A RAT IN THE SEWERS: an introduction to Teak, the sewer rat

"C'mere, you filty turdling..."

An eerie scraping sound farther down the sewer was the only indication that Teak wasn't alone down here. It was pitch black, and except for the occasional rattling and the sound of his feet schurlmping through the sewer muck, there was only the sound of Teak muttering to himself. He'd been following the trail, as it were, for a couple of hours. This was one tough rat to corner.

It began a few weeks earlier when Teak, known to the town of Rygenhijo as the crazy street urchin, got a job as the town rat catcher. The previous rat catcher had been missing some weeks, and Teak had jumped at the opportunity to earn a steady wage. Food was hard enough to come by, but without the necessary clink, he'd never be able to get the residuum he needed to perfect his magical arts.

Tead was short and wiry, scrawny even by gnomish standards. He wore beggar's rags, but a careful observer would see a glint of gold around his neck. It was a five-pointed star gilt in gold and hanging from a ratty leather collar. It was also one of the only mementos Teak had of his mentor, Kenji Kobe. Teak carried a canvas bag tied over his shoulder, a metal rod in one hand, a hand crossbow in the other, and seventeen rat traps (mostly of the humane variety) tied on where ever they might fit.

He looked and smelled, like a small pile of trash, decorated with rat traps in a random pattern.

Today he wasn't worried about his humane catch-and-release traps. His prey was not the catch-and-release type. It was a certifiable killer dire rat; a big bugger the size of a pony, all fangs, with a tail two feet long, and a taste for human blood. Teak had heard of some rich folk rearing and training dire rats as pets for their privileged children, but he had a feeling this varmit he was hunting wasn't the kind to be petted. Several bums, half a handful of dogs, and the town's previous rat catcher had all come up missing over the course of a month, and Teak was sure he was about to come face-to-face with the villain responsible.

"It is already the eating time, and ye keep running away. But I'll be finding yer lair, ye fiend, and I'll eat YOU if you keep me down here much longer," Teak spat out as he traversed the mucky muck.

Even though Teak could see twice as well as any human in the dark, it was still dark as pitch down here, yet he knew better than to try to light a torch. Hundreds of years of sewer gas build-up made any open fire a risky business. The rattling was getting closer with each step, though, so he reached a hand into the bag at his side and pulled out a small glass vial.

It was a perfectly round and fully enclosed orb filled with an alchemical concoction of his own invention. He gently shook it and then hooked it onto the leather strap at his neck with a practiced twist. Within seconds a dull blue glow filled the sewers surrounding the odd gnome. It was a simple matter of using red phosphorus with sulfur, salt peters and a drop of sewer water, and a pinch of swamp moss for color. It would burn out in in about an hour, but it was cheaply made, refillable, mostly safe down here where any flame was most defiantly unsafe. He called it a flame globe, in memory of a toy Kobe taught him to make with a globe and a wintery snow scene. Teak rehitched his bag over his shoulder and continued hunting his quarry.

He was entering the oldest part of the city. The pipes here were big enough for a horse to walk in comfortably. No one lived in this part of the sewers. No people, anyway. There were plenty of other dangerous denizens of the dark down here. Still, it was a rare thing for a foul creature such as this to have moved in. The dire rat had become more of a public nuisance. It was a threat to the lives of the people living down here. There was no one else to protect them. Teak was not only the best equipped to deal with the dangers of the sewers, he was also one of the few people that cared.

Teak knew these tunnels as well as any of the citizens of Rygenhijo. After all, he had lived down here for most of his life. Toward the east end of town, close to the river, was an entire underground community for outcasts, orphans and street people. His brief tutelage under Kenji Kobe was the once exception. The kindly old toy-maker welcomed Teak to his home, gave him food and shelter, and began teaching him a trade. Those were the best years of Teak's life. After Kobe died Teak was left alone again. He continued to study the arcane arts, but his education had been incomplete, so he was forced to improvise. Sometimes it resulted in something good and useful like his flame globe, but other times it resulted in explosions of various sizes, or some other misfortune. There was no other way to learn other than trial and error, however, and there was no one left willing to teach him.

He turned down a different tunnel. He took a step and felt something slimy moving at his feet. The slimy part was expected, this being the sewers, but the moving part was a bit disconcerting. He jumped up out of the filth he'd be walking in all afternoon, trying to find a handhold along the wall to his left so he could see what was beginning to constrict his foot--too late. He felt a sharp pain and realized he'd just been bitten by a leekert. Half snake, half leech, it hid at the bottom of a pool of dirty water and waited to be stepped on. Then it would wrap its eel-like body around its foe, bite with both its heads, pumping its venom into its target, leaving its prey in a blissful numbness, unaware that it would soon be eaten, digested, and shat out by a two-headed freak of nature. It could be a lethal predator to those caught unaware. To Teak, a long-time resident of the sewers currently bent on the destruction of a dire rat, it was a just an inconvenience.

