Podcast / Trials & Trebuchets

Trials & Trebuchets is an Actual Play podcast using Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, though our protagonists are not heroic adventurers on an epic quest to save the world, but students at a magic school who are just trying to get an education but constantly find themselves thrust into the jaws of mortal peril and political intrigue, on top of having to deal with the typical matters of school life such as grades and relationships.

The series takes place at Wildcliff, School of the Arcane, where a team of students consisting of the tiefling rogue Integrity Idleberry (Kharla), half-elf bard Mira Marchand (Sarah), gnome wizard Winsler Wallaby (Ben), and human sorcerer Serinepth Sinderman (Sam) pursue an education in the magical arts under the care of their mentor Artis Artisian (Luke). Unfortunately for them, they constantly wind up in the midst of dangerous scenarios ranging from monsters loose in the school to ancient and powerful beings trying to kill them and everyone they love.

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Tropes:

• Academy of Adventure: Even for a school in a fantasy world, Wildcliff seems to draw in lots of out of the ordinary situations for the team to be thrown into.
• Acme Products: Crowe Mercantile Corporation seems to manufacture and sell just about any product one might ever need.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The Wildcliff bookstore sells products at a ridiculous markup, and gets away with it thanks to being the Only Shop in Town.
• Aerith and Bob: Fantastic names such as Serinepth and Murundeen exist alongside mundane names like Phillip and Bailey.
• Alliterative Name:
  • Each member of the party has a name like this, being Serinepth Sinderman, Winsler Wallaby, Integrity Idleberry, and Mira Marchand. The same extends to their mentor, Artis Artisian, as well as many other NPCs, including every high elf (with the exception of Mira's father Ivaran Marchand), who, like Artis, all have alliterative "A" names, and Bailey Blue.
  • The monstrous antagonist of the "of Pets and Prophecies" arc is known as "the Prickled Pest who Pursues".
• Alliterative Title: The podcast title itself, as well as its arcs "Pitter Patter" and "of Pets and Prophecies".
• Altar Diplomacy: The Sindermans arrange for Serinepth’s betrothal to the prince with the intention of raising their family’s (already quite high) standing.
• Alternate Techline: The series is distinctly set before the invention of trains. Anything else can exist (such as advanced medicines and life jackets), so long as it isn't a steam-driven locomotive.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The fauna of the Plane of Isathil are all just as vibrantly colored as the world they inhabit.
• Amazing Technicolor World: The Plane of Isathil has a bright multicolored sky, vibrant multicolored forests, and is inhabited by lots of brilliantly colored animals.
• Amphibian Assault: Laud doesn't think twice about murdering people to get what he wants, or to get revenge on anyone who has wronged him.
• Amphibian at Large: Laud is a Gray Slaad, a hulking toad-like monster.
• And I Must Scream: After his soul is placed in a new body, Artis reveals that he could still see and hear while his soul was trapped in the pebble. Needless to say this also applies to all the other souls imprisoned by the pebble demon.
• Animated Tattoo: SWIM and Angelika Lindeman all get animal tattoos from a tattoo artist who is using cursed ink that comes alive during the full moon. This becomes a problem when the tattoos come alive in the town of Troisle and begin wreaking havoc.
• Animate Inanimate Object: Winsler often creates these using the spells Tiny Servant and Animate Objects.
• An Arm and a Leg: Mira loses her right arm to Neska after revealing that she had her arm blessed by Empress Terassis, though it was actually her left arm that was magical, a fact that Mira had not told Neska, meaning Neska ate the wrong arm. Mira later gets a brass prosthetic to replace her lost arm.
• Arranged Marriage: Serinepth finds to her horror that her parents have arranged her betrothal to the bumbling Prince Frederick.
• Artifact of Doom: The Orbs of Reverence, Progress, Power, and Might, which if each placed into their slot in the Sunken Hatch will release the Progenitor into the world.
