personally to deal with squabbles. Invidia mentions that these scuffles were not really remembered by Septimus himself, but those whose ire his actions aroused remembered and hated him all the more.
The Butler Did It: Ehren is known as a simple aide to the First Lord, helping with paperwork and such. His gentle manipulations are the reason Princeps Aquitaine went into battle to draw out either the Vord Queen or her second-in-command. The Princeps dies from wounds received in the battle.
Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp":
- invoked "Grass lions" are (by Word of God) sabertooth cats. Gargants are descended from the Giant Ground Sloth, leviathans are plesiosaurs, and herdbane are terror birds. The descriptions given to the thanadents, tavar, slives, and garim are a lot more vague, but the former two are heavily implied to be a type of tyrannosauroid and “bear-dog” respectively, while slives seem to be descendants of the Cretaceous species of venomous monitor lizards and garim are essentially Komodo dragons.
- The highly advanced and massive crossbows created by the Canim are referred to as “balests.” Additionally, the catapults re-invented by Octavian and Bernard in First Lord’s Fury are called “mules” since the force of their released payloads causes one end of their structure to leap up in a manner reminiscent of a donkey kicking out its hind legs. Notably, both of these are actually semi-historical names: The Romans called what we would now call a catapult an "onager" (an ass or a mule) because it kicked like one, while "catapulta" was used for what was essentially a giant crossbow.
Call-Back: After Isana uses a river to defeat someone in book one, she says, "My river." In the last book, after the Aleran forces repel a Vord thrust, Bernard says, "My valley."
The Call Put Me on Hold: Tavi grows up as a "furyless freak", which is a source of considerable angst. It is also a source of inspiration for him, because he has to think his way out of situations that his countrymen would simply blast their way out of, and he regularly takes advantage of resulting blind spots in their thinking. His lack of furycrafting abilities is a side effect of his mother stunting his growth to prevent his royal lineage from being noticed... and he eventually regains the ability to furycraft.
Camp Followers:
- All Legions have the standard merchant, vagabond and prostitute followers. Women have a mandatory term of service in the followers during their late-teens/early-twenties where they serve as cooks, seamstresses, etc. for the Legions. There is the implicit instruction to also serve as a dating pool for the Legions, with dialogue indicating that the real purpose young women are assigned is to make sure that legionares reproduce and have available wives; Isana says that when she had a miscarriage during her term of service, the Legion commander said she had fulfilled her duty and sent her home.
- The First Aleran Legion has the usual makeup of followers, but eventually Mistress Cymnea, their nominal leader, is added to the staff of the Legion as Tribune Logistica after all but two officers of the Legion are killed in an attempt to decapitate it.
- The Alerans have camp followers to thank for their civilization, descended as they are from the lost IX Roman Legion. Had the soldiers been alone, they would have died out, but enough female camp followers and Germanic local people came along to establish a viable breeding population, which eventually grew into the vast Aleran empire.
Canis Latinicus: Aleran names bear next to no resemblance to actual Roman naming practices. Gaius Primus, Secundus, etc look ridiculous in a Roman context, and married women apparently take their husband's family name (Romans didn't) without changing it to a feminine form (for example, Aquitaina Invidia would be more correct). Yes, there's been a millennium or two of linguistic divergence, but to readers who know Latin, it just looks wrong.
Cannot Spit It Out: In the fourth book, Isana finally tries to explain to Tavi who his parents are and why he does not have magic powers like everyone else. Unfortunately, he chooses just that moment for some Oblivious Guilt Slinging, talking about how great it is to see family again without all the political intrigue and backstabbing of his job, making it even harder for her to confess to a lifelong deception, so she puts it off. Eventually, Araris does the job for her. Tavi is a bit sore about it for a while.
Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Fidelias is aware of this, which is why he feels safe reporting failure to Lord Aquitaine. He is too valuable a tool to be thrown away carelessly, so he knows that he will not be killed until his failures outnumber his successes. This also keeps him alive when Tavi discovers that Valiar Marcus is really the traitor Fidelias, though Tavi needs to be convinced that he does still need him.
The Captain: While Legions are commanded by a Captain, their role tends to be more along the line of Colonel Badass. Demos is a somewhat more usual example, since he is in command of a ship with a Badass Crew.
Captain Ersatz: High Lady Placida bears a striking resemblance, personally and physically, to one Cordelia Vorkosigan. Word of God says that this (as well as High Lord Placida's similar resemblance to Aral Vorkosigan) is deliberate.
Captain Obvious:
- Frederic can't believe that Tavi is a particular target in the battle raging through Garrison, until a mercenary Knight swoops out of the sky and wounds Tavi's arm.
  Fred: They're trying to kill you!
  Tavi: I can't tell you how glad I am that you're here to tell me that.
- This gem in First Lord's Fury:
  [signal flare appears]
  Antillus Raucus: Well. There it is.
  Lord Phrygius: Brilliant last words, that. We'll put them on your tombstone. Right next to, "He died stating the obvious."
Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: When Tavi and Maximus are sent to join the First Aleran Legion, Max knocks out two legionares that are disrespectful to Tavi, who is there undercover as an officer. When Tavi points out to Max that he could have handled them himself, Max explains that that is not the point; an officer wouldn't dispense corporal punishment, regardless of his capabilities, since that is the job of the Centurions.
Cardboard Prison:
- The Grey Tower is supposedly impregnable. Tavi breaks two characters out of it, the first with only a couple hours' preparation, the second after the prison's defenses had been redesigned by Tavi himself. ^note
- Any non-Tailor-Made Prison usually turns out to be this to crafters. This nearly bites the Canim leader Lararl in the tail because his range has had little contact with Alerans. Lararl regards stories of Aleran furycraft as myths and exaggerations spread by Varg's range (Narash) and doesn't believe that furycraft can do anything Canim magic can't. Canish magic can't make a person fly, so he imprisons Tavi and his crew on an open roof with no way down; since they have windcrafters with them, this does not pose any significant obstacle.
  Max: They cannot possibly be serious.
Central Theme: Communication, Forgiveness, and moving away from the crimes of the past.
Characterization Marches On:
- When Isana and Fade first interacted, she was unsure if he could truly understand her simple instructions due to his mental disability. Later scenes in the same book would reveal that she was privy to his true identity the entire time.
- Interactions between Isana and Bernard in the first book heavily imply that Bernard knows the truth about Tavi, but all later novels have him in the dark and knowing only the story Isana told.
- High Lord Aquitaine is introduced in the first novel as an unsubtle drunkard who needs to be guided by his wife and more capable subordinates down the avenues to take the throne, and prone to lethal punishments for failure. Later books establish that he is a clever and insightful manipulator, skilled in both legion strategy and politics, and disinclined to pointless violence (not that he won't kill people if they get in his way, but he's not cavalier about it).
The Charmer: Antillar "Max" Maximus. The reason he is so outgoing is because he does not think he will live past 30, since his Wicked Stepmother sees him as an impediment to his half-brother's political success and has been arranging "accidents" since he was 14.
Chekhov's Boomerang: In the first book, Tavi and Kitai are sent into the Wax Forest to retrieve a mushroom that can cure any poison. After a little too much excitement ensues, this property turns out to be all that saves Kitai's life. The mushrooms do not show up again until the last book, when Isana uses them to save Amara and Lady Placida from death by Vord poison. As a bonus, it also heals Amara's blight scars, allowing her to conceive.
Chekhov's Gun: Lots and lots, some of them held across the entire series before they go off.
- The longest delay was the fact that the Calderon Valley contains the great furies Garados and Thana, which were introduced in the beginning of the first book, are mentioned briefly in the second, and finally gain great importance in the climax of the final book.
- Tavi learns about icebergs at the beginning of Princeps' Fury. At the end of the book, he has his crafters carve giant ships out of them, since leviathans avoid them and he needs a way to transport a lot of Canim noncombatants away from Vord-controlled regions.
- In Academ's Fury, Invidia introduces the newest creation from her city's best tailor: fury-infused clothing that can change colors at the wearer's command. In Princeps' Fury Amara and Bernard purchase two garments of the material, one in her size and one in his, to be made into full-body invisibility cloaks to use in infiltrating enemy territory.
- In Cursor's Fury, it is mentioned that the legion camp designs are pretty much identical. The captain's tent is always in the same relative spot, even large fortresses like the one in Calderon have a similar set-up. This means it is all the easier for the Canim to call down a deadly lightning strike onto the command structure. This fires again in First Lord's Fury when the Vord Queen stages a raiding attack on Tavi's camp and they're still following the old camp design, allowing her to know the most efficient paths to attack the medical tents and command tents. Tavi himself lampshades he should have thought of a new design.
- At the beginning of Cursor's Fury, Tavi uses a lens to light a fire and trick Max's Wicked Stepmother into thinking he has furycrafting ability (he is known as the one person in Alera without furies of his own). In the climax, he does a similar trick... with a quarter-mile wide lens made by his Knights Aeris to concentrate the sun's rays on the attacking Canim.
- One of the properties of discipline collars is that they don't work on anyone who is already wearing one. Before infiltrating Brencis Minoris' hideaway, Amara lets Bernard put a collar on her because that way Brencis won't be able to enslave her.
- Captain's Fury has a discussion on Tavi's furycrafting that discusses how a fury can be "gifted" to someone else, but it never happens in the story. In Princeps' Fury, Gaius Sextus gifts the Great Fury Alera to Tavi.
Chekhov's Skill:
- See Tavi learning/demonstrating some new skill? There is a pretty good chance he is going to use it for something absurdly badass and awesome by the end of the book.
- At the beginning of Cursor's Fury, Tavi and Magnus are testing out a catapult they made based on old Roman documents. It promptly gets smashed when an irate Max almost gets hit by a rock and chucks it back at them. No more mention is made, and it seems to be a funny but irrelevant side-note. Until the last book, when we learn that Tavi wrote home to his uncle about it, and Bernard set up over a hundred of the things as part of the defenses in the Calderon Valley, and loaded them, at Tavi's suggestion, with glass spheres full of fire furies that explode when they break. They do more damage than the High Lords when turned on the Vord army, and the ammo is easy enough to manufacture that they can outlast them, too.
- Furycrafted roads allow legions to move quickly on them and crafters can even give their horses a boost of speed from the roads. Later, Tavi substitutes "horses" with "Canim" when he needs both the Canim army and his army to do a quick march. While the Canim cannot use furycrafting, carrying the Alerans allows them the use of the causeways. Additionally, the Awakened Vord Queen is able to use the collared Citizens under her command to repair the causeways the Alerans had been severing to slow her advance, allowing her to (relatively) quickly assemble her forces and attack Riva before its defenders are ready.
- Mistress Cymnea's ladies are well practiced in earthcrafting, to better stir the loins of weary legionares. Tavi conscripts them as combat engineers to be ready to destroy a key bridge if need be, given their many years of practice with earthcrafting.
- In First Lord's Fury, Fidelias remembers part of his Cursor training: Cursors develop the skill to sneak up behind a person in absolute silence before stabbing them in the neck at the top of the spine, a guarantee one-hit kill even on a powerful Citizen. Amara uses this exact technique to finally kill Invidia using a stone knife, as her metalcrafting would have detected a metal blade.
Chekhov's Volcano: The climax of Captain's Fury (well, one of them) has the First Lord unleashing Kalus, the Great Fury within the volcanic Mount Kalare, destroying High Lord Kalarus, his capital city, and all of the other towns and steadholts for hundreds of square miles, killing hundreds of thousands.
Childless Dystopia: in First Lord's Fury, the Vord Queen offers the people of Alera the option to surrender peacefully and live out the remainder of their natural lives under her rule. The only requirement is that they not be allowed to sire any more children.
Chrome Champion:
- When the First Lord goes to battle, he has enough power and skill with metalcrafting to turn into this.
- In First Lord's Fury Araris Valerian does the same.
Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Invidia, so much so that nearly every character that has extensive dealings with her tries to take her sudden but inevitable betrayal into account. When she tries to turn on the Vord Queen, the Queen is not even upset and sees no reason to punish her for it, since that is just what Invidia does.
Civil War: High Lord Kalarus Brencis launches a particularly bloody one against the First Lord in Cursor’s Fury. The "Kalaran Rebellion", as it is called, lasts for roughly two years before it is brought to a swift and violent end in Captain's Fury.
*Click* Hello: The sword equivalent. Navaris and her team corner Tavi in his office, intending to kill him... and then Max, Crassus, and Araris show up behind them, swords drawn.
Clothing Damage: Sometimes, when Bernard and Amara are separated for great lengths of time, their passions are so great when they reunite that they do not have the patience to undo the knots and ties on Amara's complicated flying leathers. In these instances, Bernard usually just cuts the clothing off her. Amara's only problem with this is the difficulty it makes for her to get clothing again once they are done.
Colonel Badass: There is not a rank of "colonel" in the Legions, but some captains, especially Tavi, fit this trope pretty well.
Combat Pragmatist:
- Fidelias mentions at least once every book that he avoids a fair fight whenever he can.
- Tavi mentions at one point that "if he had his way, he would never engage in a fair fight ever again."
- Captain Demos, whose entire ship is a single wood Fury, mentions that the last fair fight he had was when he was twelve years old.
Combat Sadomasochist: Kalarus' Immortals have been conditioned since childhood through discipline collars to enjoy pain, to the point that one of them seems to be happy when he is forced to chop off his own leg.
Confronting Your Imposter: Of a sort. Aldrick ex Gladius often tells his opponents that "The only man who has ever matched me in battle was Araris Valerian himself, and you aren't Araris" to indicate that he is the superior swordsman. At the climax of the first novel it turns out his opponent is Araris.
Commander Contrarian: Senators Arnos and Valerius, who mostly just want to make themselves look good at the expense of everyone else. In Valerius's case, even in the face of what is The End of the World as We Know It. Valerius's Establishing Character Moment is, when he's being rescued from a Vord-induced Fate Worse than Death, to act indignant that someone is telling him what to do. Bernard promptly knocks his ass out and notes that he'll slow them down less while he's unconscious.
Common Law Marriage: Technically, legionaires on active duty are not permitted to marry. In practice, most have a woman among the Camp Followers to whom they are married in all ways but the legal. It's hinted that this is part of the purpose of the camp followers in the first place, since Alera needs its citizens to reproduce to keep numbers up.
Conflict Killer:
- The first four novels see various Aleran, Marat and Canim figures jockeying for power and control. Starting in the fourth novel, the Vord threat rises and previous rivalries are explicitly postponed until after the Vord crisis.
- Despite the Vord crisis, several Aleran characters acknowledge that Aquitainus Attis will still try to seize the First Lord's mantle, and Isana, Bernard and Amara lay their opposition in turn. Even Tavi speaks about the inevitable confrontation once the Vord are dealt with. It is the unassuming and overlooked Ehren who instead assassinates Attis, clearing the way for Tavi's unopposed rise to the throne. Everybody is surprised at this, none more so than Attis himself who almost laughs at the way Ehren outplayed him.
Consummate Liar: Fidelias (as various watercrafters learn to their dismay and disturbance). Notably, he still has to be very careful when he's lying to Lady Aquitaine, because she is powerful enough to see through him.
Fidelias: Yes, I do [plan to help the prisoner]. No, I don’t. The sky is green. I am seventeen years old. My real name is Gundred.
Continuity Nod:
- After Bernard and Amara have been engaged in a sexual relationship for several years (and multiple novels) Amara asks Bernard when he first realized that he was attracted to her. His response was when he first bandaged her ankle, which occurred in the first novel, soon after they first met.
- In the battle at Garrison during Furies of Calderon, Frederic enters one scene carrying a dancing girl that he saved during the fighting. Several books later, Tavi receives a letter informing him of Frederic's marriage to "that girl he rescued".
Contrived Coincidence: In Captain's Fury, Gaius Sextus happens to set off the Kalare volcano at exactly the right time for the sudden light and earthquake to lend that special something to the climax of Tavi's speech hundreds of miles away.
Cool Versus Awesome: SO. MUCH.
The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: Tavi briefly discusses this in Captain's Fury. He demands to be placed under the custody of Captain Nalus instead of Senator Arnos, since he does not want to wake up and discover that he has accidentally slit his wrists in his sleep.
Cosmic Horror Story: In the last book, the Vord Queen says that the Vord span the stars and the space between stars, and that they'll return eventually even if they are defeated now.
"Could Have Avoided This!" Plot:
- Towards the end of Furies of Calderon, Isana learns that Aric and Heddy were in a consensual relationship, and that if Aric had explained what happened they could have prevented the trial of his brother Bittan for Heddy's rape. This in turn would have avoided all of the conflict which spun out from there for the rest of the novel.
- As time goes on, multiple characters (even those loyal to the First Lord) point out that Gaius could have prevented a lot of the scheming amongst the High Lords by fathering another child after the death of Septimus, or at least designating an heir from one of the nobility. It would not have solved everything, especially once the reader learns that some of the High Lords created the problem in the first place by assassinating Septimus, but it would have resolved the most public crisis of a disputed succession. Gaius is well aware of this, but is far more interested in revenge than the continuity of the realm. Until he meets Tavi and realizes who he is.
Covered in Mud: In Furies of Calderon, Tavi gets caught in a furystorm and is being hunted by windmanes. He covers himself with mud so the windmanes can't sense him.
Covert Group with Mundane Front: Cursors, to an extent. Technically they serve as the messengers of the First Lord, although all aristocrats know better than that. They are spies and, if need be, assassins. Lampshaded in Captain's Fury, when Tavi has Ehren engage in "the other part of Cursor business" and deliver a message to Nasaug.
Crazy Enough to Work: Almost every plan of Tavi's relies on this. So much so that Kitai finds the Final Battle by going to the place only a lunatic would go.
Ehren: The plan is insane. You are insane. [realizes he is naked in a healing tub] I'll need some pants.
Crazy-Prepared:
- Comes up pretty often given the number of Chessmasters in play, but the precedent is set early in the first book when Amara realizes that Gaius Sextus had designed his own son's tomb as a shelter against enemy furies, weapons stockpile, and site for healing. Hidden in plain sight!
- When Fidelias enters a seemingly empty tent he turns to the empty air and makes a verbal greeting. Lady Aquitaine, hiding under a veil, reveals herself and asks how he knew that she was there, but Fidelias is actually very surprised to see her. Apparently he greets the empty tent every time he walks in, just in case there is somebody invisible hiding in there.
Creepy Crows: Crows are seen as a symbol of death and war by Alerans, and are frequently seen on and around the many battlefields throughout the series. In fact, almost every Aleran curse centers around crows.
Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Fade.
Cue the Sun:
- The main Marat horde holds off attacking Garrison until the sun rises, timing their first charge to right when the sun comes over the horizon. Apart from the religious symbolism the Marat ascribe to the sun, it will also be shining right in the eyes of the Garrison defenders and hamper their ability to see.
- Invoked in Cursor's Fury. Tavi commands his windcrafters to part the clouds and reveal the sun at high noon in order to focus the sun's rays into a Death Ray which roasts the Canim.
Curse Cut Short: In Cursor's Fury, though Tavi actually finishes it.
Random legionare: Kick their furry—
Tavi: Assault formation!
Cycle of Revenge:
- Atsurak lost family at First Calderon, where Princeps Septimus died by a Marat invasion, and so hates Alerans and leads the Marat to avenge them in Furies of Calderon.
- Doroga averts this. He lost a lot of his family in the same battle and his wife was killed by Atsurak, but after some years of thought, he no longer hates either. He sees it in the past and little good can come from opening those wounds. That said, when circumstances offer him an opportunity to kill Atsurak for the greater good, he's hardly hesitant.
- The Alerans of the far north and Icemen have this relationship. One side kills the other and the other retaliates. It has been going on for so long, Isana wonders if either side actually remembers why the conflict started to begin with. The mutually inimical reactions of Aleran firecrafting and the Icemen's innate watercrafting-adjacent powers hasn't helped.
Dark Action Girl:
- Invidia is one of the most powerful crafters in the series and is motivated solely by ambition and greed.
- Navaris is regarded as one of, if not the, deadliest swordspeople in Alera (Araris, the other single most deadly swordsman in Alera, gave any fair fight between them a 50/50 chance of going either way), but is motivated solely by bloodlust and a need to prove herself better than everybody.
Darker and Edgier: The Codex Alera series as a whole is this to its sister series, The Dresden Files. While The Dresden Files certainly isn't a walk in the park with its own respective themes, Codex Alera is generally less comedy-focused along with eventually evolving into a bloodier affair thanks to being a military adventure fantasy story rather than the not-as-bloody Fantastic Noir that is The Dresden Files. Codex Alera also deals more directly with weightier subject matter than The Dresden Files does, with many characters (most notably Isana) directly noting, critiquing and fighting against both Alera's No Woman's Land policies and practice of slavery.
Dating What Daddy Hates: While Gaius and Septimus never got along very well, the First Lord was even less pleased with Septimus's choice of a commoner for a wife, rather than the politically safe and acceptable arranged marriage to a woman who was both a ranking Citizen and a strong furycrafter.
The Dead Have Names:
- In their first skirmish with the Canim forces in Alera, two members of the First Aleran cavalry are killed. When Tavi realizes that neither he nor Maximus know their names, he asks Max to find out.
- After a pair of Hunters are killed in battle with the Vord, Tavi asks their leader what their names were, and asks if anyone will sing a Blood Song (Canim funerary ritual) for them. Their leader tells Tavi that the Songs were sung when they became Hunters, having died in society's eyes then.
- One Cane ritualist, Master Marok, uses this to take the wind out of the sails of one of his less-honorable colleagues. After Tavi is forced to kill two Canim commoners in self-defense, the ritualist says that a blood price must be paid for them — and Marok undercuts him by asking if he even knows their names, which he clearly doesn't.
Decadent Court: Aleran politics are full of deadly intrigue, to the point where “cutters” (read: assassins) will never be out of work.
Death by Childbirth: Tavi is brought up believing that his mother was Isana's sister and that she died giving birth to him. While Isana's sister did die when Tavi was born, it was not in childbirth, as she was not his mother; Isana was. Her sister died from blood loss from an arrow wound she took when they were attacked shortly before Tavi's birth, which was not properly treated since she was focused on helping Isana deliver Tavi, making her death an example of the trope by proxy.
Death by Despair: When Gaius Septimus died, his mother took ill soon afterwards. She had his unfinished portrait (which she was in the middle of painting when she received the news) hung in her room as she wasted away.
Death by Origin Story: Tavi's father was a member of the Crown Legion and his mother was a member of the camp followers, both of whom were killed by the Marat at the First Battle of Calderon. As a result, Tavi was raised by his Aunt Isana and Uncle Bernard, his mother's older siblings. Except it turns out that his father was not a legionare in the Crown Legion, but rather the Princeps Gaius Septimus, and his mother is actually Isana, who claimed to be his aunt in order to obscure his heritage.
Death Equals Redemption:
- When Fidelias is crucified for his crimes, Demos, Maximus and Crassus, and later Tavi and Kitai, discuss the way he seemed to be so accepting of the situation when he could have fought or resisted. Tavi ultimately realizes that Fidelias wanted to be executed as a form of redemption. This is what motivates him to spare Fidelias, so that they can get maximum benefit out of his death instead of wasting it in an execution.
- Amara mourns "the man he became" after Gaius Attis is fatally maimed by his wife and spends his remaining days calmly leading the Alerans and planning for his death.
Death from Above:
- Cursor's Fury:
  - The Canim have access to magic the Alerans do not. This includes a powerful lightning attack that takes out the Legion's command headquarters with most of the officers inside.
  - Tavi returns the favor, in kind, with a Kill Sat-like attack. With the sun high above, he has his Knights Aeris make a giant telescoping lens aimed over Max, who then uses his own windcrafting to redirect the resulting beam of concentrated sunlight at the Canim army.
- In Princep's Fury the Vord Queen captured thousands of crows with taker worms and filled their guts with more. Gaius observed the seemingly normal flock of crows waiting to feast on the dead and thought little of it. Then all the crows dropped dead and the takers burst out, infecting anyone they could and causing massive panic and chaos among the defenders.