If anyone had been watching, they would have seen Teak suddenly disappear. He was still right where he had been standing, but gnomes had a knack for vanishing when they got into trouble, and Teak had mastered it. Teak quickly grabbed the leekert with the hand holding the rod and ripped its toothy mouths off of his foot before the strange amphibian was able to pump its mind-numbing poison into his leg. He shouted "Away!" just as he clicked the small tab on the metal rod in his hand. The leekert appeared ten feet back up the pipe the other direction, further away from the now vanished gnome. Confused and disorientated, it was still smart enough to realize this foul-tasting gnome was more dangerous than it was edible. It buried itself back into the muck at the bottom of the pipe, content to wait for a frog or a delicious water tarantula to come by.

Water splashed down the pipe as an invisible gnome (followed by a bluish glow) retreated to the safe distance. Careless, he thought to himself. He'd been distracted by the threat of the dire rat and had let down his guard. That was a dangerous thing to do down here. Luckily it had been a male leekert or it might not have given up so easily. The females were twice as big, and often had little hungry mouths to feed. But then again, a leekert made a fine meal if they were big enough, so the sewer denizens brave enough to go hunting them ate well when successful. The usual method was to use a stick, though, not your foot.

After a few seconds he reappeared. He took a moment to look at his bleeding foot. The bite itself was far from lethal, but an open wound down here could invite disease much more dangerous than any leekert. Teak adjusted the glowing blue ball at his neck, moving it underneath his ragged burlap shirt. He reached into his bag, pulled out a vial half-full with a pink liquid, and drank it. The bleeding stopped and the small wound covered up with new skin. He put the empty vial back into his bag. Next Teak began moving his hands in a complex pattern, caressing and then banging the rod he used to teleport himself and the leekert. After several minutes of messing with it, a faint *click* was heard and the button near the base of the rod popped back out, ready to be used again. He began walking, but then paused a moment to looked at his ripped pants. He moved his hands quickly in an arcane ritual, almost as an afterthought. His ripped rags returned to their previous dirty, but intact, state.

"Now I'm coming for ya, ye bugger, and I'm hungry and harassed. I'll be dining rat-kabobs within the hour, or I'm a cross-dressing dwarf. I might even have a new hat, too. A nice fur hat!"

Still muttering to himself, he pulled his glowing orb out from beneath his shirt and continued down the sewer, now moving as quietly as he could, toward the weird scraping that he knew to be the sound of a rat chewing on rather large bones....

THE BIG FIX - patch version 9.0

Ok so after some conversations with Ryan, ray and Geoff about the current state of affairs, I'm thinking of flipping the campaign design on it's head a little - rather than having the campaign's story having level dependant aspects that because of a desire to see you succeed I end up having to adjust those requirements anyhow, how about I do the exact opposite, that if you find ways to quickly advance the plot to where it would ordinarily be outside of your reach for success - then I give or find cause to advance you along with the plot to the point where you can successfully complete those aspects. There will still of course be decisions that will be soo outside of the realm of consistency where I won't be able to do that, but those will be very minimal situations, so that the margin for error is as large as possible while still allowing for the possiblity of some risk involved/consequences.

Ok, so because of a couple decisions about characters doing their grand exit of the game before the plot I had tied to their backstory intended, I'm left in an awkard place of not really having many hooks to tie the current group together, BUT - never fear the great american railroad company has given me permission to thrust plot fixes upon you, and skip over all the nonsense that really doesn't apply to what is left of the current story arch.

So you might be saying, I don't want to ride this particular train - to that I say but you haven't even heard where it's going yet.

Wanna hear it? great - it's a go directly to 9th level, don't stop at any interim levels, and collect much loots in the form of new magical items. Yay!!!

Roughly you guys are going to awaken pelor in crusio who is going to make a deal with the group and empart some of his spiritual goodness into the group, as well as design some doo dads from his bag of creation trickets to help you along the way.

I believe we have in the party now items leveling 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9.

That leaves a 6, 7, 7, 9, 10 (for sixth to seven) then you still need, 8, 9, 10, 11 (for seven to eight) and 9, 10, 11, 12 (for eight to nine) and because expect to have you guys gaining a level each session for the next 3 sessions - 10, 11, 12, 13 (for nine to ten) these last four will be found in the course of your battles, and maybe this time I'll actually let a monster use a magic item that won't kill it when it does. - sucks to be U's guys right about now.

