Scepter of Darkness

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Scepter of Darkness by Helltanz98 is nominally a Harry Potter Time Travel fan fiction. "Nominally" because without reading the prequel (which the author has yet to repost, though continues to promise to do so hasn't yet) it's hard to determine if it is time travel or just an Alternate Universe. Another reason is because of the fact it crosses with multiple different series.

Anywho long story short time traveling knights led by Harry Potter under an assumed name arrive in 1930 along with most of their gear and decide the best way to prevent the extreme damage done to earth in their OTL is to basically force a massive development of weapons technology, this leads to keeping the Nazis in control of Europe while allowing world war II to play out leading to a bloody stalemate.

The fic is apparently undergoing a rewrite but is still pretty heavy on tropes

Prequel Summary: (divided into parts per the author's recent[when?] poll)

  • Part I comprises the Beginning, and the Elysium War
  • Part II comprises the Eurasian Wars
  • Part III comprises the Damnation War and the Preparations for the Great Journey

Scepter of Darkness can be read here.

Tropes used in Scepter of Darkness include:
  • Absurdly Sharp Blade
    • Asran's Gram though he probably does have the strength to actually put the force behind the blade
    • Drachenorden runeswords
      • These are described as cutting through tanks and armored bulkheads.
    • Demon blades
  • Alchemy Dumbledore's specialty, and its especially useful if you give the alchemists preptime
  • Alien Invasion: Happened in the prequel hence the time travel, despite the fact the earth won and is supposed to happen again
  • All Germans Are Nazis: Subverted the largest example being the reminder that the SS actually included all police forces throughout Nazi Europe, and the fact the Drachenorden will be very quick to remind any and all they are their own organization
  • Alternate Universe Fic
    • See above
  • Amicably Divorced: Harry and Arzachel's mother, well for the most part.
    • Its hinted that she's not above scarring off or killing any of the mother's to Harry's other children, but this is rare and Your Mileage May Vary as Maria's mother is the only semi solid example.
  • An Ice Person: The Count of Donestk Dmitri, the Drachenorden supreme naval commander.
  • Backstory: Even though the prequel has yet to be reposted but its there a rather nagging allusion every now and again that something really bad happened in the previous timeline.
  • Badass Family: Most Drachenorden bloodlines, also Grindelwald's 'kids'.
    • Cypher and his grandson are particularly noteworthy.
  • Badass Grandpa: Cypher, but so are most Drachenorden who can, in the case of previous timeline knights, be thousands of years old.
  • Badass Longcoat: All the officers wear them, but most notably the time travelling knights wear them especially.
  • Bio Augmentation
    • The Drachenorden's conditioning, and they encourage their members to go beyond that.
    • In addition there are others like the SS, and Thule Society, Japan's Unit 731 and related organizations get in on the action as well. Then you have the Soviets' own equivalents.
    • The Allies, particularly the American Central Intelligence Agency, are into this.
  • Black Magic
    • Grindelwald is a Dark Lord.
    • If Asran Harry Potter starts breaking it out some one is about to be fubared to an extreme.
  • Blood Brothers: The Drachenorden consider the death of one of their own to be an intolerable offense, and promptly show you just how powerful magical time traveling knights can be most the present timeline knights consider so much as bad mouthing the older knights as just asking to be killed.
  • Blood Knight: Tobias, besides being litterally called Blood Knight, makes a habit of going out and fighting, and killing rivals who oppose the Order's agenda without being ordered to.
    • Asran when he's younger also qualifies.
  • Blood Magic: Mentioned in the background.
  • Blue Eyes: The ubermench twins Zero, and Ein. The Potter Family shows a strong trait for type 1.
    • This is except for Harry and his son who have green eyes. Oddly his daughters seem to be inheriting his father's blue eyes.
  • Brick Break: Probably everyone who has magic and is in a military role.
