Fevered Rat (Basic Lore)

Fevered Rat (Swarm; CR 1)
Neutral - Tiny - Animal
This creature possesses the Swarm role, and therefore counts as 2 monsters for purposes of encounter size, XP award, and treasure. This monster frequently has the Swarm role, but may be set to other roles if desired. Ordinary household rats are timid creatures, more than eager to flee from fights and easily killed by nearly any determined foe. But all that changes when rats (and other vermin) become infected by the vile disease commonly called 'Filth Fever'. Filth Fever makes rats crazy, for want of a better term. Fevered rats still behave like rats in most ways, and the disease will never kill them, alas. It does make the rats more aggressive, cagey, meaner, and sly. A fevered rat is not likely to seek out a fight, but they might. Fevered rats will hunt down, kill, and eat, pets and children if they are able to. The horror of finding tiny bones in a welter of blood in a crib has bred utter revulsion for rats in afflicted communities, even above the common revulsion that rats engender. The Filth Fever that seethes in a fevered rat makes their bites dangerous, even for strong adventurous types. And let's be honest. One rat is no threat to any adventurer. But a fevered rats carry their terrible Filth Fever in every bite, and to make it worse, many Rats are encountered in huge swarms. A rat swarm isn't just one rat. It's hundreds and hundreds of rats, so many of them, piled so close atop one another, they form a single seething mass of dirty flesh. Rat swarms are so frenetically active they are almost fluids, flowing this way and that, no fever-stricken rat willing to break away from the safety of its fellows. This roiling, scrabbling, mass of teeth and claws is enough to be quite a nasty threat, and even the best-armored hero has no defense against a thousand claws and bites every minute. It's best to kill rat swarms as fast as possible, and from a good distance, to boot. Filth Fever must be treated promptly, even if inflicted by the lucky bite of a single rat, and that endemic disease is the cause of huge numbers of attacks, and is behind many of the vermin that infest the world.