The Rats

The Rats’ earliest work was practical: warning families when a fire spread, guiding children away from collapsing slag banks, and sharing whatever could be scavenged. As Slaghearth rebuilt, their knowledge of service passages and abandoned works made them valuable to smugglers and thieves. The first captains began charging outsiders for safe passage, then protecting the routes with threats and violence. Their defining watershed came when district enforcers sealed several old refuge tunnels after a series of thefts. Dozens of children and families were trapped on the wrong side of the blockade. The Rats broke through a furnace service way and led them out, but their escape included a bloody clash with the guards. Since then, the gang has treated access to hidden routes as both a responsibility and a weapon. Over time the original warning network hardened into a hierarchy. The gang learned to rob storehouses, extort traders, and punish those who betrayed its shelters. Rusk Varn rose by bringing rival crews under one sign after years of fragmented feuds. His rule made the Rats more feared and more organized, but it also made their old promise of refuge conditional on loyalty. Today they remain woven into Slaghearth’s daily life: a threat to its residents, a source of protection for some, and a power the district cannot simply clear away.

Faction · Chaotic Evil

The Rats

To many residents, the Rats are dangerous children grown into dangerous adults.

Type: Street gang and mutual…
Size: 136 members
Reach: Local
Base: Slaghearth

Overview

How it began

The Rats began during a foundry fire remembered by survivors simply as the Long Burn. A row of cheap dwellings went up with the workshops, and children who escaped found themselves sleeping under slag chutes, scavenging scraps from the cooling pits. The first crew was not a gang so much as a chain of lookouts passing food and warnings from one shelter to another. They marked safe doors with a rat scratched in ash. Later crews kept the sign, and the name stuck.

How to know them

MottoFind the crack. Take the way.

EmblemA rat in ash-gray paint, its tail curled around a small black coal. On cloth, the mark is rough and often smudged, as if it was made in a hurry beside a furnace.

Colours

Ash gray, Soot black, Dull red

Signs

An ash-gray rat on a bandana
A black coal wrapped in gray cloth, used as a quiet sign that a refuge has supplies
Three short scratches beside a hidden door, meaning a route is watched

DressMembers wear whatever clothing they can repair or steal. The common mark is an ash-gray rat painted or stitched onto a bandana, usually worn at the neck or tied around an arm. Some older members use faded gray cloth without a visible emblem while working. Pit Captains may add a dull-red stitch to the rat’s tail, though the practice is informal.

Standing

AlignmentChaotic Evil

AgeSeveral generations old, with roots in the fires and foundry closures that remade Slaghearth.

WealthLow to moderate. The Rats have stolen goods, hidden stores, and access to favors, but little stable income and no secure reserve against a prolonged crisis.

What they say they want

Keep vulnerable people from being driven out of Slaghearth.

Protect the district’s poorest residents from predatory outsiders.

Maintain access to shelter, food, and safe routes during fires, searches, and industrial accidents.

What they are doing now

Secure the alleys and slag stairs connecting the district’s poorest blocks.

Keep rival crews from taking over the gang’s old refuge tunnels.

Find out who has been selling the names of runaway recruits to their former employers.

Gather enough food, fuel, and coin to survive the coming lean season without surrendering influence to the ward’s officials.

Where it leads

Rusk wants the Rats to become Slaghearth’s unavoidable power, able to decide who enters its hidden routes and who may profit from its streets. The old mutual-aid network could survive under that vision, but only as a resource the gang controls. Some members imagine a different future, one in which the Rats protect the district without claiming ownership of it.

How others see them

To many residents, the Rats are dangerous children grown into dangerous adults. Some quietly rely on their warning signals and food stores; others see only the threats, thefts, and bruises left behind. The ash-gray rat on a bandana can mean that a refuge is near, or that someone has been marked for trouble.

People

5 ranks

First Rat

Rusk Varn

Controlled, forceful, and observant. Rusk rarely wastes a threat, but he expects obedience once one has been given. He sincerely believes fear is the only protection the district’s poor can afford.

Rusk Varn1 member
Sets policy, decides major reprisals, and can overrule any crew. His authority rests on fear, loyalty from old hands, and the belief that he can keep the district from swallowing its own.
Pit Captains6 members
Lead local crews, assign lookouts and thefts, settle minor disputes, and bring reports to Rusk. Captains can make quick decisions in the alleys but must answer for losses.
Runners24 members
Carry messages, scout patrols, guide recruits, and move small goods through the district. Many are young or newly arrived, and their status is deliberately kept low.
Hands70 members
The full members who steal, intimidate, guard refuges, and collect the gang’s share. Their duties vary by crew, skill, and trust.
Sootlings35 members
Probationary members and children under the gang’s protection. Some receive food and shelter without being required to commit crimes, though Rusk’s crews increasingly blur that boundary.

