Ravenor Quotes

“Locally, there were other phrases that had come into coin, phrases the administry did not encourage at all. ‘If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing in triplicate’, ‘Those who shred history are doomed to repeat it’ and ‘I file everything, therefore I know nothing’ were three of the most popular.”
― Dan Abnett, Ravenor: The Omnibus

“Well, I am five saken,’ he said. ‘Five?’ ‘It is one more than four saken,’ he replied. ‘It is a level of grief behind which there is no furthestmost.’ ‘Except six?’ ‘Pray no one ever experiences six saken,’ Unwerth said.”
― Dan Abnett, Ravenor: The Omnibus

“Well, I am five saken,’ he said. ‘Five?’ ‘It is one more than four saken,’ he replied.”
― Dan Abnett, Ravenor: The Omnibus

“I bid you all formaldehyde and gross misadventure”
― Dan Abnett, Ravenor: The Omnibus

“Tancred’s property laws were obtuse and ancient. Ownership of land, dwellings, estates and slaves were considered binding only when they were tattooed onto flesh. A man had to have the deeds of his legacy pricked into his skin before the legislature would regard him with any genuine authority. The Guild of Inkers was an ancient and trusted office, and plied their trade in the merchant quarters. When deeds were transferred, existing tattoos were blacked out. To be blacked was to be disowned or disinherited. Certain ruthless and prosperous landowners entered the legislature wearing the dry, rustling skins of those they had inherited from, like capes.”
― Dan Abnett, Ravenor: The Omnibus

“The masters of the Fratery then disseminate the details of their oracles to the lower orders of their cult. By my estimation, the Fratery numbers several thousand, many of them apparently upstanding Imperial citizens, spread through hundreds of worlds in the subsectors Antimar, Helican, Angelus and Ophidian. Once a ‘prospect’ as they call them has been identified, certain portions of the ‘cult membership’ are charged with doing everything they can to ensure that it comes to pass, preferably in the worst and most damaging way possible. If a plague is foreseen, then cult members will deliberately break quarantine orders to ensure that the outbreak spreads. If the prospect is a famine, they will plant incendiary bombs or bio-toxins in the Munitorum grain stores of the threatened world. A heretic emerges? They will protect him and publish his foul lies abroad. An invasion approaches? They are the fifth column that will destroy the defenders from within. They seek doom. They seek to undermine the fabric of our Imperium, the culture of man, and cause it to founder and fall. They seek galactic apocalypse, an age of darkness and fire, wherein their unholy masters, the Ruinous Powers, can rise up and take governance of all.”
― Dan Abnett, Ravenor: The Omnibus

“But the ritual can be good too. It focuses the mind on the act of belief. Devotion through deed is fair enough, but most of the time all you’re thinking about is the deed itself, not the devotion. Making time to go to the temple reminds you it’s just about the divine. About you and your relationship to the power above us all.”
― Dan Abnett, Ravenor: The Omnibus

“The cafe-bar was small, and lit by glow-globes so tar-stained they shone orange. Kys bought a thimble of sweet black caffeine and sat where I had instructed her. There were nine other customers, all middle-aged, sallow men in black clothing. They chatted in low, tired voices. Each one had ordered a large mug of foamed milk-caff. They seemed sinister. For a moment, I feared I’d directed Kys into a den frequented by some form of secret police. It was not so. Three doors down from the cafe-bar was the Elandra crematorium. The custom on Eustis Majoris was for sombre, evening funerals. The men were all paid mourners and hearse drivers, taking a respite during the long service before returning to perform their duties on the way to the wake. They sipped cheap amasec and grain liquor covertly from cuff-flasks, and smoked short, fat obscura sticks with hardpaper filters. When they departed, the cooling milk-caffs were left untouched on their benches. The bar owner cleared them without a shrug. The mourners were regulars, the untouched caffeines their way of paying for a seat out of the evening chill.”
― Dan Abnett, Ravenor: The Omnibus

“I am a rat, and I am gnawing. I am a rat.”
― Dan Abnett, Ravenor: The Omnibus