61: Rat Men

This is the Parable of the Old Lady. There was once an old lady who didn’t have a proper house and lived under a tree in the forest, and she didn’t eat bread or meat, she lived on whatever food she could find in the forest, and she didn’t have any friends, she merely spoke to the animals and plants of the forest as if they could answer back. And she was called a witch by the people of the nearby village.

And so a priest of Shallya visited the village and heard tales of the witch. And she asked why she did not live in a house in the village and the villagers said it was because she was a witch, and she asked why she did not eat bread and meat like the rest of the villagers and the villagers said it was because she was a witch, and the priest asked why she did not talk to the villagers, but simply spoke to the animals and plants of the forest as if they could answer back, and they said it was because she was a witch.

And so the priest went into the forest to find the old lady and to talk to her. And she asked why she did not live in a house in the village, and she replied that the villagers would not let her because they thought she was a witch, and the priest asked why she did not eat bread and meat like the villagers, and she replied that the villagers did not share their food because they thought she was a witch, and the priest asked why she spoke to the animals and plants of the forest as if they could answer back, and she replied that the villagers would not talk to her, because they thought she was a witch.

I think Shallya’s meaning is quite clear, here. Or, to put it in terms Otto might appreciate, were the rat-people in the sewers old ladies or witches? One was dressed in a long flowing dress and adorned with an abundance of jewellery, so it may have looked like an old lady.

It looked like the three rat men had been picking over the bodies of the dead and stealing their clothes and jewellery. They looked almost comical wearing the human things, but they also looked sinister, being rat-people, in the dark, surrounded by dead bodies. The final ghoul disappeared under the water, taking a piece of body with it, leaving us facing the rat-men. And for the first time ever, we looked to Otto for leadership. This was his domain, and his adversaries.

Otto however did not seem to know what to do. Had they been men he would have talked to them, and had they been rats he would have attacked them, but they were rat-men, so it was confusing. Otto decided that if they were more rat than men then they would need to be killed, but if they were more men than rat then they should live. But he didn’t know which they were. Meanwhile, Erhardt cast some sort of spell and smoky tendrils wrapped themselves around the rats pulling at them and trapping them.

Then, remarkably, one of the rat-men spoke. It asked us not to hurt them in a strange, high-pitched voice. Kurtis ordered them to drop their weapons, and the talking one did, saying they ‘just steal and not hurt.’ The others didn’t drop their weapons but may not have understood. The talking one seemed to be trying to explain it to them in their rat language. The rat-man who was carrying a large bone as a sort of weapon panicked and broke free of Erhardt’s magical bonds and Kurtis killed it with his dagger.

Otto wasn’t sure about all this and nor was I. They had surrendered and were talking to us. But Ursula was as certain about everything as always and insisted they needed to be destroyed. She shot her crossbow, and it injured the second rat-man. Kurtis was having flashbacks to the time similar creatures had imprisoned him in the sewers below Ubersreik and wanted them dead, too.

In the end, Otto ran towards the talking rat and put his dagger to its throat asking it whether it was a man or a rat. The rat-man begged Otto not to hurt it, explaining it was just stealing stuff and hadn’t killed anybody and it would help us get out of the tunnels. I tried to explain that they were obviously frightened, and we didn’t need to kill them but only Otto was listening. Otto asked where we might find Markward’s body, by showing it his shirt, but it didn’t understand. I barely understood that one, to be fair.

Kurtis was getting angry now, wondering why we wanted to save the creatures, and Ursula reloaded her crossbow. I tried to heal the wounded rat-man without the others knowing, so I pretended I was looting it for funds for the orphanage, but I didn’t really understand its anatomy. Otto understood rat anatomy but wasn’t very good at healing, and we couldn’t manage it between us. Then Kurtis stabbed the talking rat-man, killing it. Otto said that as the final rat-man couldn’t talk there was no point keeping it alive, and he smashed its head with a stone. But I think, he was just trying to stun it, to save its life and he declared it dead. From what I could gather later, Erhardt noticed that it wasn’t dead, and put it out of its misery, while no one was watching.

Meanwhile Konrad had been going through the pile of dead bodies trying to find Markward, but he wasn’t there. Erhardt and Konrad had a chat and seemed to think that wizards or perhaps scientists or medical students might be paying to have bodies removed from the cemetery, and that maybe we should investigate that. And Konrad said he had some contacts who might be able to point us in the right direction. Otto managed to find the way out of the sewers, and got us back to the surface, not far from the Garden of Morr.

Ursula went back to report to the witch-hunters. I suspected that Otto and I might be mentioned in the report. Konrad brought us all to an area just off the Street of a Hundred Taverns where he knew prostitutes hung out. A couple of Shallyan initiates doing their mission went by and recognised me from the presentation I gave earlier, and I had a hard time convincing them I was at work.

Konrad managed to find an old contact of his, Ingfried Schmitz. She told him that if he was looking into grave robbing then he would want to speak to Johnny Tombstone. She didn’t know where to find him, but knew he had a minion, a scrawny bloke, who frequented the Boarshank Inn.

I went back to the temple soon after that, but from what I was able to piece together later, Kurtis was so upset about Solvej leaving that he decided to find a prostitute, and he managed to convince Otto to come with him. Otto said he felt so guilty about the whole thing, because he was a married man, that he stayed up all night teaching the prostitute Shallyan parables and saying prayers.

The next morning, we all went to the Boarshank Inn. Konrad got there earlier than anyone else to stake the place out. There was a big snotball game on, apparently, later that day (I don’t follow it myself, loads of grown men kicking a ball about for no reason seems a bit pointless to me) between the Reikland Reavers and the Middenheim Maulers.

It wasn’t long before Konrad and Erhardt spotted someone fitting Ingfried’s description, stealing a Reavers scarf from the back of a chair and mixing with the Reavers fans, pickpocketing what he could from the drunk fans. He left the tavern and mixed with the fans heading for the arena, and so Erhardt and Konrad followed him at a distance, which they were both quite good at, to be fair. The rest of us did not want to risk giving the game away so we just stayed in the pub and had an argument about the nature of rat-men.

The man visited a grocers on the way and Konrad went there, too, and determined the bloke was part of a protection racket as well as being a pick pocket. The grocer told him that he didn’t know the man’s name but knew he was working for Johnny Tombstone. Erhardt managed to follow him all the way back to a dodgy looking warehouse, and went to fetch the rest of us, while Konrad kept an eye on it.

We watched the warehouse door from a nearby abandoned shed. There was a lot of coming and going and the door seemed to be password protected, so Erhardt eavesdropped on it, and we discovered the password was ‘Johnny is the best.’ So, Konrad and Erhardt decided to use the password to visit Johnny.

They were let into the warehouse and Johnny was sat on a makeshift throne. They could see he was called ‘tombstone’ because his mouth looked like a graveyard. He had two large bodyguards, Leonhard and Neidhard, with him, and the scrawny bloke, Leibhard, and there were three other gangsters hanging around, as well.

Konrad managed to convince Johnny that they had legitimate illegitimate business with him and told him they were after a body. Johnny sent his minions away, except for the trusted Leonhard, and revealed he had suspected someone in his organisation of bodysnatching, and that he was against it. He said if we could find out who it was, he would be grateful. So, Konrad and Erhardt accepted the job. I think Johnny wanted us to kill the culprit for him, but Konrad convinced him that he would enjoy that more, and that we would just supply the name. And so they shook on the deal.