  • Broken Masquerade: Before World War II in the Ukraine turns into The Unmasqued World afterward.
  • Clothing Damage: Literally.
    • When this happens it basically indicates some serious ass-kicking is about to occur.
      • Chapter five or six in Scepter of Darkness Harry takes a round from a cruiser grade gun and it destroys his shirt.
      • He then slices the tank in half.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: Subverted.
    • Elite troops are more effective in groups.
      • Any time a drachenorden force of battallion strength numberwise takes the field well... the enemy is fucked no matter how many there are.
  • Cool Airship
    • the German Sturm class.
    • Drachenorden ADOREs.
  • Cool Boat
    • USN Montana class super Battleship.
      • If you thought the Real Life Version was scary this monster is equivalent to a nightmare with 12 sixteen inch guns that fire Nuclear shells. The Block I served in the new timeline World War Two because the order in the pacific seriously weakens the usefulness of carriers.
    • Improved Bismark class super Battleships.
      • It's a huge battleship, sure it isn't as cool as the US's Montana but it's still a big ship with big gun.
    • Elysium class super battleships.
      • Nuclear Powered that has laser cannons on both model though Dracaena versions carry railguns in place of normal big guns.
    • Soviet Lenin class super Battleships.
      • They carry missiles, big ones.
    • Drachenorden super submarine carriers.
    • Obviously the Soviet Akula class submarine.
    • Zilant class super carriers.
      • Big ass carrier that can carry gunships that make the AC 130 look like a joke, and is more importantly Macross Missile Massacre capable.
    • America class super carriers, which was meant to combat the below.
    • Prussia class super carriers, which took a que from the order and has missiles and fighters.
  • Cool Starship
    • The order of the Dragon Bahamut-class is a 'quarter of the size' of Luna, and is fully stealthed
      • They are building the thing in orbit and nobody has noticed.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: The Drachenorden members who made the 'great journey' all have this, seeing as civilization on earth was pretty much screwed and billions died.
  • Expy: Radu Barvon and Isaak Ferdinand von Kampfer of Trinity Blood are pretty much directly copied over.
    • Not true in Radu's case while his name, physical appearance, even signature ability are definitely copied his personality isn't so isn't only a partial expy.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: America and the Orden.
    • In America's case they're considered by England's magical world and well Fantastic Racism abounds there, but they also employ a high level demon who is actually a Good Samaritan pretty good guy.
  • Deflector Shields: Wizards can create them with magic, and then there are the tech examples.
  • Demon Slaying: The Drachenorden.
    • Of course only certain demons.
  • Depleted Phlebotinum Shells
    • Notably Asran's 'Executioner' bullets which destroy souls.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?
    • Prequel
      • Harry's taming Bahamut, who is the king of dragons.
      • Technically Harry is pretty much nearing godhood by this point so its more like one Cthulhu punching out another.
  • Diagonal Cut: Landcruiser getting destroyed by Asran counts.
  • Doomsday Device: Alchemic nukes seem to fit it rather nicely, opening FTL 'gate' did a number to the French Ministry of Magic and that was only for the size of a large person.
  • Dual-Wielding: The Drachenorden used to do this during the Elysium and Damnation wars.
    • Mainly because they have magic swords which you know can cut through tanks like tissues.
  • Elaborate Underground Base: Drachenorden Stargate Command 'Hell's Citadel'.
    • Which doesn't make any sense considering the Oo D can make extradimensional bases already why build something on Earth.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The 'Great Enemy', the enemy during the Damnation War.
  • Empathic Weapon: Asran's Gram, which is a demon blade of some kind so this may be Evil Weapon instead.
    • Gram is described as malevolent in most instances.
  • Energy Absorbtion The Killing Curse just makes Harry stronger
  • Energy Ball Isaak and Harry
  • Even Evil Has Standards: The Knight Templar SS about rape. They go batshit crazy about it and will hunt down the guilty. This leads to certain problems with the Imperial Japanese Army and the Soviets's intelligence chief Beria, who they repeatedly try to kill causing Beria to be extremely paranoid as he gets older.
