Dragaera

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Steven Brust began his Jhereg series in 1983, and I read it that year when I was 12 years old. I loved the wisecracking assassin and his magical familiar, the sword-and-sorcery milieu and the skullduggery that the protagonist, Vlad Taltos, gets up to as he triumphs in a baroque gang war among factions of a giant criminal organisation.
About 37 years and 14 books later, Brust is nearly finished with the series, and I've grown up with it. Looking back on these books in hindsight, I can appreciate how Brust's Trotskyist politics infuse the story, creating a constant undercurrent of class struggle in the otherwise familiar fantasy setting (it is said that only Marxist fantasy writers get the ratio of vassals to lords even remotely right), to say nothing of Brust's musical obsessions, his incredible gifts as a chef, and his love of Hungarian mythology.
Brust was Roger Zelazny's protegé, but he's surpassed Zelazny's work many times over. Nineteen books are planned in this series, and I cannot wait to find out how it ends.

—Cory Doctorow, February 11, 2020
No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.
—Vlad Taltos, Teckla

The world of Dragaera is the brainchild of Steven Brust. It serves as the setting for two of his novel series—the Khaavren Romances (now complete) and the Taltos books (ongoing) -- as well as the standalone novel Brokedown Palace.

Dragaera is a fantasy world dominated two major sentient races. The first are the The Dragaerans, who are tall, long-lived, and vaguely elven. The second are the Easterners, who are human for all intents and purposes. Interestingly, both species call themselves "human," and use the formal name for the other. Most Dragaerans live in the vast and powerful Dragaeran Empire, which covers most of the main continent, and the rest inhabit some of the independent islands off the southern coast. Most Easterners live (surprise) to the east, in several small kingdoms, although some have emigrated to the Empire. Both the series take place largely in the Empire; Brokedown Palace takes place in the Eastern kingdom of Fenario.

The Empire consists of seventeen houses/castes, each named after an animal on the planet. Although some houses are considered superior to others, a certain amount of peace between them is maintained by the fact that all seventeen get their turn to provide an Emperor or Empress. "The Cycle" determines the order; as each abdicates, the next house in line provides their Heir. Assassination of an Emperor is discouraged by the Orb, a mystic sphere that orbits the head of the current sovereign and protects him or her from harm... at least until it is time for the Cycle to change.

The number 17 is of mystic significance in Imperial culture, and that extends to the books themselves, which all run for 17 or 34 chapters. Another common trait to the books is Devera, a little girl who appears in some form in literally every book Steven Brust writes; in the Dragaera novels, she's established to be the daughter of a major character, only she technically hasn't been born yet.

The Taltos series describes the life of the Easterner Vlad Taltos, an Imperial citizen after his father bought their way into the House of Jhereg, which is essentially the "Mafia caste." Despite being a second-class citizen, Vlad makes his way through life as an assassin and a mid-level power player in the underworld of the Empire's capital. Most of the novels are written from the first-person perspective of Taltos himself, but Brust will sometimes experiment with other approaches.

The Khaavren Romances series follows the swashbuckling adventures of four Dragaeren heroes. It is a deliberate Homage to The Three Musketeers, told by a historian narrator who writes in a loving style-parody of Alexandre Dumas' Purple Prose. The plot closely follows the Musketeers series, including the same number and structure of books. The series takes place several hundred years before the Vlad books, though due to the long-lived nature of Dragaerans, there are a number of cross-over characters between the two series.

WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware.

