Literature / The Powder Mage Trilogy

"The Age of Kings is dead, Adamat. And I have killed it."

— Field Marshal Tamas

A trilogy of Gunpowder Fantasy books written by Brian McClellan.

The original Trilogy features the story of Field Marshal Tamas launching a coup against the the corrupt king and nobility of Adro, sending the bulk of them to the guillotine. As the age of kings dies its bloody death, Tamas and his conspirators must deal with royalist insurgents, foreign invasions, riots, assassins, rogue sorcerers, betrayals, and ancient powers returning to the world.

Novels in the original trilogy:

• Promise of Blood (2013)
• The Crimson Campaign (2014)
• The Autumn Republic (2015)

The sequel trilogy, called "Gods of Blood and Powder" focuses on Tamas' adopted daughter Vlora on the continent of Fatrasta, a colonial nation that has recently claimed it's independence from the Kez. What seems like a relatively simple job for her mercenary company quickly becomes much more when ancient artifacts are uncovered, foreign powers become involved, and old friends and foes alike start to appear.

Sequel series books:

• Sins of Empire (2017)
• Wrath of Empire (2018)
• Blood of Empire (2019)

A Tabletop Roleplaying Game using the Savage Worlds system called Powder Mage Roleplaying Game was funded through Kickstarter and released in 2018.

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These novels provide examples of:

• Action Girl: Vlora and Ka-Poel. It's worth noting that every army featured is more or less egalitarian, featuring numerous women in combat and leadership roles.
• Aerith and Bob: Most names are on the fantasy side like "Borbador" or "Manhouch", but there are some names like "Jakob", "Erika" and "Ben".
• Almighty Janitor: Invoked when a chef who appears to merely have a Knack for producing vast quantities of exquisite food claims to be the incarnation of Adom, patron saint of Adro. He is, and his presence is the only thing between Adro and total annihilation once Kresimir is summoned.
• Always Save the Girl: Taniel, to Ka-Poel, although it isn't always necessary. Arguably inverted more often as well, as Ka-Poel is more than capable of doing the saving.
• Ancient Evil: In the original Trilogy Kresimir and Brude. In the sequels the Godstones.
• Anti-Hero: The world is pretty brutal, and even those who are genuinely trying to do good things and help people get their hands pretty filthy in the process.
  • Tamas: while he has the best interests of his men and Adro at heart, he starts the story off killing Privileged in their sleep and putting every single nobleman of worth in Adro to the guillotine. He does do his best to spare the children in the process, however.
  • Taniel: he's well-loved by the Adran military, but considers himself little more than a brute only good for killing. He goes on a self-destructive streak at the start of The Crimson Campaign that takes him nearly to Death Seeker levels.
  • Privileged Borbador: He's generally amiable and competent, doing his best to help his country and the rest of the world. He also tortures and kills people without pause, in one instance ripping a mans arm off so casually Adamat is nervous to be around him for the rest of the series. In his defense, Bo is quick to remind people that he's a Cabal Privileged, and they don't let good people into a Royal Cabal.
• Anti-Magic
  • Magebreakers have the ability to nullify the Else, giving them the power to prevent Privileged from being able to use their magic. Their power is not absolute, however, as it seems to scale with their relative power before becoming a Magebreaker so powerful Privileged like the Predeii are able to overcome it
  • Red Stripes are bullets imbued with anti-Privileged. As long as the supply Ka-Poel makes holds up, Taniel can to kill Privileged through their shields and wards without issue. He's even able to land hits on Kresimir with them.
  • Gunpowder is unique in that it has no aura in the Else, meaning Privileged can't manipulate it. In fact, they're allergic to it to the extent that even being near it will cause them significant irritation. It doesn't actually prevent magic, but have an allergic reaction makes it considerably more difficult to focus on using magic.
• Anti-Mutiny: General Ket's mutiny in between books two and three is actually an anti-mutiny, as General Hilanska is a traitor.
• Army of Thieves and Whores: The Mountainwatch.
• Attempted Rape: To Ka-Poel. Also to Nila during the Coup.
• Badass Army: The Adran army is pretty badass, the Wings of Adom mercenary army are even moreso.
• Bargain with Heaven: Kresimir's Promise. The bargain without which the church would not have its power nor the Privileged their magic. The basic premise is that magic would be given to the Priveleged, but they would not be allowed to rule mankind using it. The chosen bloodline must keep the throne... otherwise Kresimir comes back and reboots the world. Although it turns out Kresimir doesn't have much interest in keeping his bargain anymore and didn't actually plan on coming back to follow through on it.
• Badass Normal: Olem. His only Knack is not needing to sleep. It doesn't stop him from being the bodyguard to Tamas, one of the most powerful Powder Mages, and being at his side in the thick of the fighting. He's not afraid of snarking off at the Field Marshal, either.
  • Gods of Blood and Powder adds Mad Ben Styke, a man so badass that the state gave up trying to execute him after two firing squads weren't enough.
• Battle Couple: Taniel and Ka-Poel.
  • Vlora and Olem have been one for close to a decade by the start of Sins of Empire.
• Bayonet Ya: Considering the setting (early gunpowder), it's no surprise that this trope shows up. Muskets are the standard weapon for armies in the story and are bayonets are used with gruesome efficiency in close quarters.
• Beard of Sorrow: Pretty much everyone in the Seventh and Ninth (except Vlora, obviously) have one by the end of the campaign behind Kez lines. This is due to lacking the supplies for shaving, but...
• Berserk Button:
  • Do not threaten Adamat's family.
  • Don't threaten Tamas', either. The entire coup was (in part) orchestrated because Manhouch allowed Ipille to have his wife, Erika, executed.
