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You are Lone Wolf. In a devastating attack, the Darklords have destroyed the monastery where you were learning the skills of the Kai Lords. You are the sole survivor.

The Lone Wolf Gamebooks series (plural, containing the Kai, Magnakai, Grand Master, and New Order series) were written by Joe Dever; the first book came out in 1984. As the opening quote tells us, the hero is the Sole Survivor Fighter/Ranger/Psionic Knight Lone Wolf, who escapes the Big Bad's destruction of the monastery where he and the rest of the Kai Order lived. In the course of his many adventures, Lone Wolf has to avenge his fallen brethren, foil the Darklords and other Evil Overlords, try to rebuild the Kai Order, and otherwise save his Sword and Sorcery world Magnamund many, many times.

The books take many RPG elements and incorporate them into playing/reading, such as Hit Points (called Endurance points), "Combat Skill", skills (Kai / Magnakai / Grand Master Disciplines), and an inventory system. Each book can be read as a standalone adventure, but finishing a book allows one to gain an extra Discipline and carry over most (usually) of his inventory. You can cheat, but you can cheat at Solitaire too.

There are 20 books out that follow Lone Wolf himself, then 8 after that following a student of his, with more being written. There's also a four-books World of Lone Wolf spin-off (most often just called Grey Star) written by Ian Page and edited by Dever. It takes place in the same world, with Grey Star the Wizard as the hero. There are also 12 Legends of Lone Wolf novelizations roughly covering the first 8 books, fleshing out characterization and the series mythology, as well as a Magnamund Companion guidebook. Another Spin-Off called the Autumn Snow series, written by Martin Charbonneau and edited by Dever, started to be published in 2016. It followed the adventure of Autumn Snow, a novice of Lone Wolf's New Kai Order. There are even two Tabletop RPG versions of the books and a graphic novel spin-off, The Skull of Agarash (situated between the Magnakai and Grand Master series). A videogame spin off was released on Android and iOS in late 2013 and ported to PC in November of 2014. A tabletop RPG entitled Lone Wolf Adventure Game produced by Cubicle 7 and Joe Dever (before his untimely death) has been produced thanks to Kickstarter.

Dever died suddenly in late 2016, leaving the future of the property, including the remainder of the last wave of books he'd started, up in the air. His son Ben later announced that he and his family will work on the final books, which (along with deluxe hardcover versions of the others).

    Books in the Series 
World of Lone Wolfnote 
  • #1 Grey Star the Wizard (1985): Grey Star is a human raised by the mystical Shianti race and trained in their magic. The Shianti have taken a vow of non-interference with the rest of Magnamund. Since Grey Star is not a member of their race and is exempt from this vow, they send him to retrieve an artifact called the Moonstone, in hopes of using its power to defeat the tyrant Shasarak the Wytch-King.
    • "Druse Quest" (2017): Madin Rendalim, Herbwarden of Bautar, is on a mission to find a Druse Tree to make a cure for the Red Plague, but must evade monsters and soldiers determined to stop him.
  • #2 The Forbidden City (1986): Grey Star continues his mission to retrieve the Moonstone. While helping a rebellion against the Shadakine Empire, he attempts to find a Shadow Gate in order to travel to the Daziarn plane, where the Moonstone can be found.
    • "Treasures of Madness" (2018)note : The thief Hugi attempts to escape the Forbidden City with his loot.
  • #3 Beyond the Nightmare Gate (1986): Grey Star navigates the bizarre realm of Daziarn. Reuniting with his lost friend Tanith, the pair attempt to find the Moonstone and return to Magnamund.
    • "The Chains of Ghol-Tabras" (2019)note : Captain Havaroez must prevent the fleet of Shasarak from sending reinforcements elsewhere.
  • #4 War of the Wizards (1986): Grey Star and Tanith return to Magnamund to find seven years have passed in the few days they spent in Daziarn. Shasarak has allied with the demon lord Agarash the Damned in an attempt to wipe out the resistance once and for all. The two heroes resolve to defeat the Wytch-King and save Magnamund.
    • "Battle of the Wytches" (2020)note : Tanith seeks to free the Port of Suhn from Mother Magri's rule.

Kai seriesnote 

  • #1 Flight from the Dark (1984): After surviving the massacre of the Kai, Silent Wolf renames himself Lone Wolf and journeys to the capital of Sommerlund, Holmgard, to warn King Ulnar V of what has happened.
  • #2 Fire on the Water (1984): King Ulnar V sends Lone Wolf to the allied nation Durenor to retrieve the Sommerswerd, the greatest weapon against the Darklords, to repel an invasion led by Darklord Zagarna.
    • "The Crown of King Alin IV" (2007): Lord-lieutenant Rhygar, a Knight of the White Mountain, has an adventure roughly two years before the events of Fire on the Water.
  • #3 The Caverns of Kalte (1984): Lone Wolf must infiltrate the fortress Ikara, located in the icy region Kalte, to arrest the evil wizard Vonotar the Traitor.
    • "Vonotar's Web" (2007): Loi-Kymar, a wise and friendly wizard, is targeted by Vonotar the Traitor for his Guildstaff, which has the power of teleportation.
  • #4 The Chasm of Doom (1985): Lone Wolf investigates the disappearance of several troops sent to the province of Ruanon, and stumbles onto a plot to resurrect an ancient evil, Darklord Vashna.
    • "Ruanon" (2008): Captain D'Val, a respected officer in the King's Guard of Sommerlund, has an adventure.
  • #5 Shadow on the Sand (1985): Lone Wolf is sent on a diplomatic mission to Vassagonia. Unfortunately, the ruler he was intending to meet, Zahkan Moudalla, has just died, and his replacement Zahkan Kimah is not interested in peace and has allied with Darklord Haakon. Lone Wolf barely escapes with his life, then discovers this land has a priceless artifact that can change his destiny forever, The Book of the Magnakai.
    • "The Tomb of the Majhan" (2008): Tipasa the Wanderer discovers an ancient tomb said to have treasures beyond imagination.

Magnakai seriesnote 

  • #6 The Kingdoms of Terror (1985): The Book of the Magnakai tells of seven artifacts called Lorestones which grant great wisdom and power needed to become a Kai Grand Master. Lone Wolf goes on a quest to retrieve the Lorestone of Varetta.
    • "The Key to the Future" (2008): Gwynian the Sage seeks to aid Lone Wolf in his quest to find the Lorestones. In trying to determine the location of the Lorestone of Varetta, he encounters a barrier he must overcome.
  • #7 Castle Death (1986): The evil wizard Lord Zahda has been imprisoned inside his fortress Kazan-Oud, also known as Castle Death, by a magical force field, but he still rules the place with an iron fist. The Lorestone of Herdos is also inside this castle, so Lone Wolf must infiltrate Castle Death and retrieve it.
    • "The All-Seeing One" (2008): Tavig of Suentina, a prisoner of Castle Death, overhears a plot for Zahda to escape the force field and terrorize the outside world again. Tavig decides to stop it.
  • #8 The Jungle of Horrors (1986): Lone Wolf must brave the treacherous, monster-filled jungle-swamp known as the Danarg to retrieve the Lorestone of Ohrido. To make matters worse, news is delivered that the Darklords have united behind a new leader, Darklord Gnaag, and may soon again bring war to Magnamund.
    • "Masquerade in Hikas" (2009): Paido, a Vakeros knight, investigates rumors that the city of Hikas has been infiltrated by agents of the Darklords.
    • "The Slavers of Xanar" (2018)note : Vagur, a skilled dwarf shooter from Bor, enlisted in His Majesty Ryvin's Royal Army, has an adventure.
  • #9 The Cauldron of Fear (1986): Lone Wolf must retrieve the Lorestone of Tahou. Unfortunately, Tahou is under siege by the Darklords.
    • "The Guildmaster's Hammer" (2009): Maghana, the Guildmaster of Thieves of Tahou, asks Sogh of Suentina to steal the hammer of the Guildmaster of Masons. But this mission is easier said than done...
    • "The Lost and the Damned" (2021)note : Shaar has a mission to protect the Lorestone that Lone Wolf seeks.
  • #10 The Dungeons of Torgar (1987): The Darklords have retrieved the Lorestones of Luomi, Gamir, and Vinaldo and are holding them in the city of Torgar. Lone Wolf attempts to rescue them before the Darklords figure out how to destroy them.
    • "Echoes of Lost Light" (2009): Lone Wolf has fallen into Darklord Gnaag's trap and he and the Lorestones have been thrown into a Shadowgate. Lone Wolf manages to to grab the Lorestone of Luomi mid-flight. In the moments before he arrives in Daziarn, the Lorestone calls out for Lone Wolf's aid and transports his spirit to Luomi to defend it.
    • "Partisan" (2022)note : The smuggler Sebb Jarrel leads his countrymen against agents of darkness.
  • #11 The Prisoners of Time (1987): Lone Wolf must navigate the strange realm of Daziarn, retrieve the remaining two Lorestones, and find a way to return to Magnamund.
    • "Lord of Meledor" (2009): Two years after Lone Wolf's adventure in Daziarn, Lorkon Ironheart, commander of the army of Meledor, resolves to put an end to bandit raids in the Nahma trisect.
  • #12 The Masters of Darkness (1988): Lone Wolf returns to Magnamund to find eight years have passed in the few days he spent in Daziarn and the Darklords have all but conquered it. To put an end to this, Lone Wolf infiltrates Helgedad, the capital of the Darklands, to destroy Darklord Gnaag.
    • "Aboard the Intrepid" (2009): The ship Intrepid rescues a man named Vijya Nath who is looking for an island called Thor Golgron. Captain Borse tries to decide whether to help this man or ignore his request. Some men aboard his ship may make his decision for him...

Grand Master seriesnote 

  • #13 The Plague Lords of Ruel (1990): Five years after defeating the Darklords, Lone Wolf has become a Kai Grand Master, rebuilt the Kai Monastery, and is training new students to become the next generation of Kai Lords. Lone Wolf must now foil a plot by the Cener Druids to wipe out the rest of the population with biological warfare.
    • "Plague Agent" (2010): Tennan, a Herbalish Druid, stumbles upon an agent of the Cener Druids and attempts to stop them.
  • #14 The Captives of Kaag (1991): Guildmaster Banedon is captured and held in Kaag by the evil Nadziranim sorcerers. Lone Wolf must rescue him before he is either killed or tortured into revealing the secrets of Left-handed Magic.
    • "Darkness Most Dire" (2010): After meeting Lone Wolf during his mission to rescue Banedon, a zombie minion regains his memories and sense of self. He is Dire, a former soldier who now wants nothing more than to escape Kaag.
  • #15 The Darke Crusade (1991): Lone Wolf must stop the evil warlord Magnaarn, who has acquired the Doomstone of Darke, which makes him powerful enough to rally the Nadziranim sorcerers and other forces of evil behind his cause.
    • "Castle Akital" (2011): One year before the events of The Darke Crusade, Captain Prarg investigates an outpost called Castle Akital after it hasn't given a sign of life for three weeks.
  • #16 The Legacy of Vashna (1991): Lone Wolf returns to Ruanon to foil another attempt to resurrect Darklord Vashna.
    • "A Long and Dire Road" (2011): Dire has finally escaped Kaag and is about to enter Sommerlund when he hears humans crying for help.
  • #17 The Deathlord of Ixia (1992): Lone Wolf must brave the frozen, zombie-infested land of Ixia to defeat the formidable Deathlord Ixiataaga, who has acquired the Deathstaff.
    • "Labyrinth of Sorrow" (2012): Karoth is a Helghast who has been spying on Ixia under the orders of the Darklords for over six years. He is unaware Lone Wolf has already defeated them. One day, he receives a message ordering him to prevent Deathlord Ixiataaga from conquering the world. He dutifully does as instructed, but who sent the message?
  • #18 Dawn of the Dragons (1992): As Lone Wolf is returning from his adventure in Ixia, he learns that Naar, the God of Evil, is laying siege to the Kai Monastery with armies and many fire breathing dragons. Lone Wolf must hurry back and rescue his students.
    • "The Dead of Chrude" (2013): Jergor, a vigilante peasant, is Palmyrion's only hope against raiders and marauders from Eldenora.
  • #19 Wolf's Bane (1993): Naar creates an Evil Knockoff of Lone Wolf called Wolf's Bane. The copy terrorizes the citizens and frames the hero for it. When Lone Wolf tries to bring his imposter to justice, they are both transported to a high tech world that has long been conquered by Naar.
    • "Dire Straights" (2013): The story of the noble zombie Dire continues. After reaching the Kai Monsastery, Lone Wolf sends Dire on a mission against the forces of evil.
  • #20 The Curse of Naar (1993): Lone Wolf enters the Plane of Darkness, the realm of Naar himself, to rescue both the demigoddess Alyss and the Moonstone from Naar's clutches.
    • "The Purifiers of Kazan-Oud" (2014): A young Magician of Dessi investigates a series of murders in the city of Herdos.

New Order series

  • #21 Voyage of the Moonstone (1994): The Moonstone has provided a great boon to all of Magnamund, but its great magic is disrupting the balance of nature. It is decided to return it to the Shianti. Since the forces of evil seek Supreme Master Lone Wolf at every opportunity, he instead assigns the task to one of his greatest students, now a Kai Grand Master.
    • "Echoes of the Moonstone" (2015): To assist the Grand Master's mission, Lone Wolf sets out carrying a decoy of the Moonstone, making Naar's forces think he is the one carrying it.
  • #22 The Buccaneers of Shadaki (1994): The Grand Master continues his mission to return the Moonstone to the Shianti.
    • "A Wytch's Nightmare" (2015): Yenna is an orphaned girl who now serves as a bodyguard for Lady Tanith. When Tanith's husband Grey Star goes missing, Yenna is tasked with locating him.
  • #23 Mydnight's Hero (1995): The King of Siyen has been assassinated. The Grand Master has 50 days to locate Prince Karvas and persuade him to return and claim his inheritance. If he fails, the sinister Baron Sadanzo will claim the throne.
    • "Lost in the Kelderwastes" (2019): A skyship called the Starstrider crashes in the Kelderwastes and will take at least a month to repair. Some of the crew who were patrolling go missing, so Acraban, Wizard of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star, braves the uncharted wilderness to find them.
  • #24 Rune War (1995): The evil Lord Vandyan of Eldenora has unearthed the lost secrets of rune magics used by Agarash the Damned during his ancient conquest of Magnamund. While Lone Wolf leads armies against his, the Grand Master infiltrates Vandyan's stronghold Skull-Tor to destroy the runes that fuel his powers.
    • "The Traitor's Reward" (2019): Kalen of Salony is a sellsword hired to fight against Eldenora's forces. He soon learns the enemies are not all from Magnamund but also from another world...
  • #25 Trail of the Wolf (1997): Lone Wolf has been abducted by the forces of Naar. The Grand Master must infiltrate the dreaded stronghold of Gazad Helkona to rescue him.
    • "Dire in the Dark" (2020): Another chapter in the story of Dire. Dire is lost in the deepest parts of Magnamund's underground, but is helped by an unlikely ally.
  • #26 The Fall of Blood Mountain (1997): The dwarves' mining activities have accidentally awakened an ancient monster called the Shom'zaa. The Grand Master must enter the subterranean kingdom of the dwarves to save them.
    • "Destiny Most Dire" (2020): The final part of Dire's story. Dire must hurry and defeat the villain Azavath once and for all.
  • #27 Vampirium (1998): The Grand Master must steal an evil weapon called the Claw of Naar from the evil vampire Autarch Sejanoz.
    • "Shadow Stalkers" (2021): Ernan is the captain of a vessel that once helped the Grand Master return the Moonstone. Eighteen years later, he is asked to travel to Hammerdal and rekindle the alliance between Durenor and Sommerlund, but the forces of darkness are determined to stop him.
    • "The Spawn of Hate" (2022)note : Gildas leads a group of border rangers to investigate an attack, but things escalate quickly.
  • #28 The Hunger of Sejanoz (1998): While the Grand Master is visiting the court of Xo-Lin, Autarch Sejanoz's forces lay siege to the palace. The Grand Master must deliver Xo-Lin to safety.
    • "The Edge of Night" (2022): A man is freed from Autarch Sejanoz's mind control and must escape and rescue his son from disciples of Naar.

The Final Fournote 

  • #29 The Storms of Chai (2016): Eighteen years after the events of Vampirium, the Grand Master is informed the Elder Magi still haven't figured out how to destroy the Claw of Naar. The forces of evil attack all over Magnamund, so Supreme Master Lone Wolf sends his six Grand Masters across the land to stop them. In the country of Chai, the Grand Master learns that one of the gems on Khea-khan Lao Tin's throne is actually the Eye of Agarash, an evil artifact on par with the Claw of Naar. The Grand Master must prevent the forces of evil from getting it.
    • "The Tides of Gorgoron" (2016): Lord Elkamo Doko is a Vakeros Warrior-Mage assigned to the garrison of Anasundi. It has been a full year since Agarashi hordes came out of the Chasm of Gorgoron to attack Dessi. Elkamo is tasked to protect a bridge on the Colo river but when a party of scouts doesn't come back from a patrol to the village of Cano, he knows something bad is about to happen.
  • #30 Dead in the Deep (2019): Kai Grand Master Steel Hand is imprisoned in the ruins of the ancient Lyrisian city of Emolyria, on the brink of the Maakengorge; the largest mustering points of the servants of darkness. While his allies engage Emolyria's armies to distract them, the Grand Master attempts to rescue him, but discovers the evil denizens of Emolyria are ready to unleash the true legacy of the Darklords, fiery, hungry, and fed by the endless pain of the Restless Dead.
    • "The Kaum Before the Storm" (2019): Kai Grand Master Blazer goes on a mission to investigate rumors of a rising force of strange new monstrosities in the nation of Circoria, seek out their source, and put an end to them.
  • #31 The Dusk of Eternal Night (2020): The Archlord Vashna lives once more, and prepares his armies to march on Magnamund. Sommerlund and the Kai prepare their armies, and the Grand Master is a general in the Kai army. But even as this doom approaches, a secret society composed of servants of the dark god are reaching the culmination of a millenia-long scheme to revive the True Son of Naar, and the Grand Master must race against time to foil their plans.
  • #32 Light of the Kai Vol. 1 (2024):
  • #33 Light of the Kai Vol. 2 (2025):

Autumn Snow seriesnote 

  • #1 The Pit of Darkness (2015): Autumn Snow, a young Kai Initiate of the New Kai Order established by Lone Wolf, accompanies her teacher Silver Flame to the Kirlundin Isles. It seems like a routine inspection mission at first, but it soon turns into a fight for survival.
  • #2 The Wildlands Hunt (2019): After discovering a scheme hatched by the surviving servants of Naar, Autumn Snow leaves the Kirlundin Isles for the Sommerlund. However, she's captured during her return journey and ends up in the city of Ragadorn, destined to be sold as a slave. If she wants to avoid her bleak fate, she now has to escape her captors and find a way to flee the town.
  • #3 Slaves of the Mire (TBA):

The Huntress seriesnote 

  • #1 Marked for Death (2024): A woman stumbled out of the Vassagonian desert, covered in blood and with amnesia. Eight years later, she has become a bounty hunter and mercenary called The Huntress. In the city Toran, the noble Haert family hires her to retrieve a lost relic, offering to tell her her true name and past if she succeeds. She soon finds others are after the relic as well.
  • #2 Quelling of the Flame (2024): The Huntress must brave the war-torn city Dalobu to find a secret society called The Walking Flame for clues to her past.
  • #3 Echoes of Eternity (2024): Naar once destroyed a sacred island called Voltac, reducing it to the Dessi Trench. It is now a dangerous place, but The Huntress sails there for clues to her past.

Legends of Lone Wolfnote 

  1. Eclipse of the Kai (1989): Describes events that happened before Flight from the Dark.
  2. The Dark Door Opens (1989): A novelization of Flight from the Dark.
  3. The Sword of the Sun (1989): A novelization of Fire on the Water.note 
  4. Hunting Wolf (1990): A novelization of The Caverns of Kalte.
  5. The Claws of Helgedad (1991): Lone Wolf is taken captive and held in the Darklands as a pawn in a political struggle.
  6. The Sacrifice of Ruanon (1991): A novelization of The Chasm of Doom.note 
  7. The Birthplace (1992): A novelization of the first half of Shadow on the Sand.
  8. The Book of the Magnakai (1992): A novelization of the second half of Shadow on the Sand.
  9. The Tellings (1993): A collection of short stories.
  10. The Lorestone of Varetta (1993): A novelization of The Kingdoms of Terror.
  11. The Secret of Kazan-Oud (1994): A novelization of Castle Death.
  12. The Rotting Land (1994): A novelization of The Jungle of Horrors.

Other Books

  • The Magnamund Companion (1986): An illustrated encyclopedia to the series.
    • "Dawn of the Darklords": A prequel adventure to Flight from the Dark featuring the wizard Banedon, from leaving Toran up to meeting Lone Wolf.
  • The Skull of Agarash (1994): A graphic novel, chronologically taking place after the Magnakai series (between books #12 and #13). Khadro and his band of pirates have acquired an artifact called the Skull of Agarash and use its power to wreak havoc. Lone Wolf pursues them when they kidnap his friend Lord Rimoah during one of their raids.
  • The Disciples of Darkness (2016)note : A standalone gamebook. Tessa, a young woman who fled during the war against the Darklords, is taken in by the Herbalish Druids. As she begins training as a druid, she is surprisingly given a dangerous mission to infiltrate the Darklands.

All the currently published gamebooks and a few of the others can, with the permission of Dever, be played online at Project Aon.

Also of note is Joe Dever's Freeway Warrior series, which uses similar rules, but exchanges Magnamund for a Mad Max-inspired post-holocaust setting.

Not to be confused with the famous Lone Wolf and Cub manga series, which has no connection.


