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Message: <blockquote data-quote="two" data-source="post: 2351993" data-attributes="member: 9002">What is the party gonig to do, individually and collectively?The party runs, stumbles, and on-the-doubles it up the hill and between the series of rocks which, together, afford both cover and concealment.  With some effort, the party members (not the horses) are able to wedge more-or-less comfortably into the cracks, either standing or sitting upon the grass and brambles that grow there.Behind you, you are aware of the RatMan in the forest, who seem to be circling…but not at a particularly close range.  The night is otherwise silent, dark, and full of those woodsy smells that might otherwise accompany a pleasant and uneventful sleep-beneath-the-stars.  Not in this case, alas.The party has nearly an hour of this sort of time with which to heal themselves, talk, ponder, and do whatever it is they wish to do.  It’s currently, roughly, 2:15am in the morning, and the first light of dawn is sill 2 hours off at least.{Party does stuff, let me know if there is something specific desired}.About an hour later, members on watch hear a curious sound.  A distant chittering call is heard, roughly 600 feet away.  Then suddenly two chittering calls answer, from much closer, one on either side of your hill (Boot Hill I’m terming it).  The distant cry is repeated, but closer this time; the RatMen surrounding Boot Hill answer once again with abrupt screeches.  This happens three times.Then there is, again, silence.  For a little while.  Silence that is broken in a none-too-subtle way.From about 200 feet away, you hear, dimly but distinctly, the following conversation being held in Ratish (a debased variant of Verminish).[Loud, angry voice]: “Blah blah blah… blah BLAH BLAH BLAH”[Softer appeasing Ratman response]:  “Blah Bl…”[Louder, more angry voice]:  “Blah BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH blah BLAH.”[Softer appeasing Ratman response]:  “Blah Blah blah BLAH…”[Very loud, very irritated voice]:  “BLAH BLAH BLAH @#!@#!@#!!!@! BLAAAAH!”The latter said in the same tone of aggravated resignation which a harried and harassed mother uses after her child fails to do what is asked, and mutters angrily, “If you wanna do something right, I guess you gotta do it yourself.”The conversation stops at that point, and rustlings are heard in the forest.The moon now is visible to all; the cloud cover seems to have blown away.  Across the lunar face, dark shapes flit; bats, probably, chasing night insects.  There must be a lot of the insects around, because there seem to be a marked increase in the number of shapes flitting about in the air.  In fact, now that the party members are paying attention to it, there is a very significant number of bats spinning around in the air above Boot Hill; what were taken at first to be hundreds might in fact be thousands.  They spin in a circle, clockwise, swirling around the circumference of the hill’s base, flying en masse, their squeaking high-pitched cries far above your ear’s range of hearing, except for occasional bursts of sound:  dry wood scraping dry wood under high pressure.  Their wings, beating the air, together create a whirring noise, like the sound trees make in the late Autumn when a wind rattles through their branches and shake their dry, withered leaves.   The flying speed of the bats, if anything, seems to be increasing in speed, even as the radius decreases; they are flying in a tighter and tighter circle, perhaps better yet described as a spiral, the point of origin (or terminus) of the spiral being, roughly, the position of the party huddled between the rocks.Around the hill, three shadowy ratty shapes can be seen detaching themselves from the edge of the forest and, moving from rock to rock, making their way up Boot Hill.</blockquote>

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