Just Thinking… Teeth Behind the Badge
The guards are something else...
Idea: Most of the town guards are secretly wererats..
A whole city where the guards are secretly wererats. Not just one or two. Most of them. The ones at the gates. The ones on patrol. The ones at the jail. All wearing the uniform, all smiling, but all hiding that curse.
First thought is control. The guards already have authority. They can arrest anyone. Shake anyone down. If they are wererats, they can do more than that. They can stalk someone through the alleys at night in their other shape. They can spread the curse to any prisoner they want. Or to anyone who annoys them. That is a quiet kind of terror.
I think about players walking into this. At first nothing is obvious. Maybe the guards are just tired and pale. They mutter to each other. They seem to know things they shouldn’t. A merchant disappears after complaining about a tax. A beggar swears he saw a giant rat carrying a sword. The party laughs it off. Then one of them gets bitten during a scuffle. That’s when it gets interesting.
I imagine a scene at the table. The party is trying to talk their way past the gate at night. The guards lean on pikes. They ask a lot of questions. One guard scratches the side of his face, and the nails are a little too sharp. Another keeps sniffing the air. If the party presses, the guards let them in. But now the party is being followed. One player notices a rat in the gutter, just staring. Someone throws a torch at it, and it doesn’t even flinch. Pressure builds.
The evil part to me is how the curse changes the stakes. If the guards bite a PC, that player has a choice. Hide it from the others and wake up with new strength and strange hunger. Or confess and deal with the temple. And maybe the temple is in on it. Maybe the whole city likes the system. Every new recruit is another set of teeth in the dark. Players will start to distrust every official order. Every knock on the door.
I wonder if this is too much. If the whole city is like this, players might feel trapped. They could just leave. But that’s its own story. Maybe they leave and the guards follow them, spreading the infection to the next town. Or the party decides to stay and fight. Then the city becomes a maze of alleys and rooftops, and every shadow has claws.
I think the key is to make the danger slow and creeping. Don’t throw twenty wererats in one fight. Let them use their power. They can frame the party, deny them supplies, cut off escape routes. They hold the law. If the party resorts to killing guards, now they are outlaws. And the wererats smile because that is what they wanted.
How I’d Use This
The first hint is a terrified NPC who knows about the bites but is too scared to speak in public.
A PC gets infected early, and the guards quietly encourage them to embrace it.
The city watch uses the curse to track and corner the party instead of fighting fair.
Every lawful action, arrest, tax, patrol, has a hidden predatory motive.
The longer the party stays, the more the city feels like a closed trap, and escape becomes its own victory.