Lone Wolf and its spin-offs provide examples of:

    open/close all folders 

    Tropes A to B 
  • Aborted Arc: Voyage of the Moonstone has the player learning Grey Star's recently gone missing, hinting at a future adventure to save him. In The Storms of Chai, he's mentioned several times in the events that took place between that and the previous book with no mention of going missing, and off-screen became one of Lone Wolf's major allies.
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: A few, most notably the Baga-darooz in Barrakeesh, capital of Vassagonia. This sewer is vast enough to house giant lizards and other nasty monsters, and criminals can be condemned to be locked within. Unlike some other fantasy examples, however, it's realistically depicted as extremely filthy, smelly and insalubrious — just getting an open wound in contact with the water can give you a horrible disease.
  • Adipose Rex: The late Zakhan Moudalla, as mentioned in Shadow on the Sand. A statue of him provides lot of cover.
  • Adventure-Friendly World: Magnamund is constantly being attacked by the forces of Naar, necessitating the Kai Order running about essentially putting out fires. When the Kai Order is down to one person, Lone Wolf has to do this all by himself....
  • Agony Beam: Psychic attacks — including those used by the hero, like Mindblast and Psi-surge — are explicitly causing pain any time their effects are described in detail. Kai Lords mostly use them in combat to weaken, disarm or hurt enemies. Villains like the Darklords, of course, have no such qualms and are known to unleash such powers on minions who've disappointed them.
  • Alien Non-Interference Clause: The Shianti are forbidden from interfering in human affairs, even though Wytch-King Shasarak, one of their number, is doing just that. Of course, when a human baby accidentally lands on their island, there Ain't No Rule about teaching him to use magic and "allowing" him to go into the world to deal with the threat.
  • Allergic to Evil:
    • Evil has pretty bad effects on anyone who isn't a supernatural embodiment of it such as the Darklords, and Lone Wolf himself is particularly sensitive to it. The Doomstones for example are the Kryptonite to his Superman (the only reason Lone Wolf's able to get close enough to finish off the Big Bad of book 15 is the Doomstone he's using is weakened from overuse at the time; earlier in the same book just being close to it sucks all the strength from Lone Wolf's body). When facing extremely powerful and evil entities like Deathlord Ixiataaga, he needs the strongest psychic defense available just to survive this evil presence.
    • Probably the greatest example would be in The Plague Lords of Ruel where Lone Wolf, upon looking at the library of evil tomes the villain has, gets so outraged, he takes 2 points of damage. It's not the tomes being so full of evil magic that they harm Lone Wolf the way so many Artifact of Doom do so through the series, no. It's literally Lone Wolf getting so angry and outraged by what he's seeing it might actually kill him if he's got low enough endurance! That's right, your own emotions can kill you!
      You scan the walls of this reading room and as your eye passes over the books and scrolls stored upon its shelves, you feel an almost uncontrollable urge to tear every one of them to pieces. The wickedness they contain, gleaned after thousands of years of perpetrating the vilest herbcraft known to Magnamund, is so potent that you feel your Kai strength waning in their presence (lose 2 ENDURANCE points).
    • A similar example happens in Vampirium where Lone Wolf's lieutenant has been charged with capturing an immensely powerful sceptre known as the Claw of Naar and delivering it to the Elder Magi to ensure its destruction. Once he manages to get the sceptre, its immense evilness causes an irresistible urge in the Grandmaster to try to destroy the Claw on the spot with his own enchanted weapon, even though he's been told only the Elder Magi have the power to destroy it. There is no way to avoid this, it's just a question of how badly damaged your weapon is in the process.
    • Legends of Lone Wolf suggest there's even something of this to the weapons the Darklords issue to their rank-and-file soldiers. When Lone Wolf and Banedon have their first meeting Lone Wolf advises him to take one of the fallen Giaks' swords to protect himself, but Banedon begs off because there's an intrinsic evilness even to that kind of weapon that keeps him from being able to touch it.
  • All There in the Manual:
    • The novelizations introduce several key characters such as Naar or Alyss. (Good luck knowing who or what Alyss is otherwise.)
    • Also the Magnamund Companion; nothing really vital, or that doesn't come up elsewhere, but loads and loads of awesome world-building. As well as a Lone Wolf board game and a short solo adventure with Banedon as protagonist, providing some backdrop to Book 1.
    • The Club Newsletters and various Facebook posts from Joe Dever also fill in some gaps.
  • Always Chaotic Evil:
    • Those beings created directly by Naar, the God of Darkness, such as Agarash and the Darklords, have his essence in place of the souls that living creatures possess, accounting for their Always Chaotic Evil nature.
    • On the other hand, their servants, such as the orc-like Giaks, are evil only because they have never had any other choice, having been bred and used as warrior-slaves for generations. They do not know love, kindness, or compassion because they have never seen it, and readers are swiftly led to feel pity for them even as they kill and torture their way across the heroes' homelands. The novelizations feature Carag, a Giak who turned against its masters and joined Lone Wolf. Unfortunately, he is implied to have been killed by the Darklords by the end of The Claws of Helgedad.
    • The Szalls, a Giak sub-race who fled enslavement by the Darklords and settled in the Wildlands, are much more benign. There's a spot in Book 2 where Szalls try to warn you not to go near a monster. (Though the little bastards do steal your horse afterwards.)
  • Ambadassador: Some of Lone Wolf's adventures start out as outwardly "diplomatic missions", like the voyage to Vassagonia in Book 5. Of course, this being Lone Wolf, it always turns quickly to Aggressive Negotiations.
  • Amplifier Artifact:
    • The Psychic Ring and the Grey Crystal Ring. They are implied to be useful only because Lone Wolf has strong Psychic Powers already. Their uses are very situational, however.
    • In the New Order series, the Grand Master suspects the presence of the Moonstone is boosting the efficiency on his Healing Hands.
    • Grey Star can acquire a Mind Gem that makes his Mind Control spell more effective.
  • Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: In later books, several enemies have their strength boosted through the roof by some artifact (often an evil one) to make a credible threat for Lone Wolf (or his lieutenant). A good way to identify it is the case is when said item is mentioned alongside the name of the enemy next to the stat block. Another common point is that the magic doohickey will never be picked up by the hero afterward, to keep game balance. Either it is destroyed in the fight, too evil for Lone Wolf to consider using, or just forgotten about.
    • The most infamous exampleinvoked is Zakhan Kimah's Orb of Death in The Cauldron of Fear. Notable is that we see how he received the artifact from Lord Haakon in exchange for his allegiance to the Darklords in a previous book, Shadow on the Sand.
    • In The Dungeons of Torgar, Baron Shinzar with Ogg-kor-Kaggaz (a flaming battleaxe) or the Ziran with a Powerstave — in both cases only if you have the Sommerswerd.
    • In The Plague Lords of Ruel, Brother Croumah with a Power Rod and an Acolyte of Vashna with a Medallion of Protection.
    • Warlord Magnaarn with the Nyras Sceptre in The Darke Crusade; though here it is two-edged, since the Doomstone is also bringing him to the brink of undeath.
    • Demonlord Tagazin wears a Power Helm for his final battle against Lone Wolf in The Deathlord of Ixia. Not that he isn't already plenty dangerous without it.
    • Ixiataaga himself with the Deathstaff (uncharged at the time, luckily for Lone Wolf). Though again, the Deathlord would certainly still be a terrific foe even unarmed.
    • Prince Lutha's Ring of Power in Dawn of the Dragons is another stand-out.
    • For enemies of Lone Wolf's lieutenant in the New Order Series, there are Sesketera with a Medallion of Weaponskill in The Buccaneers of Shadaki, Baron Sadanzo with a Gem of Naar in Mydnight's Hero, or Xaol the Necromancer with a Serpent Rod in Trail of the Wolf.
  • Ancient Conspiracy: The Naarvakim, foul supporters and disciples of Agarash the Damned, which were founded and led by the Nadziranim alongside the Liganim, Kitaezi Shamans, Cener Druids and a caste of mysterious Agarashi sorcerors known only as the Yethgaw. Their high-ranking agents have embedded themselves as nobles, military officers, bureaucrats, Royal Courtiers and leaders within all the courts, guilds and armies in Vassagonia, Shadaki, Bhanar, Eldenor and the Freelands, such as Lord Sesketera of the Imperial Shadakine Confederation, Funtal Khazullo of Vassagonia, Autarchess Balorodah of Bhanor, Baron Mazimax of Siya and a host of Imperial Agarashi, Drakkar warlords and Acolyte Great Elders. The majority of their military forces, which consist of Drakkarim, Shadakine, Bhanarian, Vassagonian, Kitaezi Shamans, Cener Druids, Liganim and Nadziranim, while Demons, Vampires, Agarashi, Chagarashi and Helghast are also incorporated within their ranks.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different:
    • Lone Wolf's star apprentice takes over in Book 21, starting over from relative scratch. And if you don't want to name him, you can use a table to combine two words to give him a supposedly cool name. Or more likely, something absurd like "Sword Shield"note .
    • The World of Lone Wolf books feature Grey Star the Wizard, a young wunderkind trained in magic by the Shianti, beings so good at magic that the gods had to ask — nicely — for them to leave humanity alone. He's an orphan marooned on the rocks of their island by a storm, and finding him was serendipitous since they are forbidden to leave their island, yet there's this evil sorcerer taking over the world right outside. So they rear him, train him in their ways and send him off to topple an empire.
    • The Updated Re-release usually has a mini-story at the end with a character tied into the plot. Although there is a reoccuring hero named Dire, a Revenant Zombie that Lone Wolf met in The Captives of Kaag.
  • Animal Assassin: In book 12, The Masters of Darkness, while dressed as the enemy and hitching a ride on a giant land vehicle, Lone Wolf is attacked in his cabin by a Plaak, a small jelly-like horror with venomous fangs. Ironically, this isn't because Lone Wolf's disguise has failed; the target of the assassination attempt is the creature he usurped the identity.
  • Animalistic Abomination: Many monsters fit this. Most notable is Demonlord Tagazin, who appears as a huge sabertoothed jackal.
  • Animal-Themed Superbeing: Of the Animal Alias subtype. "Lone Wolf" mostly invokes the Noble Wolf trope and the fact he's the Last of His Kind. Though he sure has plenty superpowers through his Kai disciplines, none are especially lupine-inspired. Some illustrations use a wolf motif, for example as a belt buckle in The Skull of Agarash. Said graphic novel also superimposes the image of a wolf's head over Lone Wolf's face to show he's using his psychic powers.
  • Animate Dead:
    • In book 6, The Kingdoms of Terror, evil lordling Roark calls upon Demonlord Tagazin to animate the dead of a nearby cemetery, and sics them on Lone Wolf. His control is lacking, however, and as the hero dispatches the summoned undead, some others start attacking Roark's men, forcing him to flee.
    • In book 17, The Deathlord of Ixia, after the Mega-Maw Maneuver, Lone Wolf can observe an undead necromancer animating into zombies the slaughtered equipage of Red Shirts that were accompanying him.
  • Annoying Arrows: Zigzagged. When an enemy tries to shoot you with an arrow, it's often painful but not especially damaging if you're lucky. But if you successfully shoot someone with an arrow, they can die automatically. This means that the bow is one of your best choices for Weapon Mastery skill.
  • Another Dimension:
    • The books The Prisoners of Time and Beyond the Nightmare Gate involve Lone Wolf and Grey Star traveling to the Daziarn plane, outside the normal universe of Magnamund.
    • In the Grand Master series, Lone Wolf makes repeated (and unwelcome) visits to the Plane of Darkness, Naar's home turf.
  • Anticlimax Boss: invoked
    • Darklords Zagarna (Book 2) and Gnaag (Book 12) are destroyed without a fight by the power of the Sommerswerd. In gameplay terms an anticlimax, but the satisfying and incredibly badass descriptions of these literal embodiments of evil being annihilated in a blast of holy sunfire makes up for it.
    • Wytch-King Shasarak and Agarash the Damned from the World of Lone Wolf books starring Grey Star might end up being these. The former can have a fearsome Combat Strength of 30, but that can be reduced to 10 if you take certain options in the pre-fight, making him significantly weaker. Grey Star beats the latter by simply throwing the Moonstone at the gate Agarash is trying to pass through, thus preventing his escape. Although he's not if you try to directly match powers, which results in instant crushing defeat and damnation.
  • Anti-Magic: The Sommerswerd protects its wielder against most direct hostile magic, usually absorbing the energy harmlessly into the blade. It sometimes even allows to reflect it back at the spell-caster. Some magical attacks, presumably from artifacts of a similar level of power, have been known to circumvent this protection, however.
  • "Arabian Nights" Days: Vassagonia in Book 5.
  • Arc Welding: Many of the monsters fought throughout the series are revealed to be Agarashi (demon spawn).
  • Armed Altruism: In Fire on the Water, if you have the Magic Spear (the only weapon at that point that can harm a Helghast) you can give it to Lord-Lieutenant Rhygar so that he can guard the entrance of the Tarnalin tunnel. In early editions, you get killed for doing this because you yourself now have no weapon effective against a Helghast.
  • Arrows on Fire: Magi-magic grants this as a spell.
  • Artifact of Death:
    • The Caverns of Kalte "rewards" you with a big shiny jewel if you screw up a puzzle... which unholy radiation can end up killing you if you are not warned in time and discard it.
    • Another Doomstone appearing in The Darke Crusade has pretty much the same effect on its wielder, High Warlord Magnaarn. The Scepter of Nyras, on which it is mounted, is a powerful artifact allowing to control the armies of the fallen Darklords... but it is also turning him into an undead servant of the Doomstone itself.
    • The Deathstaff from The Legacy of Vashna is also a quite deadly artifact. Just touching it causes Lone Wolf to lose Hit Points, and it drains some more every time it is used.
    • Helshezag, sword of Darklord Kraagenskûl, is a powerful weapon, but likewise drains Lone Wolf's Hit Points when used (much less than the staff, though).
    • Averted, surprisingly, by the Dagger of Vashna. It's the weapon of the most powerful Darklord ever, but it can be used safely by Lone Wolf. However, it's only a powerful weapon against Darklords (otherwise it's just a magic dagger, useful against targets immune to ordinary weaponry).
    • Given their very evil origins (the Doomstones were created by Naar's most powerful servant Agarash the Damned, and the Deathstaff was forged by Naar himself) this makes perfect sense. The only ones who can use these things without any consequences are supernatural beings of pure evil such as the Darklords and the Deathlord of Ixia.
  • Artifact of Doom:
    • The Darklord weapons and the Deathstaff are examples of evil weapons that are powerful but have gameplay penalties when used in battle.
    • Story-wise, the worst artifacts are the Doomstones. The Doomstones are essentially crystallized Black Magic created by a powerful demon that eventually corrupts and kills anyone who uses them that isn't already a being of pure evil. Meaning that the strongest antagonists can use them with impunity, but Lone Wolf collapses as soon as he gets near one. The Doomstone of Darke featured in Book 15 The Darke Crusade deserves a special mention here. In the end, it turns out to be the REAL Big Bad of the book, having made the Disc-One Final Boss its frail, near-undead puppet. Oddly they seem to become deadlier as Lone Wolf himself becomes more powerful, seemingly to do with his increased mental senses; in the first series if Lone Wolf finds a Doomstone he won't even know it unless a friendly wizard warns him, while in book 15, where Lone Wolf has entered a heretofore totally unknown tier of Kai skills, just being a few feet away is enough to weaken him to the point of unconsciousness.
    • In The Skull of Agarash graphic novel, the eponymous demonic cranium is another artifact that needs to be destroyed by Lone Wolf.
    • A rather weird example is the Moonstone, a good Artifact of Doom: crops grow better, children are born healthier, summers are longer... but it threatens to destroy the natural equilibrium of Magnamund. The Legends of Lone Wolf series elaborates: the gods have literally set up a Balance Between Good and Evil. The Shianti were outsiders who meant well, but by putting the Moonstone into Magnamund, this gives Naar the right to match it.
  • Artistic License – Gun Safety: In book 10, The Dungeons of Torgar, Lone Wolf can end up interrogated by Eruan soldiers who suspect that he is a spy. So, he has to properly answer questions while sitting at a table and facing an officer... with a crossbow aimed at his back. Now, they certainly aren't used to people with Super-Reflexes capable of springing away before the bolt even hit, but that still means the officer is willingly putting himself straight into the trajectory of a deadly projectile, and it's indeed possible for him to get hit in a path where the interrogation turns badly.
  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence:
    • The funerals of Lord Casis in The Buccaneers of Shadaki, as the Elder Magi is passing over to the Plane of Light, leaving no body behind.
    • The Shianti are said to have done this after Grey Star returned the Moonstone to them. This was later retconned by the main series, as they were still around on the island where they spent their exile so that the new Grand Master could return the Moonstone to them. It happens to them again between Hunger of Sejanoz and The Storms of Chai. They ascend to live at Ishir's side, and leave the Island of Lorn to the Kai order. Lone Wolf orders the construction of a second Kai monastery on the island, completed 10 years later.
  • The Atoner: The Redeemers, a silent order of healers that helps Lone Wolf from time to time, are atoning not for their own misdeeds, but for the misdeeds of their ancestors, the Patar. The Patar played a key role in the near extinction of their former masters the Elder Magi by plague. Ashamed, they vowed that they and their descendants would dedicate themselves to fighting disease in all its forms.
  • Atrocious Arthropods: Archlord Gnaag has the appearance of a hideous, humanoid fly. He's one of the most dangerous Darklords thanks to his intelligence and careful planning, and the Big Bad of most of the Magnakai arc.
  • Attack Animal:
    • The Darklords' armies use several vicious species to augment their forces. The Drakkarim train warhounds called Akataz and Giaks occasionally use Doomwolves as mounts. Giant flying predators like the Kraan and even bigger Zlaanbeasts are also put to good use.
    • The Vassagonian forces Lone Wolf faces early in his career favor warhounds and giant birds called Itikar.
  • Attack of the Monster Appendage: One of the monsters found in Castle Death is a giant verrucose fist occupying most of the passageway, which crushes Tavig to death. The full monster is never seen.
  • Attack Reflector: The Sommerswerd can sometimes be used to volley a magical attack back at the caster. An example from Shadow on the Sand is the Vordak riding a Zlanbeast and firing on Banedon's skyship with a magic staff, who subsequently gets a taste of its own Fireball.
  • Awesome, but Temporary:
    • The Ironheart Broadsword in The Prisoners of Time. If you don't have the Sommerswerd, it gives you a fighting chance against the Chaos-master. After this combat, however, Lone Wolf is politely asked to return the sword to the tomb you've looted... ahem... where you found it.
    • The Deathstaff in The Legacy of Vashna. It gives an even bigger bonus than the Sommerswerd, but you won't keep it past the end of the book. In this case it's good riddance, however, because it's also an Artifact of Death and using it drains your Endurance like crazy.
  • Back from the Brink: Books 1 and 2 cover this for the country of Sommerlund, which Zagarna made his first target in his war. Books 8 through 12 seem to cover this for the entirety of Northern Magnamund, as it seems Gnaag is saving Sommerlund for last.
  • Bad Samaritan:
    • In Fire on the Water, Lone Wolf can get shipwrecked, and there is a chance he can get rescued by a boat full of fishermen. The fishermen appear friendly and even offer him food. However, once they reach shore, they suddenly knock Lone Wolf out and steal all his stuff, then leave him inside a small dinghy in the docks.
    • In Shadow on the Sand, while Lone Wolf is pursued by the Sharnazim in Barrakesh, a civilian pretends to help him by hiding him in his house, but plans to betray the hero for a quick buck, as Lone Wolf's sixth sense warn him.
  • Bag of Holding: Can be found in book 26 and increases the space in your backpack.
  • Balance Between Good and Evil: Mentioned in some places, particularly as one of the reasons for the Exile of the Shianti. Their Moonstone has to be returned to them after being borrowed by Lone Wolf for a while because his home nation starts to have way too many "good" things happening to it at once, like winter and autumn disappearing into an eternal spring.
  • Barbarian Tribe:
    • The Ice Barbarians of Kalte, for the bad guys.
    • The Lost Tribe of the Kundi and the Masbate, for the good guys.
  • Battle Aura: Zakhan Kimah has one on steroids with his Orb of Death. The intro to his fight with Lone Wolf in Book 9 has him strolling across the battlefield nonchalantly, with the only normal soldier who dares strike him being instantly disintegrated.invoked This is very likely to happen to Lone Wolf as well.
  • Battle Cry:
    • "For Sommerlund and the Kai!" — Order of the Kai
    • "Shaag Drakkarim!" — Drakkarim
    • "SHEGGA-ASH-TAAG!" — Giaks
    • "Blood for Blood" — Skyrider Dwarven crew
  • The Battle Didn't Count: Happens a couple times to Lone Wolf and once to Grey Star.
    • When Lone Wolf defeats the Rahkos in Book 7, it will immediately kill him if he turns his back on it.
    • Grey Star's fight against the Kleasá ends up being one of these as well. Even if Grey Star "wins" the fight — which he might not, considering it's very tough — the Kleasá still kicks his ass. The Love Interest Tanith has to make a Heroic Sacrifice to save Grey Star but she recovers at the end of the second book.
  • Beard of Evil: Prince Lutha sports a very neat goatee, and he's a devoted agent of Naar trying to execute Lone Wolf.
  • Bears Are Bad News: One rare actual bear Lone Wolf meets in the series (depending on if he has Animal Control or not) will either just leave him alone when he gets attacked by a pack of hungry Akataz, or he'll come to Lone Wolf's aid and curb-stomp them. So it's bad news for Lone Wolf's enemies, making this a nice change of pace from Everything Trying to Kill You.
  • Beauty Equals Goodness: The good races in the series are mostly human or humanoid, and the good gods like Kai and Ishir, and good god-like beings like Alyss, Serocca and the Shianti are humanoid as well with additions that would seem exotic rather than off-putting. Most of the races affiliated with evil are ugly or monstrous in some way, the villain leaders are mostly demonic abominations, and the evil deities like the Chaos-Master and Naar himself are hideous ever-shifting mishmashes of various different species. There are a couple of exceptions like the Crocaryx who are actually servants of the good gods, and Shamath on Naar's side.
  • Belly Mouth: Darklord Zagarna is described in the novels as having a fanged maw in the belly, which is constantly feeding on Giak or human flesh.
  • The Berserker: Some enemies are described as entering fights in a state of rage, making them immune to basic psychic attacks.
    • This is common with the Drakkarim; they're sometimes seen hacking at lowly soldiers on their side, like Giaks, just to reach their main foe.
    • Several Acolytes of Vashna are also seen in battle frenzy in The Legacy of Vashna, thanks to the Adgana herb.
  • Big Bad: While Naar, the King of the Darkness, is the ultimate Big Bad of the setting, each series also has its own Big Bad.
    • Darklord Haakon is the final Big Bad in the Kai series, though he's not challenged until Book 5 and most of the Kai series sees "the Darklords" as a whole as the threat.
    • Darklord Gnaag emerges as the main villain of the Magnakai series after he claims the title of Archlord in Book 8.
    • Naar himself takes a more direct role in the Grand Master series.
    • The vampire Sejanoz becomes the Big Bad midway through the New Order Kai series.
    • Further south, the evil Wytch-King Shasarak runs the Shadakine Empire in the World of Lone Wolf books and he's Grey Star's nemesis.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: Most of the time, Naar is essentially a Greater-Scope Villain, operating through various minions such as the Darklords, Archdruid Cadak, the Demoness Shamath and Agarash the Damned. They don't usually work together or have anything to do with each other, and some individual villains (Deathlord Ixiataaga as the prime example) act as independent Big Bads of their own books but are only remotely linked to Naar.
  • Bilingual Bonus: Some of the books include messages written in the Giak language, which can give interesting hints if you can read them (with the help of the Magnamund Companion).
  • Black and White Magic: There is left-handed magic, practiced by the good wizards of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star — which generally focuses on healing, protection, transportation, diplomacy, and detection — and right-handed magic, practiced by the Nadziranim, evil wizards in service to the Darklords of Helgedad — which tends to focus on destruction and the infliction of pain. That being said, left-handed magic does have at least one offensive spell, Lightning Hand, which enables the caster to shoot a lightning bolt out of his hand. There are also other varieties of magic, such as Magi-Magic, practiced by the good Elder Magi of Dessi, as well as the Shianti magic, as practiced by Grey Star, to say nothing of the more supernatural powers of the Kai.
  • Black-and-White Morality: Things are pretty clean-cut in these books, at least as far as the main conflict is concerned. Especially with how most of the villains are outright demonic beings in the direct employ of the supreme god of evil. Evil and Good also are tangible forces that the protagonist can perceive.
  • Black Magic: Right-handed Magic, the evil counterpart to the Left-handed Magic used by Banedon and the other wizards of the Crystal Star. Used by the Nadziranim for such fun things as demon summoning, transformation, various destructive spells (though to be fair, the Lefties have these too), and necromancy.
  • Black Speech:
    • The Giak language, lingua franca of the Darklands and Drakkarim.
    • There is also a "dark tongue" that only the Darklords have been seen using. It is described as a harsh, guttural language, with words and sounds that the mouths of men could never form.
  • Black Swords Are Better: The Drakkarim and other Darklord soldiers use weapons with black blades, made of Kagonite. The most dangerous of them all are of course the Darklord swords like Kraagenskûl's Helshezag or Gnaag's Nadazgada, though they still pale before the Sommerswerd. Wolf's Bane wields a black version of the Sommerswerd that burns with black flames.
  • Blessed with Suck: Or possibly The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard, though replace "The Computer" with "The Author". The Sommerswerd, mentioned below, makes the next few books in the series much easier, but after that, Dever began compensating by making some fights harder, or taking away non-combat options, if you have it. Perhaps the most egregious example is in Book 11, where having the Sommerswerd forces you into a battle that is almost unwinnable without cheating or massive good luck.

    And in Book 12, if you try to use it too soon... you just die. Since, if you draw it from its korlinium scabbard in the Darklands, the release of holy energy will tell the entire forces of darkness where you are. The same goes for Books 17 and 20. Even an Infinity +1 Sword is of little good when you're lit up like a Christmas tree and ripe for every evil creature in an entire realm of evil to converge on your location. On the other hand, if you do bring it along it will vaporize the Big Bad.

    You know it's bad when there're fan justifications for the hero not to have his Infinity +1 Sword for Book 11, and for continuity's sake Book 10 as well.
  • Blood Is Squicker in Water: In Book 10, The Dungeons of Torgar, one of the paths to the end is to travel through the deadly Hellswamp with the partisan leader Sebb Jarel. Eventually, Lone Wolf and Jarel are ambushed by the dreaded Ciquali (frogmen) and Jarel is dragged underwater.
    He surfaces, sword in hand, but is pulled under again and this time he does not reappear. A trail of bubbles and a patch of red water drifting with the current are all there is to mark the grave of Sebb Jarel.
  • Bloody Murder:
    • In The Kingdom of Terror, if you press the attack against the Dakomyd, its watery blood splashing on Lone Wolf's arm burn through his tunic and sear the flesh, as well as corroding the weapon.
    • In The Deathlord of Ixia, a Lencian soldier strikes an undead Cabalah with a sword, which only results in a splash of corrosive blood dissolving the weapon and reducing his hand to a stump.
  • Bluff the Impostor: In The Caverns of Kalte, Lone Wolf meets a prisoner in the enemy's fortress, who claims to be a merchant from Ragadorn, but is in fact a Helghast shapeshifter sent by the Darklords. The game allows asking him a few questions about the city of Ragadorn (visited by Lone Wolf in his earlier quest), and the monster gets the answers wrong. The text never points out whether he is right or not, however: it is up to the player to remember what are the correct answers from the previous book.
  • Body Armor as Hit Points: Early on, ordinary armors such as helmet, padded vest or chainmail add to your max Endurance points. Later in the series, however, rarer armors made of special materials or magical add more to your Combat Skill than to your Endurance.
  • Body Horror: The Beholder of Yanis in Book 11 used to be a pretty decent-looking guy until he struck a bargain with the Chaos-master. Now he's a frail homunculus with an oversized head.
  • Boisterous Bruiser:
    • The mercenary captain in Book 6.
    • Thog the Barbarian in the novels.
  • Bond One-Liner:
    • In Book 6, the mercenary captain quips after smashing the skull of a river pirate leader against the ship's mast.
      Captain: [gleefully] Ha! I've always said the Deldenians have no head for a fight!
    • In The Skull of Agarash, Guildmaster Mazrah comments about a pair of pirates getting skewered by single arrow through both skulls.
      Mazrah: ... Nothing between the ears to stop it, you see...
  • Bond Villain Stupidity: Both Naar and his servant Shamath have Lone Wolf more or less at their mercy at several points, yet decide to "test" him instead of outright attacking. Naar has the slight excuse of showing contempt for Ishir and Kai, but Shamath (a giant demoness) decides that she wants a "battle of wits" which consists of... a simple math question.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • Despite the Kai being psychic ranger wizard monks, one of the most useful disciplines is Weaponskill and its upgrades. Adding 2–5 to your Combat Skill as long as you possess one of a growing list of weapons really helps cut down on combat injuries, especially in books where boss fights are common. Unlike advanced psychic attacks, this does not cost Endurance to use, and no creatures happen to be immune to it. Only in the occasional No-Gear Level can this become limited, and even then you're pretty safe as long as you have sword mastery as all you'll need to do is defeat a guard and take his.
    • Some of the situational bonuses from the Infinity -1 Sword selection in the New Order series are like this. The base bonus is +5, with it jumping up in fights with certain circumstances. Some of these are even the equal of the Sommerswerd at +8, but they occur so rarely that you might get to actually apply that bonus twice in the whole series (while fighting underwater, fighting an enemy made of rock, fighting something that breathes fire...), and you're probably better off picking one that gives you a smaller bonus in more common circumstances, like the sword that only gives you a +6 bonus... but you get to count that during the hours of daylight.
  • Borrowed Without Permission: During Voyage of the Moonstone, in Cape Kabar, the travelling companions don't have enough money to buy five horses. The Grand Master is reluctant to commit horse thief, but Sligh manages to mollify him/her.
    Sligh: I respect your honesty, my lord, but surely you don't want to have to walk all the way to Bisutan? I'm not saying we steal five horses, I'm saying we just borrow them for a while. We can hire a rider to bring them back just as soon as we reach Bisutan.
  • Bottled Heroic Resolve:
    • Adgana herb. The strongest CS-enhancing drug in the series, but with a risk of nasty addiction that can reduce the Endurance score permanently.
    • Alether potion, too, with less enhancement but without the side effects. As a result, much more common; you can find a draught about Once per Book.
  • Bow and Sword in Accord: Starting with the Magnakai series, the hero can use a bow alongside melee weapons.
  • Brain Food: The Rakhos of Castle Death is a floating, undead, severed hand fond of eating brains. And yes, if Lone Wolf makes the mistake of turning his back to it after thinking he has defeated it in combat, we get a graphic description of the monster digging its fingers in his skull to consume the cerebral matter.
  • Bridge Logic: Early on in Castle Death, Lone Wolf has the option of using his telekinesis to bring a downed tree over a chasm to cross it (assuming he's picked up the Nexus discipline by then, anyway).
  • Bullet Time: In Book 9, during an escape from jail, it is possible for Lone Wolf (on a very high roll helped by Huntmastery and the Circle of Solaris) to see time slowing down as arrows fly toward him, and cut them into matchwood with his sword in one strike.
  • Buried Alive: In Book 15, The Darke Crusade, High Warlord Magnaarn traps Lone Wolf inside an underground temple, which he brings down on the hero. Lone Wolf isn't killed by the collapse but is buried alive and has to tunnel a way out during sixteen days with only the food and water he was carrying. He still survives thanks to his Magnakai powers and determination, but is severely weakened by the ordeal.
  • But Thou Must!: Since each book has to have 350 entries (except Book 5) and there's only one good ending, it's inevitable that some choices don't actually matter (you'll end up at the same destination page in a couple turns regardless of the choice). The entries are well-written enough (usually) that this doesn't seem like too forced.

