Rats and Gothic Horror

[NeoTiamat]

I had this strange, half-philosophical thought the other day, so I'm going to throw it out here and see what responses I get.

Basically, I noticed that there are an incredible number of rats and rat-creatures in the various Monster Manuals. You have rats, dire rats, were-rats, cranium rats, moon rats, Rylkar (fire-diseased rats), and probably others I've neglected to notice.

At the same time, rats are eerily suited for Gothic Horror as in Ravenloft. We have a single rat-centered domain in Richemulot, but even more than that, rats, along with spiders, snakes, and sharks, tend to elicit an instinctive shudder from people. Even if they're not as supernatural as a vampire or werewolf, there's something about a swarm of rats that terrifies people.

So here's the question I'm throwing out. Who's used rats in their Ravenloft campaigns, and how has it gone? Any philosophical meanderings on rats in Ravenloft?

[Isabella]

Whenever I think of rats, or indeed whenever they are used in movies, there's a certain emphasis on the squeaking they make, so I am going to take a completely uneducated and uninformed stab at it and say that the squeaking noise might be connected to a fear response (It would at least explain a similar aversion to bats). I'm not sure if anyone has tried using rats without the sounds (just the thousands of beady red eyes, and the sight of something skittering out of the corner of your eye) but I don't think it would be as effective.

I'm sure there's some kind of science out there that could tell you what humans find horrifying, even if it's an irrational fear, but heck if I can find it. I've been looking for such a webpage for ages.

[Olly]

Surely the fear evoked by rats can be summed up in two words?

The. Plague.

[CorvusCornix]

To directly answer your question: I've used normal rats a number of times in my last campaign, and mostly to great effect! I wish there were more normal instant-horror-creatures like rats or spiders (I'm not quite as sure about sharks and snakes). The best part was that the rats didn't even do anything to the players, their presence alone was sufficient. The players were searching the home of a missing person for clues, when the first noises started coming from the beams holding the roof of the house. As more and more rats (I didn't use the word, of course, just described the sounds and the tiny red dots of their eyes, it was very dark up there and the PCs could only see tiny moving shadows) scurried around on the beams, one of the players climbed up there to investigate. However, he quickly decided otherwise, when one of the rats just brushed against his hand, and the characters left the house rather quickly...

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I haven't really used rats as much as I should. I think the only time I did was when a vampire used his children of the night power. I do really like the idea of the intelligent Moon Rats from... is it Heroes of Horror? That picture of the rat reading a scroll and squeaking orders to the others is just priceless.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

I haven't done much with ordinary rats, but there's an NPC wizard whom my PCs crossed swords with, who took them captive and left his familiar (a big fat rat) to keep watch over their cell. By the time they busted out, they hated the rat more than its master, for peeing in their food, gnawing their wand of cure moderate wounds to bits, and nibbling the injured rogue's bloodied bandages while she was sleeping.

[Joël of the FoS]

I haven't done much with ordinary rats, but there's an NPC wizard whom my PCs crossed swords with, who took them captive and left his familiar (a big fat rat) to keep watch over their cell. By the time they busted out, they hated the rat more than its master, for peeing in their food, gnawing their wand of cure moderate wounds to bits, and nibbling the injured rogue's bloodied bandages while she was sleeping.

Yes, the rattus norvegicus (grey rat) is a pretty damaging fellow, that was a starvation menace in some areas in Europe in medieval time. Imagine opening your cold room in November to get stored food, to find all crates emptied by rats. Or the crops eaten during the night by numerous rats...

Interesting trivia, when the rattus norvegicus (very good Stranglers record by the way) came to Europe, it had to fight its space to then common rats rattus rattus (IIRC) (or black rats, smaller). There were many reports of racial territorial wars between rats. Now the Norvegicus has nearly put the former out of the cities.

The plague was a dark threat brought by black rats to the cities (they spread everywhere the fleas carrying the disease), before the rattus norvegicus came and was known as voracious.

