Rat-catchers, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
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A Comprehensive Guide to Old World Rat Catchers
A Comprehensive Guide to Old World
Rat Catchers
A Comprehensive Guide to Old World Rat Catchers
Credits and Further Reading
Article compiled by Dave Allen. Sources include Children of the Horned Rat, The
Loathsome Ratmen and their Vile Kin, White Dwarf, Blood on the Reik, Witch Finder,
Marienburg: Sold Down the River and Middenheim: City of Chaos. Thanks to Dan
White, Andy Law, Steve Darlington, Jody Macgregor and the gang on the Black
Industries forums for advice on this article.
Thanks to Robin Low for his thoughts on Rat Catchers. Read Robin’s in-depth article
A
Fistful of Rat Tails
in issue 24 of Warpstone magazine, which gives extra information on
the family unions in Altdorf, bounty payment, use of trappings and many other aspects
of the ‘definitive WFRP career’.
Thanks also to Tim Eccles for his thoughts on the Rechenguild of Carroburg. More
information about the city and it’s guilds can be found in issue 26 of Warpstone.
Copyright © Games Workshop Limited 2006. Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo, Black Industries
and their respective logos, Warhammer and all associated marks, logos, places, names, creatures, races and
race insignia / devices / logos / symbols, locations, weapons, units, characters, products, illustrations and
images from Warhammer are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2006, variably registered in
the UK and other countries around the world. All Rights Reserved.
A Comprehensive Guide to Old World Rat Catchers
A Comprehensive Guide to Old World Rat Catchers
Jakob Bleich - Rat Catcher
Jakob is from Wurtbad. The town is not one of the Empire’s largest and Jakob works
alongside a small group of professional Rat Catchers who have not numbered more
than a dozen during his tenure. They have formed an informal guild to make sure that
commissions are shared out amongst them so that no single Rat Catcher goes without
a big job for too long, and to make sure that no enthusiastic amateurs or itinerant Rat
Catchers attempt to cash in on their business. Jakob has a fine reputation within this
group, his skill with the sling has won him particular kudos.
Most of the commissions come from the town’s famous Vintner’s Guild, who pay very
good coin to make sure that supplies of grain goes on to become wine without suffering
from spoilage from rodents. The owners of the famous hot spring baths in Wurtbad also
provide a lot of custom, as the sight of a rat or two in their buildings can be a turn off for
their rich clientele.
Jakob regularly visits Wurtbad’s lively Stahlstrasse, in the Griefweg neighbourhood of
the town. This area can provide a lot of income for a good Rat Catcher, as the owners
of the abundance of taverns, brothels and gambling dens that can be found there like to
keep their premises sanitary. Jakob’s connections here have netted him a lot of income
that he hasn’t been honest about with his fellows in the guild, a fact that would annoy
them a great deal were they to discover it.
In Wurtbad the sewer system is limited to the rich part of the town, in the poorer areas
shallow channels ferry effluent slowly to the Stir. The town’s elite make sure the city
authorities pay a very generous bounty of four pence per tail for sewer rats, and the
local Shallyan Temple of the Lonely Sacrament lobbies to make sure the poor district
does not go unattended. In lean times Jakob can be found patrolling the sewers and
streets of the town with his small black-tan terrier, Finkler.
Jakob has never even heard of such a thing as the Skaven, the Ratmen have no
presence under the town or in the immediate surrounding area. Were Jakob and his
colleagues to hear of such creatures they would willingly add their voices to those who
regard them as mere fancies.
The Rat Catcher is a common sight everywhere in villages, towns and cities,
making a living by disposing of the vermin which infest all dwellings in this
unsanitary age.
Rat Catchers are often travelling folk, moving from village to village in order to make a
living, although in a large town or city settled ‘vermin soldiers’ may actually be employed
by the authorities and have their interests attended to by their own guild. Rats are their
chief enemy, but a Rat Catcher will also be able to deal with moles, mice and similar
pests. It isn’t a great life, and many soon retire from the cellars and seek adventure in the
clean air of the country where they become favoured scouts among adventurers who
poke around in caves and caverns.
Rat Catchers are well established in most settlements of any size. They are a common
sight, especially in the poorer areas, with their ratting poles and their small but vicious
dogs. A Rat Catcher may be known as Cazarratas in Estalian, Rattenfänger in Reikspiel,
Ratier in Bretonnian and Acchiappatopi in Estalian.
