Over on the DC Forum (here), there was a discussion on plots involving were-rats. I took a seed and put some bits into it. Then the real artists took over. Linden Dunham and Zvesda took over and developed the whole thing. Quite frankly, Linden has the craft. He is a great story teller and it is always a pleasure to read his work.
Here is what I contributed (not that you care, since the real deal will be the feature in the first issue):
Well, a vector to Rat #1, hmmmm…Let’s call him Castor; his Rat King brother is Pollux. Their parents were once professors in the classics before the university extension campus shut down, and their mother killed herself. (She could not live with the fact her progeny were weres.) Their father left them in an underground tunnel off the subway at age 4.
A vector to Castor:
This is an urban adventure, right?
Two neighborhood kids are just crazy over comics. These two preteen kids should be known to one of the PCs, perhaps through volunteer work at a community center.
Both kids are infatuated with the Rat King comic. They love what the rats do to the enemies of the Rat King. Until, that is, they discover that the setting as drawn in the latest issue happens to be the abandoned old factory down the street. The drawing is distinctive, as is the building. They check it out one evening, slipping from their sleep-over, to investigate other aspects of the comic. Maybe the artist is a local.
The bolder of the two kids, call him Brad, goes into the building to have a look see. Jamal, waits anxiously among his own fears, when Brad calls out to him. Jamal rushes to the broken window that was Brad’s entrance to see what has become of Brad.
He sees Brad running towards his exit, pursued by a host of smaller rats, with larger rats goading them on. In the distance there is a human-sized rat-like profile in the shadows. Brad almost makes it, scampering up the crates and rubbish to get to the window. Unfortunately he is overtaken and brought down under a mound of writhing rat bodies as the vicious teeth rips into Brad’s skin. Brad sees Jamal through the mass, makes eye contact, and screams above the whispering rat growls,
“It’s all real! The Rat King is real! Eeeiiiiyaaaaah!”
Jamal loses his nerve then and bolts for home.
Now Jamal is really scared. He explains to his mother and Brad’s father that the rats took him, but there is, of course, no evidence in the old factory. The rats have cleaned up after themselves. The authorities write it off to a sexual predator.
The search progresses for poor Brad, but a lot of people disappear these days and the authorities cannot give too much time to the problem. Brad’s family is not from the part of town that the news media would come running to support.
Jamal will not leave his room unless he is accompanied by friends or family. In an effort to cheer Jamal up, his mother brings him the latest copy of the Rat King, which Jamal gingerly reads.
Horror upon horror as Jamal sees, in the comic, his own likeness peering through a window at an image of Brad as Brad is eaten by the rats! Brad the “enemy of the Rat King” was threatening to expose his empire to the evil, uncaring TopSiders! Jamal’s mind reels as he reads that the Rat King is going to mount an expedition to the TopSide to find Brad’s evil conspirator, and put to rest the threat to the Rat King’s plans for dominion of the DownBelow.
Jamal freaks and calls the only person he thinks can help him, that tough looking character that hangs with the kids at the community center.
Jamal’s vignette takes place in the larger context of the decay of his neighborhood. The economic decay as businesses have been leaving the area…ever since Wide Area Metro Transport (WAMT) shut down the last three stops on the Merle Island line. Those that had jobs have left too, to be closer to the transport that takes them to those jobs. What are left are those on the dole and the criminal underground. The Clinton Park area where Jamal lives is quickly turning into an Outlaw zone.
Since WAMT has “reapportioned” the traffic routes, people in Clinton Park have been disappearing a lot. But authorities assume the disappearances are gang or drug related, and do nothing to investigate. Besides a lack of resources, the cops are not brave enough to enter Clinton Park at night.
Is that enough of a tie in for you?
–Norm
Well, you will have to look into the premier issue to see what Linden did with that. And boy did he do it!
Cheers!
Norm