• Artificial Limbs:
  • Independent researcher Yexim Felben has a mechanical left arm and right eye.
  • Artis is the victim of a magical experiment during the first visit to Isathil that results in two of his fingers needing to be amputated and replaced with metal prosthetics.
  • In the Faint of Heart arc, Mira loses her right arm to Neska, and she gets a brass prosthetic at the start of the following arc.
• Back from the Dead:
  • The witch Ferdinand was killed by the slaad Laud after she scammed him, but she managed to escape from hell and return to the world of the living.
    • Mira negotiates a deal between Laud and Ferdinand that would've brought her Back from the Dead a second time, but because Laud cuts Ferdinand's head off, Mira's Revivify spell fails to bring her back.
  • During the ritual to transfer Artis's soul from the pebble into a new body, the Flesh Golem expells excess lightning energy as Artis's soul is placed into it, killing Delnys, Mira's roommate Allena, and the Kobold Duet, who are quickly revived by Mira and Professor Allaro afterwards.
  • Mira revives the giant Graist after he gets killed by a Remorhaz, which complicates things as the giants exist in a cycle of reincarnation, so reviving the dead is not something they take lightly.
• Bee People: The Plane of Isathil is home to a race of anthropomorphic bees ruled by Queen Bezza IV.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Kenneth Horsewrangler is this to Headmaster Osei Crowe.
• Berserk Button: Do NOT lie to Golapedra, or bring up the fact that she is only the Second Eldest.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies:
  • Golapedra, the Second Eldest of the Plane of Isathil, is a gigantic centipede, described as being the length of a city block.
  • SWIM fight a Retriever, a mechanical Giant Spider, as an opponent in the Autumn's End duels.
  • Giant centipede-like monsters called Remorhaz dwell in the frozen seas around Troisle.
• Big Eater: Despite her small stature, Integrity eats large helpings of food in the dining hall, and often snacks between meals.
• Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: Integrity calls the Progenitor a "bad snake" as a rebuttal to them visiting her in her dreams and trying to convince her to open the Sunken Hatch.
• Blue Blood: The Sindermans are a wealthy, high-ranking noble family highly concerned with their status and image, and expect Serinepth to behave in a manner befitting of this status, though she does not share the sentiments of her parents.
• Brain Food: The beautifully named "Food for Thought" arc is about an Oblex, a slime monster that eats people's memories and then takes their form.
• Breach of Promise of Marriage: When Serinepth confesses to Prince Frederick that she has no interest in marrying him and breaks off their engagement, she and her family are declared traitors to the crown.
• Break the Cutie: Poor, poor Mira. She came to Wildcliff as a cheerful young woman just wanting to learn bardic magic and mak new friends, but instead has found herself trapped in a tangled web of expectations placed on her by various powerful entities and fighting deadly and even potentially world-ending threats.
  • Her adventure at the Sunken Hatch at the start of the year gains her a connection to the ancient Sheoran Empress Terassis, who unexpectedly replaces her left arm with a magical transforming snake.
  • She later loses her other arm to Neska, and the experience makes her want to be left out of any of these adventures for a time.
  • Later, when trying to negotiate a deal between Laud the Slaad and Ferdinand the witch, Mira offers Laud the chance to kill Ferdinand, with a promise to Ferdinand that she would bring her Back from the Dead, only for Laud to decapitate Ferdinand, preventing Mira's Revivify spell from working and forcing Mira to live with the guilt of her broken promise.
  • She is essentially forced to become an attendant to the Lady of the Woods, Ala Algrim, ruler of the kingdom of Ophelian, thanks to her knowledge of the ancient secrets of Wildcliff, which leads to her being in charge of a magically comatose Angelika Lindeman.
  • She successfully revivifies the giant Graist after he is killed while defending Troisle, but this complicates things due to the giants' cycle of reincarnation. The giants believe that Mira is connected to their goddess Sésul, and despite her protests to the contrary, they assign her the task of guiding Graist on a pilgrimage into the catacombs beneath Troisle to search for answers to the significance of his revival.