Tropes used in Dragaera include:
  • Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: The bulk of Dragon is basically a war movie, and it features a quite deep discussion between Vlad and Virt on the philosophy of war.
  • Action Girl: Dragaeran society is filled with them, due to the fact that women are just as likely to be fighters as men. Of the major characters, Tazendra and Aliera are most prominent. While Sethra is better known as a sorceress, she is also a potent swordswoman.
  • Aerith and Bob: On the one hand you have names like Morrolan, Loiosh, and Khaavren, while on the other are characters named Vlad, Mario, and Kelly. Common-sounding names mostly come from Eastern cultures, which are even used by some Dragaerans. Loiosh is apparently a Dragaeran spelling of the Fenarian name Lajos. A few Dragaerans even have Serioli names, which sound no more fantastic than normal Dragaeran names to readers, but qualify as this trope in-universe.
    • The roster of named deities in the series include Verra, Barlen, Kelchor, Ordwynac, Nyssa and ... Trout.
  • Alien Sky: A perpetual glowing red overcast hangs over the Dragaeran Empire, blotting out stars and obscuring the sun, but also making night much brighter. It's magical fallout from millennia of sorcerers channeling power from the Imperial Orb. The sky outside the range of the Empire is a standard clear blue. Vlad has a particularly hard time getting used to the blinding days and pitch black nights outside the Empire.
  • The All-Concealing "I": Kiera's narration in Orca.
  • Anachronic Order: The series itself is written out of chronological order, and the plots of some books are written out of chronological order. Dragon weaves three different timelines together, for instance, and Taltos alternates between two. Dzur has a fairly straightforward timeline, but each chapter is introduced with a course of the dinner that initially got Vlad involved.
  • Ancestral Weapon: Aliera acquires the greatsword of Kieron, who is her ancestor and her previous life's brother. Subverted when she gives it away in exchange for Pathfinder.
  • Anti-Hero: Vlad himself, of the Type IV variety. He can be a murderous jerk, but stops short of coming across as a Villain Protagonist and has some redeeming features.
  • Anti-Magic: Phoenix Stone, which comes in two forms that block sorcery and psionics.
  • Antiquated Linguistics: A notable feature of the Khaavren Romances, emulating the prose of Dumas.
  • Arc Number: The number 17 shows up everywhere, and is considered a holy number by the Dragaerans. Every single book Brust has written has a multiple of 17 chapters, which started as a coincidence and then became a tradition. Brust originally chose the number because it has no pre-existing mathematical or numerological significance.
  • Armor Is Useless: No one wears armor in Dragaera, which fits with the swashbuckling style that Brust likes. A novel in the Vlad series eventually explains that metal armor attracts sorcery, making it worse than useless.
  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Some of the gods of the world are Dragaerans who have ascended. Sethra claims to have turned this down.
  • Author Appeal: Brust has stated that the key to writing interesting fiction is to simply write about whatever you think is cool. Brust thinks that swashbuckling, swirling-cape adventures are cool, and so that's what he writes about. He also obviously likes food. A darker example comes from the organized crime angle in the first few books, which went by the wayside once a friend of Brust was killed by mobsters, making him realize that they aren't so cool after all.
  • Back from the Dead: Fairly routine; as long as the person's central nervous system is intact and they weren't killed with a Morganti weapon or left too long before it's attempted, revivifying someone is just a matter of an admittedly expensive spell. The ease with which revivification can be achieved and the sure certainty of an afterlife is important in maintaining sympathy for most of the protagonists. The people they kill might not always have deserved it, but at least they're not dead dead.
  • Back in the Saddle: In Tiassa, Cawti briefly comes out of retirement to save Vlad from Jhereg assassins. Norathar puts on her Jhereg cloak on top of her Dragon uniform and joins her.
  • Badass Cape: Morrolan.
  • Badass Normal: While Vlad does possess a number of magical abilities, he usually goes against foes who are larger, stronger, far older, and much more magically powerful than him due to their species and social standing.
  • Baleful Polymorph: The fate of the Dzur warriors who have challenged Sethra Lavode and never returned is to be changed into animals by her. She says so herself.
  • Berserk Button: Various characters have them:
    • Aliera is very sensitive about her height, to the point that she will float a foot off the ground to hide it. Shortness in Dragaeran society is commonly associated with Easterners. Admittedly, Aliera is willing to fight to the death for just about any social infraction.
    • Morrolan takes it extremely poorly if someone insults Adron.
    • The Jhereg has certain rules you don't break, the major ones being: never kill someone in their home, or in front of their family; never steal from someone you were hired to kill; never give any information about who hired you; never go to the empire. They tend to take any violation of these rules very poorly, even if they come from people who don't have any reason to follow them. In Dragon Vlad views tracking down Fornia as a purely professional contract, until Fornia comes after him in his home. Then it gets personal.
    • The other thing Vlad doesn't take well is having his people screwed with. Sethra Lavode gets away with setting up one of his people to get his attention once, because she's Sethra Lavode. It's not recommended that anyone else try it. Ever.
  • Best Her to Bed Her: Five Hundred Years After mentions a gender inversion. Rollondar e'Drien, who was the Warlord (commander of all military forces) fell in love with his wife after she defeated him in combat. It's noted that he receives a lot of ribbing in the barracks because of this.
  • BFS: Many Dragaeran warriors, such as Aliera and Tazendra, fight with weapons nearly as tall as they are. As Aliera is short by Dragaeran standards, this makes her the sword equivalent of Small Girl, Big Gun. Vlad even makes a point of how he has to carry around a very heavy rapier. He uses a one-handed fencing style, so he has to use something durable or else it will break too easily.
  • Bilingual Bonus: Fenario is based on Hungary, as is their language. In one novel, Vlad goes by an assumed name that a Dragaeran misponounces as "Mawdyear." This is an approximation of the pronunciation of "Magyar," which is a Hungarian surname and actually means "Hungarian."
  • Black and Gray Morality: Vlad is about as anti- as it's possible for a hero to get without being a Villain Protagonist, but we like him anyway because he's funny and the guys he's up against are usually as bad or worse. As the series goes on, Vlad experiences a crisis of conscience and becomes more moral.
  • Blood Knight: All members of the House of the Dzur are this type, constantly searching for individual glory in battle, especially against impossible odds. This is largely what distinguishes the Dzur from the other warrior caste of Dragaera, the Dragons, who yearn for military conquest rather than simply the challenge of combat.

Tazendra: "How, and miss a battle of six against thousands? When will such a chance come again?"

Vlad comments in Jhereg that the best way to avoid a fight with a Dzur is to look as helpless as possible, because Dzur don't like to fight unless the odds are against them. He also tells the Dragaeran equivalent of a Light Bulb Joke.

How many Dzur it takes to sharpen a sword? Four. One to sharpen it, and three to put up enough of a fight to make it worth his while.