Death World: Carna. Even ignoring the other hostile sentient races found on the planet, it’s inhabited by Eldritch Abominations made up of the natural elements and numerous deadly natural predators. And this is all before the return of the Vord...
Decapitation Strike: In Cursor's Fury, the First Aleran Legion is struck by a powerful attack targeted at the Commander's Tent, just when every officer in the camp has been summoned there to discuss a recent development. If it had worked as designed, it would've wiped out everyone who could've taken command of the Legion except for a strategically-placed traitor. Instead, command fell to Tavi (undercover as the Third Subtribune Logistica), who just happened to be running late to the meeting.
Decon-Recon Switch: In a sense, the entire series is one for how modern Western society glorifies the Roman Empire. The deconstruction starts out in how the series uses Deliberate Values Dissonance to show a lot of the uncomfortable flaws the Romans had that are often glossed over in the present (i.e., slavery, misogyny, Decadent Court politicking, and downright genocidal attitudes towards their neighbors), but as the series goes on, the actual positives of the Romans are increasingly shown and celebrated through the actions of the protagonists (i.e., honor, martial skill, scientific brilliance, and expertise in Realpolitik), in effect serving as a reconstruction.
Defiant to the End: When Invidia has Amara and Bernard at swordpoint, but seems willing to talk for at least a little while, Amara tells her to quit stalling and explains that she is just pitiful and pathetic and that her actions have no justification or excuse. When Invidia incredulously asks Amara who she thinks she is to talk like that, Amara points out that she is somebody who is willing to give her own life in the service to others, while Invidia is nothing but a traitor and coward who will get neither sympathy nor last-minute forgiveness from her.
Determinator: Amara takes note of one enemy soldier who had the courage and will to withstand a fearcrafting made by Gaius himself that sent thousands of the man's comrades fleeing in terror or dropping from panic, before the man is promptly killed by Gaius.
Deliberate Values Dissonance: Slavery, torture, and genocide of nonhuman species are all accepted in Aleran society, remnants of their Roman ancestry, though there is an increasingly influential abolitionist lobby in the form of the Dianic League. Women are also stuck in a second-class status, but the patriarchy has weakened slightly due to their ability to gain Citizenship by proving their martial abilities.
Deus Exit Machina: Gaius Sextus could easily handle a lot of the problems of the first four or five books, so a pretty good fraction of the plot revolves around taking him out of the picture somehow.
Diagnosis from Dr. Badass: Attis' calm and exact description of exactly what getting filleted by Invidia did to his insides.
"What Aria means to tell you ... is that the backstabbing bitch filleted me. The lower half of my body has been sliced open from groin to ribs. My guts are an unholy mess and will doubtless begin to stink in short order. My heart is laboring too hard because now apparently being dissected does terrible things to one's blood pressure. These injuries are too severe and extensive to be healed.
"I can't eat anything. Without all the proper tubes in my belly, the food would simply rot in any case. I can drink a little, which simply means that I will die of starvation a few weeks from now instead of from thirst a few days from now. Unless, of course, an infection takes me first, which seems likely."
Didn't See That Coming:
- Lady Invidia failed to consider Fidelias' words from Academ's Fury about his loyalty to the realm and thus didn't fully anticipate his betrayal that nearly killed her.
- Gaius Sextus mentions he didn't give the crows circling overhead much thought in Princep's Fury and so never considered they could be Taken by the Vord and filled with the taker-worms to infect more people with them.
- The Vord Queen gets hit with a few in the final book.
  - Her ignorance, and Invidia's ignorance of Garados' dislike for trespassers makes them assume the opening for flanking the Aleran defenses is as simple as walking on the mountain. Cue rock slide against her forces going that route.
  - She knows Alerans can use furycrafting to make horses run faster and further on furycrafted roads. She never considered Tavi would substitute horses for Canim carrying Alerans to allow both forces to reach her so quickly.
Discriminate and Switch: Several women take umbrage at implied sexism from members of the Legion, only to be told that the issue is not their gender.
- When the Vord first attack Aricholt, Amara draws a sword and manages to save several legionares and the holders that they were protecting. When Giraldi says that she did good "for a, uh..." she asks if he meant good for "a woman", and he responds that she did good for a civilian. Bernard cannot help but laugh.
- When Tavi suggests adding Mistress Cymnea to the staff of the First Aleran Legion, Max instantly objects. When Cymnea asks if his problem is with the fact that she is a woman or because she is a madam, Max says that the problem is that she is a civilian.
Disproportionate Retribution: The entire story is ultimately set off by Gaius Septimus being murdered by assassins sent from treacherous High Lords who had in turn been put up to it by Invidia as revenge for him breaking their engagement.
Damsel in Distress: Isana is generally the character to be rescued, as she is held hostage or attacked by (in order) Kord, Kalarus, Navaris, and the Vord Queen.
Doomed Hometown: Inverted. By the end of the series, the Calderon Valley is the only place still intact and not under siege by the various wars befalling the country.
Door Fu: In Academ's Fury, a group of Taken Canim strike a closed steel door so hard that it slams to the ground and crushes the man standing on the other side. Max returns the favor soon afterwards.
Don't Explain the Joke: High Lord Antillus has a habit of doing this.
Antillus Raucus: When we get back, you and I are going to have a talk in which you lose your teeth. Because I'm going to knock them out of your head. With my fists.
Phrygius: I think we all understood what you meant at the end of your first sentence, dolt.
Double-Meaning Title: "Fury" is a word for wild anger, and within the series refers to a person's ability to furycraft (manipulate the elements). The titles of each book refer both to Tavi's anger and rage over what happens, but also to his relationship with furycrafting.
The Dragon:
- Fidelias to Invidia. Until he Heel Face Turns at the end of Captain's Fury.
- Navaris to Senator Arnos.
- Invidia to the Awakened Vord Queen throughout First Lord's Fury.
Drama-Preserving Handicap: In Academ's Fury, all the rest of Clan Gargant are apparently too injured to readily join Doroga and Bernard's sortie to destroy the Vord. Which is a real shame, because given how effective Walker is — holding half the cave by himself and casually crushing and slapping away Taken holders — if there had been even two or three more of Clan Gargant present it would've been a lot less "desperate last stand" and a lot more "Curb-Stomp Battle".
Duel to the Death: The juris macto, the legal duel between Citizens to settle a grievance between them. It is mentioned in various points through the series, and readers see two duels in completion:
- In Captain's Fury, Tavi challenges the corrupt Senator Arnos to bring him to account for ordering the slaughter of Aleran freemen trapped behind the Canim lines. The senator sends in his second, Navaris, to fight, but Tavi defeats her and "Marcus" kills Arnos when he tries to escape.
- In Princeps' Fury, Isana challenges High Lord Antillus. He beats her easily, as she knew he would, but she psychoanalyses him as he does and "wins" when he realizes that she is right.
- A third duel between Araris Valerian and Aldrick ex Gladius that lasted for ten hours took place fifteen years before the start of the series. It is repeatedly mentioned by characters as one of the greatest sword fights in history.
Due to the Dead:
- The Canim sing a "Blood Song" for fallen warriors. Warriors who become Hunters (spies, assassins, and saboteurs) have their blood songs sung when they make the transition, because their old life is over.
- The legionares who die serving on the Shieldwall (the fortifications protecting Alera from the northern Icemen) are burned in funeral pyres instead of being buried. It is symbolic of keeping them away from the Icemen. High Lord Antillus will also give this honor to civilians who die valiantly fighting Icemen if they ever breach the wall and reach the steadholts.
- The Marat tradition of eating one's enemy to gain his strength may be this for some. When Hashat killed some of Princeps Septimus' singulares in the battle of First Calderon, she took their possessions and ate their hearts to honor them and take of their strength.
Dying Moment of Awesome
- Nedus is killed trying to defend Isana and Serai from assassins, but proves he is a Retired Badass by killing two of the three assassins armed with swords, and then killing the one who had fatally wounded him.
- Gaius Sextus blowing up Alera Imperia, taking out most of the Vord army in one strike.
- High Lord Cereus diving into a vordbulk's mouth and blowing it up from the inside to prevent it smashing the wall behind which his granddaughter is hiding. As Ehren puts it, "It was one thing for a man to say he was willing to lay down his life for his child-but quite another for him to actually do it."
Dynamic Entry: Antillar Maximus' first scene is when he surprises the group of bullies tormenting Tavi and Ehren, knocking them about as he yells "Good morning!"

E-I

Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Every book save the first uses a format of <Occupation>'s Fury. The first is instead named Furies of Calderon. As the trivia page can attest, Butcher's original plan was to call it Shepherd Boy's Fury; this change only happened because the marketing for him didn't think that title would work very well.
- The first novel has some slightly different worldbuilding than the following books. Steadholders are apparently not "full" citizens, with limited rights and authority off of their Steadholts, whereas the following books treat the office of Steadholder as full citizenship. Furies are also universally accepted as independent creatures, whereas the second novel introduces opposing theories regarding their true nature - though since the 'independent creature' theory is generally held out on the frontiers, of which Calderon is one, this is perhaps unsurprising.
- The first book portrays Furies as more akin to Pokemon; each Crafter has command of two elements at most, and gains access through an individual Fury that they have a personal relationship with. From the second book on, most Crafters have an aptitude for one or two elements but can command at least five to some degree, and are able to call on any Fury in the environment around them rather than using a specific one that follows them around. This is addressed as being a difference in the development of each region of Alera, as the furies used by most people in urban and heavily-settled areas are more "diffuse" due to centuries of what amounts to domestication, while in the wilderness and frontiers the furies tend to be more discrete and individual.
- The second novel has a mention of Bernard having served in the 4th Rivan Legion. The third book introduces the fact that each High Lord is permitted to maintain a maximum of three legions.
El Cid Ploy: A significant chunk of the plot of Academ's Fury consists of hiding the fact that Gaius Sextus collapsed from overwork and poison, though they don't find out about that part until book 5.
Elemental Personalities:
- Earthcraft is associated with love, lust and contentment, and can "ground" the emotions of others to make them calmer.
- Firecraft can be used to generate anger, raise passions, and cause fear and panic.
- Metalcraft is associated with an absence of emotions. A metalcrafter can draw on the "stillness" of metal to control their emotions, becoming dispassionate and flat.
Elemental Powers: There are six elements, each of which can be directly manipulated or used to summon a manifest fury, and most of them have secondary applications as well:
- Windcrafting (Knights Aeris): In addition to air manipulation and flight, grants Super-Speed, Lightning Bolt-chucking, Veils, and the ability to create a telescope-like lens out of air, the last of which has also found use as a Death Ray.
- Earthcrafting (Knights Terra): Earth and rock manipulation (good for making buildings!), Super-Strength, and ability to induce calm or lust. Additionally, manifest earth furies can be extremely useful... and dangerous.
- Metalcrafting (Knights Ferrus): Implausible Fencing Powers and the ability to sense nearby metal; additionally, it can be used to artificially repress emotion and pain to turn the user into an Implacable Man. The most powerful and skilled metalcrafters can incorporate metal into their skin to protect themselves. Finally, their sense of metal and ability to manipulate its hardness make them amazing blacksmiths.
- Woodcrafting (Knights Flora): Manipulation of plants, including encouraging them to grow, or animating them directly, which also (as the name implies) applies to dead wood. It also grants the ability to create veils when enough plant matter is present, specifically with shadows. Most Woodcrafters are archers, since control of the arrows and bows gives them Improbable Aiming Skills.
- Watercrafting (Knights Aqua): Manipulating water, empathy, underwater breathing, the ability to change their appearance, long-range water-based communication, and, most importantly, healing. Without some metalcrafting, though, they tend to be Unhappy Mediums, since as we all know, A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read.
- Firecrafting (Knights Ignus): Very big booms. It also grants the ability to inspire fear or passion, and manifested fire furies can be an outright nightmare. The Knights Ignus are the Legions' cannons, and battle plans always require some way of neutralizing them lest everyone get burnt to a crisp.
Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Each element (above) is canceled by its opposite: fire with water, metal with wood, air with earth (or just a pinch of salt), and vice versa. This is mainly used to design prisons and other restraints, but is occasionally used in battle. For example, a Wind-crafter can be cut off from their fury by covering them in enough dirt (or mud), while an earthcrafter merely needs to be suspended above the earth, unable to touch it.
Emotion Bomb:
- A less utilized, but very effective, application of firecrafting. Not only can it cause panic in your enemies and break a charge, it can inspire heroism in your own troops.
- Tavi uses this to escape a watercrafter that is drowning him. He focuses on his fear and drives himself into a panic to overwhelm her senses.
Emotion Control: Earthcrafting and firecrafting allow the crafters to manipulate creatures around them.
- Earthcrafting can inspire feelings of calmness or excitement, including lust. It is used to either seduce someone, like ladies in a brothel will use on soldiers, or calm wild animals to tame them. It can also be used when one is not in direct line-of-sight to the target.
- Firecrafting can be used to inspire fear or courage/passion, even to the point of death if the crafting is strong enough. Firecrafting seems to require line-of-sight to be effective.
The Empath:
- Any sufficiently powerful watercrafter can feel the emotions of surrounding people. One compares a visit to any sufficiently-sized city as the following:
  "...a low but steady 'noise', like being constantly accompanied by half a dozen nightmarishly persistent crickets. It was never horribly loud, but it didn't stop, and the intrusive sensations could make it maddeningly difficult to sleep or concentrate."
- The Icemen, who can communicate amongst themselves with no speech at all. Their intense enmity for the Alerans comes largely from the mix of their water-based empathy with the minor firecrafting that Alerans use to stay warm in the cold northern regions. When fire and water are mixed it creates feelings of anxiety and anger, so just by being next to each other the two sides were feeding each other's hatred.
Empowered Badass Normal: Tavi and Kitai both gain furycraft at the very end of the third book.
Enemy Civil War: Between the primary Vord Queen and her daughters. It is the main reason why Carna has not yet been consumed by the Vord.
Enemy Mine
- Amara and Invidia team up to bring down Kalarus in Cursor's Fury.
- The Alerans, Marat, and surviving Canim all join forces to stop the Vord, with a simultaneous armistice between the Alerans and Icemen also achieved. The epilogue has Tavi note that he fully intends to leverage the continued existence of the last surviving Vord Queen in Canea to maintain this alliance.
Erotic Eating: When Tavi and Kitai finally have an actual date, the text spends quite a bit of time detailing exactly how Kitai is eating, and at what speeds. Tavi is particularly transfixed by how she eats a berry. Slowly.
Establishing Character Moment:
- Tavi's first scene (Not counting the brief one-page prologue) is when he sneaks out of bed early to retrieve the sheep he had not brought in the night before, only to be caught by his uncle Bernard. The scene emphasizes that Tavi is smart and clever, but that he is not quite as clever as he thinks he is, or able to avoid the consequences of his actions.
- Aquitainus Attis' first scene has him emphasize that Ad Hominem "is a notoriously weak logical argument. And is usually used to distract the focus of a discussion—to move it from an indefensible point and to attack the opponent." Though he is drunk and watching a slave girl dance seductively, and is being subtly manipulated by those around him, it shows that he is level-headed enough to not ignore credible evidence, or to act without considering all the implications, and he's a lot smarter than he pretends to be.
- Lady Aquitaine first reveals herself by pretending to be the dancing slave girl she "gave" her husband, carefully observing Fidelias' actions, and noted she planned on killing off the mole now that he fulfilled his use.
- Antillar Maximus enters his first scene by knocking around the bullies harassing Tavi and Ehren as he shouts "Good morning!"
Euphemism Buster: Ullus of Westmiston insists on calling himself a 'merchant', but Demos bluntly interrupts and says that he is a fence.
"Eureka!" Moment: After Furies of Calderon, every novel contains a scene where a character realizes that Tavi is Gaius Octavian, son of Princeps Septimus when they receive some final bit of information and put it together with what they already knew.
- In Academ's Fury, Captain Miles realizes it when they are fighting the taken Cane and Fade reveals that he is Araris Valerian. Learning that Fade had lived incognito with Tavi ever since First Calderon tells him that Tavi would be Septimus' son.
- In Cursor's Fury, Fidelias, in his guise as Valiar Marcus, realizes it when 'Rufus Scipio' gives an insightful, logical, and impassioned argument for his plan to defeat the Canim. He recognizes the personality and skills of Septimus.
Even Evil Has Standards:
- Aldrick ex Gladius has no problem with killing, but even he says he has no stomach for Fidelias snapping the neck of a girl the Marat were going to eat alive. It is unclear whether he meant Fidelias' actions or the Marat's (probably both).
- Captain Demos, a scrupulously unscrupulous man, has his crew of thugs rescue as many women and children as they can when fleeing the island of Westmiston. He frames it as a slave raid, and he probably will sell them all into slavery, but he truly did not want to leave them for the Canim.
- The Canim - a Proud Warrior Race with loads of Fantastic Racism towards the Alerans - are utterly disgusted in Captain’s Fury by the mercenary cavalry regiments of the Senatorial Guard massacring innocent Aleran steadholts so as to draw the Free Aleran Legion out onto the battlefield (meaning that Arnos can also get credit for ending a slave revolt), with a furious Nasaug specifically telling Tavi that he plans to wipe out the First Aleran Legion and both of the Senatorial Guard Legions so as to avenge the fallen civilians.
Everybody Knew Already: Though it comes as a surprise to many, the fact that Tavi is the son of Gaius Septimus and Isana, and grandson of First Lord Gaius Sextus is known (or deduced) by many people before Tavi himself learns the truth. When Varg reveals that he also knew the truth, Tavi remarks that sometimes it feels like he was the only one who did not know.
Everyone Is a Super: And some supers are more super than others. Except Tavi, who isn't super at all. At least not for the first few novels.
Everyone Went to School Together:
- In the third book we learn that Aria and Kalarus were both at the Academy together, though possibly in different years.
- The second and final books reveal that Araris, High Lord Antillus (the father of Crassus and Max), High Lord Aquitaine, and Princeps Septimus were all friends from school and continued that friendship until the night Septimus died. Sir Miles was younger than them and more of a Tagalong Kid during the actual Academy years, but was part of the circle of friends as well.
Evil Cannot Comprehend Good
- In Academ's Fury, just before Amara finishes off the Calderon Vord Queen, the Queen looks into her mind — and is utterly unable to process the fact that Amara is doing this knowing that she will not survive it. The idea of self-sacrifice for the sake of another is so alien to the Vord Queen that she is briefly stunned and confused.
- In Cursor's Fury, Invidia suggests that Amara use forceful methods to get information out of Rook. Amara instead determines Rook's driving motivation for being loyal to Kalare (her daughter) and promises to rescue her daughter because it is the right thing to do. When Rook breaks down crying and agrees to help, Invidia is described as looking on the scene with a confused expression like someone watching a "silent play performed by lunatics".
- In Captain's Fury, several characters discuss how their actions will look to Senator Arnos, and the way he will interpret them in a certain light because of how he would have acted in the same situation. Everything they do will seem self-serving and calculating to him, because he cannot accept that they are acting on behalf of somebody else. Arnos himself tries to say that Tavi is the same way he is, but this only causes Tavi to realize that Arnos is even more deluded than he had previously thought.
- The Awakened Vord Queen is easily the biggest example of this trope in the series. In a twist, however, she knows that there is something fundamental about humanity that she is not understanding, and she keeps trying to learn what it is. She observes families, interrogates humans as to what "love" means, and tries to replicate the traditions of everyday life (family meals). Despite all this, she never does learn what it is that makes people tick, though she does manage to form a bond with Invidia and is a little put out by her death.
Evil Sorcerer: The Canim Ritualists are generally considered to be this (Sarl and Khral in particular embrace the trope thoroughly), but only some of the ritualists are as bad as they are made out to be: the blood they need for their rituals can as easily be taken from already-dead corpses as from live sacrifices. In fact, the old school of ritualists do not believe in using anyone's blood but their own; Marok, in First Lord's Fury, demonstrates how decent this type can be. Unfortunately, the old school ritualists are badly outnumbered by the rest, in part because there's only so much blood a single body can spare.
Exactly What I Aimed At: It is said Araris would think in curves compared to Aldrick's thinking in straight lines. For this reason, when they fought at Second Calderon, Araris seemed to miss Aldrick and hit only the stones on the wall they stood upon. Aldrick was able to knock Araris down to the ground and was in a killing position, only to realize Araris was aiming to cut the ground out from beneath the larger and heavier fighter.
Expecting Someone Taller: Amara uses the standard line to subtly insult Pirellus of the Black Blade, Knight Commander of Garrison. When she first encounters Pirellus he is completely naked, having just been roused from a bath, and she mentions that she thought he would be... taller after looking him up and down, during which she lets her gaze linger "significantly".
Extranormal Institute: The Academy is a school for teenage youths in a world where everyone has magic abilities, so between math and history classes, there are also classes on magical theory and actual training on how to use magic.
Expy: The Vord share several important traits (insect-like biology, hive mind, ability to infest living humans, reliance on a substance they smear across the ground in their nests) with the Zerg. They also have much in common with The Borg.
Eye Scream: Turns out, a sufficiently powerful watercrafter can regrow her own eyes after they have been clawed out.
Failure-to-Save Murder: The source of many characters' resentment towards Gaius Sextus, whose son, Gaius Septimus, was killed by the Marat approximately fifteen years before the start of the series.
Famed in Story:
- Aldrick ex Gladius often serves as The Dragon for whichever character is currently in control, and not as a clear antagonist on his own, but he is legendary throughout Alera for his skill with a sword. His duel with Araris Valerian, also legendary because of his skill, is still being talked about fifteen years later. To hear Araris tell it:
  Araris: [Aldrick had] more than a hundred duels to his credit. He used to hire out as a champion, before he took up service with [Septimus]. That one got a lot of attention. We went for about ten hours, all the way around Garden Lane and Craft Lane both. Must have been fifty or sixty thousand people that came down to see it.
- Sir Miles ends up with a bit of this after fighting to stop an attempt on the First Lord's life in Academ's Fury. Though Araris did most of the fighting after a point, Miles takes the credit to preserve his cover, and gripes a chapter or two later that some fool bard has already composed a ballad about his "heroic stand".
- A minor example in Captain's Fury. Tavi, undercover as "Rufus Scipio" in the First Aleran Legion, has amassed a reputation as a brilliant commander and strategist. Several characters who are not privy to the secret identity or all the facts of the situation talk about meeting the wunderkind that everybody is talking about, with varying opinions on whether or not he could possibly measure up to the superman that rumors depict.
Family Relationship Switcheroo: Tavi's "aunt" Isana is actually his mother.
Fan Disservice:
- The Vord Queens are all described as attractive young humanoid women who go naked except for cloaks, but their nature as Humanoid Abominations combined with their Blue-and-Orange Morality means that their nakedness just serves to make them seem even more alien and unsettling.
- invoked Played for Laughs with Amara's Sex Slave outfit during her secret undercover mission in Cursor's Fury; despite Bernard's wandering gaze being enough to convey that she looks quite gorgeous in it, any potential titillation is lost by how Amara's internal narration while wearing it consists almost entirely of her complaining about how stupid she looks, how impractical the outfit is, and how she's dreading the possibility of getting wind burns in uncomfortable places if/when she needs to pull off a sudden escape with Cirrus.
- The "conversion process line" used by the Vord in Princeps' Fury (as set up by a collared Kalarus Brencis Minoris) to enslave Alera's Citizens into servants of the Vord. It's described as having several immensely attractive nubile young women dressed in scanty clothing participating in the process (i.e., coercing people into becoming more accepting of the collars and providing Bread and Circuses so the collared Citizens don't try to violently self-destruct). However, as the whole process is an absolutely horrifying assembly line of Mind Rape, it's just insanely creepy and perverse to watch, with Amara directly comparing the sight to being uglier than a slaughterhouse.
  - This scene also involves multiple young attractive woman kissing and fondling each other...while collared and under Brencis Minoris' orders, making the display a revolting case of Rape by Proxy.
- Invidia after her fight with Attis in First Lord's Fury. The fact that the narration often refers to her as "the burned woman" should serve as a good indicator of how far she's fallen in terms of physical beauty.
