Small Saga - TV Tropes

An epic RPG of miniature proportions!

Small Saga is a turn-based RPG created by Darya Noghani, released on November 16, 2023. The game was primarily funded through a Kickstarter campaign, which can be viewed here. A demo is available on itch and Steam. The game's official website can be accessed here. A tie-in webcomic, Needle Knight, can be read here. Darya's The Basilisk, a short text-based game about a mouse dumped into an enclosure with a ball python or "basilisk", takes place in the same setting.

Beneath the streets of modern London lies the medieval land of Rodentia, the home of many sentient rats, squirrels, shrews, and other rodents. Their land is a mostly peaceful one, as there are laws in place to avoid conflict with the Gods and Titans (humans and housecats). However, this peace is not enough for Verm, a vagabond who once lost his tail to the Yellow God of Death, and now wields the Titan Reaper (a human's pocketknife) as he embarks on a quest for vengeance.

Darya Noghani previously worked on Aviary Attorney.

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The game includes examples of the following tropes:

• Above the Gods: Throughout the game there are statues of figures with special significance to rodents, which serve as Save Points that are prayed to. Most of them were made by rodents, but the shrews in Vinium worship the gods-of-gods, statues made by humans and who they believe are worshiped by them. These are actually action figures, which the shrews ascribe names and virtues to. When asked who the gods of gods pray to, a shrew opines that there are gods above them, and it just keeps going.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Justified. A human sewer makes for quite a spacious dungeon to rodents.
• All There in the Manual: A twenty-page Traveling Mouse's Guide To Rodentia is up for purchase, expanding on the worldbuilding.
• Ambiguous Time Period: Though the game takes place over a year, from Spring to Winter, no specific dates are ever given. The human world is rather generically contemporary, putting the year at "Sometime in the 21st century," and World War Two is vaguely alluded to as having happened almost a century ago. Aquila says the first book they ever read was "The Anthropocene." A book with that word in the title was released in 2021 in Real Life but that book is actually called The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet and isn't remotely like the book they describe, so it's probably not a good way to put a date on the game.
• Ambiguously Evil: Murida's library has two books by Loremaster Tobin that paint King James I as one of the heroes who ended the turmoil after Empress Nora's execution. However, a book in Vinium by Loremaster Horace paints Nora as a well-meaning ruler and James as an Opportunistic Bastard who scapegoated her for the nation's economic problems. It's never confirmed which account is true, but King James XLV claims the palace is built on blood and bone, implying that Horace may be correct.
• AM/FM Characterization: After getting his groove back, Bruce puts on a show with Anton, who asks the rest of the party if they have any requests. Siobhan wants to hear a classical piece by an esteemed composer, Gwen wants to hear "Raise Your Bloody Claws to the Dying Sky" by Pestilent Rage, and Verm wants to hear "Needle Knight", a song about the heroic exploits of Sir Leo, despite Leo having beaten him up and caused him a Heroic BSoD by this point. Disgusted, Anton says they all have terrible taste and he and Bruce agree to just play "Rat-Tailed Rover" again.
• And the Adventure Continues:
  • The game ends with Verm abandoning his sword and choosing to leave the kingdom, 'taking a walk' as he says. He doesn't specify if he's adventuring, or trying to find a new purpose without vengeance, or just returning to the old home that he mentions, or whether he intends to return. His friends offer to come with him, but he says he'd rather go alone, though when Siobhan seems upset he adds that they and the other two are the best friends he could have hoped for.
  • Depending on the outcome of a late-game duel, Sir Leo and his daughter, who few others knew existed, may have been able to flee the revolution and journeyed south to Aremorio to find a new home.
• And Then What?: Leo asks this of Verm before their second fight. Maybe Verm could overturn nature and kill the God, as he claims he can, but then what would happen? Rodent society would be thrown into chaos and, especially if Verm wasn't satisfied and went after other Gods, the Gods would retaliate to catastrophic effect. Verm, who doesn't do much long term planning, doesn't know and doesn't care.
• And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: Verm can end up with a house in Vinium. You can then adjust most of the interior furnishings to reflect various elements of the houses he's seen throughout his adventure, from rugs to beds (including the "hammock" made from a blue face mask that's seen in many houses). The reward for completing the paint sidequest is a unique painting that can be placed there.
• Animal Jingoism: A number of the bosses faced are natural predators of rodents, such as a cat, a stoat, four young owls, and a cobra. There's also a major subplot about grey squirrels with an Eagleland bent having deposed and replaced native red squirrels, representing how gray squirrels from the Americas have become invasive in Europe and started outcompeting the Eurasian red squirrel.
• Animals Not to Scale: House mice are depicted as larger than moles, while actually small moles are somewhat bigger than large mice. Rats are the largest common rodents. Squirrels are portrayed as lightly built and smaller than rats. Red squirrels are small but gray squirrels (the invasive species represented by Clan Grey) are very robust and commonly get larger than the biggest rats - larger than stoats, actually. The size differences between mice and the other species are also somewhat de-emphasized. Pigeons are portrayed as larger than any of the main rodents.
• Animal Talk: All the mammals, reptiles, and birds can speak to each other, a snake and most invertebrates (but not an octopus, who Rhymes on a Dime) either can't or are uninterested in speaking. However the Gods' language is inscrutable to all but the most dedicated (and slightly insane) scholars.
  • The travel guide mentions that all sentient animals are fluent in the language of Shared Intent, and also mentions some different languages and dialects, some nearly extinct.
• Animal Testing: This goes on at the Hall of the White Gods, the lab that Gwen escaped from. She seems to have been used for prosthetics research.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If a quest requires an item currently equipped by a party member, the game will automatically unequip that item, even if that party member temporarily leaves.
• Apocalyptic Log: A book in the abandoned shrew city of Solhill ends before things get really bad but it's clear that things are going wrong. The earliest entry takes place shortly after the events of Needle Knight; soon-to-be Sir Leo has slain the Vulpes and left, and the tone is celebratory. But the corpse of the Titan sits in the depths of the burrow and rots, starting to attract... other things. Shrews start to take ill, one of whom pronounces that "Curses beget curses".
• Appropriate Animal Attire: Rodents don't seem to have a standard for this. Verm and Gwen wear only cloaks (and bandages in Verm's case, tattoos in Gwen's), while Siobhan and Bruce are barefoot but otherwise clothed. Leo has a tunic, trousers, and footwear that exposes his toes, but other rodents have closed-toe shoes. Some wear full plate armor. There's a squirrel with a hijab. This is not remarked upon. The only animals habitually seen entirely naked are larger Titans such as cats, which aren't anthropomorphic other than being able to talk.
