Ratscapades

*In-game Date*: Some time between August 3-10, 6804

*Participating Members*: Dhalia, Newt, Pieter, & Roz

*Base Status*: Living Quarters + Secure Base + Storm Shelter + Hidden Base + Informant Network + District Tier Upgrade

*Mission*: Help Thad wrangle some rats.

*Mission Result*: Morise the giant rat-shaped rat swarm is dead, for now...

*Achievements*: 3325xp (per player)

## The Story

Ray is getting ready to do his rounds of casting guards and wardswhen there is a knock at the door of the Hollis Reid Calvert library ("HRC" for short), The Stromguard's new secret base. Our young changeling intern naively opens the door without requesting any kind of identification or looking in the door's peephole before letting in the mysterious knocker. Dhalia was concerned but that vanishes when she sees the familiar chill face of Thad the bard. Pieter and Roz are also milling about the first floor of the library and introduce themselves to Thad. He has come to request the aid of The Stormguard in collecting a large quantity of giant rats, ideally alive ones. An odd request, but he explains it is for Sylna VanDeil, the young elven ranger seen in the dream-like challenge Ray's college put some of The Stormguard through long ago (see C2OS1). She is from The Veil (aka Tan Elariel) and has a giant pet snake that is exceptionally large due to a combination of the Elven city's anti-aging magic and the snake's ability to continue growing until it dies. Thad is willing to give 5gp for a normal alive rat, 3gp for a diseased rat, and 1gp for a dead rat. He gives the party a special rat sack that can hold many rats without tearing and then they make their way down to the sewers. There they find an abundance of giant rats, some looking more pale than others. The party skillfully does non-lethal damage to a number of the rodents, except Dhalia - her skills with her dagger are quite rusty. Somehow 16-year-old Newt is the strongest one in the group so he carries the squirming rat bag with a little help from the others. The bag gets heavy with the ~20 giant rat bodies, so the party makes their way back to the HRC to deliver the bag to Thad. He is impressed with their quick work and gives them another bag that is magically modified to not feel as heavy. Supposedly it is limitless; Thad's maximum was to fit six dozen rat bodies in the bag and it still did not burst. The party makes their way back down to the sewers and follows a few fleeing giant rats down some stairs. There they find two abandoned gondolier boats in the sewer canal, a bulkhead door, and a small crack in the wall near the door where the rats scurried through. Dhalia uses Adrien to follow the rats. Through his eyes, she sees a dark room and hears the squeaking of many rats. The party has more trouble than one would expect with getting the door open but eventually they do and walk inside to find a large square room with a circular platform in the middle and platforms around the edges separated by rank sewer water. Most of them have darkvision so they are able to make out the form of a *huge* rat that seems to be made up of many squirming rats - they later learn its name is Morise. The party forgoes trying to non-lethally injure these rats and instead opts for killing as many as possible. The platforms appear to be roughly 20ft. above the sewer water and the group uses that to their advantage to keep the rats at bay. Pieter boldly swims toward another platform where he ends up being corned and Newt summons eight dretches , which he can't really control, to fight the rats. The large rat swarm creature makes its way toward the party and ends up engulfing Dhalia, but she is ultimately able to deal the deathblow to it by shooting a lightning bolt straight up through its head. They gather as many rat bodies as they can and are rewarded with 1,181gp from Thad. Also they inform him that his rat bag's limit was six dozen and four rats. The party go with Thad to deliver all the rats to Sylna and they learn that he has an adorable crush on her. Supposedly Morise reforms over time and the party never closed the bulkhead door when they left so its very possible a rat-shaped swarm may wreak havoc on the city of Stormgate...