    Tropes C to E 
  • Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp":
    • All characters have Endurance Points.
    • Grey Star also use Willpower for Magic Points.
  • Canon Discontinuity: One of the novelizations (all largely written by John Grant with input from Dever) has an epilogue which is placed at a Distant Finale where a character drives a car and has a digital watch. Any and all suggestions of a technological future for Magnamund were not written by Joe Dever, and have been purged as heresy. (Not to say that advanced technology and Magitek don't exist, they just will never get widespread on Magnamund.)
  • Canon Immigrant: Alyss, the mischievous demigoddess, originated in the Legends of Lone Wolf novels penned by John Grant, but shows up in the proper adventure starting Book 16.
  • Capital Letters Are Magic: Once you get to the Grand Master series, Lone Wolf stops detecting regular evil and deals instead with Evil, referring evidently to enemies sent directly by Naar rather than his minions.
  • Carnivore Confusion: Book 14 has Lone Wolf storming the fortress city of Kaag. References are made to the Giak-spawning vats used to spawn Giaks as cannon fodder... and as an unlimited source of meat. The other Giaks that handle and cook the meat in the kitchens don't seem to mind handling the flesh of their own kind. It is never stated if the Giaks also eat it, but it's quite likely.
  • Cast from Hit Points:
    • The Magnakai Psi-Surge power cost 2 EN every turn it is used. This makes it not terribly useful in a fight unless the enemy is immune to the ordinary Mindblast. It becomes more interesting by the rank of Archmaster, where it only cost 1 EN for a stronger CS increase, or with the Grand Master upgrade, Kai-Surge.
    • Lone Wolf using his healing powers on someone else can also cost him Endurance if the wounds are extensive.
    • Most spells work by burning Endurance in the adventure where you play Banedon, and sometimes too in the Grand Master books, with Kai-alchemy and Magi-magic.
    • Translated from game mechanics into the Legends novels. Casting Brotherhood magic causes pain in proportion to the strength of the spell, from simple annoyance to sheer agony. The pain can be blocked out with potions and drugs, but it is heavily implied that bypassing the pain has a psychologically damaging effect.
  • Celibate Hero:
    • Lone Wolf doesn't have a canonical love interest in the main books (possibly owing to the monk-like lifestyle Kai Lords have), though Legends of Lone Wolf gives him a couple of female companions.
    • Averted by Grey Star, who marries Tanith in the epilogue of War of the Wizards, with an attraction being implied as early as their first meeting.
  • Character Overlap:
    • Madin Rendalim, master Healer from Durenor, appears both in Grey Star the Wizard and Fire on the Water, thus being one of the rare people having met both Lone Wolf and Grey Star.
    • The Chaos-master is a villain both in Beyond the Nightmare Gate and The Prisoners of Time. Grey Star has to make an uncomfortable deal with him; Lone Wolf's encounter is a much more straightforward Boss Battle.
    • Acarya, the High Wizard of the Shianti, sends Grey Star on his quest, and is the one to welcome the New Order Grand Master and take the Moonstone from him.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: The Kai Disciplines are largely the development of exceptional capabilities that are within the reach of humans, along with limited psychic abilities (which can be developed by non-Kai humans in this 'verse, such as a Vassagonian captain in Book 4). The Magnakai Disciplines take this further, developing these foundational skills to the point that they allow the Kai Master to do the impossible; a Kai Lord trained in Hunting learns to sharpen their senses, while an experienced Master trained in Huntmastery can see in the infrared and ultraviolet spectra. In theory, most of the Grand Master disciplines do the same, but some are entirely new magical powers, and others tend to be increasingly divorced from the mundane skills that they started in.
  • Charm Person: Two examples with rather short-lived effects:
    • The "Mind Charm" spell in Banedon's adventure and the Grandmaster books, as part of Kai-Alchemy.
    • Grey Star's "Enchantment" magic in the World of Lone Wolf spin-off.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • As a staple of Gamebooks, any item found by the protagonist (even seemingly useless trinkets) can prove surprisingly useful later in the book — or sometimes, one or two books further in the series. However, there are also plenty of random items that serve no purpose but to take up space in the backpack, and thus you must choose wisely what you keep. Also, it is quite possible to miss the specific path were any item happens to be used.
    • For the evil side, the Orb of Death that Zakhan Kimah demands in exchange for his allegiance to the Darklords, and receives in Shadow on the Sand. A savvy enough player could guess it'd show up again, since major villains are rarely left unpunished in the series; sure enough, Zakhan Kimah, armed with the artifact, is the Final Boss of The Cauldron of Fear.
    • That Kazim stone Grey Star gets tortured with in Book 1 of his series? Those things become much more significant in Book 4.
  • Child Soldiers:
    • The Ice Barbarians of Kalte, when moving on skis over the icy wastes of their territory, each carry a child in their backpack who use a small bow and arrows against their enemies while the father focus on the pursuit. As Lone Wolf's Red Shirt guides can attest, this is a rather deadly combination.
    • The first New Order Kai Masters attained their rank at nine years old. By Dawn of the Dragons, the oldest New Order Kai are seventeen; most are younger than that. All of the Kai Masters are mustered to fight dragon-like beasts in defense of the Monastery.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: The Darklords, full stop. Although it's only implied in the gamebooks, the novelizations expand on how the Darklords spend more energy plotting against each other, in the hope of becoming the new Archlord of the Darklands, than against the rest of the world (which they were explicitly created by their dark god to conquer in the first place). Only when an iron-fisted Archlord emerges and keeps the others in check do they focus their efforts on conquering Magnamund — and even though this does generally set the Darklords in place to curbstomp all opposition, the backstabbing doesn't stop, it just gets more discreet. Every time the current Archlord is offed by Lone Wolf, it always results in a civil war between the various Darkland factions. Best demonstrating this is the fact that most Darklords' chosen weaponry are Weapons of Darklord-Slaying. Being otherwise Nigh-Invulnerable, they are more worried about facing their rivals than any hypothetical hero reaching them and turning their own weapons against them.
  • Clarke's Third Law: In Wolf's Bane, Lone Wolf and Wolf's Bane both get sent to Avaros, a planet's moon with advanced, futuristic technology. Lone Wolf mistakes what he sees as magic. For example, when he faces two mooks in Powered Armor who wield flamethrowers, he thinks the weapons are magic staves or spears.
  • Clean Cut: Can happen with the Sommerswerd due to Cutscene Power to the Max — especially to The Undead. The Sword of the Sun can sever limbs with minimal efforts, cut a shield in twain with one blow, or tear off armor like paper.
  • Clear My Name: In Book 19, Lone Wolf is arrested for the crimes of his Evil Knockoff, Wolf's Bane.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Compared to most High Fantasy heroes. Several Kai disciplines emphasize camouflage and sneaking around, and Lone Wolf has no qualms against Dressing as the Enemy. Attacking by surprise, or against an unarmed or wounded opponent, is advantageous and encouraged. The effects of his psychic attacks, when described, are clearly to cause pain. The Kai Lord ethic seems to be "whatever gets the job done," and Lone Wolf makes use of psychic powers, spells, magitek, bow and arrows, even poison on occasion, as well as Darklord weapons, without hesitation. Only the vilest black magic items are out of bounds, and that's more because they are likely Artifacts of Death than anything else.
  • Combat Tentacles: Many critters fight this way: Burrowcrawler, Crypt Spawns, Akraa'Neonor, Giant Meresquid, Roctopus, Octagtah, Ictakko, Stragnah, Korozon, Ixian Mhagani....
  • Conlang: Joe Dever developed the Giak language used by the Darklord armies, with a vocabulary of about 400 words, and rules of grammar for agreement of adjectives and adverbs. It was described in the sourcebook The Magnamund Companion, and readers found that the words spoken by the Giaks in the previous gamebooks are actually translatable.
  • Cool Horse: Wildwind. A gift from Gwynian the Sage, able to go over sixty miles per hour without ever slowing down.
  • Cool Sword:
    • All of the named swords in this series could be considered a Cool Sword:
    • Lone Wolf can make a bunch of these with the new discipline of Kai Weaponcraft once he reach the rank of Kai Supreme Master. In the New Order Kai books, the protagonist receive one of these named weapon (an axe, sword or broadsword). These "Kai-weapons" all offer +5 CS normally and provide bonus CS depending on enemy type, environment, or time of day.
  • Counterpart Artifacts: The Lorestones and Doomstones. The Doomstones were explicitly created by Agarash the Damned in mockery of Nyxator's Lorestones.
  • Cower Power: In The Cauldron of Fear, when confronted by guards, the first reflex of Sogh (the thief helping Lone Wolf escape the jail) is to cower behind the hero and use him as shield.
  • Creepy Cemetery: In Flight from the Dark, the Graveyard of the Ancients near Holmgrad is a gloomy, forbidden place. It is always shrouded in mist and cloud blocking the sun, the place is unnaturally chilly, covered in thorny graveweeds, with foul gases seeping from the open crypts and distant whispering echoing into the ears of anyone foolish enough to venture there. Worse, its underground necropolis hosts evil forces, dangerous traps and magical guardians.
  • Creepy Crows: It is mentioned that ravens are considered a bad omen in Sommerlund, and indeed whenever they show up in the books, it is in a quite negative light. The fact that some are used by lieutenants of the Darklords as scouts, as seen in Book 1 with a Vordak, sure doesn't help things. In Book 4, the finding of a murder of crows feasting on corpses reveals the fate of the Redshirt Army preceding Lone Wolf.
  • Creepy Souvenir:
    • One Vassagonian warrior wears a necklace of Shrunken Heads.
    • The south gate of the Darklands city of Kaag is adorned with the huge skull of Nyxator, and covered by the dragon's preserved hide, as a trophy for the Darklords.
  • Crystal Ball:
    • Gwynian the Sage is seen consulting one the first time we meet him in Book 4.
    • In The Skull of Agarash, Lone Wolf and Banedon communicate throughout a pair of crystal balls.
    • A more nefarious version in the Khazim Stones.
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus: Nyxator was the first servant of the God Kai to appear on Magnamund. He created the Lorestones and inspired the Kai Order. He was also a literal dragon.
  • Cultural Translation: Most of the gamebooks were trimmed for US release. The implication was that most of the page trimming was more for purposes of cost-cutting to maximize profit (even if that meant creating an inferior product), not because of cultural editing. Later books in the series suffered from this far worse than earlier ones, because by that point, the series wasn't selling as well.
  • Cutscene Boss: In books 2 and 12 of the series, the fight with the Big Bad is not played out at all if you have the Sommerswerd. However, this is not bad, but rather ainvoked Moment of Awesome as you see the Big Bad being wiped out in a blaze of holy sunfire!
  • Cutscene Power to the Max: This can happen if you have the Sommerswerd. Although it sometimes makes a combat much harder, or attracts enemies you wouldn't have confronted otherwise, it can also allow you to skip some fights entirely, usually with a description of the Curb-Stomp Battle ensuing.
    • Notably the case with a couple of Vordaks and a gaggle of Drakkarim in Shadow on the Sand.
    • The game spends several books hyping up Darklord Gnaag. And when you finally fight him, well, if you brought the Sommerswerd with you it isn't so much a fight as it is a very cinematic and fulfilling vaporization.
  • Cyanide Pill: In Dawn of the Dragons, an assassin questioned by Lone Wolf uses a poison pellet hidden in a tooth to kill himself — but also to liberate a Deadly Gas in the cell, trying to take the hero with him. Lone Wolf can shrug off the effects thanks to his Nexus power.
  • Damsel in Distress:
    • Madelon at the end of Book 4, The Chasm of Doom, is detained by Barraka for a Virgin Sacrifice.
    • Alyss, from the end of Book 19 to the finale in Book 20, is prisoner in Naar's realm.
  • The Darkness Gazes Back: An interesting variation occurs in The Kingdoms of Terror. Lone Wolf is being attacked by a very fast monster with glowing eyes in a pitch-black castle. If you choose to fire an arrow at its eyes you actually get a bonus to your success roll since, because they're glowing, they're an easier target.
  • Deadly Disc: Razor discs are used as weapons by some Vassagonian brigands in book 4.
  • Deadly Dodging: Rarely comes into play, as most fight sequences are straightforward, but there are still a few examples:
    • In book 3, inside the Caverns of Kalte, pursued by a Kalkoth, Lone Wolf can lure it over a frozen lake by dodging, the thin layer of ice giving way under its weight, and it's eaten by a giant predator in the water.
    • In book 6, within the ruins of Castle Taunor, if Lone Wolf flees from the enraged monster waiting in ambush, you can lure it into jumping down a precipice by dodging at the last moment.
    • In book 7, pushing the Rahkos into a magical trap is the only way to finish off for real the horrific undead flying hand.
    • In book 10, you can end up interrogated by Eruan soldiers while a crossbow is aimed at your back. If Lone Wolf gives an unsatisfactory answer... he can spring away fast enough for the bolt to miss him, hitting instead the captain he was facing. Maybe they should revise their interrogation methods....
    • In The Skull of Agarash, Lone Wolf sidesteps two Lakuri Isles pirates attacking from both sides, and they bump heads together. Then, they are taken out of the fight by the same arrow (from the Rain of Arrows released by the other pirates) going through both their skulls.
    • In book 19, Lone Wolf can fight two mooks who carry powerful flamethrowers. Lone Wolf grapples with one, then the other fires at him. Lone Wolf can jump away in time, causing the first mook to get fried.
  • Deadly Scratch:
    • In The Chasm of Doom, Lone wolf can fight a bandit patrol whose weapons are coated with poison. One scratch, and it's Game Over.
    • In Shadow on the Sand, fleeing from enemies, Lone Wolf gets grazed on the shoulder by a falling iron grate. A minor injury in game terms (only 1 Endurance point), but if he's later dunked into sewer water, the wound gets infected by a disease called limbdeath. Follows an Injured Limb Episode, with a paralyzed arm reducing combat prowess, and a desperate search for the very rare Magic Antidote that can cure the disease before it kills Lone Wolf.
  • Deal with the Devil: The malevolent Chaos-master, who grants wishes with the expected Monkey's Paw twists.
  • Defeat Equals Explosion: In Castle Death, among the numerous weird creatures of Kazan-Oud, there is a hideous brain-like floating sphere that tries to paralyze Lone Wolf psychically. Inflicting any wound to it, whether with an arrow or through cutting its attack tendril, results in a powerful, fiery explosion.
  • Degraded Boss:
    • This happens to the Helghast (plural) within the same book. In Fire on the Water, the first Helghast (which you can't skip fighting) is very much That One Bossinvoked. Even with the highest CS possible and the most favorable combat options, you'll come out of this at best very blooded. Later, a group of six Helghast lay waste on the armored knights who are escorting Lone Wolf (you can fight one if you're feeling brave, but it's safer to flee). Then, close to the ending, you can stumble upon another Helghast aboard Vonotar's ghost fleet... except this time, you're at full health and armed with the Sommerswerd. Between the CS increase and the double damage against undead (and the Helghast is apparently so scared of the sword it forgets about using its psychic powers), you can safely and very satisfyingly crush the monster.
    • Also the case with Gourgaz (plural too). The one from Flight from the Dark is quite the Giant Mook and the hardest fight of the first book. Another with even stronger stats can be met in The Cauldron of Fear, but Lone Wolf has so much progressed by then that it's barely a speed bump.
  • Dem Bones: Skeletons warriors constitute the main troops of the Ixian Undead.
  • Demonic Invaders: The Agarashi, and to an extent the Darklords and their more inhuman minions.
  • Depending on the Artist:
    • Darklord Gnaag's appearance between Book 8 and Book 12, which is primarily due to the change in illustration artists. The Updated Re-release changes his appearance further, again due to a new artist.
    • Gwynian the Sage is hardly recognizable in illustrations between his first appearance in Book 4, and his later one in Book 8.
    • The Chaos-master's illustrations in Grey Star's series and then in The Prisoners of Time are also wildly different, but here it's because the Chaos-master is an Eldritch Abomination who keeps changing shape all the time.
    • The graphic novel The Skull of Agarash is mostly faithful to the illustrations provided in the gamebooks, notably for the various Darklord minions and monsters, with the exception of Banedon's Dwarven crew, which are depicted looking more like goblins than the classic bearded dwarves.
  • Developer's Foresight: In The Curse of Naar, at one point Lone Wolf has to sacrifice a drop of blood to activate a portal to the next area. It says he does it with the prong of his belt buckle, just in case the reader is one who's made sure not to have any bladed weapons.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
    • Book 11 has Lone Wolf take on the aforementioned Chaos-master, the equivalent of the Devil in the Daziarn. Even other physical gods are afraid of it. On the other hand, if you brought the Sommerswerd with you on this adventure, it's probably not a fight you'll win.invoked
    • Book 20 has Lone Wolf doing this constantly. Although truthfully it's much more Lone Wolf exploiting the evil demigods' true names to immobilize them or exploiting their Kryptonite Factor than just marching into the Plane of Darkness and cracking open whoopass on every member of Naar's pantheon he meets.
  • Disintegrator Ray: The flaming aura created by Zakhan Kimah's Orb of Death disintegrates all non-magical weapons that touch it — along with the unfortunate wielder in close combat.
  • Do a Barrel Roll: In Shadow on the Sand, when the flying ship Skyrider is boarded by Drakkarim, Banedon calls out a maneuver code name for his dwarven crew, and warns Lone Wolf to hang on something. Then he starts capsizing the ship to end up flying upside-down, sending the evil warriors plummeting to their death while the dwarves are hanging on to nets, gleefully shouting "Blood for Blood!" at their falling foes.
  • Doomed Hometown: The Kai Monastery, at the beginning of the series, is the very first target of the invading armies of the Darklords, and gets destroyed along with all its occupants, save for Silent Wolf.
  • Doom Magnet: Whatever you do, never board the same ship/boat/ferry as Lone Wolf. You'll either be attacked by pirates, be the victim of sabotage, sunk by an ironclad battleship, attacked by a hungry sea serpent, captured by a giant fish-shaped boat crewed by a horde of Undead, ambushed and dragged to your death by hungry frogmen, have a necromancer stir up havoc in the taproom, or any combination of the above. Apparently Lone Wolf is such a powerful force for good that he naturally attracts evil.
  • Doom Troops: The Drakkarim. Their look, with generous use of Rage Helms, Spikes of Villainy and Serrated Blades, along with their Berserker tendencies, sure contribute in making them fearsome to their enemies. Their elites aren't called "Death Knights" for nothing.
  • Doomy Dooms of Doom:
    • Doomwolves;
    • The Doomstones (mentioned above);
    • The Doomlands of Naaros in Southern Magnamund;
    • And of course Book 4: The Chasm of Doom (guest star: Barraka the Doomslayer).
    • Furthermore, in Book 5:
      Haakon: Look on your doom, Kai Lord!
    • Wolf's Bane's ace-in-the-sleeve minion in Book 19 is called Doom-blight.
  • The Dragon: Big Bad Naar has had several Dragons in the Back Story and throughout the series. The most notable was Agarash the Damned, described as his most powerful champion of evil. Agarash in turn had his own Dragon, the Deathlord Ixiataaga, the Big Bad of Book 17. Ixiataaga even has his own Dragon, Demonlord Tagazin.
  • Dragons Are Divine: Nyxator, while not a literal god, was the first living thing on Magnamund and a devoted servant of the sun god, Kai. He also recorded his vast wisdom into the seven Lorestones to guide future generations.
  • Dreadful Dragonfly: In Wolf's Bane, upon being sent to the moon Avaros, Lone Wolf find himself in a tropical jungle of humongous flowers populated by giant insects. Among them are giant dragonflies; Lone Wolf can use one of the smallest as flying steed thanks to his Animal Control, only to be attacked during flight by a gigantic one.
  • Dressing as the Enemy:
    • Lone Wolf can fall victim to this in Flight from the Dark when facing Drakkarim dressed as a Sommlending patrol or as a ferryman on a lake, and later brigands that robbed dead soldiers.
    • Lone Wolf is infiltrating the Darklands while disguised as a Drakkar and (later) as Darklord Ghanesh's servant in Book 12. See also the Mugged for Disguise examples.
    • Can be a problem for Grey Star if the player chooses to teleport to safety while still in enemy gear. His allies react predictably to a figure in Shadakine armor appearing among them.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Lone Wolf himself, in quite a few books. To the point that on a prominent French gamebook forum the term "mast" has become shorthand for "bullshit death caused by dice alone" after an infamous example in Lone Wolf #2 (Fire on the Water) in which an unavoidable storm at sea can lead to Lone Wolf dying ignominiously, crushed by a falling mast, should the reader choose 0 from the Random Number Table. Worse, the first four Grandmaster books feature such "masts" right between the climactic boss fight and the end of the book — the worst offender probably being The Legacy of Vashna where a post-boss roll of 0-4 (on a d10) kills you outright. You do get bonuses on this roll for each GM book completed prior, so that one's more of a "New reader? Too bad."
  • Drunk on the Dark Side: Baron Shinzar from Book 10, The Dungeons of Torgar, wields a huge magical flaming battle-axe in the Battle of Cetza. He is so intoxicated by the awesome power of his weapon that weaker psionic attacks like Mindblast can't affect him.
  • Dual Wielding:
    • Technically not allowed in the gamebooks. However, this hasn't stopped some players to homebrew their own rules to gain the bonus of two magic weapons at once.
    • On the other hand, some enemies are clearly dual-wielding (like a Sharnazim officer in Shadow on the Sand), so the above could be deemed a bit unfair.
    • Also, Lone Wolf is seen dual-wielding the Sommerswerd and a dagger in The Skull of Agarash.
  • Dub Name Change:
    • The French version of the main Lone Wolf series kept most names unchanged, with a few exceptions:
      • The main character (and the title itself) receives a direct translation as "Loup Solitaire".
      • The Giaks become "Gloks".
      • "Helghast" is translated as "monstre d'enfer" (although inconsistently).
      • "Wolf's Bane" is changed to "Loup Enragé" ("Rabid Wolf").
    • The French version of the World of Lone Wolf spin-off, on the other hand, saw many more changes:
      • Grey Star is renamed "Astre d'Or" (i.e. "Gold Star"), and this is also the title used for the whole sub-series.
      • The Shianti are changed to the "Majdars"; justified since "Shianti" just doesn't sound good in French.
      • The goddess Ishir to "Ishtar" (at odd with the main series, which keeps "Ishir").
      • Shasarak the Wytch-King to "Charatchak".
      • The Daziarn astral plane to "Noctiurne".
      • Tanith to "Tanid".
      • King Samu to "Samur".
      • The Kleasá demon to "Klayshia".
      • Sado of the Long Knife to "Sadir au Long Couteau".
      • Hugi the thief to "Grando".
  • Due to the Dead: Both paths in Book 8, The Jungle of Horrors, lead to an example.
    • If you take the Barge to Tharro at the beginning of the book, you get to witness both sides of this trope. The Necromancer that you fight and kill on the barge has his corpse weighted with rocks and tossed overboard like so much garbage, while the friendly NPC that was killed by that necromancer is laid to rest in a casket and given a respectful burial in the river.
    • If you take the Great North Road, you might end up at an abbey. The monks of said abbey are actually undead Vordaks that murdered the real monks and took their place. After dealing with the Vordaks, Lone Wolf discovers the bodies of the real monks and takes the time to bury them.
  • Dug Too Deep: Kicks off the plot in Fall of Blood Mountain. The greedy crown prince of the dwarves dug too deep into the mountain to mine its valuable veins of korlinium. The same veins of korlinium that were keeping the Sealed Evil in a Can sealed. The dwarves even knew that said Evil was sealed deep in the mountain, making the prince seem even more greedy and foolish.
  • Dungeon Bypass:
    • This is actually the only way to beat The Maze in the seventh book, Castle Death. One monster shorts out the overhead force field with its death throes, enabling you to climb up its corpse to the maintenance gantries. Trying to fight your way through the maze leads to certain death. Conversely, if you possess the proper skill, you can cheat in a different way — namely, when asked to pick one of two archways to pass through, you ignore them both and break through the weak spot in the wall between them, escaping the maze. Still, there is no "fair" way to beat the maze — all paths within the maze lead to those two arches, and both of those arches autokill the player if he chooses one. Given that the villain of the book is not just evil but portrayed as completely raving mad, it makes sense at least.
    • At the very end of War of the Wizards, the armies of the Big Bad are winning despite everything Grey Star have done. So what can the hero do? You use your magic to teleport directly to Shasarak and kill him personally.
  • Dwindling Party:
    • In Book 4, the squad you bring with you is slowly killed off, and will be entirely dead by the end regardless of what path you take.
    • Same thing in Book 3 with the three guides and sled dogs helping Lone Wolf travel the icy wastes of Kalte. By the time he reaches the title Caverns of Kalte, he's alone. However, there are paths where the guides actually survive and just turn back without Lone Wolf.
    • Again in The Skull of Agarash. Lone Wolf sails to the Lakuri Isles with three ships from the Assassin Guild, but two are sunk by a giant Sea Monster on the way. Then, traipsing through the Bukimi Island jungle and swamp with Guildmaster Mazrah and his crew, the men are killed one by one by the local fauna and roaming Agarashi monsters. By the time they reach Captain Khadro's base, only six of them remain.
  • Dying Race: The Elder Magi. In the second book of the New Order series, the Grand Master can attend the funeral/ascension of one of the Magi. It is mentioned that fewer than a hundred Elder Magi remain, and their power is fading with each passing year. The Elder Magi accept their eventual demise, secure in the knowledge that the New Order Kai stand ready to take their place in the fight against evil.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Several enemies Lone Wolf encounters could be considered as such.
    • One of the creepier recurring enemies in the series is the Crypt Spawn. These are essentially swarms of human brains with batwings and tentacles that, ironically enough, mindlessly attack anything in their path. They always appear in the presence of even greater evils, such as a timeless and bodyless... thing in the Graveyard of the Ancients, two of the Darklords themselves, and the King of the Darkness, Naar himself. The thing in the Graveyard is implied to be Naar.
    • The Akraa'Neonor summoned by Vonotar in Book 3. It even has the Combat Tentacles.
    • The Agtah on the astral plane of Daziarn boast twisted misshapen forms.
    • Their leader, the horrific Chaos-master. Its appearance is that of a vaguely humanoid giant composed of the many parts of various animals... which keeps moving and changing shape unceasingly.
    • The Kleasá from the World of Lone Wolf series. A Living Shadow from another dimension that eats souls like candy. Worse, the only way you can beat it is by setting it free, to reap evil elsewhere.
  • Elite Mooks:
    • The Giaks are the lowly mooks of the Darklords, while the Drakkarim, black-armored warriors wearing death masks, are the elite. Further in the series, the ante is upped with the elite of Drakkarim, the Death Knights.
    • After having dealt with many Vassagonian brigands in the previous book, in Shadow on the Sand Lone Wolf is confronted with Sharnazim, the elite warriors of Vassagonia, during a trip to their capital.
  • Emergency Energy Tank: Touching a newly-discovered Lorestone instantly heals Lone Wolf fully — but only this one time. Other circumstances allowing a complete healing can be found in the books, but they are always plot-related and can't be brought along (to be used, for example, during the fight against That One Bossinvoked). The one exception is Shamath's potion, but it is found near the end of Lone Wolf's adventures, and it has another use anyway.
  • Empathic Weapon:
    • Though no obvious evidence is presented in the books, the actions taken by the Sommerswerd to protect both its wielder and itself may prove that it has a spirit of its own. It will also blast any evil creature who tries to pick it up (as in Book 7) and Book 2 states that it will lose its powers if wielded by one without the Kai gifts.
    • A darker variant is the Darklord sword Helshezag. The sword actually tries to compel Lone Wolf to butcher his enemies, bearing more than a passing resemblance to other cursed swords in fiction, such as Stormbringer — which Joe Dever states was in fact the direct inspiration for Helshezag.
  • The Empire:
    • The Darklands
    • Vassagonia
    • The Shadakine Empire
  • Empowered Badass Normal: According to the newsletter, King Ulnar was an incredibly badass warrior on par with a senior Kai Master when he took on Vashna, but that wouldn't have been nearly enough to defeat the mightiest of the Darklords. However, he was able to use the Sommerswerd against Vashna and bring about a Mutual Kill.
  • Enemy Civil War:
    • The Darklords really need a system of succession that doesn't involve a massive civil war every time someone whacks the current Archlord.
    • It gets even worse after all the Darklords are exterminated; most of the Darklands cities are then stuck in a state of civil war between various factions, until some new, upstart Big Bad manages to get on top.
  • Energy Absorption: The blade of the Sommerswerd can harmlessly absorb most offensive spells directed at its wielder. Sometimes, the energy is even used to heal Lone Wolf. However, the protection can rarely be foiled if the attack comes from an artifact at least as powerful as the Sword of the Sun, like with Kimah's Orb of Death or Vonotar's Ring of Power.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Grand Master in the New Order series.
  • Everything's Deader with Zombies:
    • Book 2, Fire on the Water, has a whole ghostly fleet maned by undead as the last obstacle of the story, including zombie crewmates. Since this is just after Lone Wolf gains the Sommerswerd, they really aren't much of a threat.
    • Book 6, The Kingdoms of Terror, has evil lordling Roark raising zombies from a cemetery to try killing Lone Wolf, but he quickly lose control and they attack his men.
    • Book 17, The Deathlord of Ixia, is filled to the brink with undead, including Zombie Drakkarim. Unlike previous zombies in the series, those can be very tough to fight, even with the Sommerswerd.
    • Dire, a reoccurring Monster Adventurer in the mini-stories of the Updated Re-release. Fits the Revenant Zombie trope as he still retains memories of his previous life.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You:
    • The number of death traps, cold-blooded assassins, evil armies, cursed artifacts, hostile fauna, poisonous (and man-eating) flora, malevolent undead, and hidden ancient evils sealed all over the place that Lone Wolf runs into means something is always trying to kill him. Even when he isn't in a war.
      • Book 1: Lone Wolf may barely escape sinking in a bog that claims his horse, just to be attacked by a very venomous snake next. Even lampshaded in the text:
        It seems that nature and the Darklords have conspired against you, but it does not shake your determination to reach the King.
      • Book 6: Though it requires a series of choices you'd have to be a complete idiot to actually make, Lone Wolf can get killed by an evil taxidermist.
      • Book 7: Castle Death is probably the worst about this trope. It's possible to run into magical cobwebs that try to kill Lone Wolf.
      • There are three rules to live by in all the books: Someone offering you hospitality and food? That's poisoned. Someone offering to help you? Is going to try and kill you in your sleep. Someone desperately begging for your help? Of course he's a Helghast, how many times are you going to fall for that trick?
      • Remember this is the series in which you can die fighting a door. Not even a magic/sentient/evil/cursed door, but die trying to open a boring, rusted, ordinary door. On at least two separate occasions, at that. Well, in Wolf's Bane at least it's a door that you're trying to force open after failing the mandatory puzzle lock, while caught in a torrent of acid rain, so it's the rain that's damaging you rather than the door itself. Which doesn't take anything away from the fact that yes, there is an honest-to-Kai combat sequence with a door, complete with Endurance and Combat Score, and you will die if you lose. And there is absolutely no excuse for the door in Castle Death — Endurance points lost there are explicitly stated to be from the fatigue from trying to open it.
    • Grey Star the Wizard has these too. The first book alone has: a room so evil just standing in it can kill you; prehensile swamp plants trying to eat you; man-sized frogs with poison skin that can fly(!!); a soul-eating Kleasá demon; a valley full of poison mist; and worst of all, a hive of thousands of giant acid-spitting preying mantises that you inevitably piss off and have to escape by climbing out of their lair — from the bottom up.
  • Evil Knockoff:
    • In Book 19, Lone Wolf's evil clone Wolf's Bane comes after him.
    • A similar predicament happens to Grey Star in Book 3 of his own series.
  • Evil Old Folks:
    • Lord Zahda
    • Archdruid Cadak
  • Evil Overlords: The Darklords and Wytch-King Shasarak have this trope written all over them.
  • Evil Power Vacuum: Each time the Archlord of the Darklands is killed, the remaining Darklords fight an Enemy Civil War to determine the next Archlord.
  • Evil Sorcerers:
    • Shasarak the Wytch-King
    • Vonotar the Traitor
    • Lord Zahda
    • Nadziranim
    • Cener Druids...
  • Evil Versus Evil:
    • Darklords don't see Lone Wolf as their worst enemy. The Darklords' worst enemies are other Darklords.
    • The Deathlord of Ixia doesn't care one bit about the Darklords' evil plans, and the neighboring Drakkar nations are regularly raided by undead Ixian troops to add dead Drakkarim to their numbers.
  • Evil Weapon: The series features several very powerful and very evil weapons, a few of which Lone Wolf can wield.
    • The Dagger of Vashna is Darklord Vashna's weapon and is claimed by Lone Wolf after he foils an ambitious warlord's attempt to revive Vashna with it via maiden sacrifice. Uniquely, it's actually safe for Lone Wolf to use.
    • Helshezag, the sword of Darklord Kraagenskûl, compels its wielder to butcher its enemies while draining its wielder's lifeforce (represented by a loss of Endurance), and Joe Deverinvoked even stated that it was inspired by Stormbringer.
    • The Nyras Sceptre is empowered by the Doomstone of Darke, the most powerful Doomstone created by Agarash the Damned. An ambitious Drakkar warlord named Magnaarn rediscovers both and uses the Sceptre in a bid to conquer the good kingdom of Lencia. The Sceptre grants him vast power and allows him to cow the Nadziranim and their armies into serving him, but he pays a terrible price. By the time Lone Wolf catches up with Magnaarn, he is little more than the Sceptre's frail near-undead puppet.
    • The Deathstaff is a powerful weapon forged by Naar himself which he sent to his servants so they could revive Darklord Vashna with it. If Lone Wolf wields it in battle it provides a Combat Skill bonus even greater than the one provided by the Sommerswerd but steadily drains his soul (leading to a major loss of Endurance).
  • Expanded Universe: The Magnamund Companion; the Tabletop RPG; The Skull of Agarash graphic novel; the Legends of Lone Wolf novels...
  • Extra Digits: The Dakomyd monster from the Tekaro crypt has eight-fingered hands tipped with sharp talons.

