Ingerd Fallfallow
Ingerd never sought to become a ratter, let alone Head Ratter of the Opal District Chef’s Quarter. She excelled at it though. Hunting vermin. The gods had seen fit to give her this particular calling. Why? She never cared to ask. Religions, and churches, and people for that matter made her uncomfortable. She was more at home in the dank mazeways beneath the city.
So she hunted vermin. She scourged them, and she learned with a facility that set her apart from the other ratters in the Guild, made her an oddball. She didn’t care. She could hunt circles around any of them, and those that put coin in her pocket knew as much.
Ingerd was a ratter. She would never have considered herself a ranger.
The young Gnome had heard the word, but those folk associated with the tales were always lithe woodland folk, tracking and leading hunting parties against the most savage creatures of the wild. She was only a destroyer of vermin, a cleaner for those that wanted pantries and larders unaffected by disease. The idea of an urban ranger tickled her fancy though, and while she never spoke of it aloud, she began to picture herself as the first of her kind. She knew there were ratters wherever there were vermin, but she daydreamed about being unique, about having a connection with the tunnels and the warrens like no other. A hunter and guardian of the natural order beneath the teeming cities.
Ingerd’s teeth flashed white in the darkness. The smile lingered and warmed her as she crept around the next dark corner, sniffing for the most voracious and cunning of enemies.