Beware Unmarked Spoilers
Iron Gold
- Promotional materials repeatedly bring up how Mercury and Venus are still under the control of the Ash Lord. The book opens up with Darrow conquering Mercury, meaning that the Society Remnant's territory is now down to just Venus.
- Ephraim kidnapping Electra and Pax sends Victra and Mustang into Mama Bear mode.
- Victra sets out on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, heedless of the fact that she's eight months pregnant. Since Lyria is the only suspect, Victra wants to question the girl herself, and comes after Holiday and Lyria in full pulseArmor.
Victra: "You idiots lost my child. I will get her back. With words, or with iron. Your choice. Give me the Red, or I will come and cut her out of the belly of your ship. You have ten seconds to comply. Victra out."- Kavax's wife Niobe gets in on the action too, since her husband was injured during the abduction. Her presence, and that of Augustus and Telemanus forces, are the only thing that gets Victra's forces to fall back.
- Mustang gives the supporting cast a blistering What the Hell, Hero? when she arrives to find Theodora and the Telemanuses prepared to use the Oracles to interrogate Lyria.
Mustang: "Did I say you could torture her, Daxo?"Daxo: "There's no need for you to see it. This is why you have us."Mustang: "Because I'm such a frail flower that I need bold souls to do my torturing for me?" (to Daxo's mother) "Niobe, even you?"Niobe: "After what was done to Kavax - "Mustang: "Yes. And what would he say about this?" (to Theodora) "I told you to kill all those monsters. Year ago. Did you not hear me or is insolence now to be expected from my spymaster?"Theodora: "I preserved a litter. To protect your family I would do anything."Mustang: "If Darrow were here..."Theodora: "I would look him in the eye and tell him I will not stop till his child is found, without apology and without remorse."Mustang: "And will you tell him that his child is lost? Oh, you thought I didn't know you helped him get into Deepgrave to release a war criminal who tried to murder my family in our sleep?"Theodora: "Virginia..."Mustang: (to everyone) "No. I tire of being treated like a child by my own council because I have chosen to obey the law. You're no different than Victra. You mistake morality for naivete. Now get out. I don't want to look at you any longer. It's time I talk with the girl alone." - When Holiday and Mustang corner Ephraim and force him to help rescue the children, Mustang warns him that if he escapes or attempts to defect to the Syndicate, Volga will be executed.Mustang: "And be it on Mars, Luna, Earth, the Rim, or Venus itself, one night you will wake in the middle of the dark and find a shadow standing over you. If you are lucky, it will be me. If you are unlucky, it will be Sevro or my husband, and you will die shitting yourself in a foreign bed."
Dark Age
- In less than 48 hours Darrow manages to thwart Atalantia's Iron Rain and drive her troops back from the city of Heliopolis.
- Mustang's agents manage to capture the Duke of Hands off-screen.
- If kitting up in maternity armor in the previous book wasn't enough to prove that being a mother hadn't dulled her combat skills, Victra more than proves it herself in this book. She spends a third of the book stranded on Mars with the Red Hand on her tail and only Lyria and Volga for assistance, and is such a Determinator that she doesn't tell her travelling companions she's in labor for two days after her water breaks. When the man giving them shelter offers her a bed to lie down on, she refuses.
Light Bringer
- Darrow, Sevro, and Cassius's escape from Venus.
- The Siege of Phobos
- Darrow's fight against Volsung Fa.