Day to Day Rat Catching
There are many reasons why an inhabitant of the Old World might take up rat catching.
Most Rat Catchers are employed purely as pest controllers, accepting commissions to
rid a particular area, such as a barn or a tavern kitchen, of rats or other vermin; or they
make money by taking a bounty in times of plague. Some hunt rats for other reasons
though, such as to provide live rats to scholars, or establishments that hold rat baits.
There is even a small market for charms made out of parts of dead rat, and in large cities
you may encounter a Rat Catcher who supplements his living by peddling ‘lucky rat’s
claws’. There are also those who have ulterior motives for delving into and surveying the
sewers of the Old World’s cities, these can include the cultists of some foul god, looking
for a secret and secure place to hold rituals and private gatherings, as well as those who
seek to uncover (or to cover up) evidence of the existence of the Skaven.
Rat Catchers work, and are invariably encountered, on their own. Rat Catching isn’t a
desirable job, the pay is not good and the working conditions can easily lead to an early
death as the result of the infections that can be caught from rat bites or from spending
time in unsanitary environments. Still, it is a living, and many cities and large towns
around the Old World have a Rat Catchers’ guild or union to help look after the interests
of their members. The job is a relatively easy one to enter and, once established, a Rat
Catcher can make a fairly steady, albeit meagre, income.
There are many opportunities available to successful Rat Catchers, though they may
have to have an unscrupulous streak in order to be able to take advantage of them, after
all, it is common for Rat Catchers to acquire the skills needed to become a Cat Burglar
or Thief if they don’t find the life of a pest controller rewarding enough.
Rats breed throughout the year, but litters born in the spring or summer months typically
have more of a chance of surviving and bearing litters of their own, so Catchers tend to
do brisk business between the equinoxes, Mitterfruhl and Geheimnistag. However, they
tend to recieve more commissions for clearing premises of rats in the winter months
(when they tend to be bolder about entering buildings in order to seek shelter).
Main Profile
WS
BS
S
T
Ag
Int
WP
Fel
37
41
32
39* 35
37
36
30
Secondary Profile
A
W
SB
TB
M
Mag
IP
FP
1
11
3
3
4
0
0
3
* An advance has been taken in this characteristic.
Skills:
Animal Care (+10%), Animal Training, Gossip, Common Knowledge (The
Empire), Concealment, Perception, Search, Set Trap, Silent Move, Speak Language
(Reikspeil).
Talents:
Marksman (added to profile above), Resistance to Disease, Resistance to
Poison, Specialist Weapon Group (Sling), Tunnel Rat.
A Comprehensive Guide to Old World Rat Catchers
A Comprehensive Guide to Old World Rat Catchers
Rural Rat Catching
There isn’t much in the way of underground
sewer systems in the countryside, but there
are lots of barns and farmhouses that can
suffer from infestations of rats or mice. The
arable farmland of the Empire is also home
to vermin such as moles, field mice,
rabbits, foxes and (during the spring when
fields are being sown) crows and other
birds that eat seeds.
Successful rural Rat Catchers might be
called upon to deal with less mundane
threats, like clearing out infestations of
small greenskins such as Snotlings or
Gnoblars.
Rural Rat Catchers in WFRP
Whilst most Rat Catchers in the Empire (and
almost all from other areas of the Old World)
work in rural communities the career as
written assumes the rather more archetypal
image of the urban pest controller, scouring
the sewers with his Tunnel Rat talent.
Rural Rat catchers would not have had the
same opportunities to develop this particular
ability, but they are famous for wandering
from place to place in search of work. As a
result of this alternative lifestyle it is
suggested that rural Rat Catchers take the
Orientation talent instead of Tunnel Rat if
they wish.
A Family Affair.
A new run of
The Rats of Hammstadt
is being performed at the
Rotunda Playhouse in Altdorf’s run-down East End district. The play is unusual in that
the director has cast one of the feuding families in a flattering light. The impoverished
and sprawling Stahlt family are usually as venal and myopic as the other members of
the town, but in this production they are cast as a poor yet noble clan who urge the
other families to cooperate but are ignored.
This has caused some outrage in Altdorf’s Rat Catcher community, as the other
families claim that the Wiesal family have obviously had some say in the production in
an attempt to satirise the more successful Frettchen and Hermelin families. Asked to
comment on the situation by a writer for the
Altdorf Speiler
, the aging playwright Detlef
Sierck has claimed that he would “never have sunk to such a vulgar analogy in the first
place”, and so washes his hands of the affair.
