The Icewind Dale Trilogy: Difference between revisions

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The story begins in Icewind Dale, a frozen wasteland that's populated by settlers who have established fishing towns around the three lakes, barbarian tribes, monsters, and sometimes visiting wizards. Some of these wizards trick an inept apprentice into killing his master (and their rival) for them, and then they leave him behind to freeze to death, which is when he comes across an artifact that gives him the power and desire to conquer the whole place. After he gets defeated, Bruenor decides to go on a quest with the others to find the lost dwarven kingdom of Mithral Hall, which he is the heir to but was abandoned when he was still a child. On this adventure, they have to deal with all sorts of obstacles including, but not limited to: finding out where the hell the place is, orcs, barbarians, racist humans, trolls, bog blokes, evil wizards, dark dwarves, invincible golems, a dragon, and a certain master assassin by the name of Artemis Entreri. Entreri has been hired to hunt down Regis, who had stolen something from his employer years ago. Entreri is impressed with Drizzt's combat skill, which seems to equal his own. Thus, he becomes determined to fight Drizzt to the death in order to find out who is better. He doesn't just grab Regis, but another friend of Drizzt's, and tells Drizzt to come and get him if he cares about them. The chase is on until it ends in the desert city of Calimport, where the story concludes.

See [[Forgotten Realms]], [[Icewind Dale]], [[The Dark Elf Trilogy]] and the [[Legacy of the Drow Series]].

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* [[Action Girl]]: Cattie-Brie doesn't do very much fighting at the start of the trilogy, but has become this by the third book.

* [[Back-to-Back Badasses]] : Drizzt and Entreri in the second book.

* [[Batman Gambit]]: Drizzt and Entreri pile one or two of these on top of each other in the third book, as they try to guess each other's moves and fool each other.

** A notable example is in ''Streams of Silver'' after the Companions have come to the aid of riders from Nesmé (see [[Ungrateful Bastard]] below), one of the riders attempts to kill Drizzt. The rest of the riders later make several verbal jabs at Drizzt based on his race and threaten him. Drizzt takes this with his usual quiet stoicism. However, he spots one of the riders going for his bow and immediately whips out his own, taking out the guy's cap and tells the rest of them that if anyone of them make another move against him or his friends, they ''will'' die.

* [[Berserk Button]]: See above.

* [[Bring My Brown Pants]]: A citizen of Ten Towns decides to provide intelligence to the attacking barbarians in return for future considerations. Heafstaag doesn't trust him, and swings his axe as if to [[Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves|decapitate him]]. The guy's been told not to flinch or struggle, that this will be a test, and he doesn't. So he lives, but tries very hard to make sure nobody notices the puddle he's created...

* [[Breakout Character]]: As mentioned in the main description, Drizzt.

** Or how about Drizzt's obsession with Entreri, which leads him to stop Catti-Brie from shooting the assassin.

* [[Bungling Inventor]]: The Harpells, an extended family of wizards with their own town, experiment a lot with magic, sometimes with disastrous results. One of them has even turned himself into a dog by accident, and the others can't figure out how to reverse it, so they just keep him around as a pet. (He ''does'' eventually regain his humanity in a later book.)

* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]: Some of the Harpells exemplify this trope more than others. Harkle Harpell is the most cloudcuckoolanderish of them.

* [[Combat Pragmatist]]: Everybody, really, but Entreri take the gold here when he fights Drizzt in a sewer and collects some of the water in his mouth to spit into Drizzt's eyes.

* [[The Dragon]]: The demon Errtu in the first book.

* [[Enemy Mine]]: Drizzt and Entreri team temporarily in order to survive and find their way back to their respective parties. And it is glorious.

* [[Fantastic Racism]]: Drizzt has to put up with a lot of this.

* [[Fearful Symmetry]]: While not physically identical, Drizzt and Entreri have similar body types and seem to be mirror images of one another when they fight.

** Subverted in that no one ever makes any comment of Artemis' name ([[Too Dumb to Live|granted, doing so to his face would most likely be a bad idea]]), and due to Toril being a different world than our own this trope may not even apply.

* [[General Failure]]: In "The Crystal Shard", Akar Kessel might have conquered the world if he didn't shoot himself in the foot more than once. In the end, the titular artifact stops responding to his commands and lets itself get buried in an avalanche because it's tired of watching him screw things up and wants a more worthy wielder.

* [[Heroic Sacrifice]]: Bruenor ''jumps onto the back of a flying dragon and lights it on fire'', killing it. The last anybody sees of him, he and the dragon are falling into a chasm, both in flames. Everybody is [[I Thought You Were Dead|sure he is dead]], and Bruenor probably expected to die, but he happened to be carrying something that made him immune to fire without him knowing it.

* [[I Surrender, Suckers]]: Drizzt kills a monster his pursuers have sent after him, and then waits for them while pretending to have been incapacitated by it.

* [[I Thought You Were Dead]]: Drizzt is seen by his friends falling victim to a trap that they're sure he didn't survive...except he does and rejoins them later. Also, Bruenor (see [[Heroic Sacrifice]] ).

* [[Licking the Blade]]: Drizzt pulls a non-evil version of this in ''The Crystal Shard'' after spearing a piece of mutton with a dagger (and subsequently accidently dropping it) while he and Wulfgar are clearing out a den of giants.

* [[Made of Iron]]: The companions take a ton of punishment in the final act of ''The Halfling's Gem'', yet it barely slows them down.

** The way Bruenor tricks Drizzt into going on the search for Mithril Hall is just downright mean. And no one of his friends reproaches him for that. Not even Drizzt himself. That's made all the [[Harsher in Hindsight]] if one considers that Bruenor was the first 'true' and longtime friend Drizzt had since his father's sacrifice. Granted, in ''Streams of Silver'' Bruenor at least acknowledges, that it was a dirty trick.

** At the end of the third book, the friends leave Regis in control of the thieves' guild, apparently quite comfortable with the idea that he would make a living of organized theft.

* [[Precision-Guided Boomerang]]: Wulfgar's warhammer.

* [[Royals Who Actually Do Something]]: Bruenor and Wulfgar.

* [[Smug Snake]]: Rassiter.

* [[Spoiler Opening]]: Or spoiler-book cover, to be precise. The third book, ''The Halfling's Gem'', shows the heroes fighting demons in Tartarus, which only happens at the very end of the book. Also, it shows {{spoiler|Bruenor}}, who is still thought dead at the beginning of the book, alive and well.

* [[Super-Persistent Predator]]: The trolls of the Evermoors; no matter how hard the Companions fight, no matter how many trolls they incapacitate or kill, there are always more ready to take their places, and the ones they cut apart grow back their missing body parts (including heads and vital organs; cutting the head off of a troll results in the head eventually growing a new body, the body growing a new head, and [[Oh Crap|then you have TWO hungry trolls coming after you]]). As mentioned above, only [[Kill It with Fire|fire]] can kill them, and even when they've got that it's still difficult for the good guys to hold off all of the trolls.

* [[The Only One Allowed to Defeat You]]: Artemis Entreri does not react well when he finds out that Pasha Pook has tried to have Drizzt killed before he, Entreri, has had the chance to fight and kill Drizzt himself.

* [[Weak-Willed]]: Akar Kessel.

* [[Would Hit a Girl]]: Being Entreri's prisoner is not a fun experience for Catti-Brie.

** Cattie-Brie also provokes Jierdan into hitting her, but he regrets it immediately afterward.

 

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[[Category:Fantasy Literature]]

[[Category:The Eighties]]

[[Category:The Icewind Dale Trilogy]]