  • Blue and Orange Morality: No one knows what the Jenoine are trying to do or why. Their minds are too alien to fathom.
  • Boisterous Bruiser: Tazendra is a rare female example.
  • Bond Creatures: Vlad's link with Loiosh. Other witches have familiars as well. Dragaeran sorcerers don't.
  • The Bus Came Back: In Tiassa Savn, somewhat if not completely recovered.
  • Call a Rabbit a Smeerp:
    • A teckla is a California salt marsh harvest mouse.
    • There are a few mentions of animals called "mock-men", which from context sound like either monkeys or apes.
  • Call a Smeerp a Rabbit: Orcas were originally described as much nastier and toothier than a real orca, although this is not reflected in official illustrations. Also, "Hawk" could refer to any bird of prey in the Dragaeran language.
  • Call Forward: In Yendi, Vlad realizes he should start changing his weapons regularly. By Jhereg, set later but published earlier, he does this routinely. Many others due to the Anachronic Order.
  • Can't Argue with Elves: Vlad tends to push the envelope a lot more than usual, but in general this trope is justified. Most sane people wouldn't argue with a seven-foot-plus swordswoman packing a BFS.
  • Captain Obvious: Paarfi is very good at this; often he will also, in addition to stating the obvious, precede it with a statement telling the reader he is about to state something obvious. At one point he writes, "...but the Khaavren of two hundred years before was younger, and younger, we should add, by the amount of two hundred years."
  • Cataclysm Backstory: The Viscount of Adrilankha books depict the slow recovery of the Empire from nation-wide devastation.
  • Catch Phrase: Sticks's "No future in it". Napper's "Don't matter".
  • Chekhov's Gun: In the novel Taltos, Vlad mentions being given the vial of a god's blood early in the novel, and this item ultimately proves important in the novel's resolution. Ironically, the climax of the book revolves around the fact that he didn't bring it with him, so he needs to invent a spell to teleport it there.
  • Chickification: This happens to Cawti. Though she earns a fearsome reputation as an assassin, she leaves the life behind to join La Résistance and rarely uses her skills to help her. When she gets in over her head, Vlad barges in and fix things. However, Cawti resents Vlad's interference and seems to think she could have handled herself, and she kicks plenty of ass in Tiassa.
  • Classy Cat Burglar: Kiera the Thief.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture:
    • Vlad is put into a position where he must torture a sorceress to gain information. Though he mostly only has to threaten, he finds the episode extremely distasteful.
    • Vlad himself is subjected to extended torture in Jhegaala.
  • Combat Pragmatist: As an assassin, Vlad always uses the most safe, practical and dirty way to defeat an opponent. This gets him into trouble in the Paths of the Dead, when he must defeat 17 Dragonlords in single combat. When he starts throwing knives at them, without the proper trappings of a duel, they abandon their mook chivalry and zerg rush him.
  • The Consigliere: Discreets are somewhere between this and therapists. Kragar also makes an excellent consigliere for Vlad because he's very competent and has no ambition to lead.
  • Contract on the Hitman: Happens to Vlad.
  • Cosmic Retcon: A number of plot inconsistencies in the early books were implied in Dzur to be due to Verra screwing with Vlad's memories.
  • Creator Breakdown: Brust began treating the Jhereg more negatively after a friend was murdered by the Mafia, and also wrote a novel where Vlad's marriage was dissolving while he was experiencing the same thing.
  • Cryptic Background Reference: Both Paarfi and Vlad constantly drop references to things that don't get explained, in Paarfi's case because he isn't writing for humans, and Vlad seems to want to avoid digression. Examples of Vlad's unexplained references include fighting his own likeness, communing with Eastern spirits to recover the Necromancer's soul, and Morrolan fighting a demon who had taken his sword while Vlad lay helpless. Sound like important events to someone in their twenties? All of those events were recounted on one page of Phoenix, and happened in one room of Castle Black.
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus:
    • The Khaavren books have a character named Pel who studies Discretion, an art which allows its practitioners to comfort the Emperor or Empress by listening to their worries and keeping them confidential. While it's difficult to tell to what extent this is more like psychology than religion, it's notable that Discreets dress in monk-like robes and that Pel is the equivalent of Aramis, who was a priest.
    • Also, Jhegaala, set in the East, features a Father Noji, a priest of Verra who could very easily pass for an Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic village priest in our world. The East is basically a Fantasy Counterpart Culture for Hungary.
  • Daddy's Little Villain: Aliera isn't a villain, but she's violent, destructive, and prejudiced, and her tendency to help her daddy's plans out was partially responsible for Adron's Disaster.
  • Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Elder Sorcery, which is technically illegal, but everyone knows Aliera practices it. And Vlad can too.
  • Deader Than Dead: The victims of Morganti weapons, which eat souls.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Definitely Vlad. He even lampshades it in one exchange where he states that he'll pass time by exchanging sarcastic comments with Loiosh. Many of the other characters in the Taltos books display at least a touch of the trope. Kiera, Kragar, and Loiosh all do it as well, and Sethra has her moments.
  • Diabolus Ex Machina: The end of Five Hundred Years After in which Mario's Spanner in the Works causes the Empire to fall and plunge into years of famine and chaos.
  • Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Vlad's reaction the first couple of times he meets Sethra.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: One Jenoine dies in Issola by the simple expedient of becoming a snack for a dragon. In another scene, Tazendra notes with some amazement that she just defeated a Jenoine in single combat, then promptly dies.
