RATS OF THE LIBRARY

     The Rats of the Library are one of the most curious races ever to have seen the light of the Minarran day. Confined to Miren for most of their history, the Rats have made a profound impact upon the cultural and religious life of the Shattered Continent.

     The Rats appear as exactly that: giant rodents that have been given the gifts of an upright stance, functional, pawlike hands, and the ability to speak. The color of their soft, fine fur ranges from snow white to coal black, with a wide variety of yellows, browns, grays, and beiges in between. Their eye colors range from obsidian black to mahogany red to burnished bronze, while their white incisors gleam with a faint, pearly iridescence. Though averaging 5¼’ in height, the Rats are unusually light, rarely weighing more than 90 pounds.

     The Powers of the House of Light created the Rats nearly eleven centuries ago, soon after the departure of the Mikskek from Miren. Not all the Mikskek made the journey to Dass; a few, too old and frail to make the trip, were left behind to live out their days in peace.

     One such Mikskek was the last remaining custodian of the Library, a magnificent collection of works from every field of study going back some two thousand years. Having spent his last days in a futile effort to find someone willing and able to keep the collection safe and intact, the ancient creature lay on his deathbed. In his last moment, he realized that if he couldn’t have found a librarian, he should have made one! The Mikskek then departed Minarra, cursing himself for a failure.

     But there was no failure, no failure at all...for the House of Light had heard this final thought, and marveled at the idea. After escorting the Mikskek’s startled soul to its well-earned rest, an Avatar of Arzamark appeared in the Library to see what sort of raw material might be handy. The True God found what he was looking for in the kitchen: a pack of rats happily munching on a sack of grain...

     The House of Light was very careful in "tailoring" their furry progeny to their new duties. It was quickly decided that their numbers should remain small, with no more that 350 individuals alive at any one time. To insure that this limit would not be exceeded, the females of the specie were rendered infertile for most of their adult lives.

     With such a tiny population, the Rats would have to be unusually gifted, both physically and mentally, to insure their survival; accordingly, all ability scores for NPC Rats are rolled on 1d10+8. Their life spans were increased to about 850 years, with the young reaching physical and emotional maturity at 200 (the traditional "coming of age"). Their intellectual maturity, however, progresses at ten times that rate, giving rise to the spectacle of 60-year-old Rats with the minds of college professors throwing tantrums because they couldn't have another cookie!

     The Rats do not have family names. Their surnames are derived from some notable incident or personality trait exhibited in youth or early adulthood. To outside ears, these names tend to be absurd and even embarrassing, but the Rats themselves are rather fond of them. Some of the more curious monikers include Featherpaw, Sunstroke, and Quickskitter.

     Despite having the same free will as all other races, no Rat born has ever deviated from a good alignment. Most tend towards law, and only about 1 in 30 could be truly called chaotic.

     The Rats have their own highly sophisticated language, impossible to master by any other race because of its largely ultrasonic pitch. All Rats speak Common, and some have mastered as many as seven additional languages.

Combat: The Rats retain some of the physical advantages of their animal forebears. For example, they can inflict a powerful bite once per round, inflicting 2d4 points of damage on a hit. While standing upright, their move rate is 12" and their AC is 8. But when they drop to all fours, their move increases to 21" and AC rises to 6, so quick and nimble do they become. Due to their extremely keen senses of hearing and smell, Rats are surprised only on a 1.

     For those Rats of a character class, THAC0s, attack rolls, saving throws, etc. are determined by the standard rules for such characters. First level Rats have a full 8-sided die for hit points in addition to the normal hit die for their class, but gain hit points normally every level thereafter. The x.p. value of a defeated Rat of a character class is determined by using the "Creature Experience Point Values" and "Hit Dice Value Modifiers" tables in the DMG.

Habitat/Society: Rattish society is neatly divided into two distinct groups: the Librarians and the Wanderers. But regardless of the very different lives they lead, both groups consider the Library to be their only real home.

     The Librarians live, work, and play within the confines of the Library, rarely seeing the sunlit world above and then only for a few hours at a time. The Librarians are a sedentary, studious lot, tending to their divinely appointed task with an almost religious fervor. Their curiosity about what lies beyond the Library is more than satisfied by their books, and a good thing too; most would flounder were they to be cast adrift in the "real world".

    It is also the Librarians who see to the education of the young, a training that often humbles the finest curricula in Minarra. By the time a Rat reaches his hundredth birthday, the youngster would (at least in theory) be qualified to teach at the finest institutions in all the world.

     The remainder of the population—rarely more than one in twelve adults—are known as the Wanderers. These are the restless spirits among the Rats, the ones for which a lifetime of study and contemplation simply won’t do. These Rats are the ones almost guaranteed to have a character class.

     Because of their god-touched nature, the Wandering Rats often go very far indeed in their professions. Throughout the past eleven centuries, many of the priestly Wanderers have become Graces, Knights Commanders, and even Serenities. Their warriors are often sought after by the most reputable of adventuring parties, while the Wandering wizards are more than happy to train the finest apprentices of each generation. This high public profile, coupled with their innate goodness, honor, and dignity, insures that the Rats will always be welcome in the corridors of power and influence.

     It is the responsibility of the Wanderers to seek out and send to the Library any new literature or research deserving of preservation, which to the Rats’ mind is just about anything with even a dollop of intelligence, creativity, or artistic merit.

Ecology: The Rats are known throughout Miren as fastidiously clean and undemanding creatures, impacting their environment as little as possible. If not recyclable in any way, the refuse generated within the Library is eliminated through magical means. This attention to cleanliness is far more than hygenic; a slovenly race would sooner or later give away their whereabouts, and the location of the Library is a jealously guarded secret.     

The Rending: In the year 1704 A.C., an incident took place that not only came close to destroying the Rats as a people, but threatened the very existence of the Library.

     This tragedy began when the Chief Librarian, Richard Spatterpelt, began to receive frightening images from an artifact dedicated to Chauquin the Seer, God of Time. In them, the Librarians were aboard a ship in a storm-tossed ocean, saying their final farewells to a body about to be buried at sea—Richard’s. These images, coupled with the knowledge that an adventuring band was questing for a Mikskeki Clan somehow left behind in Miren, gave rise to a most disturbing thought: if the party succeeded and the Mikskek returned, what purpose would the Rats have for even existing anymore?

     This question gnawed away at Richard’s sanity, and no assurances from his younger brother, Malcolm Quickskitter, Serenity of the Scroll, could allay his irrational fear. It was Malcolm, after all, who was sponsoring the adventurers in their ill-fated quest. Tensions between the Librarians and Wanderers became so intense that the latter withdrew themselves from the only home they had ever known, rather than risk a civil war.

     Free now from prying eyes, Richard made contact with the Vauldraani, the ancient enemies of the Mikskek, and begged their help in destroying the party. But in his madness—and utter ignorance of how the real world worked—Richard instead brought the Vauldraani down upon the Library itself. The Wanderers returned (along with the long-lost Mikskeki Clan) just barely in time to prevent the sacking of the Library and the total slaughter of its caretakers. Not one of the Vauldraani was left alive to organize another assault, but the victory was a hollow one: mingled with the ashes of hundreds of irreplaceable treasures were the charred remains of dozens of their paranoid guardians.

     In the aftermath, a devastated Malcolm exiled his own brother and all his supporters to the distant continent of Dass, where their guilt and shame would not follow them. En route, Richard died of a broken heart, and was buried in the waters of a stormy sea. In the end, Richard's visions weren't prophecy at all, but a divine warning that was devoured by his own fear.

(Oh, Rats!)

(Oh, Rats!)

(Monsters)

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