Fantastic Caste System:
- The social classes of Alera are: Slaves, Freemen, Citizens, and Lords/Ladies, with several different ranks of nobility somewhere at the level of Citizens and higher. There is a strong but not perfect correlation between strength in furycrafting and social rank, and strength in furycrafting is at least partially heritable ( until Tavi is implied to alter it at the end so it can be earned based on merit and effort), so while many characters have moved their way up in rank over their lives, the caste one is born into is still very determinative.
- The Canim castes are the Makers (farmers, workers, and artisans), Ritualists (doctors, priests, and sorcerers), Hunters (spies and assassins), Warriors. The Warriors and the Ritualists are continually at odds as to which caste is higher (although the Warriors are almost always shown to be above the Ritualists in power), though they both claim to serve the Makers, and the Hunters serve the Warriors without question.
Fantasy Aliens: In a book series about Romans with Elemental Powers, the Vord are a Horde of Alien Locusts strongly hinted to have originally been aliens from space. They're first encountered inhabiting an enormous crater with a huge metallic pillar jutting out from its exact center, inside which their Hive Queen hibernates. In a later book, after the Vord awaken, the Vord Queen declares that her species is conquering other worlds out among the stars, and that even if she's destroyed, the Vord will inevitably return one day.
Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: The campaign fought in the Amaranth Vale between the invading Narashan Canim and the First Aleran Legion has many parallels to the Second Punic War, with Nasaug painted as an analogue to Hannibal Barca and his forces as the Carthagians invading the Italian Peninsula. It's also likely not a coincidence that he's matching wits with a foe named "Rufus Scipio" — as in, Scipio Africanus, the legendary Roman general who ultimately defeated Hannibal.
Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Realm of Alera is a society very similar to Western Rome at the peak of its empire. Justified since it was founded by a Lost Roman Legion. That being said, Alera has several distinct elements that show how far it has diverged from the ancient Roman culture, particularly with a more executive system of government where the Senate, High Lords, and First Lord exist side by side, the fact that slavery is a divisive topic instead of the norm, and the use of several aspects of the medieval European feudal system, such as Counts ruling over regions under the High Lords, and the title of a Knight of the Legions. Furthermore, unlike the incredibly religious Romans, the Alerans are highly agnostic and secular, to the point of outright claiming to have Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions as "gods" and "prophecy".
Fantastic Nuke: Many smaller versions, but Gaius Sextus wiping out Kalare by unleashing a volcanic Great Fury and then slowing the Vord by destroying the remnants of Alera Imperia with another volcano probably take the cake.
Fantastic Racism: Due to the numerous bloody conflicts fought throughout history between them, the Alerans fervently hate both the Marat and Canim, and the feeling is mutual for the most part for the exact same reason. The Alerans also despise the Icemen due to their Forever War, and the Icemen (for the most part) return the favor.
Fantastic Slurs: Considering that all the main civilizations in this series are extremely xenophobic, it's unsurprising that a few of these crop up.
- Alerans often call the Canim "dogs" (though "jackal" is the canine metaphor of choice for when Canim want to insult each other), while Canim call Alerans "demons" (along with at least one instance of "monkey-boy" in Captain's Fury).
- The Marat are on marginally better terms with the Alerans (that is to say, the two groups generally avoid each other with the occasional blow-up into war, rather than continuous low-level warfare as between the Alerans and Canim interrupted by brief periods of peace whenever the Canim send their Ambassadors over), and the two races at least superficially look similar, so "monster" type slurs are usually out; instead, both groups tend to just call the other "savages", with Alerans insinuating that all Marat are into bestiality and cannibalism, and Marat insinuating that all Alerans are treacherous Dirty Cowards with no morals—the slur "Dead Tribe" is mentioned to be used by Marat for Alerans, but never actually gets used on-page.
- Oddly, no specific slur for the Icemen is ever brought up, even though a significant subplot in the fifth book involves a warmongering Aleran High Lord who is extremely bigoted against them—though aside from some slight remarks like Alerans dismissing their adversaries as "animals", "Icemen" itself might count, since it's the Aleran term for the race and not the name they use for themselves, which is never revealed^note.
Farm Boy: Tavi. Even when he is recognized as the Princeps of Alera and on a secret mission behind enemy lines, he still stops to admire the efficiency of a livestock pen.
Tavi: They can change the size of their pens, or set it up so that you can cut some animals out and leave the rest penned up. That's handy.
[Durias blinks]
Max: Don't tell anyone, but [Tavi] was brought up on a steadholt. Herding sheep, if you can believe that.
Feed It a Bomb: This is the only known way to truly kill vordbulks, which are so large they make some buildings look small. Bernard takes one out with a giant explosive arrow. The other is killed when Lord Cereus flies into its mouth and blows himself up with powerful firecrafting.
Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: Basically the root of the war between the Alerans and the Icemen. The Alerans won't retreat because they're sure the Icemen will take advantage of their leaving their lands unguarded, and the Icemen won't back down because they feel that they'll be invaded if they don't drive the Alerans far enough back from the Shieldwall. The reason this happens is because the interaction between the Icemen's natural water-based empathic magic and Aleran cold-resisting firecrafting encourages feelings of agression, anxiety, and anger, poisoning all relationships until Isana (a non-firecrafter) came along and figured out what was going on.
Feel No Pain: An aspect of metalcrafting. However, this doesn't mean the injuries being ignored are any less dangerous. If someone ignores the pain of a legitimately crippling injury (or a minor one from a poisoned weapon), it can cost them their life.
Field Promotion: Mistress Cymnea, de facto leader of the camp followers and the pleasure spot for soldiers, and Subtribune Foss become Tribune Logistica and Tribune Medica, respectively, when the majority of the First Aleran staff is killed by a lightning strike.
First Kiss: Tavi and Kitai have theirs at the end of Academ's Fury, with it notably being initiated by Kitai.
First-Name Basis:
- When the Windwolves, mercenaries in service to the Aquitaines, save the lives of Bernard and members of his legion, Bernard insists that they address him by his first name instead of title.
- High Lady Placidus Aria is the only member of the Aleran nobility to insist that other characters address her by her first name, indicating that she is friendly and approachable.
Flower from the Mountaintop: It's a mushroom, and it grows in a valley, but the Blessing of Night serves as one. It's a powerful panacea and the goal of the Marat Trial of Wits, which involves descending into the Wax Forest, dodging the spider-like Keepers of the Silence, finding the Blessing of Night growing in the center, and returning alive. Both Tavi and Kitai embark on the trial in Furies of Calderon and they manage to get one each (though Kitai gives hers up to Tavi as repayment for him using his to save her life). Shame they woke up the Vord Queen in the process.
Flying Car: The favored and fastest way around Alera is by flying coach. Interestingly, the draft "animals" are other human beings, specifically windcrafters who can carry the coach while flying.
Follow the Chaos: Kitai provides the page quote when locating the final battle of First Lord's Fury.
Quick. What is the absolute worst place in this Valley one could go? The most insanely suicidal place to be found? The place where only a great fool would venture — and only an insane fool would follow?
Foreshadowing:
- In the initial Marat assault on Garrison, Pirellus gets a small cut on his forehead when his helmet cuts into his skin. Though he dismisses it, Centurion Giraldi urges him to get it treated so that dripping blood does not blind him at a crucial moment. During his fight with Aldrick ex Gladius, the cut is re-opened and he is blinded by a drop of blood at a crucial moment, giving Aldrick the opening to disable and then kill him.
- Aldrick repeatedly dismisses his opponents throughout Furies of Calderon by saying, "...but you aren't Araris." No prizes for guessing who he ends up meeting again in battle.
- At the end of Furies of Calderon, Gaius speaks with Fade about the sword he gave Tavi and remarks that the sword is a "princely" gift.
- In Academ's Fury, while Bernard is preparing for the final push against the Calderon Vord Queen, he notes the ugly weather being brought down by the Great Furies of the Calderon Valley and remarks that "Even if we don't finish them, the furystorm will finish what we started." At the end of First Lord's Fury, a furystorm is what hurts the Vord Queen enough to allow Tavi to finally finish her.
- When traveling to the First Aleran Legion, Tavi, Max, and Magnus discuss the nature of the legion, which is comprised of soldiers from every province. It's noted that most High Lords will keep all their good soldiers to themselves, and send the newbies and the troublemakers on to the First Aleran. The Legion will also be a hotbed of intrigue, so in the words of Max, "Anyone competent and friendly is probably a spy". Later, it turns out that the competent Reasonable Authority Figure Valiar Marcus is actually Fidelias, spying for High Lady Aquiataine.
- A comedic example; During Princeps' Fury, when Isana, High Lady Placidus Aria, and Araris are all preparing to meet with the Icemen to discuss an armistice between the "northern barbarians" and the Alerans, High Lord Antillus Raucus' second (and Placidus Aria's son) — Placidus Garius — is escorting them all, and he cynically notes that the Icemen are only "savage animals" and that he & his fellow Aleran soldiers will be ready for, not if, negotiations break down. Isana is so appalled by Garius' small-mindedness that she mentions she has to stop herself from giving him a Dope Slap. Later on, during the second round of negotiations, when Aria is being badly affected by the Hate Plague inadvertently created by Aleran firecrafting conflicting with the Icemen's watercrafting and is ignoring Isana's orders to stand down, Isana gets fed up and violently slaps Aria across the face to snap her out of her daze. Evidently, Isana did end up slapping a member of the House of Placida during negotiations with the Icemen... just not the one she was probably expecting to.
Fragile Speedster: Any windcrafter without an accompanying skill in metal- or earthcrafting. Particularly exemplified by Amara, who is possibly the fastest flier in Alera aside from the High Lords, but at one point actually starts breaking bones and tearing muscles from speeding herself up too much in a fight.
Free-Fall Fight: Any fight involving Knights Aeris or other flight-capable citizens (such as Amara). During one such fight, Amara and her opponent take a glance at the rapidly-approaching ground, and decide silently to stop the fight in the interest of not going splat.
Freudian Excuse:
- Max's status as The Hedonist stems from his bitter acceptance that he's destined to live only a short and tragic life due to the manipulations of his Wicked Stepmother.
- Her poor relationship with her father is why Phrygiar Navaris is the way she is. Exploiting it is how Tavi beats her in a duel to the death.
Friendly Enemy:
- Captain Demos is a slaver and a pirate, theoretically an enemy of the Aleran government, but he frequently talks about how much he loves working with the Cursors, the spies and assassins of that same government. As he explains it, the Cursors pay on time and almost never try to kill him once the job is completed.
- The Canim term gadara essentially means this. They even see a gadara as worth more than a friend: a friend can always disappoint you, but your gadara is always your enemy. However, Tavi and various Canim always make it a point to explain that they are still an enemy, and in a conflict will do their best to kill one another.
The Friends Who Never Hang: Despite being good friends and having been part of the same "group" at the Academy, Ehren and Max are never together without Tavi being with them as well. Justified in that Max is put together with Tavi to be his advisor in the First Aleran Legion, since Max has prior experience as a legionare and placing him as a centurion in the same legion is also helpful to the Cursors mission, whereas Ehren's missions usually have him Beneath Notice due to his small stature and unassuming nature: Max is a hammer, and Ehren is a stiletto.
Fumbling the Gauntlet:
- When Tavi first encounters Ambassador Varg in Academ's Fury he sees a guard dealing with the frustrated wolfman by being deliberately calm and trying to defuse the situation. While normally acceptable for dealing with humans, Tavi realizes that the predator mentality of the Cane will instead see it as weakness and will react with hostility. Tavi has to burst in and act aggressive himself to prevent a fight.
- This is discussed in Princep's Fury when Tavi is having the Alerans and Canim teach each other their separate languages and customs. If there is to be more fighting between them, it had best be for good reasons and not a miscommunication.
Functional Magic: Several systems. The Alerans, the Vord Queen, and the Icemen to a degree use a combination of Inherent Gift and Theurgy (the elemental furies do all the heavy lifting, but Alerans have the inborn power to summon and control them), while the Canim Ritualists use a sort of blood-based Rule Magic. The Marat also have the ability to bond with various creatures, but that is more of a single inherent power than a complete system.
Funny Background Event: At one point in Princeps' Fury, Tavi needs to have a private conversation and Max starts berating his Taurg (a mount native to the Canim homeland) as a distraction. When the conversation finishes, he's still going at it.
"And not even SHE would do that with you, no matter how much gold or how many burlap sacks were involved!"
Gambit Pileup: Just look at how many Chessmasters and wannabes there are on the character sheet. Who is on whose side repeatedly changes from book to book and from moment to moment.
Game Changer: The final book sees the first use of catapults, loaded with spheres containing fire furies (which can be mass produced by people with even moderate firecrafting ability); these prove incredibly devastating, approaching the level of a High Lord. Several characters note that if Alera survives the Vord, this is going to be a game changer for their civilization: now the destructive power of a High Lord is in the hands of the common people, mirroring the ascendance of archery as a counter to knights in Real Life.
Gender Equals Breed: Of a sort. Though background Marat characters are of both genders, all named characters of any tribe are the same gender. Thus, all named members of the Gargant, Wolf, and Herdbane Tribes are male, and all named members of the Horse Tribe are female.
Genghis Gambit: The series ends this way, with Tavi as the First Lord admitting that the last Vord Queen is useful as a distant but major threat that motivates all of the four protagonist races to get along.
Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Tavi looks at Varg, who is suffering a BSOD from learning his entire nation has been devoured by the Vord and with it his family, takes a hammer, and smacks him hard on the armored chest to wake him the heck out of his stupor.
Get It Over With: Amara refuses to listen to Invidia's justifications or explanations for why she is helping the Awakened Vord Queen and tells her to "get on with it" when she holds Amara and Bernard at swordpoint.
Giant Equals Invincible:
- Averted with Walker the gargant. Doroga explains that Walker, while powerful, isn't invincible, as his feet are very vulnerable to damage.
- Vordbulks, building-sized creatures with no eyes and extremely tough armor that are designed to breach shieldwalls by falling on them, seem all but invincible. Like Walker, their feet are weak points. They can also be taken out by feeding them a bomb of sufficient force.
Glad I Thought of It: Used intentionally by Ehren in First Lord's Fury to get Gaius Attis, the current First Lord, to expose himself to a dangerous and potentially lethal situation. Attis only realized he was manipulated after the fact, on his deathbed.
Glass Cannon: The more powerful furycrafters, including the various High Lords. Multiple characters point out that, despite their strength and skills, their flesh and bone is no harder than the average human; provided you can get to them, they can be felled by a single blow like any normal person.
Godzilla Threshold: Many of the measures taken to stop the Vord will have unpleasant long-term consequences, but the Vord are just too big of a threat to consider anything besides the short term. At one point, Tavi's outright told that his plan will result in horrendously destructive weather in a hundred years or so. He says that going through with the plan is the only way to save Alera, so if his country's even still around for that to be a concern, he considers it a win.
Go for the Eye:
- Averted in Academ's Fury with Kitai. She specifically didn't go for an Aleran attacker's eye because she couldn't reach it. She did bite off his nose though.
- Later in the same book, she draws a dagger and throws it in the same motion, hitting a taken Cane in the eye and gives a guard an opening.
- Subverted in First Lord's Fury. One character remarks that attacking the vordbulk's eyes would normally be a good way to slow them down... except that they don't have any eyes.
Gondor Calls for Aid:
- Isana's mission in Princeps' Fury is to call for aid, and convince High Lord Antillus to send it.
- In First Lord's Fury, the Marat join the Alerans in the battle to defend the Calderon Valley and the Canim fight beside Tavi throughout his campaign.
Gone Horribly Right: Gaius Sextus hopes to push High Lord Kalarus into action by pretending to appoint High Lord Aquitaine as his successor, knowing that this will force Kalarus to accelerate his plans to seize the throne. Unfortunately, both Gaius and Amara believe that Kalarus will pursue a subtle means of displacing the First Lord, and are surprised and unprepared when he launches a full-scale insurrection that he had apparently been planning for years.
Gonna Need More X: When Giraldi first sees the Vordbulks, he asks Bernard for a larger wall.
Good Feels Good: Fidelias really likes being Valiar Marcus.
Good Is Not Dumb: In Cursor's Fury, Amara and Bernard are forced to cooperate with Lady Aquitaine, and spend much of the novel dreading her betrayal at the most inopportune moment since there is nothing they can do to stop it. When it finally comes, Amara and Bernard reveal that they had predicted these events long ago and had already set up their counter-plan when Invidia thought she had them fooled, and even purposefully let her overhear "secret" conversations so that she would be lulled into thinking she could outsmart them.
Good Is Not Nice: Kitai and Hashat are two of the Marat most friendly to Alera, after Doroga, and assist them in their fights against Atsurak, the Canim, and the Vord. However, they remain "barbarians", including practicing cannibalism and living with an almost sexual desire for combat and bloodshed.
- Tavi is extremely good, in fact he is the Big Good in the series. But he is perfectly able and willing to kill if necessary, and as demonstrated in the climax of Captain's Fury, he is also willing to play dirty if forced into it. Navaris never stood a chance once he identified her psychological weakness, and Tavi's internal narration even points out that she's already dead as soon as he realized it.
Good Is Not Soft: Right after the generally peaceable Lord Placida is told that his wife is being held hostage to ensure his neutrality in the upcoming conflict, Placida mobilized all his legions and brought them right to the border of his own territory^noteAs in, he left his home completely undefended. Lord Placida figured his wife would either be rescued or killed in short order; either way, he wanted to be ready to kick the kidnapper's teeth in the moment either one happened. When discussing Placida's counterattack, Amara remarks, "there will always be fools who believe that if a man dislikes violence and goes to great lengths to avoid it, it is a sign of weakness and vulnerability."
- Isana is generally a good person. As an exceptionally skilled watercrafter without any aptitude for metalcrafting, she is also The Empath, which is repeatedly shown to be detrimental in a fight because she can feel all the hate, fear, and pain of combat. But the second book starts with her killing someone (albeit in self-defense), and by Captain's Fury, she's shown taking a much more active role in combat when she needs to, including drowning a man by covering his head in water until he dies.
- Tavi, as previously mentioned, is the Big Good of the series (eventually). He's also a trained spy, genius engineer, masterful strategist, and badass legionare: Cursor's Fury makes it clear that he leads from the front, when he joins the shield wall in the climax of the story and personally leads an assault to kill Sarl and end the battle.
The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: At first, Tavi is the good, Aquitaine is the bad, and Kalarus is the evil. Later on, you have Tavi as the good, Aquitaine as the bad, and the Vord as the evil.
Gratuitous Latin: Used extensively, with good reason: Word of God is that the Alerans are descended from one of the Lost Roman Legions.
Green-Eyed Monster: Her name's Invidia^noteLatin for envy for a reason, folks.
Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Inverted with Bernard and Amara, the most long-term Battle Couple. Though Bernard has an earthcrafter's strength and carries a battle axe, he is primarily an archer, while Amara is a swordswoman.
Half-Human Hybrid:
- In a rather twisted way, the Vord Queen by virtue of absorbing both Kitai's and Tavi's blood in her larval form.
- Gaius Desiderius Tavarus, born of Tavi (an Aleran/human) and Kitai (a Marat).
Hanlon's Razor: Senator Arnos is legitimately evil, but Tavi cannot accept that as an explanation for the complete lack of any reaction to the inevitable tragedies that will come from his actions. He eventually realizes that Arnos simply does not realize the impact his decisions will have, since the war is not real to him. Arnos views it only as a ludus game, lifeless pieces moving on a bloodless board, without appreciation for the way the conflict will disturb the entire realm.
Happily Married:
- Isana and Septimus in backstory; details are gradually revealed as the series progresses.
- Bernard and Amara, who marry towards the climax of Academ's Fury.
- High Lord and Lady Placida. When Aria has been kidnapped, her husband specifies that he knows that many of the Lords of Alera marry for political reasons, but he married her for love.
- In the epilogue, Isana and Araris, and Tavi and Kitai. Both couples were essentially married in every sense but officially beforehand, but they were a little too busy saving the world to have a proper ceremony.
Happiness in Slavery: What eventually happens to people with discipline collars on them. Considering the methods employed, this is never presented as a good thing.
Heal It with Water: Healing magic is one of the watercrafting arts and one of the most commonly used for its Mundane Utility. It usually requires the patient to be immersed in a tub of water, but the more powerful practitioners don't need to do so.
Healing Hands: Watercrafters can heal using their furies, but all but the most powerful need a tub of water to immerse the patient in.
Heel–Face Revolving Door: Fidelias; see Becoming the Mask. He is always loyal to the Realm, but at one point decides that the current First Lord, old and heirless and pushing himself too hard, cannot provide the stable, strong leadership that the Realm needs and should be replaced by another High Lord. Later, he learns that his current allies are even more ruthless than he thought and that there is a legitimate heir after all. Later still, that legitimate heir learns about Fidelias' past and almost has Fidelias crucified before he is talked out of it.
Heroic BSoD: Varg gets one in Princeps' Fury when he learns that his home range (and his family) have been consumed by the Vord. Tavi snaps him out of it by hitting him with a Canim taurg prod.
Heroic RRoD:
- A recurring problem for Amara, who occasionally uses her windcrafting to move so fast that she winds up breaking her own bones and tearing her muscles.
- The First Lord spends most of Academ's Fury in a coma after being driven to collapse defending the continent from Canim-manipulated hurricanes. The poison he was being slipped certainly did not improve his condition, either.
Heroic Sacrifice:
- In Academ's Fury:
  - Sir Nedus dies protecting Isana from some assassins.
  - The guards of the second guard room leading to the First Lord's meditation chambers seal the entrance, knowing they would likely die against the taken Canim, but doing it anyway to buy the First Lord and company some time to prepare a counterattack.
- In Princeps' Fury, First Lord Gaius Sextus draws in the Vord host before detonating the Great Fury beneath Alera Imperia. Less than a tenth of the Vord host manages to escape.
- First Lord's Fury:
  - Foss pushes Dorotea out of the way of the Vord Queen's attack, saving her life.
  - High Lord Cereus, in full Papa Wolf mode, flies himself into the last vordbulk's mouth and blows himself up, killing the mammoth monster to save his surviving daughter and his dead sons' children.
Hero of Another Story: Phrygius Cyricus is the second son of High Lord Phrygius, only sixteen years old and described as being painfully thin and speaking with a stammer. Despite this, he is left in command of Phrygia in his father's absence and has apparently gained the respect of the legionares and leaders of Phrygia through his past actions. When he shows his competence, forethought, and initiative, Varg, Tavi, and Kitai all speak of how he reminds them of a young Tavi and they cheerily banter over which of them will get to hire him after the crisis.
He Who Fights Monsters:
- Lord Aquitaine began conspiring against the First Lord because the uncontrolled High Lords had killed his best friend, Septimus, and he saw that Gaius's political machinations would ultimately lead to civil war. In his efforts to gain the throne, he himself became an uncontrolled High Lord whose political machinations nearly lead to civil war. He redeems himself, however, by leading with wisdom and dignity befitting the role of Princeps.
- Isana verges on this at the end of Captain's Fury when she proclaims to Araris that she will use every connection and ally she has in hunting down her husband's killers. Araris is more scared of her becoming like the monsters she would hunt than of them, and warns her. She listens to his fears and abides by his wisdom.
Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: Throughout the series, the Alerans are mentioned as having been on Carna for roughly two millennia, with the Realm of Alera itself having lasted for roughly one millennium by the end of the series. Despite this, no calendar dates are ever explicitly given for certain points in Alera's timeline. The epilogue to First Lord's Fury reveals that this is because the Aleran calendar uses the end of the Vord War as its "Year 1" (with the implication being that this is a new calendar adopted to be used by the Alerans due to how much of an impact the Vord War had on all of Carna).
Hive Drone: Most Vord are little more than coordinated animals unless a Queen is around to take charge.
Hive Mind: The Vord. Furies might also count, surprisingly enough — we learn in First Lord's Fury that a single room has thousands or millions of tiny air furies living in it, so the smallest visible furies may be simply amalgamations of the microscopic ones.