  • Threatening Ka-Poel is the best possible way to get Taniel to respond. Ket uses this against him, deliberately setting Taniel up to do something he can be arrested for.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Brude is actually two people - Claremonte and Cheris.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Kresimir, King Ipille, and Lord Claremonte all offer their own distinct threats. Subverted. There's one Big Bad behind everything - Claremonte, who is actually (half of) the god Brude.
• The Big Guy: SouSmith, a boxer who's hired as a bodyguard by Adamat.
• Blood Magic: The magic of the Bone-eyes have elements of this, alongside elements of Hollywood Voodoo. Specifically, the creation of red-stripes involves blood magic. Ka-Poel is the only Bone-eye character in the first trilogy, but we see a whole lot more in Gods of Blood and Powder.
• Boring, but Practical: Tamas wants the army to do this at every possible opportunity, and downplays individual heroism (except from magically-enhanced individuals). The Adran military's preferred means of dealing with Privileged is to Boom, Headshot! from a distance before they even knew an attack was coming, especially if Powder Mages are available to hit them from an even greater range than normal.
• The Brigadier: In addition to a couple literal brigadier generals, Tamas, though his rank is Field Marshal.
• Bullying a Dragon: Happens often in Gods of Blood and Powder as a result of Vlora being an average sized woman who can kill three large men before they have their hands on their weapons.
• The Captain: Taniel.
• Captive Date: Vetas does this to Nila, though it's just for show for others.
• Cannon Fodder: A Kez favorite, as their army always seems to outnumber the Adran military.
  • Bone-Eye Sorcery in Sins of Empire allows the Dynize to take this up to eleven, pounding through enemy defenses through sheer force of numbers without a single man breaking.
• Child Soldiers: Ka-Poel. She's actually 19 by the time of the first book.
• Civil War: No less than three.
  • In the first book Tamas stages a Coup overthrowing the king, and armed royalists seize the main armory of Adopest and have to be blasted out with artillery fire.
  • In the third book, General Ket and three Adran brigades break off because General Hilanska is a traitor and mutiny against the Adran military.
  • After the end of the Adran-Kez War, Kez is embroiled in a civil war between Ipille's sons.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Vetas and Borbador both engage in this. It's also mentioned dozens of times by other characters.
• Colonel Badass: Olem, Vlora, Taniel.
• Consummate Professional: Fell.
• Combat Pragmatist: Tamas is most assuredly a student of Sun Tzu. Among other things, he has powerful enemy sorcerers sniped from afar, employs spies and assassins, uses diversion and ambush, fights by maneuver and flanking rather than head-on attacking, makes numerous contingency plans and fallback plans, and at one point baits enemy cavalry into charging right into well-concealed pits by faking disarray in his camp.
• Corrupt Church: Charlemund's whole hat. His staff openly refer to the orgies held at his villa. Said staff are all young, beautiful, and clad exclusively in sheer silk, and other seem unsurprised about a priest being so corrupt. He also supports the Coup to overthrow Ardos god chosen king, and is actually acting as a traitor to the Kez the whole time. It's unclear to what extent this applies to the rest of the church, however.
• Crusading Widow: While Tamas is genuinely outraged at the abuses the king and nobility commit, a major motivator is the death of his wife. She was beheaded by the kingdom of Kez and his king not only refused to do anything about it but was additionally preparing to sign a treaty making his nation a vassal to Kez.
• Deadpan Snarker: Privileged Borbadour. He keeps snarking even after being impaled on red hot steel rods.
  • When Olem isn't brutally honest, his every word is dripping with sarcasm.
• Decisive Battle: The Battle of Ned's Creek is the high-water mark of the Kez invasion.
• Defensive Feint Trap: Tamas feigns disarray in his camp at the Kez-Deliv border to bait a superior cavalry force.
• Delaying Action: The Adran general strategy after Surkov's Alley. Likewise, the Kez fight a delaying action on the retreat after Ned's Creek.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Vlora cheating on Taniel once, under pretty understandable circumstances^note For sincere and understandable reasons she thought he was cheating on her while he had been off fighting a war for almost two years. Then a man was specifically hired to seduce her. is widely regarded as having completely wrecked their relationship, ended their engagement, and ruined her life. Taniel breaks off the engagement which is understandable, but everyone else seems to regard it as being entirely her fault, although to be fair most of them probably don't know the full details. Tamas regards it as a betrayal as much as Taniel does, despite the two of them being aware of far more of the details, and he notes that's when he stopped treating her like a daughter.
  • Taniel, meanwhile, comes back form aforementioned campaign with a mute 19 year old "savage" girl he picked up in a foreign country. She is his constant companion and somewhere between servant and partner. Nobody seems to see anything wrong with this, even generally assuming he's sleeping with her because she's "his savage", although they do think it a little uncouth. She's never actually referred to as a slave and slavery is explicitly illegal, but almost everyone in the setting regard her in possessive terms ("Taniel's savage") rather than as an individual. She's also subjected to a fair amount of racism, and even Taniel himself thinks of her as "a savage" for a fair portion of the books.
• De Powered: It's mentioned several times throughout the series that it's possible for a Powder Mage to go "powder blind." The details of powder blindness aren't revealed until Blood of Empire. It's effectively an overdose, where using too much powder in too short a time burns the mage out, leaving them unable to use their sorcery for awhile, at least.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • Taniel put two of Ka-Poel's Red Stripe bullets thorough Kresimir's head and chest as he returns. It's unclear at first if this will actually kill him, (or even badly wound him) or not.
  • In book 2, Taniel manages to literally punch Kresimir in the face, doing actual damage, in spite of the fact that even metal blades just bounce off of him.
  • And in book three, Ka-Poel keeps Kresimir comatose for most of the book with nothing but a doll and force of will, and in the end she, Tamas, and Taniel manage to kill both aspects of Brude.
• Dirty Coward: Prime Lektor flees Adro and is not seen again after learning that Brude is in the fight too.