• Arboreal Abode: The two squirrel cities shown, Sky Garden and the ruins of the Ash Tower, are within tall hollow stumps rather than up in canopies. The lower levels of Sky Garden have rooms branching off of the main one but these aren't evident higher up, where the trunk is thinner. Interestingly, Duke Josh isn't actually at or near the top, but on a middle level.
• Armored, but Frail: The Pre-Final Boss Apocalypse Engine (a fumigation machine) has a very measly 20 HP... but has such high defense that most attacks deal 1-2 damage to it after its defense is lowered. To make matters worse, its Noxious Gas makes your team tipsy, greatly lowering their accuracy.
• Audible Sharpness: The Titan Cleaver's blade flipping out from the hilt always makes a solid sharp noise, more resonant and dangerous than you'd expect from a pocket knife.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: If Verm takes the time to inform Maisie that she's late to roll call, Rosaline is very grateful, to the point of later pretending she never saw him in the Gloaming Woods and reporting her mission to apprehend him as a failure. She explains that since the two of them can barely get the time of day from the residents of Gutter End, Verm's act of kindness stands out to her.
• BFS: The Titan Cleaver is nothing more than a pocket-knife but that makes it an enormous god weapon to rodents. In the hands of Sava, the hulking water vole bandit who wields it in the prologue, it's a big, clumsy weapon but somewhat proportionate as a large sword. Sava boasts that he's indeed killed Titans with it. Verm and Lance manage to kill Sava themselves and Verm is fascinated by the weapon, which is taller than him even when the blade is folded into the hilt. The player can choose if he calls it amazing or ridiculous. After the prologue, Verm has spent a season learning to wield it and it's so massive multiple characters wonder how he can even swing it at all. Siobhan can't even lift it. Just as Verm is an expy of Guts, the Titan Cleaver is an expy of the Dragonslayer - 'titan' to 'dragon', both being big monsters that aren't his real target, 'cleaver' to 'slayer'.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: There are a lot of arthropods serving as minor antagonists, from sewer roaches and treasure chest spiders to scorpions. They're fairly large compared to the rodents making up the cast, but would only qualify as bigger-than-normal to humans.
• Big Friendly Dog: Dogs don't appear directly, but a painting in the palace shows a squirrel riding on the head of a happy yellow Labrador, with a caption referring to the squirrel as a Titan-tamer.
• Black Bead Eyes: They're fitting for a cast full of rodents. Gwen, being albino, instead has red bead eyes.
• Book Ends: The first encounter with the Yellow God takes place in an area introduced with the text "Heaven: Tread Softly." The Final Boss takes place in an area introduced with "Hell: Tread Softly."
• Boss Banter: Similarly to a particularly spoilery boss from The Binding of Isaac, Plaguemaster Aquila's boss theme has a vocal accompaniment, consisting of a text-to-speech program commentating on humanity's effects on the environment and the apathy humans have towards them.

  "Is anyone even listening?"

• Brick Joke: The undetonated "Excalibur" housed atop Big Ben is never defused by the party after defeating Plaguemaster Aquila - Siobhan specifically mentions that the bomb itself is still active, but the ballista intended to launch it is no longer operational, thereby rendering it incapable of harming either Parliament or the rodent city below it. Once the party have defeated the Yellow God of Death, their victory is cut short by the sound of a massive explosion. The game then cuts to a shot of the Houses of Parliament, with the top of the famous clock tower having been blown to bits.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: The third-from-final boss thinks it's possible that Verm can kill the Yellow God, but fears what would happen next, especially if Verm got a taste for it. Leo knows enough about humans to be aware that they would retaliate and that this would be catastrophic for Rodentia.
• Bucket Helmet: Members of the Thimble Guard wear thimble helmets, though Sir Alex instead has a feathered cap and Leo and the Scissor Sisters are bareheaded.
• Cargo Cult: In Vinium, a town set up in an abandoned toy store, rodents pray at colorful plastic statues they refer to as the gods-of-gods, the beings Gods pray to. These are actually action figures and anime figurines.
• Carnivore Confusion: A book in Cranbaile insists that carnivores are barred from Rodentia. Real rats eagerly hunt and eat mice but that doesn't come up here. However, Blademaster Lamia is a stoat and makes frequent allusions to eating rodents. Other than Duke Josh, who feeds her prisoners and enemies, everyone including his other guards is distinctly uncomfortable about this. When the party fights her, she eats a nearby guard, which is distinctly played for horror. Halfsight the cat is given dead gladiators to eat in exchange for deterring other Titans from Vinium. While Bruce is uncomfortably reminded of Lamia, the local rodents are not concerned and even consider the old cat harmless.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • When Verm and Lance first fight past the bandits blocking the way to Heaven, the bandit leader uses his final breaths to tell them that it's been taken over by a Yellow God of Death. Lance tells Verm to disregard the warning as the final ramblings of a villain that wants them to suffer, but Sava soon turns out to have been completely honest.
  • If Verm attempts to tell the Wizard Lizard about the party's encounter with a rhyming Kraken, the lizard will assume that he's just messing with them. Gwen also responds like this when he tells her about it.
• Cast Full of Gay: Among the playable characters, we have Siobhan (non-binary), Bruce (gay), Gwen (bi or pansexual), and even Verm himself is strongly implied to be asexual in a conversation with Gwen regarding sexuality.
• Chase Fight: In Vinium, gladiatorial fights on Chariot Chuesday take place atop RC cars the residents refer to as chariots.
• Common Tongue: The Traveler's Guide mentions that the common tongue in Rodentia is the language of Shared Intention, spoken by all sentient animals. Different cultures within Rodentia often speak non-common languages as well that may be unintelligible to other cultures. In the game these are stylized as Gratuitous Foreign Languages.
• Chest Monster: Some treasure chests have a creature called an Avarice Spider living in it, which will attack the party when they try to loot the chest.
• Cunning Like a Fox: It doesn't appear in the game itself, but Sir Leo got his reputation by killing Ironfang, a fox that had been raiding a shrew settlement. The fox, as revealed in Needle Knight, had been allowing the shrews to live in one of its "many dens" and claiming tribute in the form of food as rent; when they ran out of provisions, it switched to eating the shrews.
• David Versus Goliath: While the size difference between Verm the mouse and the human God he wants to kill is the most blatant size disparity, many other bosses also tower before the party, such as Tiger the housecat and (to a lesser extent) Blademaster Lamia the stoat.
  • We don't get to see Leo's battle with a fox, but the comic does include an image◊ of Ironfang leaning his snout down close to Leo. According to the song that can be heard in the Twisted Tails, Leo killed that fox by stabbing him through the eye.