Hive Queen: The Vord Queen mentally controls her swarm, but only to a certain range. One can tell if the Queen is close based on the effectiveness of the Vord in battle. If they're acting like a terrifying professional army, the Queen is there. If they're acting like a horde of dangerous wild animals, then the Queen is present (though even when the Queen isn't present, if she has given "jobs" to certain sections of the horde, they will still try to fulfill said jobs to the best of their limited ability). And if the Queen is dead, then the Vord will descend into savage insanity, typically attacking one another and/or devouring anything in sight.
Honorable Marriage Proposal: Discussed in First Lord's Fury, when Tavi discovers that Kitai is pregnant. He suggests that they could get married right now so their child won't be seen as a bastard, but they ultimately decide to wait and get properly married when the war is over.
Hopeless War: The Vord come within an inch of wiping out all resistance on Alera despite everything the Alerans can throw at them. The only reason they're stopped is because Tavi manages to kill the Vord Queen at a critical moment, and even then that only worked because the Queen was "defective" and didn't have any other Queens helping her command the swarm.
The Horde: Before a tentative truce was struck between Alera and the various clans of the Marat (primarily the Gargant and Horse Clans), almost the only contact between the two peoples was when a Marat horde would sweep into the Calderon Valley to raid the Steadholts there.
Horde of Alien Locusts: The Vord are one, to the point that their entire species is shown to have a literal genetic imperative to devour and assimilate all life that isn't fellow Vord.
Horse of a Different Color:
- invoked While regular horses exist, a preferred secondary beast is the Gargant. The descriptions in the books are a little vague, but Word of God finally came out and said that Gargants are descendants of Megatherium, the Giant Ground Sloth.
- The Canims' mounts, the Taurga. Descriptions are vague, but they give the impression of being massive, predatory camel-analogues (especially in disposition) mixed in with water buffalo.
Hostile Terraforming: It is never explicitly confirmed, but there are some very vague implications suggesting that the Vord were perhaps engineered by another alien species as a terraforming system for planets: Exterminating the locals and growing croach for what is to follow.
Hotter and Sexier: The Codex Alera series as a whole is this to The Dresden Files. While the latter certainly isn't very chaste, the former has at least one (admittedly obscurly-described) sex scene per book along with a comparatively more even-handed depiction of both Male Gaze and Female Gaze in its character narrations and multiple female characters having a history related in at least some way to prostitution.
Hufflepuff House:
- The Marat are split into seven known tribes/clans - The Fox Clan (who were driven to extinction well before the events of Furies of Calderon), Gargant Clan (Sabot-ha), Herdbane Clan (Sishrak-ha), Horse Clan (Kevras-ha), Wolf Clan (Drahga-ha), Lion Clan, and an unnamed seventh clan. While they're all important to greater Marat society, only the Gargant, Herdbane, and Horse Clans are ever given specific attention by the story and characters.
- invoked There are three main villains who want to usurp the First Lord's throne. Two are major characters, but the third, High Lord Rhodes, is not. While the reader is told told he's both very smart and incredibly ruthless, he lacks both High Lord Aquitaine Attis' personal flair and High Lord Kalarus Brencic Majoris' spectacular sadism, meaning he tends to get shoved into the background and namedropped every so often so we know he's still there. Justified In-Universe by Rhodes' machinations being intentionally thwarted and Overshadowed by Awesome because Aquitaine is his close neighbor.
- There are three non-human species surrounding Alera - The Marat, Canim, and Icemen. While the Icemen have been at war with Alera more continually than any of the other nonhuman factions (for about 300 years solid), their attacks are confined to a particular region in the far north where the POV characters almost never go, meaning they get comparatively little pagetime and development.
- The Canim have four known castes: Warrior, Ritualist, Maker, and Hunter. According to Nausug, the Makers are actually the main caste in that the other three do what they do for their benefit... But none of the Makers are ever named or portrayed as particularly important individually. Justified as the caste is what's important, while individuals within it are not.
Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Aldrick and Odiana; Bernard and Amara.
Huge Holographic Head: The most powerful watercrafters can create life-size, full-color images of themselves in water to communicate at a distance. In the last book, Tavi and the Vord Queen later figure out that if you do not bother to make it two-way, you can project copies of the image to every body of water on the continent.
Humanity is Infectious: The Vord Queen is more human-like than both her predecessors or her offspring because of Tavi and Kitai's blood mingling with her larval form.
Humanity Is Insane: Almost every nonhuman species is convinced that Alerans are completely, irrationally mad.
Humans Are Special:
- While each sentient species on Carna has its own magic, humans are the only one where every single member of the species has access to it. The only possible exception is the icemen, who are revealed to use only watercrafting, albeit to a deeper and more nuanced degree than humans.
- As a result of the way she pupated, the Aleran Vord Queen has a deep fascination with humans. She views all other Carnan life as food.
Humans Are the Real Monsters: This is the viewpoint of the Canim, given how much Alerans kill each other over leadership and other reasons. The series itself mostly shows humans as no better and no worse than the other races, just different.
Ice Magic Is Water: Isana demonstrates quite handily that snow does in fact count as water for use in watercrafting. The trick allows her to survive a duel long enough to convince the guy she was dueling to cooperate with her instead.
I Did What I Had to Do: Gaius tries to justify blowing up Kalare by unleashing Kalus this way, pointing out that it actually saved lives compared to the alternative. It was also in part a case of Best Served Cold — High Lord Kalarus was a member of the cabal that killed his son.
Idiot Ball: Allies and enemies alike point out that Tavi had no reason to think that he could turn the Vord Queen in Shuar against her mother and sister, since it relied on assuming a history and motivation that he had no evidence to support, and that his plan was doomed from the start.
I Gave My Word: Demos is scrupulously unscrupulous, but he keeps his word. When he told Ullus that he would kill him if Ullus did not have his money by the time he returned, he meant it.
Ignored Expert: Nobody believes Bernard about the threat the Vord pose. He eventually just gives up on trying to convince the idiots in charge and starts fortifying the Calderon Valley instead, but Ehren believes that Bernard had convinced the First Lord and had been operating under secret orders to prepare for an invasion.
I Have Your Wife: One of Kalarus's favorite tactics. It backfires in several instances. The Awakened Vord Queen also kidnaps both Isana and Araris in First Lord's Fury in hopes of inciting more irrational decisions on behalf of Tavi.
I Just Want to Be Special: Tavi, initially. (Although strictly speaking he just wants to be normal - every ''other'' Aleran has the power to control the elements, after all.)
I'm a Humanitarian: Marat believe that, once you have defeated your foe, you must "partake of their strength" — which means eating bits of them, usually the heart. And yes, this includes Alerans and other Marat. The more villainous Marat are also fine with "partaking of their strength" while their enemies are still alive.
I Meant to Do That: Tavi's talented at this. Considering everything else he manages, people usually assume he really was planning on whatever it was, be it a dramatically well-timed volcanic eruption or his plan to get into Riva accidentally leveling several blocks of buildings, the latter of which led to the phrase appearing almost verbatim in the narration.
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice
- When fighting the Vord Queen in the First Aleran's camp, Tavi is pinned to a rock with a razor-edged, poisoned vord-chitin sword. He almost cuts his fingers off trying to get himself free.
- The Vord Mantis Warriors in First Lord's Fury tend to do this. One almost kills Ehren this way, pinning him to a fortress wall in the process.
- Amara impales Invidia from behind with a stone-headed spear before cutting her throat.
Impersonation-Exclusive Character: Tavi's friend Gaelle at the Academy, who turns out to have been Killed And Replaced by Rook, one of High Lord Kalarus's top spies.
Implacable Man:
- Any sufficiently powered metalcrafter can become this, as a benefit of their furies is to disregard pain and exhaustion to keep going for days.
- Kalarus' Immortals, who have been trained since birth with discipline collars so that they will not only continue fighting until they literally drop dead, but will enjoy doing so.
Implausible Fencing Powers: Most metalcrafters have this as their primary means of offense. Although they have to build up their reflexes and muscle strength naturally, their Metal Furies give them the ability to sense all metal around them, giving them a sort of metal-detecting bullet time (though this doesn't work against non-metallic weaponry), as well as allowing them to magically harden the metal in their blades to the point that they can easily cleave through solid stone walls. Aircrafters can use their Furies to boost their reflexes and movement speed to give them increased swordfighting powers as well.
Improbable Aiming Skills: Anyone with strong woodcrafting ability becomes an incredible archer; examples include Bernard, Fidelias, and any Knight Flora. In Academ's Fury, a group of Knights Flora looses a barrage of arrows that are so precise they can fly between a legionaire's ear and his shield, or beneath a rising sword arm as the soldier in question strikes out. In Captain's Fury, a woodcrafter named Iris the Hawk is so accurate that she can put arrows into men's heads or throats from four hundred yards while on the rolling deck of a moving ship. By comparison, the classic English longbow could potentially reach those ranges in ideal conditions, but with only inaccurate, arching barrage fire.
I Never Told You My Name: Beritte, who fancies herself as something of a seductress, accidentally gives away that she was eavesdropping when she refers to Fidelias as a gem merchant, which was the cover story he had just relayed to Bernard.
Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: Everyone who works with Invidia Aquitaine tries to take her Chronic Backstabbing Disorder into account, with degrees of success that range from "filleted for their trouble" to "left Invidia stranded naked in the woods deep in enemy territory."
Innocent Fanservice Girl: Kitai grew up in a culture where nobody past childhood, male or female, wears anything but a loincloth, and they only wear that for functionality so they can have pouches to carry things. Consequently, she has no problem stripping down, and Tavi has to think of creative interpretations of Marat customs to get her and other Marat women to cover up and wear Aleran clothing.
Insult Backfire: The knights in the First Aleran Legion invoke this in Cursor's Fury. The previously inexperienced division of Knights had gotten the nickname Knights Pisces, based on the naming convention for the knight divisions by craft (Knights Ferrous, Knights Flora, and so on) and the tradition of calling new recruits "fish".^note After their exceptional performance in dire circumstances, they make themselves insignia of a shark as a Badass Boast because of Tavi's little trick with the cattle blood in the river.
Crassus: Apparently, they never realized how bad a bunch of fish could hurt them.
Interservice Rivalry: As part of their Fantastic Caste System, the Canim force that comes to Alera is severely hamstrung in operations because it is composed of members of all three castes. The Ritualists are in command and need to gain victory in order to keep command, but if the Warrior caste is seen as being responsible for the victory then they might lose dominance anyway. As such, both the Rituatlists and the Warriors are sabotaging the battle in order to make sure that they only achieve victory at a moment that gives their particular caste the glory. The Makers, unfortunately, are caught in the middle of this and suffer the vast majority of the casualties as the other two castes jockey for position.
Interspecies Romance: Tavi, a human, and Kitai, a Marat. The two species are almost identical, with the only physical difference being that Marat have a higher body temperature and a shorter gestation period for fetuses. The Marat can also interbreed with humans, though mutual longstanding hostility between them means no one knows this is possible.
Intimate Artistry: First Lord Gaius Sextus has a half-finished portrait of his son, Gaius Septimus, who had been killed fifteen years before the start of the series proper. Sextus explains that his wife had been painting the portrait when she got word of her son's death, and had stopped at the news (Sextus points to a mark that indicates the exact point). Afterwards, she had the painting hung in her room and wasted away in despair looking at her dead son's image.
Invisibility Cloak: Far from its intended use, Amara and Bernard use fury-infused cloth that can change color to the wear's liking as invisibility cloaks while skulking around Vord-infested Ceres.
Irony:
- Amara's selflessness in terms of performing a Heroic Sacrifice in Academ's Fury so as to ensure the death of the Calderon Vord Queen confuses the Queen so much that it actually helps make it so that Amara survives her "Hail Mary" attack. In essence, Amara's willingness in terms of sacrificing her life actually ensured that she would survive.
- The Icemen give their aid to Tavi in First Lord's Fury after he leases them the Shieldwall. In short, the Icemen now have control over the very construct they've been trying to destroy for the better part of three centuries.
- The woman Attis marries is the same woman who was behind getting Rhodes and Kalarus's attack on Septimus, which was the driving cause for Attis to usurp Gaius.
Tavi: (to Marcus) Since [the Shieldwall] is now their own property, generating revenue, I think they might be considerably less likely to attempt to demolish it on a weekly basis.
I Shall Taunt You:
- In Cursor's Fury, Tavi uses his knowledge of his enemy's culture to make their leader look like a fool and thus erode his support.
- Tavi uses this against Phrygiar Navaris after he determines the cause of his opponent's fragile mental state.
It Began with a Twist of Fate: Pretty much the entire plot happened because Tavi decided to get some flowers for a girl.
It Can Think: The Vord, when commanded by a Queen. This is especially evident the first time they show up as a major threat, when they have not yet built up a truly absurd numerical advantage and fight a vicious guerrilla war instead.
It Has Been an Honor: Amara and Aria as dawn arrives on the first day of the final stand in the Calderon Valley.
"It" Is Dehumanizing: Throughout Academ's Fury, every bit of narration refers to Varg as "it". This continues through Cursor's Fury until the very end, when the narration uses "she" to refer to a fleeing Cane along with the wham that this is the first time anyone's ever seen a female Cane. Afterward, the proper gender pronouns are used. When Isana first sees Ambassador Varg in Captain's Fury, she remarks at just how large "it" is. Tavi responds that yes, he is quite big.
It's What I Do:
- Inverted — it's what he does. When Tavi and Nasaug discuss Varg and why he is imprisoned in the Aleran capital. Nasaug states that Varg is imprisoned unjustly since he did not act dishonorably. When Tavi asks what makes Nasaug think that, he simply replies, "He is Varg."
- The Vord seem to have some sort of genetic imperative to destroy all other living species on the planet. In the end, the Queen tells Tavi that it was never personal; she was just doing what a Vord Queen is supposed to do.
- As of Princeps' Fury, High Lord Antillus Raucus has spent huge chunks of his life locked in constant battle with the Icemen. He is obviously emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted by the constant strain, but he gamely carries on with it, because "it's what one did".
- In the sixth book, after Invidia's sudden but inevitable betrayal of the Vord Queen, the Queen isn't even particularly mad about it because it's just what Invidia does.
It Was a Gift:
- The Marat believe strongly that it is an obligation to make full use out of any gift that they receive. When the holders of Calderon gift Doroga with a tunic that is too small for him to fit across his massive body, he cuts it open and tears off the sleeves which he ties into ropes so that he doesn't waste it.
- When some Marat from the Horse clan are helping the First Aleran, they don't like the idea of wearing armor and other clothes. So Tavi invokes this and personally gives each member clothing because in the Marat customs, not using a gift is considered an insult to the gift giver.
I "Uh" You, Too: Of the platonic variety — in First Lord’s Fury, the Awakened Vord Queen quietly tells Invidia that “You are not replaceable,” and then adds as she is about to leave for battle “I will therefore sacrifice you the most reluctantly. I would prefer it if you took whatever action you could to avoid becoming the victory of chance.” Considering how the Vord are a Hive Minded Horde of Alien Locusts, it serves as a pretty startling example both In-Universe and out of just how Intrigued by Humanity the Awakened Queen has become.
I Warned You: Discussed in First Lords Fury. Bernard warned the various lords of Alera about the Vord repeatedly and was ignored until it was too late. He doesn't see much point in rubbing it in after being proven right though. So Amara does it for him.
I Will Only Slow You Down: When Ivarus and Kestus are fleeing the Vord, Ivarus' horse is killed and he tells Kestus to continue without him to warn Alera. Kestus instead turns around to carry Ivarus on his own horse, and is killed by the Vord.

J-O

Jackie Robinson Story: Isana becomes the first female steadholder at the end of Furies of Calderon. Tavi becomes the first non-crafter to be, well, everything.
Kansas City Shuffle: Tavi figures out that the best way of combating an enemy who can read minds is to make sure nobody but him knows all of what is going on, so he uses plans that rely on complicated sets of sealed orders issued to many different people. And in return, they do not tell him about the fact that they are sending backup when he meets said mind-reading foe.
Tavi: The best part about this plan is that I don't have to explain anything to anybody.
Karmic Death:
- High Lord Kalarus is killed by not only the father of the man he murdered, but by the enraged Great Fury he had previously leashed to his will as part of a bid to take as many innocent people with him when he was killed.
- In a way, Gaius Sextus, as he is poisoned by his second wife to the point where his life expectancy is shortened by the same number of years that she was stuck in a loveless marriage to him.
- Invidia Aquitaine dies by being stabbed in the back.
Kick the Dog:
- High Lord Kalarus, in his bid to overthrow the throne and take it for himself, quickly demonstrates that such petty things as "morals" or "humanity" do not concern him. When he kidnaps the wife and daughter of two High Lords in order to blackmail them into non-action, he puts one of them in the same room as the five-year-old daughter of his spymaster and explains to her that, should she try to escape, his security systems will kill the child first and then try to stop her.
- Senator Arnos has two distinct moments:
  - First, he orders a recently-liberated town of innocent civilians executed for "conspiring with the enemy" (read: not committing mass suicide by fighting a hopeless battle against a vastly superior enemy). He does it for the sole purpose of having an excuse to remove Tavi from command of his Legion when Tavi balks at the order. He also fully intends to carry through with the order even when Tavi gives him a better reason to remove the captain from command, because he's just that kind of asshole.
  - Arnos is also responsible for alaes of mercenary cavalry in the Senatorial Guard slaughtering innocent steadholts throughout the region so as to draw the Free Aleran Legion into a fight and get credit for ending a slave revolt. Notably, even the Canim are revolted by the latter actions; Nasuag fully intends to wipe out all of the remaining Aleran Legions in the Amaranth Vale so as to avenge the dead civilians.
- Invidia is entirely too smug when she reveals to Isana in First Lord's Fury that she was the one who organized Septimus' assassination.
Kicking Ass in All Her Finery:
- Amara is wearing a dress (which Isana notes is a rarity for her) when the heroes are ambushed in Ceres by Kalare's Immortals in Cursor's Fury. It doesn't stop her from kicking plenty of ass or being the one to personally chase down and capture Rook in a one-on-one fight.
- Placida Aria is almost never seen without a gorgeous flowing gown. She's also one of the most badass High Lords in the entire series, having earned her title in the juris macto (most High Ladies married into the title, but Aria refused to do so).
Killer Rabbit:
- Canim pups are the most adorable things ever. They can also bite your hand off at the wrist.
- Gram, one of the more powerful firecrafters around, uses a fury that takes the shape of a hummingbird named Phyllis.
  Gram: Named her after my first wife.
Kill It with Fire: The generally preferred method for dealing with the Vord.
King Incognito:
- Princeps Septimus used to disguise himself and travel among civilians and the camp of his Legion in order to gain a different perspective. This is how he first met Isana.
- Gaius Sextus does this a few times. However, Tavi and Fidelias can both spot him in short order.
- In Captain's Fury, Ehren briefly believes that Isana is First Lady Gaius Caria in disguise after he overhears a few brief comments between Tavi and Isana. Tavi quickly disbauses him of the notion and explains that she really is Isana. Which lets Ehren connect the dots and realize Tavi's heritage instead, which Tavi also intended to tell him anyway.
Knight in Sour Armor: High Lord Antillus Raucus hates fighting on the Shieldwall and wants nothing more than to stay at home, but he gets out and goes to war, because his men need him.
Knight of Cerebus: The Vord. Virtually nothing is funny about them, and the story always takes a darker turn whenever they appear.
Kraken and Leviathan: The leviathans are mammoth deep-sea creatures that regularly sink ships which attract their notice. Infants are a "mere" forty-feet long.
Lady Macbeth: Lady Invidia Aquitaine is much more evil than her husband. The Cursors even had a betting pool going on "Which one will win when they finally try to kill each other?" Invidia, as it turns out.
Lady of Black Magic:
- Lady Placida is a calm, regal woman who cares about those under her charge and will stand up to the Citizens if one is about to harm those she has come to respect. She is the only woman to attain Citizenship by virtue of winning a juris macto duel in her teens; all other woman Citizens save Isana earned the title by marriage.
- Invidia is something of a hybrid of this and Dark Action Girl. Amoral and carefully calculating, she is a powerhouse on the battlefield and able to firecraft so precisely in a confined space that she utterly destroys an enemy without hurting anyone else. It's implied that she's one of the most powerful furycrafters in the series (second only to Gaius Sextus and Tavi when he's fully powered).
- Gaius Isana, First Lady of Alera is not as combat-able as either of the two above, but she will not shy away from combat in later books, having fought a High Lord to his defeat by means of her own strength and willingness to sacrifice herself to open his eyes to his own deep hatred and took down six powerful vord that were covered in metal blades with just water attacks. She also connects to the Ocean Fury - that is, the fury that exists in the entire ocean, and the realization of it enhances her power so much that she is able to heal a mortal wound in seconds without a tub of water after pulling off several craftings that would exhaust even a High Lady.
Language Equals Thought:
- The Marat do not have a word for "lying", the closest they can come is to say that somebody is making an 'intentional mistake'. In their culture, when one person accuses another of being mistaken the result is a Duel to the Death between parties to determine who is correct; they find the concept of somebody deliberately telling a falsehood confusing and pointless.
- The Canim warrior caste have a strict code that covers their treatment of each other within the frame of combat, and they have eleven words to name "enemy". A gadara is "a foe that is equal. Honorable. Trusted." They liken the different gradients of 'enemy' to the way that the Icemen have twenty-four names for snow.
Laser-Guided Karma: High Lady Aquitaine's ultimate fate. She was offered a choice between helping her fellow Alerans against the Vord Queen or following the Queen's command to kill the remaining High Lords and Ladies. Not seconds after she chose to side with the Vord Queen, Amara rams a stone-tipped spear through her chest from behind and cuts her throat with a stone dagger.
Late-Arrival Spoiler: Quite a few, but especially Princeps Gaius Octavian and First Lady Gaius Isana, which is a major plot twist foreshadowed for the first three books and explicitly revealed in the fourth, but is so central to the plot of the last two that it is near-impossible to give a plot summary without giving it away.
Lava Adds Awesome: Twice, more specifically with the volcanic eruptions of both Mount Kalus and the fire-mountain below Alera Imperia.
Law of Inverse Fertility: Amara was rendered infertile in her youth due to the Blight, and toward the end of the series finally reconciles herself to having no children and adopting wayward orphans. It is after she accepts this that the Blight damage to her womb is healed by the Blessing of Night, and she becomes pregnant.
Leave Him to Me!: At the climax of Furies of Calderon, Aldrick ex Gladius and Pirellus of the Black Blade order their two groups of soldiers to retreat and reform. The two of them, however, stay in position and fight one-on-one after their supporters have withdrawn.
Legacy Character: invoked According to Word of God, the current Gaius Sextus is actually the eighth First Lord to bear the name of Sextus. How Aleran heredity works in regards to the First Lord is that whenever one unbroken line of lineage of the House of Gaius would die out, the lineage would then be passed on to another branch of family (i.e., a first or second cousin) and the numerical naming convention would start over with the new branch. Apparently, one branch managed to get to Gaius Duodecumus (i.e., Gaius the Twelfth). However, the tragedy of Septimus' death was that by that point in time, no more branches of the House of Gaius existed anymore (implied to be due to how the House of Gaius has apparently never been that fertile), and so it looked like the current Gaius Sextus was the last of his line for good. This is only lightly hinted at in the books (most notably, the Great Fury Alera noting that civilization only came over the ancient Alerans when the original Gaius Primus conquered and defeated all of his enemies), and Word of God had to later explicitly confirm this out-of-universe so as to clarify that no, First Lords aren't able to live for centuries and Gaius isn't only the sixth ruler of Alera in recorded history.
Lethal Chef: In an effort to understand humans, the Vord Queen has taken to eating regular meals. However, she eats croach instead of human food, which she has taken to preparing by baking, marinating, and even melting cheese on it. The end results are technically edible and can even sustain a human, but they pose a significant health risk regardless since they are so disgusting in taste as to cause extensive vomiting.
Invidia: On a scale of one to ten, ten being the most revolting and one being almost edible, I believe that rating this recipe would require the use of exponents.
Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Played for Laughs in First Lord’s Fury when the Alerans literally ride the Canim piggy-back style to take advantage of the remaining furycrafted causeways since Tavi needs both the Canim army and his own forces to do a quick march to Riva and the Canim cannot use furycrafting. While it proves to be surprisingly effective, neither the Canim nor the Alerans involved are happy with the plan, and everyone essentially resolves to never speak about it again.
