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The Saint of Steel

179 statements
34 feature instances
4 referencing feature instances

The Saint of Steel	type	TVTItem
The Saint of Steel	label	The Saint of Steel
The Saint of Steel	page	TheSaintOfSteel
The Saint of Steel	comment	Paladins of the Saint of Steel are blessed with a divine rage, giving them the strength to strike down the wicked while sparing the innocent. Until one day, when their god died. And they had no choice but to seek a more... mortal source of purpose.A series of "fluffy paladin romances" by T. Kingfisher: Paladin's Grace (2020) (Stephen and Grace) Paladin's Strength (2021) (Istvhan and Clara) Paladin's Hope (2021) (Galen and Piper) Paladin's Faith (2023) (Shane and Marguerite)Part of The 'Verse with the Clocktaur War duology and Swordheart, loosely referred to as the World of the White Rat.
The Saint of Steel	fetched	2023-11-24T00:16:10Z
The Saint of Steel	parsed	2023-11-24T00:16:10Z
The Saint of Steel	processingComment	Dropped link to TheVerse: Not a Feature - IGNORE
The Saint of Steel	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Saint of Steel / int_2a015a74	type	Beauty Equals Goodness
The Saint of Steel / int_2a015a74	comment	Beauty Equals Goodness: All paladins for the Dreaming God are unfairly good looking people. They claim it's so demons can't tempt them by offering to make them beautiful, but since most demons are gibbering terrors that prefer to possess animals, Galen suspects the Dreaming God is just a little vain.
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The Saint of Steel / int_332005d9	type	Third Wheel
The Saint of Steel / int_332005d9	comment	Third Wheel: Piper and Galen end up having a very important conversation about their relationship while Stephen is right next to them. He takes to loudly commenting on some nearby friezes to remind them he's there.
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The Saint of Steel / int_3c3f28a5	type	Blessed with Suck
The Saint of Steel / int_3c3f28a5	comment	Blessed with Suck: Piper can see a person's last moments by touching their corpse. Since he does autopsies for a living, this is a pretty useful talent to have—but since he does autopsies for a living, it's also incredibly traumatic. Plus, it isn't limited to humans, so he can't eat meat without getting nasty images like having a fishhook through his mouth.
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The Saint of Steel / int_41271766	type	Happily Ever After
The Saint of Steel / int_41271766	comment	Happily Ever After: As befits a romance novel.
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The Saint of Steel / int_43f2f606	type	Annoying Arrows
The Saint of Steel / int_43f2f606	comment	Annoying Arrows: Averted, for the most part. If a character gets shot and doesn't have some serious protection, it is an issue. Earstripe nearly dies of a crossbow bolt to the leg.
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The Saint of Steel / int_4e7c4536	type	Wham Line
The Saint of Steel / int_4e7c4536	comment	Wham Line: The last line of Paladin's Hope. Piper touches the altar of the Saint of Steel. With his bare hands. "And suddenly Piper knew what it felt like when a god died."
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The Saint of Steel / int_51c70be6	type	Obliviously Evil
The Saint of Steel / int_51c70be6	comment	Obliviously Evil: Clara and Istvhan are somewhat surprised that the people who work at the Gladiator Games don't seem to consider that the fighters might not like being there, and seem to think they're all friends. (They eventually learn that the economic conditions in that area are so bad that being forced to fight for the amusement of pirate lords is actually a step up because at least there's guaranteed food and lodging, plus if you actually manage to win, the rewards are really good.)
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The Saint of Steel / int_54725e95	type	Omnidisciplinary Lawyer
The Saint of Steel / int_54725e95	comment	Omnidisciplinary Lawyer: Averted in Paladin's Grace. Zale is very clear that they are a property lawyer, not a criminal lawyer, and they only end up representing Grace at her murder trial because it's an emergency. They do a pretty good job anyway, but their main tactics are to delay and try to get a mistrial declared.
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The Saint of Steel / int_57b80b45	type	Fantastic Racism
The Saint of Steel / int_57b80b45	comment	Fantastic Racism: Gnoles are treated as second-class citizens. This causes a lot of trouble in Paladin's Hope, when Earstripe catches on to the pattern of the bodies in the river before anybody else, but Captain Mallory won't listen to him because he's a gnole, leading to a lot of mortal peril that could have been avoided. Worse, after Earstrip leads the effort to catch the killer on his own, they trump up charges of vigilantism and throw him in jail, right after he's had major surgery.
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The Saint of Steel / int_5c300c3b	type	The Berserker
The Saint of Steel / int_5c300c3b	comment	The Berserker: When the Saint was living, his Paladins battle rage was tempered by his divine judgement. Without him, the only thing that prevents them from killing the innocent is the brute force of other paladins. It turns out that at least some of this is just from how upsetting the loss was, not inherent to entering the state without him. Stephen is able to enter a milder form where he can remember that Grace is friendly and even follow her instructions. But he still tries to fight random objects when he bumps into them. In Paladin's Hope, It's more of a problem for Galen, who if he's awakened from a nightmare may simply throw a punch at whoever's touching him, but may also actively get up, draw his sword, and try to hurt people who aren't a visible threat, his own Love Interest included.