• Deal with the Devil: Needle Knight includes a story about The Legend of Oisín the Oathbreaker, a mole lord who made a deal with a Titan, a stoat named Hera, who would single-handedly (pawed-ly?) kill the enemies facing the mole city in exchange for half of his treasury. The legend thinks this would have ended fine, except that Oisín reneged on the deal and hid away most of his valuables before she came to claim them. Hera, displeased, then killed and ate half the town's nobles. It's generally believed to be a very bad idea to break a deal made with a Titan.
• Devious Daggers: When Bruce fights Pocket Jabari, the jerboa's main weapons are "knives" (thumbtacks). A couple of his moves involve revealing that he has a second knife, and a second attack.
• Door to Before: To reach the Hall of the White Gods you have to pass by a construction worker eating a strawberry in order to enter a sewer dungeon. Work your way through the dungeon and to the entrance of the Hall and the construction worker, coming off his lunch break, installs a ladder between the entrance and exit. At that point you have a choice in the dialogue, either marveling at the convenience of the ladder or being peeved that it hadn't been there from the start. (Finishing the quest in the Hall will have the characters leave the area offscreen, but there's also a later side quest involving the Hall and in that case you have to manually get back out, so the ladder's a merciful gesture.)
• Eagleland: Clan Grey, the grey squirrels that colonized the forests occupied by red squirrels and drove them out, is a clear analogue to America the Boorish, having a pledge just a couple of words removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. Their leader, Duke Josh, vapes in front of people and is very petty and smallminded. Clan Grey claim that they crossed the Atlantic on their own ships and followed the Wayward Star to reach land, but it's generally assumed that rodent-made ships can't navigate the ocean and they were brought by humans. The travel guide also mentions that while tipping is appreciated-but-not-required in the rest of Rodentia, Clan Grey has brought the custom of mandatory tipping with them from the Westlands and that not following the practice in squirrel cities "may result in you finding spit in your beetburger and fleas amongst your bedding."
• Embarrassing Statue: Residents of Rodentia build statues of their ancestors and heroes, which they pray and give thanks to. Most characters depicted in them are dead but they often valorize living rodents who've done great deeds, like Sir Leo, who killed a fox. At the end of the game there's one of Verm, making him look far-sighted and noble - completely unlike him, actually, and he's not happy about it. A party member says that he just has to give the people a few days to get the hero worship out of their system and then he can break it, pee on it, whatever.
• The Enemy Weapons Are Better: Downplayed with the Titan Reaper, which originally belonged to Sava, the first boss of the game. It's stronger than the Tin Sword that Verm starts with, but it's also less wieldy because of its size and weight, which is why the party initially forgoes taking it. After the Tin Sword breaks and the Yellow God kills Lance, Verm claims the Titan Slayer and eventually becomes strong enough to wield it with the same ease as his previous sword.
  • However it's played straight in that the Titan Reaper and the other weapons carried by the party post-prologue were Forged by the Gods, who have better materials and access to more advanced technology than rodents do.
• Evil Overlord: King James, the mouse monarch enforcing the current status quo, understands that the Yellow God is a threat and wants to use the Excalibur bomb to kill Him, but doesn't bother to evacuate Murida. In fact, when the commoners start rebelling against him he decides that he can solve two problems at once.
• Excrement Statement: In the epilogue, a statue has been erected of Verm. He hates it and how it portrays him as noble and heroic, when even he knows that he's a Nominal Hero, a Jerk with a Heart of Gold at best. Gwen says that he's got to give the public a few days and then he can do anything he wants to and with the statue, up to and including urinating on it.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Siobhan's Mammy, the leader of Cranbaile, is adherent to the "Old Ways" and will not raise a paw against the gods even when a god's pet cat Tiger is responsible for slaughtering her own people. When Siobhan decides to take up arms themself and wins with Verm's help, first they're scolded for disobeying, and then a letter is sent to the king stating that Verm is a corrupting influence that needs to be taken care of. She's had Character Development by the end of the game and according to her Blademaster is becoming more accepting, sending the Hedge Knight to support them and not asking him to bring them home.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Guns exist in the setting since the modern human world exists, but as it's centered on a medieval-ish Mouse World with a mostly-rodent cast who consider human tools to be "God weapons", the rodents don't possess any, aside from one minor enemy who fights with what appears to be a human's modified spark-shooting toy gun. A project that the game's creator ended up discarding but posted an excerpt from on Discord was a history book that included a note about stolen human firearms the rodents call "thunder-cannons", used at times by rat militias overseas in the Westlands(the Americas, where presumably they're easier to find and purloin), but extremely rare in Rodentia. There's also an anecdote about Rodentia's army attempting to use them in war against other rodents.

  "When the thunder-cannon fired, every rodent on the battlefield was deafened by the noise and blinded by the flash. It took ten seconds to regain my sight, and in truth, I never fully regained my hearing. The scene before me was utter carnage. The cannonball had pierced the shrew ranks so cleanly, so utterly. I felt something horrid in my stomach. I knew we had done something terrible, something unnatural and irredeemable. And that's when Elliana ordered for the second cannon to be fired."

• The Farmer and the Viper: A book of fables recounts the story of a viper who wants to cross a river and asks a raven to carry her. The raven is aware of this trope but despite his instincts picks her up and flies with her... and they land safely on the other side, where the viper thanks the raven and goes about her way peacefully.

  "Hold up. Why didn't you bite me? You had every opportunity. Isn't biting in your nature?"

  "In all thingsss of nature, there is something of the marveloussss."

• Fighting Your God: Rodents regard humans as Gods and follow the Old Way, whose tenets include avoiding the Gods and their business for everyone's sake. Verm and his party's defiance of the Old Way and their willingness to go against "nature" has far-reaching repercussions in Rodentia.
• Fluffy Tamer: One mouse from the past honored with a painting in the castle of Rodentia tamed a labrador, and rode him as a steed.
• Forged by the Gods: God Weapons of course. Since humans have industrial technology and higher temperatures to call on their items are often sturdier than the weapons rodents can make themselves.
• Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: Most of the cast are completely bipedal. Violet the bat also walks around on two legs and has generally quite human anatomy. Titans, being larger and less anthropomorphic, are more likely to be found on all fours, other than owls and stoats. The former of course are bipedal anyway, and the latter aren't that much bigger than rodents.
• Friendly Neighborhood Spider: A mouse-sized spider in Muria is friendly. It can't speak, but when given insect parts it excitedly flings seeds at Verm, so it has some idea of what trade is.
