This story is turning out to be more fun to write than I'd originally planned, and is turning out to be a much longer story than I'd originally planned. At this point, I expect it to run 8-10 segments. I'll post segments each Tuesday and Friday.
If you haven't yet read the first segment of the story, I recommend doing so before reading this.
Brazen Blusterfuss led her companions down the rickety wooden stairway, daggers drawn. The wooden high heels of her black leather boots clacked against the steps. She glanced up at Blacksash with a smirk, "Seekolun? You wanna... buff me?"
"For crying out loud, Blusterfuss, give it up! First you spend all morning in the inn room running around topless, and now this crap. We know you're playing a female character, now get over it!"
The basement was dark, and old lady Witherby called down from the top of the stairs. "Be careful now, it's awfully dark down there!" It was indeed dark. And it smelled like rotten eggs and vomit. Ominous muttered something under his breath, and the end of his staff flared to light.
"Ominous! My freakin' infravision!", whined Blusterfuss.
Ominous sighed. "You don't have darkvision. You're a halfing. Halflings haven't had infravision since second edition."
"Crap. Okay. Fine." Blusterfuss looked around, her eyes trained on the edges of the light provided by Ominous's staff. "You know, this is wicked stupid anyway. Killin' rats ain't never gonna get us nowhere. I mean what are they? Like 2 XP?"
"They're all we've got. You heard the mayor. No more goblins, no more kobolds. All we've got are rats, and missus witherby said she had rats in her basement."
The party reached the bottom of the stairs and started working their way around the edge of the basement, eyes peeled. In the darkness, they heard squeaking. Ominous raised his staff a bit, extending the light marginally. The group moved slowly forward, weapons drawn.
As they edged forward, tiny glowing pinpricks became visible: beady little eyes. As they came fully into the light, the rats began to squeak even louder, advancing. Blusterfuss rushed forward at the rats, screaming a wordless berserker battle cry. Losing her balance, she did a bellyflop into the mass of rodents, stabbing wildly, and grunting as she received bites in kind.
Blacksash was staring at the rats intently, noticing something else. These rats weren't... normal. There was something wrong with them. Their tails appeared to be interconnected, making them into a single chained multi-rat creature.
Blacksash screamed. "RAT KIING!!!" He threw his mace at the thing, then turned and ran.
As he fled up the stairs, he heard over his shoulder swearing and the firing of magic missiles.
The next thing he remembered was an irate halfling pulling a paisley window treatment off his head. He was in the kitchen, hiding beneath old lady Witherby's curtains, which he'd torn from the wall. Blusterfuss's studded leather halter top seemed to have been gnawed off, and she was now wrapping the curtains around herself. They soaked up a fair amount of blood from the halfling's numerous scratch wounds, and old lady Witherby winced. Those were her good curtains.
"What. The. Hell? What the hell you thinkin', Blacksash? Runnin' yer lanky ass away while I get mauled by a freakin' rat king? I barely got away!" She kicked the shredded halter top across the floor. "You know how hard it is to find armor in my size?" She gestured at her unrealistic breasts which were now covered only by a makeshift paisley toga.
The fear hadn't yet entirely left Blacksash, and his voice trembled as he spoke. "M... My mother. She was killed by a rat king."
"Bull shit." said Blusterfuss, adjusting the curtain. You said yer family got killed by orcs, jus' like all ours did."
"My father and brother were killed by orcs. My mom died two years before that. It was a rat king."
"Ugh. I had enough o' this." said Blusterfuss as she turned to Ominous. "I swear. This bitch is makin' up his character history as he goes. Damn, Blacksash, at least heal me. I got no healing surges left after that."
Blacksash stood, clearing his throat, and looking a trifle embarrassed. "I can't."
"The hell you mean you can't? Course you can! You ain't used any healin' today, right?"
"Well, no. It's not that. I just..." He was beginning to blush. "I can't do it."
"What you mean you can't do it? Yer a cleric, ain'tcha?"
"Yeah."
"Then what?"
"I... I don't believe in the gods."
Stunned silence. Then Ominous spoke. "This... is a problem."
"What. The. HELL?? You mean yer what? An atheist cleric? The hell good is that?"
Blacksash sighed and shrugged awkwardly. "Garl Glittergold? I mean, come on! I'm sorry! Look, I'm still pretty good with my mace."
Blusterfuss looked incensed. "WHAT mace, BITCH?" She gestured back at Ominous, who produced the mace Blacksash had left downstairs. They'd managed to retrieve it before fleeing the rat king.
As Blusterfuss grunted in frustration and stormed out of the building, old lady Witherby called out "Keep the curtains, dear!"
"I think", said Ominous, "that we need a fighter."
So there's part two. Hope you got a laugh or two out of it. Turns out that there's actually a wikipedia entry on Rat King, which is kind of interesting.