Ravenor

A mind without purpose will wander in dark places...

A trilogy of novels set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe featuring the heavily disabled psyker Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor and his retinue, written by Dan Abnett.

The first of the novels, Ravenor, features the team's investigation into a suspicious drug, known as Flects, on Eustis Majoris. Ravenor Returned leads the heroes deeper into a conspiracy encompassing the whole world, and begins Carl Thonius's fall into Chaos. The third novel, Ravenor Rogue ties the threads together and finishes this particular arc. There are also two short stories, collected along with the three novels in an omnibus edition. The first, Playing Patience, is set between the Eisenhorn trilogy and this one, and the second, Thorn Wishes Talon, is set between Ravenor and Ravenor Returns and fills in some extra backstory. The author is planning a third Inquisition trilogy...

Ravenor was first mentioned as an aside in an early Gaunt's Ghosts novel. He was developed as a secondary character in the Eisenhorn books, during which he suffered the horrendous injuries which led to him being confined to his life support chair.

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These books feature examples of the following tropes:

• Ambiguously Gay: Thonius. Definitely The Dandy in clothes and manner, and various other characters imply it; still, the setting expects a degree of such behaviour among the upper classes, and he never admits attraction to anyone.
  • Dan Abnett published "nice job noticing queers exist" a troper's email on his blog.
• And I Must Scream: Ravenor has a mild form of this all the time, reliant entirely on his chair for sight and sound and unable to touch anything. The classic Nightmare Fuel example is his default state without the chair - a limbless, blind, deaf, mute lump of burned flesh that the surgeons had to cut a hole in just to feed him.
• Back-Alley Doctor: Belknap.
• Badass: Where to freaking start! Most of the named characters are badass to some degree but considering that this is the 40K universe, that might not be saying a lot.
• Badass Normal: Harlon Nayl and Kara Swole. Nayl is one of the few (relatively speaking) un-augmented, non-pyschic characters in the series, but is more than capable of going toe to toe with anyone. Swole is some kind of awesome, for a woman who first joined the Inquisition as a dancer acrobat with absolutely no combat training. Even Ravenor takes notice of this.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Kara's "voluptuous" figure is mentioned frequently.
• Bittersweet Ending: At the end of the trilogy, Ravenor essentially loses his entire team. Those that survive either leave the team or are arrested by the Inquisition. Ravenor himself has to face a trial to answer for his actions while he went rogue. It would have been pure Downer Ending material if they hadn't actually put a stop to Molotch's plans and saved the Imperium from Slyte.
• Black Dude Dies First: Poor Mathuin.
• Blood From the Mouth: ...and eyes, and ears, and nose... Then again, this tends to happen when people are exposed to psychic power and/or the warp.
• Boobs of Steel: Kara Swole
• Butt Monkey: Sholto Unwerth, the Malaproper. This changes a little with book two, where he turns out to have some hidden depths.
• Captured Super Entity: Ravenor's backstory
• Collector of the Strange: Orfeo Culzean, who collects deodands - random, everyday items that have caused people's deaths.
• Constantly Curious
• Continuity Nod: Numerous, to Abnett's other novels, among others. Also, much nodded to, by Abnett as well as by Mitchell in the Ciaphas Cain books. Ravenor is a famous writer in that area of the Warhammer 40000 universe, apparently. Inquisitor Lillith, a fairly important minor character in Gaunt's Ghosts is encountered in the series.
• Cool Gate
• Cool Sword: A vampiric one, and a "shivered sword." Ravenor himself can explain the shivered sword best: "Forged so hard by the hammers of master smiths, the blade had been knocked slightly sideways in time, so it resonated and shivered against the mundane now." Apparently that makes it cut better, or something.
  • It's implied the blade is partially phased out of existence, enabling it bypass physical matter.
• Disability Superpower: Ravenor is crippled in every physical sense of the word. He can't walk, talk, or even breathe without his support chair. This doesn't stop him from being able to read the minds of an entire city at once or being able to telekinetically crush a man though. It's implied that Ravenor's separation from his body made him a more powerful psyker. (Compare Stephen Hawking and his mathematics?)
• Divided We Fall
• Dramatic Irony: Belknap's reactions to them when he did not know Ravenor was an Inquisitor.
• Dreaming of Things to Come
• Eviler Than Thou: Jader Trice vs. The Divine Fratery.
• Fantastic Drug: Several. Lho-sticks, a narcotic which are analogous to and as common as cigarettes. There are others mentioned, including yellodes, grinweed, baby blues, redlines, and obscura; the exact nature of most isn't exactly known beyond a street name, but obscura can obscure somebody from psychic perception. The biggest and most story-relevant are flects, shards of glass saturated with energy from the Warp, "used" by looking into.