• Fun with Flushing: Gwen managed to escape the Hall of the White Gods by going through the toilet and into the sewers. She retraces her steps with Siobhan in the latter half of the game, this time breaking in to the lab via the toilet.
• Funny Animal: Rodents and other small animals tend this way, as they all have very human drives and motivations including ideology and rent, but still have various Furry Reminders. A mole town is dug into the ground, a squirrel city is formed inside the trunk of a hollow tree, rats have more institutional power than mice representing their larger size and more complex social structure. Birds and animals larger than stoats are non-anthropomorphic but still intelligent and able to speak.
• Furry Reminder: While exploring Solhill, Verm and company can smell that the town isn't actually entirely devoid of rodent life. The player can't really tell that losing his tail has affected Verm, but Gwen relates to him as a fellow disabled rodent and says he must have had to work to balance without it.
• Game Within a Game: There's a classic Gameboy in Siobhan's hoard, but she says it must be missing a component as it doesn't work. You can find that component - a game cartridge - by trash-fishing in Murida, and bring it back to play a little platformer.
• Genuine Human Hide: The description for an equippable piece of fox fur - the only article of clothing in the game that used to be part of something that talked - is just "Unclean."
• Giant's Knife; Human's Greatsword: Very common in the Mouse World of Rodentia, with quite a few characters wielding human-made objects as what they call "God Weapons." Verm's "Titan Cleaver" is just an ordinary pocket-knife, Gwen's glaive is a scalpel, Blademaster Leo uses a Sewing Needle Sword, Diego uses a gavel as a massive warhammer, the scissor-sisters Rosalie and Maisie each use one-half of a broken pair of scissors as longswords, and so on. Lamia the stoat has a barbeque fork referred to as a lance, which the gray squirrel in charge of maintaining can't even lift.
• Gladiator Games: The shrew settlement of Vinium has an arena where gladiators are made to fight Scary Scorpions and duel on moving "chariots" (RC cars). A citizen speculates that since the entire town is built of plastic LEGO bricks the people crave the relative reality of a blood sport.
• Gratuitous Latin: The shrews of the Golden Laurel Empire which preceded Rodentia used a language called Soricidin which is rendered as Latin. Quintus likes to pepper his speech with untranslated quotes in it. A major bridge is marked "Dei Dirigite Nos", or Gods Guide Us. It's part of the song that plays while fighting the final boss, too.
• Hair-Raising Hare: Sir George of the Hall of the White Gods worships those gods and thinks the animals they experiment on should accept any treatment, up to and including being killed, with a glad and gracious heart. He's not pleased with his ex, Gwen, for her disagreement and for doing things like running away and dyeing her hair.
• Heaven Above: In the prologue, Verm and Lance make their way through the sewers and ascend into "Heaven" - a grocery store.
• Heel–Face Turn: Largely facilitated by Defeat Equals Friendship.
  • Pocket starts as an unscrupulous thief that's willing to help Bruce and Anton commit a heist because it seems funny, but can't help gloating and alerts the guards while they're performing, at which point he skedaddles and starts gleefully waving his trophy around when they're captured and he's safe and in the clear. After a battle with Bruce, Pocket has a change of heart and infiltrates Clan Grey by himself in order to break everyone out before Lamia can eat them.
  • Bree and Stilton, a Fat and Skinny pair of sewer rats, are the first battle in the game as they attempt to rob Verm and his brother. They go straight post-prologue, wanting to inform the king of Rodentia's unaddressed problems and discussing issues with other citizens. Near the end of the game, they're the ones organizing a revolution and allowing Verm's party to use it as a distraction to infiltrate the royal palace.
  • If certain sidequests are done before the end of the game, Rosalie, George the rabbit, and Nemian the Hedge Knight, all of whom were previously battles, assist Verm's party in revolting against the King.
• Hopeless Boss Fight:
  • Lance versus the Yellow God. None of his attacks deal a single point of damage to it, and once Lance gets its attention, the Yellow God uses its hand to crush Lance several times for damage way over his maximum health, killing him.
  • The first Duel Boss against Blademaster Leo has him parry everything Verm throws at him. Even after Verm manages to break Leo's weapon, he still follows up with an attack with his broken weapon that deals as much damage as the grip of the Yellow God.
• Humans Are Cthulhu: The people of Rodentia call humanity gods, and many are terrified of even the chance of gaining their attention. The opening lets us briefly control a mouse who is attempting to attack one of them as a distraction, and it's an utter Curb-Stomp Battle where the human is left completely unharmed and Lance is crushed to death almost immediately by an attack that does hundreds of times more damage than his maximum health. A book by a Loremaster who dedicated her life to understanding the behavior of Gods says the question she's asked most often is whether Gods are mortal and says this is a controversial topic, but there are verified accounts of them dying.
• Humanlike Hand Anatomy: It'd be difficult to build such an advanced Mouse World without them! The most striking example is probably Violet the bat, who's fully humanoid and has basically finned upper arms, rather than a membrane stretched between elongated fingers. Larger animals known as Titans sometimes also have hands - the stoat Blademaster Lamia, who isn't that much bigger, is quite capable of using weapons and wears armor - but are usually less anthropomorphic.
• Instant Messenger Pigeon: In both Needle Knight and the game proper, the characters hear about the prospect of being carried in a basket by a messenger raven only to meet Ditzi the pigeon, who's good-natured if hapless.
  • Siobhan's mother contacts the king of Rodentia by sending him a messenger butterfly.
• Interface Spoiler: Several of Verm's Tech Tree skills have their names redacted during the prologue, which might be a clue he will change his fighting style before too long. In a wider scale, averted in that his brother Lance has an entire tree of skills, some with unique names, that you will never get to use.
• Interspecies Romance: Bruce the red squirrel and Anton the hamster. Gwen the lab rat is exes with Sir George the lab rabbit and gets arrested for hitting on Lamia the stoat.
• In-Universe Soundtrack: A tavern rat has a guitar and takes requests, and can play and sing the Traveller's Blessing, Rat-Tailed Rover, and Needle Knight, the last of which recounts the heroic exploits of Sir Leo and is Verm's favorite song. Bruce and his boyfriend play a cover of Rat-Tailed Rover to distract Duke Josh as an accomplice steals something from his treasury. In that area, the Ash Tower, there's a bat playing an electric guitar version of the area's music. She complains that the Duke has ordered her to only play Clan Grey's theme.
• Justified Save Point: Rodents build statues of their ancestors and heroes, which they pray and give thanks to. Each one is different and many were designed by Kickstarter backers; others are of relevant characters, like Sir Leo or King James, or are references such as to the poem Ozymandius. Shrews in one location prefer to pray to "the Gods-of-Gods" or humanoid figurines made by humans, ascribing them names and virtues and not aware that they are literal toys. At one point, after winning one battle and about to head on to a major setpiece, the protagonist Verm tells the party to wait so he can attend to a statue, at which point control returns to the player and they get the chance to save before progressing.