  • Fairy Tale Motifs
    • It's called the order of the dragon and its members are all badass.
      • Order as in a group of knights.
      • And the fact their leader commands the king of dragons who is supposedly only cowed by God's power.
  • Famous Ancestor: Subverted by the time travelers and possibly going to be played straight by some others.
  • Faster-Than-Light Travel: Not simply on ships either.
    • Not kidding even though the 'present time' in story posted on FF.net is circa the sixties the timetravellers have FTL ships
  • Fertile Feet
  • Feudal Future: Both alluded to have occured in the prequel during and in the aftermath of the Eurasian wars as well as present in the Reich.
    • Prominient examples being:
      • Duke of Kiev Ukraine having been defected from the USSR
      • Baron of Luxor
      • Count of Donetsk
  • Fire, Ice, Lightning: Depending on which three you want to use of the Senior Council, when it comes to specialties, or lots of the more powerful wizards use all three.
    • As far as trios go the most typical one is Radu, Dmitri, and Asran (usually), Asran's position can be subbed though.
  • Former Teen Rebel: most of the leading time travelers were mercenaries at best at the very beginning of the prequel.
  • Functional Magic
  • Ghostapo: The Thule Society, and the SS are separate, but fundamentally are all Nazis with supernatural powers.
  • Godwin's Law of Time Travel: Intentionally invoked from the Order's point of few having three power blocs will surely cause humanity to develop even better ways of killing each other, and by proxy the Chaotic Evil Aliens who wiped out most of humanity.
  • God-Emperor Asran in the new timeline is considered a physical god, and commands the Drachenorden, and Dracaena
  • God Mode Sue: Played straight - the Drachenorden leadership are absurdly powerful and the big boss himself takes it even further.
    • Supposedly justified in that in the prequel the Big Bad were monsters that even with all that power were still capable of killing more than half of the population of the previous timeline's earth.
    • Lampshaded by the time traveler's leader when Dumbledore attempts to kill Grindelwald.
  • Guns Akimbo: Mostly averted.
    • Though in the prequel Asran has two Magitech Berettas loaded with Depleted Phlebotinum Shells which he uses during the Damnation, course one of them gets destroyed so he carries a back up HK USP nowadays to replace the lost one.
  • Gratuitous German: Most of it was removed.
  • Green Eyes: Harry and his son, as well as Lily, who hasn't shown up. In the prior two though its generally used to reference terrible killing power as its described more "cold shards of glittering emeralds. All the enemy that were before these deathly eyes died this day."
    • Oddly, the fic having been released before the Deathly Hallows' epilogue, Helltanz98 has Arzachel, Harry's son, being the only one of Harry's children seen so far that has Green Eyes.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: In a non figurative sense, Harry Potter under his assumed name, being a time traveler, as well as his son, are referred to as the Death Eyed knight and Angel of Death respectively and have all kind of monstrous powers.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Arzachel Leonid Asran, Harry's eldest son. Most speculation points toward his mother being a member of the True Fae.
  • Healing Factor
    • Asran takes a sniper bullet through the carotid on a downward trajectory and starts healing in seconds. The bullet doesn't even slow him down.
      • Hitler isn't so lucky.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Drachenorden Greatcoats, or possibly just Asran's.
  • I Have Many Names
    • All the senior lords have several names and titles.
      • Not even counting actual noble titles like Count of Donetsk, or Duke of Kiev.
    • Harry takes this to a new level by abandoning his birth name after ill meetings with the English Wizarding world in the prequel.
      • He of course has a bunch of other titles Death Eyed Knight, Duke of Kiev, Viscount of Oddessa, Sovreign of all the lands of the Dragon, Grandmaster, Lord of the Cosmos.
  • Immortality
    • The Undead: Vampires, obviously.
