W20 - Changing Breeds.pdf

Not only are Ratkin the most numerous ChangingBreed, they’re also arguably the most dangerous. Plaguedwith madness, they turn their Rage on any enemy ofchaos, not just the Weaver and Wyrm, but also humansand any signs of progress or structure.HistoryBefore the War of Rage, Gaia made the Ratkin responsiblefor culling the human population with famineand disease, crippling the hairless monkeys before theybecame a threat. Seeing themselves as the planet’s last lineof defense against human excess, the wererats performedtheir job zealously. Eventually, the Garou became jealousof their successes, coming to see each Ratkin success astheir own failure to keep Gaia safe. Resentment festered,poisoning relations between rat and wolf.After centuries of growing tension, the Garou tookgreat pleasure in slaughtering the Ratkin during theWar of Rage. The Garou killed hundreds of Ratkin inthe first days of the war but, as with their rodent Kin,exterminating Ratkin is far from easy. Most fled deepinto Umbral boltholes, while others went to ground inhuman settlements, living as either humans or rats.From then until fairly recent times, the Ratkin livingamong humanity kept their numbers small. They watchedand waited for their chance to regain their lost power andnumbers without risking bringing the Garou’s wrath downupon them again. Seeing minions of the Weaver and Wyrmcalcifying the world over thousands of years fired their Rage,but self-preservation won out — keeping their numberssmall was the key to survival, but in doing so, the wereratswere too few to do anything about what they saw.Several decades ago, however, watching how sickand broken the world had become fired the madness ofthe Ratkin, and the wererats began making their move.They issued a call to arms, urging those who had fled tothe Umbra so long ago to return, and for the Ratkin ofevery kind to breed, breed, breed and renew their numbers.The Ratkin believe human civilization is beyondsalvation. Their goal is to kill off humanity before itcalcifies the world in the Weaver’s webs, and to teardown everything obstructing the Wyld’s glorious chaos.As rats’ breeding cycles are shorter, and litter sizes arelarger than their human counterparts, the Ratkin’s massivebreeding program has created tens of thousands ofnew rodens Kinfolk, most of which have been exposed tothe Birthing Plague. The result was a massive populationexplosion among rodens Ratkin, tipping of the formerlybalanced scales between homid and roden wererats. Mostof these new generations of wererats live in vast nests, hiddenfrom the prying eyes of other shapeshifters. Because thevast majority of new Ratkin are rodens, the other ChangingBreeds who watch homid Ratkin don’t know how muchthe Breed’s numbers have increased in the past 30 years.THE NEZUMIThe Ratkin who belong to the Beast Courtscall themselves the Nezumi. The Nezumi recoveredfrom the War of Shame relatively rapidly,but restrained their growth so as not to draw toomuch human attention. That left them betterorganized than the Western wererats when thebulk of the Breed returned from the Umbra.The traditional Nezumi still belong to the BeastCourts, but most of the returned Ratkin wantnothing to do with the other Changing Breeds— and they are breeding more rapidly than theNezumi. Relations between the returned Ratkinand the Nezumi remain close, but the independentwererats have asked that the Nezumi donot share how rapidly the Ratkin population isgrowing with the Beast Courts. So far, the Nezumihave agreed — but only as long as the returnedRatkin don’t interfere with the Nezumi’s plans.RATKIN177