• Knee-High Perspective: Being rodents, when in human spaces the characters' perspective is quite close to the ground. In the prologue Lance has to climb a number of shelves to get on a God's eye level.
• Leonine Contract: In Needle Knight, Leo encountered the Foul Fox Ironfang, who loomed over him like a kaiju. Leo had been sent to investigate why the residents of Solhill were disappearing, and Ironfang faux-affably said he'd been eating them as per his contract with their leader, as a form of rent. Ironfang then offered a "contract" with Leo, saying that if he left Ironfang to his legitimate business he would be spared. Leo agreed just to get out of there, but in town he had second thoughts and sought to try and fight Ironfang off. His companions were dismayed, as breaking a contract with a large predator is not expected to go well. The comic went on pause at that point but according to the game, Leo managed to kill Ironfang, only to leave and for the fox's body to rot, bringing disease and worse predators to the townsfolk.
• Living Memory: Ghosts appear to be these, and it seems like only the player (not Verm or any other living characters) can see them. In the old Ash Tower, burned a century ago, the squirrels who used to live there can be seen standing about. If you take the optional quest to go to Solhill, which went dark only a year or so ago, ghosts of the shrews who used to live there line the approach to the boss. They speak, but not like people do, recounting the story of Sir Leo and saying that curses beget curses.
• Lizard Folk: There are only a few lizards to be seen in Rodentia, and their being lizards isn't commented on.
• Long Song, Short Scene: Most of the songs aren't all that long, but in general the fights are easy enough that a player who's hit on a hard-hitting strategy will regularly clear the fight well before the song is done.
• Master Swordsman: King James, and smaller-scale leaders of cities or settlements, always have advisors including their Blademaster, who's got to be both a good fighter and capable of organizing and evaluating defense.
• Medieval Universal Literacy: Rodentia is largely medieval-ish, but also exists directly underneath a modern London. There is writing everywhere, from the plinths of statues, to architecture, to libraries and bookstores.
• Memorial Statue: Most of the Justified Save Points are of ancestors and heroes, though sometimes one is made of a then-living person.
• Mixed Animal Species Team: Verm's party consists of himself (a mouse), Siobhan (a mole), Bruce (a red squirrel), and Gwen (a white rat).
• Monochromatic Eyes: Most characters have Black Bead Eyes. Large Titans have these instead, except for friendly Halfsight, whose one good eye has a slit pupil.
• Mouse World: The land of Rodentia is this, being an entire miniature kingdom built under a human city, with its own mouse-sized cafes, barracks, and other fully-furnished locales.
• Mr. Exposition: Mx exposition, rather - in Needle Knight Val explains who Blademaster Alex is to then-Naïve Newcomer Leo. He thanks them for the "clunky exposition".
• Nice Mice: There are plenty of mice and they have variable temperaments. Since they're smaller than rats are and mainly don't have a lot of power, they're generally depicted as ordinary civilians.
• No Cutscene Inventory Inertia: Small Saga being a sprite-based game, the character models in and out of battle don't reflect any particular weapons and equippable clothing other than the changes in outfit that came during the Time Skip - except for Verm's weapon. Usually it's the Titan Cleaver, but when it's not available he has to resort to a Lego brick which remains in his inventory afterwards - equip it, and his battle sprite has him holding and swinging the brick. One opponent even comments on it in disbelief.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: Rodentia is a land in which for the most part non binary identities and same-sex attraction are common and unremarkable, though territory controlled by Clan Grey is considerably more conservative.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Two out of three fights in the prologue end with the death of one of the combatants. The rest of the game has markedly less death. Despite a party that, when all members are present, includes a Sinister Switchblade, a lighter modified to produce explosions, and a scalpel used like a glaive, defeated enemies rarely seem hurt in the least. The end of each fight also sees the party back at full health and energy, with even all consumable items reset. Sir Leo, on the other hand, is shown or implied to get in fewer fights but these much more often cause death or distinct wounds
• No One Gets Left Behind: After the events of the opening, Verm thinks of Lance whenever he starts to walk away from a friend or ally in need, causing him to say "I'm not running away!" and go to their aid no matter the risk.
• Oddly Small Organization: Those Two Guys Bree and Stilton spend at least half the game organizing a protest on the palace. They send out lots of fliers, and you'd think they would get a strong response given how deeply unpopular King George and his policies are. In the endgame only Verm and the other three in his party, and a maximum of four other characters if you did all the sidequests, actually bother to show up, something that the rats find disappointing. Talking to the various citizens during the revolution shows that even though most of them sympathize with the cause, they don't want to risk getting arrested or killed. Even so, Verm and his party are such formidable fighters that it sends the king into a panic.
• Orphaned Series: While the game itself was complete when it launched, the tie-in Needle Knight webcomic made during development only lasted 21 pages and covers just the first half of Sir Leo's "song".
• Oppressive States of America: America itself doesn't appear but Clan Grey and their Wayward Star ideology fill in for it, with uniformed soldiers imprisoning all manner of citizens and visitors "for safety".
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: Mention is made of "Muswolves," but they're implied to just be a myth. "Ghosts and muswolves" is a Rodentian idiom that seems to basically mean "that sounds like superstitious nonsense." However, ghosts are seen at a few points in the story, and Vinium's new champion gladiator is said to be a muswolf... but it's just kayfabe.
• Ominous Owl: They're referred to as Nightwings and of course are extremely threatening to the residents of a Mouse World.
• Out of Focus: Looking at the characters of Needle Knight, all the named ones appear in some capacity or another in Small Saga. Of the four Thimble Guards who investigated Solhill, Leo has become Blademaster and stands at the King's side, Alex has lost that position but still commands squads, Rosaline is still working under him and is now joined by her little sister, and Val... Val has no side or main quests. They hang out in the palace, drinking from their peanut flask, and just says they won't stop Verm if he takes something from a nearby treasure chest.
• Out of the Closet, Into the Fire: Bruce first encounters Gwen in a Clan Grey dungeon where the latter's crime was simply being queer in a territory that doesn't tolerate it. Bruce himself is arrested primarily for thievery and being a red squirrel, but as the duke is having him and his boyfriend Anton dragged away he does bring up their relationship with disgust.
• Pacifism Breaking Point: Bruce is averse to combat, preferring to support his allies with music. However, upon reencountering Pocket, the thief that betrayed him and led to Anton being imprisoned by Clan Grey, he decides this is a matter he needs to deal with himself and learns his only offensive skill, "Thwack".