• Gaia's Lament: Petropolis is a sterling example. Generations of dirty industry left enough air pollution that a slightly ravenous acid rain a common occurrence, rain exposure-induced cancer are the biggest killer just behind pollution-related emphysemas. And with some shades of Cyberpunk to go with the rest of the Wretched Hive.
• Gladiator Games: Carnivora Circus, particularly when they dispose of intruders.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Toros Revoke. If he weren't so inexplicably loyal, Trice would be in trouble.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Belknap
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Used occasionally by Nayl and Kara, particularly when Ravenor isn't around to read a mind or just Mind Rape the information out of somebody.
• Language of Magic: Enuncia. When Kys infiltrates a decoding process, even the partial decoded stuff is enough to make her ill and betray her. It also lets her learn a "word" that kills men; she uses it to escape. Their enemies decoding and use of it forms a major plot element.
• Malaproper: Sholto Unwerth.
• Male Gaze: In the descriptions of Patience Kys and Kara Swole. Subject to either Fridge Brilliance or Author's Saving Throw in the third book, which reveals that Ravenor (whose point of view much of the series is written from) is actually kind of creepy at times.
• Man in the Machine: Ravenor, though he's rather less humanoid than most examples of the trope; his life support chair makes him look something like a particularly angular Dalek.
• The Medic
• Melee a Trois
• Meaningful Rename
• Mind Rape: Everyday part of the job for Ravenor, and his People Puppets ability, 'waring, is described as exactly this. It's also in the repertoire of other psykers in the trilogy, especially Kinsky. The flects are basically a Mind Rape narcotic with extra dimensional nastiness added.
  • Said word-for-word when Ravenor wares Carthaen warrior-ess Angharad after they're attacked by Tyranids on the un-named planet that the tri-portal takes them to. Angharad is unhappy about this, to say the least.
• Mythology Gag: In Ravenor Rogue, Sholto Unwerth is explaining why he is so short and bearded to Patrik Belknap, the medicae. "...it is much derailed, in places high and low...that there ever was a race of beings of the name the squats, and many scholams and those of the high mindful claim it's just a myth, a thing that never was..." He goes on to explain that his great grandfather stated that his family has squat-blood in his lineage. The lampshade is on the fact that until the 1990s, the Warhammer 40,000 game included an army of "space dwarves" called Squats. In the interests of removing 40k from her fantasy sister, Games Workshop removed them from the game. Many fans want them back, calling it "The Squat Question," and Dan Abnett is likely one of those.
• Never Found the Body: The Divine Fratery never found Eisenhorn's after they "dealt" with him.
• Noodle Incident: The previous disastrous encounter with Molotch that cost the lives of some of the few survivors of the Eisenhorn trilogy has yet to be explained, but is frequently referred to. Abnett has recently hinted that one of the short stories in an upcoming Inquisition collection will be this very incident.
• One Bullet Left: At the climax of Ravenor, Mathuin saves Nayl's life by shooting his would-be executioner with one of Kara's nearly-empty guns.
• People Puppets : One of Ravenor's powers. Handy when you are crippled like that.
• Phrase Catcher: "The things you know" for Carl Thonius. Most often said by Patience, but Kara and Harlon will use it a few times.
• Porn Stash: Frauka's porno slates.
• Portal Door
• Pyrrhic Victory / Bittersweet Ending: The final conclusion of the trilogy. Molotch is dead and Slyte has been vanquished, but Mathuin and Thonius are dead, Nayl and Belknap have left the team, and Ravenor and everyone else are facing the wrath of the Inquisition for their actions.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Like every other Inquisition warband in the history of the ordos, ever.
• Reality Warper: Enuncia
• Red Herring: Ravenor, and initially the readers, are led to believe that Zael may be Slyte. However, it's actually Thonius.
  • A twist that would have had considerably more impact if it wasn't given away in the Where Are They Now? Epilogue of Eisenhorn.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: The Inquisition in a nutshell, but also the various heretical factions, from the Secretists to the Divine Fratery.
• Room Full of Crazy
• Shapeshifter Showdown: How psyker-duels seem to take place, albeit only visible by psykers.
• Show Within a Show: Well, technically book within a book. Ravenor's writings are much-referred-to by various characters in the 40K canon.
• Street Urchin: Zael, a flect-addicted kid who gets caught up in Ravenor's investigations. He turns out to be a mirror psyker. And later becomes a Grey Knight, of all things..
• Talking in Your Dreams
• Urban Segregation: Petropolis, capital of Eustis Majoris, is a particularly interesting example, in terms of layout.
• Waif Fu:
  • Patience and Thonius are both remarkably deadly in unarmed combat despite a very light build.
  • Averted with the strongly-built Combat Pragmatist Swole.