Other key members

Tavi Runner and keeper of refuge routes
Helle Saar Pit Captain and planner of storehouse thefts
Osk Pit Captain responsible for discipline
Shirin Vey Quartermaster and shelter organizer

How they are organised

How it is runCrew-based gang with a centralized leader and informal refuge network

Who comes nextRusk has no publicly named successor. If he dies or is removed, the Pit Captains will meet to choose a First Rat, with the strongest claim going to whoever can keep the crews supplied and prevent a split. In practice, a captain who controls the refuge routes and the loyalty of the Sootlings could shape the choice. The meeting itself may trigger violence if rival crews bring armed supporters.

How they recruitMost recruits arrive as runaways, displaced workers’ children, or young people with nowhere safe to sleep. A member brings them to a refuge, where they are fed and watched before being assigned simple tasks. The gang teaches its signals and routes first, then tests loyalty through errands. The official story is that no one has to join to receive help; the reality depends on which crew takes them in.

To join

A recruit must be vouched for by a current member or arrive through one of the gang’s refuge routes.
New members must learn the gang’s signals and the locations of safe doors before being trusted with sensitive work.
Full membership requires a public show of loyalty, usually an assigned theft, lookout shift, or defense of a crew.
The gang claims to protect runaways, but in practice some captains make shelter contingent on work. Refusing a criminal order can endanger a recruit’s place in the refuge.

Operations

What they do

Theft and fencing of small valuables

Extortion of vulnerable businesses and laborers

Recruitment and sheltering of runaways

Protection of selected alleys and refuge routes

Information gathering through lookouts and runners

How they do it

Use children and small crews as lookouts, messengers, and distractions.

Threaten shopkeepers and laborers who refuse the gang’s demanded share.

Steal from stores and workshops during shift changes or when machinery masks noise.

Use old passages to evade patrols, move contraband, or surprise rivals.

Make examples of informants through public warnings, damaged property, and selective violence.

Services for hire

Safe PassageA modest fee, a favor, or a promise to leave a refuge route alone
A runner can guide a visitor through a limited section of the district, provided the party is not being pursued by the Rats.
Street KnowledgeCoin, useful goods, or information of equal value
The gang can identify likely patrol times, the location of an abandoned entrance, or which local crew controls a particular alley. Information may be incomplete or deliberately slanted.
A Night Under CoverFood, fuel, or a favor owed to the shelter crew
A person in immediate need may receive a meal and one night indoors. Continued aid depends on who brought them in and whether the refuge has supplies.

What they can do

They can coordinate lookouts and warnings across Slaghearth faster than most outsiders can move through it.

Their knowledge of abandoned foundry passages gives them unusual options for infiltration and escape.

They can blend into crowds of laborers, scavengers, and market workers, though the ash-gray rat mark risks exposing them.

Their refuge network can hide people for a short time, but it is uneven and vulnerable to betrayal.

What they have

A network of hidden paths through abandoned foundry works and service passages

Numerous lookouts among market stalls, ash yards, and low-cost lodging

A modest reserve of stolen food, fuel, tools, and coin

Local knowledge of patrol habits, old fires, and buildings weakened by subsidence

A reputation that makes many residents hesitate before informing on them

Where they are weak

Their authority depends on fear and can unravel quickly if residents stop believing the gang can protect them.

The refuge routes are valuable but fragile. A map or betrayal could expose people who are not members.

Many recruits are young, inexperienced, or loyal to individual shelter keepers rather than to Rusk.

The gang has little ability to withstand a sustained, organized crackdown.

Internal disagreement over whether protection must be earned threatens to split the crews.

Territory

Headquarters

Slaghearth

KindHidden refuge in an abandoned foundry chamber

A disused sorting chamber beneath a collapsed foundry annex. Its entrance is hidden behind a leaning furnace door, and its low rooms smell of damp coal, old grease, and boiled roots. A narrow vent carries the constant hiss of district machinery overhead. The gang has patched the chambers with stolen planks, scrap iron, and blankets, but smoke sometimes curls back through the cracks.

Lands they hold

The Slaghearth District’s foundry lanes and surrounding poor blocks

Abandoned service passages beneath former industrial works

Selected market approaches and alleys where the gang’s lookouts are established

Outposts

Coal SlotA bricked-over service niche near an old furnace laneStores food and basic tools for runners and newly arrived children.
The SiftA low arch beneath the district’s slag stairsA meeting point for captains and a place to pass messages beyond the main refuge.

Secrets

The big secret · GM only

The Long Burn was not simply an accident. A foundry proprietor ordered a service passage bricked up to protect the works and stored material, trapping people who had taken refuge there. The Rats possess a partial ledger naming the officials who approved the closure. Rusk has kept it secret because exposing it could bring dangerous attention to the refuge routes, while using it as leverage has become central to his plans.