• Pets Versus Strays: Since the residents of Rodentia consider humans to be Gods, they're fairly positive about pets, who they regard as having been chosen and freely given housing, food, etc. Gwen contrasts that to living in the Hall of the White Gods, which offers those same benefits but makes them "transactional" as the White Gods have many cruel demands of their experimental subjects. A brief conversation with Halfsight the cat suggests cats have a more varied opinion, with some regarding collars as marks of slavery and others seeing them as akin to fine jewelry.
• Point of No Return: Once Verm talks with Bree and Stilton in a tavern about organizing a revolution as a distraction so Verm's party can sneak into the palace to deal with King James, Plaguemaster Aquila, and the Yellow God of Death, they warn his party that there's no going back once it starts, with Verm's allies suggesting some final sidequests to undertake first. Talking to the tavern mice again initiates the final sequence of the game.
• Precision F-Strike: The language in the game is mainly on the tame side, but late in the game King James says "Shit!". After the climax, Verm can ask a guard about the fates of various characters who aren't in the palace as of the epilogue, including Plaguemaster Aquilla, and the guard will say "Didn't they fucking explode?"
• Race Against the Clock: The boss fight against Plaguemaster Aquila has a time limit of four minutes (complete with a timer visible in the corner of the screen) before Excalibur fires, devastating Murida. As they say, they don't need to beat you to win, they just need to delay you. The music for this boss fight prominently features the sound of an egg timer ticking, with a voiceover counting down the last ten seconds.
• Realpolitik: Quintus runs a slave trade and forces people to either work for him in his mushroom farm or participate in gladiator games. He gets away with this until he captures Bruce, the ambassador of Sky Garden. Baron Magnus has no choice but to arrest Quintus because there would be repercussions from Sky Garden otherwise. An NPC notes that Magnus never acted against Quintus until now, which implies Magnus was fine with slavery until it put his own position at risk.
• Red Herring: When Verm goes missing after being soundly defeated by Sir Leo and falling into the sewer there is a Time Skip, and the game resumes with his friends trying to find him. They hear rumors of a particularly ferocious fighting mouse in the Gladiator Games in Vinium, so Bruce follows up on this lead. Verm is in Vinium thanks to an unscrupulous shrew rescuing him to exploit, but he's been keeping his head down and farming the whole time. The ferocious fighting mouse just has the gimmick of being a 'muswolf' to get the crowds going, and she's quite chill out of the arena.
• Reforged Blade: After the Time Skip Verm's friends find the Titan Cleaver in one piece but battered and rusted to the point of uselessness, with the blade unable to be folded back into the hilt. (The hilt is almost as tall as Verm is, so even if it can be sharpened it needs to fold to be portable) They have to find a god's forge that's capable of generating more intense and consistent heat than is available to rodents in order to repair it, and repaint the hilt while they're at it. There wasn't any red, so they went with green. The reforged sword gives a higher stat bonus than it did originally.
• Relocating the Explosion: Inverted. Siobhan is unable to quickly figure out how to disarm Excalibur, but they do understand the ballista it's hooked up to and are able to prevent it from launching the bomb through the face of a great clock and into the House of Commons. After the final boss fight, it explodes anyway, destroying the clock tower.
• Resourceful Rodent: While Rodentia as a whole is filled with intelligent rodents, Verm's party frequently comes up with innovative ways to solve their problems, such as Siobhan repurposing a lighter as a God Weapon that fires its flame like a cannon.
• Robot Dog: In the dungeon under the Ash Tower there's a note from Plaguemaster Aquila mentioning that they'd translated an operating manual from the Gods' language. Soon after that you find that the prison warden commands an AIBO-looking robot dog using a remote. It's some threat to rodents, but its attacks are howling and tackling - it's a human's toy, not really made for combat.
• Running Gag: Whenever the party has to jump down from a high place, Siobhan always lands on their face, with a squeak instead of a thud.
• Sapient Pet: There are some sapient pets, though the only ones actually shown in the game are Tiger and a tortoise family, as well as the ex-pet Halfsight. It's not clear whether or not pets hide their sapience and to what degree. Rodentia has laws about limiting interaction with humans, regarding them as Gods who may become angry. Verm disregards these laws, as does his party for his sake. With the game's perspective firmly being of a mouse-eye view and there being a language barrier there's no telling if the Yellow God's noticed that his hands are getting attacked by rodents wearing clothes and wielding weapons, or that's an Unusually Uninteresting Sight.
• Save Point: The game can be saved at any idol, whether it's a golden statue honoring a war hero, a carved wooden figurine, or simply an action figure purloined from the Gods.
• Scary Scorpions: Vinium has several scorpions referred to as Imperators - presumably after emperor scorpions - to pit against rodent gladiators. The scorpions are non-anthropomorphic and unlike most foes are killed in these combats rather than disengaging.
• Scavenged Punk: Most of the towns feature human items to various degrees. A bookstore uses human-scale books as steps to get to the upper floor. Colored pencils can make a barricade. Cans are furniture once they've been "licked clean". Vinium has fully embraced Lego bricks.
• Schizo Tech: The kingdom of Rodentia is roughly medieval, with animals forging swords and wearing armor. The human world above them is on the modern side, enough to have Gameboys and calculators, and various animals use human items as "god weapons" or just as props, such as the Duke of Clan Grey having a vape pen. Rodents also steal electricity from humans and their settlements are usually heavily Scavenged Punk. Aquila also develops simple mouse robots suitable as Mecha-Mooks.
• Screwball Squirrel: In the backstory, militaristic and intolerant Clan Gray squirrels came from across the ocean and displaced the gentler local Clan Red squirrels, invoking how grey squirrels from the Americas became invasive and outcompete Eurasian red squirrels. Individual gray squirrels vary in personality with many actually being quite nice, but Clan Grey's leader Duke Josh is volatile, imprisons people on a whim, ensures security by employing a stoat who eats prisoners, and won't stop vaping in front of people.
• Seers: After the jailbreak and becoming enemies of Clan Grey, the part seek out the Cailleach^note  in order to know where to go next. It turns out that Clan Grey beheaded the Cailleach long ago after being given a prophecy of their downfall, but her four owl children are willing to answer one question for Verm before they demand tribute and try to kill him.
