Age of the Rat

[Zor]

This brief peice of original fiction was inspired by Surlethe's Global Mean temperature and by thinking about Rats.

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The Species Rattus Norvegicus (Brown Rat) is among the most successful species on Earth, having spread across the world with Eurasian Civilization. But Rats are more than just mindless Vermin like locusts or roaches. Rats are intelligent, social creatures capable of rather complex communication among themselves and a highly developed video memory. Rats are able to thrive on a wide variety of foods, from meat to vegetation and Rats themselves have rather dexterous frontal paws. As well, they breed very quickly, allowing rapid changes in their genetic structure by Natural Selection, a trait that has allowed them to adapt to the methods of extermination that humans have thrown at them.

Now Envision this...

Due to a combination of nuclear and biological warfare, global warming, plagues and food shortages, within the next 150 years mankind has been reduced to small hunter gatherer bands. Meanwhile, across the planet, natural selection begins to change the creatures. The sudden removal of large numbers of humans, which provide the rats with a constant supply of food, forces the populations of Rats to adapt. Those Rats which can communicate with their groups more efficiently do better, and said populations survive, thrive and establishes new populations among other rat colonies. The result of this is a major increase in intelligence over a very short period of evolutionary time, this eventually leads to the rats beginning to apply this knowledge like many other creatures, to the use of tools, like dropping stones on prey in ambush from trees or cracking open eggs with rocks. The result of which means that the rats now are able to more actively hunt prey, which father hones their ability to use tools, increases their size as they go after more active prey and improves their ability to kill communicate as more successful hunters are better able to defend their kin and provide food for them, passing on their genes and creating bigger, more intelligent rodents, which allows them to go on after larger prey. Due to their reproductive rate and populations around the world what took early hominids millions of years, the rats are capable of doing within tens of thousands.

Human interaction with the rats was originally one of hunting and slaughtering them like any other animal, but eventually, a new relationship began to emerge. It is 70,000ce and certain human tribes are beginning to interact with rats (which are now up to a meter long tail included and weigh on average 10 kgs and normally walk upright), they use rats as guard animals, a practice that started by leaving scraps of food out for rats who acted as an early warning system in case of danger and following them about as they smelt out mushrooms and other hidden food morsels, with emotional bonds developed between humans and rats, like humans and dogs have. Latter, colonies of humans and rats begin to live together, with rats being used for hunting animals to help bring down prey, like dogs, but dogs can't stab with pointed rocks or throw sticks chewed pointy at their prey. Within a period of 2,000 years, humans have done with these new rats what their ancestors had done with dogs, and domesticated them. They then begin breeding rats for qualities, such as size and intelligence, adding artificial selection to the natural kind which had Driven Rat evolution, and the humans want their servant Rats to be bigger and more intelligent to do more complex tasks.

Now it is 75,000 and a new age of civilization has begun. Humans have established copper age agricultural towns, human civilization is beginning to re-emerge. However, they now have a large number of Rats, being used to herd sheep and digging with proper training. This, however, shall prove to be costly, as the rats gain in intelligence and capacity, and every so often a few escape into the wilderness and breed with their kin, elevating wild rats even further and soon leading to increasingly intelligent colonies of wild rats being a pain in the side of local humans.

Now the year is 79,000 in what was once upon a time called Spain, a human civilization has established itself and has prided itself on having the best rats, which has allowed a single small city state standing on was once Madrid to rise to power. These rats are particularly large and intelligent, they stand, while hunched over, up to 1.5 meters tall and weigh up to 50 kilograms. They are used as beasts of burden, building the structures of their master's cities and digging in mines and as cannon fodder, hurled at their enemies under watch of keepers armed with crude bronze tipped spears in vast numbers to overwhelm their enemies. A few are used in farming, plowing the fields and harvesting. Vassal states provide vast quantities of food other materials for the capital to sustain it. But eventually the whole thing ends when a few rats, who after being tortured by a particularly merciless slave master, kill him, leading to a riot that consumes the capital and all humans are either killed, or enslaved. These human slaves combined with Rats trained in basic crafts and agriculture keep the city able to supply itself with food, and the rats are able to bully the empire's vassals into tributing them with arms and armor lest they be ripped apart by armies of armored rodents. The Rats gradually begin to expand, using vast numbers to launch attacks on human settlements in a new age, in a world where Skaven have ceased to be only long forgotten fiction, but are a reality, as mankind faces the dawn of the age of the rat.

[KlavoHunter]

I, for one, welcome our new rodent overlords!