The Legatum series is an ongoing Fantasy web novel series by Tyk 5919. It takes place during a medieval time period where dozens of different mythical races all coexist and go through different trials and tribulations over a series of many years. It currently consists of the following stories:
The Smirvlak Trilogy
Help Not Wanted
Other Stories
Legatum provides examples of the following tropes:
- All Trolls Are Different: None of the trolls in the series are the same, in terms of their design, their powers, or how they behave. Swamp trolls are known for being disgusting, using clubs as weapons, and even attack with poisonous gases, whereas mountain trolls are rocky powerhouses, some of whom know earth magic.
- Anyone Can Die: Zig-zagged. Each story focuses on a different event or crisis, and some stories have vastly different tones, so the mortality rate fluctuates. Smirvlak's Stone kills off all but one main character, whereas The Green Wanderer doesn't kill off anybody.
- Big Bad: There's usually one in each story.
- Smirvlak's Stone has Gnekvizz Corveel.
- The Green Wanderer, surprisingly, doesn't have any.
- Help Not Wanted has Ogrell Syn'Gorrsh.
- The Road to Hell... has King Chorn Torgash.
- Scrambled Egg has Sonya and Trellorv.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: There's hardly anyone who's a complete hero. Most of the inhabitants seems to be, at best, a self-serving nice person or Anti-Hero who tends to stay out of major conflicts, and at worst, a sadistic, maniacal person who starts wars and rapes and massacres thousands all for the sake of their personal enjoyment. Most of the characters who are completely innocent either have a Dark and Troubled Past, or they end up dying.
- Cerebus Rollercoaster: Since every story in the series is self-contained, some of them have vastly different tones. Help Not Wanted is a dark comedy, whereas The Road to Hell... is a very serious tale about revolution, and Scrambled Egg is a serious story all about morality.
- Draconic Humanoid: Drakos are basically smaller, bipedal, wingless descendants of dragons. Unlike stilios, they even look more like dragons as opposed to lizards, they only have three toes and four fingers, and it's implied they can still breathe fire.
- The Dung Ages: The country of Glordale cares very little about hygiene. It's fairly common for people to dump their trash and empty their chamber pots into the middle of the street. Hardly anyone in the country who isn't human bathes, no one seems to complain about the country's overwhelming odor, and some of the more grosser inhabitants will nonchalantly micturate or defecate in public, or even soil themselves out of laziness. It's gotten to a point where people outside of Glordale have aptly nicknamed the country "Smirvlak's Anus."
- Dung Fu: Ogres seem to have a nasty habit of using their excrement either as a means to insult something, or as an "improvised" weapon. Morklox finds this out the hard way in The Road to Hell...
- Embarrassing Nickname: The country Glordale is sometimes referred to as "Smirvlak's Anus," largely because of the smell and the country's atrocious lack of hygiene.
- Fantastic Racism: Given the sheer amount of races in the setting, this was bound to come up. Goblins are typically treated with discrimination by everyone, and drakos and dragons hate stilios so much that some of them have attempted genocide against them.
- Fish People: The fiscians are a race of scaly, humanoid fish creatures.
- Food Porn: Anytime a character or group of characters eat an exquisite meal, the food is thoroughly descriptive and detailed.
- Frog Men: Ranas are a race of humanoid frog or toad-like creatures.
- Heinous Hyena:
- Averted as a whole with gnolls. They're a race of anthromorphic hyena beasts, and while some look intimidating, they're no different from the various other races featured in the series; some are good, some are evil, some are neutral.
- Played straight with the Yellow Fang tribe, a group of gnolls that Rape, Pillage, and Burn as they please. The head of said tribe, Lorko Maeliss, is the worst out of all of them, treating his tribe as expendable pawns and desiring to conquer the world by attempting to slaughter millions in his path.
- Lizard Folk: Stilios are tall, anthropomorphic scaly creatures that look like bipedal lizards or salamanders.
- Loads and Loads of Races: Absolutely. So far dragons, wyverns, stilios, murids, orcs, ogres, goblins, elves, humans, trolls, fiscians, gnolls, dwarves, half-orcs, werewolves, drakos, minotaurs, and even a cyclops have all appeared in the series at least once. On top of that, it's mentioned that other races, like ettins, imps, satyrs, and giants, also exist.
- Our Dragons Are Different:
- Dragons are sentient beasts, to the point where it's not uncommon for them to possess the ability to speak. They also all have the appearance of your average four-legged western dragons.
- Wyverns are two-legged dragonic creatures with wings instead of arms. And unlike dragons, not all of them can speak, or appear to be fully sentient.
- And then there are the drakos, which is further explained under Draconic Humanoid above.
- Our Dwarves Are All the Same: So far, the only dwarves who have appeared in the series are the typical bearded, brutish, grumpy, alcoholic soldiers who take pride in their craft.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Goblins are seen as being part of the lower class in society. Most of them are either loners who stay away from society, homeless vagrants who dig through the trash for food, or mischievous thieves who try to bargain and sell whatever they can or commit petty crimes. Those who do get jobs typically get the jobs nobody wants, such as scooping dung out of the streets. Goblins are also notorious for not bathing for months and having very bad breath.
- Our Minotaurs Are Different: Minotaurs, massive anthropomorphic bull-like creatures, are a recurring race in the series.
- Our Ogres Are Different: All ogres who have appeared in the series, while obese, are not malicious at all. If anything they're more prone to toilet humor or being a Gasshole than being a Child Eater or cannibal. However, Ogrell Syn’Gorrsh is essentially a Serial Killer who kidnapped people and either ate them, forced them to turn into cannibals, or forced them to starve to death.
- Our Orcs Are Different: Orcs, surprisingly, are not Always Chaotic Evil like in various other fantasy series. Some orcs, like King Chorn Torgash, are the typical muscle-bound brutes who crave violence and thrive off war and wanton destruction. Other orcs, like Marrox, are genuinely nice (albeit morally-conflicted and morally-gray) people who just want to live their lives in peace.
- Our Werewolves Are Different:
- Alpha's group from Smirvlak's Stone are still fully cognizant and can maintain the ability to speak even in wolf form. They have the appearance of burly, bipedal wolves and still wear normal human clothing and can use regular weaponry. They're also dragon riders.
- Purebloods are wolf creatures that were apparently born as anthropomorphic wolves, and can't change into human form. Their race is endangered, to the point where a tribe of them from The Green Wanderer frequently breed with one another to try and increase their numbers.
- Rat Men: Murids are giant, scruffy, lanky humanoid rat creatures.
- Scenery Porn: Some of the larger cities and towns in the series, such as Tovvol, are described in vivid detail to grasp each location's atmosphere.
- Thematic Series: The series focuses on what kind of legacy different characters have left or will leave behind, and shows how their actions have impacted the setting and other characters. Each story is (mostly) self-contained and focuses on its own plot and its own set of characters. Any story can be read in any order without the reader getting confused or missing huge bits of critical information.
- Toilet Humour: Everywhere, largely because of the setting. If an ogre or Mulvernt the Cyclops shows up, there's bound to be some sort of scatological joke around the corner.
- The 'Verse: Legatum all takes place in the same world and has the same continuity, albeit spanned across different years. Some characters, like Mulvernt, will be mentioned or even appear in multiple installments.