    Tropes F to L 
  • Face-Design Shield: A common feature of the illustrations by Gary Chalk. The Magnamund Companion has some notable examples.
  • Faceless Eye: In the bonus story of the reprint of Book 7, Tavig faces down a creature called the All-Seeing One, a roughly humanoid creature whose head is just one big eye.
  • Faceless Goons: The Drakkarim. To the point it can take a while for a newcomer to the series to even realize they're actually humans.
  • Fake Identity Baggage: In The Masters of Darkness, Lone Wolf infiltrates the Darklands' capital, Helgedad, by taking a ride on a giant land vehicle while disguised as Darklord Ghanesh's servant. However, Lone Wolf becomes the target of an assassination attempt by a venomous plaak in his cabin during the journey. His disguise didn't fail him; it's just that minions of the Darklords are as much of a fractious lot as their masters, and the target was the person whose identity he usurped.
  • Fallen Angel: Some of the side materials, novelization and some lines of the gamebooks imply the Darklords may have been something like this. That they used to be immortal spirits who weren't evil (might even have been good) before Naar re-made them as literal and figurative monsters and sent them to conquer Magnamund for him.
  • Fallen Hero: Shasarak the Wytch-King was once a Shianti wizard, a member of the very group that sent Grey Star on his quest. He refused Ishir's order to leave humanity alone, and tried to continue helping people, but the Sunstone he built was destroyed when the people of Taklakot started poking at it, wiping out the city. The injuries he suffered in the explosion drove him insane. By the time of the books, nothing of Shasarak the Benevolent was left, only the Wytch-King.
  • Familiar: The shapeshifting Liganim are described as the Nadziranim's familiars. Of note is the one in the form of a Shoulder-Sized Dragon from The Skull of Agarash. When its master is killed by Lone Wolf, the Liganim drops dead too.
  • Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: Alether; Larnuma; Copalla; Thatchwort; Volko...
  • Fantastic Radiation Shielding:
    • Lone Wolf's magical sword, the Sommerswerd, radiates such goodly power that it acts as a beacon to evil beings. On the occasions when Lone Wolf has to sneak into the hometurf of such beings, he has to keep the Sommerswerd sheathed in a Korlinium scabbard. The people who give him the scabbard warn him that the instant he draws the sword his cover will be blown by the sword's aura, so he should only wield it when he's in striking distance of the Big Bad. In the last Grandmaster book, if Lone Wolf does not have the Sommerswerd and takes the magical sword Skarn-Ska the Elder Magi forged for him, Lord Rimoah will give him a Korlinium Scabbard since Skarn-Ska, while not as powerful as the Sommerswerd, also radiates goodly power.
    • Lone Wolf's lieutenant in the New Order series has the same problem with the Moonstone, which he carries in a Korlinium-laced satchel during his travels, as to not attract the attention of Naar's agents. It works quite well.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Most of the places visited are your typical European inspired fantasy lands, but there are some more straight examples of this. Chai takes a lot from China in particular. Down to having its own version of the Great Wall seen at the end of Vampirium.
  • Fantasy Metals:
    • "Bronin" is a metal that looks like bronze but will not tarnish with age or use like ordinary alloys of copper and tin. Lone Wolf can find a Bronin Warhammer (+1 CS, though non-magical) and a Bronin Vest (replacing the Chainmail Waistcoat) during his travels.
    • "Kagonite" is a black metallic mineral, light as wood yet ten times harder than steel. It is what gives the Darklord troops' weapons their black appearance. Lone Wolf can loot a Kagonite Chainmail vest from a fallen enemy, and "Because it is so light, it can be worn beneath any padded or metallic body armor you may possess."
    • "Korlinium" is a fibrous mineral looking like strands of polished silver, which can hide the radiations of good artifacts.
  • Fantasy World Map: Each book includes a map of the region where it takes place. How useful such the map is varies tremendously from book to book. A fan collected all the information from the maps, and was able to make a (nearly) complete map of the entire continent.
  • Featureless Protagonist: Not Lone Wolf himself, but the New Order Grand Master you control from book 21 onward, meant to be easier to personalize for each individual reader.
  • Fiction 500: High-Mayor Cordas from the city-state of Casiorn. Said to be the wealthiest man in Magnamund and able to order the construction of a skyship to be finished within a month for the sole purpose of helping Lone Wolf travel home more quickly.
  • Fictionary: The Giak language, which has some fun grammar.
  • Fighting a Shadow: In The Dungeons of Torgar, driving Demonlord Tagazin to Endurance 0 does not kill him; it just sends him home. In fact, the Remake of the series feels obliged to point out that even if you roll a One-Hit Kill with the Sommerswerd, no, he's not dead. You later fight him on his home turf in The Deathlord of Ixia, where he can be destroyed permanently.
  • Figure It Out Yourself: "Let us say that the wisdom of the Kai and the lore of the Magicians' Guild can surpass the limitations of even time itself." Loi-Kymar seems to think that "We got here so fast because we teleported." is too easy.note 
  • Fingore: In Castle Death, an ugly dwarf servant of Lord Zahda proudly shows off to his master the seized weapon of the hero they'd just captured. That's a colossally bad idea, though, since the Sommerswerd is an Empathic Weapon which doesn't appreciate at all being manhandled by evil beings. One blast of energy afterward and the screaming dwarf is missing half the length of his charred fingers.
  • Flaming Sword:
    • The Sommerswerd has holy sunfire on its edge when it faces particularly evil foes.
    • The Darklord blades, like Helshezag or the Dagger of Vashna, are surrounded by black flames when used.
    • A Sun Lord with Grand Weaponmastery can set any normal weapon's edge aflame for extra damage in battle, as long as it's not completely wooden.
    • Flaming swords are the favored weapons of Nadziranim under the Ice Dragon form.
  • Forced Prize Fight: In book 21, the New Order Kai Grand Master must fight Dromodon the Invincible, the champion gladiator, after accidentally killing his intended opponent due to drinking from the wrong fountain. While the Grand Master is initially sorry to have to kill the man to earn his freedom, he "looks into his eyes" and somehow realizes that Dromodon is a worshipper of Naar, meaning it's okay to kill him. A fairly transparent attempt to keep the Grand Master from appearing too morally grey.
  • Forged by the Gods: More specifically "a race that men would now call gods" for the Sommerswerd.
  • From Dress to Dressing: On their (possibly second) meeting in Shadow on the Sand, Lone Wolf tends to Banedon's wound with strips of the wizard's journeymaster robes.
  • From Zero to Hero: Lone Wolf's rise is one of the more extreme examples. He goes from being a nearly helpless apprentice who initially was shown accidentally knocking himself out to a legendary hero who casually kills gods on the way to fight more important ones in their own domain.
  • Gaiden Game:
    • The World of Lone Wolf books serve as this, following the wizard Grey Star who lives at the very southern tip of Magnamund, whereas Lone Wolf hangs out mainly in Northern Magnamund.
    • Also, most of the newly re-published old books have a new short adventure at the end where you take the role of one of the characters you have met during the course of the main adventure, each having their own unique gameplay style.
    • The 2013 video game which takes place during the middle of the Kai saga.
  • Gamebooks: It almost goes without saying, but this is at least more complicated than the standard fare, with underlying mechanics and skills that carry over between books.
  • Gargle Blaster: Bor-brew ale doesn't look that threatening and even has a pleasant taste ("malted apples"). It has a fearsome reputation because it's the favored beer of dwarves. The first time Lone Wolf can drink it, he runs the risk of falling unconscious and waking up with a hangover that robs him of Endurance. Later it seems the brew became even more potent; the second time he can drink it, he runs the risk of suffering horrifying hallucinations, falling unconscious, and waking up with a hangover that again robs him of Hit Points. Yes, even the beer is trying to kill Lone Wolf. In either case, actually consuming the stuff without side effects earns impressed looks from witnesses.
  • Giant Flyer:
    • The Zlanbeasts and Kraan; ugly reptilian creatures with leathery wings serving the Darklords as flying mounts for them and their various troops. Lone Wolf does "borrow" a Zlanbeast on a few occasions to travel through enemy territory.
    • The Itikars, giant birds used as steeds by the Vassagonians. Lone Wolf also "borrows" one in Shadow on the Sand.
    • The Grand Master series features the Lavas, dragon-like monsters in direct service of the god Naar.
    • There are also a few authentic dragons, mostly found on the Plane of Darkness.
  • Giant Mook: The Gourgaz, huge axe-wielding lizardfolks employed by the Darklords as squad leaders. The toughest fight of the first book, Flight from the Dark, is against one.
  • The Gift: The Psychic Powers of the Kai require a psychic gift only found in those of Sommlending descent, something mostly explained in supplementary materials. Those in Sommerlund who have the Gift are trained by the Kai; most become Kai Lords and Kai Masters, while those whose Gift is too weak and never master more than a handful of Disciplines wash out and become Kai Virin (ordinary Sommlending with a bit of Kai skill).
  • Gigantic Moon: The final illustration for The Chasm of Doom shows the standard-bearer of the Sommlending army framed by a huge moon.
  • Ghost Town: In Book 19, Lone Wolf can visit two ghost towns on his cross-country trip back home. One village was hit hard by a plague and is completely abandoned. Another one, the town of Amory, is a literal "Ghost" Town. The spirit of old enemy Roark still haunts his former home and his evil presence frightens away any living thing that tries to stay there. After Lone Wolf defeats Roark for the last time and banishes his spirit forever, he is delighted to hear birdsong in the morning after the battle — life is already returning to Amory. Lone Wolf also finds some hidden money in the floorboards of the house he was sleeping in — almost as if the town itself was thanking him.
  • Global Airship: Banedon's skyship, Skyrider. After it gets shot down in Book 18, Lone Wolf gives Banedon the ship he got in the book, Cloud Dancer.
  • Global Currency: There are multiple currencies. However, they have fixed exchange rates and are almost always given and used in multiples equal to an integer amount of gold crowns (the protagonist's "home" currency). For instance, 4 lunes equal 1 gold crown, so most amounts of lune given are multiples of 4, and the exchange rate is usually given, as in "32 Lune (8 Gold Crowns)". Also, 4 lunes take up the same amount of inventory space as 1 gold crown in the given rules despite lunes being silver, so the game implies that silver, gold, and iron all have the same value! However, in a few areas, the currency you use for something matters a lot, such as potentially revealing that you're a disguised intruder.
  • Global Currency Exception:
    • The various currencies can usually be spent interchangeably... but woe betide you if you try using the wrong currency as a bribe. Kika, the currency of the Darklands, takes this a step further: you can't spend it at all (except as a bribe in said Darklands). Basically, its purpose is to take up space in your Belt Pouch and to convince the naysayers at the Kai Monastery that, yes, these fiends do have an economy.
    • One tavern in the New Order series will only accept Gold Crowns or Silver Lune. The felt currency your companion carries is useless and the tavernkeeper will kick you out if you offer Ren from the Autocracy of Bhanar since Bhanarese soldiers killed the tavernkeeper's son.
  • Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: Sported by Helghast in their true form as shown with several illustrations. Note that they are shapeshifters, and thus their eyes don't glow while in human form, as it would give them away. (The glow may be a side effect of the psychic attack that a Helghast is trying to melt your brain with...) Most other undead in the series avert this. The skeletal Vordaks still have human eyeballs, while some zombies either have eyes or just rotting eye sockets.
  • The Gods Must Be Lazy: Kai and Ishir don't really do direct interventions, though they sometimes provide advice and comfort. (Naar is as active as he can be.) Ishir commands the Shianti (demigod-like beings) to abide by an Alien Non-Interference Clause, but takes no action to enforce it when one of them ignores her.
  • God of Evil: Naar, the King of the Darkness. He takes on a more direct role as Big Bad after Lone Wolf defeats his champions the Darklords of Helgedad.
  • God of Light: Kai is a sun god, while Ishir is a goddess of moon and light. Both are Gods of Good.
  • God of the Moon: Ishir is the goddess of moon and light.
  • Gold Fever: In the New Order book The Fall of Blood Mountain, the greedy crown prince of the dwarven kingdom of Bor developed a case of this and heavily mined the veins of korlinium, a very valuable mineral with mystical properties, in the mountain. Unfortunately, said korlinium was the seal on an ancient demon's prison.
  • Good Is Not Nice: In Legends of Lone Wolf, Lone Wolf himself often comes across as rude, intolerant, short-tempered and especially bloodthirsty when he goes into a combat rage.
  • Good Thing You Can Heal: The Kai Discipline of Healing is a favored choice amongst most players, and for good reasons. There are so many ways for Lone Wolf to get sliced and diced, stabbed, concussed, burnt, frozen, poisoned, contaminated, mind-fried, life-drained or just generally hurt, to make it a very good thing he can heal. Sadly, this was nerfed in the New Order books to 10 Endurance healed this way per book. Probably to push the emergency healing power one gets from the highest-rank healing discipline instead.
  • Good Weapon, Evil Weapon: Very much enforced on Magnamund; you can tell which side most troops are just from a look at their weapons. Just for the Sommlending, you have a prevalence of "clean" weapons like swords, longbows, crossbows, spears and lances for the knights. The evil Giaks, on the other hand, use curved knives and swords, warhammers, spears and pikes as well as bows and arrows, all forged in a black metal. Same thing with the Drakkarim, usually wielding swords, axes and polearms with a strong preference for serrated edges. The morally ambiguous Vassagonians are mostly seen with scimitars and curved knives, and so on....
  • Gorn: The novelizations take this up to eleven. To give some examples:
    • The Drakkarim hang the skulls of newborn children around their belts as trophies.
    • In the aftermath of the massacre of the Kai Monastery, a girl's heart has been gleefully eaten out and her groin is a pool of blood.
    • During the Darklords' invasion of Sommerlund, people are taken up into the sky by Kraans (winged monsters) and dropped to their deaths.
    • In Vassagonia, a condemned man is fed a live creature that chews its way out of its victims.
    • While looking for the Lorestones, Lone Wolf passes through a town in which condemned prisoners have apples placed on their heads, and later in their mouths, while spears are thrown at them. Onlookers place bets as to whether the throwers will spit (spear) apples or Adam's apples.
    • Immediately prior to his defection, Vonotar uses magic to explode a colleague's heart (the person was alive at the time), and the narrative gives descriptions of pieces of the victim covering the room.
    • During the attack on the Kai Monastery, people go mad from seeing the Darklords, with blood pouring out of their eyes, ears, noses, and mouths.
    • People are Eaten Alive on a regular basis, with one scene indicating that Giaks feed victims a potion that keeps them alive and conscious to prolong their suffering.
  • Gotta Catch Them All: Books 6–11 involve searching for the seven lost Lorestones one by one.
  • Gradual Regeneration: How the various Healing disciplines work in the original books. It makes dallying about in otherwise pointless paragraphs sometimes worthwhile just for the regained Endurance.
  • Grail in the Garbage: In The Jungle of Horrors, Lone Wolf can visit a shop where the proprietor claims to be selling legendary artifacts. Lone Wolf easily recognizes most of them as fakes, but one is a genuine magic ring that can amplify his psychic powers.
  • Great Big Book of Everything: In the beginning of Book 20, the Elder Magi give Lone Wolf what is essentially a travel guide to the Plane of Darkness. It's pretty much the only reason Lone Wolf has even a snowball's chance in (literally) Hell of succeeding.
  • Great Gazoo: Really the only way to describe Alyss, the mischievous demigoddess first introduced in the novelization before becoming a Canon Immigrant in the gamebooks. She's firmly on the side of Good, but is rather playful about it compared to any other of Lone Wolf's allies. And although her Reality Warper powers could be game-breaking, she only uses them to even the odds in Lone Wolf's favor rather than letting him win without efforts. Alyss is unusual for this trope in that she both has definite goals and fully understands what she's doing: she isn't just messing with people or producing loads of unintentional consequences. To some extent she's deliberately playing this role to hide just where her limitations and weaknesses are.
  • Green Aesop: Nature is Good, to the point where the Darklords are weakened by clean and pristine environments. The only ones who use significant amounts of industrial technology are the bad guys (and the Dwarves). The books also take the extremely Romantic version of this trope, where "interfering with nature is a bad thing," Science Is Bad, and the world should exist in eternal Medieval Stasis in harmony with nature.
  • Grim Up North: Kalte (icy wasteland populated with hostile barbarians, malevolent wildlife and as of book 3 an Evil Sorcerer), the Darklands (Mordor) and Ixia (Mordor with more ice and Sealed Evil in a Can) fit this trope perfectly, but the heroic northern kingdoms of Sommerlund and Durenor avert it.
  • The Guards Must Be Crazy: Although even smart guards would have a hard time against a psychic hero specialized in infiltration and camouflage, some over the series display the typical incompetence associated with this trope.
    • For example, in Shadow on the Sand, two Vassagonian gaolers believe their prisoner has escaped when they can't see him through the peephole, just because Lone Wolf is sitting against the door. And he isn't even doing it on purpose, but still gets the opportunity to ambush them when they open the cell.
    • In Dawn of the Dragons, the Eldenorian guards capturing Lone Wolf and bringing him before Prince Lutha take his gold, backpack and weapons... but not the weapon-like special items. Including the Sommerswerd!note  The collector re-edition explains this by having the soldiers being quite superstitious of touching magical artifacts or weapons.
  • Guns Are Worthless: Completely averted in this series. Anytime an enemy has one of the "primitive" Bor Muskets, Lone Wolf will either die instantly or face a random number roll that can still result in instant death. Apparently, wielding awesome Psychic Powers granted by the Sun God doesn't count for much against guns.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be:
    • This is the fate of a Vordak in Book 5, Shadow on the Sand, if you have the Sommerswerd.
      You strike again, curving the golden blade in a great arc. It bites into the Vordak's neck, tearing through its unnatural body, and severing it diagonally from collarbone to hip.
    • In The Skull of Agarash, Lone Wolf kills a ravenous Anapheg by bisecting it vertically, from groin to skull, with one upward slash of the Sommerswerd, leaving two near-perfect symmetrical halves.
  • Healing Factor: The various Healing disciplines; most of the time they are just granting Gradual Regeneration, but there are instances when they can explicitly save the protagonist's life from grievous injuries, poisoning, or diseases. Especially with Curing by the rank of Archmaster, or the Grandmaster discipline of Deliverance, which can heal 20 Endurance Points even in the middle of a fight if the total falls too low, though only once per adventure.
  • Healing Hands: The various Healing disciplines allow a Kai lord to heal others by laying his hands. It can cost the player some Endurance if the wounds are extensive. Note that this very rarely can save a life if the person is too grievously wounded and at death's door; at best the power will allow a few last words followed by a peaceful death.
  • Healing Herb:
    • Laumspur, which you can find over most of Magnamund.
    • Oede herb is considerably rarer, but powerful enough to qualify as Panacea.
  • Healing Potion: A staple of the game; the most common kind is the Laumspur potion. There are other varieties, more or less efficient, like Rendalim's elixir, Larnuma oil or liquor, Kourshah wine, Oxydine tincture, Oede herb, etc. Very useful even with the Healing discipline, since it's quite easy to get mangled beyond what your Gradual Regeneration can quickly repair.
  • Heel–Face Turn: The Slavemaster of Aarnak in Book 12, who has had enough of the Darklords and their destructive ways. Later becomes the first president of Magador under his birth name, Kadharian.
  • Hell Hound: Various types of Hellhounds serve as recurring enemies.
    • In earlier adventures, Lone Wolf has to face the Doomwolves, the (barely) tamed mounts of the orc-like Giaks.
    • Then he has to face the Akataz, the warhounds of the Drakkarim.
    • Book 18 has as one enemy encounter the Hounds of Vikkak, described as "hellish beasts born of dark sorcery".
    • Finally, Book 19 introduces a mecha version of one, aptly named Mech-Wulf.
    • And let's not forget about Demonlord Tagazin, a recurring villain with the appearance of a sabertoothed jackal.
  • Helping Hands:
    • The novelization of Fire on the Water describes the severed limbs of the zombies from Vonotar's ghost fleet still moving on their own until hacked to pieces.
    • The eight-fingered hands of the Dakomyd, even after being severed from the monster, still attack Lone Wolf, climbing his legs and dragging him down by the cloak.
    • The Rahkos in Castle Death is a floating, undead hand fond of eating brains.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: While there are other types of magic weapons, a few of which are even halfway decent, the best magic weapons are swords. The Weaponskill Kai discipline in the first books has 4 chances out of 10 to give you some kind of sword as favored weapon. It's the best option in the game, since even beyond the Sommerswerd, it's the most commonly found weapon in a No-Gear Level.
  • Heroism Equals Job Qualification: At the end of Book 2, Lone Wolf is granted the title of "Fryearl" and custody of the lands surrounding the remains of the Kai monastery after he rallied Sommerlund's Durenese allies and slew Darklord Zagarna with the legendary Sommerswerd.
  • Hero of Another Story:
    • Banedon is implied to be on his own adventures when he's offscreen. He starts out, like Silent Wolf, as a slacker student, and eventually becomes Guildmaster of the Brotherhood of the Crystal Star. Such as winning an airship staffed by gun-toting dwarves. You find that one out when he rescues Lone Wolf in Shadow on the Sand. In The Legacy of Vashna, it's mentioned that Banedon is in Bhanar on some quest and not expected to be back before the end of the year. As we learn in the New Order series, Bhanar is a country led by a dark magic-using tyrant who is also a Vampire and whose army uses guns powered by steam. One wonders what Banedon was up to there! One of Banedon's missions turning sour is the setup behind The Captive of Kaag where Lone Wolf needs to rescue him.
    • In the Mongoose Publishing remakes, each book has a 100-page mini-story about one of the characters who shaped the plot of that book, either taking place before or after said book. One character, the Noble Zombie Dire from The Captives of Kaag, is also the mini-story character in The Legacy of Vashna, Wolf's Bane and Dead in the Deep.
  • Hero Stole My Bike: In Lone Wolf's case, it's "Hero Stole My Horse" — repeatedly over the course of the series. As well as "Hero Stole My Flying Mount". In The Kingdoms of Terror, Lone Wolf needs to follow someone fast. There's a horse in the open; he can either buy it legitimately off the owner, or just steal it. The latter's riskier but a heck of a lot cheaper.
  • Hit Points: Or Endurance Points, as they're known here.
  • Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: Magnamund's calendar is based on the date of creation of the Moonstone by the Shianti.
  • Holy Hand Grenade: The Sommerswerd. Uses the blessed power of light... to obliterate the enemies of the Kai.
  • Holy Water: Flasks of Holy Water can be found in Book 4, The Chasm of Doom. Throwing a flask at the Dagger of Vashna makes the water explode violently. Lone Wolf will lose 3 Endurance points, while the villain who was holding the dagger suffers far worse: he is on fire, one arm was torn off by the blast, and his eyes are gone.
  • Hook Hand: In Book 5, during the palace prison escape path, you can meet "Hammerfist the Armourer", a huge weaponsmith with a hand replaced by a warhammer for both fighting and metalworking.
  • Hostile Terraforming: The Darklords thrive in toxic environments and cannot stand clean ones. Thus, their forces slowly spread out and turn the land into Mordor.
  • Humanoid Abomination: About every one of the Darklords of Helgedad qualify. They have quite varied appearances, but are usually humanoid (or close enough; Darklord Taktaal is a Snake Person). Darklord Gnaag is essentially the Brundle Fly. Darklord Haakon is the best example since the Legends of Lone Wolf novels reveal that he has the face of a young human man under his black helm. He also has unnaturally long skinny fingers and a powerfully muscled physique. A physique that is very easy to see since he has translucent skin from the neck down. Despite the physical similarities to humans, Haakon is an embodiment of pure evil just like the other Darklords.
  • Humanshifting: The Helghast are undead with the power to change into a human form. This makes them the perfect spies and infiltrators for the Darklords.
  • Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: The Shadowgates allow travel between other dimensions and other planets. However, actually traveling through a Shadowgate is completely inimical to mortals, ravaging body and soul alike. The two times Lone Wolf travels through a Shadowgate in the Magnakai series rob him of Endurance points. In the Grandmaster series, Lone Wolf can eventually learn how to shield his body from the worst effects of Shadowgate travel.
  • Hypno Trinket: The golden bracelets used by Vonotar to control the Ice Barbarians in Book 3. Putting one on your wrist is a very bad idea.
  • Ice Palace: The ice-fortress of Ikaya.
  • Idiot Ball: This being a Choose Your Own Adventure type of series, the player can make Lone Wolf hold it if he's faced with a situation where some of the choices are clearly dumber than the others. Some examples:
    • Book 1: If you fall into a tomb in a graveyard known for being the home to ancient horrors... why yes, do open the sarcophagus please, what could go wrong?
    • Book 2: If a zombie captain (that you've known when he was alive) asks you to put down the Sommerswerd so his soul could be freed... of course you can trust him and discard your magic weapon while on a ship full of undead.
    • Book 3: If you find a pretty golden bracelet on the body of an obviously mind-controlled Ice Barbarian, when it is known his people lacks metal and never fancied any jewelry, you can safely put it on your own wrist... Vonotar would just love to have a word with you.
  • I Don't Like the Sound of That Place:
    • Joe Dever loves this trope, as is evident from such titles as The Chasm of Doom, The Kingdoms of Terror, Castle Death and The Jungle of Horrors.
    • Many of the actual place names fit the bill too, such as the Darklands, the Doomlands of Naaros (you know it's bad when it's got Doomy Dooms of Doom and is named after the God of Evil) and the Hellswamp.
  • The Igor: Lord Zahda has two of them, a hunchback and an ugly dwarf.
  • I'm a Humanitarian:
    • The cannibal wretches of the Forbidden City.
    • The ghouls in Tahou's "Cauldron".
  • I'm Melting!: Many an Undead (above the standard skeletons or zombies) dissolves into foul-smelling goo upon destruction. Notably the case for Vordaks or Helghast among the servants of the Darklords, or for the mutated boss undead of Deathlord Ixiataaga from Book 17.
  • Impersonating the Evil Twin: Lone Wolf taking the place of Wolf's Bane at the end of Book 19. He successfully infiltrates the enemy base, and Wolf's Bane's superiors are fooled because Lone Wolf's aura is altered to match his. He is outed when he is forced to help Alyss, who has sneaked in as well and gets spotted.
  • Improbable Age: In one of the Newsletters, Joe Dever provided a list of Kai and Magnakai ranks and the average ages the Kai Lords reached them. A raw recruit entered at the age of 7, made Initiate (the rank Lone Wolf has at the beginning of his first adventure) at 16, and completed his training and became a Master at 28. The Grand Master, at the time the highest rank, was anywhere from 56 to 60. Of course, that was the old Order; Lone Wolf would radically shake things up, becoming an Initiate at 15, making Master before 18, and reaching Grand Master at the shockingly young age of 35 (even more shocking when you consider that due to his time in the Daziarn, physically he was just a lick over 23). And even that pales in comparison to his successor in the New Grand Master books, who reached the rank of Grand Master at 14. Although to be totally fair, those previous Grand Masters rose through the ranks by training under other Kai; Lone Wolf did it by finding magic gems invested with the lore of the higher Kai teachings shaped by the hand of Nyxator the Dragon.
  • Improbable Infant Survival: In the World of Lone Wolf spinoff series, the protagonist Grey Star was an infant who washed ashore on the island home of the mystical Shianti after a particularly violent storm. This was made even more improbable since the island was specifically enchanted to keep outsiders away. The Shianti who discovered the baby boy in the wreckage took his survival despite the odds as a sign that destiny brought him to them. So they adopted him and raised him as their own, teaching him their magic. This was especially fortuitous since Southern Magnamund is being overrun by Wytch King Shasarak (a rogue Shianti) and his empire. The Shianti themselves cannot intervene due to an oath of noninterference they made long ago, but Grey Star, their adopted human son, can intervene.
  • Inescapable Ambush: Eshnar in Book 4. The moment you visit the town, you can tell there's something wrong. By then, it's too late.
  • Inescapable Net: In book 8, traveling companion Paido is snagged by the bad guys in a net that is also studded with fishhooks, making it practically impossible to quickly free him before they drag him off. You see him again a couple of books later, alive but covered in scars from where the hooks were pulled out.
  • Infernal Retaliation: Happens after a fashion in Wolf's Bane. Early on in the story, Lone Wolf is trapped in an otherworldly plant stem. Your options include cutting your way out, shouting your way out, and using magic. The problem comes with the last option, since the player isn't told which spell Lone Wolf will use. He ends up casting his lightning hand spell, which does effectively open the stem up, but it also causes the apparently flammable sap in the stem to ignite and burn furiously. You take damage from the resulting inferno if you're not immune to fire.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: The Sommerswerd, acquired in the second book. The most powerful sword in the series, it's somewhat of ainvoked Game-Breaker until later books give enemies power-ups to counter it. It's still an incentive for people to read from the beginning. In that book, the Sommerswerd is in fact the Sword of Plot Advancement; as an Old Save Bonus it acts as the Infinity +1 Sword in later books.note 
  • Infinity -1 Sword:
    • There are a string of these, most prominently in the last few books of the third series, where they get into the high end of the Sorting Algorithm of Evil and Lone Wolf regularly has to fight some extremely powerful demonic bad guy that he could only believably beat with a potent magical weapon. There's the Dagger of Vashna, Helshezag, the Power Spike in book 17, as well as Skarn-Ska in book 20.
    • After attaining Supreme Mastery, Lone Wolf learns how to make these himself, and the new PC can choose from a list of ten of them. By default these are as powerful as Skarn-Ska or a Darklord blade, but get a bonus in certain circumstances that's even higher. Some of these bonuses can equal or even top the Sommerswerd's. This seems to have been done partly to make sure the PC had a powerful magical weapon that would work on inhuman enemies, and the author wouldn't have to keep inventing new ones for a reader who hadn't gone through the whole series.
  • Injured Limb Episode: In the first half of Shadow on the Sand, Lone Wolf can spend a good deal of the action while having contracted a disease called limbdeath, resulting from sewer germs getting into a shoulder wound. (It's possible to avoid the infection with some paths in the sewer, though.) This means Lone Wolf is unable to use his left arm until he can find the Magic Antidote, which results in a serious reduction in fighting skills.
  • Instant Sedation: For all his powers, Lone Wolf can get knocked out instantly with a Tranquillizer Dart (notably in Shadow on the Sand) or some Knockout Gas (notably in Castle Death). As usual for the trope, a big source of Cutscene Incompetence.
  • Interspecies Romance: The Legends of Lone Wolf books imply Banedon (a human mage) and Alyss (a demigoddess) have a thing for each other.
  • Inventory Management Puzzle: The series lets you have 8 backpack items from the beginning, and around 12 Special Items in the Grandmaster books. It can get really hard to decide what to throw out, especially when you continue and find out that one of the things you threw out, thinking it was useless, is for a puzzle in the current book which you now can't do. Thankfully, some Special Items don't count toward your 12-item limit (for example, a sheath that hides the Sommerswerd from evil eyes), and while Meals count toward Backpack inventory, learning Hunting allows you to leave them behind entirely for most areas. You can also store items for safekeeping between books.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Surprisingly, Lone Wolf himself in the Legends of Lone Wolf series is capable of being quite unpleasant to be around.
  • Joker Jury: Lone Wolf gets one such mock-trial in Book 7, Castle Death, from the denizens of said forsaken place. The sentence? "The Maze!"
  • Juxtaposed Halves Shot: The Skull of Agarash uses a juxtaposed halves shot in the same panel to show Grandmaster Lone Wolf and Guildmaster Banedon both leaning over a Crystal Ball while they're communicating with each other at a distance.
  • Killer Game Master: The series absolutely counts as written by one. The second volume is especially infamous as it can result in, among other things, an unwinnable situation because a key item was stolen from you and never recovered, and an instant death outcome because you didn't fetch a magical weapon (which itself can become an instadeath situation because fetching it puts you against one of the strongest enemies in the book). And that's just two of the many, many deaths you can experience in the average Lone Wolf book. The sheer amount of bad ends in this series is staggering, and the enemies you meet in the later books can be absurd, to say the least (the Chaos-master and the Ruel Giganites come to mind).
  • Killing Your Alternate Self: The whole of book 19, Wolf's Bane, is about Lone Wolf pursuing and dueling with his Evil Knockoff, first on Magnamund and then on another world. In the end, although he receives help from Alyss (who prevents Wolf's Bane from cheating), Lone Wolf deals the fatal blow by turning the Doppelgänger's sword on himself.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: Maybe he's not as bad as some video-game heroes, but still, Lone Wolf always has the option to thoroughly check for loot wherever he goes. It's part of the Inventory Management Puzzle, as many items, precious or not, won't come into play and just waste space in the backpack. Nonetheless, if you want to drag along that heavy bag of silver nuggets or that ingot of platinum for the rest of the adventure, you can! The Kai monastery can always need some rebuilding/refitting, after all.
  • Knights and Knaves: A variant offered as a puzzle: a performer brings out two children, masked so as to conceal their genders. One states, "I'm a boy," and the other, "I'm a girl." The performer confirms that they are indeed a boy and a girl, but at least one of them is lying, leaving Lone Wolf to determine the gender of each without asking any further questions. Of course, given the above information, if one of them is lying, the other must be as well, making this one as straightforward to solve as the classic version.
  • Knockout Gas: In Castle Death, soporific gas is filling some trapped rooms or delivered by an ugly dwarf blowing it in your face through a brass tube.
  • Large and in Charge: The Gourgaz, huge lizardfolks used as squad leaders of the Giak battalions. These Giant Mooks being much harder to kill than ordinary Giak officers, including by archers, they insure greater morale among the troops.
  • Laser Blade: Darklord Haakon summons a blue swordbeam of Pure Energy from his magic stone to fight Lone Wolf.
  • Last of His Kind: Lone Wolf is the only survivor of the Kai Lords, until he rebuilds the Kai Order in the Grand Master books.
  • Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: In Book 19, Wolf's Bane, after a long cat-and-mouse game, when Lone Wolf finally catches up to his Evil Knockoff Wolf's Bane, the villain challenges him to an honorable duel using only two rapiers he has prepared. He allows Lone Wolf to inspect both rapiers to confirm that neither of them has been sabotaged or enchanted. If the player tries to refuse, Wolf's Bane will accuse Lone Wolf of cowardice and the duel will begin regardless. Of course, when Wolf's Bane is about to lose, he cheats by summoning a monster called a Doom-blight to attack the hero, but Alyss interferes and saves him.
  • Letter Motif: If it has a double A in it (whether "it" is a creature, character or place) then it's trouble.
    • Characters: Gnaag, Haakon, Ixiataaga, Kekataag the Avenger, Kraagenskûl, Magnaarn, Naar, the Shog'aash, Shom'zaa, Taktaal.
    • Creatures: Akraa'Neonor, Dentaag, Dholdaarg, Dhorgaan, Kraan, Muntaag, Plaak, Taan-spider.
    • Places: Aarnak, Dejkaata, Kaag, Haagadar, Maaken (Maakengorge, Maakenmire), Naaros, Xaagon, Zaaryx.
  • Level Scaling: Enemies you meet in the late Grandmaster Books, or New Order series, may be things like common guards or street thugs, yet they will have stats that may compare to or surpass that of the Darklords' finest soldiers from the first few books.
  • Lifesaving Misfortune: In the backstory to the original series, Lone Wolf is the only one who survives the massacre of the Kai Order because he has been gathering firewood away from the monastery as a punishment for misbehavior. When he sees the monastery on fire, he begins to run back but hits his head on a branch, falls unconscious, and doesn't wake up until long after the villains has killed everyone inside the monastery and left without discovering him.
  • Lizard Folk:
    • Gourgaz are massive lizardmen coming from the Maakenmire swamp and employed by the Darklords to lead the Giak soldiers in combat.
    • Crocaryx are crocodilian humanoids in service of the god Kai, who guard the Lorestone of Tahou in the lost city of Zaaryx.
  • Load-Bearing Boss:
    • Start with Book 7, Castle Death, and the destruction — in a volcanic eruption — of the title fortress of Kazan-Oud after the defeat of its evil Lord, Zahda. Although to be specific, it is the shattering of the Doomstone which induces this, since its magic (in conjunction with the Lorestone) was keeping the volcano at bay, and not just Zahda's death.
    • Played straight in Book 17, The Deathlord of Ixia, with the destruction of Ixiataaga resulting in the collapse of the whole city of Xaagon as time is catching up with it.
  • Long-Running Book Series: From 1984 to 1997, 2010 to present.
  • Loophole Abuse: The Shianti have sworn to the goddess Ishir that they would no longer get involved in the world of mortals and never leave the Isle of Lorn. However, the serment said nothing about adopting a human child serendipitously washed ashore their island, teaching him their magic and then sending Grey Star fighting against Wytch-King Shasarak....
  • Loyal Phlebotinum: The Sommerswerd can only be used to its full potential by a Kai Lord, like the eponymous hero, or a member of the royal house of Sommerlund. If wielded in combat by anyone else, it is said that its power will fade and be lost forever. Furthermore, if a truly evil creature makes the mistake of simply holding the sword — as an ugly dwarf servant of Lord Zahda painfully discovers in Castle Death — it will cost it a few fingers.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Pick a number from the Random Number Table. If it is 6 or less, "Your life and your quest end here." Anybody who tells you they read the books all the way through without cheating is lying. Well... that, or their OCD makes them insane enough create a new character each and every single time the Random Number God frowns on them.
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: A shield gives you a +2 Combat Skill bonus. This is an easy advantage in combat that shouldn't be passed up, considering there is otherwise no Dual Wielding rules. (Some weapons are supposedly two-handed, but it is hardly enforced.) This is also much less situational than the equivalent bonuses granted by the Kai disciplines of Weaponskill or Mindblast, although there are some circumstances where you explicitly can't benefit from a shield either (like if you're dangling from a rope/ledge with one hand, or have an arm paralyzed). Against projectiles, however, it is extremely rare that a shield is taken in account.