  • Divide by Zero: Adron's Disaster. It's complicated.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Teckla rebels are strongly reminiscent of Bolsheviks. Verra implies that this may be because they actually found a stash of the writings of Earth philosophers.
  • The Dragon: Or in this case, the Demon, the highest ranking member of the Jhereg yet encountered, yet clearly not the big boss. The novel Dzur has him acting as The Starscream and fighting his way to the top of the House.
  • Early Installment Weirdness: Some aspects of the world had not been completely fleshed out when Brust wrote Jhereg, resulting in a little bit of weirdness on rereads. For example, the Phoenix Guards are simply called Imperial Guards. Vlad also seems to characterize assassinations a lot more lightly than they're taken in the rest of the series, implying that you might get assassinated simply as a warning.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The Jenoine are vastly powerful, extraplanar creatures who warp reality to unknown purposes and are generally considered hostile by everyone who is not Jenoine. The entire purpose of the Dragaeran Empire is to keep the Jenoine from coming back.
  • Empathic Weapon: The Great Weapons.
  • Epigraph: Brust usually opens chapters of the Taltos series with quotes from in-world documents or conversations, often hilarious ones. Sources range from court transcripts and legal memos in Iorich, to a list of instructions for Vlad's laundry service (mend cut in pants, remove bloodstains from shirt, etc) in Teckla.
  • Equal Opportunity Evil: Vlad thinks of Dragaeran society as evil, but with only a few minor exceptions they have almost no division of gender roles. Eastern society, while actually shown to be equally as ruthless as Dragaeran society, does have a more real-world distinction between genders. Noish-pa once curses himself for going easy on a hostile Dragaeran simply because she was female.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Vlad always refers to his grandfather as Noish-pa, which means grandfather in Fenarian. A number of Dragaerans are also referred to only by their nicknames, such as the Demon, the Sorceress in Green, and Sticks.
  • Evil Chancellor: Lord Garland in The Phoenix Guards
  • The Evil Prince: The Duke of Kana in the Khaavren series is a rather incompetent example of this; Probably Adron also, although Aliera and Morrolan would make you wish you'd never been born if you said so.
  • Evil Sorcerer: Loraan, with Grita/Orlaan of the Khaavren books being an evil sorceress. Sethra Lavode is a subversion: she fits a number of the stereotypical traits, but is actually quite a nice person.
  • Evil Weapon: Played pretty straight with Morganti weapons, although generally somewhat subverted with Great Weapons, which are are caring and protective of their wielders, and just happen to eat the souls of their victims. According to the short story "The Desecrator", this is played totally straight by the Great Weapon Nightslayer though.
  • Expansion Pack World: The Isles, a group of Dragaeran kingdoms that exist outside of the Empire but never seem to get conquered. They aren't even mentioned until well into the series, when Vlad visits one.
  • Expy: The Khaavren Romances were conceived when Brust and a friend assigned Dragaeran Houses to the heroes of The Three Musketeers. In the resulting series, the main characters are obvious stand-ins for each of the original heroes. Khaavren is the young, ambitious d'Artagnan. Aerich is a consumate gentleman with a dark past, like Athos. Tazendra is a boisterous bruiser and dumb muscle, like Porthos. Pel is a cerebral schemer and womanizer, like Aramis.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: One of the hints in Orca that Kiera isn't quite what she seems.
  • Eyes of Gold: A noted feature of members of House Phoenix.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Eastern Kingdom of Fenario is heavily based on Hungary. Its language is Hungarian and its "klava" seems to be based on Hungarian egg coffee. This might be justified by the fact that Dragaera is sometimes suggested to have a science fiction background as a world populated by humans from Earth. Vague references are occasionally made to cross-overs between the universes. By the way, "taltos" means a shaman or wizard-like figure in Hungarian folklore and traditions.
  • Fantasy Gun Control: There are almost no projectile weapons of any sort in Vlad's time. In the Khaavren Romances, which are a parody of The Three Musketeers, magical "flash stones" take the place of muskets, being short-ranged and single-fire weapons. Word of God explains that flash stones have fallen out of use by Vlad's time because magical advances have made them too easy to sabotage.
  • Fantasy Pantheon: The gods who sit in the Hall of Judgement, though they're really Sufficiently Advanced Aliens.
  • Farm Boy: Deeply subverted with Savn in Athyra.
  • Fetish Fuel Future: Brust seems to like Action Girls, and Dragaeran society's almost total lack of separate gender roles makes this a lot easier to accomplish.
  • First-Name Basis: Regardless of how formally they might address one another at other times, folks who communicate psychically always use first names, which maintains the necessary intimacy for a mental connection.
  • First-Person Smartass: A textbook case. In fact, the term was actually coined to describe this series.
  • Five-Man Band: Khaavren, Aerich, Tazendra, Pel, with Mica as The Chick.
  • Floating Continent: Castle Black is a floating castle.
  • Food Porn: Brust is a noted gourmand and Vlad is a cook who spends a lot of time in restaurants, leading to some obvious Author Appeal. The framing tale of Dzur is a single meal at the world's most luxurious restaurant. Each chapter represents a course. You will get hungry reading it.
  • Four-Star Badass: Sethra takes this and runs with it. She's not just a general, she's one of the greatest military minds ever known, and she's not just a badass, she's a vampire wizard who orders gods around.