• Break the Haughty:
  • Fourth-year student Joan Evelyn Kingsley has tons of adoring fans thanks to her prowess in the Autumn's End duels and her cocky demeanor. After learning that Joan somehow draws power from her fan club, Integrity humiliates Joan in front of the whole school at the Autumn's End Gala, causing her to lose her popularity and allowing SWIM to defeat her team in the duel.
  • Mira is doing her best to ruin the reputation of the insufferable Bailey Blue, as she is gunning for his position as head of the Planning Committee.
• Burn the Witch!: The Grung plan on doing this to the witch Ferdinand as punishment for her scamming them (and also because they just really want to burn a witch).
• Capture and Replicate: This is the modus operandi of the Oblex, which uses the memories it absorbs from its victims to create near-perfect facsimilies of them.
• The Caretaker:
  • Serinepth usually has to look out for the team, but takes on a much more protective role for her old friend Phillip Maisel when he's put in the infirmary.
  • Mira becomes this to Angelika Lindeman, who has entered a magical coma of sorts after an accident at the Sunken Hatch, at the behest of Ala Algrim, the Lady of the Woods.
• Chest Monster: The Keeper of the List of Warlocks, or "Keepsie", as SWIM nicknames them, is an intelligent Mimic. Though they are friendly, Serinepth is still very uncomfortable interacting with them as she has a phobia of Mimics.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Serinepth and Phillip, who have been close since childhood, develop romantic feelings for one another. Things get complicated when Serinepth's parents arrange her betrothal to Prince Frederick.
• Childhood Friends: Serinepth has been close friends with Phillip Maisel since they were both young children.
• Claimed by the Supernatural:
  • Mira gains a spiral tattoo that is the symbol of the ancient Sheoran royal family on her left arm after completing the Trial of Power at the Sunken Hatch, and soon starts being visited by the ghost of the Sheoran Empress Terassis in her dreams. The empress later replaces Mira's left arm with an identical arm that can turn into a snake as a blessing.
  • Winsler gets an "S" branded on his wrist after he trades one-seventeenth of his soul to Seltie in exchange for her magic scale.
  • Integrity gets a black streak in her hair after making a deal with the Progenitor and becoming a warlock.
• Clever Crows: Crowrigami is shown to be very intelligent during "of Pets and Prophecies", speaking with Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness while in the Talking Animal world.
• Compete for the Maiden's Hand: Phillip challenges Prince Frederick to a duel for Serinepth's hand in a desperate attempt to get her out of her Arranged Marriage to the prince. Serinepth is able to call this duel off by confessing to the prince that she has no intention of going through with her engagement to him. This results in Serinepth's and Phillip's families being declared traitors to the crown.
• Cool School: Wildcliff, School of the Arcane is a prestigious magic academy built into the side of a mountain partially under a rocky overhang with luminous crystals growing on the ceiling, and it sits atop an ancient ruin. It's hard to get much cooler than that.
• Country Cousin: Winsler, the Dwarf-adopted gnome, has Chudley, a member of the same Dwarvish clan as he. Despite them both being from the Mud Flats, Chudley out-countries Winsler by a fantasy mile.
• Creepy Centipedes:
  • Golapedra, the Second Eldest of the Plane of Isathil, is an enormous centipede-like being.
  • SWIM fight a giant centipede-like monster called a Remorhaz outside of the city of Troisle.
• Creepy Crows:
  • A murder of crows starts following Integrity around campus after she becomes a warlock.
  • Mira's crow tattoo comes alive and grows to an immense size on the full moon in Troisle and starts vandalizing things and attacking people.
• Crystalline Creature: Serinepth’s pet Isathil hedgehog Virgil has amethyst crystals for quills.
• A Day in the Limelight: The "Of Pets and Prophecies" arc sees the players take the role of their respective pets as they adventure in a world of talking animals.