    Tropes M to R 
  • MacGuffin Guardian:
    • Lord Haakon himself, and the monsters he summons, must be vanquished to retrieve the Book of the Magnakai at the end of book 5, Shadow on the Sand.
    • The monstrous Dakomyd guards the first Lorestone in book 6, The Kingdoms of Terror.
    • The Crocaryx and the Zadragon in book 9, The Cauldron of Fear.
    • Book 20, The Curse of Naar, can be said to be mostly a series of MacGuffin Guardians, as several Demon Lords must be beaten to retrieve a new Plot Coupon each time.
  • Mad Artist: Chanda the Taxidermist wants a unique subject to create his ultimate masterpiece — and chooses the last of the Kai Lords.
  • Made of Indestructium: The Sommerswerd, a sword gifted to mankind by the gods. It can be taken from Lone Wolf, but destroyed? Not a chance. Offensive magic is just absorbed or deflected, and physical force ignored. In The Caverns of Kalte, to escape a trap Lone Wolf has the option to use it to pierce through a door made from a thick slab of stone. It takes several hours, but it's quite clear that breaking or even dulling the blade is not going to happen. The one time it's threatened is while absorbing an energy vortex generated by a Ring of Power crafted by the God of Evil Naar himself in Dawn of the Dragons. The Sommerswerd's tip becomes molten for a moment before it eventually triumphs and sends the vortex back at the ring's bearer.
  • Mad Scientist: The Cener Druids are the medieval equivalent of Mad Scientists. They specialize in experiments that surpass Josef Mengele in sadism and really love biological warfare. In the Back Story they nearly wiped out the mighty Elder Magi with a plague and in Book 13 they plan to do the same to everybody else.
  • Magic Antidote: Oede Herb is the rarest and most expensive medicinal plant on the whole Magnamund. But it can cure many diseases and poisons, and its effects are nearly instantaneous. In Book 5, Shadow on the Sand, the hero recovers the usage of an arm paralyzed by infectious bacteria in mere seconds. How rare is it? There are only three doses of Oede in the entire series. And you can only get the one in Book 5 if your arm gets infected.
  • Magic Knight:
    • The Vakeros Order, servants of Mages that Lone Wolf eventually befriends.
    • In the Grand Master series, Lone Wolf can choose one of two styles of magic as a skill set to go along with his others. The Kai Lords themselves can be considered psionic knights.
    • On the villains' side, Lone Wolf can duel against a Ziran in Book 10, a Drakkar in full armor fighting with a Magic Wand.
  • Magic Mushroom: The calacena is a hallucinogenic mushroom. It is prized by magicians as it can be used to create a pink potion that enhance clairvoyant or enchantment powers. Eating or breathing the spores of the unprocessed mushrooms is a sure way to go through Mushroom Samba, though.
  • Magitek: Present in some places. Most notably, the skyships like Banedon's Skyrider and Cloud Dancer, and several of Naar's minions in Book 19.
  • Male Sun, Female Moon: Ishir is a female Moon goddess and Kai is a male Sun god.
  • Mana: Grey Star's Shianti magic uses Willpower points in the World of Lone Wolf spin-off. Not the case in the main series or Banedon's short adventure, where spells are Cast from Hit Points.
  • The Man Behind the Man:
    • Naar, King of the Darkness is the real Big Bad of the entire series, and the one who created the Darklords.
    • In the World of Lone Wolf books starring Grey Star, Sealed Evil in a Can Agarash the Damned is The Man Behind the Man to Wytch-King Shasarak.
  • The Many Deaths of You: Especially in the earlier books that read more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. The sheer number of non-combat-related ways Lone Wolf can die in the series rivals Shadowgate.
  • Master of Unlocking: In the Kai series, the basic Mind over Matter discipline is mostly used to open locks and disarm traps. It doesn't always avoid having to use the proper keys with some ancient or magical locks, or whenever Lone Wolf has no time to spare since it's a time-consuming process.
  • Mauve Shirt:
    • Don't get too attached to any of the named characters who get characterization and accompany Lone Wolf on any of his adventures. If they stick around for more than a few page turns, chances are they're going to die horribly. Depending on the path taken, examples of ill-fated Mauve Shirts can be found in Books 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, and 18. In other words, more than half the series. The guy's called "Lone Wolf" for a reason. There are exceptions, however, notably Vakeros Warrior Paido, Guildmaster Banedon and Captain Prarg. If one of them happens to die while they accompany Lone Wolf, the hero meets his end shortly thereafter (making these books somewhat Escort Missions). The three of them get captured by the enemy at some point, but are later rescued by Lone Wolf. Sadly, Paido isn't an exception to the end. He is killed off-screen by Gnaag at the end of Book 10. Lone Wolf learns this in Book 20 when he finds Paido's soul being tortured in the Plane of Darkness. Ouch.
    • The four named Siyenese Rangers who team up with Lone Wolf's Lieutenant from Vampirium make it to the very final confrontation before they either die or wind up being left behind at the clutches of the Autarch Sejanoz.
    • Generally speaking, if the survival of that side character travelling with Lone Wolf isn't Lone Wolf's or his Lieutenant's mission objective (i.e.: Banedon in The Captive of Kaag or Karvas in Mydnight's Hero), then that companion is not going to make it to the end — this is almost guaranteed if that person is with the protagonist from the start of the book. If the character is specifically referred to as a "guide" for the protagonist, then his death/capture with subsequent death is almost certain — being designated as Guide to a Kai Lord is a death sentence. Captain Prarg is probably the most notable exception, as he survives the entirety of The Darke Crusade (despite being assigned as Lone Wolf's guide!), though he gets separated from Lone Wolf a few times, captured twice, even freeing himself from capture once, yet still makes it team up with Lone Wolf during the climax and live through it to cameo in a later book! And that's after he survived another bout of travel with Lone Wolf in The Dungeons of Torgar. Interestingly enough, in that book, another path can lead to never meeting Prarg, instead taking the leader of The Resistance Sebb Jarel as a guide. Sebb dies almost midway to escorting Lone Wolf.
  • Maximum HP Reduction: Though rare, there are a few things that will result in permanent reduction of Endurance or Combat Skill, no matter how developed Lone Wolf's healing disciplines are. Notably, surviving the explosion of a Vordak gem, trying to climb bare-handed out of the icy Caverns of Kalte, getting addicted to Adgana herb or setting off a pocket of swamp gas with a fire seed.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Grey Star is incredulous at Kundi magic rituals; he can't actually sense any sorcery being performed whatsoever by their kooky shaman, yet the mantiz bite on his leg heals somehow and their shaman does manage to point the way to the Shadow Gate. One possibility is that the Shianti use Magic A and the Kundi use Magic B, but it's never confirmed.
  • The Maze: Lone Wolf faces this scenario in Book 7, after being caught by yet another evil overlord, stripped of his weapons, and sentenced to a maze. The maze isn't actually that big, but it's certainly riddled with lethal monsters. It is tricky in the sense that actually reaching the center kills you. To continue with the story, Lone Wolf has to cheat.
  • Meaningful Name: Magnamund is almost-Latin for "big world".
  • Meaningful Rename: Kai Lord student Silent Wolf, once he finds himself the Sole Survivor and swears revenge, decides that "Lone Wolf" will now be more fitting a name.
  • Medieval European Fantasy: For the most part, although differently themed civilizations are visited, and some parts of the world are heavily (and evilly) Steampunk.
  • Medieval Stasis: Right from theinvoked Word of God, as Dever has stated that Magnamund does not have a "technological" future. Lone Wolf is even passingly confused by the concept of a clock at one point. The idea was hinted at in one of the deuterocanonical Legends novels, and was Fanon Discontinuity among most fans even before Dever confirmed it. This doesn't stop a mecha wolf, a time bomb, and power-armored warriors wielding laser spears from appearing in Book 19, among other things. Of course, this all takes place on the moon of a different planet.
  • Mega-Maw Maneuver: In The Deathlord of Ixia, Lone Wolf's ship is "swallowed" by a huge sea vessel shaped like a giant fish, and dry-docked inside. Then Drakkarim Zombies board it and slaughter the crew.
  • Mind over Matter:
    • The namesake Kai discipline allow minor feats of telekinesis, mostly used to open locks, disarm traps or cause small distractions.
    • The Magnakai discipline of Nexus is its upgrade, giving stronger telekinetic powers as well as resistance against harmful energies.
  • Mineral MacGuffin: Several.
    • First and foremost is the Moonstone, a powerful artifact crafted by a race of demigods, the Shianti. So important it is in Magnamund that Year I of this world's calendar is set on the date of its creation. It's also important in a more personal sense for Grey Star, as three-fourths of his quest is devoted to finding it so his magic will become powerful enough to take on the Big Bad.
    • Then there are the Lorestones, made by Nyxator the Dragon, which spun the Gotta Catch Them All plot of the whole Magnakai series.
    • Even the villains have their own set, the Doomstones created by Agarash the Damned (as a mockery of the Lorestones), which any hero is best off destroying on sight.
  • Mirror Match:
    • Lone Wolf vs. Wolf's Bane.
    • Grey Star vs. the Jahksa.
  • Mistaken for Granite:
    • In Book 3, The Caverns of Kalte, Lone Wolf may encounter a strange crystal statue that may or may not come to life depending on the player's choices. Unless you have a certain special item by that point (either the Sommerswerd or the Kalte Firesphere), attacking it is actually a very bad idea. Doing so releases the powerful Ice Demon that was imprisoned inside it. It will repay Lone Wolf by attempting a Grand Theft Me, which spells instant death for him. This attempt may very well succeed if the player did not find one of the aforementioned Special Items.
    • In Book 20, you have the demonic beast "Ghazoul". Although it is not specifically stated that the statue of it encountered earlier was in fact the monster waiting in ambush, it is strongly implied. The power of turning itself into stone is certainly a good way to trick even a Kai Grandmaster's mystical senses.
  • Mistaken for Murderer: In the second book, where Lone Wolf, after a failed attempt to poison him by one of the people he was travelling with, goes to the inn's common room where they all are, and angrily confronts and fights to the death the one he believes responsible. Of course, only one of them is, so if you choose the wrong person, this happens. Fortunately for observant readers, there are pictures of each traveler. The actual culprit is the one who looks the most Obviously Evil of the lot, and has a snake tattoo (which was on the wrist of three that tried to kill Lone Wolf in an earlier assassination attempt).
  • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The Slavemaster of Aarnak realizes that he's going to outlive his usefulness sooner or later, and cuts a deal with the Elder Magi to betray the Darklords.
  • Mix-and-Match Critters:
    • Several beasts of Magnamund are these, like the Anarian Sky-snake or the Ixian Mhagani.
    • Also, the Cener Druids' creations are often a mixture of various creatures.
    • However, it is even more prominent with beings of chaos, like the Daziarn's Agtah or the Plane of Darkness's Chaos-horde and Demons. The Chaos-master is a mix and match of many animals, all of which keep changing shape all the time.
  • Money for Nothing: Though it never becomes completely useless, money does become less useful in the later books. Some of them are set in places that have little use for currency, such as an icy wasteland populated by The Undead, a jungle moon orbiting another planet, and the Plane of Darkness (the series' equivalent to Hell).
  • Mook Carryover: The death of all the Darklords at the end of the Magnakai series sure throws their troops in complete disarray and makes them an easy pick for the forces of Good, but it doesn't lead to their complete destruction. Thus, in the Grand Master series, slews of Drakkarim, Giaks, Kraan, Zlanbeasts, Vordaks, Helghast, Nadziranim and other foul monsters still exist, although for the most part locked in civil wars in the Darklands. The aim of some of the new antagonists, like Archdruid Cadak or High Warlord Magnaarn, is precisely to regain control of these armies and resume conquest of Magnamund.
  • Mook Lieutenant: Vordaks are red-robed undead that serves as commanding officers for the Darklord armies. They also can communicate telepathically with each others and use ravens as scouts.
  • Mordor: A few examples in the series, most especially the Darklands.
  • Mugged for Disguise: It is not unknown for Lone Wolf to kill some Evil Minions for clothes before sneaking into enemy strongholds. This can happen in Book 5 to a Vassagonian messenger, in Book 12 to a Drakkar horseman, in Book 13 to a Cener Druid or in Book 16 with an Acolyte of Vashna. It helps that most enemy Mooks are either Faceless Goons or In the Hood.
  • Mugging the Monster: When in "civilized" parts of the world rather than evil fortresses or the wilderness, various rogues (robbers, thieves, bandits, pirates, backstabbers, grave diggers, pickpockets, brigands...) trying to mug the hero is a common type of fight encounter. More often than not, it's the hero who ends up richer and the cutthroats dead. Later in the series, the book may not even involve the player in such encounters. You get an off-hand paragraph that you're set upon by bandits, demanding gold but instead "receiving a harsh lesson in the powers of a Kai Master".
  • Multi-Melee Master: The Magnakai or Grand Master Weaponmastery disciplines give bonus with a wide array of weapons. Even though it isn't mandatory, considering that there are two weapon slots in the inventory it is probable Lone Wolf will have at least two weapons around, not counting the "special item" ones. Even with the Sommerswerd as favored weapon, some places exist where using it is unsafe, forcing you to rely on a secondary weapon.
  • Mushroom Samba:
    • The calacena mushrooms in Book 4 make Lone Wolf believe he's in a fight with some underground fiends.
    • Possibly, Bor-brew ale in Book 8 can give Lone Wolf hallucinations briefly before knocking him out.
  • Mutual Kill: In the backstory, this was the issue of the confrontation between King Ulnar I, armed with the Sommerswerd, and Darklord Vashna: neither survived the fight.
  • My Brain Is Big: The Beholder of Yanis in Book 11 has a very frail body and can't move by himself, having to be carried around by a servitor. He's gifted, however, with immense Psychic Powers and has an appropriately over-sized skull to contain his huge brain.
  • Named Weapons: A lot of really potent magical weapons have them, like the Sommerswerd or Skarn-ska, and the Kai Weapons available to player's character in the New Order series. Some villainous examples include the swords that were the personal weapons of various Darklords. Like Helshezag, wielded by Kraagenskûl, which Lone Wolf can claim after killing him. Additional lore provides the names of a few others, like Nahelzagrath (Zagarna's weapon), and Nadazgada (Gnaag's).
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Of course, as Lone Wolf, you run toward these.
    • Maybe a mild example here, but most people probably wouldn't be too eager to meet beings named "Kraagenskûl" or "Haakon", even if they weren't Darklords.note 
    • Another example is the eponymous "Castle Death" from Book 7, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Book 7 is one of the harder books in the series; the castle is full of monsters and traps, and that's before Lone Wolf gets to the Maze (which, for extra fun, is a No-Gear Level).
    • Then there's the Deathlord of Ixia. Even the Darklords fears this guy. So will you.
  • The Necrocracy: Ixia — malevolent kind, with both ruler and subjects undead.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Destroying the Rune that controls the Soultaker in Rune War also left it stranded in Magnamund. As if having a pissed-off demon trapped on your world wasn't bad enough, said demon kidnaps Lone Wolf at the end of the book.
  • Nigh-Invulnerability:
    • The Darklords are explicitly described as impossible to kill with mundane or even most magical means. They can be banished to another world (one possible way to deal with Darklord Haakon), but otherwise you need a divinely powered weapon such as the Sommerswerd. Although it is later revealed that Darklord-forged weapons (like Helshezag, the Dagger of Vashna or a Zejar-Dulaga arrow) can also kill a Darklord — no doubt on purpose, since other Darklords are the most likely enemies they can have to confront.
    • Major demonic beings, such as the Chaos-Master and Naar's Demonlords, are also impossible to fight with mundane or even ordinary magic weapons. Attacking Tagazin with a non-magical blade just destroys the weapon — and this is with a mere projection of the Demonlord on Magnamund, much weaker than his true form. You need to find their specific weaknesses or use their true names against them. On the other hand, the Sommerswerd once again always proves adequate for the task, although you must be ready for very tough fights.
  • The Night That Never Ends:
    • In the backstory, Agarash the Damned's reign of terror was called the "Age of Eternal Night".
    • In the series proper, Agarash's lieutenant Deathlord Ixiataaga uses his powers to maintain a permanent cloud cover over the city of Xaagon which prevents any sunlight from reaching it.
  • Nintendo Hard:
    • Book 11 concludes with three boss-level fights in close succession (one of which is virtually impossible if you have the Infinity +1 Sword) with hardly any chance to heal between the last two.
    • Book 17 is pretty bad too. Nearly every enemy encounter verges on Demonic Spiders invoked territory, and the battles against the Big Bad and his Dragon are some of the hardest in the series. And just like the battles in Book 11, there is almost no chance to heal in-between the boss fights. And in this case you might actually need the Infinity +1 Sword to beat the boss.
  • Noble Wolf: Lone Wolf himself draws on this symbolism with his name.
  • No Body Left Behind: Among others, the Darklords and Nadziranim fade into nothingness when killed.
  • No Fair Cheating: Sometimes, when a situation calls for the Random Number Table to be used, turning to the page reserved for landing a 9 (which usually means the best outcome, period) will instead give you a game over. Of course, these being a literary medium means that it's not all that effective.
  • No-Gear Level: Having to survive without the normal equipment and armament can happen to the hero every couple of books early on.
    • Notably in Book 2, after you inevitably get shipwrecked, and have to throw away your weapons and armor so you don't drown.
    • In Book 5, 9 and 17, in each case if Lone Wolf has to get out of jail.
    • Unavoidably in Book 7, Castle Death, when thrown into The Maze.
  • No Hugging, No Kissing: The Lone Wolf series follows this trope. Grey Star, on the other hand, has an implied romance between Grey Star and Tanith, but it only became fully canon when they married in supplementary material.
  • Non-Standard Game Over: If you inadvertently put the fortress of Ikaya on alert in Book 3, you get an ending where you escape back home without dying or completing your mission to capture Vonotar — the only place in the whole series where you can fail your mission without dying.
  • Not-So-Harmless Villain: When Roark first shows up in Book 6, Lone Wolf takes him down a peg or two with no effort. Later he turns out to be a demon worshipper who sics undead after Lone Wolf. Then if you meet him in Book 10, he actually manages to summon Demonlord Tagazin back to Magnamund. Finally, Lone Wolf meets Roark again in Book 18, where he shows up as a ghost. A ghost with powerful telekinetic abilities who has a surprisingly high Combat Skill. Not bad for someone who isn't originally a supernatural being or sorcerer.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • These are the words (or the Magnamund equivalent at least) that probably go through the minds of all the villains when Lone Wolf inevitably shows up to hand them their asses, and it shows. Book 12 has some good examples.
    • The best one is probably from Vonotar the Traitor in Book 3:
      "Who dares disturb me?" he hisses, rising from the Brumalmarc throne, his eyes searching for an intruder. Upon seeing you, he emits a horrified gasp and fumbles for his black staff. He has the look of a criminal who has been discovered in the act of some dreadful crime.
    • Each time Lone Wolf meets the Crypt Spawns, the text makes it clear that this is his reaction.
    • Lone Wolf also has this reaction to the Mech-Wulf in book 19.
    • In Shadow on the Sand, the Vassagonian envoy who escorts Lone Wolf to Vassagonia reacts with horror when he finds out that Kimah is the new ruler of Vassagonia. The unlucky envoy barely has enough time to warn Lone Wolf that he's been Lured into a Trap before Kimah's soldiers behead him.
    • This is something the books frequently do to Lone Wolf himself, with lots of sections ending by saying he sees something that fills him with dread, then making the player turn to a new section to find out what it is.
  • Oh, My Gods!: Many Sommlending characters will swear "by Kai and Ishir", the god of the Sun and goddess of the Moon, respectively. Kai is mostly popular in Sommerlund, while Ishir is revered over most of Magnamund. The Vassagonians rather invoke their prophet, the Majhan. As for Naar, the God of Evil, his name is only ever used for the most obscene curses.
  • Old Save Bonus:
    • Each book read about the same character gives bonuses to "rank", equipment, and one skill for each book. Except for whatever doesn't carry over, presumably for game balance. Although everything can be carried over until Book 13.
    • Whether or not you recognize returning characters depends on whether or not you've played the previous gamebook(s) featuring that character.
  • Ominous Floating Castle: Lone Wolf chases Wolf's Bane into a castle floating in the clouds in Book 19.
