Raturnalia

Raturnalia, the new holiday sensation that's sweeping... legs.
As the skittering of shadowy rats came yet again for the year, as is tradition and as has always been the case in Parhelion, some adventurers banded together to protect various assets.
In New Avalon, Terpsichore, Tarla Nok, Mason, Valron, and Reshal Osird valiantly defended the manor home of the Lord and Lady Mondego from a squad of shadowy rats bearing a disturbing similarity to Skech, a demolitions expert in the employ of the rats, who chittered with laughter from the shadows as they set up explosives and threw bombs.
Near Senka, Angela, Red Hook, Peanut, and Rakh-Tah set up camp in a void ship repair depot, setting up void shields, pit traps, and choke points with barrels of napalm, before being descended on by a pack of No Tell look alikes.
Over in Viva Vanam, Maerlun, Vivian, Varys, and the Tumbleweed Kid were hired on to protect a counting house and currency exchange. They barricaded the doors, choked the stairs with metal cabinets and desks, and boarded up all the windows in preparation, before a second pack of Not No Tells descended on them, stalking them.
Lastly, Calthidor, Henry, Tormod, and Lily began assisting Princess in the defence of her palace. Here Princess dug into the archives to learn as much about this horrid holiday and the rats that came with, Calthidor set up illusions and put all the expensive things in one location to make it easier to fall back and defend, Tormod and Henry boarded up windows and barricaded doors, and Lily put up decorations of painted razor wire and gift wrapped rocks.
Then the night came, the rats came out, and the darkness became oppressive, dimming all sources of light, and the bells of every tower ringing incessantly, thirteen chimes at a time to signal that the rats had arrived.
In the first three hours, the rats crept and probed, finding holes to crawl in, skylights and chimneys to scramble through, windows to open, and in one case even sliding through the ethereal plane to bypass the walls. Then came the probing and prodding, the rats watching and stalking their prey, learning their movements, adjusting their traps, and leaving cryptic, taunting messages.
But all seemed to be going well. Three hours out of twenty four and no one had been struck. Then the rain started. Dead sparrows, cats, pigeons, and other small critters raining from the sky, beating down anyone foolish enough to stand in the open. It was here that the Tumbeweed Kid and Vivian got their first taste of terror, as the Shadow No Tells dropped from the ceilings and attacked the pair who had seperated from their groups, beating them into unconsiousness before leaving them to be found by their compatriots as a warning. At the Mondego estate, Tarla Nok rushed out to confront the rats and was greeted with a veritable hail of explosives, knocking her out, with the rats dragging her into the yard and hanging her upside down as bait, surrounded by landmines. Calthidor, paroling the hallways of Princess' Palace alone was stabbed in the back by a rat, learning which of Parhelion's ratfolk had been copied to come for him, staring into the beady red eyes of a facsimile of the Bad Rat himself, who was now holding the swarmbane clasp he normally wore, before disappearing into the darkness.

It was also during this time that the team near Senka managed to catch out their hunters, and begin their desperate struggle hoping to eliminate their rats early. Unfortunately the sheer terror of the sight of these monstrosities overwhelmed two of them, who were quickly beaten down, leaving Red Hook and Rakh-Tah to valiantly struggle, outnumbered, and with broken knees, against their foe. Ultimately it was for naught. The four waking up in the morning, hanging upside down in the middle of the warehouse, broken, beaten, and drawn on with grease pens, with a note from the rats wishing them a happy Raturnalia, and promising to see them again next year, as well as four Rat Sacks, blankets that protect the user during their sleep from their armor, the elements, and things sneaking up on them in the dark.
Shortly after the team near Senka was beaten down, the team guarding Princess' Palace found themselves face to face with not one, but two nightmarish versions of Feskatch Umberwhisker, who tormented and abused them. The battle raged, Calthidor's brain was melted, Lily and Henry were knocked out quickly, and Princess engaged in a desperate struggle as a Nightmare Fesk hunted her down relentlessly, enduring Boneshatter after Boneshatter while carving chunks of her away. Near defeat, Tormod, Cleric of Gorum, managed to get past the whirling blades and blurred form of one of his opponenets, dispatching them, while Princess, on her last legs, finally managed to drop her pursuer.
In New Avalon, our heros pulled back into the house after trying, and failing, to rescue Tarla, only to be greeted by a web of tripwires, and then an ambush.More explosions rocked the house as the rats descended on their prey, switching to knives to shiv and stab our plucky defenders, dragging them down one by one.
In Viva Vanam, things took a turn for the worse, four Shadow No-Tells jumping the team, and launching a devastating ambush, knocking out the Tumbelweed Kid almost immidiately, Maerlun following shortly after, while sending Varys into a full panic, leaving Vivian to desperately struggle against four rats at the same time. Just as it looked like she was about to be taken down, Varys made his sacrifice. Summoning all his courage and all his power he turned and called out the four shadow rats, trying to draw them away from his team. It worked. A portal to whatever hell these rats come from opened behind him, tendrils of shadow binding his arms and legs while the rats sent to terrorize them turned and grabbed him, dragging poor Varys into the inky darkness from whence they came.