    • Resurrective Immortality: Harry and the non vampire Senior Lords all appear be this. Most likely since Antoine is killed near the end of the prequel and he's stated to be as immortal as the others.
      • Non vampire Drachenorden Knights who underwent the Conditioning before Antoine's death appear to be weaker Immortals of this type as well.
  • Immortal Immaturity: Harry frequently complains his son is one of these, something about him being reckless.
  • Immune to Bullets
  • Implausible Fencing Powers: Cutting through tank armor plus other superhuman feats.
  • Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Stargate cross.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills
  • Inertial Dampening Present: On spaceships.
  • Infinite Supplies: Shangri-las seem to be separate worlds which have easily accessible resources and more can be made.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: Prequel and then the present timeline characters are much younger than those of the previous timeline by thousands of years yet tend to get along quite smashingly.
  • Invisibility Cloak: No one has yet noticed the fact that the Drachenorden is building a warship that is supposed a quarter the size of Luna.
  • Invocation: The Drachenorden have a specific branch of magic that involves around this.
    • Actually it's shown the Battle Incantions don't require it.
  • In the Name of the Moon: Happens a few times in varying forms and by different characters.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: Subverted. Only the Japanese use katanas, everyone else uses appropriate cultural blades.
  • Kill It with Fire: Get into a fight with Radu and he'll do this, also most the Drachenorden are capable of pulling this off via incantation sorcery, or by other means for older knights.
  • Knight Templar: The actual stereotypical SS, and others.
  • Kung Fu Wizard the Entire Drachenorden are this, particularly since lower level order knights rely on longer incantation spells they have to be able to fight hand to hand
  • Lamarck Was Right: Strong people tend to have strong kids, though in the Drachenorden's case this might just be the 'genetic engineering' being hereditary.
  • Light Is Not Good: England's wizarding Government, which is arguably the Most Light side by Wizarding standards, which has Fantastic Racism.
  • Literal Cliff Hanger: The start of the Elysium arc in the prequel.
  • Lost Technology: Chapter 1 starts in an 'Ancient' Laboratory in Sinai.
  • Magic Knight The drachenorden, also the Amazons
  • Magitek The Order, Thule Society, and Americans love the stuff. In particular all three consider Magitek items highly valuable items to protect all cost
  • Master Race: Younger members of the orden, and rather commonly their children, some wizarding groups, certain mutants, the SS.
  • Masquerade: The wizarding world's International Statute of Secrecy, which Harry really hates leading to the Broken Masquerade in Imperial Countries.
  • Mega Crossover: This author is notoriously bad about them. This fic is allegedly one, but no other works contributing to it have been identified.
  • Might Makes Right: The Drachenorden early on, and origin to modern the Orden's Duchy, military governing, system.
  • Middle-Eastern Coalition The UAS, which excludes Egypt, and other North African states, but did previously contain Iran before they separated
  • Multicolored Hair
    • Harry ends up having two red streaks through his hair after one of his massive boosts in power.
  • Muscles Are Meaningless: None of the knights are described as having a body builder physique yet they can thoroughly trounce most threats.
  • Multigenerational Household: Cypher, one of the leaders overall of the Drachenorden, lives with his Grandson. Cyper's son however died in the Damnation War.
    • In the prequel they were fighting demons in unarmed combat and winning.
  • Nakama surprisingly even when he's trying to be a Nietzsche Wannabe he looks out for his crew.
    • All the drachenorden look after their own.
    • The word Tovares, comrade, gets used a lot.
  • Nanomachines: Timetravellers have them in a variety of forms not limited to being used to heal there is also an artificial life form, plus for construction.
  • Nietzsche Wannabe: The early part of the Prequel, Harry despises weakness, going so far as to consider anyone without power as below him.
    • He gets better, to a degree.