Sethra: It is good to find one's self in agreement with the gods.
Vlad: Is it?
Sethra: Yes. It shows the gods have some wisdom.

  • Fragile Speedster: Vlad must fight this way against Dragaerans, who are larger and stronger than him. His Eastern style of fencing is focused on speed and evasion.
  • Fridge Brilliance: On rereads, you will see a hint of the Kiera=Sethra thing in virtually every book.
  • Friendly Enemy: The Demon and Vlad are this toward each other. While the Demon is still devoted to killing Vlad for betraying the Organization, he respects him a lot for risking death to help Cawti, and agrees to order his subordinates to leave her alone. For his part, Vlad thinks that if he was still in the Jhereg, he would like to work for the Demon, and is willing to take his side against other contenders to rule the House.
  • Functional Magic: There's sorcery, witchcraft, and psionics. Sorcery is the most useful by far. And then there's Elder Sorcery...
  • Gender Is No Object: The Dragaeran Empire places almost no distinction on gender, allowing women to participate equally in all professions, even the military. Most people in high office during Vlad's lifetime happen to be female. There are a few minor exceptions, such as the Jhereg Organization, which is traditionally divided into the male Right Hand of mobsters and female Left Hand of mercenary sorceresses. In the Khaavren Romances, two Dragaeren women discuss whether a male Dzur would really be attracted to a woman who could defeat him. They ultimately decide that he could. Even the Dragaeran language has gender neutral pronouns, so that they do not need to use male pronouns as a default.
  • Get On With It Already: Paarfi sometimes spends an entire paragraph explaining a literary technique he is about to use, or assuring the reader that he's not going to waste any words getting right down to the point. This tends to be highly amusing in the same way as Polonius's "brevity is the soul of wit" speech.
  • God Was My Co-Pilot: Sethra to Vlad while in her Kiera persona
  • Hair of Gold: A trait of members of the House of the Phoenix. Vlad insists, "If I meant blond, I would have said blond."
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Aliera's father is Dragaeran and her mother is a Sufficiently Advanced Alien goddess.
  • Hitman with a Heart: Vlad and Cawti Taltos, as well as Mario in the Khaavren book Five Hundred Years After.
  • Honor Before Reason: The House of Dragon in general, Morrolan in particular. The House of Dzur especially, to the point of pride.
  • Horse of a Different Color: Dragaera has a lot of odd creatures, such as the named but never described winneasaurus, which seem to be similar to Earth animals.
  • How Do I Shot Web?: Vlad has little understanding of Spellbreaker's full properties beyond its ability to negate spells. When it becomes Godslayer, he learns its properties on the fly, doing things like accidentally breaking memory modification spells put on him by a goddess and destroying the soul of a sorceress who's trying to kill him.
  • Humans by Any Other Name: Has a very weird relationship with this trope. Both what we consider humans ("Easterners") and the elflike Dragaerans refer to themselves as human and call the other something else.
  • Humans Through Alien Eyes: The Phoenix Guards series has a lot of this due to Paarfi, a Dragaeran, acting as narrator.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Paarfi's lengthy rants about how he will waste no words in his storytelling. Heavily lampshaded by an essay following one of the novels in which the case is made that Paarfi really is being terse and laconic by Dragaeran standards. The entire novel is presented as being "one of his notebooks" for a work that needs expanding "by an additional eight or nine volumes" before publication! Jhegaala suggests that a "brief" survey for a Dragaeran is at least six volumes.
  • I Call It Vera: All the great weapons have official names. Vlad, however, insists on referring to Godslayer as Lady Teldra, and for good reason.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Or book naming in this case, and sometimes chapter naming as well.
  • I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Castle Black. Vlad notes that black is the color of sorcery, so calling it Castle Black is pretty ostentatious to a Dragaeran.
  • I Like Those Odds: The entire House of the Dzur. Tazendra gets most of them on the page, but that's just because she's the most prominent Dzur character.
  • Innocent Bigot: The Empire is a hierarchical and fairly racist society, and lots of perfectly nice characters will say unintentionally offensive things about Easterners or Teckla without realizing it.
  • In Which a Trope Is Described: The chapter titles in the Khaavren books.
  • Jerkass Gods: Vlad has gotten significantly more cynical about religion on the whole since Verra started screwing with his life. But she's not the worst of them by a long shot.
  • Kaleidoscope Eyes: Aliera, justified. This is one reason some fans consider her a bit of a Parody Sue.
  • Klingon Promotion: The Jhereg
  • Language Equals Thought: Comes up when Teldra tries to explain what the Jenoine have to say in Issola.
  • Levitating Lotus Position: Daymar's favorite posture.
  • Light Bulb Joke: The Medieval Stasis version is apparently a sword-sharpening joke. After Vlad made several in Yendi, the fans took it upon themselves to write a whole lot more.
  • Literary Agent Hypothesis: Played with on a massive scale in the peripheral material of both series. In one Vlad book, he refers to a "fool" who is paying him for his stories, and in another novel describes how he's speaking into a "tube" to narrate the story. In the Khaavren Romances, Brust even interviews the series's fictonal author, Paarfi, and talks about the changes he's had to make in "translating" the original text. Paarfi reacts with outrage at the liberties he's taken.
  • Lovely Angels: Norathar and Cawti when they were the "Sword and Dagger of the Jhereg". Given the disparity in heights, they probably also count as a female version of the Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser type of Brains and Brawn.
  • The Mafia: The Right Hand of the Jhereg, the male half of "The Organization" in House Jhereg, behaves much like the real world Mafia. Contrary to in-world as well as fan perception, most Jhereg are not actually in the Organization, and are law-abiding citizens of the Empire.
  • Magitek: In the Empire, everyone can cast at least minor spells by drawing power from the Orb, and magic takes the place of most technology. The simplest function of the Orb is to act as the Empire's official timekeeper. In the Khaavren Romances, based on The Three Musketeers, "flashstones" are the magical equivilent of flintlock pistols.
  • Mathematician's Answer
  • Medieval Stasis: Both averted and a Justified Trope. Magical "technology" leaped forward after the Interregnum due to changes in the Orb. Otherwise, the Dragaeran Empire's Great Cycle system is deliberately designed to keep it in stasis.
  • The Mentor: Vlad's grandfather probably is the most obvious example, but Kiera the Thief also played an important part in making Vlad who he is, as does Sethra Lavode.
  • Mind Screw:
    • It is revealed in the novel Orca that Vlad's friend, the cat burglar, Kiera the Thief, is in actuality another of his friends, the feared vampire and near-goddess, Sethra Lavode. With this revelation, Vlad realizes that, far from acting out of free will, he had been manipulated into many of his life choices, including becoming an assassin.
    • Not to mention in Dzur we find out that the goddess Vlad was raised to worship has been screwing with his memories, and not even Vlad is sure what's true about his past anymore. This also functions as something of a Cosmic Retcon, since Verra's messing with his memories could explain certain inconsistencies.
  • Morph Weapon: Godslayer, which turns into everything from a knife to a rapier.
  • Moses in the Bulrushes: The prequels reveal that Morrolan occupied this role, being raised as an Easterner and not discovering his true identity until some time later. There was a rather hilarious scene in which Teldra has trouble keeping a straight face while explaining his species to him in The Paths of the Dead.
  • Mugging the Monster:
    • Vlad's main source of income while he is on the run is a gold coin he shows around in some shady taverns. Then he takes the money of the bandits that inevitably show up. From what is left of them.
    • Happens to Grita in the Khaavren Romances, when she's approached by a group of highwaymen, and eventually recruits them to be her thugs.
  • Multiple Choice Past: Vlad's explanations for losing one of his fingers include "a very heavy weight," "too slow with Spellbreaker," and "a wound that got infected," among others. The real reason is given in Jhegaala.
  • Muscles Are Meaningless: Draegarans typically have long, lean builds. It's unusual for them to be noticeably muscular. Nevertheless, they're all stronger than most Easterners across the board.
  • Mutilation Interrogation: The actual reason Vlad lost a finger.
  • Mysterious Past: Definitely Kragar, and most of the cast to a lesser degree.
  • Narrative Profanity Filter: Vlad occasionally uses this, but given his Sophisticated As Hell attitude toward vocabulary in general, it tends to be more about an opportunity for Expospeak Gags than actually censoring himself. Iorich in particular is full of these sorts of jokes.
  • No Guy Wants an Amazon: Averted. Women are just as likely to fight on the front lines as men.
  • No Name Given: The Sorceress in Green is never referred to by name. Pel, the Duke of Galstan, goes by a fake name and a fake title. No duchy of Galstan has ever existed. Both characters are Yendi, who are famous for their webs of deception.

