So, my DM threw out our last campaign and told us all to show up next session with just our dice, leaving our collected materials and sheets behind. When we arrived he gave us a choice of 0 level NPCs. We were now shit-tier nobodies in a shit-tier town in a shit-tier kingdom in shit-tier nowhere.
Our party consisted of: Myself, the village blacksmith who can’t really make anything much better than simple or martial weapons, and even then can mostly just make horseshoes and nails and shit.
The village healer, does not into magic, does not into potions beyond herbal teas, and does not into healing beyond a vague understanding of good hygiene and drinking fresh water.
A farmer.
A fisherman.
We started off on a fine new morning, and found out that the local innkeeper had rats in the cellar, eating up his foodstuffs and doing your typical low-level rat shenanigans from every RPG. We were offered the chance to try and locate some sort of wandering adventurer to handle this. We chose to settle the affair ourselves.
Total party kill.
We rerolled. This time, we played a farmhand, a stableboy, a messenger, and a woodworker.
We prepared ourselves ahead of time, after hearing of the grisly deaths of the village’s only blacksmith, the local healer, one of the fishermen, and the farmhand’s boss. We knew exactly how we’d take care of the rats, by sealing em away in that cellar and walling her up. The woodworker prepared his sturdiest boards.
We went into the inn only to find the innkeeper dead, and we were beset upon by the rats from the shadows. We had, in our former lives, forgotten to close the door behind us.
We attempted yet again, this time as a huntsman, the village drunk, the gatekeeper. and a tailor. We thought things would be a lot simpler, after all, we now had a huntsman, who while not necessarily a ranger or rough and tumble rogue, could at least operate a bow. Our plan, this time, was to prepare an ambush outside the door of the inn. Our huntsman was ready with his bow and arrow, and he also had a bear trap of sorts that we set just by the door’s entrance.
We threw open the door. Nothing. We knew they were still inside, perhaps in the cellar, because we could hear the gnawing. The chewing. The terrible chewing. We coerced our village drunk to go inside with a torch, just to rouse the rats and flush them out. He did so, waving the torch around just inside the inn before sprinting back outside. And into the bear trap. We tried to assist him. And then the rats were upon us. Our huntsman got off two shots. We bludgeoned a wounded rat to death. but they were too much for us. There were five rats in all, four remaining after the battle.
Now the rats were loose in the village.
This time we were playing as a traveling merchant who had been staying at the inn, a baker. a cobbler and a librarian.
A day had passed. The children of the rats grow strong on the flesh of our neighbors, and yet worse terrors such as spiders and a snake plagued our village. Windows and doors are boarded up, the streets are empty.
We provided them enough food, after all. Not that it sated them. We had a new mission, now. Survival. Escape. We couldn’t convince those who remained in the village (something like 20, ourselves included) that it was wiser to flee. After all. some had lived here their whole lives. A couple were too old to run, a couple too young.
We were only able to convince one other, a minstrel (not a bard, sir, the man’s music is passable at best and certainly not magical), to make the dash to the gate with us.
We waited until the dawn. thinking that with the coming light the creatures that had invaded our peaceful village might return to the shadows. The cobbler, ironically, in his well-made shoes, reached the thick, towering log gate of our village first. We could hear the rats scrambling after us. practically biting at our heels. The minstrel fell to them. we didn’t turn back.
The cobbler turned. his face pale. screaming. “IT’S LOCKED!”
The gatekeeper had the key. The village was now a tomb.
This is, unfortunately, where our tale ends. We resumed a more traditional, and regular campaign, and several weeks went by of standard DnD. At one point, while hiking up in the hills, near a forest, we came across an old, abandoned village. The gates had been forced open from the outside, by bandits most likely, perhaps the orcish raiders we were after. There was little remarkable about the town and we found little to take with us. It seemed as though nobody had survived. A few bodies, likely dead for weeks, little but gnawed bones remaining, littered the village’s one road, and the story was more or less the same in each of the houses. Some of which were quite disturbing. The poor townsfolk had been driven mad, it seemed, from cabin fever. It quite puzzled us, and we theorized out loud what might have happened, if bandits had maybe invaded and forced the villagers to stay in their homes while making use of the village’s supplies. It wasn’t until we reached the inn, and found four corpses and a bear trap, one still caught in the jaws, outside the door that we realized where we were.
We never bitched about helping out some random npc with his rat problem again.