• Disappears into Light: Mihali.
• Divine Right of Kings: This is known as Kresimir's Promise. The god Kresimir established bloodlines as the rightful rulers of the nine kingdoms. If one of the bloodlines is removed from the throne, Kresimir said he would return and destroy the nation who dared to defy his will, although several characters note they suspect he never intended to actually return. The king of Adro is extremely wasteful, weak minded and Lethally Stupid and Field Marshal Tamas decides to remove him from power and execute the entire royal family and most of the aristocracy. Tamas discovers Kresimir's Promise as he murders the royal Cabal, and later finds that the country's enemies are planning to summon Kresimir so he can fulfill the Promise and destroy Adro. They succeed, although it seems that Kresimir may very well intend to destroy more than just Ardo.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Jacola regrets his slide into alcoholism after his sister's death, and will only answer to Gavril in order to protect peoples' memory of him.
• The Dragon: Fidelis Jes is this to Chancellor Lindet in Sins of Empire. Part of his morning routine is a cup of coffee and slaying anyone who's demanded to duel him.
• Eager Rookie: Green troops rout the easiest when the tide turns, but they're also undesirably aggressive when first meeting the enemy and may fall out of rank to pursue foes.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Almost every Privileged in the series is a cabal Privilege or a Predeii, the best of the Privileged. The rest are usually not named and killed quickly.
  • Grenadiers are elite soldiers given exceptionally dangerous service. They tend to be physically larger, and considerably more badass, than line infantry.
  • The cavalry consists, by number, of lightly-armored dragoons, but elite cuirassiers get more attention in the narrative.
• Elite Mook:
  • Wardens in Promise of Blood, twisted monstrosities wrought of Kez Privileged magic. They're super tough berzerkers with their minds nearly destroyed.
  • Powder Wardens up the ante in The Crimson Campaign. They're Wardens made from nascent Powder Mages; every bit as tough as the originals, but with added protection from Sorcery.
  • Sins of Empire adds the Dynize Dragonmen. Fierce elites who must kill a swamp dragon in single combat to finish their initiation, the first one we find is dead—and surrounded by the forty soldiers he killed while they tried to bring him down.
• Emergency Trainee Battle Deployment: Nila is a Privileged only just beginning to learn she has powers, but she's thrust into the field regardless because she's one of two Privileged left in all of Adro as of The Autumn Republic.
• End of an Age: It's heavily implied that Tamas's actions will ultimately bring about the end of feudal monarchy in the Nine, much like how the French Revolution was the beginning of the end of absolute monarchy in Europe, though it will take some time yet. Tamas comes to fear that this transition will be long and bloody, despite his dream of (relatively) bloodless revolutions.
  "The Age of Kings is dead, Adamat. And I have killed it."
  • The era of Privileged being the overwhelmingly dominant form of mages in the world - hence the name Privileged. Powder mages may not be as explicitly strong as Privileged, but their ability to shoot someone from miles away makes them uniquely good at killing Privileged, which is one reason out of several that Privileged generally hate powder mages.
  • In a technological sense, very early experiments with steam power promise to one day revolutionize industry, and the contemporary Industrial Revolution is putting out of business many traditional industries. Labor unions are replacing guilds as the predominant form of industry workers' communities, as well. And, of course, gunpowder and artillery are obsoleting sword cavalry and walled fortresses.
• Ethnic Magician: Privileged and Knacked seem to exist all over the world, but Powder Mages are unique to the Nine and Bone Eyes are unique to Dynize.
  • Powder Mages play this trope straighter than they initially appear because the first trilogy is centered on Adrans. Powder Mages are relatively new (or at least, gunpowder is, meaning they've only just begun to realize their powers), and Adro takes them far more seriously than most of the world. Kez is a point of comparison, where Powder Mages in influential families are branded and forbidden from touching powder, while lower class Powder Mages are kidnapped by the state and turned into Wardens.
  • Ka-Poel plays this trope up in the first trilogy, as she's both the only Dynize and the only Bone-Eye portrayed.
  • Gods of Blood and Powder expands on this trope, showing how the battle doctrines of Adrans and Dynize differ as a result of the sorcery they have access to that the other lacks.
• Eternal Love: An unusual sibling rather than romantic/sexual version of this trope, the two-faced god Brude is in fact a brother and sister who will do anything, including killing the rest of the gods of the Nine, to be with one another.
• Even Evil Has Standards: King Ipille of Kez may effectively be a warlord leading an army raping and enslaving its way across southern Adro, putting civilians to the torch and committing magical atrocities, but even he wouldn't use the white flag of truce to launch a surprise attack and is furious when he believes Tamas has done so after a third party in disguise attacks during truce negotiations.
• Exact Words: The Royal Cabal all take a binding magical oath to avenge the King should anything happen to him. Which is a problem for Privileged Boubadour, as he likes Tamas and his family, but is required to kill them for killing the King. He eventually finds a way out by killing the executioner who performed the literal act of killing the King on Tamas' orders.
• False Flag Operation: Nikslaus attempts one in order to turn Deliv against Adro, making the Adran-Kez War a two-on-one conflict. It fails, and Deliv instead winds up on Adro's side.
  • Done more successfully later by Brudanians, in order to kidnap Ka-Poel and sabotage the peace negotiations between Adrans and the Kez.
• Fantastic Drug: Two versions, with varying degrees of fantasy.
  • Mala is a drug imbibed by smoking and seems to be a mundane opiate analogue.
  • Gunpowder is a much more magical version. The way that powder mages use black powder is clearly reminiscent of drugs, especially powdered opiates like heroin or cocaine. It grants them the ability to endure pain, heightens their senses, and gives them extreme powers of concentration. It's swallowed or snorted, to the point that Taniel winds up with a bloody nose after imbibing too much under stressful conditions, and carries around a batch for personal use in a snuff box.