  • Omniglot: Beyond learning languages the normal way (like the Vassagonian tongue and script during his trip to Barrakesh), the Kai disciplines of Animal Kinship and Camouflage, as well as their respective upgrades, give Lone Wolf access to many languages spoken by creatures of Magnamund.
  • Omniscient Morality License: Turns out the Crocaryx in Book 9 were created by Kai for the sole purpose of guarding a Lorestone. Once said Lorestone is no longer in their possession, the narration announces that this is the beginning of the demise of their race (and they do become extinct within a generation). Makes one wonder when humans will outlive their usefulness.
  • Once per Episode:
    • It is quite rare that a book doesn't include at least one fight encounter with The Undead, in order to enjoy the bonus granted by the Sommerswerd.
    • Starting with Book 16, The Legacy of Vashna, a dive through a Shadow Gate and a visit to the Plane of Darkness is mandatory for Lone Wolf in every book.
  • One-Handed Zweihänder: Sun Knights with Grand Weaponmastery are able to wield two-handed weapons with full effect, using only one hand.
  • One-Hit Kill: A mechanic of the series, Lone Wolf's results in a round of combat depend on the difference between his Combat Skill (along with any modifiers) and the enemy's as well as what's picked on the random number table. If Lone Wolf is skilled and lucky enough, he can automatically kill a weaker opponent. Also in situations where Lone Wolf can use a bow, if he manages to shoot someone then they'll die instantly.
  • One-Winged Angel: The Nadziranim ("dark sorcerers") always adopt a more appropriate combat form before entering a fight; their favorite is that of an Ice Dragon (sometimes wielding a Flaming Sword in addition to the deadly cold Breath Weapon).
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: "Lone Wolf" is not his birth name, nor even the name he was given when he first joined the monastery. It was "Silent Wolf" before he changed his name due to being the Last of His Kind. Lone Wolf's birth name is never mentioned. (At least, not in the gamebooks themselves.)
  • Only Smart People May Pass: Constantly. Sometimes the series gets cheeky by giving you a riddle with a numerical answer and asking you to turn to the page with that number.
  • Only the Chosen May Wield: The Sommerswerd can only be used to its full potential by a Kai Lord or a member of the Royal House of Sommerlund. If wielded in combat by anyone else, it is said that its power will fade and be lost forever. Being the last of the Kai Lords at the beginning of the series, Lone Wolf is naturally The Chosen One.
  • Order Reborn: Lone Wolf eventually rebuilds the Kai Monastery and trains several apprentices.
  • Orphaned Etymology: In Book 4, a demonic enemy is briefly described as "satanic", even though Magnamund is a world totally unrelated to Earth and Christian tropes. The term is never used again.
  • Our Dragons Are Different:
    • The extinct Sun Dragons from the Backstory.
    • The Lavas in the Grand Master books (which bear a passing resemblance to D&D Draconians).
    • In the appropriately titled Book 18, Dawn of the Dragons, the dragons Naar intends to unleash on Magnamund to kill everything.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Although Magnamund lacks most classical fantasy races (elves, gnomes, halflings...), the dwarves from the mountain kingdom of Bor are pretty much standard fare. They're even known for their mechanical prowess and invented guns. In The Skull of Agarash, though, Banedon's Dwarven crew looks more like goblins.
  • Our Ghouls Are Creepier:
    • The Zaaryx Ghouls from the book The Cauldron of Fear are emaciated flesh-eating undead, although still smart enough to use rusty weapons. One of them, however, is more mutated than the others and has dangerous Psychic Powers, apparently the result of the dead body it originated from wearing a Psychic Ring.
    • The Master of Darkness features Helgedad Ghouls, bloated humanoids with wicked claws and eyes sewed shut, the result of some Darklord experiment. Though obviously not human, they're probably undead too, but it's hard to tell for sure since it's in a part of the book were pulling out the Sommerswerd is unsafe.
  • Our Liches Are Different: Deathlord Ixiataaga. Fits within the undead sorcerer mold, but he obviously never was human to begin with.
  • Out-of-Genre Experience: The book Wolf's Bane veers from the usual High Fantasy into Science Fantasy once Lone Wolf is stranded on the far-away moon of a different planet, which features strong science-fiction elements, quite apart even from the Magitek of Magnamund.
  • Outscare the Enemy: It is explained in The Magnamund Companion that Giaks are much more afraid of their officers than of their enemies. Which proved a weakness early on: the Sommlending archers were quick to figure out that if you targeted and killed the Giak commanders, their troops would readily disband in panic. This forced the Darklords to look for stronger, arrow-resistant platoon leaders, which they found in the huge Gourgaz lizardfolks.
  • Panacea: Oede Herb is the most powerful Healing Herb of the world, and can cure just about any disease and many poisons. It's also the rarest and most expensive.
  • The Paralyzer: The Kalkoth are dangerous predators from the mountains of Kalte, which have a long, barbed tongue that can inject a paralyzing venom. They have a rather low Combat Skill, but any damage received during a fight results in complete paralysis within seconds, after what the Kalkoth can easily feast on the hapless victim.
  • Pelts of the Barbarian: The Ice Barbarian of Kalte wear heavy fur clothes to protect themselves from the cold. Of course, the hero and his guides are similarly garbed when they venture in this arctic region.
  • Permanently Missable Content: Any item you don't grab in its book (or any item from a book you skip) is generally lost forever.
  • Perpetually Protean: The Chaos-master is an Eldritch Abomination that is pretty much chaos personified. As such, its appearance is that of a vaguely humanoid giant composed of the many parts of various animals... which keeps moving and changing shape unceasingly.
  • Phantasy Spelling: The Sommerswerd — not sword. It's inspired by Old English or some modern Nordic spellings. The Sommlending (people of Sommerlund, the "Summer Land") tend to have Nordic-derived names for places and objects, as well as being clearly Nordic racially as well. A vowel shift appears to have occurred since they sailed across the ocean from their original native islands on their mission from Kai.
  • Plaguemasters: The Cener Druids are literally worshiping the demon lords of disease, and aim to spread epidemics of their creation throughout Magnamund.
  • Plague of Good Fortune: Keeping the Moonstone in Sommerlund leads to this. At first, it's beneficial — crops grow abundantly, infant mortality drops to zero, disease more-or-less vanishes. But keeping it there for too long leads to a disruption of the cycles of nature — people stop dying of natural causes and the seasons stop changing, being replaced with eternal springtime. After someone's caught trying to steal it, Lone Wolf realizes all this essentially makes the Moonstone impossible to hide, and needs to be taken back to the Shianti for it to be truly safe.
  • Poisoned Weapons:
    • In Book 4, Lone wolf can encounter a bandit patrol whose weapons are coated with gnadurn sap, a deadly poison. By identifying it beforehand, the Hunting discipline gives you a warning to avoid this dangerous combat.
    • The "Zejar-Dulaga" are magical poisoned arrows created by the Darklords. One is powerful enough to one-shot a Darklord.
  • Poison Mushroom:
    • The Caverns of Kalte:
      • The Glowing Crystal found in Ikaya, in fact a Doomstone. If Lone Wolf keeps it on his person for too long, its radiation will kill him.
      • The golden bracelets worn by Ice Barbarians. They are Hypno Trinkets allowing Vonotar to control them, and if Lone Wolf dons one it can lead to a Psychic-Assisted Suicide.
    • The Black Crystal Cube from Shadow on the Sand. It's not until later in the book that you learn a) it attracts your enemies to your location, and b) it is going to explode in your hand if you don't throw it away fast enough. A similar one can be found in The Masters of Darkness, and if you keep it too long, it just kills you outright when exploding.
  • Poke in the Third Eye: In Book 18, Dawn of the Dragons, Lone Wolf can opt to contact his friend Banedon telepathically with Telegnosis to confirm whether or not he survived the crash of his skyship. If he does, he discovers a wall of sorts in the astral realm blocking his attempts. During his attempts to break through the wall, he senses that Naar, who is an Unseen Evil, is using his own power to repair it. Lone Wolf immediately ceases his attempts to avoid giving Naar any chance at attacking his mind.
  • P.O.V. Cam: Since, well, the reader takes the role of the protagonist, all the full-page illustrations are from Lone Wolf (or Grey Star, or Lone Wolf's lieutenant)'s viewpoint. This means we never see what the protagonists look like with those inner illustrations (although sometimes, their hands are in the shot).
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Lake of Blood in Helgedad, the capital city of the Darklands. A sea of supernatural flames fed by the pain of those thrown into it. Even worse, the victims aren't able to die and remain trapped in a state of undying agony. Fortunately, Lone Wolf blows up Helgedad and the Lake at the end of Book 12.
  • Precursor Heroes:
    • King Ulnar I, who killed Archlord Vashna with the Sommerswerd after he invaded Sommerlund. The King died in the process, but the sword was taken up by...
    • Sun Eagle, the first Kai Lord and founder of the Kai order, who wrote the Book of the Magnakai.
  • Predecessor Villain:
    • Agarash the Damned — except in the World of Lone Wolf series, where he is The Man Behind the Man. Agarash's legacy in the form of the evil artifacts, weapons, and servants he left behind continues to trouble Magnamund even after he was defeated and sealed thousands of years ago by the Elder Magi.
    • Archlord Vashna, the most powerful and influential of all the Darklords, who launched the first invasion of Sommerlund in the past. He even has his own Religion of Evil with the Acolytes of Vashna. Preventing him from coming back is the aim of no less than two of Lone Wolf's missions. Some ominous events mentioned in book 29 (that the Maakengorge suddenly lengthened by more than twenty miles, followed by literally thousands of Vashna's human worshipers making a pilgrimage to the site) indicate another attempt at a comeback isn't far off.
  • Previous Player-Character Cameo: In the New Order series, Lone Wolf typically appears in the prologue to give the Grand Master his mission brief for the book, along with appearing for maybe the first few paragraphs in the story if the book begins at the Kai Monastery. In Trail of the Wolf, though, he is kidnapped by the Soultaker and taken to the Darklands, where the Grand Master has to rescue him. Even then, he's a badass, resisting a full-on psychic assault from the Soultaker and a direct funnel to the Plane of Darkness for several days and still having enough juice to propel his Sommerswerd through his magic prison barrier like a bullet to destroy the Soultaker while the Grand Master has him distracted.
  • Print Long-Runners: 28 volumes, soon to be the intended 32.
  • Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Being forced to kill himself can happen to Lone Wolf in The Caverns of Kalte if he puts on his wrist the golden bracelet of a mind-controlled Ice Barbarian and cannot resist Vonotar's mental command.
  • Psychic Block Defense:
    • The Mindshield, Psi-screen, and Kai-screen disciplines. They are mostly geared toward protecting from psychic combat and mental damage (which, to be fair, are a favorite of many creatures of Magnamund). Mind control is harder to defend against, and some especially powerful telepaths may manage to slip in and read Lone Wolf's thoughts while he's busy shielding his psyche from trauma.
    • Psychic attacks are in fact frequent enough in this setting that some non-Kai humans otherwise devoid of psychic powers learn to resist the basic Mindblast through willpower, like the knight order of the White Mountain. Berserk rage also provides a modicum of protection.
  • Psychic Link: In the Legends of Lone Wolf novels, Vonotar the Traitor establishes a psychic link between himself and Darklord Zagarna. Vonotar discovers in the process that Zagarna has very little consciousness of his own; he is basically a puppet of Naar himself (like, assumedly, all Darklords).
  • Psychic Powers:
  • Puzzle Boss: Some enemies have no standard battle, or are better off avoided by using certain items or tactics. Two of the four Grey Star books have puzzle boss fights, for example, and the other two tend to fare better if you go into them with your thinking cap on.
  • Rage Helm: The Drakkarim are almost always seen wearing metal helmets with skull-shaped facemasks in battle. To the point this is often the main feature used to describe them, notably by Vassagonian locals in Shadow on the Sand.
  • Rail Roading:
    • There's usually more than one direct path to victory, but all books begin and end the same way, and if any major character dies as part of the plot, there's no way to save him. Sometimes the books draw out your attempts to save the doomed character, though.
    • Also, the adventures get a lot more linear over time. Compare the pathways through early installments like book three, The Caverns of Kalte or book seven, Castle Death, versus later installments like book seventeen, The Deathlord of Ixia.
    • Probably a good example is in Mydnight's Hero where the protagonist encounters a patrol. There's about a dozen different ways to handle the patrol, from various bluffs, bribery, to trying to escape, to trying to mind control the leader of the patrol, yet all of them end with you and your companion being captured and jailed. Every outcome leads to that. Refuse to answer them? You are captured. Try to flee? Captured. Bluff? You have to bribe them, use the wrong currency? Captured. Used the right currency? Patrol wants more, do you try to mind control them? No? Captured. Yes? He figures out you're trying that and you get captured.
  • Ramming Always Works: In Fire on the Water, the flagship of the death-hulks fleet (sunken ships manned by The Undead) has a huge ram on its prow. At the beginning of the naval battle, it rams the Durenor, the admiral ship of the Durenese fleet, which quickly sinks, forcing Lone Wolf overboard.
  • Random Number God: The gamebooks contain unavoidable situations where you can be killed by bad random number picks, to the point where the falling mast in Book 2 (1/10 chance of instant death) became something of a meme for its Dropped a Bridge on Him nature.
  • Rank Scales with Asskicking: Constantly. The highest-ranking officer in any group will have the strongest combat stats. Each of the heads of state Lone Wolf eventually has to confront (Zakhan Kimah, Baron Shinzar, High Warlord Magnaarn, Archdruid Cadak...) is certain to be either a Mid-Boss or Final Boss (and likelyinvoked That One Boss too). And the Darklords are among the toughest customers around, of course.
  • Rays from Heaven: At the end of Book 17, after the defeat of the Deathlord, rays of sun are described piercing the sky of Ixia for the first time in centuries.
  • Reassigned to Antarctica: Captain Lanza commands a fort near the frozen wasteland of Ixia because he killed the son of a noble in a drunken brawl. Most of the garrison, in fact, probably ended up there for similar reasons.
    His posting here had been his punishment for a drunken brawl in a Vadera tavern in which he had killed, albeit in self-defence, the brutish elder son of Haglar, the mayor of the city. At his court-martial he had been allowed to choose his fate — command of the notorious Azgad Island garrison, or death by hanging. Lanza readily admits that there have been times when he has felt that he made the wrong choice.
  • The Red Mage:
    • Vonotar the Traitor, who studied both the left-handed magic of the Crystal Star brotherhood, and the right-handed magic of the Nadziranim, making him one of the most powerful wizards on Magnamund.
    • Lone Wolf and the New Order Grandmasters diversify their powers by integrating non-Kai magic. There's still Grand Master versions of the traditional Kai and Magnakai Disciplines, but there's also six new, unrelated Disciplines with no tie to the core Kai training.
  • Red Shirt: Lone Wolf shouldn't get too attached to any unnamed characters that travel with him either. For examples, see Book 17 and...
  • Red Shirt Army: Book 4. By Kai and Ishir, Book 4. Lone Wolf starts out with 50 elite rangers following him. None make it to Ruanon.
  • Reflective Eyes: The Shianti have pupils reflecting light like a mirror. When Grey Star says his goodbyes to them at the start of his quest, he sees himself in the eyes of his mentor. It becomes a plot point later, at the end of Book 1 / beginning of Book 2 of World of Lone Wolf. The Kundis ask Grey Star a riddle based on this little-known fact, to make sure the wizard has indeed been in contact with the Shianti.
  • Related in the Adaptation: In Fire on the Water, Lone Wolf meets separately with both Durenese Lord Axim of Ryme and Viveka the mercenary woman, but there is no hint they could be related. In the Legends of Lone Wolf novelization, those two are father and daughter.
  • Religion of Evil:
    • The Acolytes of Vashna wish to resurrect Vashna, the first and most powerful of the Darklords, so that he'd conquer the world with an army of undead.
    • The Cener Druids plan to kill about every living being beside themselves with biological warfare. And they are allies of the Acolytes.
  • Remember the New Guy?: Naar is introduced after the death of the last of the Darklords, and we are then told they were all serving him and that Naar is this figure integral to the backstory of the world and the conflict between good an evil. He goes on to play a dominant role as God of Evil in the rest of the series.
  • The Remnant: After the Darklords are defeated, many of their forces are still hanging around and come under the authority of various servants of Naar.
  • Retcon: The Epilogue of War of the Wizards makes no sense in light of the New Order books. The Shianti Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence with the Moonstone to join Ishir and live by her side — she's the one who ascends them. In the New Order books, they still live on the Island of Lorn. It also seems unlikely she took the Moonstone with her if Naar wound up with it.
  • Revenant Zombie: In The Captives of Kaag, Lone Wolf meets with Dire, a Noble Zombie who still retains memories of his previous life and give some advice to the hero. This sets him quite apart from the many monstrous undead Lone Wolf is usually confronted to. Dire is also the protagonist in three mini-stories, from the books The Legacy of Vashna, Wolf's Bane and Dead in the Deep.
  • Revive Kills Zombie: At one point you can encounter a potion of Good magic that heals you, but acts as a painful acid to a demonic foe.
  • Rich Bitch: Or rather, Rich Bastard — Roark, as the Lord of Amory, acts this way. Only eviler, crossing the Moral Event Horizon on his very first appearance.invoked
  • Rightful King Returns: The New Order Grand Master's mission in book 23 Mydnight's Hero is to return the exiled Prince Karvas to his country of Siyen so that he can be sworn in as king.
  • Ring of Power:
    • The Psychic Ring in Book 9; if you lack any magic weapon, it gives the only other fighting chance againstinvoked Zakhan Kimah.
    • Vonotar the Traitor (in Book 11) and Prince Lutha (in Book 18) also have evil Rings of Power, which they try to kill Lone Wolf with.
  • Rodents of Unusual Size: The Swarm of Rats roaming the shores of Kazan-Oud (the eponymous Castle Death) isn't composed of ordinary rodents, but of dog-sized ones.
  • Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: Exceptionally Romantic. The ugliness of medieval life isn't always downplayed (at one point, it's mentioned that only one in three poor infants survive their first month), but anything that might fix this is contrary to the natural order and forbidden by the gods. Meanwhile, Science Is Bad and the bad guys use lots of technology, but they only use said technology to grind people into the dirt rather than to help and elevate them. (Magitek used by the heroes is a-okay, of course. Airships and grenades are cool technology.)
  • Roof Hopping: Toward the end of the first book, you can use the "Roofways" to reach the king's citadel while avoiding the crowded streets. It is mentioned the citizens of Holmgrad were familiar with this way of travel before a royal decree forbade it because of too many accidents. Indeed, an unlucky roll can result in yet another untimely death for Lone Wolf.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something:
    • Or Grand Masters Who Actually Do Something — after the Magnakai series, nobody would blame Lone Wolf for wanting to sit back and train his acolytes in peace and let someone else handle the brush fires. But whenever a crisis emerges, he's always the first to step up to the plate to take care of business. It isn't until the New Order Kai series and his ascension to Supreme Mastery that he finally starts delegating the crisis du jour to his lieutenant. The books explain by then that he's become so famous it's impossible for him to go anywhere without every single agent of evil knowing about it, and after him making a career out of slaying the worst demonic overlords and evil sorcerers out there because there was nobody else around to do it, it's hard to believe otherwise.
    • There are plenty of classical examples. On the side of evil, the Zakhan (Emperor) of Vassagonia leads his troop in person during The Cauldron of Fear, Baron Shinzar of the Hammerlands, the Autarch Sejanoz and of course the Darklords themselves. On the side of good, Prince (later king) Karvas of Siyen, the Dwarven princes and the king of Bor, several princes who personally help Lone Wolf through his adventures, and even the King of Sommerlund himself shows up leading The Cavalry at the end of The Chasm of Doom.
  • Rule of Seven: Nyxator the Dragon created the seven Lorestones. In mockery, Agarash the Damned created seven Doomstones.
  • Running the Blockade: Book 12 begins with Lone Wolf boarding a ship to slip past a blockade of the Darklords' ironclad ships in a gambit to infiltrate the Darklands. As with many of Lone Wolf's other adventures where he starts with companions, the ship and its crew are doomed, but he manages to get where he needs to be anyway.

