The gang is your life, your family, and your pack. Your fellow Rats give you a steady place in the chaos of Stormreach’s mean streets. You get respect because you’re a Rat, but you have to earn it every day. Intimidation is the gang’s specialty, and you do your part to terrorize the Rats’ enemies. Keep people afraid, and they’ll never rise against you. Threaten, make examples out of agitators, and send strong messages to any who oppose you and yours. Strangers don’t know you except by the reputation of the gang . . . and they don’t know if you are dock vermin or a Gifted Rat.
You are part of the food chain and must accept your place with the Rats. You take care of them, and they take care of you. Failure never goes unpunished, but neither does hard work go unnoticed. Serve loyally, and you get the Gift. Betray the Circle of Plague, and you end up as its next meal.
The Gift changes you forever. From then on, you are a Rat to the bone and core of your soul. Once you are bitten, the disease festering in your veins assures your loyalty. Your thoughts are never human again . . . even your dreams are those of a rat. You no longer question your superiors, since the desire and will to question is no longer in your nature. If your life can save the pack, you sacrifice it without thought or hesitation. You hope to rise high through service to the pack and someday enter the Circle of Plague to command your lessers.
Combat
A stand-up fight is for the arena, and for fools who have something to prove. You don’t believe in honorable combat, and you prefer to fight with a tremendous advantage over your enemy. Like the vermin of your namesake, you overrun your foes with superior numbers, and you ambush them from the depths and the dark. The best fight is one in which the enemy is dead before he has a chance to draw his blade or cast a spell.
Advancement
The Circle of Plague extracts payment in both gold and loyalty. If you pay in hearty shares of both, there is no limit to how high you can rise with the Rats, but you are only as good as your last week’s earnings. If the amount of earnings you kick up to the Circle starts to slip, you might just take a fall. Maintaining lucrative rackets or taking initiative against the Rats’ foes are the two fastest ways to work up the gang’s ranks.
Once you get your bite and become a Gifted Rat, advancement becomes more about the pack’s well being. You fill positions as they become available and the more successful the gang gets, the more highranking positions are created to manage new turf and rackets.