In any proper D&D party, this would be where the rogue and wizard started bickering over tactics, the cleric began quietly praying for guidance, and the barbarian got impatient and just hit something.

  In this party, there was only one very small, very determined rat and the distant, indifferent rumble of Waterdeep rolling on far above.

  Jim paused at the base of the cracked masonry where the thin trickle of water disappeared between two misaligned bricks. The seepage carried that now-familiar vinegar-sweet burn, the signature of something that had no business existing in a sewer. His whiskers twitched, tasting danger in the air.

  “All right,” he thought, giving the damaged wall one final sniff. “Let’s find whoever’s using your home as a toxic waste dump.”

  He squeezed into the gap.

  The crack was more like a jagged, vertical chimney with strong opinions about who belonged inside it. Stone pressed in on both sides of his ribs immediately. Mortar crumbled under his claws, sending tiny avalanches of grit pattering down into the darkness below. The corrosive trickle hugged the left wall, turning every paw-hold slick and treacherous.

  His first slip came only a few feet up. His hind legs skidded on the wet film, and for one terrifying heartbeat he hung by his front claws alone, back legs scrabbling uselessly against smooth stone. The old animal part of his brain screamed pure panic. Six inches might not sound like much—until you were the six inches. A fall from here wouldn’t just hurt; it could break bones or leave him wedged at the bottom of the shaft until something worse found him.

  DC 15 Climb check, his human brain supplied with dark humor. Don’t roll a 1, Jim.

  He recovered, heart jackhammering, and pushed higher. The sewer stink gradually faded, replaced by drier smells: old dust, woodsmoke from a banked fire somewhere above, and growing stronger with every inch—the sharp, complex reek of alchemical reagents. Dried herbs, metal salts, something acid-sweet that made his eyes water and his nose burn.

  The shaft twisted sideways, forcing him to wedge himself almost vertically, then angled upward again. His shoulders scraped raw against rough stone. Every breath felt tighter than the last. Several times he had to stop, pressed flat, listening to his own pulse thunder in his ears while waiting for his muscles to stop trembling.

  Finally, the passage ended in a round stone throat. The underside of a floor drain. Cold droplets of condensation plinked onto his nose in slow, mocking rhythm.

  He squinted upward.

  A decorative iron grate was set into the cellar floor above, four elegant curved slits like flower petals. It was supposed to look civilized. Instead, one petal had been eaten thin and ragged, the metal pitted and scalloped as if something had been patiently chewing on it for weeks. Dried white crystals clung to the edges, and a faint greenish stain glowed with sickly familiarity.

  The Intuitive Appraisal triggered as his paw skimmed the softened rim.

  Structure: Basement Floor Drain

  – Condition: Heavily degraded from corrosive dumps

  – Integrity: Compromised (collapse risk high)

  – Note: Acid incompatible. Spectacular failure in progress.

  Jim tested the weakened edge with a careful push. It gave with a brittle flex and a sprinkle of orange grit.

  The hole looked big enough now.

  He wedged his head through the gap and began to wriggle through. Fur scraped harshly against cold, corroded metal. His ribs compressed painfully. For several long, terrifying seconds he was stuck fast—half in, half out—old primal terror flooding his system as he imagined himself trapped here, slowly starving while the humans above went about their business. He twisted, pushed, clawed, and finally popped through like a cork from a bottle, rolling onto the cellar floor in an undignified heap.

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  Grit puffed around his whiskers. He froze instantly, certain the sound had been as loud as a thunderclap to human ears.

  Nothing stirred.

  The cellar stretched out around him like a vast, shadowy warehouse. From ground level it felt enormous. Heavy barrels loomed on sturdy racks like wooden siege towers. Several showed clear signs of damage—dark stains running down their sides, iron hoops warped and half-dissolved. Wooden crates were stacked haphazardly against the walls, some bearing partial trade symbols he couldn’t quite make out from this low angle. The stone floor around the drain was spider-webbed with cracks, evidence of at least one heavy impact or spill.