    • Gunpowder has its own side effects, including headaches and "powder blindness (temporary loss of use of the Mage's Third Eye, making them unable to detect magic)." At the climax of Wrath of Empire, Vlora overdoses on powder and begins the next book unable to use any of her Mage powers.
• Fantastic Nuke: Killing a god destroys a huge swath of land in the area, and can destroy a mountain or a large city district.
• Fantasy Conflict Counterpart:
  • The French Revolution and subsequent warfare.
  • Similarly, the two Great Offscreen Wars of the setting use this trope. The Gurlish Wars are roughly analogous to the British conquest of India, and the Fatrastan War of Independence bears a likeness to the American Revolutionary War.
• A Father to His Men: Taniel, Tamas' son, calls the men of the Seventh and Ninth Brigades Tamas' children.
• Firearms Are Revolutionary: Firearms and gunpowder don't just revolutionize warfare, they revolutionize magic, as powder mages can use gunpowder to strengthen themselves and enhance their senses, and can also aim their bullets with impossible accuracy and at ranges far greater than the Elemental magic-wielding Privileged, thus making them the only viable battlefield counter to them other than other Privileged.
• Fog of War: Both in a literal sense, in that black powder weapons eventually obscure the battlefield with thick smoke, and in the figurative sense, that at both the tactical and strategic level characters often eventually lose track of what precisely is going on due to the general confusion and chaos of war. Often, the exact events of an engagement are only clear in hindsight. Due to some characters being out of contact with others, many mistakes and un-optimal choices are made during the war.
• Food God: One of the gods has incarnated as a chef, who provides gourmet food in effectively infinite quantities in the army's camp kitchens.
• Four-Star Badass: Actually he ranks above a four-star general, but Field Marshal Tamas fits the trope to a T. Being a mage who can ingest black powder to give himself superhuman endurance and strength helps. This leads to...
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Ka-Poel goes from a mute savage child to holding a god in check in under two years.
  • Similarly, Nyla starts the story as a humble washerwoman and is blowing up entire battalions by the start of The Autumn Republic.
• Frontline General: Tamas sees battle personally on numerous occasions.
• Gemini Destruction Law: Brude.
• Give Him a Normal Life: Nila wants this for Jakob.
  • Taniel fakes his death for this, knowing with Tamas dead, Adro will always look to him to be Tamas 2.
• Good Is Not Soft: Tamas. Taniel gets it from him.
  • Borbador engages in torture, murder, and sexual harassment. He's a nice guy, though, really.
• Grave-Marking Scene: Tamas and his brother-in-law in The Crimson Campaign.
• Greater-Scope Villain: After Lord Vetus is defeated in The Crimson Campaign, his master, Lord Claremonte invades Adapest at the end of the book.
• Great Offscreen War: The Gurlish Wars, and also the Kez invasion of Deliv.
  • A previous conflict between Adro and Kez led to Manhouch's treaty with Ipille, which triggered the coup.
  • Both trilogies make frequent reference to Taniel's (and later Ben Styke's) accomplishments in Fatrasta's war for independence from Kez a few years before Promise of Blood.
• Götterdämmerung: By the end of the third book, every god but Adom is dead.
• Happiness in Slavery: Neither Lord Vetas or Fell seem to actually mind the fact that they're essentially bought outright by their respective employers, from a "finishing school" that sells highly-skilled and disciplined servants. Neither of them show even a hint of rebelliousness or want of independence. While their term of service has a specific end date of thirty years, they're at best indentured servants who aren't free to leave their position for much of their lifespan and work in positions that are violent and dangerous. When Taniel expresses disappointment at his friend Ricard buying Fell, she even defends him, and doesn't really do much to correct being called a slave.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: It's noted that healing is an extremely difficult branch of magic. Only Privileged (the most powerful and versatile of the setting's three main types of magic-user) have healing magic, and even most of them aren't very good at it.
• Highly-Conspicuous Uniform: Common for the era. Adrans wear blue uniforms (much like the French army until 1914) with red striped pants. Kez wear tan and green. Deliv wear kelly-green and white.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: The "Kez Wolf" in The Autumn Republic.
• Hollywood Voodoo: The other aspect of Bone-eye magic, alongside Blood Magic.
• Home Guard: One is briefly mustered when Brudanian ships sail on Adopest, though it proves unnecessary.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Fell. Her finishing school's whole deal is to produce hypercompetent agents at extreme expense.
• Implacable Man: Taniel, due to the wards Ka-Poel has placed on him. Though it specifically comes about after Taniel puts a Redstripe bullet in Kresimir's eye and Ka-Poel trades someone else's life for Taniel's.
• The Inspector Is Coming: Adamat causes this for a powder company, at least until he clarifies what kind of "Inspector" he is (as in the detective kind, not a regulatory inspector).
• It Never Gets Any Easier: Tamas is unceasingly haunted by a lifetime of warfare.
• It Gets Easier: Bo tells Nila this after she burns several thousand Kez alive.
• Jerkass Gods: Kresimir is a patron of civilization, but based on the way people who knew him personally talk, he was fairly horrible on a personal level even before he went mad. Brude, aka Claremonte and Cheris, wants a peaceful, prosperous world for humanity - so long as they're in charge. Averted with Mihali/Adom, an affable deity who just wants to live in peace and use his magic to throw feasts for everyone.
• Kill the God: Taniel tries to kill Kresimir at the end of the first book. It doesn't work. Later, it's revealed that the only way to kill a god is with their own blood which is how Brude killed most of the rest of the pantheon and stole their powers. In the end, Brude kills Kresimir, and they are in turn killed by the heroes, leaving Adom the only living god in the Nine.
• Kryptonite Factor:
  • Gold in a Powder Mage's body nullifies their powers, although this is somewhat inconsistent as the gold must constantly stay in contact with their blood.
