The Rat King (SLASH'EM)
Template:Monsym/rat king Rat King 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 16 |
| Attacks |
Weapon 2d4, Bite 2d3 |
| Base level | 12 |
| Base experience | 359 |
| Speed | 15 |
| Base AC | 7 |
| Base MR | 0 |
| Alignment | 0 (neutral) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | Unique |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 200 |
| Nutritional value | 120 |
| Size | Medium |
| Resistances | stoning |
| Resistances conveyed |
None |
|
The Rat King:
| |
| Reference | SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2/monst.c#line1476 |
The Rat King appears only on his level in SLASH'EM. Although all other r are tiny animals, he is in fact medium sized and able to use weapons, wands and scrolls.
Strategy
He can be quite dangerous to the unwary adventurer, owing mainly to the fact that he is reasonably fast, has a lot of hit points, and is always armed with a long sword, meaning his weapon attacks hit relatively hard. He can also use any wands or other magic items that are found in his room, making him potentially all the more dangerous.
Origin
In biology, a rat king refers to a group of rats, that are knoted and sticking together at their tails and sometimes legs. It shares some similarity with siamese siblings, but as opposed to actual siamese twins (like a cat king) the rats are joined postnataly. Radiographical images show, that the tails of the joined rats have had fractures in their tails which healed, implying the rats were alive in that state for a prolonged time. This is possible, because the species Rattus rattus (Germany) or Rattus argentiventer (Java) are very social, and rats who aren't stuck in rat king feed the members of the rat king. If you have pet rats (real life), don't worry, about them sticking together, pet rats are of the species Rattus norvegicus who wouldn't feed each other and tend to "euthanize" injured rats.
Initially, rat kings there believed to be hoaxes, by pranksters, who knotted a bunch of dead rats together, but given the X-ray confirmation, what it was alife, and the fact, that it was found in Germany and Java, two rather distant cultures, it is know sure, that rat kings do exist. It is still not known what makes the rats stick together.
The more literally Rat King as a large humanoid rat with a crown is based on the ballet The Nutcracker by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, where the Rat King is the villain. This ballet is based on the novel The Nutcracker by the German writer E. T. A. Hoffmann, where the Rat King is discriped closer to the biological Rat King. As the purpose of ballet is to see beautiful women dancing, the disturbing image of a real life rat king would be rather inappropriate there.
