King Rat; Court of Teeth

During the Great Plague the Beshilu Hosts used the chaos of dead and dying humans, and more than one Uratha, to make a concentrated attack on the Gauntlet, at many places it came under real threat of being torn down. The Packs of the Tribes of the Moon made an alliance with the Rat King; they fought to guard Him and to keep spiritual Predators off his back whilst he cut the Beshilu hosts off from the normal rats that they needed to grow. This stopped the Beshilu, granting the tired and sore-pressed People a respite and made the Rat King a powerful force within the Court of Teeth. Though he owes his position to the Uratha he doesn’t like to be reminded of it – there are some versions of the story of the Ride of the Rat King which say he has promised aid in the future for the deed done to him by the Tribes of the Moon.

Since the 1600’s the spirit named the Rat King has been seen all across Great Britain – a mighty spirit it can find Essence almost anywhere that rats might be found, and is not afraid to prey on those of its Choir who are too slow to serve him or to avoid him. It has had interactions with those of the Tribes of the Moon over these years, both positive and negative, but reportedly always reacts with an almost regal courtesy (differing in reports of the bestial creature the People made alliance with in 1665), especially to those who bear the sign of Death Wolf.

In appearance the Rat King is oddly varied –sometimes he’ll be seen wearing a long, dirty, torn ermine-trimmed robe of royal purple, with a single one-eyed rat at the head, a corroded crown on its ‘head’, and the body made up of…something. At times this strangely proportioned figure wears a plague doctor’s mask – its long nose concealing something of the rats nose, and the pungent herbs seeming to surround the hunched figure in a aromatic cloud. Occasionally he’ll appear as a single, enormous rat the size of a motorbike, with upright, bony ridges along its spine and the same corroded circlet. Some suggest that it is trying to become more ‘kingly’ as the long years march onward.

Spirits known to be part of the Court of Teeth:

• Dark-Hunter-of-the-Deep
• Greedy Beast Which Stalks the Alleys
• Heavenly Destroyer
• King Rat
• Rusty-Bull-with-Steam-for-Breath (was once Iron Bull of the Bull Ring)

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