• Detention Episode: "Book Worms" has Winsler, Integrity, and Mira attending detention in the archives, where they get sucked into a Portal Book, and "of Pets and Prophecies" starts out with SWIM attending detention in the Evocation department, though it shifts focus after their pets are magically transported to the Talking Animal world.
• Didn't Think This Through: Winsler's creative mind combined with his poor impulse control frequently results in him enacting half-baked plans that wind up getting him deeper into trouble.
• Distressed Dude: Artis isn't particularly skilled at combat, and is magically bonded to the Orb of Might and becomes very sickly if it is taken from him, and as a result often ends up in situations that SWIM has to rescue him from.
• Ditzy Genius: Winsler is very book-smart and great at coming up with inventive solutions to problems, but he also has a bad habit of acting impulsively and not considering the consequences of his actions.
• Draconic Humanoid: Several Dragonborn NPCs appear in the podcast, including Integrity's friend and roommate Silvi, class Jerkass Murundeen, the residents of Lightmere, Professors Flaegon and Zaegon Deeptar, and the gangster Jagun.
• Dragon Ancestry: As a draconic bloodline sorcerer, Serinepth's magic is inhereted from a distant dragon ancestor, as are her scales.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In early episodes, Winsler doesn't speak with a Southern accent, and is characterized as being timid and sensitive in contrast to his impulsive characterization in later episodes. Integrity is portrayed as aloof and mysterious in early episodes, whereas in later ones she's very outgoing and rambunctious.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Artis's wife and dear friend, Fidan, disappeared before the series started, and over the course of it he also loses the two other members of his school friend group, Dain and Teb.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: One character's name is Rat-Licker for a reason.
• Extracurricular Enthusiast: Mira sees extracurriculars as a great opportunity to meet new people, and as a result has joined the book club, the embroidery club, the foreign languages club, and the event planning committee, and has become vice president of the music club, though she eventually has to drop out of the embroidery club after losing her arm.
• Fantastic Measurement System: Magic is measured in Cows.
• Feud Episode: More of a feud arc when Integrity's best friend and roommate Silvi finds out she lied about cheating on their exam. It gets to the point where Silvi temporarily moves out of their room.
• First Friend: While she had a group of people from childhood, Serinepth says SWIM is the first time she's felt like she's made friends not out of obligation, but because they want to be around her.
• Flesh Golem: One of the tasks Winsler, Integrity, and Mira have to complete in "Book Worms" is the completion of an incomplete Flesh Golem. Later, SWIM create a Flesh Golem to serve as a vessel for Artis's pebble-bound soul to be transferred into, after which a True Polymorph potion is used to transform the Flesh Golem into Artis's body.
• Friend in the Black Market: The wood witch Seltie sells a variety of strange and rare items at her shop in Pitter, and is able to get her hands on rare and hard to acquire items (such as the angel tear she got for Winsler), but her prices can be quite steep, especially those for difficult custom orders.
• Frog Men:
  • The Grung are a race of small, poisonous frog people who live in the Plane of Isathil.
  • Laud is a Slaad, a monstrous bipedal toadlike creature.
• Fun with Acronyms:
  • The main group calls themselves SWIM (Serinepth, Winsler, Integrity, Mira).
  • They also find out their mentor Artis's friend group when he was in school consisted of Dain, Artis, Fidan, and Teb (DAFT).
• Gadgeteer Genius: Winsler’s roommate Kurt Orlain spends most of his time tinkering with various inventions.
• Giant Spider: In the Autumn's End duels, the place of an absent student team is taken up by a Retriever, a giant mechanical spider controlled remotely by a drow researcher.
• Gilded Cage: Serinepth finds the expectations and lack of freedom placed upon her as a member of the noble Sinderman family stifling, and finds the relative lack of scrutiny on her at Wildcliff to be a breath of fresh air.
• Glowing Gem: The cavern ceiling formed by the rocky overhang above Wildcliff has luminous crystal formations embedded in it.