  • The Red Stripes created by Bone-Eyes seem to have some ability to nullify the Else, as they pierce Privileged shields easily. This is likely similar to the wards Ka-Poel has placed around Taniel, and Ka-Poel's magic in general seems to be highly effective against Privileged.
  • Privileged are allergic to black powder. It doesn't affect their magic directly, but even being close to powder leads to congestion and swelling, which isn't very conducive to spellcasting. Gunpowder is also the only known substance with no aura in the Else, meaning it's the only thing that Privileged magic can't affect, and Bo says that powerful powder mages have some degree of resistance to their magic. He also says that Privileged as a whole have been getting progressively weaker since the advent of gunpowder.
• Little Miss Badass: Ka-Poel, A 19 year old girl with the appearance and build of a small 14 year old. In addition to likely being the most powerful mage in the series, a common tactic for her is to jump up on enemies' shoulders and stab foot-long needles into their spine.
• Loan Shark: Palagyi is one. Adamat is in debt to him after taking out a loan from a friend's bank, who sold the loan to Palaygi. He tripled the interest, forced Adamat's publishing business to fail and threatens Adamat throughout the first book in order to make him pay it back. the loan is later picked up Lord Vetas, but they prefer to just threat him directly to get him to comply
• MacGuffin: Gods of Blood and Powder has the Godstones, ancient artifacts that can theoretically make a mortal into a god.
• Mad God: Kresimir goes a little crazy after Taniel shoots him in the eye.
• Made of Iron:
  • Neither Adamat nor Tamas is a spring chicken, and both suffer grievous injuries after already needing stitches earlier in the novel. Somewhat justified for Tamas in that he can use a powder trance to ignore pain, though he has to heal like a normal human.
  • "Mad" Ben Sykes has survived things that he really should have no ability to survive. He was once cut with a blade coated in a deadly poison that should have him paralyzed in minutes and dead in a couple hours. Ben merely ended up with a fever that cleared after a couple days. He led numerous cavalry charges into enemy armies outnumbering him ten-to-one and not only survived but came out victorious. He was once punched in the face by a Warden, which should have caved his skull in but instead just gave him a bruise and a black eye. He was put in front of a firing squad and when that failed to kill him, he was put in front of a second firing squad. That crippled him but still did not kill him. He then survived years of hard labor in a prison and still came out strong and tough enough to take out some of the best fighters the setting had. While he does have a small Knack, and had some magic armor for his early days as a lancer, there does not seem to be anything else magical or supernatural about him, at least not before Ka-Poel magically anoints him. After dismissing this boon, he takes a punch to the chest without flinching that makes his opponent stumble, because it was supposed to kill him.
• Mage Marksman: This is the signature ability of the mages referred to in the title. Powder mages can guide bullets as they fly, carrying them further than normal or bending their course. As a result they're remarkably good at picking of high value individuals, such as the contrasting Privileged, whose sorcery is more traditional.
• Magic Versus Technology: Zigzagged. By and large, magic and machine get along. Gunpowder is the exception. It's a relatively recently discovered substance, and has unique magical properties. Powder Mages uses it to fuel their magery. Privileged distrust gunpowder because it, alone among all known substances, has no aura in the Else. Privileged are also allergic to gunpowder, to the point that it can be fatal (although it's mostly just highly unpleasant.
• Meaningful Background Event: Once you know who Claremont and Cheris are, quite a few scenes with them are cast in a different light.
• Military Brat: Taniel.
• Military Coup: How the story begins. Tamas is his nation's highest ranking military officer and leads a coup against the corrupt king and nobility.
  • Vlora attempts one in Sins of Empire, after Lindet makes it clear that she values the Godstone more than the population of Landfall. It goes less well than even Tamas'.
• Military Mage: The titular powder mages are a special division of the Adro military and serve as enhanced riflemen. They also serve as officers. For example, Tamas, one of the main characters and a powder mage, is Field marshal of the entire army. Knacked, another set of magic users, also serve in the military but are treated as normal soldiers, although those with particularly handy Knacks may be called upon to use them as needed.
• Million Mook March: The Kez army on the march is so massive, it hurts Adran morale just seeing them. However, they're actually relatively poorly equipped and supplies, with their reserves and irregulars not even entirely armed.
• Monument of Humiliation and Defeat: The King's Garden is renamed Election Square after the coup. The square is where the king and upper nobility were put to the guillotine...and elections aren't actually held until months after the renaming.
• More Dakka: The powder mages' magic gives them incredible control over gunpowder and firearms. They mostly use it for Improbable Aiming Skills as their powers let them turn a musket ball into a miniature guided missile with an incredible range. However, a master like Tamas can simply toss a sack full of musket balls into the air and give each individual ball the same momentum as if was being fired from a gun. Depending on how he times it, it will have the effect of a giant shotgun firing dozens of large pellets at once or the effect of a machine gun firing them in quick succession. So you get the effect of a modern machine gun using just blackpowder and lead balls but with no actual firearm present.
• Mundane Utility: Magic is frequently used for the mundane as well as the fantastic. Privileged use magic fire so they don't have to carry around matches or firestarters. Powder mages can use any nearby amount of powder as a source for magic, allowing them to detonate enemy infantry's powder horns and also...allowing them to fire rifles loaded only with ball instead of powder, rendering their rate of fire slightly faster. Mihali can conjure huge amounts of food, which he uses to boost the citizen's and later the army's morale. Knacks offer almost exclusively this variety of functionality as well. Handy Knacks include not needing to sleep, a perfect memory, and being able to detect lies.
• The Musketeer: Given the setting, this was pretty much inevitable.
• Mysterious Waif: Kah-Poel. Made extra mysterious by being mute.
• Noodle Incident: The setting's backstory includes The Bleakening some 1400 years before the Adran coup. It was known as a time of conflict in which much knowledge was lost. Beyond this implication of a dark age roughly equivalent to the Fall of Rome, it is barely described.
