Last time, fucking Yushuv. Today, Ratcatcher!
None of the prince’s remaining servants paused to watch Ratcatcher go.
And who were they, and why was it apparently a valid concern to worry they might steal from Ratcatcher?
Who knows. Point is, Ratcatcher is a buttmonkey. But a buttmonkey with style! He rode off in the gloom of a misty evening, his two companions and a pair of pack animals trailing behind him like rags tied to a tattered kite.
No sense of direction, though. After three days it suddenly occurs to him he doesn’t know where he’s going.
The mounts were tethered to a bare-branched shrub by the water’s edge, and from time to time one dipped its head to the stream and drank.
Another data point for a thing that is like a horse – they also drink like horses.
Ratcatcher begins to complain about the cooking fire, worried it’ll attract attention. One of his servants begins to flatter about how even if someone was here they’d be much too scared to attack the great Ratcatcher’s campsite.
“Oh fuck you,” the player tells the DM. “You’re just saying that so I’ll get attacked by somebody again.”
“No out of character chatter,” replies the DM.
“You haven’t been paying attention to my personal history, have you?“ Ratcatcher said sourly.
But they have – or, I’m pretty sure they’ve been told something. So, what’s their motivation here?
Given there’s a good argument for hedonism once you’re sure everyone’s going to die, and they are under the Lover in particular, they may care a lot less about getting attacked than giving up a warm rabbit supper. It’s also possible that, while Ratcatcher is a pile of failure when going up against main characters, he is being pretty ridiculous here – he’s supposedly good in a fight so long as it’s not against an elderly woman. A good argument can be made that anything in Ratcatcher’s weight class wouldn’t need a campfire to track him down. (For example, that elderly woman can easily track him without it.) Finally, there’s the possibility that the neverborn fanfic isn’t quite done with, and Ratcatcher’s gotten some sort of temporary fate buff.
Anyway, proving that regardless of the reasons above, Ratcatcher absolutely is pathetic enough to have to fear a campfire, instead of cutting out a tongue for that backtalk, he just sulkily pokes the fire. The fire starts to flare up and he’s scolded more firmly not to mess with the cooking fire.
And Ratcatcher may be a pathetic buttmonkey, but even he has his limits.
“Scorch the dinner ?” Ratcatcher raised an eyebrow, slowly. “After all I’ve been through, you honestly think I give a damn about burning dinner?” He pulled the stick from the fire, and the end glowed cherry red. Unsmiling, he leaned forward until the smoldering wood was directly under Mushroom’s nose.
And, suddenly realizing that right, he actually has power here and it makes no sense he’s letting them call the shots, Ratcatcher decides now is time for some enhanced interrogation. He sayshe wants answers. Is he going to the Prince of Shadows? Just like last time, the answer amounts to “yes in all relevant ways, but we misled you on a technicality and are now claiming it was so you wouldn’t be mad, even though you’re only mad about the misleading technicality part”.
Also, Ratcatcher takes a minute to claim that I’m a different man these days, and I’ve learned not to act hastily. which is why he’s not killing them on the spot but waiting to hear the explanation, except sadly he was never that person and isn’t that sad? A dumb asshole murdering people midsentence could’ve had all sorts of legitimate trouble, rather than just being blown off by people all the time. He explains that if there’s a good explanation very, very fast, I might even let you live.” He yawned elaborately. “I doubt it, of course, but where there’s life, there’s hope, yes?” You’re a fucking abyssal, Ratcatcher. Where there’s life, there’s a brief moment of futile struggle and suffering against the inevitable all-encompassing end of all things.
Despite his best attempts at being intimidating, he can’t get any more information than that they’re going to where the Prince of Shadows will end up being. As Ratcatcher finally begins abyssaling up and actually searing some flesh, the other one explains that the issue is it’s against the rules.
“We are not permitted to do so, no matter how much we might wish to.”
“And do you wish to?”
“Of course. But our wishes matter little.”
Ratcatcher sulks off whining that APPARENTLY his don’t either.
“It’s safe now,” his companion said. “He is gone for the moment, and while he is not satisfied, he is willing to trust us for a while longer. He will follow until we reach the Howe.”
“I wish I could kill him,” Mushroom replied, his voice quavering. “I will watch him when he sleeps, and dream of killing him.”
“We are not permitted. You know that. We must serve instead.”
So, what the hell is going on with them?
I suggested the neverborn fanfic and I think that yeah, it’s time to take refuge in the only way to make this plotline makes sense: brain-eating chaos fairy bullshit.
Whether or not these are literally undead fae or just regular fae pulled into the games of the former primordials, they’re definitely something that runs on narrative law. That’s why they keep drawing everything out in ways that just anger Ratcatcher further – they have to pad the word count! They’re miserable because they’re fully aware they’re crappily written supporting characters in the neverborn’s weird misery sue self-insert fanfic. That’s why this ends with them chatting about how soon Ratcatcher will kill them, but that’s how it’s supposed to go, and anyway it’s good because at least they’ll get out of this narrative.
Oh, brain-eating chaos fairies. Is there any crappy writing you can’t make sense of?