Let's Get Dangerous!: At the climax of Furies of Calderon, Fade, the scarred, mentally retarded slave who has been tagging along with Tavi throughout the novel, stands up against Aldrick ex Gladius and bests him in a duel.
Lightning Bruiser: The Vord. They are fast, come in huge numbers, are almost impossible to kill, and if directed by a Queen, are terrifyingly smart. The Vord Queen also qualifies, seeing as balest bolts bounce off her skin, she can craft better than any Aleran, is faster than any windcrafter and stronger than the Canim. It takes the efforts of Tavi, Kitai, and two Great Furies to put her out of commission.
Living Lie Detector: All watercrafters with at least Knight-level skill. It is possible for very good liars, like Fidelias and Tavi, to deceive them, but it requires a lot of experience to pull off. Dialogue implies that even such skilled liars can be properly detected if the watercrafter is physically touching them, but this is never demonstrated in the novels.
Load-Bearing Boss: Kalarus, the failed Chessmaster, took out an insurance policy against his demise: he enrages, then binds the elemental of a sleeping volcano. He dies, the volcano blows its top. At least, that was the plan. The First Lord made the hard choice and detonated it prematurely. It wiped out the city below, but if he had let it be until the end of the civil war, the city would have been filled with refugees and the soldiers of his own armies, which would have doubled (or more) the number of casualties.
Locked into Strangeness:
- Kitai gains Tavi's green eyes as a result of their bonding. Tavi doesn't understand what that really means until a book later.
- Gaius Sextus's hair goes solid white after his collapse during the second book. He still looks 40-something otherwise.
Lost in Translation: In Princeps' Fury, Marcus is teaching a young, energetic Cane how to speak Aleran. He encounters the syntax issue when the Cane states, "Alerans smell badly." His intent is to claim, "Alerans have a poor sense of smell" not that "Alerans stink." Marcus is very careful in his critique, as the 8-foot tall Wolf Man is a young packleader (officer) trying to demonstrate his prowess in front of his elder (Varg), and is not likely to react well to being told that he is incorrect, along with the resulting loss of face. When the Cane lunges at him in anger, Marcus evades and slams the Cane's head into the ground, continuing his conversation as though it didn't happen.
Lost Roman Legion: The Alerans are descended from a people that their histories refer to as "Romans," who claimed to have come from 'Mother Rome,' and who originally appeared on Carna in numbers equal to a single Legion and its camp followers. Word of God is that they were the IX Roman Legion, and were transported to Carna by a wormhole. Notably, it was so long ago that the ruins of this civilization are called "Romanic", and there's a serious debate on whether or not Aleran ancestors had inherent furycraft (they did not).
Luxury Prison Suite: The Grey Tower, which is the most escape-proof prison in Alera. The cell on the top floor is the entire floor and includes dining areas, luxury furniture and plenty of books. Max points out that anybody who ends up in that cell is there for politics, and the bars are simply for show.
Max: Actually, the room they had me in was quite a bit nicer than any I've ever had to myself.
Killian: Mmmm. Gaius Secundus had a prison suite installed when he arrested the wife of Lord Rhodes, eight hundred years ago. She was charged with treason, but never tried or convicted, despite interrogation sessions with the First Lord, three times a week for fifteen years.
Lysistrata Gambit: Upon learning just what the Aleran view of her relationship with Tavi is, Kitai is not pleased.
Kitai: You will no longer lie with me. You will treat me in exactly the fashion that you would any proper young lady of the Citizenry. You will court me, and do it well, or so help me I will strangle the life from you. And you will court me properly after the ways of my people. You will do so with legendary skill and taste. And only when that is done will we share a bed once more.
Mage Species: The Alerans/humans are a version of this. All Alerans can harness Elemental Powers, and while other races have some degree of magic among them, humans have the greatest and most common access to it. Interestingly, this works as a disadvantage as much as an advantage, since they tend to have trouble thinking about non-magical methods of accomplishing things (meaning, for example, that there exists no really advanced technology, beyond maybe air coaches and ships, both of which even then can be created using furycrafting). Similarly, though to a lesser degree, the Canim have a whole caste who are just magic users, though seeing as the ritualists are a rather secretive and elitist bunch it’s unclear whether their powers are hereditary, or just an art they keep to themselves.
The Magocracy: Though not as obvious about it as other settings using the same trope, Alera is effectively one of these. One's political power within Alera is dependent on their capacity for furycrafting, with the First Lord being generally held as the most powerful furycrafter. High Lords, just below the First Lord, are nearly as strong, and are each a virtual One-Man Army. Below these are Citizens, who possess strong furycrafting in one or more disciplines and can prove that strength in a furycrafting duel with another Citizen. Everyone else (who aren't slaves) are freemen, who have some basic furycrafting but usually not enough to stand out.
Magical Defibrillator: Veradis, the daughter of High Lord Ceres, can do this through a combination of watercrafting and windcrafting to channel electricity.
Magitek: In daily life, most Alerans use technology roughly equivalent to medieval Europe, which is about what one would expect considering the origin of Alera was as a Lost Roman Legion. However, different aspects of furycrafting stand out as modern conveniences: furylamps, which function exactly like lightbulbs; coldstones, which provide refrigeration; watersending, which provides communication across thousands of miles; and air-coaches, which stand in for airplanes. Combined with the healing of watercrafting and the ability of woodcrafting to stimulate the growth of food crops, Alera has a general life-expectancy and quality of life equal to the mid-twentieth century United States.
Make It Look Like an Accident:
- Max's mother succumbed to this, and his Wicked Stepmother has been trying to arrange a similar accident for him since he was 14. It is her preferred method of operation against all opponents, and she is damned good at it.
- When the First and Second Senatorial Guard Legions are introduced in Captain's Fury, it is revealed that the officer originally slated for command of the First suffered a fatal accident before they could march. In a play on the trope, it was not his replacement doing the killing in order to advance his career, but Senator Arnos seeking to make sure that he had somebody in the position he could control.
Makes Us Even: Odiana explains at the end of Furies of Calderon that she and Isana are now even after she saved the lives of Bernard, Fade, and Tavi.
Mama Bear: Do not make Isana angry by threatening her loved ones. She floods an entire river in the first book when Odiana tries to drown Tavi, and casually punts a Threatening Shark out of the sea with the equivalent of an Offhand Backhand in the fourth book.
Manipulative Bastard: Gaius Sextus is legendary throughout Alera for his skill and abilities in pitting his enemies against one another. Unfortunately, this is also his downfall, as many of his enemies became his enemies when they saw how preoccupied he was with keeping his other enemies at one another's throats instead of planning for his succession.
Manly Tears:
- In Academ's Fury, when Miles witnesses his brother Araris in battle again, after believing he had been dead for fifteen years, he weeps at the sight.
- In First Lord's Fury, Marcus weeps as he watches the First Aleran's Last Stand.
Man Bites Man: When Tavi and Kitai are ambushed by Kalaran thugs, Kitai bites off one of their noses. When Tavi reacts in shock she explains she did this because she could not reach his eyes.
Mark of Shame: Fade's brand. It is done to any who desert the Legion. While it is self-inflicted, he feels it is more than justified for his failing to protect Septimus in the final stage of the First Battle of Calderon, having allowed his love for Isana convince him that following Septimus's orders and protecting Isana was best.
Master of One Magic:
- Generally speaking, rural Furycrafters tend to closely bond to one or two specific Furies. This gives them limited breadth but greater strength in their furycrafting.
- Specifically, Knights are military Furycrafters who are recognized for their excellence with one particular type of Furycraft and its application in combat.
Master Swordsman: Any Knight Ferrous is this by definition. Araris Valerian, Aldrick ex Gladius, and Phrygiar Navaris are the three most significant to the story, and each of them has a deserved reputation as one of the top blades in Alera. Araris is probably the best, though Aldrick once famously dueled him to a draw, and he admits himself that it could go either way between him and Navaris. Other lesser examples include Max and Crassus, Schultz (who Max claims could even become a Knights Ferrous given enough time and training), and Amara (despite her having no actual metal furies). Tavi is no slouch with a blade either, given he's the one to duel both Navaris and the Vord Queen to the death - theirs.
Mathematician's Answer: In Princeps’ Fury, when Kitai asks if Tavi is studying the Vord or the Canim while overlooking Shuar’s battle plans, Tavi simply replies "Yes."
Mauve Shirt:
- Centurion Giraldi was introduced towards the climax of Furies of Calderon as a soldier stationed at Garrison, returns in Academ's Fury as Bernard's second-in-command, and spends Cursor's Fury as Isana's companion, guard and assistant. He returns in First Lord's Fury, back at Garrison where it all began.
- Serai and Nedus from Academ's Fury, the former a courtesan Cursor and a friend of Amara, the latter a retired Knight Captain. They spend their time trying to help Isana get in contact with the First Lord. Isana even notes to Serai that Nedus adores Serai like a daughter, to which she responds with a sad smile that she knows this, after Serai tries to tell Nedus to not come along and guard them as they go out into the city. Tragically, they both die defending Isana from assassins.
- Legionare Schultz was introduced as a trainee in Cursor's Fury and worked his way up to Centurion of the Battlecrow Cohort, functioning as Tavi's primary battle component in the First Aleran.
- Durias, the First Spear of the Free Aleran Legion, is first introduced in Captain’s Fury before later joining the Narashan Canim and other Free Alerans on Tavi’s expedition to Canea.
- Tarsh, Anag, and Sha are the three Canim most frequently seen and characterized out of the last two novels while still not being major Canim characters on par with Varg, Nasaug, or even Master Marok. Tarsh is mostly characterized as an overly ambitious bully who was Reassigned to Antarctica in hopes of him becoming more competent. Anag serves as a Hypercompetent Sidekick assigned to Tarsh (largely to minimize any damage he would cause) and quickly gains a fascination with furycrafting and strong respect for the Alerans. Sha, meanwhile, is the only surviving Hunter under Varg’s employ and develops a surprising camaraderie with Fidelias.
May–December Romance:
- Gaius Caria is decades younger than Gaius Sextus, being his second wife after her predecessor died of grief. She greatly resents the situation, having dreamed that she would get to live out an epic romance and instead being stuck with a scheming old man who only viewed her as a tool. Even Sextus cannot disagree or blame her for her feelings.
- Amara and Bernard. Bernard is approaching middle age, whereas Amara is just entering adulthood. Unlike the above, though, they are Happily Married.
Meaningful Echo: When Captain Demos asks if Ehren is a Cursor, Ehren responds "I don't know what you mean, sir," but both he and Demos know it is simply a pro forma lie. Later, when Ehren asks if he was working for Kalarus, Demos responds with the same phrase, and makes an effort to mimic Ehren's inflection. Again, they both know it is just a lie to keep up appearances.
Meaningful Name:
- "Invidia" is Latin for "envy". Which is rather appropriate.
- In Cursor's Fury, there is a character named Rook. In one scene, she exchanges places with a member of the royalty for the sake of both protection and greater maneuverability. Or, to put it simply, Rook castles.
- When first introduced, the Placidas are noted for staying out of the turbulent politics.
- Names like "Antillar" for Max (compared to his half-brother's Antillus) denotes the child is a bastard born by some noble who refuses to make an official claim of parentship. So, the child inherits the name of the High Lord's city his land is loyal to.
- "Varg" is the word for "wolf" in Norse Mythology, and from there it is the source for the Warg wolves in The Lord of the Rings. It also serves as the root for the modern-day word 'wolf' in many Nordic languages.
- "Tavi" takes on a new meaning when it's revealed that it's short for "Octavian", representing the fact that he is Hidden in Plain Sight, by appearing to be less than he truly is. Additionally, his name is a reference to the Rudyard Kipling character Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a seemingly small mongoose who worked together with his allies to use cleverness, guile, and courage to triumph over much stronger opponents.
- In the epilogue Gaius Desiderius Tavarus. Desiderius means "the desired one" and was chosen by Tavi and Kitai so he would never feel unwanted.
Meaningful Rename:
- When Araris Valerian wanted to disappear into obscurity, he chose the name Fade.
- Marcus earned the name Valiar for his valor in going alone into enemy Icemen territory to rescue kidnapped children.
- Isana gives Invidia the new name of "Nihilus Invidia" for the woman's treachery.
- Varg dubs Tavi "Tavar," pointing out that it's close enough to his own name and also appropriate. A tavar is a highly intelligent predator native to Canea, stupidly brave, incredibly dangerous, and relatively small. Varg says that despite its small size he has never heard of a Cane taking one down without receiving extreme injuries of its own, and the Canim have a saying that only a fool messes with a tavar. Even the Vord tread lightly around them.
Medieval Prehistory: The series' main setting - Carna - is a Portal Crossroad World that contains several species of prehistoric fauna and their descendents. Among those seen, there are grass lions (sabretooth cats), leviathans (plesiosaurs), gargants (descendents of the Megatherium), herdbane (terror birds), thanadents (tyrannosauroids), tavar ("bear-dogs"), slives (Cretaceous-era venomous monitor lizards), and garim (Komodo dragons).
Medieval Stasis: For the most part among the Alerans, technology is static and has actually regressed from the original Roman settlers' because of the universal access to Elemental Powers. Magitek is so universal that despite the low tech levels, the actual quality of life is roughly equivalent to the mid-twentieth century, and the use of magic has been evolving. There is also an institutionalized traditionalism within Aleran society, thanks to the fact that they've spent a millennium simply fighting to survive against the Death World that is Carna, which resulted in an emphasis on following set, traditional methods. This is ultimately a serious problem that the Alerans have, as they have no reference point to deal with enemies using advanced engineering like the Canim, let alone a completely new Outside-Context Problem like the Vord. Furthermore, Aleran furycrafting is almost entirely hereditary, helping reinforce an static and unchanging power structure in society that makes it increasingly difficult for clever minds like Tavi to have their ideas spread and take root without sufficient outside assistance.
- And then Bernard and Tavi reinvent the catapult. Which turns into a WMD when loaded with lots of small fire orbs children can make with little effort. A WMD in a world with Races of Mass Destruction. This is when the Alerans seem to finally realize their Medieval Stasis is breaking (as evidenced by other clever inventions of Tavi's, such as the practice of "mounted infantry" units in the First Aleran and the "ski-ships" able to easily travel along the Shieldwall).
The Men First:
- Pirellus, Knight Commander of Garrison, makes sure that his soldiers are all properly fed and rested during the brief lulls in combat, and waves off treatment for his own superficial wounds until the more seriously injured men have been treated. This leads to his death, as the minor cut he suffered on his head bleeds into his eye at a critical moment, blinding him before he is killed.
- Captain Nalus of the Second Senatorial Legion has his own wounds stitched up with needle and thread instead of watercrafting, since his minor cuts would have only kept more seriously wounded legionares from treatment.
Minion with an F in Evil: Captain Nalus heads one of the Senatorial Guard Legions under Senator Arnos, whose political machinations make him the villain of Captain's Fury. Nalus, however, is simply a professional soldier without a political agenda or vice, and so continues to act as a proper Legion captain.
Minored in Ass-Kicking: Magnus. Archeologist-professor-butler by day, spymaster by night, and retired legionare.
Mistaken for Gay: Briefly, when Max notices that Tavi has stopped complaining about being separated from Kitai, he says that it is good Tavi finally got himself a woman to take his mind off things. When Tavi explains that he has not gotten himself a woman, Max asks if it was a boy instead. An exasperated Tavi has to explain that he has not had any kind of sexual partner.
Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Aric turns on his father, Kord, because of the horrendous treatment he endures and the generally abhorrent attitudes and actions he was raised with.
Mon: invoked Word of God holds that the furies are in fact based on Pokémon.
Mood Whiplash: Often. Particularly when Max goes in and out of scenes.
Moody Mount: The Taurga, which try at every opportunity to dislodge, kill, or eat their riders.
Mr. Fanservice: It's admittedly blunted by the focus of the third-person narrator, but Max, Bernard, Attis, and Kalarus Brencis Minoris, along with Tavi as he physically matures and Araris (after he gets assistance with his depression) in the later novels, are often given some noticeable praise in terms of the attractiveness. Bernard and Araris deserve special mention, since their Love Interests (Amara and Isana respectively) often find their internal narration lapsing into the Female Gaze whenever they're exercising or performing manual labor.
Ms. Fanservice: Many examples (to the point where virtually every woman — even some of the younger women like the teenaged Beritte — in Furies of Calderon is described as physically attractive in some way^notethough in fairness, one of the main narrators — Tavi — was a Hormone-Addled Teenager at the time), but among the main cast of characters, Invidia is easily the biggest example, with there being many examples of her being a raven-haired beauty. Kitai also counts in the later novels as she grows into a young woman, with Tavi in particular practically drooling when she suggestively sucks on a berry during their dinner date in First Lord's Fury.
- Defied with the Vord Queens; objectively speaking, they're Green Skinned Space Babes who only wear elegant robes (at most) in lieu of clothing, so they seem like they should fall into this. However, as they all operate on Blue-and-Orange Morality and are the leaders of an omnicidal Hive Mind of all-devouring Insectoid Aliens, any potential attractiveness is lost and replaced solely with completely rational terror.
Muggles Do It Better: One of the most devastating weapons the Canim use against Alerans is an enormous crossbow. There is nothing magical about it, beyond the fact that it is scaled to a Canim warrior, making it somewhere between a ballista and a man-portable crossbow. Alerans call it a "balest", invoking the term "arbalest", which is essentially a huge, heavy crossbow in Earth terms.
- The Grey Tower is designed to hold extremely powerful furycrafters, up to and including the First Lord if necessary, and as such is designed in a way that prevents anyone from using their furies to escape. Tavi manages to orchestrate a breakout by using entirely mundane options instead.
- The climax of First Lord's Fury involves using catapults to throw incendiary grenades, which, while furycrafted, are nothing more complicated than jars of pitch lit on fire. This proves devastatingly effective, to the point that multiple characters realize that it easily surpasses the power of a High Lord.
Mundane Solution: A whole lot, mostly courtesy of Tavi. Earthcrafting makes someone super strong, but it does not increase weight and you have to be touching the ground to use it. Throwing an earthcrafter on a wooden deck cuts off their strength, making them an easy target if they are relying on their crafting too much. Likewise, salt injures wind furies, disrupting fliers: Tavi comes up with the idea of salt arrows^note, which Bernard later uses to terrifying effect. Metalcrafters can sense blades or arrowheads coming at them, but not flint or stone weapons.
Mundane Utility:
- All of the different types of furies and their crafters have some form of mundane utility; windcrafting allows for flight and bending the air to see distant objects, earthcrafting increases strength to the point that loads in the hundreds of kilograms are no issue and active earthcrafting can be used to make buildings or drag minerals up to the surface (either ore for mining or nutrients for farming plants, though the latter is usually an emergency measure and is mentioned as making the soil unusable for farming after a few seasons' worth of growth), watercrafters are healers, metalcrafters are smiths and have endurance that allows them to block out pain or keep going for days, woodcrafters can manipulate any form of plant life, making them excellent farmers — and archers — and firecrafters create the equivalent of both lightbulbs and refrigeration. The economy is so based on fury-crafting that most other forms of technological development have completely stagnated.
- In comparison, it's mentioned that Canim Blood Magic is mostly geared towards usage in combat and doesn't feature as much versatility as Aleran furycrafting. However, in Captain's Fury Varg claims that it still has its uses elsewhere, such as in blessing bloodlines, improving fertility in Canim women, increasing the bounty of crops, and lessening the ravages of storms, droughts, and plagues. The last aspect in particular is implied to be the reason why, despite furies existing in Canea, no furystorms or wild furies are observed there by Tavi and other Alerans in Princeps' Fury.
My God, You Are Serious!: In Captain's Fury, when Tavi suggests that Ehren attempt to make contact with Nasaug, the war leader of the Canim, Ehren bursts out laughing before he swiftly realizes that Tavi isn't joking.
Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Gaius Tavarus Magnus, which means something like "Lord Super-Wolverine the Great".
Nature Spirit: Furies in general are this, with each seeming to be magical partially self-aware entities that singularly embody one of the six elements of nature. However, with the exception of the Great Fury Alera herself, virtually all of them aren't really anthropomorphized, with "domesticated" furies (those found in large cities and towns) basically being non-sapient, "wild" furies (those found out in the countryside farther from civilization) typically taking the forms of either various animals or plantlife along with having at least some degree of sapience (though, again, usually only to the level of an animal), and the Great Furies themselves typically taking on some mocking parody of the human form.
Nature vs. Technology: Plant/Wood and Metal are treated as opposing elements.
Neural Implanting: From First Lord's Fury, Alera teaching Tavi how to bond with a fury:
She touched his forehead. Her fingertip was damp and cool.
The means simply appeared in Tavi’s mind, as smoothly as if it had been something remembered from his days at the Academy. And, like much of furycraft, it was quite simple to implement. Painful, he suspected, but simple.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Tavi and Kitai are inadvertently responsible for the awakening of the Vord. They do eventually fix it, but it takes them all six books.
- In the final battle, Tavi leads the Awakened Vord Queen to the Great Furies of the Calderon Valley, and accidentally gives her the idea of claiming them, which would make her unstoppable. Kitai is appropriately exasperated.
Nigh-Invulnerable: The Vord Queens are far more durable than anything made of flesh and bone (and chitin) ought to be. It's taken to a level of near-absurdity with the Awakened Vord Queen — it eventually takes getting essentially Eaten Alive by a sentient thunderstorm after having already gone through a long fight with both Tavi & Kitai for her to be weakened enough for Tavi to kill her.
Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie: Those Taken by the Vord are essentially zombies, having similar capacities to their living selves save for lack of pain or emotion. The Taken Alerans can even do furycrafting after watching others do it if their bodies were capable of it in life, letting them be capable of being zombie wizards. In Academ's Fury, some Canim are Taken, thus making them zombie wolf men. Fighting the Taken sucks, especially since Alerans are better off not using furycrafting in front of the Taken Alerans at all rather than risk their enemy using it upon them.
Non-Indicative Name: Fidelias ("faithful"), the Wild Card who goes back and forth through the Heel–Face Revolving Door. That being said, he is always faithful... to Alera as a whole.
No One Could Survive That!: High Lady Aquitaine, conspirator extraordinaire, gets shot with a poisoned crossbow bolt while in disguise as a washerwoman. The combination of the two highly deadly poisons on the bolt plus the fact that the bolt went through her back and out through her chest reportedly kills her within minutes despite the best efforts of the healers. But her body was not in the morgue when the guy who shot her went to make sure. The fifth book reveals that she was indeed mortally wounded, but was able to heal enough to get away... where she was found by a Vord Queen who offered to keep her alive in exchange for her loyalty.
No One Gets Left Behind: When Kestus and Ivarus are fleeing from the Vord, Ivarus' horse is killed and Kestus turns around to assist him and bring him to safety on his own horse, even though Ivarus says it is more important that he escape with the news. Kestus himself is killed immediately after he turns back for Ivarus, leaving Ivarus/Ehren to continue the journey alone.
Nothing Personal: When Bernard confronts Aldrick over their conflict atop the walls of Garrison, Aldrick explains that he took no pleasure from it, but that he also refuses to apologize. He expects that Bernard, as a soldier, should understand that.
Not Now, Kiddo: Bernard to Frederic, regarding the Vord parasite he has captured in a cup.
"Not So Different" Remark: In Captain's Fury when Senator Arnos tries to reject Tavi's moral condemnation by saying that Tavi would have done the exact same thing, and in fact had done the same thing during his rise to command the First Aleran. Tavi, for his part, just realizes that Arnos is so blind as to not even be worth talking to.
