aliberator
First Post
Currently making a wererat lair deep in a sewer. What kind of rooms do you think a wererat lair would include? Thanks!
Wererat Lair
- Thread starter aliberator
- Start date
Now seriously I do think adding Ratmen from Creature Collection Revised would make PCs go like "Oh look at the humaniod rat! It's not immune to silver." Just saying...
Hypersmurf
Moderatarrrrh...
Nightfall said:
That's not a room.
Perhaps it's just the mental association with the phrase 'pack-rat', but I tend to imagine wererats as hopeless hoarders. A couple of rooms full of broken window shutters, unmatched boots, empty wine jugs, rotting coils of rope, and so on - stuff with no apparent use, but you just never know!
Several escape routes - out to the sewers, up to the streets, into the basement of a building or two. A wererat in his own lair is never cornered. Most of the escape routes, of course, will be trapped and/or alarmed... any way out is potentially a way in for someone else...
A larder, which may include 'real food', scraps from alleys, dead bodies, or half-dead bodies.
-Hyp.
Teflon Billy
Explorer
Many, many corridors and rooms that are of an insufficeint height for a Human/Elf/ Half Orc etc to stand upright.
Many of tyhe corridors shold be impasable without, say, an escape artist check (complete with Encumbrance penalties)
Many of tyhe corridors shold be impasable without, say, an escape artist check (complete with Encumbrance penalties)
Gargoyle
Adventurer
Some ideas:
- The word "packrat" comes to mind. Being fairly smart and (as I picture them) paranoid, I would say that they would each have locked rooms, perhaps they have taken over an abandoned prison (wow an actual dungeon in D&D) where they each have a cell to keep their stash of junk. That way they can't steal each other's "treasure".
- A room devoted to infecting others with lycanthropy and torture. It would have manacled tables and maybe some silvered torture implements. These guys are evil and aren't necessarily nice to each other. They might infect enemies to make them experience the pain of shapeshifting (I would think it would hurt) and then torture them further with silvered items to get what they want out of them. As lawful evil creatures who usually live in urban areas, getting information is probably a major goal for them. Silvered items might be locked up or otherwise secured or hidden.
- A rat's nest room where swarms of rats feed on garbage in a pit or something, ready to be released. Some rats might be used for spies, others as attackers. A swarm of rats would be nasty when lead by wererats.
- Cages to hold some diseased captives, held for ransom.
- Vaults of stolen silver bars/ore, locked and hidden away. If there is a shortage of silver in the area, the humans can't make silvered weapons.
- Anything you might find in a thieve's guild.
- Entrances/exits too small for medium creatures. (but see Teflon Billy's suggestion on Escape Artist checks)
- A chamber with holes open to the sky where the full moon can be worshipped on certain nights. Altars for sacrifices; runes that appear only under moonlight. The opening could be in a very public place in a city, just not visible to passing people. For instance, it could be at the top of a hollo obelisk built over the chamber or it could be at the bottom of an unused well. Or a frequently used one.
- You could have many of the same types of "rooms" that humans have in cities. There could be an entire society of wererats with a marketplace, a courthouse, a crypt, apartments with wererat families, forges, etc. Who knows what is living under the town or within the thick walls of the castle.
- The word "packrat" comes to mind. Being fairly smart and (as I picture them) paranoid, I would say that they would each have locked rooms, perhaps they have taken over an abandoned prison (wow an actual dungeon in D&D) where they each have a cell to keep their stash of junk. That way they can't steal each other's "treasure".
- A room devoted to infecting others with lycanthropy and torture. It would have manacled tables and maybe some silvered torture implements. These guys are evil and aren't necessarily nice to each other. They might infect enemies to make them experience the pain of shapeshifting (I would think it would hurt) and then torture them further with silvered items to get what they want out of them. As lawful evil creatures who usually live in urban areas, getting information is probably a major goal for them. Silvered items might be locked up or otherwise secured or hidden.
- A rat's nest room where swarms of rats feed on garbage in a pit or something, ready to be released. Some rats might be used for spies, others as attackers. A swarm of rats would be nasty when lead by wererats.
- Cages to hold some diseased captives, held for ransom.
- Vaults of stolen silver bars/ore, locked and hidden away. If there is a shortage of silver in the area, the humans can't make silvered weapons.
- Anything you might find in a thieve's guild.
- Entrances/exits too small for medium creatures. (but see Teflon Billy's suggestion on Escape Artist checks)
- A chamber with holes open to the sky where the full moon can be worshipped on certain nights. Altars for sacrifices; runes that appear only under moonlight. The opening could be in a very public place in a city, just not visible to passing people. For instance, it could be at the top of a hollo obelisk built over the chamber or it could be at the bottom of an unused well. Or a frequently used one.
- You could have many of the same types of "rooms" that humans have in cities. There could be an entire society of wererats with a marketplace, a courthouse, a crypt, apartments with wererat families, forges, etc. Who knows what is living under the town or within the thick walls of the castle.
TheAuldGrump
First Post
I view Were Rats in the opposite manner to the above, rather than seperate locked rooms they have one tight, squirming, living chamber. No privacy, and hundreds of shrilly squealing were babies. Even if well away from the sewers proper there is an overwhelming stench of urine. Countless thousands of Dire and regular rats haunt the sewers. were rat sorcerers, wizards, and druids all add their critters to the mix.
a 'trophy' room where the bodies of former opponents have been wired back together, and posed, their valuable weapons replaced with far more worn materials. (Though the armor, less useful for the rats, is still on the bodies.)
A corridor of spiked chains and ropes that requires an Escape Artist check to get through - failure results in becoming entangled and in taking damage (with a risk of poison and disease).
A prison/larder, where homeless people are being stored for later consumption in...
Dining room, stinking of rotted flesh, with the whimpering of victims that have not been killed, but rather left to survive as were rats, or be consumed after they die.
Tunnels that even a dwarf would have difficulty passsing through, but in which a were rat running on all fours is perfectly comfortable.
Submerged tunnels, hidden by the murky effluent of the sewers.
Methane pockets, waiting for open flames to ignite the vapors.
A were rat/vampires chambers, possibly sealed so that even in mist form the creature cannot escape. A very hungry creature by now....
The Auld Grump
a 'trophy' room where the bodies of former opponents have been wired back together, and posed, their valuable weapons replaced with far more worn materials. (Though the armor, less useful for the rats, is still on the bodies.)
A corridor of spiked chains and ropes that requires an Escape Artist check to get through - failure results in becoming entangled and in taking damage (with a risk of poison and disease).
A prison/larder, where homeless people are being stored for later consumption in...
Dining room, stinking of rotted flesh, with the whimpering of victims that have not been killed, but rather left to survive as were rats, or be consumed after they die.
Tunnels that even a dwarf would have difficulty passsing through, but in which a were rat running on all fours is perfectly comfortable.
Submerged tunnels, hidden by the murky effluent of the sewers.
Methane pockets, waiting for open flames to ignite the vapors.
A were rat/vampires chambers, possibly sealed so that even in mist form the creature cannot escape. A very hungry creature by now....
The Auld Grump
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