"How many Yendi does it take to sharpen a sword? Three. One to sharpen it and one to confuse the issue."

"We'll need a sorcerer who specializes in light extraction from candlebud, a smith who can fabricate a foot-long surgical-quality needle, an acrobat who can do both wide-spar and high-rope, a swimmer who is fluent in Serioli, a-"

  • Noodle Incident: The guy wearing the wrong sort of boots, who could jump an eleven-foot crevasse.
  • Not So Different: While Vlad hates his father for toadying to Dragaerans, Vlad's refusal to join Cawti's rebellious activities demonstrates that he is more within the system than he would like to admit. Jhegaala is a book-length example, where Vlad, who had an idealized vision of life in Fenario, encounters just as much corruption and cruelty there as he had among Dragaerans.
  • Oblivious Adoption: Morrolan was raised as a human and didn't realize he was different, even as he remained youthful looking at over 100 years old, despite everyone else around him getting older and dying. The fact that he was at least a foot taller than anyone he knew should have been another clue...
  • Odd Couple: Aliera and Mario
  • Oh Crap: Kragar has exactly this reaction when he and Vlad realize that Mellar has intentionally set himself up to get assassinated in order to spark another Dragon-Jhereg war and destroy both Houses, as well as utterly humiliate House Dzur in Jhereg.
  • Oh Wait, This Is My Grocery List: The paratext before each chapter of Teckla is Vlad's laundry bill, and seems inconsequential, until you realize that the book shows how each item got dirty, torn, or covered in Vlad's blood.
  • Oracular Urchin: Devera.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Subverted in that Easterners are called "dwarfs" by Dragaerans outside of the Empire. Easterners are essentially real-world humans, and their society is based somewhat on Medieval Eastern Europe. Serioli are a short crafting people, but otherwise have no similarities to classic fantasy dwarves.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Dragons in Dragaera are giant, powerful reptiles that do not breathe fire. Instead, they have tentacles that pick up psychic impressions from other animals. The House of the Dragon was named after dragons for their aggresive and warlike demeanor. Giant jhereg found around Deathsgate falls look more or less like classic wyverns. The smaller, more common jhereg look like cat-sized wyverns. They have human level intelligence and a poisonous bite.
  • Our Elves Are Better: Dragaerans are called "elfs" by Easterners in the eastern kingdoms. They are tall, slender, extremely long-lived, highly magical, and some strains have pointed ears. Their Empire is based on the Protestant Reformation era of Europe. Dragaerans come from all walks of life, from peasants to criminals to tradesmen to professionals to nobles.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Sethra Lavode has the traditional need to drink blood, but from what description is given, it seems to be small quantities and there's no indication of her preying on Dragaerans or Easterners. She is also able to consume at least small quantities of normal food and appears completely human (or Dragaeran) in her Kiera identity. Loraan in Athyra is also undead and fits the traditional vampire idea better, having a number of Glamour Failure traits which reveal he's no longer alive.
  • Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Well, Sethra is a vampire after all. But the fact that nobody noticed that she died for a few thousand years is rather telling.
    • The Necromancer probably is this as well; although her hair color isn't specifically mentioned, she's described as looking like a Dragon, and Aliera is the only blonde Dragon in the books.
  • Panthera Awesome: Tiassa. They're panthers with wings.
  • Patronymic: Members of the House of the Dragon are the only Dragaerans to use them. Sometimes they'll change them if someone they're related to becomes more famous than their previous patronymic. They're also used in Fenario.
  • Phrase Catcher: "Shut up, Loiosh."
  • Planet of Hats: Each house has distinctive personality traits. Of course, the houses that contain major characters are developed beyond their "hats."
  • Possession Implies Mastery: Subverted. One of Vlad's weapons, Spellbreaker, was stolen from a wizard; Vlad has no idea of its complete powers, and simply uses it to the best of his ability. He's even less competent with Godslayer.
  • Power Nullifier: Spellbreaker negates magic that it touches. Sorcery also does not work on the Isles, which is probably why they never get conquered by the Empire.
  • Prequel in the Lost Age: The Paarfi books, especially the first two (set before the Interregnum).
  • Pretend Prejudice: Vlad says he hates Dragaerans, and in fact he got into his line of work just so that he could beat on them. However, as time goes on, he begins to realize that nearly all of his friends are Dragaerans, and that the really revolutionary human factions just irritate him. Aliera, too, is not especially fond of Easterners, but she likes Vlad and Cawti just fine.
  • Proper Lady: Lady Teldra.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Houses of the both the Dzur and the Dragon, with the former aspiring to be heroes and the latter aspiring to be conquerors.
  • Punctuation Shaker: House Dragon's patronymics take the form of "e'Something". It's probably a contraction, since the double-whammy "e'Marish'Chala" was a shortened form of a very long name. Also, trying to pronounce Serioli names is hazardous to your health. Vlad's decription of someone saying a Great Weapon's real name: "He made a sound that, if it had been louder, would have made the staff think he was choking to death."
  • Purple Prose: Paarfi gets a little overenthusiastic sometimes. This is usually both intentional and played for laughs.
  • Rage Against the Heavens: Vlad really doesn't appreciate Verra deciding to make him useful. There isn't a whole lot he can do about it, but that doesn't stop him from being very, very angry.
  • Reincarnation: Being "revivified" is a rather simple procedure with a high chance of success, provided that your central nervous system is intact. Dead Dragaerans are reincarnated if they are not judged worthy to pass on to the next level of existence. Vlad is revealed to be a reincarnation of the founder of the House of the Jhereg.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Referenced.

Loiosh: I told you I was cute.