• Golem: Wildcliff employs two types of golem as manual laborers and custodians: the stone Jeeds, who lack individual desires or personalities, and the brass clockwork golems, who include Ari and Tol, as well as Sto and Yog, who have individual personalities thanks to the angel tears that serve as their heads.
• Goth: Delnys is a necromancer with a morbid sense of humor who, aside from her hats, dresses in all black.
• The Great Serpent: Neska’s snake form, which is so large that her head is described as being “bed-sized” by Luke.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Though most of the Jeeds lack individual desires and personalities, one Jeed in the restricted section of the reliquery differs from the others, desiring friendship and freedom and having taken up the hobby of collecting dead moths.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Mira is a half-elf, and though Serinepth is mostly human, her magic (and scales) comes from draconic ancestry far back in her family history. Notable half-human NPCs include the half-elf Elrich Raethran and his daughter Delnys, Mira's three half-elf sisters, and the half-orc Kormet.
• Halloween Episode: The "Weenie Hollow" mini-arcs, which are framed as horror stories being read In-Universe by different NPCs, and use Call of Cthulhu rules.
• Happily Adopted: Winsler loves his dwarven parents very much and hopes to use the magic he learns at Wildcliff to help them out on the farm.
• Heroic Pet Story: Of Pets and Prophecies has the pets restore elemental balance to another world of Talking Animals.
• An Ice Person: The wizard Ferimel specializes in ice magic, and has an icy aura that turns the area around him freezing cold.
• Informed Ability: Professor Elrich Raethran is said to be a talented songwriter and lyricist, even having won a prestigious award for his work, but when we see him actually attempting to write a song as an attempt to win back the affections of his estranged wife Adelyne, it sounds terrible and the lyrics just consist of her name repeated constantly; only after Mira helps him with writing the song does it become any good.
• Informed Attribute: Rat-Licker says she's called that because she licks rats. We never actually see her lick a rat, however.
• Insistent Terminology: The Grung, a race of small frog people, find being referred to as "frogs" instead of "Grung" to be gravely insulting.
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: The players watch in horror as Winsler invites the terrifying witch Seltie to their party, which they cannot interfere with as their characters are not in the scene.
• Jerkass Has a Point: After Mira does poorly on her midterms, she gets paired up with the rude Murundeen as a study buddy. He suggests that she should spend less time on extracurricular activities and more time studying, which Mira disagrees with and argues against. She does eventually drop the embroidery club after losing her arm, however, and scores significantly better on her final exams as a result.
  Luke: Murundeen was right, in the end.
  Sarah: Fuck!
• Leave the Camera Running: There are several instances of the cast saying to delete something or "fix it in post," though this has yet to be done anytime they do this (to be fair, we wouldn't know when they successfully edit something out).
• Lemonade Stand Plot: Integrity and Winsler set up a stand called "Lemowand, Etc." at the Autumn's End Festival, which soon descends into chaos as they form a rivalry with the apple cider stand across the path, and their customers start developing magical ailments from residual magic in the hollowed out old wands they were using as straws.
• Little Bit Beastly: Though Serinepth is basically just human for all intents and purposes, she has small patches of blue scales on her face and body as a result of her Dragon Ancestry. Her father has similar patches of scales, albeit to a lesser extent.
• Locked Door: The bane of SWIM's existence.
  Luke: It does not budge.
• Locked into Strangeness:
  • When Integrity accepts the Progenitor’s deal for power and becomes a warlock, she gains a permanent black streak in her hair.
  • Serinepth's hair starts turning green (in addition to a sapling sprouting from her head) after a tree sneezes on her in the Plane of Isathil. Though she does eventually remove the sapling, her hair remains green, which is a problem as her parents will be visiting Wildcliff soon.
• Logic Bomb: "To be fair, we didn't know it was bottomless until about halfway."
• Lonely Rich Kid: Serinepth had very few true friends before coming to Wildcliff.