    Tropes S to Z 
  • Samus Is a Girl: Briefly in Book 6; one of Lone Wolf's many enemies happens to be an evil knight in a suit of armor, and upon death, we discover that she's a woman muffling her voice.
  • Savage Wolves: Ferocious wolf-like predators are not uncommon foes, like the Doomwolves ridden by Giaks, Hounds of Death, Taintor Wolves, etc.
  • Scary Black Man: Samu, who manages to be almost more badass than Grey Star without needing magical powers.
  • Schizo Tech: Magnamund may not have a technological future, but it sure gets a lot of technology in places. The Darklands are heavily industrialized, while the good guys' lands are locked in Medieval Stasis.
  • Schmuck Bait: Any time, in a book starring Grey Star, that you're asked if you want to fight your way out of a situation, or otherwise take significant physical risks. You would do really well to remember that you're a Squishy Wizard who should exhaust all other options first.
  • Science Is Bad:
    • The bad guys use a lot of technology; the Darklords use ironclad steamships and mechanical foundries, which have the double effect of fueling their war machine and polluting the environment for them (since they're weakened in clean, pristine environments). Science-fiction technology is also used on other worlds controlled by Naar. But Magnamund itself is kept in Medieval Stasis if the Kai win, and Lone Wolf never uses any technological weaponry or devices except for a very few examples of Magitek, such as Skyrider and the Crystal Explosive.
    • Subverted in The Fall of Blood Mountain, as the (good) Dwarves of Bor use guns, cannons, and all sort of technological devices. Their enemies use the same weapons, but only because they stole them. What they've made themselves are primitive or magical in nature.
  • Script Breaking: There isn't an official result for what happens in Grey Star the Wizard if you manage to defeat the Kleasá (you're supposed to survive the fight for 5 rounds, not win).
  • Sdrawkcab Alias: In Book 11, the Beholder of Yanis used to be known as Sinay.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Quite a few of these appear as major and minor foes in the series. Two notable examples in the Back Story are Agarash the Damned, a powerful demon created by Naar that killed Nyxator and was sealed in another dimension by the Elder Magi, and Darklord Vashna, the mightiest of the Darklords and the first to be defeated by the Sommerswerd. The remains of Vashna and his army, along with their vengeful spirits, were sealed in the Maakengorge (a.k.a. the Chasm of Doom). These two examples subvert the usual path of this trope since, canonically they never escape. Yes, they stay sealed, thanks to Lone Wolf and Grey Star.
  • Sealed Good in a Can: Not quite a true example since they weren't actually sealed away, but the goodly gods Kai and Ishir are relegated to their own dimensions and can only provide aid to Magnamund indirectly. It is revealed in Book 19 that their Evil Counterpart Naar can bypass the same limitation by using the Moonstone to open Shadowgates, allowing his minions to constantly harass Magnamund and Lone Wolf in particular.
  • Sea Serpents:
    • The Xargath is a species of dragon-like Sea Monster from the Kalte sea, whose mere existence has rendered fishing impossible in those otherwise fish-rich waters. Lone Wolf encounters one at sea in Book 12, The Masters of Darkness. It can be killed with a well-placed arrow in its vulnerable ear, but otherwise it's a tough fight ahead; the Xargath has the highest Endurance score of any monster in the whole series.
    • The Skull of Agarash features a giant reptilian sea creature attacking Mazrah's fleet while sailing toward the Lakuri Isles, and sinking two of its three ships. Lone Wolf manages to inflict a deep wound to its neck with the Sommerswerd, and the serpent dives in the sea, presumably to die.note 
  • Second-Person Narration: The player is referred to as "you" as a staple of gamebooks.
  • Sequential Boss: In Book 14, you face a fire-breathing demonic monkey, whose corpse turns into a swarm of man-eating insects. After you deal with them, they come together and form an ice dragon.
  • Serrated Blade of Pain:
    • The Drakkarim are very fond of weapons with a serrated blade, be they swords, axes, daggers or polearms.
    • The Barbarians of Kalte from Book 3 wield serrated bone swords in combat.
  • Series Continuity Error: Some of the early Magnakai books describe Lorestones as crumbling away or becoming non-magical when Lone Wolf acquires them, their power transferred into him. Later on, they're described as intact and still empowered, kept in Lone Wolf's secret inner sanctum. Bathing in their magical radiance even heals all his wounds once he gets back in Dawn of the Dragons.
  • Sewer Gator: Not alligators exactly, but close enough: the Baga-darooz in Barrakeesh is an Absurdly Spacious Sewer inhabited by Kwaraz (giant carnivorous lizards) among other monsters. A couple of them can try to eat the hero during his visit in book 5, Shadow on the Sand.
  • Single-Stroke Battle: Some fights are close to this trope, usually when one or both opponents are on mounts and they have only one round to strike each other before the momentum bring them apart. Notably, a barbarian scout on skis while Lone Wolf pass him on a sled (Book 3), a Vassagonian horseman charging Lone Wolf (Book 4) or a Drakkar Kraan-rider while Lone Wolf is flying on an Itikar (Book 5). The one with the highest Endurance loss loses the fight, with varying results, up to a One-Hit Kill.
  • Situational Sword: The Sommerswerd can release a devastating Sword Beam if it receives a direct ray of sunlight and there is a Darklord target within range.
  • Slaying Mantis: The whole nest of man-sized, aggressive, acid-spitting mantises that pursues Grey Star at the end of Grey Star the Wizard.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World:
    • Kalte in Book 3.
    • Ixia in Book 17.
  • Snake People: Darklord Taktaal is the one known Darklord to not be fully humanoid, his lower body being a giant snake tail.
  • Soft-Spoken Sadist: Darklord Zagarna's voice is described in the Legends of Lone Wolf novels as "quiet and bubbling, as if he spoke through a foot of water", in sharp contrast to his huge imposing form.
  • So Last Season:
    • The Kai and Magnakai skills of Books 1-12 are rendered almost obsolete by the new Grand Master Disciplines. Noncombat related Magnakai skills don't cut it against the new threats in the Grand Master books. But the gameplay bonuses from the Magnakai skills are still relevant such as the Gradual Regeneration from Curing and the bonuses from Psi-Surge and Weaponmastery (though Weaponmastery is replaced by Grand Weaponmastery for balance issues). Many powers that you can select as Magnakai or Grand Master are simply improvements over existing powers. Yet there's no reason offered why you can't use Hunting in lieu of Huntmastery, or Huntmastery in lieu of Grand Huntmastery. In fact, even some of the gameplay benefits of discipline you should have disappear when improved versions of these powers become available. (Why do you still need to carry meals around when when you don't have Huntmastery/Grand Huntmastery? You should still have Hunting/Huntmastery which also allows you to get your own food.) The Project Aon versions have clarified that you should get the benefits of hunting as an Old Save Bonus — but Hunting doesn't work in wastelands, so it won't work in Book 8 at least.
    • Some magical items fall victim to this too. The Grand Master series has a limited list of special items you can bring with you, which omits some trinkets that were very useful in the preceding books, like the Kalte Firesphere or the Psychic Ring. It is implied that Lone Wolf's newfound skills are making them obsolete — by that point he can now see in the dark or create fire by himself, making the Kalte Firesphere redundant, and his Psychic Powers are so great that an Amplifier Artifact like the Psychic Ring no longer makes any difference.
    • Grey Star's fourth and final book does provide him with a whole bunch of new magical powers that, surprisingly, do not replace his old ones, but act as new applications to the old abilities. Options to use the older powers still exist and sometimes you're better off with the weaker versions since they often burn fewer Willpower points.
  • Sole Survivor: At the very beginning of the series, Silent Wolf is the sole survivor of the Kai Order, which is wiped out by a surprise attack by the Darklords' force upon the Kai Monastery. In the original, he was sent to fetch firewood as punishment and accidentally knocks himself out upon witnessing the attack. In the Updated Re Release, he takes part in the defense of the monastery and flee through a secret passage. Either way, he renames himself "Lone Wolf" and swear revenge for his fallen companions.
  • Sorcerous Overlord:
    • The Darklords
    • Shasarak the Wytch-King
    • Lord Zahda
    • Archdruid Cadak
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil:
    • The defeat of the Darklords has the unfortunate side effect of angering their god Naar, who starts giving his remaining agents on Magnamund more direct support. When that fails, Naar's personal armies attack Magnamund directly.
    • Explored a bit in the backstory: Naar's original champion on Magnamund was Agarash, a demonic being so powerful he was practically an evil god in his own right. Upon Agarash's defeat, Naar has the realization that while a kingdom-wrecking demigod sounds like a good idea on paper, if your only envoy is defeated then all the time and effort spent preparing him is down the drain and you're back to square one. This led to the creation of the Darklords; none are anywhere near as powerful as Agarash, but even if the champion among them is defeated, there's a long list of potential replacements already on the ground to fill his role.
    • The trope is often played with: Lone Wolf can sometimes encounter something way too powerful for him to fight. However, the text is usually kind enough to warn you through imposing descriptions, names like "The Akraa'Neonor", and action options such as "If you want to run like a frightened bunny, turn to 113."
  • Spider-Sense:
    • The Sixth Sense tree of disciplines, which often allow for Kai Lords to sense danger before it's too late.
    • Grey Star gets his "Prophecy" spell, too, and also a "Psychomancy" spell that lets him examine objects by laying his hands on it. All of these abilities help remove forks in the road when you're at a crossroads in the books.
  • Spider Swarm: In Book 5, Lone Wolf can upset a whole colony of fist-sized steam spiders while trying to climb out of the Baga-darooz by a steam vent. It's even worse if he'd contracted limbdeath earlier and can't use his free arm to defend himself against the spiders.
  • Spikes of Villainy: The Drakkarim's armors are rarely lacking in spikes, horns and other pointy edges.
  • Spin-Off: The World of Lone Wolf series starring Grey Star would be a textbook example of this.
  • Squishy Wizard:
    • Grey Star. He doesn't get armor, the only weapon he's any good with is his staff, and once he runs out of Willpower points he's pretty much boned. He also does not get Lone Wolf's regenerating health skills; Shianti magic relies on Alchemy for healing instead, which is limited by available potions and reagents.
    • Banedon too, in the Magnamund Companion adventure featuring him. He's a bit more adept with weapons than Grey Star, but the few opponents he can fight hand-to-hand are tough, even with the Status Buff spell "Vigour". In Shadow on the Sand, his Journeyman magic sure lay waste on enemies, but when forced in close combat against a Drakkar he's severely wounded and would be dead without Lone Wolf.
  • Stab the Sky: Lone Wolf takes the pose with the Sommerswerd at the very end of Book 2, just before blasting Darklord Zagarna with a ray of holy sunfire.
  • Status Buff:
    • The most common form are "Ability Up" potions which increase Combat Skill, especially those made from the Alether fruits, as well as the more dangerous Adgana Herb.
    • Banedon has a few with his "Brotherhood Spells", notably "Vigour" for direct combat, or "Invisible Shield" and "Counterspell" as defenses. Them being Cast from Hit Points, you have to carefully weight down the cost versus usefulness.
    • A few other spells are available to Kai Grand Masters with Kai-alchemy and Magi-magic. That are quite situational, though, and can only be used when the text allows it, even those augmenting Combat Skill and Endurance.
  • Steampunk: The Drakkar ironclads in Book 12, as well as the "Lajakeka" juggernaut. The city of Helgedad itself definitely embodies it, with the description of high, Gothic windows and a classic Mad Scientist Laboratory, though at times it strays closer to Diesel Punk.
  • Stellar Name: Grey Star was named so by the Shianti because the star is a symbol of hope in their faith. (The "Grey" part is for the white forelock in his otherwise black hair.)
  • Summon Magic:
    • The Darklords and evil sorcerer types love to summon nasty things in a pinch. Among their favorites are the Crypt Spawns — flying flesh-eating tentacled brain monsters that can really ruin your day.
    • For the good guys, extra help can come from Shianti Elementalism magic. Which elemental shows up is a bit random, and sometimes they hurt more than they help. Earth Elementals are notoriously stupid and slow.
  • Super-Reflexes: The Magnakai discipline of Huntmastery, and furthermore the upgrade Grand Huntmastery, give a Kai lord increased celerity and agility, sometimes allowing to dodge fired arrows or even to slash them in mid-flight.
  • Super-Senses: The discipline of Huntmastery augments a Kai Lord's senses at higher Magnakai ranks, giving telescopic vision to a Principalin, and enhanced hearing, smell and night vision to an Archmaster. Grand Huntmastery upgrades them even more, with vision in complete darkness and heightened senses of touch and taste.
  • Swarm of Rats: In Castle Death, one of the many niceties welcoming Lone Wolf on the shores of the island of Kazan-Oud is an immense swarm of dog-sized rats.
  • Sword Beam:
    • That's how the Sommerswerd blasts any Darklord if it can get a ray of sun. Or just from the energy accumulated by not using it for most of Book 12 until the end.
    • Skarn-Ska ("Wolf's Blade") in The Curse of Naar can also deliver an energy bolt to soften some enemies.
  • A Tankard of Moose Urine:
    • In The Jungle of Horrors, "Ferina Nog" is called "bilge juice" by Paido. Lone Wolf finds the beer weak but doesn't have a problem drinking it.
    • In the first book of the New Order series, some ale is described as having "a peculiar smell that makes you think of greasy animal hides."
  • Taxidermy Is Creepy: In Book 6, the hero can meet with Chanda, a taxidermist quite proud of his creations. He wants to test a new taxidermy technique with a subject worthy of his talent: the last of the Kai lords. As he explains to Lone Wolf while serving him drugged wine.
  • Technicolor Blade: The Sommerswerd, or Sword of the Sun, is explicitly described as a "golden" blade. Whatever metal it is made of, of course, is not pure gold because it's unequivocally Made of Indestructium.
  • Telephone Polearm: In The Prisoners of Time, the giant Chaos-master uproots a tree and wield it as a club to chase after Lorkon Ironheart, and then to fight Lone Wolf.
  • Teleportation:
    • Not a common magic at all on Magnamund; Lone Wolf needs nearly maxed-out levels to have access to a version of this spell, and it's quite limited in range.
    • Even a Red Mage like Vonotar has no access to it; in the backstory of Book 3 he has to kidnap an elder of the Magicians' Guild of Toran, Loi-Kymar, and forces him to use his Guildstaff to teleport them both to Kalte. At the end of the book, Loi-Kymar uses it to teleport himself, Lone Wolf and the captive Vonotar back to the ship waiting for them.
    • Grey Star gains this spell in Book 4 of his series, once his powers have been boosted by the Moonstone. During the climax, he teleports directly to Wytch-King Shasarak's throne room in order to confront his nemesis.
  • That's No Moon: Happens in book 20, The Curse of Naar, while the hero is venturing into the Plane of Darkness (the setting's equivalent of Hell). While lost at sea on a small raft, Lone Wolf spots a distant island and heads toward it — until it starts moving and is revealed to be a nondescript giant monster. If the player hadn't picked a magic amulet earlier, Lone Wolf gets eaten by the monster.
  • Thieves' Guild: In The Cauldron of Fear, Lone Wolf can have to deal with Tahou's Thieves' Guild in order to reach the title Cauldron if he can't go there by legal means.
  • Third Time's The Charm: Lone Wolf foils two attempts by the forces of evil to bring Darklord Vashna back to life. Near the end of the New Order series, they're attempting to do so again, but this time it works.
  • Throw a Barrel at It: Not a barrel, but close enough: in Shadow on the Sand, if cornered on top of a guard tower in the Zakhan's palace, Lone Wolf can drop a big, heavy drum down the stairs at his Drakkar pursuers, crushing a few and gaining himself a short reprieve.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: The opportunity to throw your sword is very rarely given, since Lone Wolf has usually plenty better options, like a bow and arrows or offensive magic in the later books. Still, it can happen:
    • In Book 9, The Cauldron of Fear, one way to break through Zakhan Kimah's Orb of Death and kill him is to successfully throw the Dagger of Vashna at him. On a low roll, it will miss and Kimah will kill Lone Wolf.
    • There is a noteworthy occurrence in Book 12, The Masters of Darkness. If you draw the Sommerswerd in front of Darklord Kraagenskûl to fight his Crypt Spawns, Lone Wolf is forced to throw the Sun Sword at his back before he'd alert Darklord Gnaag. It never misses and Kraagenskûl is badly wounded either way, but on a low roll he's still able to warn his master, making "your life and your mission end here."
    • In The Skull of Agarash, Lone Wolf also throws the Sommerswerd at a fleeing Kraan, killing the beast before it can fly away with its loot.
    • In Trail of the Wolf, part of the New Order series, Lone Wolf (as a Previous Player-Character Cameo) throws once again the Sommerswerd to bring down the Soultaker.
  • Time Skip: Between the last Magnakai books and the first Grand Master books, 5 years past. Between the end of the Kai series and beginning of the Magnakai series, 3 years past. And according to the pre-release blurb for the last 4 books, they take place 18 years after the New Order series, with Lone Wolf's Apprentice now leading his own Kai Monastery located on the Shianti island of Lorn.
  • Time Stands Still: In book 19, Wolf's Bane tries to cheat his duel with Lone Wolf when it is turning sour for him, by calling upon a demonic monster to backstab the hero with a Flaming Sword. Alyss interferes in the nick of time by stopping time before the Doom-blight can strike Lone Wolf. And then she dismisses the demon with a touch.
  • Time to Unlock More True Potential:
    • Happens when Lone Wolf discovers the Grand Master disciplines previously unknown to even exist (which even Sun Eagle couldn't do before him).
    • In the New Order series, there are mentions that heavily imply that Lone Wolf is developing his own Supreme Master disciplines; this after a point where he ages less than a year per decade, is on Kai's personal Christmas list and is already the next best thing to a demigod on Magnamund.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Lone Wolf came a long way from being an inattentive student knocked out by a tree branch over destroying the Darklords, to becoming the mightiest Kai (and possibly human) in Magnamund history. In Gameplay terms, with every book concluded, he learns a new Kai/Magnakai/Grandmaster discipline.
  • Tranquillizer Dart:
    • Darts are used by Maouk, the Sharnazim Captain, in Shadow on the Sand to take out Lone Wolf without a fight.
    • In the same book, Lone Wolf can use a blowpipe and dart on a guard; the effects are instantaneous.
  • Trapped in Another World:
    • Lone Wolf's predicament in the Daziarn Plane in Book 11, thanks to Darklord Gnaag.
    • The Big Bad of Book 17 tries the same thing, only he sends Lone Wolf to the Plane of Darkness, a place with Everything Trying to Kill You on steroids.
  • Trial-and-Error Gameplay: As with most gamebooks, this series has its share of moments where making the wrong choice will kill you without warning.
  • The Trickster: Alyss the demigoddess. She fancies herself as neutral and is certainly mischievous, but Naar and his minions are such utter bastards that she systematically ends up on the side of Good anyway.
  • Turn Coat:
    • Vonotar the Traitor, who gets his comeuppance twice in the series.
    • For the good guys' side, on the other hand, there's the Slavemaster of Aarnak.
    • The Back Story mentions the Patar, the servants of the Elder Magi, who allowed the Cener Druids access to the Elder Magi's knowledge, which they used to engineer a plague to almost wipe them out, ending the Age of the Old Kingdoms.
  • Turn Undead: In The Buccaneers of Shadaki, just showing the Moonstone to an undead immediately destroys it.
  • The Undead: Very common henchmen among Lone Wolf's various enemies. Book 17 in particular is rife with them.
  • Unkempt Beauty: Tanith from the Grey Star books is described as being one.
  • Unseen Evil:
