Daystar
is a crossover between Worm and Exalted by WinterWombat
Tropes found in Daystar:
- Accidental Truth: When Taylor used her Break Them by Talking power on Glory Girl, she didn't know that Victoria had actually been doing what Taylor accused her of.
- Animal Battle Aura: Taylor's anima banner displays a hundred luminous stripes, creating the image of a tiger from negative space.
- Break Them by Talking: One of Taylor's Charms allows her to know exactly what to say to inflict the maximum emotional trauma on anyone she interacts with. She developed and activated it accidentally during an argument with Glory Girl, and has kept that particular power on a tight leash ever since.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: Essentially how Taylor learning new Charms works. She doesn't learn specific mental triggers or pick superpowers off a list, she simply raises her mundane skills to such a degree that they become superpowers.
- Dead Fic: Has not been updated since late 2020, and the author has seemingly abandoned Spacebattles.
- Energy Absorption: During her battle with Lung, Taylor manifests a Charm that lets her absorb fire or other similar forms of energy, then use the energy to imbue her strikes with explosive force.
- Familiar: Rachel gives Taylor a puppy, which she names Nova, after the first battle against Lung. Nova soon begins to exhibit signs of unnatural intelligence, but it's not until she shows the ability to understand and follow written instructions that Taylor begins to suspect there might be something more going on here...
- Heel Realization: Vicky realizes how bad she's going after Taylor's Break Them by Talking, so she begins to work on her rage issues and apologizes to Amy for taking her for granted.
- Impossibly Delicious Food: One of Taylor's Charms automatically infuses any food she prepares with traces of Essence, elevating the food to the highest possible quality. Even a meal of scraps and leftovers becomes a gourmet feast at her hands.
- Instant Expert: One of the core aspects of Taylor's powerset. For skills that align with her nature as a Solar Exalt or her core personality, she attain in months a level of mastery that would take mortals decades to reach. This ability is somewhat lessened for skills that don't directly complement her nature as a hero, granting "only" the equivalent of superlative natural talent rather than nigh-instant mastery.
- Knockback: One of Taylor's staple combat Charms, the Heaven Thunder Hammer allows her to send opponents flying dozens of feet with a single blow. This doesn't actually make the blow any more damaging, however, except insofar as it can be used to fling enemies into a wall or the like.
- Living Lie Detector: One of Taylor's most useful powers, the Judge's Ear Technique lets her sense falsehood or half-truth. And because it keys off the intent to deceive rather than any physiological cue, there is no counter to it other than not interacting with Taylor directly. It even works over phone lines and the like.
- The Mob Boss Is Scarier: In chapter 3.9, Taylor encounters a group of ABB thugs who are more concerned with protecting Lung's cache of guns than the fact that the building they are in is currently on fire. When challenged on this, one of them retorts that if the building fire kills them, at least it won't get creative.
- Original Character: Thanks to the unnamed Sidereal's aid, Lung has acquired three new capes in this timeline.
- A Master who can cause spikes of crippling pain, and mind-control those who pass out due to that pain.
- A cloth/stealth-themed Tinker.
- A cape who can charge weapons with various superpowers, which they can then draw out again while using those weapons.
- Past-Life Memories: Taylor has flashes of memory from three previous Bearers of her Exaltation, which eventually become full-on personalities able to speak to Taylor:
- A Solar who fought in the Primordial War, dying near its end.
- A Solar who ruled through the First Age, eventually falling to the Usurpation.
- A Solar who was born into the Age of Sorrows.
- Talking the Monster to Death: A quasi-accidental version. When Glory Girl pisses Taylor off, the latter unknowingly activates her Sadistic Insight Technique (a Charm that tells her what to say in order to inflict the maximum emotional trauma on whoever she's talking to), and gives Glory Girl a vicious "The Reason You Suck" Speech. Fortunately, this prompts Glory Girl to have a Heel Realization and dramatically clean up her act.
- Tautological Templar: How Taylor's First Age incarnation describes herself:This is who I became by the end. The person I died as. Here, you see, is the face of someone who is so secure in the idea of her own perfection that she need no longer even consider the consequences of her actions. She can indulge any urge or passing whim with a clear conscience, because if it wasn't the right thing to do, surely the desire would not have formed within her. Such a grand irony, that one of the most powerful beings in Creation was incapable of something so easy as doubting herself.
- Tiger vs. Dragon: Taylor's anima banner shows a tiger, and her arch-enemy Lung has the power to turn into a dragon. The unnamed Sidereal notes the appropriateness of the juxtaposition.