No Woman's Land: Though Alera's women do enjoy plenty of rights as freemen, the number of female Citizens is limited; up until Gaius promoted Isana to the Citizenry at the end of Furies of Calderon, no woman had ever gained Citizenship without either serving in the military ^note, winning a Citizenship bout (requiring strong furycrafting), or marriage into the Citizenry (strong furycrafting being nearly required as well). In short, women without Knight-level furycrafting are generally out of luck in Alera, at least until Gaius promoted Isana. This becomes an important plot point as the series progresses, as Isana's promotion is taken as an official statement by the First Lord regarding parity of genders and a sign of his power, making Isana a target for those trying to undermine Gaius' authority. It also resulted in an increase in sale prices for female slaves and caused chaos and pressure in the slave trade in general. Since Kalarus is one of the two High Lords with eyes on the First Lord's crown, and the province of Kalare is heavily dependent on slave labor, this seriously hampers his economy and pushes him into launching the brewing civil war earlier than he planned.
Obfuscating Stupidity:
- The first thing Kitai says about her father, Doroga, is that he does not seem clever.
- Fade, seemingly a mentally disabled slave, is really Araris Valerian, possibly the greatest swordsman alive. He slowly drops the charade after Tavi discovers the truth, eventually abandoning it completely in the epilogue of the third book.
- Inverted with Ullus, the fence in Westmiston. When he draws a sword on Captain Demos, the Captain is surprised to find that Ullus really is as stupid as he seemed; Demos had thought it was an act.
- Kitai has a kind of Obfuscating Savagery: She is entirely frank about many things Alerans prefer not to discuss openly, but Isana realizes soon after talking to her that she grasps the subtler things quite easily and just likes to Troll those around her.
- Ehren seems like a smart, young, Cursor with weak furycrafting. And he is. He also kills Attis Aquitaine by manipulating the man to going into mortal peril with barely any effort.
Oblivious Guilt Slinging:
- Occurs in Captain's Fury, when Tavi makes an offhand comment about how you can always trust your family while Isana is in the room. Isana, who has been lying to him his entire life about his parentage and the reason for his lack of crafting ability, was getting up the nerve to confess.
- Fidelias/Marcus gets it from both sides. On one hand, Max, Nalus, Crassus, and most of the First Aleran keep going on about how good a friend, adviser, and all around soldier he is, while he is technically working for Lady Aquitaine and has orders to kill Tavi, and on the other, Lady Aquitaine keeps complimenting him on his ideas to get Tavi out of the way, when he feels horribly guilty about coming up with them.
Obstructive Bureaucrat: It would not be Alera without them, and they come in all shapes, sizes, and positions of authority. Naturally, they cause innumerable headaches. However, in at least one instance, they proved useful: one such official, Pluvus Pentius, protected some children by obstructing a roving monster with his accounts ledger. Repeatedly. To the head. Because hey, in Alera even the accountants can kick your ass.
Odd Name Out: Isana, Amara, Fidelias, Maximus, Araris, Invidia... Tavi? Which is Foreshadowing, as it happens. "Gaius Octavian" fits right in with the rest of those Latin-derived names.
One-Steve Limit: Mildly averted. Cursor's Fury introduces two characters called Gracchus: the Tribune Logistica of the First Aleran, and the Senator Primus, Gracchus Albus. The latter is distinguished by being referred to by his full name.
Offhand Backhand: Walker provides the Gargant equivalent when charged by a mantis Vord in First Lord's Fury. The creature charges with berserk fury until Walker squashes it while paying next to no attention to it.
Official Couple: Tavi and Kitai, Bernard and Amara, and eventually Isana and Araris.
Offing the Offspring: Antillar Maximus seems to have plenty of accidents whenever his step-mother, High Lady Dorotea Antillus, is around.
Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The frequently recounted duel between Araris Valerian and Aldrick ex Gladius, which took place nearly twenty years before the start of the story proper. Everyone who saw it claimed it was the single greatest swordfight in history, with an audience of more than fifty thousand people and lasting for more than ten hours.
Oh, Crap!: Everywhere and in wide variety.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": Also common, but especially notable when the Awakened Vord Queen pulls a One-Hit KO on a High Lord.
Oh, My Gods!: Many variants on "crows" and "furies" seem to have taken the place of traditional oaths.
Older Than They Look:
- All powerful watercrafters, to the point where even the eldest High Lords almost never look older than their forties, with the majority of them looking like they are in their mid-thirties or even younger. Gaius Sextus spends the entire series dying of old age (with a little help from some poison) but apart from his hair, he still looks like he is in his forties.
- Tavi looks young for his age and does not reach his full height until he is over twenty, since Isana purposely stunted his growth as a child to obscure his real age. More than a few dim bulbs in Aleran society make the mistake of assuming that just because someone looks like they are in their late teens or early twenties that they really are that age.
Olympus Mons: Though most Alerans do not believe they truly exist, "Great Furies" embody the larger geological formations of Carna, including mountains, volcanoes, and the land of Alera itself. These Furies can be stirred to action, held to inaction, and (if the crafter is powerful enough) bound to a person as any smaller fury can be.
One Curse Limit: Only one discipline collar can be fitted to a person at a time; the furycrafting involved does not take if a second one is added later. Amara uses this to her advantage.
One-Man Army:
- When the gates to Garrison are breached by the Marat horde, Pirellus of the Black Blade orders Amara to have the remaining legionare's regroup on the top of the walls to prevent more Marat from scaling the fortifications. When Amara asks him who will hold the gate, he responds that he will, and proceeds to do so. Singlehandedly. Against the entire horde.
- Giraldi explicitly calls Araris a "one-man Legion" in Cursor's Fury after he massacres dozens of Kalarus' Immortals.
The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Tavi and Varg, especially in Princeps' Fury. Earlier, in Academ's Fury, Varg tells Tavi that the entire reason he is helping him protect Gaius is because Varg wants to be the one to lead the army that will destroy Alera with honor, and that he does not want Alera to fall to Sarl and the Vord Queen's trickery and deception. Applies to any sets of gadara as well, and other Canim will get out of the way in order to let them challenge each other.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In her first POV chapters, Amara finds herself and Fidelias captured by Aldrick and Odiana. Fidelias gives her a cynical and defeated line before being carried off to "be killed." Through her grief, Amara reviews the facts and realizes while the mission was hers to plan, Fidelias should have noticed the trap and given her some warning, should have given her different words before being carried off. The fact he fails to do so clues her in on his having betrayed the Crown and that he is actually working with these mercenaries.
Open Secret: The Cursors are officially the messengers of the First Lord, but everyone knows that they are also the First Lord's spies, assassins, and special operatives. It gets to the point that some people are actually surprised when they are reminded of their official job.
Orifice Invasion: Vord Takers crawl in through your mouth, secreting a poison to numb your flesh so you do not know they are crawling into you until it is too late.
Our Elves Are Different: The Marat are basically Neolithic Wood Elves through their intimate connection to the natural world, their Noble Savage design, and lack of serious metalworking, though the term of "elf" is never explicitly used for them.
Our Gargoyles Rock: Gargoyles are earth furies bound into statues taking the form of certain animals (sometimes In-Universe mythical creatures, like sphinxes), and are typically used as the Magitek equivalent of automated security robots by sufficiently skilled Citizens and High Lords. It's mentioned that they're only good as Dumb Muscle and are often painfully slow, but even a glancing hit by them can turn someone into a wet spot on the pavement.
Our Gods Are Different: The Great Furies are effectively the gods of Carna through their immense physical and elemental power over the natural world. Notably, the Alerans don't actually worship them, most likely because the Great Furies are (predominantly) too mindless to even notice.
Our Orcs Are Different: Aside from a lack of green skin (what with them being a race of anthropomorphic Wolfmen), the Canim fulfill virtually every other trait seen in Blizzard Orcs, being large, powerful, and warlike humanoids that have both a culture predicated on honor and a longstanding enmity with humanity.
Our Spirits Are Different:
- Furies are powerful Nature Spirits that typically take the form of either an animal or plant, and can be bound and controlled by Alerans through sheer willpower.
- The physical descriptions given to the windmanes (basically feral and wild wind furies found living on the frontiers of Alera) in Furies of Calderon are vaguely reminiscent close to some of the depictions of the banshee, resembling rotting human corpses shaped from clouds, wind, and lightning baring sharp claws and fangs, and are infamous for their hollow, deafening screeches that sound more like howling stormwinds than anything else. Unlike the mythical banshees, though, they're not active death omens, and instead are more likely the ones to be responsible for someone's death through either shredding them to ribbons or suffocating them to death. Thankfully, they can be warded off by either a sufficiently strong windcrafter (e.g., Amara) or a pinch of salt, and they cannot attack someone who has covered themselves in mud (as Tavi figured out while lost out in a furystorm in the first book).
Our Zombies Are Different: invoked The Vord use "Takers" - tiny scorpion-like parasites the size of a spider - to crawl into someone's mouth and take over their body. After the Taker has assumed control, the "Taken" person serve as Parasite Zombies and can puppeteer their new forms however the Vord see fit. Not only can Takers control animals, but they give their new forms Super-Strength, a limited form of Super-Speed, force them to Feel No Pain, and to make matters worse, the Aleran Taken can even still use their furies against their former countrymen (though with the caveat that they need to personally observe someone else furycraft in front of them so as to "turn back on" their own furycrafting). Finally, the Takers inflict a Death of Personality on their victims - Descriptions of them trying to serve as infiltration agents by un-Taken Alerans and Canim describe them as being as deep in the Uncanny Valley as much as possible - and there is no way to "cure" a Taken aside from performing a Mercy Kill.
Outside-Context Problem: invoked The Vord, which do not behave like any of the other species which inhabit the world of Carna and have been encountered only in vague legends of the Marat. Word of God has even stated that they are alien invaders.
Out-Gambitted:
- In Cursor's Fury, Amara and Lady Aquitaine (with their respective associates) work together for the latter half of the novel, with everybody aware that an inevitable betrayal is coming. Lady Aquitaine switches identities with Odiana for the betrayal, but is then surprised when Amara's associates also switch identities, giving her the final advantage.
"I gave you even odds of seeing through the switch."
- In First Lord's Fury, Gaius Sextus set things up against High Lord Aquitaine. He adopts the man as Tavi's younger brother, giving the country a good leader until Tavi returns. Knowing Attis isn't likely to give up this seat of power, Gaius gives him Ehren, one of the weakest crafters in the story, as his personal valet. Gaius also gave Ehren secret orders to kill Aquitaine if he doesn't give up the position. Ehren wins and kills the man in such a way that Lord Aquitaine suffers this trope twice over by his death.
Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: The Alerans speak with scorn of several ancient Roman traditions and practices, and some refuse to believe these things ever happened because they are so patently ludicrous. These include, but are not limited to, praying to "gods", trying to tell the future by scattering animal entrails, shaping metal and stone without furies, constructing mechanical devices to supplant human labor, and building a civilized society without furycrafting. Considering the fact that the Great Furies like Kalare and Garados are at least as powerful as the Olympian gods, and have a far more palpable influence on the world, it is not really that surprising that religion as we know it fell by the wayside.
Out of the Inferno: Cursor's Fury. Tavi gets hit with a massive evil magic lightning bolt. Twice. And is unfazed the second time.

P-S

Parental Favoritism: Kord favored Bittan, who was growing into just as sickening a thug as he was, over Aric, who never quite reached the same depths.
Parrying Bullets: Both metal- and windcrafters are fast enough to slap arrows out of the air with their swords, though windcrafters usually prefer to deflect arrows with gusts of air instead. People start using salt arrows against windcrafters to take advantage of this (salt disrupts wind furies).
Peeling Potatoes:
- Bernard has Amara peel "a sack of tubers" after he captures her in Furies of Calderon in disguise as a slave.
- Tavi regularly pisses off his superior officer in Cursor's Fury, who usually has him measuring latrines as punishment. It gets bad enough that some people start calling him "Scipio Latrinus".
Person of Mass Destruction: All the High Lords, and especially the house of Gaius. A single High Lord is said to be equal to an entire cohort of Knights, and Gaius was able to influence weather on a continental scale.
Planet of Hats: A rare fantasy aversion. Although there are five different races, each one is shown to have its cowards and its heroes, individuals noble and villainous. The Canim and the Marat may be Proud Warrior Race Guys, but there's far more to their outlooks than just killing stuff for honor. It is what makes The Alliance at the end possible. Even the Horde of Alien Locusts are somewhat exempt, as the original Vord Queen develops a personality very different from her daughters. Of course her daughters all consider this a major flaw and want to kill her as a result.
Pintsized Powerhouse: The tavar native to Canea, wolverine-like beasts which are relatively small compared to the giant wolfmen that are the Canim, yet are known among them for being absolutely cunning, vicious, and very capable of taking down much larger beings. And that's why Varg names Tavi "Tavar".
Politically Incorrect Villain: The Steadholder Kord, High Lord Kalarus Brencis, and Kalarus Brencis Minoris are all raging misogynists. Additionally, both Senator Guntus Arnos and Invidia Aquitaine repeatedly show incredibly classist views of Aleran society, with the latter repeatedly calling Isana a “glorified peasant” and “camp whore” during their time together in First Lord’s Fury.
Portal Crossroad World: invoked According to Jim Butcher, Carna is Another Dimension that has wormholes pop up in other dimensions and suck beings in.
Posthumous Character: Princeps Gaius Septimus. In the first book, he is mentioned briefly and it almost seems like a bit of scene-setting: this is why there is a succession crisis and scheming noblemen, the monsters in the storm are so dangerous the only safe place is a tomb fit for a prince, and that is all we know about him until halfway through the second book. However, Septimus gets developed as a major character later.
Pragmatic Villainy: High Lady Aquitaine gives Isana an impassioned (for her, anyway) speech about how she can be trusted to honor loyalty, oppose violence and protect the people she has sworn to protect. Not because she feels some sort of moral duty to do so, but because she knows that that is how she gains loyal servants, preserves Alera as a prosperous whole and sways others to her cause.
- Additionally, the Aquitaines are very much against slavery... since weakening slavery will shatter the strength of their main political rival, High Lord Kalarus, whose economy is completely built around slavery.
Pregnant Badass: Kitai throughout all of the last book.
Pretender Diss: Aldrick ex Gladius, regarded as one of the greatest swordsmen living, is legendary partly because of his famed duel with Araris Valerian. At multiple points throughout the series he crosses swords with other famed warriors, calmly informing each of them, "The only man who has ever matched me in battle was Araris Valerian himself, and you aren't Araris." When it turns out that one of them actually is Araris, Aldrick practically collapses.
Pretext for War: The plot of the first novel revolves around High Lord Aquitaine spurring the Marat to invade the Calderon Valley, planning to use the subsequent chaos and war to position himself as First Lord of Alera.
Pronoun Trouble: Marat children are referred to by their parents as their "whelp," instead of "boy" or "girl", until they pass a certain rite of adulthood. In the first book, Tavi meets (and is injured by) a Marat child (Kitai), and the narration refers to this child with male pronouns since that is what Tavi assumes her to be. Before the reveal, Tavi asked Doroga, Kitai's father, about his "son" - Doroga's response is to look up at the sky and it seems he is confused by the homonym, as a bit of a language barrier had been established earlier, it is only later that it is revealed that the confusion is because he has a daughter instead.
Proud Warrior Race: The Marat and the Canim. The Alerans also have a strong martial tradition, though it's largely due to the brutality of having to survive in the Death World that is Carna.
Psychic Static: When the mind-reading Vord Queen is questioning Amara about the location of Bernard in Princeps' Fury, Amara follows the resultant train of thought and brings up every memory relating to Bernard that she can think of. The Queen remarks that her mind is surprisingly disciplined, and has to resort to other methods of information extraction.
Psycho for Hire: Phrygiar Navaris is a cutter (assassin) whose insanity is felt by every watercrafter who comes near her.
Punch-Clock Villain: Though some of Senator Arnos' singulares are among the most notorious murderers and thugs in Alera, others are instead famed for their past heroic rescues of kidnapped women and protection of Citizens from assassination. They currently have no agenda or stake in the senator's schemes, they are simply here because they have been hired for a job.
Puppeteer Parasite: The Vord's most potent weapon are the Takers, insects the size of a mouse that crawl in through your mouth and take over your body. The Taken bodies are impervious to pain, have strength far beyond their normal capability, and are used to sow dissent and fear amongst the populace. When the Taken is an Aleran, they can even use furycrafting, provided that a non-Taken furycrafts first to "activate" the furies.
Quip to Black: Tavi pulls a mild one in Captain's Fury after surviving an assassination attempt at the end of a chapter. The text even includes a perfect moment for a Glasses Pull:
"It would seem," Ehren said, "that someone doesn't want you making this trip."
"Then someone," Tavi replied, "is going to be very disappointed."
Rags to Royalty: Tavi (Sleeping Beauty-style) and Isana (Cinderella/Goose Girl-style) and Araris, by marrying Isana.
Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil:
- Rape is a "Realm offense;" if somebody is convicted then punishment is meted out not only to them, but even to their family if the judge deems it worthy.
- First Lord's Fury finally reveals just what it was that caused the infamous duel between Araris Valerian and Aldrick ex Gladius: Aldrick had slept with Odiana after Septimus and his singulares rescued her from sex slavery, and Araris comments that that given just how traumatized she had been there was no way she could have consented or rationally dealt with the situation. Aldrick was wrong to take advantage even if he did it to comfort her, and despite being sword-brothers, Araris could not let it pass.
"Rashomon"-Style: When Araris Valerian talks about Gaius Septimus, he extols his virtues when it came to dealing with other members of the nobility: he could turn even enemies into friends, and he had the knack for getting other people to back down without wounding their pride or losing face publicly. High Lady Aquitaine Invidia, on the other hand, says that Septimus simply didn't notice the enmity he aroused in those around him, and forgot about the grudges that other Citizens would nurse for years.
Really 700 Years Old: Varg. Potentially any Cane for that matter, as their life expectancy seems to be near a millennium.
Reasonable Authority Figure: Bernard, Giraldi, High Lord and Lady Placida, High Lord Ceres, Tavi, Varg, Nasaug, and Gaius Sextus.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Amara gives one to Invidia in both Princeps' Fury and First Lord's Fury, then Isana to Invidia and the Vord Queen later in the latter novel.
Reconstruction: invoked According to Word of God, part of the reason for the Vord being a rather obvious Captain Ersatz of the Zerg (of Starcraft fame) is that he wanted them to be a reconstruction of the concept of a Horde of Alien Locusts; through changing the focus to be more personal and "ground-level" (rather than the higher-up position the Player Character of a Real-Time Strategy game would occupy), the Codex Alera series effectively reminds the audience how legitimately terrifying the Zerg or any similar race would be to fight through their sheer overwhelming force, bafflingly alien nature, and heartless slaughter of innocent civilians.
Red Baron: Skilled swordsmen of Alera are often given sword-based nicknames which become part of their actual names.
- Aldrick ex Gladius. "Ex Gladius" means "of the sword," and when he is introduced Fidelias explicitly states that he is known throughout Alera as "the Sword."
- Pirellus of the Black Blade.
Red Mage: Rural Alerans tend to bond one or two Furies. Of those we see with two, none of are of the opposing axes in Furies' Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors. In contrast, urban Alerans can call on as many as five elements, including opposing forces that their rural counterparts are never shown using together.
- Bernard is the only character called out as having the strength of a Knight with more than one Fury.
Redemption Quest: Tavi sets Fidelias up on one at the end. Fidelias ex Cursori is dead. He is now Valiar Marcus and he will train the next generation of Cursors, and receive all the glory, goodness, and other rewards Fidelias should have received had he never betrayed the Crown.
Red Shirt: Tons of people without names die, from legionares to civilians, as situations spiral increasingly out of control.
Refuge in Audacity: In Academ's Fury:
- When Tavi meets Varg for the first time, the Canim ambassador is demanding to see Gaius, who cannot see anyone at the moment due to currently being in a coma. How does the Aleran with no furycrafting stop a 9-foot tall Wolf Man? He gets Varg to lean in close and pulls a knife on the Cane, threatening a Mutual Kill if Varg doesn't back off and go away. Varg is impressed.
- Tavi needs to get Kitai to the citadel to help protect Gaius from some Taken Canim. When the second set of guards see Kitai, Tavi stops them from killing her by claiming she is the Ambassador of the Marat. It works and they get in.
- In general, this is one of Tavi's most common techniques. Other highlights include crossing an entire continent in a couple of days, breaking into the setting's most impregnable prison twice, and allying with centuries-old enemies of Alera. Twice.
The Remnant:
- As revealed in Princeps' Fury, Shuar is the last surviving range of the Canim left on Carna, with the rest having been devoured by the Vord over the course of six or so years. Due to the events of the novel, Shuar is eventually overrun completely, but the surviving civilians of both Shuar and Narash are able to escape to Alera.
- According to the Marat's legends, the modern Marat are descended from the few refugees that survived the previous two attempts by the Vord at wiping out their civilization.
Required Secondary Powers: High Lords/Ladies and the First Lord are generally very strong in all six elements. Most other people, though, are only strong in one or two, which means they might lack these. This results in situations where speedsters shred their own muscles if they do not have the earthcrafting to augment their own strength; see Fragile Speedster above. In the same way, metalcrafters have the pain tolerance to keep fighting far too long for their own good because they do not have the earthcrafting to prevent injuries in the first place or watercrafting to heal them. Watercrafters have the empathic ability to sense everyone's emotions, but might lack the pain tolerance of a metalcrafter to avoid going crazy from the mental cacophony.
Rescue Romance: After Bernard pulls Amara out of the frozen, flooding Rillwater river, the two of them warm by the fire and Amara leans in to kiss Bernard. He pulls away, pointing out that she is cold and injured and it would be taking advantage to pursue the matter. They get together later on anyway.
Retired Badass:
- Old and blind Killian is supposed to be this, and as far as Captain Miles knows he is, but in truth he is still an active Cursor and the current leader of the organization.
- Nedus from Academ's Fury, a retired Knight Captain trying to help Isana get in contact with the First Lord while protecting her from her political enemies. He is the sword master who trained most of the expert swordsmen of the current generation, including Araris Valerian and Sir Miles. He proves his badassery as he defends Isana from assassins. There are three cutters armed with swords, and he manages to kill two of them, but killing the second opens him up for the third to stab him fatally. He proceeds to grab his killer and take him out by stabbing him through the mouth before expiring.
- Valiar Marcus was in retirement for many years after his time at the Shieldwall. As far as anyone knew, he was living quietly on a steadholt. He is still a dangerous and capable fighter when he came back into service of the First Aleran. Fidelias, however, was quite active during "Marcus's" (one of his aliases) "retirement".)
Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Sarl smuggled one of the Vord Queens back to Canea, and several groups of the ritualists eagerly smuggled Vord into their own lands to help with rebellions against the Warmasters. Once the Vord has a solid foothold everywhere they turned on the ritualists, and by the time of Princeps' Fury the ritualist caste is very nearly extinct.
Riddle for the Ages:
- When Aldrick ex Gladius explains to Fidelias why it is that he hates Gaius Sextus, Fidelias claims that there is something more that Aldrick is not telling him. Aldrick admits that there is something more, but refuses to say what. Though later books do delve into Aldrick's history, including how he and Odiana became a couple and his relationship with Princeps Septimus, the series never does explain just what it is that makes Aldrick really hate Gaius.
- All of the ancient enemies the Alerans fought several hundred years ago - at the least - before the start of the series are only mentioned by Amara in passing by name^note in Princeps' Fury, and almost all other details are completely left up in the air. The only thing we know about any of them is that the Children of the Sun used to live in the Feverthorn Jungle, and whatever they left behind is capable of keeping both Alerans and the Vord from entering.
Right for the Wrong Reasons: After surviving an attack that killed or injured almost every other officer of the First Aleran, and then unleashing a dramatic and extremely effective fire attack on the Canim forces, the members of the First Aleran begin to believe that Tavi has amazingly powerful furycrafting abilities. Coupled with his appearance, that leads to rumors that he is the son of Gaius Septimus. Though Tavi has no furies and accomplished what he did through blind luck and quick thinking, the rumors are true after all.
Rogue Drone: Played interestingly with the Vord, where it's one of their Hive Queens who starts developing her own personality (leading the other queens to try to kill her to prevent her from "infecting" the rest of their race). She stays a villain even while developing increasingly humanlike personality traits, though her death scene is surprisingly moving. Additionally, since Tavi and Kitai accidentally awakened the Vord Queen in the first place, all "lower-form" Vord (i.e., Vord that aren't the Queens) will ignore them and treat them like other Vord unless the two directly attack them.