• Older Than They Look:
  • The Predeii. The three that show up in the trilogy are hundreds of years old.
  • Ka-Poel. While she has the appearance of a small, thin 14 year old, she's actually 19. People also assume she's younger than she appears due to girls in her tribe being married off by 16, and in non-fitted clothing she appears younger than that. 15 is implied to be pushing it.
• Officer and a Gentleman: Tamas.
• Only One Name: Most of the characters, even non-Adrans like Nikslaus. Word of God says that this comes from an older custom wherein only the wealthy had surnames and had to buy them. This is why wealthy Adrans like Ricard Tumbler have them, but most people don't.
  • Less common in Gods of Blood and Powder. New major characters Fidelis Jes, Ivana ja Fles, Michel Bravis, and Benjamin Styke all have surnames, and Vlora has extended her name to "General Vlora Flint." The exception is Lady Chancellor Lindet, though this is justified in the text; Lindet keeps information compartmentalized as much as possible, and doesn't want anyone to know that Ben Styke is her older brother, which using her surname would give away.
• Outside-Context Problem: Adamat had this happen to him several times after he retired and opened a print shop. The printing press literally exploded, leaving him with sizable debt and no way to pay it off. That debt was then sold by the reputable bank he'd opened it with to Palaygi, a small time loan shark he had a history with from his time on the force. Palaygi's grinning mockery over Adamat's upcoming default was replaced by Lord Vetas, a bona fide crime lord with international connections. In under two years, Adamat went from owing money to a friend's reputable bank to having his family held hostage by an international crime syndicate.
  • Happens again in Sins of Empire. There's a plot brewing about Tampo, Styke, Lindet, Michel, Vlora, and Jes's Gambit Pileup, with a vague question of why there are Dynize spies in Landfall's ghetto. Then the Dynize turn up in Landfall's port with blood sorcery and an invasion force, the first time they've left their borders in a century.
• Outside-Genre Foe: Our heroes are dealing with overthrowing the monarchy, defending their land from invaders, and rogue sorcerers. In the middle of all that the gods of old show up.
• Opposing Combat Philosophies: Tamas' post-reform Adran military fights using positioning, combined arms, and well-trained and well-equipped infantry. Opposite them, the Kez are not fools or ignorant of strategy, but the core of their strategy is an unstoppable wave of bodies that can wear down even a superior-equipped opponent through sheer attrition.
  • Vlora runs into this in Sins of Empire. Her strategy is descended from Tamas', relying on using superior tactics and equipment to strike decisive, demoralizing blows that cause the enemy to rout. Ka-Sedial focuses on infantry who are well-equipped to counter other infantry via knife-bayonets, breastplate, and helmets, then relies on Blood Sorcery to keep them from breaking when hit by cavalry or artillery. Their first battle causes massive casualties to both sides, as Vlora's decisive blows are sunk into a massive army that keeps walking into them instead of breaking.
• Permission to Speak Freely: Vlora has a habit of speaking over-familiar to Tamas. When he finally calls her out on it, she immediately asks this, and gets duly denied.
• Person of Mass Destruction:
  • Powder Mages possess superhuman toughness and coordination. They can detonate gunpowder from a distance, making ambushes deadly and battlefields treacherous. They're the least example of this trope walking the Nine.
  • Privileged are the oldest and best known example. Masters of elemental magic, they can summon waves of fire, deflect enemy shots with walls of wind, and wreak all kind of elemental havoc. There is a scene where a Privileged in training gets a kill count in four digits without even trying.
  • Predeii are special Privileged who take their magic up to eleven and throw in immortality. in Gods of Blood and Powder, Powder Mage and Bone-Eye predeii have begun emerging.
  • If predeii are Privileged, then the gods of the Nine are at approximately fifteen. There is more powerful, more flexible, and ignores all the constraints and technical requirements of Privileged magic.
• Phenotype Stereotype: Every Palo and Dynize in the second trilogy has red hair.
• Photographic Memory: Inspector Adamat's Knack is a perfect memory.
• Praetorian Guard: The royal cabals. In Tamas' case, his powder cabal.
• Pragmatic Hero: Tamas guillotines the entire nobility of Adro.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The Kez win several early battles, but at unsustainable costs.
• Rage Against the Heavens: By executing the corrupt king of Adro and ending his line, Tamas explicitly broke Kresimir's Promise. Kresimir keeps his end of the Promise (although he hadn't intended to) returning as to burn Adro to the ground and start over as punishment for daring to cross His will. His sibling, Brude, also becomes an antagonist after Kresimir is dealt with.
  • This trope is played with in Gods of Blood and Powder. After seeing what the Gods of old did to Adro, Vlora is dead set on preventing anyone from using the Godstones to become new Gods, and several other characters agree with her.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: The Kez army commits many atrocities on the warpath, including enslaving local populations. It's a big reason for the bad blood between Kez and Adro, and between Kez and Deliv.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Tamas really does seem to put Adro ahead of his own glory. He put up with more than a decade of Manhouch XIII's incompetence before finally staging a coup a week before Manhouch would make Adro a vassal state of a rival nation. He repeatedly rejects the opportunity to rule as a despot. He is not afraid to risk his own son when Taniel's skill is necessary. He repatriots the royalists after they're beaten, rather than executing them. He's even willing to give up Mihali's cooking, despite the morale boost it's given his army, when he believes that doing so is in Adro's best interest. Of course he later reveals that the Kez king killing his wife is his actual motivation, although that doesn't stop him from doing a good deal of good along the way.
• Refuge in Audacity: Tamas notes that Olem's Brutal Honesty and constant sarcasm would be grounds for a court-martial, but he never actually punishes him due to a combination of being far too entertained by it, appreciating an underling who doesn't sugarcoat anything, and Olem's sheer competence and badassery.