• Loser Buys Lunch: Integrity challenges Murundeen to a race while on a field trip in Isathil while she's carrying both teams' supplies, wagering that the loser must buy the winner 20 gold's worth of snacks from the campus store. Murundeen wins the race.
• The Lost Lenore: Decades before the story began, Artis’s wife Fidan left on an expedition, but never returned, and is presumed dead. Artis has been in a deep depression ever since, and after the end of the Autumn's Mend arc, he sets out on a journey to find out what happened to her.
• Machine Monotone: The school golems speak in a robotic monotone.
• Marry for Love: Serinepth wishes to do this instead of accepting whatever Arranged Marriage her parents force her into.
• MegaCorp: Crowe Mercantile Corporation.
• Motor Mouth: Mira becomes this when she's nervous, frantically trying to explain herself and often Saying Too Much.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: SWIM generally gets along well with their fellow students... and then there's Bailey Blue.
• My Nayme Is:
  • Angelika Lindeman, whose name is spelled with a K rather than the typical C, and Adelyne Raethran, whose name is spelled with a Y rather than an I.
  • Laud's name is pronounced like "loud", though it is spelled the same as the word "laud" which is pronounced more like "lawd".
  • Giants commonly have silent S's in their names, such as Graist, Haist, Baist, and Casde, whose names are pronounced like "great", "hate", "bait", and "Cade", respectively.
• Name That Unfolds Like Lotus Blossom:
  • The Nebulosis Street Urchin Rat-Licker, who licks rats.
  • The Kobold The Cobalt Butterfly Kissed The Dew-Wet Rose in the Morning Sun, who goes by Duet for short.
• Never Trust a Title: There have yet to be any trebuchets appearing in the series. It's possible the series would end if one ever showed up, having fulfilled its destiny.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: What’s SWIM’s reward for defeating the Oblex and saving the lives of multiple students and a professor? Detention for breaking into the sewers.
• No-Tell Motel: The Oshin's Bries Resort has a very unpleasant smell described as "when you leave something in a drawer for too long." The first thing that happens upon Artis entering is a step breaking under his foot.
• Odd Name Out: Mira's dad Ivaran Marchand is the only high elf without an AA name.
• Off with Her Head!: The Slaad Laud kills Ferdinand this way, preventing Mira from using her Revivify spell to bring her Back from the Dead.
• The Oner: The cast claims the entire series was recorded over the course of one extremely long D&D session. This has yet to be disproven.
• Only Shop in Town: Since Wildcliff isn’t located near any city or town, the school bookstore is the only place to shop on campus.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: Giants exist in a cycle of reincarnation of fire, stone, frost, and cloud giants, where as the last of one type of giant dies, the giants of the next type in the cycle are reborn in the world. The cycle of four is broken very rarely by the birth of hill giants during times of great peace, and less rarely by the birth of storm giants during times of great turmoil. Graist is reborn as a storm giant at the end of his pilgrimage to the temple of the goddess Sésul.
• Overly Long Name: The Kobold The Cobalt Butterfly Kissed The Dew-Wet Rose in the Morning Sun, who quite understandably goes by Duet for short.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The students don't spend much on-screen time in class. While it's implied they usually attend class, some of their grades would beg to differ.
• Portal Book: One early arc sees the gang getting sucked into a book while in library detention and being forced to fight their way through a dungeon before they're allowed to leave the book. They also find a student who went missing a week ago and rescue her.
• Precocious Crush: Ax Light-Sun, the young child of the chieftain of Lightmere, becomes convinced that Serinepth is a dragon disguised as a human after mistaking the scales she inherited from a distant dragon ancestor for a Glamour Failure, and believes that him finding out her "secret" means that she now has to marry him, based on a story he was told.
• Prince Charmless: Prince Frederick is simple-minded and childish, making Serinepth's betrothal to him all the more horrifying for her.
• Rage Against the Mentor: A situation Mira is put into when she is forced to have her mortal enemy Murundeen Purebone as her tutor to improve her grades.