• Set Swords to "Stun": The very second fight the mice Verm and Lance get into ends with Sava dying. The third fight is a Hopeless Boss Fight against the Yellow God, who kills Lance with one hand. You might think from that that the fights would often be lethal, but after that only a few of them are even incapacitating, never mind that they usually involve knives, fire, and a scalpel, unless they're fighting insects. Lamia is bloody, but she's an exception. Verm despairs briefly after his party is victorious over a White God - it retreated barely scratched after all their efforts. Verm can kill Leo, who won't back down unless all his weapons are destroyed, but that's about it. Interestingly, Leo is much more lethal in general, despite getting into fewer on-screen fights as an NPC.
• Short-Lived Organism: Since the cast are rodents, they don't live as long as humans do and refer to "seasons" more readily than years. After the Time Skip a shrew refers to Verm as being three seasons old, with maybe another two active ones to go, but Verm's pretty scarred and hard-worn by all that fighting; Sir Leo's a whole year older than him and doesn't seem to be regarded as elderly. None of the characters consider themselves short lived except for Aquila, who has several bitter statements to the effect of "a rodent's life is short and meaningless." They also complain that "gods" live one hundred times as long as rodents, which may be them exaggerating.
• Shout-Out:
  • Verm is an expy of Guts from Berserk, from his clothing and the BFS that many characters marvel at him being able to use, to an arc of learning to accept and rely on the help of others and that there's life beyond revenge, to even his personality. He even says "As long as I was swinging my sword at a foe, I didn't have to think", and then there's this moment that's a clear visual reference to Guts riding Zodd.
  • One location is a toy store that includes a doll of the witchy rabbit persona of Lilith Walther, the developer of Bloodborne PSX and Nightmare Kart.
  • The mythical character of Ratlas in Murida is a reference to Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.
  • Sir Diego in his armor◊ resembles Executioner Smough, complete with hefting a gavel like a war hammer.
  • An in-universe book called "The Destitute" involves Sir Jacques pursuing Volejean.
  • Needle Knight has a reference to Seven Samurai (or any of the many things inspired by it) as Leo remembers the Tokudaia Ten, a band of warriors who taught a village to defend itself against water vole raiders.
  • One of the items is an Oaken Ocarina, which has a The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time shape and is described as "Nostalgic to the ear".
  • In the remains of a burnt-out Clan Red city, there's the remains of a statue. "Two vast and trunkless paws of stone stand before you."
  • A shrew in Vinium ate a bad mushroom and had a vision of being the main character of Aviary Attorney.
  • Plenty to Final Fantasy, given the game functions as a throwback to many classic JRPGs:
    • Bruce gets called a spoony bard in a rare case of the word being used correctly.
    • The Octopus boss singing is a reference to Ultros from Final Fantasy VI.
    • Gwen says "let's mosey" under White Hall.
    • Verm's Cleave attack bears a great resemblance to Cloud's iconic Climhazzard Limit Break, also from FFVII.
    • Gwen's a white rat with a cape, nicknamed "Dragon," who wields a spear, all pointing to Freyja from Final Fantasy IX.
    • Blademaster Leo bears a great resemblance to General Beatrix, also from FFIX - both are high-ranking soldiers loyal to a monarch, who are famed in-story as peerless warriors, and are fought as a Hopeless Boss Fight. And just like Beatrix, Leo eventually turns on his monarch when he learns the truth behind his cruel and selfish nature.
• Single-Species Nations: The nation of Rodentia is primarily composed of five rodent species - rats, mice, moles, shrews, and squirrels. The heroes visit the capital Murida (mice and rats), Cranbaille (moles), Sky Garden (squirrels), and Vinium (shrews). Each settlement is heavily dominated by the aforementioned species with only a few of the other five races present, if any. If you return to Cranbaille after Bruce and Gwen join the party, they'll stay outside as they're just too large to be comfortable in the tunnels dug by the smaller moles.
• Sinister Switchblade: The Titan Cleaver is this and a BFS, thanks to its wielder being a mouse.
• Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Small Saga's small mammals are mainly Civilized Animals with a full Mouse World. Some of the cast walk around mainly naked with a few accessories and basically look like bipedal rodents, some are more on the Funny Animal or even Beast Man side and have head hair and wear full human-style garb including pants and boots. The most anthropomorphic character is a bat that's basically a fuzzy human with batlike ears and a nose and finned upper arms, able to play a guitar and wear a T-shirt. Larger animals or "Titans" are on the Partially Civilized Animal or Talking Animal side. Titans are generally willing to eat rodents, while the smaller animals, including rats, don't go in for that sort of thing. There is also a Friendly Neighborhood Spider who doesn't speak but seems to understand the concept of trade.
• Sneaky Spider: If a treasure chest is in a room by itself with spiderwebs about, it's actually an Avarice Spider. Fortunately, they're not as deadly as they seem, and there are only three of them throughout the entire game.
• Stats-Tradeoff Equipment: The Hoo Helm is an armor item that increases attack by 10, but reduces defense by 5. Because the armor slot is responsible for most of a character's defense, wearing the helm will almost always bring it into the negatives.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Before Pocket makes off with the Pebble of Scuin, he helpfully informs the treasury guard that the song title he's trying to remember is "Rat-Tailed Rover". This completely blows Anton and Bruce's cover, getting both of them arrested.
• Sticks to the Back: All the party's God weapons are visible on their backs, over their cloaks if they wear them, as they walk around, with nothing apparently keeping them in place. Other characters with smaller swords usually keep them on their belts.
• Superweapon Surprise: Averted. The royal court of Murida is aware of the threat the Yellow God poses, and is prepared to defeat it by dropping "Excalibur" on it: an unexploded, salvaged World War 2-era bomb from the Blitz. The problem is that while this would certainly kill the Yellow God, it would also obliterate half of Murida, killing tens of thousands of rodents — and for King James and Aquila, this is the point. The party therefore has to sabotage Excalibur to prevent it from being launched, and defeat the Yellow God the hard way.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Sir Leo made his name by killing a fox that was threatening Solhill, a shrew town that had set up in one of the fox's dens. This was a very impressive feat and there's a heroic song about him, "Needle Knight". However, late in the game Verm and co can visit Solhill and find no shrews. Leo had fought and killed the fox in the depths of the den, and the shrews were unable to move its corpse. It rotted, spreading disease and attracting other predators.
• Take That!: In Vinium you can find a book which has a takedown of the memetic saying "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times". After one philosopher provides the saying, rendered with "rodents", another dissects it, questioning whether regular food and medical care, as are more available in good times, don't make stronger rodents, then concluding that the saying combined with how it's generally used is "kinda fash". A third philosopher then pitches in with "Get his ass."
• Throne Room Throwdown: Verm's second battle with Sir Leo takes place in the throne room after Leo has killed the King. Verm's not really interested in the King, but in a passage from the throne room up to the hall where he can find and fight the Yellow God.