  • Running Gag:
    • The "sword-sharpening jokes"—one for every House, at least by implication—and Vlad teasing Loiosh about lacking opposable thumbs in Yendi.
    • In Taltos, whenever anyone in the Paths of the Death notes that Vlad and Morrolan are alive, Vlad replies "How can you tell?" Only Verra likes the joke.
  • Sacred Hospitality: Jhereg in the Organization will never mess with someone in his or her home. Also, anyone who kills someone in the hospitality of a Dragon is likely to cause a war between Houses. This has happened twice between them and the Jhereg.
  • Sassy Secretary: Subverted, as Kragar is not just a rare male example, but knows full well that he could run the operation on his own. Moreover, given that he is wisecracking and refers to Vlad as boss, Loiosh might be argued as an example both male and animal.
  • Science Fantasy: The series plays like Low Fantasy, but there are occasional glimpses of a science fiction background to the setting. In Dragon: a Serioli refers to Easterners as the "Old People," then "clarifies" this as "people from the small invisible lights." As the overcast hides the stars, this suggests the aboriginal Serioli remember humans coming to Dragaera from the stars. Sethra has admitted to Vlad that the Dragaerans were engineered from humans by the Jenoine.
  • Seemingly-Profound Fool: Vlad has a hard time figuring out whether the drummer he meets on the Isles is incredibly profound or just a goofball who takes drumming too seriously. Ultimately it's left ambiguous. The character was based on Brust's friend, who really is that into drumming.
  • Selective Historical Armory: Weaponry is mostly Renaissance-era or thereabouts, but with a lack of projectiles that encompasses not only Fantasy Gun Control, but Fantasy Bow Control as well. The one time Vlad encounters archers (in Dragon), their bows are called "javelin-throwers", and their rarity in the Empire is such that Vlad doesn't even recognize them as weapons.
  • Servile Snarker: Loiosh is Vlad's familiar and obeys his orders, but that doesn't stop him from constantly busting his chops through their telepathic link. Loiosh is quick to blame Vlad's Deadpan Snarker personality for rubbing off on him.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Morrolan, Paarfi
  • Shoulder-Sized Dragon: The jhereg.
  • Shout-Out: Due to the humorous nature of the series, Brust sprinkles in shout outs to some of his favorite things.
    • In Issola, Vlad and Teldra come up with the recipe for bagels and lox.
    • In Dzur, the old Tsalmoth who assists Vlad at the library uses a spell that finds specific patterns of characters in text, making it the sorcerous equivalent of a search engine.
    • In Iorich, four-year-old Vlad Norathar is seen playing with the low-tech, soft toy equivalent of a Transformer.
    • There are a few Monty Python and the Holy Grail jokes in Yendi:

Morrolan: "You wouldn't want her to turn you into a newt."
Vlad: "I'll get better."