• Robot Buddy: After much effort, Winsler and his roommate Kurt create Yog, their personal golem.
• Running Gag:
  • The fact that trains haven't been invented.
  • SWIM's horrible luck with Locked Doors.
  • Integrity slamming Artis's office door.
• Saying Too Much: Mira's habit of becoming a Motor Mouth when under pressure often results in her revealing information that would've better been kept unsaid.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Trapped within the Sunken Hatch is the Progenitor, a godlike being responsible for wiping out the ancient empire of Sheora.
• Serpent of Immortality: Neska has been alive since the before the fall of Sheora thanks to her ability to grow replacement bodies of both her humanoid and snake forms to inhabit in case her current body dies.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Crowrigami speaks in this manner while in the Talking Animal world.
• Show Within a Show:
  • Mira and Integrity are fans of the young adult adventure novel series Diane Danger and its spinoff series, Alyssa Adventure.
  • The “Weenie Hollow” episodes are framed as horror stories being read In-Universe by different characters.
• Significant Anagram:
  • Neska is an anagram of Snake.
  • Corka is an anagram of A Rock.
• Snakes Are Sinister: The Progenitor has the head of a cobra, and Neska, the Ascendant Priestess of Meaphidae, has a giant serpent body.
• Sssssnake Talk: Neska speaks like this, both in her humanoid form and her snake form.
• Soapbox Sadie: Cyndra Sunfire believes that the school golems are wrongfully enslaved, and takes every opportunity to protest for their freedom.
• Sold His Soul for a Donut: Winsler sells one-seventeenth of his soul, to be collected upon his death, to the wood witch Seltie in exchange for her magic scale, which he has yet to find much use for.
• Southern-Fried Genius: Winsler Wallaby, a humble farm boy from the Mud Flats, scored third-highest in his class on his first-year exams.
• Soul Jar: Adelyne Raethran is a lich and has sealed her soul in a phylactery, which she has entrusted her husband Elrich with protecting.
• The Stool Pigeon: Bailey Blue is a stickler for the rules, to the point that he even goes to Mira’s golem party specifically so he can document and report any rule violations.
• Street Urchin: Orphans and runaway kids in the city of Nebulosis are forced to turn to a life of crime in order to find treasures to pay to Zanak, a Djinn who dwells in the City of Ghosts below Nebulosis, who in turn allows them to stay in his party palace.
• Supernatural Sealing: The pebble demon seals the souls of their victims in pebbles.
• Talking Animal:
  • Winsler's familiar Mr. Wiggles is a talking cat.
  • "Of Pets and Prophecies" has SWIM's pets magically transported to a world entirely populated by talking animals.
• Team Mom: Serinepth takes on a motherly role towards her other teammates, frequently showing concern for their safety over her own and acting as the voice of reason advising them against making rash decisions.
• Team Pet: Everyone on the team has an animal companion. Winsler has a cat familiar, Mr. Wiggles; Mira has a living paper crow, Crowrigami; Integrity has a living plush squirrel, Ida Idleberry; Serinepth has a purple amethyst hedgehog, Virgil.
• Time Crash: The Smush.
• Tournament Arc: The Autumn’s End Festival duels.
• We Sell Everything: Crowe Mercantile Corporation sells everything from gemstones to lemons to wagon wheels.
• Why Did It Have to Be Mimics?: Serinepth is afraid of Mimics due to a traumatic childhood experience of being locked in a room by bullies who tricked her into believing that there was a Mimic inside that was going to eat her.
• Wizarding School: Wildcliff, School of the Arcane, the main setting of the series, is a prestigious academy of magic.
• Your Brain Won't Be Much of a Meal: The Oblex prefers to feed on the memories of smart people, and thus targets students who scored highly on their exams, considering those who performed poorly not worth the effort.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: The pebble demon rips the souls out of their victims’ bodies and traps them in pebbles, then burns the bodies.