Joël

[Boris Drakov]

I've used rats of all sizes and wererats to good effect as they can prowl through the sewage systems and even appear out of your toilet if they want.

Did a wererat assassin/gangster villain doing that.
Needless to say I always made them play out any visits to the bathroom from then on and they needed to go constantly.
There's some places even heroes fear to be stabbed.

[DocBeard]

The problem with, "Snap: Teh Plague!" as a primary threat is that, well, gosh, what can you do to dramaticly battle a plague?

Applying it a little more esotericly, like stopping wererat cultists from creating a new strain of plague, or battling a biologist who uses rats in his or her experiments, that can work. But just, "Okay, we have to burn this villaige so the rest of the domain doesn't get sick." is kind of a binary situation to put players in.

[Joël of the FoS]

The problem with, "Snap: Teh Plague!" as a primary threat is that, well, gosh, what can you do to dramaticly battle a plague?

Applying it a little more esotericly, like stopping wererat cultists from creating a new strain of plague, or battling a biologist who uses rats in his or her experiments, that can work. But just, "Okay, we have to burn this villaige so the rest of the domain doesn't get sick." is kind of a binary situation to put players in.

Well, it could be a magical disease (wizard, Ravenloft fleas), or a plague from the lab of a mad researcher (Mordenheim, Bollenbach or any mad scientific), or an evil born plague (say, from Borca, or from wererat cultists), and the cure is found in XYZ (a place, someone's brain, Ivana's castle, the vistani, etc.), or you have to do ABC (ritual, quarantine, make them drink something rare, etc.) to cure all the people, etc.

So they have to save these people while trying not to get sick themselves, and while making sure the village stays isolated.

Not an easy job, but not binary either

Joël

[Boris Drakov]

Come to think of it rats symbolize uncleanliness and disease but also secrets and darkness.

They kind of expose the rotting corpse beneath the beautiful masquerade mask so to speak.
Dirty corrupt secrets happening just beneath a thin veil of normalcy.

[NeoTiamat]

Well, the beauty/horror thing is pretty well done in Richemulot, notably Scholars of Decay. The classic "Fight the Plague" is that you have to stop it at its source, i.e., kill something.

Hrm.... I suspect I'm one of those odd people who finds rats to be cute, and snakes rather sleek and handsome (just don't ask me about the bugs *shudder*).

If anything, I rather like Corvus's method. Just a slowly increasing quantity of rats. Actually, that might be an interesting adventure situation. No plague, nothing like that, just every day, the number of rats in the city increases. No one know why, but as there's more of them, there's the ever looming threat that what if they start to get violent?

[Hazgarn]

I think the thing that makes rats creepy is that it's impossible to keep them out of anything. If they want in somewhere, they'll get in, sometimes gnawing through metal to do it. And once they get in, you don't always know it until it's too late and they do a lot of damage. Usually to property, but there's always that chance...

Actually, when I was little and growing up in the sticks I think there was a family whose little girl had rats get to her one night. The kid lived, but how messed up would that be to go in to see what your baby was crying about and finding rats chewing on her fingers?

[Rotipher of the FoS]

What an awful thought....


Hmmm. Maybe that's the way to make swarms of rats truly horrible for players. Don't sic them on the party when they're alone; do it when the heroes are in the middle of a hospital or orphanage, surrounded by fragile, defenseless NPCs they have to keep the chittering rodents away from.

[Hazgarn]

The best uses of rats as objects of horror seem to revolve around being helpless. I mean, rats are tiny. They aren't anything a human needs to fear once they are walking. But if they can't get away or avoid them it becomes something else entirely.

I remember the scene in one movie that struck me out of a particularly nasty sequence of images...I won't spoil what movie...where a soldier was paralyzed with no feeling in his legs and left at the camp, and when his comrades got back they found that the rats had been eating his legs.

Another good example is the novel 1984. The specific scene I'm talking about was particularly disturbing in the movie.

*willies*