SHADOWS ANGELUS

Contains examples of:

• Abandoned Hospital—Seen in the first episode.
• Action Girl—Jamadigni Renuka in the first series, and most of the cast in the second series.
• After The End—California dropped off into the ocean.
• Alien Geometries—Two words: Omega Sector.
• Applied Phlebotinum—How exactly does Angelus stay together and afloat?
• Artificial Human—Chrysine, Tyger, the other Clades.
• Artifact Of Doom—The doll, the Animus Mortis, perhaps even the Grimorum Esperanza itself.
• Attack Of The Killer Whatever—The Animus Mortis, which was a Spooky Painting.
• Backstory—Everyone on the Crash Team had an awesome one. Most included some sort of Dark And Troubled Past, of course.
• Bad Dreams—We'll need a show of hands here—how many characters (in SA 1&2) suffered from them? (Didi and Jama [whose Nightmare Fuel was spiders])
• Badass (most of the cast)
• Badass Librarian—Jamadigni Renuka
• Badass Longcoat—The standard XSWAT uniform includes a longcoat.
• Badass Preacher—Nathan Carpenter
• Berserk Button—The 9^th Squad tended to have a “mess around with one of us, you mess around with all of us” attitude, but there’s sure-fire way to get your ass handed to you—try and screw around with Jama. Malachi Brogan was the strongest proponent of this trope. In the second series, Jama’s Berserk Button was messing around with her husband, Mitch (as Erin McCarthy found out).
• BFG—Brogan’s super-sized maser.
• Big Bad—Gurzorath, who is personified Cosmic Horror.
• Big Damn Heroes—The entire cast at the end of the first series, standing over Gurzorath’s corpse in their Badass Longcoats.
• Blood Splattered Innocents were a fairly common occurrence in Angelus. (And those were the ones lucky enough to survive.)
• Body Horror—What you get when you OD on Angel’s Blood.
• Cat Girls—Tyger.
• Car Fu—Hemelshot behind the wheel, which usually resulted in Ramming Always Works.
• The Chains of Commanding—One of the take-home lessons from Angelus was that being in charge sucks. The female version of this trope is sometimes The Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask. It started with Alice Cadbury, then Richard Hemelshot (commander of the 9^th Squad), then ended up on Jama's shoulders.
• Character Development—Too many times to really list.
• Chekhov's Gun—The Grimorium Esperanza. The book was mentioned briefly to be what van Goren used before the campaign began. Later on, it became something that not only had to be acquired, but also used.
• Children Are Innocent until proven guilty.
• Church Militant—Enochians, ‘nuff said.
• Combat Pragmatist—Richard Hemelshot.
• Cool Shades—Malachi Brogan.
• Cosmic Horror—Somewhat subverted in that the Entities could be defeated.
• Cow Tools—The Vault. While some of the things that were in there had a known use, most of it you either couldn't tell just by looking at it... or it was better to just not ask at all.
• Crazy Enough To Work—Also happened too often.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome—Everyone in the cast had one. Jama’s was probably when she summoned the Digital Angel to battle the Enochians.
• Crowning Moment Of Funny—The following exchange from the second series:
  