Rousing Speech: In First Lord's Fury, Tavi gives one to his men and to all of Alera via watercrafting, to get them to stand up and fight hard against the Vord threat. It is considered a well done and moving speech, with Tavi's rival to the throne even agreeing it got him ramped up. It also doubled as a distraction for a special mission to save the Vord Queen's prisoners.
Royals Who Actually Do Something: The High Lords are the most powerful and influencial individuals of Alera, and they make good use of it as the Vord Queen comes to threaten everyone in Alera.
Running Gag:
- Kitai would like to point out that she wanted a horse.
- Maximus frequently utters the term "sacred right," referring to a legionare's right to complain about his duties, no matter how frivolous his complaints are, for as long as he wants. Tavi co-opts the phrase at least once to refer to his right to be mysterious and secretive as part of his authority.
- Once Ehren becomes a Cursor he carries numerous knives hidden about his person. Eventually people begin commenting on just how many he has tucked away from view.
Sadistic Choice: When the Vord Queen studies people to try and understand their thoughts and motivations, she orders a mother to hand over her infant son. The mother looks to Invidia and asks for help, but she tells her that she has another child that she can protect by handing over the baby as ordered.
Salt Solution: Wind furies, and by extension, windcrafters, are adversely affected by salt, as it's a type of earth.
Samus Is a Girl: For such a smart guy, Tavi takes far too long to realize that Kitai is female. Twice!
Sanity Has Advantages: Phrygiar Navaris may be a swordswoman on par with Araris, but her Ax-Crazy nature ultimately leads to her death at Tavi's hands.
Schizo Tech: Downplayed example - while Alera is implied to have a technology-level similar to that of ancient Rome (as befits a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Romans), due to their use of furies, they lack some other techniques and technologies that would have been known to the real Romans, such as tracheotomy (because buying time for transporting patients isn't quite as vital when the doctor's a watercrafter) or even catapults (because you can blast things with firecrafters or bring down stone fortifications with earthcrafters instead).
School of Seduction: Lord Kalare is said to have used a training program incorporating this as well as other things for all his female agents. The Cursor's Academy also teaches some agents the ropes, but none of the main characters (save perhaps Serai) are so trained.
Sealed Orders: In "Princeps' Fury", Tavi foils the Vord's ability to read minds by setting up whole strings of sealed orders given to several people with strict instructions to open each one only when told to by the preceding order.
Secret-Keeper: Several people keep the secrets of Fade and Tavi's respective true identities once they work them out, usually simultaneously, as figuring out the former usually leads to deducing the latter (because why else would Araris Valerian, greatest swordsman in Alera, mar his face with a coward's brand and pretend to be a halfwit slave for twenty years to protect someone who is apparently just an ordinary shepherd boy? Answer: said shepherd boy is actually Gaius Octavian, the son of the late Gaius Septimus and the rightful Princeps of Alera) - as is the case with Sir Miles towards the end of Academ's Fury.
Senseless Sacrifice: When Amara and Bernard are spying on Vord activities, they see a Ceresian cohort sacrifice themselves in an attempt to hold off the Vord long enough for a group of civilians to reach the safety of the city walls. Amara is particularly sickened when, after killing the last of the soldiers, the Vord catch up to the holders in less than two minutes, rendering their brave sacrifice completely pointless.
Sequel Hook: In the epilogue, Alera reveals to Tavi that the Vord Queen in Canea will be ready to cross the sea in one-hundred and fifty years, and he - or rather his descendants - had better be well prepared.
Sergeant Rock: The Centurions.
- Centurion Giraldi was stationed at Garrison since before the the first novel; he remains there for several years and serves as Bernard's primary subordinate for numerous battles. He was offered a promotion to officer after Second Calderon, but turned it down; as he explained, he had spent so much of his life making fun of the officers of the Legion that he could not very well join them now.
- Valiar Marcus, First Spear (Senior Centurion) of the First Aleran Legion. One of the few men living to be "promoted" to the House of the Valiant (Valiar) for his service to Alera. It turns out he is one of Fidelias' alternate identities.
- Schultz grows into this, becoming one of the senior Centurions of the First Aleran Legion
Sexual Karma: The series's main couples (Tavi and Kitai, Amara and Bernard) get it on explicitly, frequently, and enthusiastically. Relatedly, Princeps Septimus and Isana apparently had a very positive sex life on top of being Happily Married, and Max serves as both The Pornomancer among Tavi's friends and an increasing voice of reason. In contrast, while it might just be ribbing on behalf of Placidus Aria, Kalarus Brencis apparently had "trouble" bedding women at the Academy when they were all younger, and Gaius Sextus (who, while not exactly evil, is still very morally ambiguous at times and frequently forced to Shoot the Dog) is mentioned to have had a non-existent sex life since remarrying Caria in an Arranged Marriage and found it very awkward when Caria later seduced him in the bath after Max (while disguised as Sextus) had previously made out with her to serve as part of a distraction.
Shapeshifter Weapon: Watercrafters are capable of using their control over their own bodies to lengthen their fingernails into claws.
Sheep in Wolf's Clothing: What it takes to fool the Vord.
She Is Not My Girlfriend: When Ambassador Varg refers to Tavi and Kitai as "mates" in Academ's Fury they each (at the same time) state that they are not mates. Note this is before they began their relationship.
Shock and Awe:
- A very limited form. Windcrafters, working together, can capture a storm's electrical energy and keep it bouncing around between themselves until they find something they want to throw it at.
- At another point, a healer with windcrafting powers gathers an electrical charge to serve as a defibrillator.
Shock Collar: In this case the collar not only hurts the slave when they misbehave, but rewards them with sensations of pleasure when they do well.
Shoot the Dog: In the climax of Captain's Fury, Gaius Sextus releases the Great Fury within Mount Kalus, erupting the volcano. This destroys the entire city of Kalare and much of the surrounding countryside, killing hundreds of thousands, but Gaius explained that if Kalarus was allowed to unleash Kalus on his own whim at the end of the campaign, the city would have been filled with even more refugees and soldiers, doubling or tripling the death count.
Shoot the Medic First: A favored tactic among the Vord is to go after the watercrafters first, since they can heal.
Shout-Out:
- Tavi's name is based on Rikki Tikki Tavi, a mongoose that regularly overcomes greater foes with cunning and skill in the works of Rudyard Kipling.
- Placidus Aria and her husband Sandos are based on Aral and Cordelia Vorkosigan from the Vorkosigan Saga in both their appearance and personality.
- In First Lord's Fury, Varg knocks down Khral, an attacking ritualist, with what is strongly implied to be a copy of the Commentaries on the Gallic War by Julius Caesar.
Shut Up, Hannibal!: When Bernard was giving a lecture to the Ceresian Collegia Tactica on the threat of the Vord, Senator Arnos repeatedly dismissed the danger as either a misunderstanding or outright deception by Doroga, calling Doroga numerous unkind names as he did so. Bernard, in response, warned Arnos that if he insulted Bernard's friend again, Bernard would challenge him to the juris macto and rip his tongue from his mouth.
"Shut Up" Kiss: When Amara and Bernard are imprisoned in Garrison, Amara is anxious and hyperactive in their captivity. Bernard kisses her to calm her down and get her to stop panicking over a situation outside of their control.
Sickening "Crunch!": When Gaius Sextus kills three cohorts (roughly 1,800) of Immortals at the same time, the sound of all their necks breaking "was a rippling staccato of sound, somewhat like a saw going through wood."
Single-Stroke Battle:
- Ehren kills Ullus with a single neck-cut after realizing that he needs to leave Westmiston now.
- In the climax of First Lord's Fury, ultimately, the Vord War is decided by a single lunge between Tavi and the Vord Queen.
Single-Target Sexuality: Kitai and Tavi love only each other. When his friends advise him to get a new woman when he's separated from her, and not expecting to see her again for months or years, he doesn't even entertain the suggestion. Kitai, likewise, never shows the slightest interest in anyone else besides Tavi. Well, except jokingly: after encountering one impressively competent officer, Kitai declares she is now in love, and Tavi tells her to get in line.
Sinister Nudity: The more advanced Awakened Vord Queens resemble naked women wearing only capes. Far from being sexy, they're quite eerie.
Skewed Priorities: Ullus, the Westmiston merchant Ehren is spying on, only considers that the blood-red sky will be bad for business.
Sky Cell: Lararl, the leader of the Shuaran Canim, imprisons a contingent of Alerans on top of a building. As the group contains a couple of windcrafters, this does not especially inconvenience them. (Lararl dismisses claims of Aleran sorcery, believing it to be incapable of doing anything Canim Blood Magic can do; as Canim ritualists cannot fly, he feels such a prison is sufficient.)
Slave Collars:
- Slaves are marked as such by wearing a leather collar to indicate their status.
- "Discipline collars" are shock collars for slaves. When one is put on you, you are buried in indescribable pleasure, until the mere absence of that pleasure is like torture. From then on, you must obey the orders of the person who put the collar on you, or you will feel pain, while obeying causes pleasure. Worse, you will die if anyone other than the person who put the collar on you tries to take it off, even if that person is dead.
Slave Liberation:
- In Captain's Fury it is revealed that the Canim occupying force has freed the Aleran slaves in their territory and armed them to form the Free Aleran Legion.
- In the epilogue at the end of First Lord's Fury, First Lord Gaius Tavarus Magnus (Tavi) signs into law the end of slavery throughout all of Alera.
Slave Mooks: The Immortals are a group of people who were raised since childhood wearing discipline collars and driven to be loyal to Kalarus. They are conditioned to carry out their orders regardless of injury.
Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: It's notable that, of all the other thinking peoples on Carna, only the Alerans practice slavery. Kitai's people are established in the first novel to literally cook Alerans alive before eating them, and even she finds their institution of slavery to be the worst, most inexplicable thing about them. The Canim are similarly disgusted, with Nasaug specifically mentioning the Alerans' practicing slavery as a reason for why his fellow Canim see the Alerans as monsters and demons.
Slipping a Mickey: Aphrodin, a chemical derived from hollybell plants, causes intense sexual desire in those who drink it. Some people take it deliberately as a recreational drug or sexual stimulant, but it is also given to others without their knowledge for seduction and rape.
Slouch of Villainy: High Lord Aquitaine is sitting this way during his first appearance in the series, during Furies of Calderon.
Small Role, Big Impact: Beritte. She only makes a short appearance in the first book, but it is her request to Tavi to bring her some flowers that kickstarts the story, as Tavi leaving early the next morning leads him to meeting Amara.
Smart People Play Chess: Or the local equivalent, ludus. It has two boards, one on top of the other, so you can fight on both the earth and in the sky. This is probably based on the Ancient Roman game ludus latrunculorum, which is said to be similar to chess or draughts.
Smug Snake:
- High Lord Kalarus, though regarded by all his foes as competent and dangerous, is nonetheless held in contempt by the same foes, who see him only as a stepping stone before they kill each other in the real contest. His own arrogance blinds him to his own status and nature.
- Senator Arnos (who was actually in the pay of genuine Magnificent Bastard Lord Aquitaine) spends most of Cursor's Fury getting in the way of the Legions in their war with the Canim.
Solar-Powered Magnifying Glass: In Cursor's Fury, Tavi uses a small magnifying glass to light a fire to fake having the ability to firecraft (as part of assuming an undercover identity). Later in the same book he uses the same concept writ large as a weapon.
Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Furies of Calderon features a relatively minor struggle against invading "barbarians". By First Lord's Fury, the world is about to end. The Vord have this as a superpower – kill some, and all you have really accomplished is teaching the Queen new tricks to incorporate into the next generation.
Spanner in the Works:
- Throughout Furies of Calderon, Fade repeatedly saves Isana's life by tripping over people and spilling hot soup right at the critical moment. All on purpose.
- In Cursor's Fury, Sarl would have killed Tavi if it were not for the red stone Tavi accidentally stole from High Lady Antillus.
Spirit Advisor: The Great Fury Alera has been helping the House of Gaius from the background for the past several hundred years.
Spoiler Title: At some point, the reader will likely realize that the titles of the books refer to Tavi's rank and position during that book.
- This does cause some Late Arrival Spoilers: knowing that there's a book called First Lord's Fury when you're still on Cursor's Fury provides some rather significant spoilers, though you may wonder how and why Tavi becomes First Lord without furies.
Spot the Thread: Or, as Magnus calls it, an "accretion of evidence", as he puts together a list of possible Cursors with the skills, abilities, and age to match the traits Valiar Marcus shows. It leads him to realize that Marcus is Fidelias.
Spreading Disaster Map Graphic: Commanders use green-colored sand on their maps to represent the spread of the Vord. By the end of First Lord's Fury, they often have to use multiple buckets of green sand.
Spring Is Late: Tavi gets Alera to bring cold air from the arctic much farther south than normal for late winter/early spring. The extra week of winter allows Tavi to craft the snow into a surface that allows ships to sail on land, getting Tavi's army to the main battle earlier than expected.
Star-Crossed Lovers: Towards the end of Furies of Calderon, after most of the story has established that Heddy had been raped by Bittan, it is revealed that Heddy had actually been having consensual sex with Aric, Bittan's brother. Aric's father, Kord, was an abusive, violent, lecherous bully, and Heddy's father, Warner, knew all too well what Kord was like, so both partners had to keep their relationship secret from their families. Aric and Heddy are married by Academ's Fury... only for Aric to be Taken by the Vord.
Start of Darkness: The fifth book reveals that, contrary to what most people assumed, Aquitaine was not one of those who killed Princeps Septimus: quite the opposite, he was one of Septimus' closest friends and turned against the First Lord who had been unable to protect his own son, becoming just as cruel and ruthless as those he sought revenge against.
Stealth Expert: The Cursors are typically trained to be this, but Kitai (as a Marat, she has senses far enhanced in comparison to a human's, along with Super-Strength and incredible agility) and the Hunters of the Canim take this up to eleven. The latter case is especially impressive, since they're all incredibly large Wolf Men who are nevertheless able to catch even Kitai off guard.
Stealth Hi/Bye:
- Both windcrafting and woodcrafting are capable of creating veils to hide things from sight (the first by manipulating air to bend light, the second by manipulating plant matter to alter shadows). Powerful enough crafters are capable of seemingly appearing from nowhere.
- Varg's Hunters do this repeatedly, including once emerging from a room that Tavi and company had been in (alone) only moments before. Eventually, Sha (their leader) pulls this on Valiar Marcus so often that Marcus stops being surprised at finding him in his tent.
Stealth Pun:
- Metalcrafters subsume pain and emotion by drawing the matrix of the metal into their mind. In other words, they "steel" themselves against it.
- As part of a Meaningful Name. A character named Rook switches places with a royal figure for the sake of maneuverability for her and protection for the royal. In other words, Rook castles.
- In First Lord's Fury, Doroga rides to the rescue with his big freaking club and shouts "Good day!" as he pastes a Vord. There is a Danish weapon called a gotendag ("good day"), which is basically a giant wooden club with spikes. Supposedly, its wielders would shout "Gotendag!" when using it to take down knights on horseback.
- Crossing over with Visual Pun, Invidia Aquitaine is literally killed by getting stabbed In the Back.
Strange Minds Think Alike:
- When Doroga and Kitai see examples of precise, choreographed Aleran activities (Military formations and rehearsed singing, respectively) they both comment that Alerans must be bored out of their minds rehearsing in advance, part and parcel of Aleran "madness". The people they are talking to (Bernard and Tavi) both then point out that they seem extremely pleased with the results.
- When Isana and Araris have been kidnapped and bound with bags over their heads, Isana complains internally about the fact that it is a dirty bag. The sheer banality of this thought causes her to start laughing, and when Araris asks why, she explains that she was marveling at her ability to take umbrage at minor details in such dire situations. Araris then remarks that he, too, was wondering at the poor quality of their head coverings.
- When she is listening to Senator Valerius drone on at length in senate politics, Amara indulges in a fantasy of using her windcrafting to strangle him from where she is sitting in the auditorium. Just as she manages to break herself out of the temptation, Bernard leans over and asks her if she would be willing to strangle Valerius for him.
Stress Vomit: After Tavi kills a man for the first time, he has to fight back vomit long enough to search the body for any clues as to the man's identity and purpose. Once he finishes, however, he cannot continue to hold it back and throws up on the ground.
Stuff Blowing Up:
- Firecrafters are the cannons of Aleran legions, and Knights Ignus and High Lords can make explosions ranging from personal- to artillery-sized detonations.
- In Cursor's Fury, Tavi arranges to detonate a town to stop a Canim assault through the liberal application of alcohol, lamp oil, and distributed sawdust.
Succession Crisis: The overarching plot of the series, and the cause (however indirectly) of the entire story. Princeps Gaius Septimus, only son and heir of First Lord Gaius Sextus, was killed in the First Battle of Calderon by a Marat horde more than fifteen years before Furies of Calderon, leaving Alera without a clear inheritor for the position of First Lord. Multiple High Lords have spent the intervening years scheming and positioning themselves to take Gaius's position once he dies, and some have decided to hasten his end in order to claim the throne sooner.
Summon Bigger Fish:
- In Captain's Fury, the Slive is being chased by a larger pirate ship with plans to board. Tavi arranges a boarding action to kill the witchmen aboard the pirate vessel, removing their covering watercrafting and disturbing the leviathans around them. The leviathans, in turn, smash the ship to splinters.
- In the climax of the series during First Lord's Fury, Tavi is battling the Vord queen and deliberately disturbs the Great Furies Garados and Thana to rouse their wrath against all parties present.
Super-Reflexes: A primary combat ability for wind crafters, as drawing their wind fury within them extends their perceptions to allow them to react at heightened speeds.
Super-Speed: A primary combat ability for wind crafters, as drawing their wind fury within them allows them to increase their own speed beyond human norms. Later deconstructed in that if the windcrafter tries to take it up to eleven, their bodies cannot keep up and/or they end up with torn muscles and broken bones.
Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
- High Lord Kalarus is basically Kord from the first novel (being an abhorrent and misogynistic Hate Sink hedonist who practices slavery and isn't nearly as clever as he thinks he is), albeit elevated to a recurring antagonist and major player in Aleran politics.
- Sarl is an adversary among the Canim ritualists for the second and third novels, and is replaced by Khral in the sixth.
- The Aleran Senator Valerius from the sixth novel resembles Arnos in more than one way, primarily in being a moronic and egotistical Jerkass with horrendously Skewed Priorities.
Sword Sparks: Swords sparking is an artifact of powerful metal crafting. With thematic colors no less!

T-Z

Tailor-Made Prison:
- In the first book, Isana and Odiana (both powerful watercrafters) are locked in a drying hut for meats, surrounded by hot coals, and kept dehydrated, being given barely enough water to survive.
- In Princeps' Fury, prisons for other crafters are seen. Firecrafters are put under running water. Earthcrafters and metalcrafters are in wooden cages away from the earth and metal. Windcrafters are in stone boxes with a single air hole the size of a human thumb. Woodcrafters are in metal cages set far from the wooden cages. Citizens require more complex combinations of these cages in order to counteract multiple aspects of furycrafting at once.
- The Grey Tower is intended to be this: it's supposed to hold anyone up to and including the First Lord if they break the law, but not only by frustrating their furycrafting. In addition, each of the Grey Guards assigned to the tower are considered bribe-proof^note, they are at least Knight-class crafters (usually in metalcrafting, but also with other talents), and the Tower itself is full of security measures to warn of a breakout attempt. A powerful enough citizen might escape, but, in theory, the Grey Guard will run them down and capture or kill them, and no matter what, their escape will be noticed. Tavi, of course, engineers a breakout in Academ's Fury, but as a result he recommends improvements to security to guard against any more attempts in the future. This causes problems when he needs to stage another breakout in Captain's Fury.
Taking You with Me:
- In Academ's Fury, Isana is attacked by assassins in the capital while she is being guarded by a Cursor and Sir Nedus, a Retired Badass. Nedus is personally attacked by three swordsmen, and is stabbed by the third after killing the first two. Nedus proceeds to grab the third swordsman and kill him while he himself is dying.
- A variant in Cursor's Fury. Araris is hit with a poison that will rot him from the inside, but can be healed. However, he has hit the Despair Eventhorizon and wants to die. So, Isana ties her life to his and tells him he can either die and take her with him, or will himself to live and continue his duty to protect her.
- In Captain's Fury, Gaius Sextus reveals that High Lord Kalarus has bound the fury within Mount Kalus to himself, tying it to his life. When he dies, the volcano will erupt, destroying the city of Kalare and killing everybody in the surrounding region. Gaius sets the volcano off himself, since allowing it to erupt on Kalarus's terms would have resulted in the city being filled with even more refugees and soldiers.
- In Princep's Fury
  - Tavi expected this as a final result when he got his one-on-one meeting with the Vord Queen in Canea. He anticipated she would refuse his offer of peace and alliance, and planned on killing her even at the cost of his own life. Thankfully Kitai knew him well enough to predict this course of action and act accordingly.
  - The Vord are attacking Alera Imperia and have just sprung a trap that has routed the defenders. Gaius Sextus, realizing that the Legions have been outmaneuvered, erupts a volcano beneath the city to destroy the Vord horde as it claims the city and himself. The surviving Vord are reduced to barely a tenth of their original number when the assault ended.
Technically a Smile: Captain Demos is described as showing his teeth in an expression which is definitely not a smile.
Technical Virgin: The concept is explicitly discussed in the beginning of "Cursor's Fury". Gaius asks if Tavi and Kitai are having sex, and Tavi stumbles through an explanation that they are doing "things" together, but not having intercourse. Gaius approves, since he is aware of the risks an unplanned pregnancy would have on Tavi's life and his service to Gaius.
Tempting Fate: In Cursor's Fury, while Isana is traveling with Invidia Aquitaine, Isana makes a good and insightful comment about the Aquitaine's next political and economic gambit. Lady Aquitaine is amused and wishes more were as insightful as Isana. Not five minutes later, after thinking on the matter some more, Isana identifies and notes the real purpose of the Aquitaine's actions and the deeper, more manipulative ploy that is really going on. Invidia notes perhaps it is best not as everyone is as smart and savvy as Isana.
That Man Is Dead:
- Araris Valerian died 15 years before the start of the series. Fade, on the other hand, is alive. Fade disappears about halfway through the series, right when Araris returns.
- After the climax at the end of Captain's Fury, Fidelias ex Cursori is "dead" in favor of Valiar Marcus.
- Several characters note that High Lady Invidia died and only Invidia, a shell of the former and servant to the Vord Queen, remains.
- High Lady Antillus Dorotea is fitted with a discipline collar and commanded to serve as a healer. She asks people to simply call her Dorotea, as her previous life is over.
That's No Moon: At the climax of First Lord's Fury, Garados, when fully unleashed, is an ugly humanoid twice as tall as the mountain he emerged from. Tavi cannot stop gawking at the fact that something that large could actually exist.
Theme Naming: Almost all of the High Cities of Alera along with many geographical locations and ruins are named after people, places, and/or cultural aspects of the Roman Empire. For instance, the ruins of the oldest human settlement in Carna is called "Appia" in reference to the Appian Way, Antillus is named after a son (and legal heir) of Mark Antony, Phrygia is named after a kingdom in west-central Anatolia conquered by the Romans, Rhodes gets its name from a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea annexed by Rome, Ceres is named after the Roman goddess of agriculture, Placida takes its name from a surname used for Venus in some myths, Aquitaine is named for a province of Gaul (the latter of which also became the namesake of the River Gaul), Attica is named for the Greek peninsula encompassing Athens, and the Tiber River is named after the actual Italian river cutting through Rome. Justified since the Realm of Alera was founded by a Lost Roman Legion.
There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Ambassador Varg beheads and then dismembers the body of one of the Vord Queens in Canea, commenting to Tavi that it is better to be sure.
Third Line, Some Waiting: Each book has a plotline following Tavi, a plotline following Amara, a plotline following Isana, and periodic cutaways to Fidelias. Sometimes they're interwoven, and sometimes they're almost completely separate.
