"Death is nothing compared to vindication."
The Night Lords are one of the most iconic legions of Chaos Space Marines in Warhammer 40,000
. Even before the Horus Heresy broke out they were infamous for their brutal attacks (which often involved excessive amounts of force) and terror tactics. Essentially, think of an entire army of eight-foot-tall genetically enhanced supersoldiers in power armour, and now they incorporate all the darkest aspects of Batman
filtered through the characteristic grim darkness
of the far future. This will only come a fraction of the way to summarising what the Night Lords are, but for our purposes it will do.
The Night Lords were originally the subject of only one book, Lord of the Night
(2005) by Simon Spurrier, which presented an alternate interpretation of their history where their Primarch and progenitor, the Night Haunter, was a highly focused individual who shunned the accolades that were heaped upon his peers. Instead, he prosecuted his own brutal kind of warfare precisely because none of the other Legions would and was loyal to the Emperor up until the end, even when his father had abandoned him. This interpretation, bolstered by the quality of the book, proved popular and enjoyed renewed interest with the release of Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Soul Hunter series, which includes, in narrative order, the short story Shadow Knight
(2009), the novel Soul Hunter
(2010), the audio drama Throne of Lies
(2010), the novel Blood Reaver
(2011), the short story The Core
(2010), and finally the final novel Void Stalker
(2012). They also have a number of works featuring and also centering on members of the Legion in the Horus Heresy
Lord of the Night contains the following tropes:
- Berserk Button: If not for the narrator explicitly telling the reader that Cog is not an Ogryn, one would assume he is one from the description. People regularly make this mistake, making Cog extremely angry.
- Blessed with Suck: Mita, who has incredible psychic powers but is treated like garbage by the people she protects and constantly thrust into danger. By extension, all psykers in the book are in this boat, as this is a general W40k theme.
- Black and Gray Morality: The whole book, really. The good guys are often worse than the bad guys. The bad guys are even worse than that. Wait, why are we still being designated the bad guys?
- Board to Death: When Zso Sahaal was uniting gangs and underhive elements into his personal army, he has the respective leaders brought to him and intimidated into swearing their people to his service. Then he kills them all at once, to keep power firmly in his control.
- Knowledge Broker: Pavulti's trade after going renegade from the Mechanicum.
- The Man Behind the Man: The Eldar also want the Corona Nox, and to this end a Seer Council took control of an Inquisitor to look for it.
- Manipulative Bastard: All part of The Reveal.
- Mob War: Sahaal orchestrates one to delay the Inquisitor's retinue while he searches for the Corona Nox.
- Power of Trust
- Requisite Royal Regalia: The Corona Nox.
- The Reveal: Just between you and us, it wouldn't be much of a reveal if we spelled it out here.
- Revenge by Proxy
- Smoke Shield: The result of Zso Sahaal's attempt to kill Krieg Acerbus at point blank range with a holy bolter given to him by the Primarch of his chapter. He emerges from the smoke completely unharmed and backhands Sahaal across the room, cracking his power armor.
- Succession Crisis: A very large one after the death of the Night Haunter lead to the start of the story.
- Suicide by Cop: Inquisitor Kaustus was under control of the Eldar throughout the entire book and was waiting until he could break free or for Mita to kill him.
- Twist Ending: Played straight because it probably wasn't the twist you were expecting.
- Too Kinky to Torture: Being a cogboy would already mean that the knowledge broker can switch his pain receptors as desired, but Sahaal's interrogation of him shows that he takes some pleasure or satisfaction from the whole thing.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: This takes place within the Imperium of Man, even the nominally human Cog is heavily discriminated against.
- What Year Is This?: Sahaal asked this of one of his victims, as an afterthought, he asked what millenium it was, as well. He first thought he had been gone longer than expected, but he was completely taken aback when he found out that he was gone not a few centuries, but for ten millenia.
Tropes demonstrated by the Talos trilogy:
- Eye Scream: Talos scoops out J'sara's eyes in the process of torturing her for information in Throne of Lies.