  Mitch: [Approaches Diedre about the use of excessive force. Before he can speak...]
  Diedre: "Sir. If this is about the use of excessive force, you can shove it up your finely-sculpted damn ass."
  Mitch: "... I-"
  Diedre: "I don't want to hear it, Sir! You've got a people-eater and a house-burner! Why don't you yell at them?"
  Mitch: "This isn't about them, it's about you."
  Diedre: "Well, I don't want to talk about it."
  Mitch: "You don't have to. You're going to listen."
  Diedre: "I'm not listening then." [sips tea]
  Mitch: "You can't go around shooting normal people with-"
  Diedre: "Normal? These are the Gucci-Goos! They've always got an entity, some dark foul magic, cyborg, or something worse. They're shootin' cop-killing bullets, murdering innocents, and blowing up orphanages! Why do I need written permission to wipe my own ass now!?"
  [Applause from audience in the hallway.]
  Elizabeth: "Y'know, she has a point... You do have a finely-sculpted ass."
  Lorraine: "Sis! Don't hit on the commanding officer. Even if he does have a finely-sculpted ass."
  Nicodemus (to Chrysine): "Please don't say anything."
  Chrysine: "I have never seen the Lieutenant unclothed and therefore cannot comment on the sculpting of his ass."
  Nicodemus: "I swear, kids these days
• Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming—Jama’s line of “I love you” to Carpenter, which is followed by Carpenter’s gentle “I know.” This then became a Crowning Moment Of Funny when Brogan says “I bet you say that to all the guys.”
• Cry For The Devil—Both Lieutenant Shade and Coordinator Hart.
• Cyberpunk
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?—Brogan did this specifically with Gurzorath, but I think this happened a couple of other times with some of the other lower-level critters that were way out of our league at the time.
• Dreaming Of Things To Come—Yiska does this from time to time
• Epiphany Therapy occurred at least once: it took a nuclear bomb that didn't go off to make Brogan realize he did NOT have a death-wish. Any other examples?
• Everybody’s Dead Dave—See the comment under Big Damn Heroes.
• Everything Went Up To Eleven in the final battle against Gurzorath. The Enochian Invasion cranked it up to ten, but that was just the warm-up....
• Fanservice—Jama did this a few times, what with her taking instant showers to rinse off her skinsuit. The second series was loaded with it.
• Film The Hand—A lot of XSWATs activities caused a need for this, Tyger took it to the extreme by shooting down camera drones.
• Five-Man Band—For a time it was Carpenter, Hemelshot, Jama, Tyger, and Yiska. Then Brogan showed up and it was The Squad.
• Functional Magic—Jama’s Elemental Theurgy (spirit summoning).
• Giant Spiders—Omega Sector + Wolfspiders = Nightmare Fuel.
• Good Is Not Nice; 9^th Squad had its share of bad boys: Hemelshot was the ultimate pragmatist. Tyger was...Tyger. And Brogan just didn't give a damn.
• Government Agency Of Fiction—XSWAT
• Guns Akimbo—Tyger.
• The Happy Fun Ball—The doll Hemelshot found and gave to his daughter. Big mistake.
• Holier Than Thou—The Enochians. Subverted with Carpenter.
• Hollywood Cyborg—Brogan, and others.
• Humongous Mecha—Tyger’s various Blue Steel Specials (and others).
• I Am What I Am—At the end of SA1 Brogan comes to terms with his demonic nature. In SA2, this trope is averted when Liz's demon is exorcised by Diedre.
• Instant Runes—Some of the spells that Jama cast and pretty much any of the spells or abilities that Nicodemus used had this.
• It’s Going Down—Subverted, as none of the really large structures that were shown 'on camera' collapsed; such as Rutger Bridge or XSWAT HQ (normally, when something like these structures are shown or have attention drawn to them, they go down).
• Jerk With A Heart Of Gold—Tyger and Brogan. Hemelshot could also fit here, but I never saw him as being a jerk.
• Jerkass Facade—In SA2, Mitch Brogan tries to pull this off in order to protect Jama while he's on assignment, but he loses control of it horribly.
• Kill Sat—The Enochian’s orbital weapon.
• Knight Templar—Again, the Enochians.
• Lady of War—Chrysine, who was also The Stoic (or The Quiet One). Jama wasn't quite a Lady of War, as she was more the Black Magician Girl.
• Last Name Basis—Except Jama. Probably because “Renuka” isn’t all that easy.
  • And Jamadigni is?
  • Hence “Jama.”
• Light Is Not Good—James Masada.
• Messiah Creep—At the start of the campaign, Jama started off filling the 'Smart Guy' trope, but she pretty much became the lynchpin to make sure the bad guys didn't win (the Messiah). I think she shed that when it was uttered—“Save the sorceress, save the world.” Word Of God also stated that originally, it was going to be Graham Burton. Jama worked as the replacement, and Grady and I think that if Jama had been killed, Carpenter would have gotten the nod.
• Mind Screw
• Man On Fire—Two words: Burn Halfman!
• Most Common Super Power—Subverted in the case of Jama, who’s quite modestly endowed.
• Nightmare Fuel—Just about anything involving Entities.
• Nightmare Fuel Unleaded—Gurzorath spoke of making Jama his bride... and her being alive apparently wasn’t a requirement. This is also Better To Die Than Be Killed.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book—The pictures of the blue lady from the second series.
• Nonhuman Sidekick—Corporal Cadbury, Jama’s pet cat.
• Petting Zoo People—Chrysine, Tyger (actually A Cat Guy), and the rest of the Clades.
• Psychic Powers—Yiska and the rest of the epsers, most of whom have Mind Over Matter.
• Rapunzel Hair—Jama binds up her hair in uniform and it still falls to her waist.
• Really Big Gun—Hemelshot’s single-shot pistol and Chrysine's Earthshaker.
• Rule Of Cool—It’s why XSWAT officers don’t wear helmets, but have Badass Longcoats instead.
• Religion Is Magic—Just about anything Carpenter does.
• Scary Shiny Glasses—Nicodemus always wore glasses and on more than one occasion did the “Gendo glasses thing.” Even if this was not described in play or writing, I can see it happening frequently in animation.
• Send In The Clones—All of those Clades that were created to specifically fight entities and then were sent to invade Angelus.
• Sick and Wrong came up too many times to count. In the plot (hat tip to Ross) the PC quotes (hat tip to the players) and the stories. (hat tip to all.) Also, creation of HAL and some of those crazy combat cyborgs, as well as when Jama got eaten.
• Smoking Is Cool—Tyger.
• The Squadette—Jama seems to be out of place in 9^th Squad, since the rest of the cast is an esper, ex-army, ex-police, ex-police (again), and yet another ex-police who is also ex-pirate. Then she starts slinging spells around and you realize she’s an Action Girl.
• Squick—Tyger’s relation ship with Marcie the Mechanic. He’s what? Three? Four?
  • More like ten.
  • Oh, that makes it so much better.
• Team Mom—Jama in SA II, to all of XSWAT.
• The End Of The World As We Know It—What would have happened if our Big Damn Heroes had lost.
• The Only One(s)—Nobody else in Angelus could handle the crisis at hand; only the 9^th Squad (or the Crash Team).
• There Are Things Man Was Not Meant To Know—This was hinted at with Entities and their origins. Nicodemus pretty much personified this, especially when he could tell you something and leave you a twitching, gibbering mass of insanity.
• Trapped In Another World—Several episodes in both SAI and SAII had us in other worlds/realities for a short time.
• Urban Fantasy—The series takes place on a floating island-city!
• We Are Everywhere—Those zealous “neighborhood watch” police forces that Davies and Hart created.
• We Win Because You Didn't—While Ross had specifically made it clear that he wanted the campaign to end on a high note with “good times ahead” (even temporarily), the fact of the matter is that Angelus was all but ruined when the dust settled.
• Weapon Of Choice—Whether it was a BFG, BFS, Really Big Gun, or just Mother's Little Helper, almost everyone in both Angelus campaigns had one.
• What Do They Drink?—The time-honored (not always serious) method for stereotyping characters occurred in several stories.
• You Can't Go Home Again—I'm not sure if this started out as a central theme for Angelus, but by the end it applied to most of the characters.