Regal Rat
| PESTILENTIAL STAFF | |
 Regal Rat |
Access: None Additional Access: Wherever you can vent crawl to Difficulty: Easy Supervisors: None Duties: Establish your territory over Maintenance, chew upon as many wires as possible! Guides: This is the guide. Quote: Grime on the airlocks, grease on the trigger. Go get your hands dirty, will ya? |
According to all known laws of station engineering, maintenance should not exist. Stations constructed during humanity's initial bout into the stars had their power grid and ventilation systems laid completely under the floors of their hallways, a fact corroborated by the excavation of ancient stations. The reason for their sudden, and continued ubiquity is unknown. Extensive cataloguing by Nanotrasen historians have demonstrated that power grid security does not increase with the presence of maintenance, rather, it decreases due to the ease of deployment and concealment of some Syndicate devices.
Nonetheless, maintenance continues to be a signature feature of Nanotrasen stations. The reasons behind this are unknown. Leaked documents of questionable validity have asserted that Nanotrasen engineers have been afflicted with a madness, persay, of maintenance construction. Even when the dimly lit, cramped, safety hazards of the corridors are not specified on design documents, even when supervisors are posted (who also, inevitably, no matter how noble or steadfast their character, succumb to believing that maintenance corridors are a necessary part of the station), even when stations are built by machine intelligences, all Nanotrasen stations uniformly maintain the common characteristic of maintenance linking the various departments of the station.
The document offers few hints of what may drive these delusions. It details the sometimes obsessive habits of Assistants on Nanotrasen payroll to mill about, doing nothing in particular within the confines on maintenance. It cites statistics, highlighting how the frequency of murders, muggings, eldritch activities, and xenobiological contamination increases from anywhere between threefold and tenfold within maintenance as compared to the regular hallways of the station. It highlights how creatures, their home planets often separated by thousands of parsecs, have spontaneously manifested within the premises on one Nanotrasen station's maintenance.
As for the cause? It's left up in the air, but recent developments have shown assistants making sacrifices to the "maint gods", with common invocations being for "dies of fate", "skeletal trombones", and "tabling armor". Most concerning of all, some of these prayers appear to have been answered. And as of late, the piles of trash that accumulate seem to have been stirring...
Here Comes the Squeaks!
Whenever the Mice Migration event triggers a bunch of mice get spread out over maintenance. It varies per round, but on average it should be around ten mice. Each mice has a 2% chance of spawning as a Regal Rat, which in total works out to about a 20% chance of having a Regal Rat spawn whenever Mice Migration is triggered. Somewhat uniquely, the spawning of a Regal Rat is untied to dynamic and its threat levels.
In addition, a non-sentient Regal Rat can be spawned by feeding a mouse some 
Royal Cheese, which is cookable in the kitchen. They'll probably keep it caged and try to milk it for profit, so it's not as interesting, is it?
Somewhat unrelated, but normal mice can eat nearby cheese they encounter to spawn more mice. Use this information as you will.
Objectives
Hoard wealth (and cheese!), establish a Regal Ratdom in maintenance, chew through the flesh of any interlopers, command your legions to kamikaze the station's power grid. Lead an invasion against your rival Regal Rat(s), assuming that they exist!
His Majesty, Himself
The Giant Rat that makes all of the rules.
Health: 70
Melee Damage: 15
Structure Damage: 10
Speed: Slow (and a funny waddle)
The Regal Rat asides from these stats has excellent and can heal mainly by eating cheese. That cheese can be obtained via invading the Kitchen, or (more likely), it'll be scavenged by the Regal Rat directly. Any kind of cheese will work, be it a full wheel, wedge or other kind. Bigger the cheese, bigger the heal. The Regal Rat can also heal passively by being in rooms with enough Miasma in the air. Each Regal Rat spawns with a unique name usually having to do with filth, rats, and being a ruler.
Often overlooked, but the Regal Rat can in fact speak and understand the station's crew!
Abilities
Active Abilities
| Icon | Name | Description | Cooldown |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Raise Army | This ability does two things:
Firstly, it recruits any mice, cockroaches, and frogs around the Regal Rat into loyal rats, sewer roaches, and trash frogs respectively. The most notable aspect of these maintenance critters besides their increased health and strength are that they are innately hostile, and will attack any organic beings that it encounters asides from its ruler. Loyal subjects can be given orders as well; more details on this below.
|
4 Seconds |
|
Regal Rat's Domain | This ability has the Regal Rat spread his domain in the surrounding area, which summons a small amount of Miasma into the air and summons some dirt and occasionally some filth. If used enough times in a sealed room the accumulating miasma can heal the King passively over time. | 6 Seconds |
Innate Abilities
Rummage: Regal Rats can interact with trash disposals found around the station to rummage through the bin, pulling out trash, cheese and coins from it. Disposal bins aren't usually found in maintenance where most Regal Rats will appear in, so some excursions to the more well-lit parts of the station may be required for scavenging.