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The Saint of Steel / int_6363937b	type	Cyanide Pill
The Saint of Steel / int_6363937b	comment	Cyanide Pill: The young would-be assassin early on in Paladin's Grace takes poison when Grace, Stephen, and Marguerite find him. However, in a subversion, he had already been poisoned by his superiors, presumably because they weren't sure he was brave enough to actually go through with it on his own.
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The Saint of Steel / int_693cabaf	type	Gladiator Games
The Saint of Steel / int_693cabaf	comment	Gladiator Games: This is why Clara's sisters were kidnapped. A powerful pirate lord wants werebears to show up his opponent's zombies in the ring.
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The Saint of Steel / int_6b05b601	type	Jerkass Has a Point
The Saint of Steel / int_6b05b601	comment	Jerkass Has a Point: In Paladin's Grace the Motherhood priests do their best to prosecute Grace as a poisoner and unrepentant murderer. The case against her was dubious, but painting her as a lone madwoman and organizing her swift execution was the surest way to avoid war with a powerful neighboring kingdom whose crown prince had (supposedly) just been poisoned to death. The Bishop of the White Rat begrudgingly admits they were trying to do something approximating the right thing given the circumstances (a single unjust execution is a small price compared to the horrors of war), but still thinks they were being assholes about it and should have been more concerned with finding the actual guilty party. To their credit, the priest who was leading the prosecution got demoted for overstepping his authority when things went off the rails during the trial.
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The Saint of Steel / int_6bda9a30	type	Meaningful Name
The Saint of Steel / int_6bda9a30	comment	Meaningful Name: The order of St. Ursa, whose members are were-bears.
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The Saint of Steel / int_704d7e91	type	No Ontological Inertia
The Saint of Steel / int_704d7e91	comment	No Ontological Inertia: It takes an extremely strong wonder-worker to create anything that will survive past their death. This is why the Smooth Men keep such a close eye on their creator—and ultimately what does them in when he chooses to make a Heroic Sacrifice.
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The Saint of Steel / int_7282d48a	type	Cranial Processing Unit
The Saint of Steel / int_7282d48a	comment	Cranial Processing Unit: Zig-zagged with the Smooth Men. On the one hand, they literally are their heads. On the other, they don't have to steal a body by replacing the head; they can stick themselves anywhere as long as the original owner is dead. Istvhan gets a nasty surprise when he realizes the "zombies" he's fighting are Smooth Men set into the bodies' chests—a place most swordfighters instinctively avoid aiming for, because they don't want to get their blades stuck in a rib.
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The Saint of Steel / int_77468805	type	God Is Dead
The Saint of Steel / int_77468805	comment	God Is Dead: The Saint of Steel died three years ago. This was traumatic for his paladins, and disturbing for everyone else—gods being mythically dead is normal (the Hanged Mother is literally hanged, for one), but gods being actually, no-fooling, straight-up gone is unheard of.
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The Saint of Steel / int_90965cc7	type	Hive Mind
The Saint of Steel / int_90965cc7	comment	Hive Mind: The Warrenmind in Paladin's Strength, a Hive Mind of rabbits. It's a benevolent example capable of peaceable communication and trade, which doesn't make it any less unsettling.
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The Saint of Steel / int_99390db0	type	Saintly Church
The Saint of Steel / int_99390db0	comment	Saintly Church: The White Rat are all-around good guys, providing everything from free legal representation to disaster relief.
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The Saint of Steel / int_9d12bbc1	type	Foreshadowing
The Saint of Steel / int_9d12bbc1	comment	Foreshadowing: The serial killer in Paladin's Grace leaves a lot of severed heads, but no bodies, and the characters spend some time speculating about exactly where they went. Because the killer is actually a special type of golem that's just a head piloting a headless human body, and it's getting bodies for all its friends. In Paladin's Strength, Istvhan and Clara hear several tales of scuttling, spider-like things with faces on their backs surrounding the case of the decapitating serial killer. This is an early sign the Smooth Men don't have to replace a body's head to control it. Piper idly wonders if he could figure out what happened to the Saint of Steel with his powers. He ends up accidentally doing just that.
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The Saint of Steel / int_aa30e350	type	Sole Survivor
The Saint of Steel / int_aa30e350	comment	Sole Survivors: Only seven of the Saint of Steel's paladins survived His death: Stephen, Istvhan, Galen, Shane, Marcus, Judith, and Wren. It's never mentioned outright how many paladins the Saint had in the first place, but twelve of them were spared to meet with the locals near the town of Hallowbind, so it's implied that there were quite a few.