    • In one of the prefaces, Vlad riffs on Dragnet: "This is the city: Adrilankha, Whitecrest."
    • The preface to the second Khaavren novel explains that Paarfi's writing style isn't historically correct but taken from a play called Redwreath And Goldstar Have Traveled To Deathsgate.
    • Lefitt and Boraan, the detectives in the play Six Parts Water, which provides chapter quotes in Jhegaala, have a rather Nick and Nora Charles tone to their dialogue. In particular, the play's title refers to Boraan's intended drink at one point: six parts water ... to one hundred parts "oishka" (whiskey).
There's a fan page on these, from Abbott and Costello to Hamlet, with a separate page for the Grateful Dead.
  • Shrouded in Myth: Sethra is a bit mysterious. She has a reputation for, say, turning Dzur heroes who showed up to kill her into lizards, yet she's usually a fairly nice person, if kind of creepy. Vlad has on a couple of different occasions considered a list of Sethra myths and commented on which ones he thought were really, really stupid; in particular, if she actually does have a secret path to the Halls of Judgment in her basement, she owes him an apology.
  • Silly Reason for War: Morrolan goes to war with Fornia in Dragon over the theft of a fairly worthless sword; lampshaded numerous times by Vlad, who can't understand it and feels like the Only Sane Man even though he's in the war for an similarly stupid reason. Subverted when he suggests the alternatives, like assassinating Fornia or stealing it back or negotiating, and all of his ideas are shot down immediately. Later justified by Sethra by explaining that both Morrolan and Fornia are ambitious Dragonlords with a common border - war was inevitable, the sword was just a convinient pretext for both of them. Fornia wanted also to fight with the sword against a great weapon to reveal the great weapon hidden inside the sword, but that was just a bonus.
  • Slap Slap Kiss: Vlad and his wife Cawti meet under an... extreme case of this.
  • The Sneaky Guy: Kiera the Thief has a reputation as being able to steal anything and relies on stealth rather than combat prowess.
  • Sophisticated As Hell: Vlad
  • Soul Cutting Blade: Morganti weapons.
  • Spanner in the Works: No one was expecting Mario to actually succeed at assassinating the Emperor. The fact that he did so, and with the worst timing possible, is what led to Adron's Disaster.
  • The Spock: Daymar, who combines it with Cloudcuckoolander.
  • The Starscream: Most everyone in the Jhereg is ready and willing to take advantage of Klingon Promotion opportunities.
  • Start X to Stop X: The Serioli created Morganti weapons so no one would ever want to fight a war. It worked; Serioli were horrified by the idea of utterly destroying a soul. Dragaerans and Easterners lack that level of concern.
  • Stealth Hi Bye: Kragar's talented at this. However, his tendency to fade into the background causes a lot of problems for him: "I write a lot of notes."
  • Suicide by Cop: This is Mellar's scheme in Jhereg, hoping that his assassination would cause a civil war.
  • Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The Jenoine are interdimensional beings who popped into the Dragaeran universe and warped everything around for their unfathomable experiments. The actual gods of Dragaera are mostly comprised of their helpers, who rebelled and kicked them out. Lesser beings can ascend to godhood if they become powerful enough.
  • Sympathetic POV: Only the fact that we see things from Vlad's perspective (or Paarfi's rose-tinted view of history) makes the cast seem anything less than a bunch of total bastards.
  • The Syndicate: House Jhereg does pretty much everything illegal. Drugs, assassinations, theft and reselling, untaxed gambling and lending, and illegal sorcery are just what's been mentioned so far.
  • Taking the Heat: Half the plot of Iorich.
  • Teleportation Sickness: After the Interregnum, magical teleportation is easy, safe, and relatively cheap. However, almost all Easterners suffer motion sickness when teleported, whereas Dragaerans don't.
  • Teleport Interdiction: Sorcerous teleporation blocks, which can be configured to either only keep people from teleporting in, or to prevent teleportation both ways. The blocks are always placed over battlefields, to prevent teleportation from being used in war.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: Vlad lies paralyzed, staring down a mass of advancing chaos that is dissolving everything in its wake.
  • Time Abyss: Sethra Lavode. She's commonly believed to be around twenty thousand years old (a typical Dragaeran lifetime being two to three thousand)...and that's off by a factor of ten. She is quite literally as old as the Dragaeran Empire—somewhere around 250,000 years. And she only became undead relatively recently. (How she did it is unknown, but she has said something about "merging with the rock of Dzur Mountain again...")
  • To Hell and Back: The gateway to the afterlife for Dragaerans is a physical location that mortals can enter. Some Dragaerans become undead and walk back out again. Mortals have walked out of the Paths of the Dead twice so far.
  • Torture Technician: Unfortunately encountered by Vlad in Jhegaala.
  • Trouble Magnet Gambit: In Jhereg. Kiera uses her pickpocketing skills to replace Mellar's regular daggers with Morganti daggers (which destroy the victim's soul). Aliera then picked a fight with him and got stabbed, causing Mellar to panic and flee Morrolan's castle, allowing Vlad to kill him. Mellar didn't know that Aliera's soul was protected by her sword, allowing her to be resurrected.
  • Tyke Bomb:
    • Vlad. He learns that most of his life's choices have been influenced by Verra and Sethra in order to make him useful. In Issola, Sethra even states outright that facing the Jenoine in their own place in order to rescue Morrolan and Aliera is "the kind of activity Vlad is trained for." It is not yet clear if he is targeted against the Jenoine, or an all-purpose Tykebomb.
    • Possibly also the case with Devera, who actually engineered her own conception at Verra's instigation.
  • Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Aliera is famous for her beauty, but her lover Mario Greymist has unexceptional looks and might even be a little paunchy. He makes up for it by being the most feared assassin in the world.
  • Uncoffee: While regular coffee does exist, a variation called klava is an import from the Eastern kingdoms and very popular with Dragaerans. It's based on Hungarian egg coffee, and involves coffee being filtered through egg shells. For some reason, Dragerans serve it in a glass, which burns your hand if you don't let it cool. Vlad is a particular connoisseur of good klava, but prefers it in a mug.
  • The Underworld: The Paths of the Dead.
  • The Unpronounceable: The names of Serioli. Also, Dragaerans from a certain part of the Empire have bizarre, consonant-littered names that Vlad can only approximate. He doesn't even try with "Hwdfrjaanci" in Orca.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Vlad's messed-up memories. Also, the Khaavren Romances are fictional accounts of historical events within the world of Dragaera. Word of God states that Paarfi embellishes and makes some things up. In one particular clash of unreliable narrators, the confrontation between Aerich and a Teckla is given vastly different accounts by the Teckla in Teckla and Paarfi in Sethra Lavode. Paarfi also completely ignores the Dragon-Jhereg War.
  • Values Dissonance: Discussed in Yendi, when Vlad tells Cawti what it's like to have Dragaeran friends who nod along when Sethra the Younger talks nonchalantly about her plans to invade and subjugate the East. Even Morrolan, who grew up among Easterners, would have made her Warlord if he were Emperor, and Aliera was only opposed to it because she felt it would weaken the Empire.
  • Vain Sorceress: The Sorceress in Green uses magic to continue looking young and attractive.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds:
    • Morrolan and Aliera are cousins and best friends, but any time they're in a room together odds are really, really good they're going to start yelling at each other. Lampshaded when Vlad finally gets sick of it and chews them out.
    • Aliera and Sethra are a particularly extreme version of this in Five Hundred Years After, constantly challenging each other to duels and assumed by everyone seeing them to be worst enemies.
  • Voice of the Legion: Verra, whose voice sounds like two people speaking slightly out of sync. Has the added bonus that a group of different people, all listening to her at once, will all hear different things. And respond to what they hear. As Vlad put it, "She's the only person I know who makes those around her incomprehensible."
  • The Voiceless: In Tiassa, Khaarven's servant Borteliff is widely assumed to be mute. He can talk, he's just found that silence in a servant is so prized by his employers that he'll go for a year or more without saying a word.
  • Wandering Minstrel
  • We Are as Mayflies: Most Easterners in Dragaera don't live long past 60, while Dragaerans live for thousands of years. Powerful Easterner witches can live hundreds of years, while undead Dragaerans can exist pretty much indefinitely.
  • We Could Have Avoided All This: Vlad lampshades how Fornia's scheme in Dragon is unnecessarily complex; he fought a large-scale war just in hopes of fighting Morrolan or Sethra, whose weapons could break open his greatsword and reveal the more valuable blade hidden within. While he just couldn't ask them to help since he'd stolen the weapon from Morrolan in the first place, there were still plenty of ways to accomplish what he wanted easily. But Dragonlords never choose the easy path.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: One interpretation of Adron is that he wanted to take over so that he could fix the mess that Tortaalik had gotten the Empire into. However, his choice of methods and some really inconvenient coincidences resulted in him crippling the Empire for 2 or 3 centuries.
  • Wham! Episode: The ends of Phoenix, Orca, and Issola.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Especially in the earlier novels, Vlad doesn't care about taking the lives of Dragaerans, and even enjoys it. In kind, Dragaerans see little value in Easterners' lives. Also, Dragaerans don't seem to view jhereg as anything more than wild animals, even though they are known to possess human-level intelligence.
  • You All Meet in An Inn: Khaavren and the others in Phoenix Guards. It is played so straight it is probably a parody of the trope.
  • Xanatos Speed Chess: The Sorceress In Green's plan in Yendi.
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