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Baker Street Regular for Sherlock Holmes. You could look into Hero Secret Service.
There's Friend in the Black Market
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Note that Wainscot Society is not limited to magical examples.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Thanks very much for these.
@eroock: I looked at those two tropes previously, but they felt off - the Baker Street Regular was an individual who sort of stands in for a type of a crowd, and Hero Secret Service was... adjacent, but not exactly right. What I'm thinking of would be more like Hero NSA, really - they don't do protection, generally, but gather intelligence or pass messages. It's close.
@4tell0life4 : That totally feels adjacent, if it's expanded to a group or division rather than a character. Friends in the Black Market maybe? One of the features of what I'm thinking of is a sense of facelessness - like, the Blue Blaze Irregulars could be anybody, because they're everywhere. The idea of being an insider with knowledge of "how things really get done" feels totally right, though.
@crazysamaritan : I do get the feeling the thing I'm thinking of might be a sub-trope of a Wainscot Society. The only real distinction is that a Wainscot Society as I understand it is, well, maybe not magical, but a kind of boundary-guardian group? Like one that's on the periphery of a "known world" because they're also connected to some other realm where things work differently - the example I kind of grokked there was of the Quiet People in the fourth Rivers of London book, living underground and (essentially) earth-bending but getting grocery deliveries from an ordinary supermarket.
I suppose the thing I'm thinking of is like that, but the secret or unseen world is one that we're seeing all the time, just not noticing - the source of the trope's power is that this guild is already all around us. It's not exactly related to a Masquerade, in other words. Do you think what I'm all wound up with right now is really a Wainscot Society for a non-magical universe? I'm not sure it is, but I'm not sure it isn't, either. Is it distinct enough to matter?
Edited by Grantimatter
A good example of Wainscot Society that doesn't involve any (additional) fantastic elements is the Marvel Universe and their Morlocks; "ugly" mutants that lived in the the sewers, contrasting with the "normal" mutants/humans living above-ground. Both live within the same national borders and share the same infrastructure. A Masquerade is any society that must go to extreme measures to prevent the "muggles" from learning about their existence.
The Baker Street Regular can be a single recurring character, but they don't have to be. It could be a different person every time; the point is to show a network of informants that collect information for the detective/police-officer. They are often homelessmen and newspaper boys for Mr Holmes, but other works have drawn from upon other parts of society. This would typically be a rather informal relationship, however, you're approached and welcomed to the group because you're already Beneath Notice. The Blue Blaze Irregulars from Buckaroo Banzai fits this.
Perhaps Covert Group covers what you're looking for. It requires secrecy and can be engaged in information collection without needing to be illegal or controlled by the heroes. Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Beautiful - thanks very much.
I'm a little surprised I haven't been able to find this one, but I haven't yet: an underground network of people beneath notice - service professionals, homeless, taxi drivers - who use their connections to aid the hero... or the antagonist. This would be close to a Wainscot Society, except they're not on the boundary of a magical world, and close to a Milkman Conspiracy, except they're not necessarily in control of events, and definitely not concerned with much outside their immediate sphere of influence. The closest trope I've been able to find is The Almighty Janitor, except that's an individual rather than a group, and that individual is usually somehow key to the whole plot or the secret master behind everything. The group I'm thinking about - these guys just help things along. I also feel like this is not quite a case of a Weird Trade Union, because they're not always given a collective name, and usually have some ordinary job or nondescript role with unexpected perks.
Examples would include the concierges of The Order of Crossed Keys in The Grand Budapest Hotel, perhaps The Newsboy Legion from the Golden Age comics, the Blue Blaze Irregulars from Buckaroo Banzai (to a degree), the Baker Street Irregulars from Sherlock Holmes, the criminals who track down Hans Beckert to bring him before the Kangaroo Court in Fritz Lang's M, and... well... I know I've seen some 70s-era action/thrillers where, say, all the cabbies from one particular company act as a surveillance network in the city, tracking down someone. Somewhere adjacent might be The Beggars' Guild in Terry Pratchett's novels (or I think in the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories - the beggars are part of that Thieves' Guild, if I'm remembering right), and maybe the mob that's formed of Greenwich Village locals/citizens' watch types that Griffin Dunne's character has to elude in After Hours.
It seems like the central element to this trope is that somebody - protagonist or antagonist - gets a little power boost by knowing "the right people" to do this one thing... and "the right people" turn out to be ordinary, apparently undistinguished, but somehow exactly in the right place, in the right numbers, with the right connections to execute the one thing with uncanny perfection.
Is this already a trope that I've missed? Does it belong somewhere that I've ruled out for the wrong reasons?
Edited by Grantimatter