“We are going to build the biggest and most beautiful dam/wall right here where the sewer river runs into this fancy estuary ecosystem. We are going to build the greatest god dam/wall in history, it's going to have traps to catch so many critters that it will all look illegal and the fish and alligators we catch are going to pay for it!”
The rats immediately went to work, piling rocks and garbage into the river to dam it up. The work was so fast that it made Karen’s head spin. Within a day a thick 10ft wide dam was taking shape. The dam narrowed the sewer river into a 2ft wide fast moving stream down the middle.
The rats had even managed to scrounge up rebar and sheet metal that the Blacksmith Rat was working into two floodgates. With a crude pulley system, teams of rats pulled the heavy floodgates into position, one at the front of the dam and one at the back.
When the front floodgate dropped down, the flow of water was nearly stopped and the 2ft wide section of the dam instantly dryed out.
Karen eyeballed the rising water levels behind the dam. Maybe 30 min tops before the dammed up water overflowed. “Open the front floodgate! Rat Rock Throwers go stand on top of the dam, start tossing and lure us a gator!”
The estuary was swarming with critters, Karen had to Covfefe Ro Da a few that got too close during construction. In seconds, the first gator was lured into the 2ft wide section of the dam.
“Close the gates! Drop them both!” yelled Karen.
The water level dropped and the gator sensing danger tried to turn around and swim out. It bumped its nose on the sides of the dam, trying to wiggle it’s long body around. The gator did not have enough room to turn in the 2 ft wide channel that was quicking drying out.
When the gator’s feet touched the bottom, it tried to walk back out the way it came in. But it’s fate was sealed. Where the front floodgate was sheetmetal, the backgate was rebar. The holes between the rebar allowed the water to escape but not the gator.
The hungry rats above looked down onto the gator that was at least 12 feet below them in the dam and started tossing down rocks. The dam channel had become a killzone.
Karen and Rat Mom took turns stunning the croc with Covfefe and Crikey. Rat Mom felt bad about exploiting the blessing of the great Irwin but she had 12 kids to feed! The Rat Rock Throwers had a blast, with gravity accelerating their weapons at a stunned target, almost every hit was a critical strike onto the head of the poor croc.
*YOU HAVE DEFEATED A LEVEL 20 SEWER GATOR* Experience reduced for group kill, experience increased for killing a creature more than 10 levels higher than you. *LEVEL UP*
It took the Rat Army almost 23 minutes to butcher the gator and drag the meat out of the channel. The gator was just too large and heavy for even the Rat Army to drag out in one piece.
Karen could see that the blood was attracting more gators. “Gates up! Prepare for the next gator!”
After 2 more gator’s, the rat army was exhausted. With the dam trap, the gators were easy to kill, but it was hard work butchering and hauling the dinosaur sized beasts from Karen's canal of death.
“Rat Blacksmith, build me a crane to haul out the dead gators, butchering in the canal is slowing us down.” -Karen.
“Sure thing boss, but I've run out of scrap to build with. Back at the shop I got everything we need. I also got a hydro generator I'd like to haul over and install on these gates.”
“Fine, we’ll head back in a bit,” said Karen as she looked over her tired rats and the mountain of gator meat they had just harvested. She trotted up to meat mountain and took a few chomps off of a gator's tail sticking out of the pile. They probably couldn't eat 1/10 of it. “Lunch break! Everyone eat up. Rat Mom, grab some grub then join me on top of the dam.”
Karen licked clean her snout while she watched from the top of the dam, enjoying the scenery of the estuary. The entire place was miles across and the ceiling was cone shaped, with the tippy top breaking out onto the surface world, letting in a single beam of afternoon sun. The whole place was an undiscovered sinkhole that had gone out of control.
“Rat Mom, I'm going to need you to stay here and guard the fort. This shall be the new border of our rat kingdom. I name this dam; The Alamo, a very important place etched into the memories of my people. It was the turning point in my people’s history where we brought so much law and order to a place, that everyone else beyond our borders turned into illegals.
We later turned that place into the greatest parking lot for the greatest car rental company the world had ever seen.” Karen had many fond memories of smuggling drugs for the cartels in Alamo rentals.