What they really want · GM only

Use the Long Burn evidence to make district officials dependent on Rusk’s silence.

Bring every refuge route under the First Rat’s authority before a rival or the ward can seize them.

Identify and punish the person selling the names of runaway recruits, even if the evidence implicates a senior member.

Force Slaghearth’s wealthy interests to recognize the Rats as a political power, not merely a nuisance to be cleared away.

Hidden plans · GM only

Rusk is quietly gathering records of the people who abandoned Slaghearth during the Long Burn, hoping to use them as leverage against the district’s wealthy patrons.

A small circle of senior members wants to turn the gang into a permanent power in the district, even if that means making the runaways pay for their protection.

Some members preserve the old network of safe doors and want to keep it open to any desperate child, whether or not they join the gang.

Smaller secrets · GM only

Several Rats secretly send food to a household that once sheltered Rusk, despite his order to keep the gang’s supplies for members.

A Pit Captain has been paying a ward clerk for advance notice of searches, concealing the payments as ordinary theft losses.

The gang’s ash-gray bandanas are sometimes dyed with material stolen from a foundry store. A few batches leave a faint mark that identifies the source.

Some Sootlings are allowed to disappear from the gang without punishment when they find a safe home, though this is never admitted openly.

What insiders say · GM only

Trouble inside · GM only

The central fault line is whether the Rats are still a shelter for the desperate or merely a gang that recruits the desperate. Rusk insists that discipline keeps the refuge network alive, while several captains believe he has made the gang too dependent on intimidation. Older members remember mutual aid as the point; younger hands know only the rules and punishments. Another tension runs between crews that want to expand into nearby streets and those who fear that expansion will draw the kind of force the gang cannot survive.

Crimes · GM only

Plot hooks

4 hooks

1
The Mark in the Soot
Low to moderate; social investigation, stealth, or a confrontation with a small crewReward: Information, a safe route through Slaghearth, or the gratitude of a protected family
A runaway asks the characters to recover a bandana left at a scene of intimidation. The cloth could identify the responsible crew, but the runaway fears Rusk will punish anyone who exposes the gang’s refuge routes.
2
A Warm Hearth
Moderate; negotiation, investigation, and possible street combatReward: Local goodwill, payment, or leverage with a Pit Captain
A shopkeeper has been threatened over protection money and asks for help. The responsible Rats are also secretly keeping the shopkeeper’s children supplied with coal. The characters must decide whether to stop the extortion, preserve the aid, or find another way to protect the household.
3
The Passage Ledger
Moderate to high; tracking, infiltration, and a choice about who receives the mapReward: Access to the hidden routes, a favor from Rusk, or evidence of the ward’s plans
A patrol is preparing to seal the passages beneath the district after a series of robberies. The Rats ask the party to locate the people who sold the route map. The map includes a way into an occupied refuge, and the traitor may have been trying to get its residents out before the crackdown.
4
What the Fire Buried
High; regional political pressure, competing claims, and a dangerous search for the remaining recordsReward: A major debt owed by the Rats, public support, or proof that changes Slaghearth’s balance of power
A fragment of the Long Burn ledger surfaces in the hands of a salvager. Rusk wants it returned quietly, while Shirin believes its contents could force the district’s powerful to make restitution. The party can expose the truth, sell it, or help decide who will bear the consequences.

Work they offer

1Carry a warning through several foundry lanes before a patrol closes the routes.

2Find a missing Sootling who vanished after refusing a theft order.

3Retrieve stolen food from a rival crew without starting a district feud.

4Discover which clerk is selling patrol schedules to the gang.

What gets in the way

Members who joined for protection are increasingly pressed into robberies and reprisals they never agreed to.

Rusk’s hard discipline keeps the gang effective, but it is driving some of the oldest hands toward defiance.

The gang’s protection of runaways makes it harder for authorities to distinguish sanctuary from recruitment.

Several households depend on stolen coal and food the Rats distribute, leaving them fearful of both the gang and its enemies.

Rumours

1The Rats can get anyone through Slaghearth unseen if the price is right. Mostly true, though some passages have collapsed or are watched.

2Rusk keeps the original rat-mark from the Long Burn hidden under his coat. False, but the story helps make his authority seem older than it is.

3The gang gives every runaway a bed and never asks for anything in return. Partly true for the first nights, false for many who stay.

4A ward clerk takes money to keep the Rats’ routes open. True, though the clerk’s motives are not purely financial.

The Rats

The Rats

Overview

How it began

How to know them

Standing

What they say they want

What they are doing now

Where it leads

How others see them

People

First Rat

Other key members

How they are organised

Relations

Operations

What they do

How they do it

Services for hire

What they can do

What they have

Where they are weak

Territory

Headquarters

Lands they hold

Outposts

Secrets

Plot hooks

Work they offer

What gets in the way

Rumours

Media

Turn The Rats into a sheet