There has also been an increase in the rat population and reports of very large, dog-sized rats making off with household pets. And there’s a circus in town that was slated to leave in the next day or two. The increase in crime occurred prior to their arrival so that may just be a coincidence. We agreed to look into it. She wanted to meet in her office the next morning but the players were eager to get started. We split up to do some looking into things. Some went to the bar, some went back to her office, and some went to the wizard school to ply their various skills. Some additional clues were found.

She had hired some purported rat-catchers who took her half upfront money and then were never seen again. Skipped town, in on it or dead? The rats are in the poorer south side of town and have been seen coming out of the sewers. Evidently for such a small town, it has quite the sewer system under it. The sheriff is trying to keep this all quiet, so not to panic people. She also probably trying to keep her job. The wizard recalled reading about were-rats that supposedly have the ability to control rats. He thought that magic or silvered weapons would be needed.

We got a bunch of names of townspeople but I can’t recall any of them. But it all boiled down to rats in the sewers on the south side. We fanned out and walked through the streets of the south side. BTO’s Rogue wanted to be in the back and then Lillith wanted to be behind him so we were pretty spread out. Several spotted several swarms of rats. Their swarm nature gave them resistance to normal weapons but their AC was low and their hit points modest. One complication was that they could occupy the same square as their victim but Andy still allowed it to be attacked without harming the friendly unless you were using an AOE.

The Monk got swarmed but with his Shield of Faith going, he had the highest AC and wasn’t hit. The Fighter did get hit a couple of times. But the fight only lasted a couple of rounds. It was noted that the rats had some weird green slime on them that the arcane knowers thought was unnatural and perhaps the key to controlling them. After a bit of discussion, an entrance into the sewers that we could fit down was sought. The Paladin thought we should look into getting silvered weapons before going down but that opinion didn’t get much traction. So he ran off to pursue it alone.

So the Paladin went back to the sheriff who didn’t have such weapons. She thought the local merchant might have the heavy silver candlesticks he asked about as a backup but he was shut down for the night. He’d have to wait until morning. Rather than rejoining, he went back to the tavern. Some of the players wanted to get more flasks of oil after seeing how effective Brian’s Rogue was with his. Several characters went back to the sheriff to see if the town had some supplies that they used to light the street lamps. The lamplighter was found and provided a keg of oil. That was combined with empty bottles from the tavern and we had as much oil as anyone could carry. Not all did. Meanwhile Lillith and Silent Rekh worked on the sewer grate we found.

After a couple tries, the half-orc muscled it open. Lillith went down to look around but then waited for the rest to show up. The fighter did a short rest to heal up a bit while they waited. Into the sewers. The water was slimy and disgusting. There were walkways besides the streams but walking them required rolls to jump from one to another. We made a lot of athletics and acrobatics rolls with the skilled helping the unskilled. No one fell in but it took a lot of time and certainly wasn’t quiet. We saw a lot of nothing. Andy said that we happened to use one of the least interesting entrances. We did get to what we figure was the basement of the tavern or mercantile but no rats or other bad guys. Just lots of water moving downhill and lots of skill rolls. Eventually we started to get into an area that was going to be more interesting but since it was late we stopped there rather than start a fight.