Ratcatchers is an in-progress fantasy series by author, game designer, and Youtuber Matt Colville.
Described as "A Fantasy Hardboiled" by the author himself, the series currently has two books, Priest and Thief. The next entries in the series, titled Fighter, Wizard, and Paladin, are planned but not yet completed.
Tropes related to Priest:
- Always Chaotic Evil: Urq can't really help it. They were made by dragons for the purpose of killing humans and that's hardwired into their brain. Averted for Giants and other races, who clearly are humanoids with their own cultural ways that are neither good nor bad.
- An Adventurer Is You: Heden is a Cleric in the Dungeons & Dragons style, with armor, sword, and miracles. The Green Order are Paladins of Nature or Druidic Warriors.
- "Arabian Nights" Days: Source of the Flying Tapestry. Heden's former comrade lives there.
- Arc Words: "A man is greater than his worst mistake".
- Badass Normal: Teagan again. He takes down an evil priest and an invisible assassin just by virtue of being an incredible swordsman.
- Bag of Holding: played straight.
- Big Damn Heroes: Sir Nudd, twice.
- The Big Guy: Sir Nudd, again. Heden is fairly short for a man, and mentions that Nudd is almost twice as tall as he is.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Where to begin? A "turn" is 20 minutes. Urq and Urmen are Orcs (but more like pigmen/gorillas than green orcs are). Half-Orcs are called Demi-Urqs. "Prayers" is the general name for spells. "Thyrs" are giants. Brocca are badgermen. "Campaigners" are adventurers, but most people have a low opinion of them and call them rat-catchers
- Celibate Hero: Isobel, Aedyrn, Heden.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: Cavall is a redemeer and forgiver of sins.
- Disposable Sex Worker: Vanora starts the story by having epileptic fits and her boss has her sent to jail, knowing that the guard will drown her for demonic possession. Oh, and also The Duke gets off on taking new girls slowly from ordinary sex into bdsm and then torture and finally murder.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Several, although in a subversion many of them a wrong. The first one is that it doesn't make any sense that a renegade priest who hates knights would get a job to redeem a knightly order. The final one is that the Green Order are desperate for Heden to realize their crime and absolve them of their guilt.
- Exact Words: Heden always says he "was made a priest 5 years ago".
- Flying Carpet: Heden has a Flying Tapestry. He doesn't really get why you'd make it a tapestry though.
- Gender-Restricted Ability: St. Lenwyn (a woman) only grants her power to men, and even then, only one at a time.
- Genius Loci: The Wode. It's the kind of forest people don't come back from.
- Godzilla Threshold: Heden can call down a Dominon, but in exchange he will have to undertake at holy quest in exchange for the help.
- Heroic BSoD: Heden quit adventuring because of this. It still gets the better of him when he see's certain things.
- Heroic Vow: All of the Knights of Green Order take one. Chastity and Silence are two that we see spelled out. Heden also appears to have one.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Heden bears the guilt of doing this. The Green Order does too, in its own way.
- Leg Focus: Heden notices the pair of nice legs of a literal Saint, of all people.
"There will probably never come a time I don't notice a great pair of legs".
- Locked into Strangeness: Knights of the Green Order all have their hair turn green. it turns back to normal if they lose their powers.
- Loophole Abuse: The god Cavall will not heal one specific type of injury: any of his servants self-inflicted wounds, because he doesn't believe in self-mutilation. Taethan uses this knowledge to slit his own wrists allowing him to both die and confess, knowing that Heden can't fix it.
- Mercy Kill: Heden is told (after a bit of reading between the lines) to kill a boy who's been possessed by demons before the town drowns him, on account of how drowning is an awful way to go.
- Necessarily Evil: the job of Heden, an 'Arrogate' is to do unpleasant things that need to be done, even if that breaks a few of the church's rules. Happens to coincide with the entire Green Order, save for Taethan. See the entry in To Be Lawful or Good.
- Never Mess with Granny: Isobel is pushing 60, and it doesn't make her any less of a terrifyingly dangerous knight. It's implied that the powers of the Green Order are keeping her body strong, but her skills are all her own.
- Odd Job Gods: St. Lenwyn is/was a whore in life, to show how much her patron god Cavall is willing to forgive anyone. Can be seen as an Expy of Mary Magdelene.
- One-Man Army: Heden is one when he needs to be, although he's more reluctant than most. Every single member of the Order of the Green are too.
- Our Orcs Are Different: Urq or Urmen are dark blue, piggish, and have a general posture like gorillas. They were also explicitly made by the dragons of old to push back the encroaching tide of humans.
- The Quiet One: Nudd has sworn a vow of silence.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The Abbot, who is insightful, wise, and leads the lower levels of the church of Cavell.
- Retired Badass: Heden used to be a "campaigner" (adventurer) in his youth. Now he's a priest.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Kavalan doing this causes the entire plot.
- Spoony Bard: Renaldo. His 'understated' outfit makes him look like a jester to the humble folk of the land.
- Take a Third Option: Heden is told to Mercy Kill a girl "possessed", but instead he cures her of what seems like Epilepsy.
- The Tease: 'Saint Lenwyn' does this to Taethan, because she knows he's too noble to be seduced. It's implied she likes messing with men this way.
- To Be Lawful or Good: The basis of the entire plot. Kavalan, head of the Green Order was given direct instructions not to stop the Urq horde from destroying a town. He decided to stop them anyway and his fellows were forced to kill him to keep up the existence of the Order, considering it a Greater Good. The inability of the knights to reconcile these two contrasting loyalties, and Taethan's inability to absolve them of their sin, break the order apart at the seams.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Taehan is too pure and too inflexible to be a good knight in an imperfect world.
- Ultimate Blacksmith: The Dwarf smith in the Capital. He apparently guards numerous magic treasures as well.
- World's Strongest Man: Sir Nudd is over 7 feet tall, is able to wield a greatsword with one hand. Heden suspects that there are no amount of Urmen in all the world that can take him when he's in the Wode.
- Your Head A-Splode: a prison guard gets this right in the first chapter, courtesy of an evil mage.
