Helm/Awesome

• Leland de Laal, Warden of the Needle, is the most prolific generator of these:
  • His very introduction, solo climbing the aforementioned Needle, an over-three-hundred-meter granite tower, in order to reach the eponymous Helm.
  • During his Training from Hell, when he figures out how to trick the soldiers assigned to beat him up to hit each other instead.
  • Right after being placed in charge of the mounted infantry unit that he dubs The Eight Hundred, he brings his entire unit of green troops back from the border hours before anyone thought it possible.
  • Turning an ambush at the inn in Noram City with minimal losses to his unit.
  • When he first demonstrates the use of camouflage to his halvidar.
  • When he subsequently uses camouflage to kidnap the leader of the Rootless clans.
    • ...which he subsequently parlays into initiating peace talks.
    • ...which in turn he parlays into sending the Rootless to attack Cotswold, the country that invaded his own.
• Ricard de Laal's Heroic Sacrifice, preventing both himself being turned by the imprinter and Laal's spies being blown by their turned spymaster.
• The original imprint from the Helm, Michaela Herrin, taking over the line so as to protect Leland from Sigfried's brainwashing.
• Almost a meta example: the one-page last chapter, wherein an the environmental probes reports back to the survivors of the destruction of Earth that Epsilon Eridani II, also known as Agatsu, the planet where the rest of the story had taken place, is a viable colony. Meaning that humanity will survive. Brings tears to this troper's eyes.