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The Saint of Steel / int_ad982e04	type	Super-Persistent Predator
The Saint of Steel / int_ad982e04	comment	Super-Persistent Predator: Averted. If a werebear's animal side takes over, they run away from fights if at all possible — the bear side only wants to take the risk if it's about something like immediate survival or cubs, and especially does not want to tangle with things it feels are unnatural. Like the Smooth Men. Luckily for Istvhan, when this happens to Clara he doesn't actually need her help, so it's merely inconvenient. It's much more dangerous when this happens in the gladiatorial arena while they're surrounded by Smooth Men.
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The Saint of Steel / int_b281bf24	type	Meatgrinder Surgery
The Saint of Steel / int_b281bf24	comment	Meatgrinder Surgery: Played for Drama; Piper ends up having to do emergency surgery on Earstripe in a wine cellar, complicated by the fact that he's exhausted from spending several days trapped in a deadly obstacle course, and he has no idea how gnole anatomy works. Luckily, he's able to stabilize his patient long enough to reach a more experienced surgeon, but it's very much touch and go.
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The Saint of Steel / int_c4500946	type	Break His Heart to Save Him
The Saint of Steel / int_c4500946	comment	Break His Heart to Save Him: Galen dumps Piper because he fears his issues make him too dangerous to have as a lover. Basically everyone calls him an idiot for trying to do this, and it ends up causing a lot more problems than it solves.
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The Saint of Steel / int_d45c0b86	type	Refuge in Audacity
The Saint of Steel / int_d45c0b86	comment	Refuge in Audacity: Grace's friend Marguerite cheerfully admits to everyone that she's a spy for Anuket City. This works amazingly well at keeping her out of trouble. Turns out that she is a spy, but she doesn't work for Anuket City and her name's not Marguerite.
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The Saint of Steel / int_dc3d9a68	type	Orgy of Evidence
The Saint of Steel / int_dc3d9a68	comment	Orgy of Evidence: Marguerite is extremely skeptical of the poison and letter that point so obviously to Anuket City on the dead assassin, noting that no competent operative would have been so ham-handed. She says it's so over the top she wonders if it actually was Anuket City, and they deliberately set things up to make it look like they're being framed.
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The Saint of Steel / int_ddb220f5	type	GetAholdOfYourselfMan
The Saint of Steel / int_ddb220f5	comment	Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Beartongue gives Stephen a tonguelashing when he's beating himself up for losing his temper during Grace's trial. She points out that it is a completely normal human reaction to be angry when someone he loves is being harangued and slandered by her abusive ex, not a sign he's about to fly off the handle and murder everyone, and he needs to quit freaking out about every emotion he feels.
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The Saint of Steel / int_e1acc872	type	From Nobody to Nightmare
The Saint of Steel / int_e1acc872	comment	From Nobody to Nightmare: The Hanged Motherhood were an obscure little priesthood with not much history (compared to the Temple of the Rat, which is over eight hundred years old) or power until the most recent Archon was appointed, at which point he made showered them with riches and made them the unofficial state religion. The 'nightmare' part is because the Motherhood is very passionate about burning what it sees as corrupting influences, which occasionally take the form of people. The other temples do their best to keep it in check.
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The Saint of Steel / int_eb81c601	type	Big Damn Heroes
The Saint of Steel / int_eb81c601	comment	Big Damn Heroes: Just when it looks like it's about to come to a showdown between the Saint of Steel's paladins and the priests of the Hanged Mother in Paladin's Grace, the Prince shows up, perfectly alive, to inform them that Grace did not kill him (thanks to Marguerite, who broke into his quarters to give him a browbeating about putting Grace in danger). It was his supposed loyal servant.
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The Saint of Steel / int_ece6f910	type	Moment Killer
The Saint of Steel / int_ece6f910	comment	Moment Killer: A very charged moment between our lead couple in Paladin's Strength gets bluntly interrupted by their host bursting into the room yelling "We have to save the newts!"
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The Saint of Steel / int_f9876f7e	type	Faking the Dead
The Saint of Steel / int_f9876f7e	comment	Faking the Dead: The Prince is not actually dead. He caught the poisoning attempt and went into hiding to trip the murderer up.
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The Saint of Steel / int_fed93e1b	type	Dark and Troubled Past
The Saint of Steel / int_fed93e1b	comment	Dark and Troubled Past: The paladins in general, obviously, due to the death of the Saint, but in particular Judith, who seems familiar with torture implements and has never mentioned her past in the then ten years Galen had known her. Also Grace, who escaped an abusive marriage in Anuket City with nothing but the clothes on her back, her perfume notes, and a civette named Tab.
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The Saint of Steel / int_ff16efbf	type	Heroes Want Redheads
The Saint of Steel / int_ff16efbf	comment	Heroes Want Redheads: If they're Piper, they certainly do.
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The Saint of Steel / int_name	type	ItemName
The Saint of Steel / int_name	comment
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

The Saint of Steel	hasFeature	Artifact Title / int_a3178d77
The Saint of Steel	hasFeature	Centipede's Dilemma / int_a3178d77
The Saint of Steel	hasFeature	Miles to Go Before I Sleep / int_a3178d77
The Saint of Steel	hasFeature	Our Gnolls Are Different / int_a3178d77

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