W20 - Changing Breeds.pdf

TERROR AND TACTICSBecause they are small, and cannot relyupon brute strength, Ratkin don’t thrive in opencombat. They cannot stand toe-to-toe with theirfoes and expect to survive the encounter. Fortunately(for the wererats, at least), they’re wellsuited for asymmetric warfare — what humanscall “terrorism.”Some Ratkin are skilled assassins, but onthe whole, the Breed usually has no time forsubtlety. When a wererat needs someone dead,the victim usually turns up gutted in a lockedroom or blown to bits by an amateurish — butenormous — bomb.Ratkin excel at sabotage, and count bothdemolitions experts and self-taught chemistsamong their number. The Breed puts great stockin homemade bombs and chemical weapons,with collateral damage being seen as a bonus.Some Ratkin weaponize ancient terrors like pneumonicplague, influenza, and smallpox, but others are working onmore supernatural attacks, counting on humanity’s lack ofexperience with spirits to leave them vulnerable. A smallgroup of the most extreme wererats is even attempting tocreate an airborne and highly contagious version of theBirthing Plague. Their goal is to create a malady that wouldinfect all of humanity, killing all but a small percentage ofthem — and transforming the survivors into wererats. Inone terrible blow, they would end human civilization andfill the world with several million new Ratkin, living in theruins left behind by the now-extinct humanity.Other Ratkin make certain that humanity could notrespond to such plagues in time by using homid RatkinKinfolk to infiltrate in national disease control and emergencyresponse agencies like the CDC and FEMA. They tryto place their Kinfolk in key positions and kill, harass, andattempt to discredit non-Kinfolk who apply for or currentlyhold these jobs. Once they have a critical mass of Kinfolkin place, they plan to infect them with the Birthing Plague.After these new wererats have come through the plague’smadness, they will fall into line with other Ratkin, sabotagingefforts to discover cures or vaccines for epidemic diseases.Urban SurvivorsRatkin are by far the most urban of the ChangingBreeds, but that does not mean that they like humans.THE LITANY OF SURVIVALLet the other Changing Breeds have their laws.The Ratkin embrace justice — which includes thefreedom to interpret their Litany of Survival as thesituation demands. The Knife-Skulkers interpretthese edicts and enforce them with great fervor.Preserve the Veil, which ensures your survival.Shred the Wyrm’s tentacles when they constrict you.Sever the Weaver’s threads wherever theycalcify chaos.Survive so that you may breed.Respect strength and exploit weakness.Conflict breeds strength.Build, steal, and suborn to strengthen yourbreeding grounds.Trust your own kind before you trust outsiders.When someone is responsible for injustice, makesure someone pays.Wererats see the rot and ugliness that is an integral partof every city and know that humans are responsible forit. They live in the filth and hidden places beneath thefacades where humans live. From their tunnels, sewers,and crawlspaces, they hate the people whose waste,carelessness, and greed corrupts the air, water, and land.A few Ratkin abandon cities and retreat to live in ruralareas. In the United States, they nest in decaying smalltowns and ruined rural compounds. Here, violent isolationistwererats forage for food and stockpile guns and explosives touse during the coming Apocalypse. Most are also eager touse their weapons against outsiders who discover or disturbthem. Some of the most isolationist rural nests even turnon other Ratkin who do not wish to join them.The Birthing MadnessThe Birthing Plague doesn’t just transform Kinfolkinto Ratkin; it also drives them stark, raving mad. ThePlague fills their minds with ancestral memories, the constantyammering of hundreds of spirits, and a multitude ofstrange and vivid delusions. This madness fades for mostwererats and they do eventually return to a skewed formof sanity, but the legacy of the Birthing Plague remains.RATKIN179