Pieter Hermelin, one of the more senior members of his family, is curious to learn the
truth of the matter, and has put the word out to some underworld contacts of his to see
if some larcenous types can be hired to find or fabricate some evidence of the Wiesals’
involvement with the play.
A Giant Draw.
The Splintered Skull in Wurtbad is one of the more popular taverns
along the town’s Stahlstrasse. One of the entertainments held at the tavern is a regular
rat bait, where dozens of trapped
rodents are thrown into a pit and bets
taken on which will be the last one
standing. A recent visitor to the
tavern, a northerner with some
irritating airs and graces, has watched
one of these baits and loudly pooh-
poohed the performance. Apparently
the Drowned Rat in Middenheim has
a similar arrangement, except the rats
they have compete against one
another are three feet long, and that’s
not including the tails.
Leopold Arschel, the organiser of the
rat baits, paid to have the northerner
soundly worked over by a pair of local
Protagonists, but the tale of the giant
rats has excited his imagination. He’s
pondering getting in touch with his
cousin Laurencius, who moved to
Middenheim some years back to
pursue a vocation in ceramics, to see
if he can hire some likely lads to go to
the Drowned Rat and try to get their
hands on one of these monster
vermin and have it sent to Wurtbad.
Payment
Many town and city councils levy a standard bounty on rat tails. Usually this is a
meagre amount, rarely exceeding a few pennies per tail, but in times of plague (or
rumoured plague), or in an effort to beautify a certain area of the town or to be seen to
care more for the hygiene of the city, the authorities might increase the bounty to five or
more pence a tail. It is only during these times that Rat Catchers are likely to be found
living up to their reputation for skulking about in the sewers to earn their living, as the
money to be made from the bounty recoups the costs of regular laundry and justifies
the risk of contracting some disease. Councils may well pay a higher bounty if the
catcher can prove he has dealt with a giant rat, or a rat with an obvious mutation.
Councils often refuse to pay the bounty unless a certain number of rat tails are turned
over at a time, a dozen or a score, for example. This prevents them from the extra
administration they would have to perform should they be dealing constantly with
opportunistic killers of vermin.
Most of the money a Rat Catcher makes comes from accepting a commission to rid a
certain area, such as a field or a warehouse, of vermin for a private individual.
Sometimes these individuals will pay for a bounty per dead rat, but to avoid
unscrupulous Rat Catchers from obtaining dead rats from other sources most
employers will simply pay on completion of the task, often offering the Rat Catcher
relatively little up front, but then a bonus on quick and efficient completion of the task.
The Rat Catcher can then take the rats he has killed and claim any bounty the local
authorities award for rat tails.
More money can often be made by capturing rats alive. These can then be sold to
various interested parties who will be willing to pay more than a few pence for delivery
of whole live specimens. The universities in large cities pay for rats in order to teach
scholars of the little understood science of Biology a little about anatomy or
reproduction in animals.
Those Rat Catchers who trap large numbers of their prey alive can make extra money
A Comprehensive Guide to Old World Rat Catchers
A Comprehensive Guide to Old World Rat Catchers
Adventure Seeds for Rat Catchers
A Musical Remedy.
It can be tedious forever going back to the traps you have laid just
to find them empty, and dangerous cornering frightened rats in the hope of taking them
out with a blow from your ratting pole, and mucky and unpleasant scouring the sewers
for vermin with your small dog - what if the often repeated rumours of individuals able to
charm and control rats with a musical instrument were true?
People talk of the animal charmers of Ind, able to make the rats there dance to the tune
of squealing flute, but stories are also told of individuals with similar skills in the Empire.
The most famous of these are the tales of the Pie-Eyed Piper of Middenheim, said to be
able to charm vermin from their holes with his playing. The motif has even made it into
a Detlef Sierck’s
The Rats of Hammstadt
, and variations on the trick are performed
regularly in carnival sideshows.
Surely many a Rat Catcher has daydreamed about utilising such an easy method to
make his living? However, there is a darker side to such stories, in that the musical Rat
Catchers are often said to have brokered a deal with dark gods for their gifts, and that
their real prey isn’t rats, but children.
The Snake God.
