Regal Rat
| PESTILENTIAL STAFF | |
 Rat King |
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...
We're The Rats
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 Rat King, which in total, works out to about a 20% chance of having a Rat King spawn whenever Mice Migration is triggered. Somewhat uniquely, the spawning of a Rat King is untied to dynamic and its threat levels.
In addition, a non-sentient Rat King 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 rat kingdom 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 Rat King(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 Rat King, asides from these stats, has night vision, 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 Rat King directly. Any kind of cheese will work, be it a full wheel, wedge or other kind. Bigger the cheese, bigger the heal. The Rat King can also heal passively by being in rooms with enough Miasma in the air. Each Rat King spawns with a unique name usually having to do with filth, rats, and being a ruler.
Often overlooked, but the Rat King 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 mutates any mice around the Rat King into stronger, loyal rats. The most notable aspect of these rats are that they are innately hostile, and will attack any organic beings that it encounters, asides from its ruler. If there are no mice around to mutate, a mouse will be spawned below the Rat King IF the ratio of loyal rats to non-loyal mice is high enough. If the ratio is too low, then the Rat King gets prompted to go about converting the station's local mice first. | 4 Seconds |
|
Rat King's Domain | This ability has the Rat King 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 Rat Kings 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 Rat King 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
Rat Spit: A Rat King 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 Rat King will no longer attack them! Rat Kings 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 are often super hot due to how thermomachines work, or they could be freezing cold if the Atmospheric Technicians are working to cool the waste loop.
Electrical Sabotage: Just like the King's underlings, the Rat King 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, they're 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.
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