“We did a hell of a job here. Just look at that meat mountain. I think this is at least twice as much meat as we got from those teenagers we ate top-side. Looks like we just solved our food problem.”
The overworked Rat Mom was already asleep and sprawled out, snoring on top of the dam with her pinkies suckling away.
Looking off into the estuary again, Karen wondered how the Ratboys were doing.
Tyrone had drawn some of the city above onto the dirt with Travis’s help and now they pondered the pros and cons of raiding each location. There was the orphanage at the center, the alleyway to Jahx’s shop, the nearby Dump, the Recycling Yard, the Pally PD/Church, the projects, the city hall that also doubled as the HQ of the local Adventurer’s Guild, and various homeless encampments dotted throughout the city.
Travis put a big X on two of the locations. “The Orphanage and Jahx’s shop are off limits. Next closest is the Dump, which has what we need; food, even if it’s just table scraps and spoiled garbage. But it's turf that is controlled by the Junkyard Dogs, a bunch of starving homeless that turned into thugs. They are protected by at least 12 strays that have become their guard dogs.
I don’t think we should fight them for the dump with our current numbers. They are eating garbage, so they are probably not as strong as the Graduates but they got at least twice the numbers, not counting the dogs they are named after. Maybe we can take them if we have both Rat Armies attacking them at the same time.
The Recycling Yard next to the Dump would be a great place to raid for coins. The Junkyard Dogs do brisk business picking through the trash for aluminum and other recyclables. Our scout rats see them all the time hauling over big garbage bags full of metal to be traded for cash. When they get enough money, they go to one of the homeless encampments to buy drugs or Jahx’s shop for liquor.
Next closest is Pally PD, aka the Church. That place is definitely off limits. They got high level hardasses in there that would kill us all with a stick and not break a sweat. After the police force was defunded and disbanded, the church stepped into the power vacuum with their own enforcers. The Church’s vice squads are the real power that control this city. They are armed and armored to the nines. We should steer clear of them and theirs.
The Projects next to pally PD is where most of our condoms full of drugs come from. The vice squads do regular patrols and searches of the projects and tenants usually flush their drugs when they come knocking. Since that place is controlled by the Church, it is also off limits.
Last but not least, the City Hall doubles as the Adventurer HQ, also a place that would be suscide to raid. But they do offer quests to clear out all the homeless encampments scattered around the city. These quests could be a way for us to loot drugs, money, and…. meat, all while getting paid by the Adventurers Guild to do it.”
Tyrone- “Well what are we waiting for then, that last option sounds perfect? Let's get going, the rat army won’t feed itself with us standing around here talking.”
Travis and Tyrone walked up the steps of city hall and into a waiting room full of empty chairs. The entire place seemed to be staffed by one elderly hirsute man slowly rubber stamping documents on his desk. As they approached the sloth-like receptionist, the bureaucrat immediately said, “take a number please.”
Tyrone and Travis looked around, found the ticket dispenser and took #345. Then they looked up and saw the now serving sign at #344. They shrugged and sat in the empty seats and waited.
After 30 min, their legs were falling asleep so they got up and walked over to the quest board. It was organized by rank and difficulty from top to bottom. They grabbed flyers for all of the easy tier one quests they were looking for and Tyrone started reading them off to Travis.
“Kill 10 rats… definitely not doing that one.” Tyrone said as he put that quest paper back onto the board. Ghepetto hisses in agreement. They sorted through the stack and found 3 quests that seemed to be perfect. They were all to inspect a prior team’s work and then clean out another homeless encampment. This looked similar to the sewer cleaning work they used to do back at the orphanage.
Travis and Tyrone became annoyed as they watched the beaurocrat, who was clearly half sloth, slowly work his way through the stack of papers. Stamping each sheet methodically, one at a time. An hour later, the slothman finally finished his stack and pushed a button on his desk. A chime sounded and the now serving sign finally flipped to #345.
“Hello kids, how can I help you today?” said the slothman as he looked at the quest papers they were holding. “Let me guess, you are newly graduated orphans who want to be registered as full fledged adventurers!”