- He also blinded M'shen with his acidic spit in the process of hunting her down and earning his epithet.
- Throne of Lies mentions that J'sara and M'shen sound nearly identical. The eye damage may be a Meaningful Echo.
- Faux Flame: Used by the Eldar to ignite Cyrion's corpse in Talos' nightmare in the Blood Reaver epilogue, Variel isn't as lucky and dies much more slowly.
- Flaying Alive: Done with great glee to a loyalist Astartes in the opening of Blood Reaver.
- Also mentioned as a means of punishment that the 10th company use to keep their slaves and / or brothers in line.
- Taken Up to Eleven with the flaying pits, where they are flayed, thrown into a huge hole in the ground, and left to die. This becomes the fate of many of the ten million people purged from on Tsagualsa in the first half of Void Stalker.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: First Claw at the beginning of Soul Hunter. Played for the worst of each humor, because to do otherwise wouldn't be Grimdark.
- Choleric — Uzas. His emotions are all or nothing; he's almost universally violent, irritated or sullen when he isn't an unreadable shell. Thinks only of himself, which is how he became corrupt in the first place. He himself admits he all but runs on a slow, seething rage.
- Melancholic — Xarl. Cynic, chronic complainer, suspicious pessimist, and yet somehow a very capable Lancer for Talos. Throws his whole life into the sword and it shows in every sense of the word.
- Phlegmatic — Talos. His romanticism of his Legion's past and the power his prophetic abilities have over his life have left him worn thin all around. Known to brood over both. His stubbornness won't let him put anything less than his heart and soul into what he does however, and it's nearly killed him before.
- Sanguine — Cyrion. Possibly the most easy going of the group, and the most vocally distressed at the state of the Legion, although it also means he stands out the least in the shambling wreck of a squad.
- Friendship Moment: A rather grim example. When Talos is shredded following the duel with Third Claw, he reaches out first to Cyrion, then Septimus, Mercution, and he surprises himself by asking for Xarl as well.
- Cemented even deeper by Talos' harvesting Xarl's geneseed himself by hand and giving him a makeshift Viking Funeral in his own quarters. He realizes many commendatory, honorable or brotherly things could be said over Xarl's corpse, but the truest thing was that if there was a hell, Talos would join him there soon.
- General Failure: Discussed in a bit of back-and-forth between Talos and one Abaddon the Despoiler on why his Black Crusades haven't yet succeeded.
- Talos himself isn't much of a general when given the chance to lead, which is part of why he doesn't like leading.
- Ghostly Chill: Indicative of the presence of a Neverborn.
- Gorn: Descriptions of Night Lord initiated combat or torture usually teeter between this and straight up nauseating.
- Heel Realization: Septimus has one while going off to kill disruptive new inductees into The Covenant's crew in exchange for a lasrifle for Maruc.
- I Gave My Word: Why Night Lords let their primarch be assassinated.
- I Owe You My Life: Variel to Talos
- Impaled Palm: A minor part of the damage to the crucified, flayed and mutilated loyalist Astartes in the opening of Blood Reaver
- Insignia Rip-Off Ritual: Every piece of scavenged Imperial material must have the insignia removed or (in the case of warplate, where this would be too difficult), ritually defaced. When Talos takes command, he renames them the "Warband of the Broken Aquila" in recognition of this.
- Insistent Terminology: The contention between the two of the mare brought up when Mercutian insists to Xarl that 10th company did not steal from Ganges Station, they "liberated materials".
- Intercontinuity Crossover: With the Salamander saga in the short stories, The Core and Promethius Requiem in the Fear the Alien anthology.
- Zso Sahaal can be seen in a number of Talos' flashbacks, and Acerbus is mentioned at least once
- It Gets Easier: Shadow Knight and Soul Hunter both feature Talos' memory of his first kill at the age of 12. He's more contemplative than anything after the fact, while his unblooded friend Xarl, the future Blood Knight and Master Swordsman, is the one freaked out.