K, so get your noses in the books and min max like I know you can. j/k don't really do that, (not that I can stop you) but do try to find useful things that you will make you enjoy the character - if that lends itself to min max - so be it.

I made some new friends

Reed t'lls me he's on da move, so I'm like, "Awesome, time t' go 'venturing again!" Obbiously I ain't ganna let 'im go off and get hiself killed like he'd like t' do, as 'e is lible t' do if I ain't round.

So we're off, travelin' bout for months, running around in circles, eating from the same barrel of pickled herring until my sweat smells like rotten fish and even his doggie avoids bein' downwind from me. The very idea of stopping for dinner time made me lose me appetite toward the end, there. Reed insists we ain't got no time to hunt nothing not pickled and in barrels, though, much less find a decent tavern with some decent swill.

When we finally catch up to whatever ghost Reed was a'chasin, turns out we're a minute too late! Not even so much as a thank you from that lot, neither. BUT I FINALLY GOT TO SEE A DRAGON!! There were two of 'em, but by the time I came up, pantin' n' out of breath, they had both flown off.

The lads seem a tad on the morbid side. They're definantly the cup's half empty type. Also, it grieves me terrible to say they don't even 'ave a 'alf decent 'venturing name.

The one in robes took me up on me climbin bet, but 'e cheated! Least he gave me back me coin, though I was sportin enough to let 'im keep it. I learned a lesson 'bout making bets with pointy-ear'd ones, least.

'Fore long passed, we were talking to some tree-woman. She sent us to the mountains without so much as a toasted croc' leg to eat, and there was we continuing our n'er ending march to no-wheres.

We must 'ave been getting close, for long had passed the wolf-masked feller starts hoopin' and hollerin' a'tryin to wake up the whole country-side. I figured it must've been a success, cause here comes a big 'ol green dragon. Try as we might, he didn't eat us after all! Fact is, now we're 'pose to be working for him, or sumtin like that.

I am glad t' be out an' about, don't get me wrong, I just wish'd there was more in the way of vittles out here. Reed n' me are about t' start growin gills at this rate!

Everything that has nothing to do with the game, or so you'd think...

I have currently a one month subscription to dnd insider so if any of yous wants to see it or anything on it just let me know and ill get it for ya or if there is a compy around ill just show ya in person.

Merry Christmas!!

stuff.

Also, after everyone has had a chance to read this, it can be deleted to preserve the essence of the blog.

Yes it did, and Here's how it's gonna go down.

Alright, well thanks to all the guys who've checked the blog and left comments and suggestions.

From those I've come to a plan - it's blunt but I'm just going to break down some options for you for next session and I'll try to have some things prepared for each of those situations, but ultimately it will boil down to a good deal of winging it again (another of those bare with me situations).

So last time you guys were caught by a random NPC in the catacombs below what you now know to be the Headquarters of the Cercators, the NPC closed a multitude of security gates behind him as he fled -

NOW FOR THE OPTIONS:

If any of you are concerned about the time line for the captains being executed you can at any time reveal yourselves to the cercators which will essentially give them cause to resume using them as hostages to force you to proceed doing what they want - though you all will also know that you've already broken the cercators ability to ever reproduce the cycle by freeing the Raven Queen, but have no idea what would happen to the Captains if the Cercators find out that they can never again try the cycle again (kind of the point of this second story arch).

You all know that after the hand of fate, if you move forward into the catacombs you will find one of the captains you seek, but I will remind you that going forward directly into the catacombs will lead to your revealing yourselves to the cercators and your margin for error will be very small (this amounts to every challenge you face being at the highest possible difficulty allowable for your level, which means it is completable, but likely not everyone will make it through to see the results)

As a freebie you guys will recognize that the drainage gates in the first room of the catacombs that I mentioned last time may lead into the sewers, this would get you into Rygenhijo the city through the sewers, but won't immediately lead to the captain you seek - downside the sewers may only be slightly less perilous than the catacombs.

Another option is to return to the lolth tower and seek out the dryad along the primary flow of the river, and hope she will be willing to show you a way to the next captain or Rygenhijo - but more likely if you recall the portal she had showed several locations that would each mostly match to a gatekeeper, as in perhaps this path would only lead you to another gatekeeper (and if Crusio was to be watching over you all again, he would likely be around one these gatekeepers waiting for you all to show up, and you might be able to find him) This will likely reveal yourselves to the cercators, but if you believe Crusio is a captain you might be able to find him there as well (warning, you have no idea how he will take the loss of his sister Lotus), but if you don't confront or find Crusio and just fight the gatekeeper this will likely be the path of least resistance.

Ok so you guys have a decision to make, you can do your chat on here or however, just try to have an idea in mind before next session.