Night Rats

The Night Rats are a gang of the slums of White City in the Raphael Efsanesi ("The Legend of Raphael") campaign. They are one of the four powers that rule the city's streets beside the army, together with the assassins of Kalel, the Followers of Zolan and the Thieves' Guild. They grew strong while Raphael was away from the city and are now the most numerous of the four, though Zolan's men are the better fighters one against one and Kalel the more powerful.¹²

Crimes and rumours

A boy of nine or ten who tried to cut Raphael's purse said that the Night Rats' leader Zulu forced him to steal, and that other children were kept locked up at the gang's base, the Bearded Mermaid. Picolo of the Thieves' Guild says that the gang forces women into prostitution and children into theft. The caretaker of the Silver Herd inn blamed the fighting between gangs for the many inns of the city that had been burned, ruined or left without anyone to run them.³⁴⁵

It is rumoured that the Night Rats are not rats in name only: under the full moon they become ratfolk, and they gain new members by biting them. The caretaker who repeated the story admitted it might be only a tale.⁶⁵

The same boy later carried an urgent note from Kala to Raphael, who paid him to say that he had not been able to find him.⁷

Zulu

Zulu, the gang's leader, came to Raphael's council of war in disguise, in human form, together with Picolo; they had already removed a Kalel lookout. The gang's members are said to change at night, and in planning the attack it was discussed that they would go in as humans and change inside.⁸⁹

The war on Kalel

When Raphael told Zulu that the master of Kalel wanted his head and his men's service, Zulu agreed to join the attack with about a hundred Night Rats. He rejected the idea of digging a new tunnel in a single night, and the plan used an existing sewer passage instead: thirty rats would hold the surroundings, twenty would go in through the front door as the first wave, and fifty would come through the sewers with the main force. The first wave paid heavily.¹⁰¹¹¹²

Spoiler: Zulu and KalelRevealSpoils: Raphael Efsanesi #2 · Say what you have read

After the battle it emerged that Kalel had made an earlier arrangement with Zulu, and that one of its officers called on him to change sides as agreed. Zulu refused, having learned that Kalel wanted his head, and threw a knife instead.¹³

Later

Derek Sunshield, seeking to clean up the city in the emperor's absence, said he wanted no Night Rats left in it.¹⁴