  • Older Than They Look: A lot of people, the drachenorden has more or less countered the effects of aging however the new timeline knights are only mildly so seeing as someone important died before the trip to the past though for the most part they all look like adults Harry looks to be middle aged while his son is supposed to look in his mid twenties.
    • The commander of the SINEW III is Seventy years old by the Earth Calendar but actually quite a bit older than that due to his participation in the Elysium Crusade.
      • Retcon SINEW are now called Sphere Type Aerial Warship the acronyms have been ditched.
  • Only Mostly Dead Harry dies a couple times in the prequel only to wake back up a few days later more or less good as new
  • Our Monsters Are Different
  • Our Vampires Are Different: There are a number of different vampire species.
  • Orcus on His Throne: Subverted. Harry hates this and would much rather lead from the front lines and frequently does.
  • Overly Long Name
    • Radu Barvon, Baron of Luxor, Ifrit of the Empire, Lord of fire, Lord of Smoke, Lord of Ash, Senior Lord of the Drachenorden, etc.
  • People Puppets Cypher can turn entire cities of normal people into remote controlled attack dogs
  • Personality Powers: Subverted in the case of Radu who is quite levelheaded up until you attack Harry in which case he's a raging inferno.
  • Person of Mass Destruction
    • In addition to the senior lords of the Order of the Dragon, there is Zero, and Ein, not to mention Arzachel, who is not only a time traveler but bears the title Angel of Death by the Army.
  • Physical God
    • Admittedly they don't need worship though each of the Senior Lords do seem to have a speciality.
    • Radu is fire.
    • The Count of Donetsk is Water.
    • Asran just blatantly messes with Reality.
    • Antoine is life.
    • Isaak is magic.
  • Playing Both Sides: The Order of the Dragon gladdly supplies everyone from behind the scenes as a prelude to world war II/
  • Playing with Fire: Radu Barvon the Baron of Luxor is known as the Ifrit of the Order (or the Empire), and Lord of Fire.
  • Power Levels occasionally mentioned with Muggles and regular wizards being the bottom
  • Power of the Void Harry, as befitting his early Nietzsche Wannabe attitude, Kemmler, and later Harry teaches Zero amongst others wield this
  • Psycho Supporter: The side story posted in the latest chapter on FF.net shoves this in your face pretty clearly though there are other examples.
  • Psychic Surgery Antoine's most well known ability, and used far more than Healing Hands
  • Psychic Powers: The Drachenorden, but the senior council in particular Loremaster Cypher who is amongst the strongest, he also heads the Drachenorden Counter Intelligence Taskforce, which involves mindreaders.
    • Cypher himself is capable of predicting the attacks of other senior lords and holding them at bay for several hours, except when they start using their more advanced attacks even so his psychic barrier can hold off Asran's radiation 'wings' for a short while.
  • Qurac: The United Arab States averts this for the most part as its basically it a united Middle East mini super state. That was formed after World War II by the Axis.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: How the Drachenorden started out.
  • Ragnarok Proofing
  • Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: In The Empire do not do this, the SS will find a special way to kill you if you, and that's if the drachenorden doesn't find you first it doesn't matter who you are.
  • Razor Wind: Zero, Grindelwald, Harry along with probably the Amazons and the Knights of the Drachenorden.
  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: And then some - anyone who is from the previous timeline has at the very least seen their first Millenial Birthday due to the difference in the passage of time in Elysium
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Vampires - Hellish Pupils are common too when they're pissed off.
  • Refusal of the Call: Harry during the Eurasian Wars and during the Damnation Wars. He tells the English Wizarding world they can go burn.
      • In the case of the Damnation War refusal he has a justifiable reason; the wizards in England are leaving the rest of humanity out to dry in fighting the invaders and he doesn't like that.
  • Reality Warper Wizards in general are very weak ones, but Harry is a Reality Maker, as is Cypher to a lesser extent
  • Rewriting Reality
  • Rooting for the Empire: Depending on your persuasions it's possible for someone to root for any one of the superpowers.