• Relationship Upgrade: Taniel and Ka-Poel, eventually.
• Required Secondary Powers:
  • In addition to the more obvious powers (such as improved toughness, telepathic control of gunpowder, and Improbable Aiming Skills), Powder Mages' bodies are able to ingest and process gunpowder. There are side effects if powder is imbibed too heavily, but it requires many times the amount that would poison a normal human before something as trivial as a migraine or bloody nose show up.
  • All magic users, even including the lowly Knacked, can sense magic via the Third Eye.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Prime Lektor. Rosalina, too. A number of characters suggest that this is the best course of action following the Adran Coup.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Unable to destroy or transport the Godstone, Ka-Poel uses the copious blood from the recent battles to build a lock for its powers. She's not actually sure how long it will take Ka-Sedial to unlock it, but is confident it will buy them a good deal of time..
• Senseless Sacrifice: Even if your son is in harm's way, running off on the eve of a decisive battle and leaving command to your staff is not going to go over well. It contributes to the Wings of Adom withdrawing from the Kez-Adran war, and ultimately proved unnecessary as Taniel was safe before Tamas even got there. Tamas later criticizes himself for it, though it does convince Taniel that his father isn't entirely heartless towards him.
• Sherlock Scan: Inspector Adamat does a number of times, aided by his Knack giving him a Photographic Memory.
• Shoot the Dog: When Tamas finds out that all of the Cabal Privileged are put under a geas that will eventually compel them to come after him for killing the king, no matter how they otherwise feel about it, he sends Taniel on a mission to kill Borbador, even though Bo was adopted into the family as a child and is Taniel's best friend. Fortunately for everyone involved, Taniel decides not to follow through on it, giving Bo time to figure out a work-around.
  • Late in the trilogy, Adamat asks Borbador to do this to a Black Warden he had encountered because said Warden had been his son, and with no way to bring him back after the Kez Privileged had warped him into a monster, it was the only way to bring his family any sort of peace. This time, the dog gets shot.
• Single-Minded Twins: The god Brude is actually a set of male and female twins. Though they have slightly different personalities - the female twin seems to be rather more abrasive and aggressive - they are unified in action, purpose, and even name, although they actually don't seem to have perfect communication as they do inconvenience one another on a few occasions.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: A big part of the Dynize threat in Sins of Empire. The rank-and-file soldiers are only a threat because of their numbers and Sorcery that keeps them from panicking. The Dragonmen, on the other hand, are solitary elites that can be a match for as many as forty normal soldiers. Just not Ben Styke, apparantly.
• That's an Order!: Tamas' shorthand for "I'm done discussing this subject," most commonly towards his kids (adopted and otherwise) and Olem. He tries it on Nila, but she points out she isn't a part of the army and thus he has no actual authority over her.
• The Squadette: Both the Adran and Kez militaries (and the Fatrastan and Dynize in the sequels) allow both men and women to serve equally in all apparent military roles. Both armies have women as front-line soldiers and a large number of women appear as generals or in other similar high ranking positions.
  • In the major cast, Vlora fits this role.
• Start of Darkness: Bo's generally amiable demeanor may make the reader (and some characters) occasionally forget that he's a killing machine. He tells Nyla a story about his introduction to the Royal Cabal, where he was compelled to execute a slave just to prove that he could. After refusing three times, he was told that if he didn't kill her this time, the Cabal would kill his friends and family. Oh, and he was fourteen at the time. Bo's Anti-Hero tendencies make much more sense after this revelation.
• Strong, but Unskilled / Weak, but Skilled: The primary dynamic between Ka-Poel and Ka-Sedial in Gods of Blood and Powder. The previous trilogy established that Ka-Poel is the Bone-Eyes equivalent of a Predeii; however, she's young and self-taught, limiting how effectively she can bring that raw power to bear. In contrast, Ka-Sedial seems to have about average strength, but can keep up with Ka-Poel because he has approximately four times the experience in working his magic.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Sometimes, when Privileged cut loose, and virtually always when a Powder Mage is involved, since one of their powers is the ability to mentally and remotely detonate black powder.
  • Special mention goes to the Flerring family, who appears to have been the first to invent "blasting oil," which sounds a lot like real-world nitroglycerin. Enough of that allows one of the Flerrings to shatter an object that had otherwise been cloaked so deep in magical wards that no amount of black powder or Privileged sorcery could scratch it.
• Supreme Chef: Mihali embodies this trope to the fullest. Anybody who has ever tried his meals can attest that the man is nothing short of a god in the kitchen. Not only that, but he also seems to be capable of conjuring food seemingly out of thin air in large enough amounts to feed an entire city, and even has the ability to magically enhance his food.
  • Furthermore, he holds the official title of "Lord of the Golden Chefs."
• Sword Cane: Adamat wields one with some fair ability, as he is a former cop and was decent at swordplay.
• Tactical Withdrawal: Used repeatedly. Tamas fully understands the importance of retreating from a superior force and finding a better position (either geographically, miltiarily, or diplomatically) from which to re-engage. Much of the plot of The Crimson Campaign is an attempt by the Seventh and Ninth Brigades to withdraw to friendly territory.
  • After the Battle of Ned's Creek, the Kez Army attempts to withdraw in good order to more defensible ground and await reinforcements.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Given that Tamas's revolution seems to be inspired by the French revolution this is a given.
• Took a Level in Badass: In about six months, Nyla goes from being a humble washerwoman whose chief concern is an ornery governess and a master who wants to bed her to being arguably the most powerful Privileged currently living, able to vaporize thousands of soldiers with a single gesture, and being the only person who isn't a literal god who can use magic without gloves.
• Training from Hell: The realities of being a Cabal Privileged mean that amorality is essentially a must. Borbador speaks of his experience gaining admission to the Cabal, requiring him to kill an innocent slave girl in cold blood at age fourteen. He frequently remarks that Cabals don't admit good people.