Some scholars talk of how the reptilian inhabitants of the New World
once fought an infestation of rats running rampant in their jungle home and spreading a
virulent disease. Myths translated from stolen stone plaques are said to speak of the
priests of the lizardmen invoking an ophidian god, who sent swarms of serpents into the
rats’ tunnels to consume or poison them all, leaving the Lustrian jungles mysteriously
free of rats to the present day, a fact many explorers of the New World confirm.
Such legends may be of great appeal to Rat Catchers, who might offer up the odd
private prayer to the Lustrian snake god, or bear the likeness of a snake as some kind
of personal totem. Of course, the worship of such a strange and alien deity would not
be looked upon with kindness by many of the traditional religious authorities in the Old
World.
A Trip to Tilea.
These days the Rat Catchers who regularly patrol the sewer system of
Delberz do so with a freshly formed force of Sewer Jacks. They never encounter
Ratmen, but those amongst them with sharper hearing often claim to be able to hear
sounds of activity emanating from below.
Direktor Liebrecht Schleicher, the head of the Delberz Guild of Safety and Sanitation
(which looks after the interests of numerous parties including the town’s Rat Catchers,
Sewer Jacks and Dung Farmers), has studied accounts of the histories of Tobaro and
Miragliano. Based on his knowledge of these cities he is planning to finance an
expedition to Tilea in order to hire the services of some of the country’s most
experienced Skaven hunters.
However, the Skaven are keeping a careful eye on their enemies above, and plan to
shadow the expedition to make sure they don’t return to Delberz. They will send a party
of their own to ambush the travellers in some quiet location, and may also try and get in
touch with members of the Tavelli family, a Miraglianese clan who have had a
longstanding alliance with the Ratmen and remain members of the dwindling Poison
Claw Cult. These human followers of the Horned Rat will act to head the party off if they
reach Tilean soil.
by selling rats to entertainers around the cities of the Old World, who regularly hold rat
baiting contests in taverns. These betting contests take many forms, starved rats can be
set on each other in a pit and bets taken on which rats will survive, or bets can be taken
on how long it will take a rat dog to kill a dozen rats. The capture of a giant rat, or rats
with notable mutations, can make a real draw for an establishment running such
competitions. The organisers of rat baiting events may even be generous enough to
allow the Catcher to remove the tails of his catch in order to collect the bounty on them.
Another group of customers who desire live rats are those who are interested in having
them as pets. These can include noblewomen who have succumbed to the fashion of
keeping fancy white rats in gilded cages (it is rumoured in some corners of the world
that there is something special, if not even uncanny, about a rat with white fur, and
some are therefore kept in the belief that they are lucky talismans). Some of these
customers are even wizards, who are on the look out for a large and healthy specimen
to make a suitable familiar. Pleasing such luminary customers can make the Rat
Catcher a highly useful contact.
Some Rat Catchers take to breeding dogs. There is a healthy market for these animals
as the small but vicious breeds favoured by the Rat Catchers are also favoured by those
with an interest in animal baiting and dog fights, or even clearing out infestations of
Snotlings.
What can you expect from a Rat Catchers’ Guild?
Rat Catchers’ guild houses tend to be poor premises – for example the Middenheim
Ratter’s guild is based in a room above a tavern in the somewhat rough Ostwald district
of the city.
Joining a Rat Catchers’ guild is often easier than most, in many towns and cities there is
often a dearth of Rat Catchers, especially in times of plague (when the demand for Rat
Catchers is higher) or in a location with a Skaven problem (where potential recruits can
be put off by rumours of the Ratmen and Rat Catchers are more likely to meet a violent
end whilst working in the sewers). As such the family ties, proofs of experience or official
recommendations that more salubrious guilds might require from a potential member
are often overlooked in the case of Rat Catchers.
However, because of these lax entry requirements, as well as the fact that many of their
members are very impoverished, Rat Catchers’ guilds can be open to corruption and
bribery.
The Rat Catchers guild usually have reasonably accurate maps of the sewer systems of
their home city, though in order for an inquisitive individual to get a look at one he or she
would need to be a guild member, a figure of some authority, be able to pay a decent
bribe or craft a convincing cover story.
Operating as a Rat Catcher without guild membership carries the usual risks, but as Rat
Catchers’ guilds tend not to have the funds to pursue justice via the courts a putative
Rat Catcher who works without guild membership can find himself on the receiving end
of some rough justice at the hands of some cheap hired thugs, rather than being forced
to take part in what may be costly legal proceedings.
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