- There is a 66% chance that the Regal Rat will find some discarded trash.
- There is a 28% chance that a Cheese Wedge will be found.
- There is a 5% chance that some coins will be manifested.
Royal Command: When a Regal Rat recruits rats and other critters to their command, they will heed the command of the Regal Rat (Except the trash frogs. They're too busy licking themselves and watching the colors). This is done by saying certain command words out loud. Individual creatures can be ordered by Alt + Left clicking on them, which will present a radial menu to select an available command. The full commands are listed below:
- Follow ("heel", "follow"): All rats will closely follow the the Regal Rat unless told otherwise. Rank and file march, men!
- Stay ("sit", "stay", "stop"): All rats will stop what they're doing and stay put, staying idle until told otherwise. Atteeeeention!
- Attack ("attack", "sic", "kill", "cheese em"): A two part command; giving the order will put rats on alert. Pointing at an object or creature will order all alert rats to attack whatever was pointed at (if the target is invalid, the rats will shake their head). Charge!
- Loose ("free", "loose"): Releases any rats from under the Regal Rat's command to resume their usual behaviors; in this case being automatically attacking any organic creatures in sight. At ease!
Rat Spit: A Regal Rat can also contaminate the stations food by... passionately licking all of it. Interacting with injectable items (food excluding cheese, beakers, glass cups, etc.) will allow the King to lick the target; after two seconds it'll add a random amount (1 to 3 units) of the unique Rat Spit reagent to the item/container.
Rat Spit, aside from having a "funny taste", causes people to feel queasy and throw up if it gets in their system. If a person reaches the overdose threshold for Rat Spit (20u or more) they'll sense an awakened kinship with rat-kind and become part of the rat faction, meaning that rats summoned by the Regal Rat will no longer attack them! Regal Rats can use this to ally themselves with loyal humanoid subjects if they so desire.
Vent Crawling: Despite the King's size, they can still squeeze their way into the station's atmospherics piping. This can be used to quickly and sneakily navigate across the station! ALT + Left Click an air vent/scrubber to enter the pipe.
Take caution when entering the station's waste network via scrubbers, as the pipes could be flaming hot from fires around the station, or they could be freezing cold if the Atmospheric Technicians are working to cool the waste loop.
Airlock Prying: If vents are inaccessible or welded shut, Regal Rats have just enough strength (and technique) to pry open powered airlocks by left clicking on them while in Combat Mode.
Electrical Sabotage: Just like the King's underlings, the Regal Rat can chew up the station's cables at a noticeable cost to his health. Depending on the station layout, a King can cause widespread power outages if enough wires get chewed.
A Guide in Kingdom Building
It's pretty simple. Keep mashing your ability buttons, hide in maintenance during your early vulnerable phase, and accumulate enough rats such that they can pose a threat to the station, even if they may do pitiful damage. Enough rats stacked up in one room can quickly swarm anyone they get close to and deal massive damage, even enough to tear through cyborgs. In huge swarms the rats are HILARIOUSLY LETHAL (Manuel Sector "RAT VAULT" Incident of 2561).
The Domain ability has a small chance to spawn a slippery puddle of oil as one of the potential filth it can summon. Placing this in tight corridors in maintenance or at the entrance to your kingdom can cause pursuers to slip and slide right into your hoard of rats.
Ventcrawling can get you anywhere you need quickly and without detection, abuse this up until the crew start welding vents.
If you take damage, consider venturing out to rummage through disposal bins for some cheese to heal yourself, or perhaps raid the kitchen. While you're there, you could also lick all the food and drinks in the kitchen/bar to MENACE any future kitchen-goers with your vile spit.
Commanding your army to "follow" can let you move large groups of rats around to other places if you need to relocate or stage an all out attack on a location. You can also command your army to attack structures if you just feel like tearing down everything down around you; enough rats can chew through some structures and machines surprisingly fast.
You may find yourself bored of the usual harassment of the crew with rats. A fairly entertaining way of playing a Regal Rat is to choose a lesser visited room of a department to take over. Crawl in and totally trash the place; break lights, destroy machines, spew filth everywhere and summon a guardian force of rats for the room. If a maintenance shaft is near, pry open the airlock leading into it and snip some wires leading to the department. This will be your new home; you'll now be a pest to anyone in the department that wants to work in that room. Against most lightly armed crew you'll find that you can hold your own with your rat underlings; continue your shenanigans until security/someone extremely threatening shows up to play exterminator. Hop into an air duct and travel somewhere else similar to repeat for endless tomfoolery.
If you can find potential allies among the crew, consider talking with them. You might not be super useful, but your ability to talk with humans can get you places sometimes. Maybe some dastardly individuals could help you usurp the "King" of the space station and allow you to take their place as the one true ruler?
Don't fight directly, as you'll very quickly die in a few laser shots. 
Relevant Github PRs