  The smell hit him in layers: sharp reagents, sour corrosion, old wood, and underneath it all the unmistakable signature of the same substance he currently carried in his inventory. This was definitely the source.

  He moved carefully, hugging shadows, and scurried up a nearby stack of crates. The wood was rough under his paws, easy to grip. From the top of the stack he had a much better view: the underside of a stairwell leading up, the door at the top slightly ajar, and through the opening, a narrow slice of Dock Ward alley visible.

  That was when he heard them.

  Two voices drifted in from just outside the building, relaxed and slightly muffled. The sweet, herbal scent of dreamleaf smoke curled into the cellar on the night breeze. They were on a smoking break.

  “…swear to the gods, Ves, that last batch nearly ate straight through the barrel,” the man said, sounding tired and exasperated. “I told you the new reagent ratio was unstable.”

  A long inhale, then a slow exhale of smoke. The woman’s voice was younger, confident, with the polished Waterdhavian accent of someone who had once moved in better circles. “I fixed it. Near enough, anyway. And the Dungsweepers haven’t come banging on the door complaining, have they? The sewers are for waste. That’s literally their entire purpose.”

  The man gave a nervous chuckle, followed by another puff. “Maybe… but you didn’t see those rats. They looked… wrong. Bigger than normal. Meaner. Some of them had these weird patches missing from their fur.”

  Fantastic, Jim thought, teeth baring in a very un-ratlike snarl. Future encounter table: 1d6 Alchemically Mutated Sewer Rats, CR bumped by one. Coming soon to a dungeon near you.

  The woman—Ves—laughed lightly. “Rats always look wrong in the Dock Ward. Worst case, they all die and the smell gets a little worse for a week. Big deal. We’re making coin here, Jerrick. Real coin. The ships don’t ask where the solvent comes from, and the Watchful Order doesn’t need to know what their former star pupil is doing these days.”

  Jerrick grunted. “Still feels risky. If one of those barrels goes while we’re shipping it…”

  “That’s the carters’ problem. If it goes bad, we blame the damn rats. Relax. Have another puff.”

  Their voices faded as they stepped back inside and headed upstairs, the sweet dreamleaf smoke lingering in the air.

  Jim stayed perfectly still on his high perch, mind racing. Dock Ward Distillations. Ves, formerly of the Watchful Order. Jerrick, the nervous partner. A side-hustle turning solvents into profit for shipwrights, with the convenient philosophy that bad batches poured down a drain simply ceased to exist. They had already begun mutating rats. How long before something worse crawled out of the dark?

  He couldn’t kill them. He couldn’t even threaten them. He was still just a rat. One good sprint across open floor and he’d be a red smear under a boot.

  But now he knew their names. He knew their operation. He knew exactly where the poison was coming from.

  That was power.

  He crept back down the crates and returned to the damaged drain. The climb down was easier with gravity helping, though the memory of the near-miss on the way up still made his tail twitch.

  He was halfway back toward the nest chamber when the image slammed into him like a boot to the ribs.

  The limping rat with the shiny, half-dissolved hind leg.

  The burned scout who had stared at him with something close to awe after the glowing sludge vanished.

  The pups back at the nest, tiny and blind, squirming in the warm dark while the world above them slowly poisoned their entire future.

  All of it because two humans found it easier, cheaper, and more convenient to pour their failures straight into the dark than to deal with their own mess.

  His claws dug hard into the stone.

  No.

  Not anymore.

  The idea arrived fully formed—stupid, risky, perfect—very, very rat .

  He would hit them where it actually hurt: their stock, their profits.

  Jim stopped descending. For a long moment he hung there in the dark shaft, heart pounding with new purpose.

  Then he turned around and began climbing back up toward the cellar, claws gripping with fresh determination.

  In his inventory, the mass of unstable alchemical sludge pulsed like a living promise.

  It was time to start playing the game for real.