• Time-Limit Boss: Aquila's boss battle is a lot more dire than most since they need to be defeated quickly in order to prevent Excalibur from launching. You have 240 seconds (4 real-time uninterrupted minutes) to do it or it's automatically Game Over. Aquila outright says that since they have no battle experience, they can't hope to defeat the party; they just need to buy enough time for the weapon to fire.
• Toppled Statue: In Ash Tower, the ruins of a city long ago put to the torch, only the legs and head are left of the city's enormous central statue. Sky Garden's statue is of its ruler Duke Josh; when he's deposed the statue is removed and not replaced, so you pray/save at the empty plinth.
• Treasure Map: Verm can acquire a treasure map early in the game but can't do anything with it at first, because he never learned to decipher maps. A little girl in Murida, Virgo, helps him make sense of it, at which point he can go to the location marked with an X and recover the treasure.
• Tree Trunk Tour: Sky Garden and the Ash Tower are both entirely contained within tall hollow stumps fitted with winding staircases.
• Toy Time: The abandoned toy store is full of shelves stocked with plushies and boxes of LEGO sets. The shrews have their whole town made out of purple and gray LEGO Bricks, including an entire colosseum, with a road inside for RC cars.
• Tuft of Head Fur: A number of characters have these, ranging from just slightly longer fur that seems to be little different from the rest of their fur to a full Furry Female Mane that may even be brightly colored.
• Unexpectedly Human Perception: Part of the anthropomorphization package. All rodents, moles included, can read and are happy walking around through spacious brightly lit environments, and don't make all that many references to whiskers and scent.
• Untranslated Catchphrase: Gwen affectionately refers to Verm (and Siobhan sometimes, but mainly Verm) as "dwt". He often responds "Doot?", handily showing the player how it's pronounced. Bruce asks if he's also dwt and is told no. Gwen never translates it, but "dwt" is a Welsh word for someone that's small and cute. Bruce's boyfriend Anton regularly calls him "lapa" and this isn't translated either - it's literally Russian for "paw" but can be used as a term of endearment as well.
• Unusual Euphemism: Anton tells Brian he should "tuck" when in Clan Grey territory, and clarifies that he means Brian's tail. His nose, paws, and ears being red will apparently go unnoticed but the tail is too far. When the Duke becomes suspicious of the performers, he demands to see Brian's tail and has to clarify that he means his actual tail, since at first Brian says "I'm flattered but you're not my type." In Needle Knight, after Sir Alex and Leo wound each other in a duel and decide to stop before someone gets killed, Rosalie tells them they should have just compared tail sizes.
• Vague Age: Rodents are Short Lived Organisms in comparison to humans. Word of God is that post-prologue Verm (mouse) is five months old, Siobhan (mole) three months, Gwen (rat) eight months, Bruce (red squirrel) one year, Sir Leo (mouse) a year and five months, and Plaguemaster Aquila (rat) is five years old. What that means in terms of human ages is unclear, aside from Aquila who's positively ancient (typically captive-born rats live for around two years with the absolute luckiest reaching four years and change). Are Verm and Siobhan teenagers? Lucky red squirrels can reach ten years old and don't wean until they're two months old or so, does Proportional Aging make him "younger" than the other members of the party? Is Sir Leo actually a Cool Old Guy?
• Villain Has a Point: This happens a few times.
  • Plaguemaster Aquila's solution to the threat of the Yellow God is to use a leftover shell from World War Two to kill it, wreck the humans' House of Commons, and incidentally raze the capital of Rodentia. They acknowledge the massive toll on their own people but don't see them as worth saving, being sickened of rodent society and certain nothing can improve, so they might as well kill everyone. Siobhan sympathizes with this to a degree and says they've had similar feelings about burning down the city and about general hopelessness, but they can't countenance killing everyone and think Aquila's doomerism is delusional in its own way, making them unable to see and work for a better future.
  • After Clan Grey is overthrown, the prison warden is imprisoned in the dungeons as he refuses to either be reformed or go into exile. He's a true believer in the Wayward Star ideology and is utterly convinced that every form of government becomes some sort of tyranny, as hierarchies inevitably develop. Verm can visit to talk to him and the player can decide to have him say that he has a point, though he does disagree on the inevitability of it and thinks something better than "tyranny, but my friends and I are on top" is possible.
• Villain Holds the Leash: The prison warden of Clan Grey has the remote control for a mechanical Titan, an Aibou-looking robot dog. His only move is to use the remote to give it an extra attack; take the Titan out and he's helpless.
• Voice of the Legion: Most Titans speak in a large, jagged font, befitting their nature as terrifying monsters to mousekind. They're also able to affect a less intimidating voice, like Lamia until her Horror Hunger kicks in, and Halfsight, who as a scary-looking cat deters other Titans away from the shrew town but is regarded as harmless by the residents and speaks with them quite civilly. Diego, while very large, is probably a rodent under his armor, and he speaks like this except when addressing Leo as his friend. At the end of the game, Verm speaks in such a font when he tells the fallen Yellow God to "RUN."
• Wise Old Turtle: Verm can go on a sidequest to steal paint from a human. In doing so he angers the human's pet tortoises, first being attacked by an indignant tortoise child, then the child's angry father for beating her up, then the larger female tortoise for attacking her family. The two smaller tortoises then want all three to gang up on the thieving mouse, but the mother is a Graceful Loser. Her daughter protests that stealing is wrong, and she says yes but sharing is good, and their God has so much paint while the mouse is only taking a very little.
• Wise Serpent: A slow-worm can be found in the Gloaming Woods who'll reward Verm for telling him something new. Slow-worms are actually legless lizards, but Verm does think this one's a venomous snake at first, and it's posed in a classical serpentine way rather than being rather stiff-bodied as legless lizards are.
• Weird Currency: Seeds, though they're a fairly reasonable currency for rodents to have. As Lance explains, they're portable and don't go bad (or at least, they'd last a long time from the perspective of a mouse). You can only accumulate a hundred or so in play but a mouse living in the capital complains about rent consisting of three thousand seeds.
• Wolverine Claws: The champion gladiator of Vinium has gloves like these. Knowing Vinium and its propensity for using human toys, they might actually come from a Wolverine action figure.
• Wrecked Weapon: In the prologue, when Verm tries to attack a Mouse Trap with his sword it snaps. Much later, when Verm and Leo duel, Leo parries all of Verm's attacks but the Titan Cleaver proves more durable than his Sewing Needle Sword. It doesn't matter, since Leo, finally retaliating, one-shots him with the broken needle. Verm falls into the sewer and vanishes. After the Time Skip, his friends have found the Titan Cleaver, battered and rusty enough to be useless.

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