    • USSR is portrayed as a relatively benign communist nation, who is unlikely to collapse thanks to improved trade allowing them to vastly increase social programs.
    • Even the South African Superstate by 1980, if you're a rabid anti-colonialist, by which point they've mellowed out a bit from their earlier batshit tendencies.
  • Shock and Awe: Harry, and Isaak to a lesser degree.
  • Smoking Is Cool: Starts in the thirties and proceeds from there. Isaac by nature of being an expy of the character of the same name from Trinity Blood smokes.
  • Sniper Rifle: An integral part of the modern military.
    • Though not particularly useful against older drachenorden knights because of their Healing Factor
  • Social Darwinist: Harry early on in the prequel.
    • As the protagonist he gets better.
  • Soviet Superscience
  • State Sec Everybody ranging from the SS and Drachenorden psychics in the case of the Axis, to the CIA, and wizards of the Secret Service in the case of the Americans.
  • Storming the Castle: The English wizards 'storm' a Drachenorden Castle built in Targoviste as a base for the Eurasian Wars.
    • Harry blasts them off a tower with relative ease.
  • Stupid Jetpack Hitler: The advanced drafts of the rewrite make it abundantly clear the Axis wins because the Order can afford to give millions and millions of tonnes of war material to the Axis, all the while supplying technical schematics to the Allies, and the Soviets.
  • Supernatural Martial Arts: Drachenorden Pankration is both brutal and useful at fighting demons in hand to hand combat.
  • Supernatural Sensitivity crops up from time to time
  • Sword Beam: Gram releases immense bursts of raw malevolent energy which well think wind scar from Inuyasha for the low power or just outright wiping things from existence.
  • The Clan: Wizard Nobility.
    • The Potters
    • Likewise Drachenorden 'Houses' tend to be similiar with a member of the family, usually a drachenorden peer, as The Patriarch. The House of Asran has the House of Kiev and the House of Moldova as subordinate branches to it.
  • The Dark Arts Grindelwald, Kemmler, and Riddle all like using the Dark Arts. Grindelwald in particular has a Demon anchoring his soul to the mortal plane.
  • The Empire: The third Reich after WWII becomes this.
    • Officially it's comprised, subdivided into smaller 'Kingdoms' like Germanicus, and Dracaena, and the UAS.
    • Also the Empire of Imperial Japan.
  • The Magocracy The Order of the Dragon with heavy influence of Authority Equals Asskicking. In America though its more like Court Mage, while England also has a separate Magocracy in the form of the Ministry of Magic
  • The Patriarch
  • The Power of Creation Harry's ability to create Shangri-la
  • The Power of Love First Timeline Dumbledore claims, as in canon, this is the power the dark lord knows not, Harry thinks Albus is crazy.
  • The Unmasqued World: Post World War II Europe and Asia.
  • Time Travel
  • Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: The actual 'first book' in the series Harry with Gram in knife form performing an Eye Scream... It Got Worse.
  • Weapon of Choice: Asran's Gram the regular knights all carry runeblade swords which can tear through tank armor with ease.
  • Weapon of Mass Destruction: Rio gets blown up by the Luftwaffe using a Unobtanium bomb not to mention conventional nukes, alchemically enhanced nukes, bio weapons, poison gas unobtanium enhanced alchemically enhanced nukes with controlled radii.
    • The Drachenorden has rail guns in space.
      • And on tanks and as fixed artillery installations.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: The whole point of getting the Nazis to win the war, is to prevent the ominous future from the previous timeline.
  • White Gloves: Isaak, and Dietrich, plus the Hellsing Characters, dark color gloves tend to be quite common.
  • Wizards and Witches
  • Wizards Live Longer
  • World War II: The first couple of chapters take place in World War II, though it goes from what happened in the OTL to Germany launching Operation Midgardsormir which is an Axis invasion of Asia it goes much better with future tech.
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Radu has dark blue hair.


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