TheRat

Background and Information

The Rat was born in the foetid tar-swamps of Aarzgajh in the Southwest, on the edges of the jungle. As a child she was strange and, some believed, mad, for she giggled wildly when she witnessed the slaughterings of animals and loved to capture small creatures in a rusty iron cage which she had found and watch them starve. Her parents believed that she was a changeling, and that Fair Folk had stolen their true child. But all agreed that there was one thing she was very good at, conniving; she could talk her way out of any situation, call off the anger of any person, convince even children who hated her to come with her to the depths of the tar-swamp, where she would play nasty tricks on them.

In the summer of her 13th year, a plague was born in the depths of the tarry black swamp and swept through the village and into the further towns beyond. It struck only children, sadly, and hundreds died in Aarzgajh. Its symptoms, however, made it more hideous, for it put children into comas deep stupor as if dead, and so many children were buried alive and starved to death in their coffins. The Rat was nearly one of those, but as she howled and scrabbled like a tightly caged rat in her coffin, words welled up from the ground into her mind, like tar oozing from the peat of the swamp, and spoke to her of a new and great gospel of darkness, that of Oblivion, and called her to join the Seven Unspeakable Ronin in their quests of destruction.

When the Faceless and the Blade lifted the last shovelful of sticky, tarry soil from the coffin, she lifted the lid and giggled with glee, a new and ghoulishly glowing Abyssal Exalt.

The Rat serves as the speaker for the Seven Unspeakable Ronin, their voice in their affairs. She is well-pleased with her lot, taking unholy glee at speaking words of poisoned honey to those who are their targets. The other Ronin either despise her as a giggling, mad freak or are mildly fond of her (as fond as Abyssals can be in their strange manner) as a sort of dark little sister.

Description

The Rat is short, sleek, and mahogany-skinned, with a wild mane of dully-colored dreadlocks which she ties behind her head with woven funeral-prayer strips. Her pretty face is childlike, delicate- cute might be a good term for it, if it weren't for her gruesome raiment. Her ears, lip, nose, and brows are pierced with small studs of human bone.

She wears a funereal garment of strips of lacy black silk from ghost-spiders, wrapped tightly around her body like mummy's wrappings. She wears her own tattered funeral shroud for a cloak, and the broken pieces of her funeral mask make up her necklace, along with a yellowed rat's skull. From her belt hang the small dead animals which she collects- birds, rats, mice, snakes. These dangle in a macabre fashion until they rot away, at which point she collects more. She always goes barefoot, save for the silk wrappings upon her feet. Tied to the palms of her hands there are clay disks bearing the seal of the dead city of Meru, with a different, disturbing symbol carved in.

The Rat's mannerisms are disturbingly slick and hard to follow. Her neurotic self grooming, sweeping hands over dreadlocks, smooth face, hips, adjusting cloak and silk, is almost hypnotic, distracting watchers from other things in her manner. Every once in a while, she will shiver violently, as if wracked with a pang of sickness. When she moves, it is the quick, sleek, darting movements of a rat fleeing from a catacomb, and when she fights, it is with the insane, blind ferocity of a cornered rodent. Her shoulders are slightly hunched. She constantly chews a certain poisonous leaf which grows in the Underworld, and this makes her spit a deadly weapon, though she seems herself to be immune.

Her voice is high, lilting, childlike, but also sweet, sickly sweet, like fruit rotten to a thick paste, cloying with all the feigned innocence of a decieving demon and acrid with a faint hint of mocking sarcasm. She has a trilling accent of the Southwest. Her words and sentences are conciliatory and non-hostile, in most times, though her tone and choice of words pervert the friendly meanings to something vaguely mocking and hostile.

The Rat carries her hook swords, the Lovely Twins, upon her hips.

Stats

The Rat

• Concept: One of the Seven Unspeakable Ronin (childlike speaker for the Ronin)
• Nature: Conniver
• Caste: Moonshadow

• Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Charisma 4, Manipulation 5, Appearance 3, Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 2

• Virtues: Compassion 2, Conviction 4, Temperance 1, Valor 2

• Abilities: Martial Arts 3, Awareness 2, Dodge 2, Performance 4, Presence 4, Resistance 1 (Piercing Wounds +1), Beauracracy 5, Linguistics (Native: Firetongue; Rivertongue, Seatongue, High Realm, Airtongue {is that its name?}, Forest-tongue) 5, Socialize 3

• Backgrounds: Contacts 3, Spies 3

• Charms: The Rat possesses Charms to make her words and speeches seem sensible and hypnotic, as well as Charms to cause illusions and produce phantom feelings. She has a small number of Martial Arts Charms.

• Base Initiative: 5

• Attacks:
• Soulsteel Hook Swords (The Lovely Twins): Speed 0, Accuracy -1, Damage 3L, Defense 3
• Poison Spit: Speed 1, Accuracy -1, Damage 1L, Very close range

• Willpower: 9
• Health Levels: -0/ -1/ -2/ -2/ -4/ Incap
• Dodge Pool: 5
• Soak: 2 Bashing, 1 Lethal

• Essence: 2
• Personal: 15
• Peripheral: 32