Threatening Shark: In Cursor's Fury, one of several tricks Tavi pulls during the defense of the Elinarch is to dump blood into the river, attracting sharks that very effectively prevent any Canim from swimming across. In Captain's Fury, they have to swim through the Leviathans' Run, and Demos says that the sharks will be more of a problem than the leviathans — but since they have Isana with them, when one shark is stupid enough to bother them, she throws it a good fifteen feet out of the water to land on the deck of a pirate ship.
Throwing Down the Gauntlet:
- Juris macto is thrown around many of times as a threat, essentially with people saying "If you don't shut up, I'll challenge you to juris macto, and then you'll regret it". Most people back down and shut up. The first time juris macto actually gets thrown down is in Captain's Fury, when Tavi challenges Senator Arnos and gives absolutely no possibility of declining it^note.
- Doroga sets Tavi up to throw down a gauntlet in Furies of Calderon by giving him a chance to challenge the validity of the Marat's war before the One.
Throw the Book at Them:
- In the first book, Garrison's resident Obstructive Bureaucrat uses his accounts ledger as a bludgeon to fight off a herdbane and protect a group of children.
- In the last book, Varg knocks down Khral, an attacking ritualist, with what is strongly implied to be a copy of the Commentaries on the Gallic War by Julius Caesar.
Time Abyss: While Alera, the Spirit Advisor to the House of Gaius, has only been existence as a coherent entity for the past two millenia, they remember billions of years back. This is because she is essentially the spirit of the continent itself. Really, she might be one of the foremost examples of this trope considering just how ridiculously long her memory goes back.
Alera: Species come and go, like the sparks rising from a campfire.
Time Skip: A two-year one between the first two books, and another (technically two and a half, but the first chapter or two starts about half a year before the rest of the book) between books two and three. There are about two years between three and four, and about six months between books four and five and another six months between five and six.
Took a Level in Badass:
- As the series literally follows Tavi as he grows from boyhood to adulthood, each Time Skip in the series follows him growing larger, stronger, more experienced, and constantly receiving training in the arts of politics and war.
- Ehren is introduced as a Cursor-in-training who is more adept at the economic analysis and information interpretation area of spycraft, although Tavi realizes that Ehren must have been hiding some of his skills from the rest of the group even during this time. After he begins active duty as a Cursor after graduating from the Academy, he grows into a knife-wielding assassin, covert agent, and spymaster.
- Centurion Schultz, who starts as a fish in Cursor's Fury and is a Centurion by Captain's Fury, mirroring the First Aleran's transformation into one of the most elite Legions of Alera.
Took a Level in Kindness: High Lord Rivus Grantus toward Amara and Bernard. In his first few mentions and appearances, the man is seen as an arrogant old noble who dislikes Gaius for usurping his right to name a replacement as Count in the Calderon Valley. Later, when the Vord attack, he doesn't believe Gaius' claims, thinking this is some political scheme on Gaius' part. Then in First Lord's Fury he is humbled by seeing the devastation of his city, and much of the continent, and offers his apologies to Amara and Bernard for his years of dislike towards him and offers his aid as an engineering master to Bernard's plans.
Too Kinky to Torture:
- A small humorous example where Kitai suggests she might be this.
  Tavi: If we survive this I'm taking it out on your hide.
  Kitai: That could prove interesting.
- In Cursor's Fury, Odiana actually implies that she wants to have a discipline collar put on her by Aldrick, but only Aldrick. This is played for tragedy, not humor; in the first book she reveals that she used to be a slave, used for sex, and her watercrafting abilities let her feel the emotions of her attackers, which is what broke her. Notably, Aldrick will not do it, possibly because, in the final book, we learn that he was one of the men who saved her from said slaver.
Training "Accident": Amara's test at the beginning of the series was not really to see whether she could get information; it was to see if she would stay loyal and be able to escape after Fidelias's betrayal, which Gaius predicted.
Translation Convention: Apparently the Alerans are actually speaking English, not a Latinate language being translated for reader ease. In Furies of Calderon and Academ's Fury, Tavi explains lying (deceiving) to Doroga and Kitai, respectively, and both are initially confused because they thought "lying" meant reclining (As in "to lie down"). That does not work in Latin, German, Proto-Germanic, or even Old English; the words are only homonyms in English.
Trial by Combat:
- The Marat language has no word for "lying;" the closest concept they have is to say that someone is "mistaken." When one Marat accuses another of being mistaken, they fight each other to the death in order to see who is correct, with the rationale being that The One has shown favor for the winning side.
- The Juris Macto is the Aleran version. It can be used to resolve legal disputes, matters of honor, or to allow one to gain Aleran citizenship by defeating a Citizen. The challenged participant can have a Champion stand in their stead, but the challenger must fight personally. Not all juris macto fights are to the death, but most of them are, and if a juris macto challenge is withdrawn by the challenger it is recognized as a formal withdrawal of the accusation.
True Companions:
- Tavi and Max became close friends after rooming together at the Academy, which Gaius had arranged with the hopes of this result, and they were joined by Ehren, a fellow Cursor-in-training. Crassus, Max's half-brother, had a very rocky relationship with Max going back to their childhood, and got off on the wrong foot with Tavi as well, but eventually they grew past their differences.
- As is slowly revealed through the series, Princeps Septimus had a cadre of true companions in Araris Valerian, Miles, Antillus Raucus, other (unnamed) swordsmen who formed his singulares, and Aldrick ex Gladius and Aquitainus Attis. Those who survived his death at First Calderon were forever changed by it.
Tsundere: Kitai, especially early on.
Tunnel King: Earthcrafters can phase through earth and rock, allowing them to travel underground without leaving any sign of their passing.
Twin Threesome Fantasy: Antillar "Max" Maximus is introduced after spending the night in the company of Ladies Celine and Celeste. When he obliquely mentions this to Tavi and Ehren, they are shocked and jealous, especially when they realize he means both, not just one or the other.
Underestimating Badassery:
- In Academ's Fury, Tavi is bullied at the Academy by Kalarus Brencis Minoris and his gang of cronies, who pick on him because of his lack of furycrafting. When they finally push him too far, in a situation that they do not know is life-or-death and in which Tavi does not have the time to politely disengage, Tavi brutally beats both cronies into unconsciousness in moments using the Cursor training that they did not know he was receiving.
- Ehren is recommended to Aquitainus Attis as the most competent and skilled Cursor remaining in Gaius Sextus' service, and becomes Aquitaine's spymaster as a result. Yet he presents such a timid and unassuming air that even Aquitaine mentally dismisses him as a glorified scribe. Ehren ultimately assassinates Aquitaine at the height of the Vord conflict, and Attis almost laughs at how he was outplayed.
The Unfair Sex: When Kitai learns of the complicated rituals of courtship and marriage among the Citizenry of Alera, and that the relationship she has with Tavi is (by those standards) that of a concubine or whore, she becomes infuriated with how Tavi has treated her. Tavi, however, points out that she was the one who initiated their relationship, and that by her own Marat customs he has behaved perfectly honorably. Alera points out that that really is not relevant at all, and when Tavi accuses her of supporting Kitai simply because she is a woman, she agrees.
Uncanny Valley: invoked In-Universe, those "Taken" by the Vord are regarded as this by the other members of their species. Alerans see something fundamentally wrong and alien in the eyes of Taken humans, while Varg claims that Taken Canim both "smell wrong" and have ears that "don't look right".
Unhappy Medium: Watercrafters, the strongest of whom tend to be incapacitated by sufficiently powerful emotions unless they are also good at metalcrafting.
Unholy Matrimony: Odiana is Ax-Crazy. Aldrick is an amoral mercenary. They make a surprisingly cute couple.
The Unsmile: The Vord Queen's smile is described as something without meaning or warmth, a movement of facial muscles that is a replication of something she has seen in others.
Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Tavi and others in the series are quite good at playing their cards close to their vests. Becomes even more true in the fifth book, when Tavi realizes that the Vord are able to read the minds of their foes... and thus sets up a plan that is unspoken even to those who are carrying it out, using a whole network of sealed orders.
Utility Magic: Aleran society runs on this. They use furycrafting for literally every single convenience and technology.
- All lamps are fury-run because the flames are easier to control and anyone with even basic access to furycrafting can turn the brightness up or down.
- Firecrafting is again used in the creation of coldstones; unlike lamp-furies and their exothermic properties, coldstones are endothermic and absorb the surrounding heat into them, which means they become refrigeration units.
- Roads are imbued with earthcrafting to maintain them and allow people to move at a faster rate.
- In the second book, Invidia Aquitaine reveals she has sponsored the creation of furycrafted cloth which can change its colors to the user's desire. Amara and Bernard use cloaks made of the material to increase their stealth capabilities in the fifth book.
- Bernard commissions small glass orbs imbued with firecrafting. These are easy to make by anyone with even moderate talent for firecrafting, and when the orbs are launched en masse from catapults, they can generate an explosion comparable to a battle firecrafting from a High Lord.
Unwanted Spouse: According to Max, the tradition of arranged marriages in Alera means that this is the norm among High Lords.
- Gaius Sextus and Gaius Caria were wed after the death of Sextus's first wife, when Sextus was already well into middle-age and Caria was barely an adult. She thought she would be living out an epic romance, but (as Sextus himself admits) she was stuck with a scheming old man who had manipulated her from the beginning. She is eventually driven to an affair with Aquitaine and poisons Sextus.
- Antillus Raucus and Antillus Dorotea were married after their parents arranged the pairing in an attempt to unite the southern and northern cities, as Raucus was heir to Antillus and Dorotea was the daughter of the High Lord of Kalare. Raucus was in love (or at least affectionate lust) with a dancing slave girl, and he and Dorotea bitterly despised each other, but they both continued to play their roles.
Uriah Gambit: The First Lord sends out the High Lord of Rhodes to be killed by the Vord at the vanguard of the Aleran forces for multiple reasons: a dead High Lord underscores the fact that the Vord truly are a threat to the whole realm, whereas previously many of the Lords and higher-ranking Citizens had dismissed them as a danger; killing Rhodes in particular gets him the loyalty and assistance of the High Lord of Aquitaine, who viewed Rhodes as a potential threat to his own plans to attain the throne; and killing Rhodes was a matter of personal vengeance, as he was one of the cabal of citizens who, decades earlier, had killed Gaius Septimus, the First Lord's son.
Villainous Rescue: In order to prevent Kalarus from seizing the throne himself, the Aquitaines need to help save Gaius Sextus's life in Academ's Fury from the Vord, which they both recognize for the irony. Invidia herself is the one to personally go to the Citadel and battle foes on Gaius's behalf.
Villainous Valour: When Gaius Sextus unleashes a fearcrafting on Kalarus' Legions, the entire force is instantly routed. Many simply die of fright, and the rest flee or collapse in panic. However, one single legionare resists the mental assault and actually raises his sword in defiance. Amara feels pity for him and regrets that the reward for his courage, greater than the entire rest of his Legion, is to be killed by the First Lord.
Vitriolic Best Buds: High Lords Phrygius and Antillus, who command the two cities of the Shieldwall and stand together against the Icemen of the north. They also bicker Like an Old Married Couple.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Watercrafters are healers, and almost all of them can alter their features to make themselves look younger. If they are really skilled, they can make themselves look like someone else, including changing their voice as well. Attempting to imitate someone larger or smaller is quite uncomfortable, however. Fidelius is principally an earth- and woodcrafter, so his transformation into Valiar Marcus takes a few weeks of concentrated effort with his weak watercrafting.
Walking the Earth: It is not uncommon for the elders of the Canim ritualists to leave all their belongings and depart without a word to do this, in hopes the pilgrimage will help them find new ways to help the maker caste (the civilians). Sha and Fidelias make it seem like an enemy ritualist has gone on this to hide the fact they murdered him and hid the body.
Warrior Therapist: Through watercrafting, characters can literally feel their opponents' emotions during battle.
- When Tavi is fighting Phrygiar Navaris, he makes deductions about her history based on her name and what he knows about her, and uses them to drive her to a panicked, desperate attack.
- Isana challenges Antillus Raucus to a duel in an attempt to get him to see sense regarding the negotiations with the Icemen.
Weak, but Skilled:
- Amara is not one of the most powerful furycrafters in the series, only having one fury, but she has plenty of skill and a quick mind. In First Lord's Fury, while talking to Lady Veradis she points out that other people need to divide their studies and practice amongst many different subjects, while she can focus specifically on flying and other applications of windcrafting.
- Tavi's nonexistent talents and Ehren's weak crafting forced this on them as a matter of survival. Until Tavi's powers finally awaken.
We Are as Mayflies: At least, compared to the Canim, who can live for centuries (unless they die in battle first). The other races' lifespans are never explicitly stated, but the Vord seem to have some sort of Genetic Memory at least.
Weaksauce Weakness:
- For Windcrafting, earth, mud, dust, and salt are common things which can be the bane of their wind streams that give them flight. At Tavi's suggestion, Bernard weaponizes the salt by making salt-tipped arrowheads which will damage any windcrafting.
- For Earthcrafters, they must maintain contact with the earth to use their super strength. One can lift the crafter off the ground and strip them of their strength.
- For Watercrafters, dehydration is a common tactic, as is overwhelming them with emotions.
We Have Become Complacent: The Aleran Legions were so successful in crushing all their enemies early in their history that in the story's present day it was possible for someone to serve an entire three-year tour of duty in a Legion and not fight a single battle unless they were from an area near the Shieldwall (the only remaining border that sees combat on a regular basis). As a result, most of the Legions are green and unprepared for a Canim invasion, a civil war, and the Vord attack happening in rapid succession. Isana's arc in the fifth book is to negotiate a ceasefire on the Shieldwall so that all the northern Legions, which contain the bulk of the country's elite legionares, can be freed up to fight the Vord.
We Have Reserves: Senator Arnos' plan to deal with the Canim is a deliberate campaign of attrition that doesn't leave any room for the possibility that Nasaug might be more clever than Arnos thinks he is. As a direct result of this, the two Senatorial Legions Arnos commanded at the start of the fourth book are so reduced in number that the survivors are combined into a single legion at the end of it.
"Well Done, Son" Guy: Phrygiar Navaris. Tavi guesses that she never knew her father (as evidenced by her having the city of her birth in place of a family name, the naming standard for bastard children), and she became so focused as a cutter to build a name for herself so that he'd be impressed and acknowledge her.
Well-Intentioned Extremist:
- Fidelias, who betrays the First Lord for what he views as the greater good, the long-term stability of Alera, by ensuring that there is a strong and younger First Lord in charge.
- Aquitainus Attis, who sought the throne because he believed that Gaius Sextus could no longer control the High Lords and would ultimately lead to civil war.
- In Cursor's Fury, the Libertus Vigilantes are mentioned. They're a group dedicated to the abolition of slavery, and often resort to murdering slavers to make their point.
What Happened to the Mouse?: The Windwolves are last seen preparing to go into battle against the Vord near the end of the sixth book. Despite many of the people they were fighting alongside getting mentioned in the epilogue, their survival (or lack thereof) is not explicitly stated.
What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: The Vord Queen, in her efforts to understand humanity, asks people to explain to her what "love" is.
What the Hell, Hero?:
- The First Lord's decision to contain the threat of Kalarus unleashing Kalus by setting off the volcano and killing the majority of Kalare's population did not go over well with Amara.
- Tavi is not pleased when he learns that a) Isana's been lying to him all his life about being his aunt when she's actually his mother, and b) she's the reason he didn't come into his furies until well into adulthood, causing him a load of pain and heartbreak.
- Crassus is furious when he learns that Tavi knew his mother, High Lady Dorotea, was alive, but kept it a secret from him. Even during the epilogue there's still a lot of bad blood between them, and Crassus refuses to attend Tavi and Kitai's wedding.
What You Are in the Dark:
- When Max tells Tavi that he should buy a woman for the night in Cursor's Fury, pointing out that nobody would know. Tavi gives the standard response that he would know.
- When Bernard asks Amara why she did not kill Invidia when she had the chance, since she could easily have blamed it on the enemy or even natural causes, Amara explains that she refuses to live in Invidia's world, where actions are determined by power and practicality. Her world has laws and justice, and she would rather live there and suffer than win by using Invidia's methods.
White Sheep: Aric is no saint, but his father, Kord, is a brutish thug and his brother, Bittan, is offensively loud-mouthed and is being raised in the same vein. He eventually turns on his father and frees Isana from her captivity.
Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: It isn't immediately obvious if you don't know Latin, but High Lady Invidia Aquitainus' parents essentially named her 'envy'.
Wicked Stepmother: Max's stepmother, Lady Dorotea Antillus, wants the best for her son, the official heir of Antillus, and fears that Max will make his own attempt to seize the High Lord title. She killed Max's mother, and has been arranging "accidents" for Max since he was a child. She also betrays the Alerans to the Canim.
Wild Card: Fidelias will sometimes be motivated to help those still loyal to the realm, even if it does not benefit his goals, and he eventually becomes loyal to Tavi, albeit in a Secret Identity, upon realising that Tavi would make a better ruler than Aquitaine, as well as being a better man.
With Us or Against Us: During the Vord War, Tavi makes a declaration regarding this concept.
- The freemen and slaves of Alera are permitted to accept the Vord Queen's offer of amnesty and mercy. No punishment will be levied against them when Alera wins, as their legal status recognizes that they are not under obligation.
- The Citizens and Lords are obligated under their oaths and privileges to support and protect the Realm. If any of them do not give their full support in the war, if any refuse to fight, they will be considered a collaborator and a traitor to Alera.
Woman Scorned: It turns out Invidia arranged Septimus's death because he rejected her for a peasant - Isana.
Women Prefer Strong Men: Bernard's strength is one of his prime physical attractions for Amara. In Academ's Fury, Serai realizes that Amara and Bernard are in a relationship given the way Amara's voice changes when she talks about him, and she deduces that he must have been doing something strong and manly in Amara's line of sight to get that kind of reaction (he had been lifting very large and heavy objects). Amara feels the most feminine when she is experiencing his prodigious strength.
World of Badass: Because of the nature of the series, every single character encountered either has a magical ability of some sort, or has developed the intelligence and skill to survive when faced with such.
Worthy Opponent: The fifth novel explains that the Canim as a culture prefer having a Worthy Opponent over having a friend: a friend can disappoint you, but a Worthy Opponent can always be trusted to try and kill you. The Canim even have a specific word (gadara) that means Worthy Opponent. When Nasaug addresses Varg, he does so as gadara-sar (Worthy Opponent-Father), which shows what relationship the Canim culture prioritizes.
The X of Y: The first book, Furies of Calderon, referring to the Elemental Embodiments that permeate the world of Alera, and the central location of that book, Calderon.
You Are Already Dead: Politically speaking, anyway. In Captain's Fury, Senator Arnos attempts to remove Tavi from command and launches into a speech about how his role in the war with the Canim is already at an end. The reputation he has already built will be discarded, he will have no impact on the shape of future events, and his name will be forgotten and lost to irrelevance. Arnos does not even need to kill him, since he is already dead.
You Are in Command Now: For Cursor's Fury, Tavi is inserted into the First Aleran Legion as the Third Subtribune Logistica, a non-critical post that serves as an excuse for him to be present and spy on the legion. He winds up in command as Captain of the whole Legion when the Canim kill or incapacitate every other officer by calling down a bolt of lightning upon the Captain's tent during an officers' meeting, which Tavi escapes while running messages. There are other far more experienced men under Tavi's command, but none of them are officers.
You Are Not Alone: Tavi's reassurance to Kitai in Academ’s Fury when he figures out that he has been bound to her as her chala, her totem and Bond Creature. Marat tribes are based on having the same totem, and since no other Marat has an Aleran as a chala, Kitai has no tribe and she feels utterly miserable and alone as consequence. She takes this to heart, as when Isana later tries to comfort her for being alone in Captain’s Fury, a smiling Kitai retorts that she is not.
You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: Twice in Captain's Fury:
- Tavi laments Senator Arnos' martial incompetence and self-aggrandizement, as with his political influence and admitted intelligence he could have been a great asset if he cared more about solving the problem instead of undermining Tavi to make himself look good. He goes so far as to explicitly say as much to Arnos, but when Arnos instead tries to turn it around that Tavi is no better, Tavi realizes that Arnos really is that far gone and says that he won't be helping anybody after all.
- While undercover amongst the First Aleran, Fidelias comments to Lady Aquitaine that she could remove her disguise and take charge, using her power and strength to lead the doomed men to victory and gain all the political power and respect from her "Big Damn Heroine" moment. She simply states there is no guarantee she could win and would rather simply let the men die and escape herself.
You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
- At the climax of Furies of Calderon, Fidelias cuts Atsurak's throat in the midst of the Second Battle of Calderon in order to remove any connection between the invasion and Aquitaine.
- During the campaign against the Canim in Captain's Fury, Lady Aquitaine orders Fidelais to assassinate Antillus Crassus after he has helped the Senatorial Guard defeat the Canim and he will no longer be necessary to help command the First Aleran
- At the climax of Captain's Fury, Lady Aquitaine orders Fidelias to kill whoever survives the juris macto between Tavi and Senator Arnos, and assures him that afterwards she will fly the two of them away from the conflict. Fidelias, aware of how she thinks and how much simpler it would be for her if he were to also disappear, knows that she will leave him to die as well after he has fulfilled his purpose.
- If you're noticing a common thread of "Aquitaine/Lady Aquitaine" in these entries, it's because this (and Chronic Backstabbing Disorder) is kind of Lady Aquitaine's hat.
You Just Told Me: In First Lord's Fury, at the culmination of Magnus's suspicions over Marcus's history, during a fight with some Vord, he yells, "Fidelias! Behind you!" and "Marcus" whirls around. Tavi, who'd agreed to the plan thinking he'd exonerate Marcus, is very, very pissed.
You Need to Get Laid:
- In Furies of Calderon, Count Gram heartily approves of seeing Bernard and Amara together, as he felt that Bernard's life would be "fixed" by a woman. Later, Bernard gets this from his own earth fury, Brutus, when he and Amara are locked in a cell together, and the fury starts earthcrafting both of them into arousal before they realize it.
- Sir Miles to Gaius Sextus at the beginning of Academ's Fury. It is said without the humor customary of the trope, as Miles realizes that Sextus is working himself to emotional and physical exhaustion, and he realizes that Sextus will burn out if he does not get some rest and relaxation. At the end of the book, it is implied that he did, in fact, eventually have sex with his wife. Mostly thanks to Max, oddly enough.
- Max to Tavi during much of Cursor's Fury, as Tavi has spent the months since leaving the capital constantly moaning about missing Kitai. It comes up again at the beginning of First Lord's Fury, when Tavi and Kitai are still together, but are not...together...in the evenings anymore.
You Remind Me of X: When Phrygius Cyricus threatens to kill Varg if he or his allies harm any of the citizens of Phrygia, Varg asks Tavi in Canish if Cyricus reminds him of anybody. Tavi, understanding what Varg is referring to, comments that he was holding a knife to Varg's throat at the time.
Varg: It did give you a certain credibility.
You Shall Not Pass!:
- In Furies of Calderon, Amara sends Tavi ahead to warn Garrison, since he is the only person who can testify to having seen the Marat. She decides to stay behind and delay Fidelius and Aldrick, since she and Tavi have no chance of outrunning them. Bernard is the one to actually run into her, and the two of them then do their best to catch up to Tavi.
- Princeps' Fury culminates in Gaius Sextus drawing almost all of the Vord army into Alera Imperia and detonating a volcano underneath the city to wipe them out and buy the country critical months to fight the invaders.
Zerg Rush:
- Subverted with the Vord when there's a Queen nearby, as they use very good tactics. However, when a Queen is not nearby (the Vord are basically animals without a Queen's direction), they play it straight. It's noted that the problems faced by the besieged cities are less like being under attack by an army and more like getting caught in an exceptionally long and heavy blizzard.
- When the Canim first land on Alera, their Raiders are described as moving almost like the tide of the ocean: Rolling, vast and overwhelming. However, as this means they are also disorganized and unguided, proper Aleran defenses are able to halt their offenses and beat them back with severe casualties.

Codex Alera

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The Codex Alera series provides examples of:

Alternative Title(s): The Codex Alera

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