- It Was a Gift: Subverted when Talos loses his bolter and no less a hero than Malcharion the War Sage casually hands over his own as a replacement. Despite Talos' initial misgivings over a Legion relic, Malcharion points out that he is now a Dreadnought and doesn't need it.
- Occasionally the human characters will barter around legion coins, signifying the legion's protection over that person. The voidborn's parents are given one, not that it helps.
- Job Title: Soul Hunter, Blood Reaver and Void Stalker
- Journey to the Center of the Mind
- Last Stand: Vandred's death
- Then the 10th Company in Void Stalker
- Make an Example of Them: A core part of the Nostraman/VIII Legion doctrine, demonstrated with the stringing up of the gangers in Blood Reaver and the crucifixion of Ruven's corpse on the bridge of The Echo of Damnation
- Made a Slave: Fates of Septimus, Eurydice (later Octavia) and Maruc
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": During the Tsagualsa Reprisal, the Night Lords reaction to the Ultramarines and their successor chapters arrival was to start screaming "Get to the ships!" in every dialect of Nostraman.
- Mauve Shirt: Maruc
- Meaningful Rename: Talos renames all of his slaves for (presumably) High Gothic ordinal numbers.
- Konrad Curze is said to have nicknamed a number of his brethren.
- Meaningful Echo: "It was a curse, to be a god's son"
- "Death is nothing compared to vindication." Echoed by Talos, whose actions in Void Stalker seem to echo Konrad Curze's end-of-life breakdown. Only Talos seems like he's going to take the entire 10th Company down with him...
- Meat Moss: The Screaming Gallery in the mausoleum on Tsagualsa. Made of the fused flesh of hundreds of shrieking faces which were kept alive with fleshcraft for the sole purpose of being both terrifying and Badass. Konrad Curze was not particularly fond of cheery design.
- Some parts of the lower decks in the Echo of Damnation feature steel walls mutating into flesh due to the warp mutations the ship went under when the Red Corsairs had it.
- The Mole: Septimus at the start of Blood Reaver.
- Moment Killer: Cyrion acts as one between Septimus and Octavia before they admit their feelings to each other. After they do, and Septimus is in the process of Bridal Carrying Octavia to his quarters, Talos interrupts them once again.
- First Claw eventually stops cock-blocking them, though, given that Talos's vision in the Epilogue shows Octavia is pregnant...and running from the Inquisition.
- By Void Stalker, it seems that the cock-blocking was on purpose, as if Talos beating Septimus half to death as if he should've known better is anything to go by. Justified, considering Octavia is the 10th Company's sole navigator and they can't get very far (at least no FTL) without her.
- Monster from Beyond the Veil: Octavia killing people with her Warp Eye tends to pull ghosts from the Void back into the vicinity. This results in shambling, in(post)humanly tough zombies called Neverborn.
- My Sensors Indicate You Want to Tap That: Ruven notes he can smell Septimus' attraction to Octavia.
- Talos's super-hearing is what first alerts him to Octavia's pregnancy. His super-smelling would've tipped him off first, but, since he is a Combat Medic, what he doesn't know about human pregnancy could fill a battle barge.
- Named Weapons: Well...
- Aurum, the power sword Talos stole from the Blood Angels
- Anethema, his old bolter
- Mordax Tenebrae, Zso Sahaal's bolter
- Executioner, Xarl's chainsword
- Banshee, Cyrion's bolter.
- Mercy and Forgiveness, Konrad Curze's own lightning claws.
- Nay-Theist: The Night Lords' theology in a nutshell, applying in equal measure to both the Emperor and the Chaos Gods. The only reason some Night Lords even dignify the Chaos Gods is to momentarily channel their power and then abandon them when their blessings are no longer needed. Uzas is constantly trying to explain this to First Claw in his more lucid moments, not that any of them care.
- Nice to the Waiter: Talos In Soul Hunter.
- Nightmare Sequence: Talos' dream of the Eldar at the end of Blood Reaver
- Not Me This Time: Uzas is held guilty for killing Arkiah, the father of the Voidborn, despite his constant lucid insistance that he did not. Turns out in Void Stalker he's been telling the truth, it was Cyrion.