1000 Outlandish Moonrat Schemes (formerly: If I were a band of moonrats I would...)

Does anyone have any idea what kind of things a bunch of moonrats might want to do?

First of all you are a bunch of rats.
Second you only get intelligent enough to get any real work done about once a month.

what could you possibly want? What would be your grand scheme that you would slowly work towards.

Obviously "Try and Take over the World" is on the list, but lets keep our goals more reasonable.

hrm...

Now that I think about it.... Trying to take over the world would make a lot of the actions of the rats inexplicably weird.

What goals and inexplicable things would you use in your campaign?

Aaron.

Reproduction and food are the most important things. After they acquire all those things, anything else becomes art.

So what types of art would rats want to pursue? I don't have the MM2, so I don't know if Moonrats are supposed to be evil. If they're not, I can imagine them creating strange forms of art and graffiti that only shows up on the full moon. Things like writing, "The rats are only dirty because you force them to live in filth" on the sides of public buildings.

Madame Pettigrew of 17 Haven Lane lost her husband, Stanley, years ago. Since then she has worked as a seamstress, taking in alteration work and occasionally sewing a dress for lesser nobility. Three months ago she found some curious looking rats in her basement. She was struck by their precocious nature and decided to adopt them as pets, rather than calling for the rat catcher.

They were, of course, Moon Rats and they were grateful indeed to Madame Pettigrew. In return they have sallied forth, once a month, and return to her seamstress shop with all sorts of materials, including valuable buttons, needles, balls of silk thread, and coin. When an enforcer for the local guild showed up to collect "protection money" the rats later assaulted him, swarming over his body and gnawing at his eyes. The watch investigated the death and are now fearful that a pack of dire rats are on the loose.

The rat catchers are more active than ever and Madame Pettigrew worried that her "little darlings" are at risk. She will seek the party's aid in relocating the Moon Rats to a less-hostile environment. The PCs will be at odds with the Guild, who wants payback for the death of their man, and a zealous priest believes the rats are sent by a dark foe and demands their extermination.

Just an idea.

Lets see Rats taking over the world. Many bad guys do why not rats. Where to start??

First you need money. How would rats get money. Seeing they are only smart about once a month got to start small. How about they begin to take over a merchant company. The picture of the moon rats shows them holding a scroll so lets say they can write. Well they do a little Enron on the merchant companies books once a month, some money gets siphoned into buying things the rats are going to need, like rope, cloth. Then the next month they all plan to eat all rope and cloth in the town except the material in merchants house they are in. They do for a few years, making this merchant company rich and expanding and the rats expand with it, continuing this process in the cities this merchant company expands with.

Second, you need power. Either political or military to take over the world. Well you need money for both these but we got that covered. Now a rat is not going to get elected into office or lead an army into battle, they need "someone" else to do this. In the 2e Planescape game there were cranium rats. Kind of like moonrats, only got smarter the more that where around. Anyway they had a normal everyday non monster skeleton sitting on a throne. They dressed it in fine robes and used magic to make it speak. They ran a thieves guild and everybody in it thought a lich was in charge. Well these rats can do same, once a month. Rats get everywhere, and will know everybodies secret. They find out Mayor Jim Bob is secretly working with the bandits outside of town. Well Councilman Herb wants to be mayor, and the rats know this. They also know Herb has been stealing from the town treasury. Well they tell Herb to meet this "man" somewhere. Of course this man is the skeleton the rats are talking through with magic. Well they tell Herb they can make him Mayor. Mayor Jim Bob is working with the bandits, if you bring this council with the proof we have here they will be greatful. Then with this money here we can probably get you elected mayor. All we ask for is a you do a few things for us. We got info on you to so you better go along with our plan. and so on and so forth. They start doing this in larger cities and gaining even more political power.

Now all this will take YEARS to implament. I think it would be fun.

"Hey Brain, what are we gonna do tonight?"

"The same thing we do every night Pinky...

TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD"




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El Rav

Bump!

Keep those ideas coming! Surely there must be tons of cool stuff for the little vermin to busy themselves with!

Hmmm... How about renaming this tread '1000 outlandish moonrat schemes'?

Well, this is kind of cheap, but it could make for an interesting NPC...
An insane moonrat steals an item from some utility-minded wizard: an ioun stone with continual flame cast on it. The moonrat equips it and is bathed in the light of his own personal sattelite. Since the stone is relativly moon-like, he deludes himself into believing that the stone is the moon and becomes permanently intelligent. He begins stealing ioun stones from magic-selling merchants and wizards to "share his marvelous discovery".

Demiurge

This reminds me of a Far Side cartoon, the one captioned: "Dog scientists worked diligently round the clock to discover the key to The Doorknob Principle."

That said, I'd suggest thinking "Watership Down". Moon rats are unlikely to have a united front - there's probably gang warfare between rival nests for turf, mates and food supplies.

Outwardly looking, I think the rats would focus on taking out their natural predators so as to avoid being eaten in the "down time". Dead cats and dogs would be one of the first signs of their presence. Ratcatchers would probably turn up dead too.

Pity the city whose moon rats put two and two together and realise that they can orchestrate a systematic infection of plague throughout every household in the place....although smart rats would realise that the humans keep them in grain, and only use those measures as a last resort. The world takeover, or at least, toppling humans, is easier than you're all making out - normal rats brought Europe to it's knees. Plague-spreading moon rats could topple empires. No need for money, nor military power....

I also think it would be cool if they "got religion". The idea of a moon rat evangelist gathering his flock for a moonlight mass - and rats casting divine spells - appeals to me.

Religion

Well, if I were a bunch of moon rats in the DnD verse I think a big goal would be creating our own dungeon and gaining the attention/protection of a deity or two.

Dungeon building is a good once a month activity and pretty ideal work for little smart things that can dig pretty well and build their own protected tiny tunnel system through the madness. Plus it's like building your own property, gives you effective squatter's rights and someplace to store stuff. Plus adventurers can wander in and 'leave' you some loot.

Getting religion is good cause it's the key to better rights and living in most cultural contexts, and particularly DnD. Just avoid some gawd who will give your people a spider fixation, caste structure, and force you to live in truly nasty neighborhoods.

Shop around, see if you can get some popular gawd to declare you a sacred animal.

Would also look at setting up paper identities, maybe with several other moonrat communities so they guy would 'appear' several times a month when the other communities went active.

That and collectively gaining access to a spellcasting class. Then you can defend yourself a little better and get a magic item creation feat or two with which to make serious money.

Well as the above poster suggested, build their own warren. Then make an agreement with the Thieves' Guild in the area. During their smart times they steal and act as scouts for the guild in exchange for foodstuffs which are then stored in the warren for their dumb times.