Fire Rat Skin Village

[Vutall]

Fire Rat Skin Village
While many Crab view the nezumi as some-thing between uneasy allies and tolerated enemies, there are accounts of attacks from ravenous, vicious nezumi against remote Crab homes and caravans. Similarly, there are other tales of regions where vile humans welcome nezumi only to capture and exterminate them. Most of these have little basis in fact or remain very isolated incidents.

There are disturbing rumors, however, that, while never proven, are even more troubling. One particularly horrid anecdote insists there is a village whose human inhabitants skin any unfortunate nezumi they find, often while still alive. The villagers wear the treated skins, believing this to offer protection against the Taint, and even fashion the leather into the exteriors of their tent-like houses. For the nezumi, such a place would be more terrible than any endless pit or blood-red lake.

To this day, no such village has been discovered. Some believe these tales are the work of cults out to poison relations between the Crab and nezumi. Some families, especially the Hiruma, worry how easily they spread throughout their clan, an indication that there many still distrust and even hate the nezumi. The nezumi, for their part, sometimes carefully check the scent of the leathers that some humans wear and keep a careful eye out when entering human habitations.