Arantia’s Ratter’s Guild

Under the protection of the city’s mages, Arantia has grown into a sprawling metropolis, one crisscrossed by underground tunnels. But in its labyrinthine sewers and forgotten canals, a different kind of commerce thrives, one far removed from the arcane dealings of the surface. This is the domain of the Ratter’s Guild, an organization that controls the city’s undercroft. They are not, as their name suggests, simple pest-catchers, for they more often than not work as reclaimers, guides, and the grim gatekeepers of the city’s foundations.

Ostensibly, the Guild pays fealty to the city by managing the vermin population, keeping the sewers clear, and dealing with the occasional otyugh or carrion-crawler that finds its way up from the depths. This is merely a front for their true business, though: salvage and smuggling. The sewers of a city as old as Arantia are a graveyard of its own history, one that the Ratters are happy to “mine”, dredging up centuries of lost items. Anything from signet rings of extinct noble houses, to discarded murder weapons, and sometimes, even lost arcane trinkets that have washed down, are recovered daily by the Ratters.

Their other service is guidance. For the right price, a Guild Ratter can navigate a person from one end of Arantia to the other without them ever seeing the sky. They know every cistern, every collapsed crypt, and every secret passage that connects a mage’s cellar to the main sewer artery. Many other organizations use them for infiltration into their enemy’s territories, wanted criminals use them for escape, and the paranoid Arcane Conclave pays them handsomely to know—or to seal—these hidden routes.

Membership in the Guild is a brutal affair. Initiates, known as “chum”, must spend a month in the darkness of the undercroft, mapping a new section of the tunnels and surviving on whatever they can catch. Many are lost to disease, cave-ins, or the things that feast on the city’s refuse. Those who return have proven their hardiness and are given a “rat mark”, a brand on their palm that identifies them.

The Ratter’s Guild is a necessary, foul-smelling, and deeply pragmatic order, but one crucial to the proper functioning of a city such as Arantia, and those who know the width of their services recognize its important role in the city’s ongoing political and social landscape.