    • Naar the King of the Darkness is never seen in his true form for most of the series. Being one of the Powers That Be (an evil one), he might not have a true form. His preferred form, described in Book 19, is pretty damn creepy especially if the reader hates spiders.
    • In Book 1, the timeless evil in the Graveyard of the Ancients is not seen. It's revealed to be Naar itself in the rewrite.
  • Unstoppable Rage: Frequently manifests in almost all books as an immunity to psychic attacks possessed by some particularly berserk or enraged enemies. This can be just immunity to lower grade psychic powers, or just all of them.
  • Unwinnable:
    • In Book 2, you can miss getting the Magic Spear, and even if you do get it, choosing to do the right thing and give it to an ally to let him survive guarding a tunnel means that you will die about 5 page turns later. Thankfully fixed in the Project Aon version (if you have Animal Kinship — otherwise, you're still screwed and will die).
    • Also in Book 2, you are given a seal ring that will show that you are on a quest to retrieve the Sommerswerd. If you lose it, due to selling it or getting robbed, you will die. The path continues beyond that, until you try to get a red pass. The forged paperwork a kid will sell you isn't enough, and will just get you killed.
    • In Book 3, if you ignore the old man in the cell and end up in section 276, you're doomed — there is no path to the winning page from that point onward. Despite this, that path continues for some 30-odd sections, including several completely useless battles, events, and chances to use your items. Oddly enough, one possible path leads to the series' only possible Non-Standard Game Over, which has Lone Wolf escaping Kalte on a skiff in one piece, but since he did not kill Vonotar and cannot return with the entire ice-fortress on high alert, he ends up failing in his mission.
    • Book 8 has you fight a timed battle against two Vordaks, with individual Combat Skill and Endurance scores (meaning, overkill won't help you for the other guy). For players starting with that book, you absolutely need a completely massive string of luck for both your Combat Skill that you rolled at the beginning and all four rounds you had to fight — and all the CS-increasing items you could obtain during the journey — and the Weaponmastery ability for the weapon you use against the enemies. Roll a 3 for your CS or get anything below an 8 during battle, you're screwed.
    • In Book 17, The Deathlord of Ixia, it is more or less impossible to win if you do not have the Sommerswerd from book 2, since you have two fights against opponents with much higher Combat Skill than you and far more Endurance, and you have to fight them in a row with no healing, having already gone through the demonlord before the two-round survival battle. This is particularly fun as the Sommerswerd will make several other books much harder.
  • Updated Re-release: To go with getting a new publisher, all previously released books are being rereleased with new art, fixed typos, and a bonus adventure tacked on to the end. In the case of the first book, this also involves heavy re-writing in many areas — notably having Lone Wolf participate in the doomed defense of the Kai Monastery rather than sitting it out due to an errant tree branch.
  • Upgrade Artifact:
    • The Book of the Magnakai at the end of Shadow on the Sand, followed by the Lorestones in the Magnakai series. Each one Lone Wolf finds allow him to learn a new Magnakai skill by the next book.
    • In the World of Lone Wolf spin-off starring Grey Star, the Moonstone itself. In the fourth book, once the hero has completed his quest to find it, his Shianti magic is considerably boosted, gaining new advanced versions of his old powers, as well as a load of Willpower points.
  • Useless Useful Spell:
    • Grey Star's Prophecy and Psychomancy are pretty good at eliminating variables when faced with a choice — sometimes. Psychomancy can just give you a warped riddle that may or may not be right, and Prophecy sometimes completely fails to illustrate the nature of your impending doom. Use it when you're in a valley of poison gas, it just goes "GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT" without saying which way to go.
    • The New Order series adds on "Astrology" to the list of Kai-Disciplines. It's supposed to let you look into the far future rather than the immediate future like Sixth Sense does, but the opportunities to use it come up so rarely it's like the author forgot he put it in the list (only once in the first New Order book, and not at all in the next two). The few times it comes up, you tend to get a Vagueness Is Coming reading, too.
    • For that matter, the Grandmaster upgrade for the previously quite useful Sixth Sense / Divination ability, Telegnosis, is mostly useless, and occasionally actually counterproductive. There are several instances where you take damage simply because you have Telegnosis and your heightened mental sensitivity makes you vulnerable to psychic damage.
  • Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: There are very few weapons that can kill Helghast-level undead, and even less for Darklords or worse. (In the remake, it's commented that the Sommerswerd is the only Good weapon that can kill a Darklord.) If you don't have the Sommerswerd, there's almost always some way to use the villains' own magic weapons against them.
    • Especially apparent with the Helghast attacking the king in the updated remake of the first book. If he hadn't nonchalantly thrown a magic dagger at some poor sod, there would have been no way to stop it.
    • Darklord Haakon can be vanquished without the Sommerswerd by turning his magic gem against him, banishing him to another dimension.
    • Likewise, if you have neither the Sommerswerd nor the Dagger of Vashna to fight Darklord Kraagenskûl, your only hope is to seize his own sword, Helshezag, and use it to kill him.
  • Utility Magic:
    • Kai-alchemy (which has nothing to do with mixing magic chemicals, just go with it) is full of utility spells that help you out in a pinch, but not so much combat magic (that would be Magi-magic, which at its highest level lets you do things like crush a man in armor like a paper cup).
    • Elementalism (the Kai version, not the Shianti version) lets you do a number of things with small amounts of flame, dust, water and puffs of air, so it too falls under the "Utility Magic" label.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Or in this case, Gamebook Cruelty Punishment.
    • Over the course of the series there are times Lone Wolf can do things that are... morally grey at best. The penalties for such decisions take the form of difficult battles, losing out valuable items, or dying horribly. Lone Wolf is canonically a Messianic Archetype, he should act like it.
    • In Book 2; when one of your travelling companions (you don't know which) tries to have you poisoned, you'd better pick the right suspect. The mercenary woman is bad enough, but if you pick one of the Knights of the White Mountain, he and his brother team up and become the hardest fight in the Kai books. They're even tougher to beat than Darklord Haakon! And this takes place before you get the Sommerswerd. Aside from cheating or being very lucky, there's no real way to win this fight.
  • Villain: Exit, Stage Left: In Fire on the Water, after an attempt at killing Lone Wolf with his magic is foiled by the Sommerswerd, Vonotar the Traitor cover his exit with a cloud of noxious gas and... undignifiedly flees the death-hulk flagship by frantically paddling on a small boat.
  • A Villain Named "Z__rg": The series absolutely lives off this trope, especially with its double A phoneme; Zagarna being a fine example, the Negud-Kor-Adez, Kaag, Helshezag, if it sounds harsh and guttural it's probably somewhere in the language of evil. This isn't strictly reserved to the bad guys however, with noble if dangerous places named things like "Zaaryx".
  • Villainous Breakdown:
    • The Big Bad of Book 7 (Castle Death), Lord Zahda, is initially portrayed as a charismatic Evil Overlord and arrogantly taunts Lone Wolf when he has him flung into the Maze. While Zahda isn't seen again for some time, his next appearance makes it clear that Lone Wolf's victories in the Maze and his subsequent escape have unhinged him. Zahda goes from a feared sorcerer that even the Elder Magi could only seal away to a crazed old man savagely attacking Lone Wolf.
      Lord Zahda: You will die... die... DIE!!
    • Archdruid Cadak from the Grandmaster series suffers a protracted one. Lone Wolf's victory over the Exterminatus in Book 14 leaves Cadak gaping like a fish with his confidence shattered. In the next book he takes Lone Wolf's victory over his new monster with even less grace — he gives off a Big "NO!" and a This Cannot Be! and spends precious seconds staring at his dead monster in shocked disbelief while Lone Wolf escapes. During his final encounter with Lone Wolf, Cadak's composure is shaken again when Lone Wolf completely derails another evil scheme. By this point his death at Lone Wolf's hands is arguably a Mercy Kill.
  • Villain Pedigree:
    • The Drakkarim (plural), fierce evil warriors wearing death masks, are more or less the same power level throughout the series, but Lone Wolf keeps getting better and they become less and less able to oppose him. In the "Kai" books, a single Drakkar can put up a good fight. In the "Magnakai" series, Drakkarim are only a real challenge if they attack in group. In the "Grand Master series", they're completely out of their league: the only Drakkar that can still put up a fight against Lone Wolf is their War God in Book 20, and Lone Wolf can still kick his ass and throw him into a lava pit.
    • Similarly in book 10 you have Demonlord Tagazin, who is presented as a fearsome demonic being. Then he reappears in book 17 as a mere vassal to the far more terrifying Deathlord Ixiataaga.
  • Virgin Sacrifice: In The Chasm of Doom, the virgin Madelon is planned to be sacrificed at the edge of the Maakengorge by bandit lord Barraka and the Acolytes of Vashna, in order to raise Darklord Vashna and his army of undead. She's saved by Lone Wolf (unless the player mucks it up, of course).
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting:
    • The Helghast, who are capable of mimicking human form, and are immune to non-magical weapons. Considering that their preferred form of attack is choking victims with their skeletal hands, it's probably best that Lone Wolf never invokes the Shapeshifting Squick trope.
    • Also the Nadziranim, who are fond of adopting a combat form before a fight through their Black Magic, since in their natural state they're basically formless specters. The results ain't pretty.
    • The Liganim, Nadziranim's familiars, appear to have many different shapes.
    • The Deathstalker and its mate, introduced in the New Order Kai series, went on a killing spree in a city and used its shapeshifting abilities to evade detection. Its natural form is some sort of horrible ape-like thing. Hunting down a supernatural shapeshifting murderer in the dead of night in the middle of a small city is hands-down one of the best parts of Book 21.
  • Walking Armory: Not necessarily so, but it's possible for Lone Wolf to be this if the player wants. At best, just going with the special weapons, by the end of the Magnakai series you can carry the magic spear, the Sommerswerd, the Dagger of Vashna, a jeweled mace, the Silver Bow of Duadon or a Bronin Warhammer (those two are mutually exclusive), an enchanted bullwhip and the Darklord sword Helshezag — all at the same time. Add in how the player probably also has a pair of normal weapons because of all the chances to pick up free ones, and... you can easily imagine any of the scenes preceding the hero being thrown in jail to involve Extended Disarming.
  • Walk into Mordor: Lone Wolf's sole modus operandi is to take the most convenient conveyance to the vague borders of Evil Land and then walk the rest of the way. Across burning deserts, arctic tundra, Darklord-polluted wastelands, the nightmare-fever landscape of the Daziarn's Neverness, Aon's equivalent to hell, across anything.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: The Darklords are severely weakened in clean and pristine environments. Since Magnamund is a world in Medieval Stasis (i.e. no huge polluting industries), this is actually something of a problem for them. In Book 12, they create a device that negates this weakness, allowing the Darklords to curbstomp most of Magnamund. Lone Wolf's initial goal is simply to destroy this device.
  • Weak-Willed: In this world, it concerns not individual but whole species. Although creatures with a resistance to Psychic Powers are much more common, a few like the Kwaraz giant lizards or the Akataz warhounds are very susceptible. This makes psychic attacks twice as efficient, or animal control powers work more easily on them.
  • Weapon of X-Slaying:
    • The Sommerswerd, devastating against undead, and deadly even for the Darklords. It is stated later it could be lethal even against Naar. To be honest, it's quite good at killing anything anyway — none of the extremely powerful entities encountered in the series, including the Chaos-master or the Deathlord of Ixia, show any immunity toward it.
    • The various evil weapons favored by the Darklords have one thing in common: they give combat bonus against other Darklords, and are among the very few things able to kill them permanently. Those guys truly have their priorities in order.
    • The jeweled mace from book 5 gives a bonus against illusory creatures.
    • The enchanted bullwhip from book 10 can hit (and gives a bonus against) incorporeal specters.
    • The Dessi Stone is a magic gem that, when merged into the hilt of any ordinary weapon, can turn it into an undead slayer.
    • Several of the weapons forged by Lone Wolf with Kai Weaponcraft in the New Order series have a CS bonus when used against specific creatures, like reptiles, undead, stone beings, magic-users, flying monsters or fire-breathers, respectively.
  • We Meet Again: Said by Archdruid Cadak in book 14, The Captives of Kaag, referencing the previous book.
    Cadak: So we meet again, Lone Wolf.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: In The Cauldron of Fear, you have about a one in two chance of having to deal with Tahou's Thieves' Guild to reach the underground city of Zaaryx. In exchange for his help, the guildmaster only ask for one thing: to return the ring worn by his son, who had ventured there and likely gotten killed some time ago. Which is, in all likelihood, the Psychic Ring later found on the finger of a mutated psychic ghoul. However, once back on the surface Lone Wolf never hears of the Thieves' Guild any more, and can keep the Psychic Ring for further adventures. (It warrants mentioning that the next few books happen one right after the other, and involve Lone Wolf being off the planet completely for over eight years. By the time he makes it back, the tide of the war has swung hard against humankind.)
  • White Stallion: Wildwind, the horse offered by Gwynian the sage to Lone Wolf in Dawn of the Dragons, is described as a magnificent white stallion, and the finest steed the hero's ever seen. He has also a faint magic aura, making him swifter than the best-breed mounts, and nearly tireless.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Here it's more like "Why did it have to be flying flesh-eating tentacled brain monsters?" The Crypt Spawns are one of the few enemies that Lone Wolf actually fears throughout the series.
  • William Telling: From The Kingdom of Terror, Lone Wolf witnesses such a scene in the city of Varetta, although one that doesn't involve bow or crossbow. In a huge tavern filled with soldiers, some men punished for cowardice are standing in line with a fruit on their head, while a rider on horse from the same regiment tries to skewer it with a lance! Naturally, the onlooking mercenaries are taking bets on whether the cavalier succeeds or fails.
  • Wizard Beard:
    • Gwynian the Sage
    • Lord Rimoah
  • Wizard Needs Food Badly: Every so often you'll be prompted to "eat a meal or lose 3 Endurance points," which can't be healed until after you've eaten. You can avoid this by having the Hunting skill of your tier.
  • The World Is Always Doomed: Sort of a justification, as after the first twelve books the villains Lone Wolf fought before are now dead and the other factions fight amongst themselves. However, the rest of the country has more than enough new ones to make up for it. To the point the author seemed almost struggling to constantly have someone for the Kai Order to fight.
  • Wrecked Weapon:
    • There are many ways to break ordinary weapons in the series. In general, it's a really bad idea to attack powerful supernatural entities, like the Darklords or Demonlord Tagazin, with a non-magical weapon.
    • A few special weapons can also be damaged or outright destroyed if they encounter even more powerful magic:
      • In The Legacy of Vashna, Helshezag and the Dagger of Vashna will not survive to the end of the book if you bring them with you.
      • In Vampirium, your Kai Weapon is damaged after a failed attempt to destroy the Claw of Naar. In gameplay this means that its Combat Skill bonus is permanently reduced by either one or two points. Conveniently, this means that there is actual incentive to use the unique weapons that can be found in the previous book.
    • Sometimes if you need to get through a door without the proper key or the telekinetic discipline that would let you jigger the lock, you have the option of trying to pick it if you're carrying a dagger. While it does usually open the door, this also snaps the blade and makes it useless.
  • Wretched Hive:
    • Ragadorn, main city of the Wildlands. It's a big commercial hub, but it's also teeming with thieves and cutthroats. The lord of the town and his Secret Police are no better.
    • Vakovar, in Magador, even more so. At least by the time Lone Wolf visits it, it's full of brigands. The worst part is that the current state of affairs is apparently an improvement over what it was like back when the Darklords were still in power.
  • Writers Cannot Do Math: The difference between your Combat Skill and the enemy's is called the "combat ratio". It's not a ratio.
  • Xanatos Gambit: These appear several times in the series; the Evil Plan of the Big Bad in Book 10 is a great example. Gnaag knew Lone Wolf would try to retrieve the last three Lorestones at Torgar and was lying in wait the entire time. If Lone Wolf didn't make it in time, Gnaag would have succeeded in destroying the Lorestones. If Lone Wolf DID make it in time (which, canonically, he does) Gnaag would have a chance to send all of them into the Daziarn (which segues into Book 11). While this gambit fails to kill Lone Wolf, it does buy the Darklords eight years to undo all of the progress Lone Wolf made against them. By the time Lone Wolf escapes the Daziarn, the Darklords have all but conquered the world, leading into Book 12.
  • The X of Y: About two-third of the book titles.
  • X-Ray Sparks: The lethal kind for one poor soldier when disintegrated by Zakhan Kimah's Orb of Death, as an outline of his skeleton can be seen.
  • Year Outside, Hour Inside:
    • Both Lone Wolf and Grey Star spends only a few days in the Astral Plane of Daziarn, but to find out upon their return that years have gone by on Magnamund.
    • To a lesser degree, the Plane of Darkness. Lone Wolf spends perhaps five minutes there before escaping in a hurry in one adventure, while several hours passed on his home world.
  • Yin-Yang Bomb:
    • Zahda uses a Doomstone and a Lorestone in conjunction to keep at bay the volcano Kazan-Oud is built upon.
    • Lone Wolf himself can use the Sommerswerd and Darklord weapons like the Dagger of Vashna and Helshezag.
  • You Are Not Ready: The goddess Ishir sending the powerful Shianti away in ancient times, fearing that they were interfering too much with the destiny of mere mortals, even though they meant no harm. Well, most of them meant no harm — Wytch-King Shasarak is a rogue Shianti. Maybe Ishir was onto something...
  • You Have Failed Me:
    • This is the reason why Vonotar has to flee to the icy wastes of Kalte in Book 3: he has failed to prevent Lone Wolf from bringing the Sommerswerd to Sommerlund and from stopping the Durenese reinforcement with his ghost fleet in the previous book. The Darklords don't tolerate such failures and would have killed him if he didn't escape; even after that, they send a helghast assassin to pursue him.
    • We learn in Book 12 that Darklord Kraagenskûl likes to whip out his Agony Beam when his servants disappoint him.
    • Demoness Shamath, Archdruid Cadak, and Darklord Gnaag in Book 20 are good examples of what happens when you let down Naar. In the cases of Gnaag and Cadak, Naar wasn't satisfied with death; only eternal torment was enough to express his disappointment. And it turns out that this happens to everyone who worships Naar if they fail him and die; Kekataag's soul is whisked off to begin his eternal torment right then after Lone Wolf destroys him.
  • Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: If Grey Star uses Evocation to escape the prison in Suhn (by raising the spirits of the prison's many victims to wreck everything), then Tanith — who is left wide-eyed at the resultant carnage — will coolly remark "Shasarak would have approved." She does not mean it as a What the Hell, Hero? moment... but Grey Star takes it as one all the same.


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