• Trapped Behind Enemy Lines: Two entire brigades in The Crimson Campaign.
• Underestimating Badassery: Employed deliberately on several occasions.
  • Bo's favorite technique for Nila is introducing her as a servant or secretary. After all, nobody would expect her to be a Privileged, without gloves.
  • Ricard and Fell use a similar tactic.
• Unequal Rites:
  • Privileged are among the most powerful type of sorcerer in the setting and are, as the name suggested, privileged: they can join the royal cabal, live in the lap of luxury and even have their own harems. They have expansive Elemental Powers, though most of them need special gloves to protect themselves from the backlash from manipulating these forces. Magebreakers are a subset of Privileged who deliberately give up their elemental magic and acquire Anti-Magic abilities instead.
  • Powder mages, meanwhile, are sought after in the military for their gunpowder based powers, but hated by the the more traditional Privileged. This may be due to fear, as powder mages are one of the few things that can actually threaten a Privileged since they can attack at very long ranges; the fact that Privileged are painfully allergic to gunpowder, something the average powder mage is going to be carrying if at all possible, doesn't help. In fact, Powder Mages are sometimes called "Marked", as they were often systematically killed by Privileged order in the past.
  • Next are the Knacked, people with a single small power, often a supernatural extension of some mundane skill, ranging from highly useful to trivial. Knacked have only one active ability, their power to open a "Third Eye" to see other sorcery, something shard by all types of people with magical powers. A Knacked with a highly useful talent can be highly desired as an individual as, well the often tend towards being more mundane, they also offer abilities that no other magic can replicate.
  • The Predeii seem to be more than just Privileged up to eleven. They have Nigh-Invulnerability, are potentially completely immortal, and the only things that seem to have a chance of doing any damage are the Red Stripes created by Ka-Poel. Some of the Predeii view themselves as being above Privileged, though other groups seem to view them as simply "very powerful Privileged".
  • The last book outright states that the gods are "just" immensely powerful human - or once-human - mages, with the implication that they, the Predeii, and ordinary Privileged use the same sort or magic on three distinct tiers of power. Apparently Godstones were used to ascend to their godlike state, but the specifics of how and what changes this invokes are unclear. Taniel is noted as being essentially the powder mage equivalent to Predeii thanks to an interaction between Ka-Poel and Kresmir.
  • Bone-eyes are the first mage type that doesn't come native to the nation of Adro, and seem to be not very well known outside of the Dynize culture they come from. Their magic contains elements of Blood Magic and Hollywood Voodoo. The Bone-eyes are dismissed as savages by all of the others excepting the Predeii and Gods. The sequel series goes a bit into what they can do, although the specifics of their powers are considerably less clear.
• Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway: Blasting oil in The Autumn Republic.
• Walking Armory: A relatively realistic example, but Tamas may carry two pistols, a carbine or rifle, a bayonet, a cavalry saber, and a cavalry lance, and use all of them, as well as several powder horns, which are vastly more capable weapons in the hands of a powder mage anyway. Pretty much everyone in the series is carrying at absolute minimum a rifle, bayonet, knife, and pistol, and most are carrying at least a few weapons beyond that.
• War Is Hell: The book does not shy away from portraying the grim aftermath of a great battle, although A Million Is a Statistic can come into play when lists of dead, casualties, numbers expected to die from infections and injury or numbers (and fates) of prisoners. Lack of supplies and communication, confusion, Fog of War and other various practicalities all come up.
• Was Once a Man: The Kez Elite Mooks called Wardens are humans who have been transformed into semi-mindless Super Soldiers by Privileged. The process is apparently not reversible. The later section of the book also features Black Wardens, who are Powerder Mages that were turned into Wardens, and a subplot of the series is Adamant finding out his son was turned into a Black Warden.
• We Can Rule Together: Brude tries this on Tamas.
  • Bo's ex from the Brudanian cabal tries it on him, too.
• We Have Reserves: Ipille says this almost word for word to Tamas when negotiating a truce. It seems to be a primary element of the Kez battle plan, contrasting the Adrans better trained, better equiped force.
• We Used To Be Engaged: Taniel and Vlora. The pair aren't actually around each other until later in the Trilogy, when they finally do their best to deal with their painful feelings.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Taniel, Tamas's son. While Tamas does love him, he is an emotionally reserved man and is heavily invested in his position as Field Marshal. As a result Taniel often feels like he's just another solider to Tamas.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Happens a few times in the confusion following the Adran revolution:
  • The first third of Promise of Blood has a heavy emphasis around the Privileged Rosalia, but eventually she leaves Adro and never comes up again.
  • The traitor Hilanska disappears after stabbing Tamas, though it's implied Vlora is going to have him assassinated.
• Wizards Live Longer: Predeii are super powerful Privileged who are hundreds of years old, although it's unclear if "standard" Privileged live significantly longer. The gods were in fact just incredibly powerful Privileged, too. The sequel series does expand this by revealing that the ancient Godstones allowed them to ascend to godhood.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Nyla spends the first two books adrift on the plot, basically going from one awful event to another. She's nearly raped by soldiers, briefly sheltered by royalists, kidnapped by Lord Vetus, and ultimately freed by Bo. Then she discovers that she is not just a Privileged, but one of the most powerful ones around and uses them to kill more than three thousand Kez soldiers in a single shot.
• Zerg Rush: A Kez specialty do to the fact that they almost always have overwhelming numbers.
  • The Dynize put the Kez to shame in Sins of Empire. Although they don't have the same sheer numbers, sorcery is used to keep the army from breaking, meaning Soldiers in longboats literally climb over piles of friendly dead and refuse to stop coming long after any normal army would have made a panicked retreat. Although when the Bone-eye's die, their army quickly collapses

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