It seems like they’re the mechanic’s equivalent to the Doomed Monster Hunter. When I use one, I imagine it sliding down a chute to a hole in the hull, where it bangs it with a wrench before slipping into the zee. :(
Or it could just abandon ship, if you needed to use it’s services you were probably not the sort of captain it wanted to work with. But seriously, they never specify.
I like to imagine they’re taking a smoke-break and waiting for you to renew their contracts - which can only be done in London, in the presence of an authorised representative. And if you sink, they all take to zee in tiny boats, cheerfully remarking that it’s your own fault for not pre-purchasing more repairs!
Since you can get an Assistant from a certain individual by hiring his niece, and returning to him without an Assistant allows you to rehire his niece, I’m guessing the Rattus Faber kind of goes flying through the air thanks to the Ratsender, repairs anything it flies past, then engages its tiny personal lifeboat contraption and zooms away back home.
Poor little rat souls that die for our hulls,
May the Stone’s blessing be upon them
Shoot down the tube in neither mail nor lube
Their fur gets singed down to the stem
Patching the leaks we wouldn’t get to in weeks
For the sake of some lover back home
Soon they all die with a swear not a sigh
All 'cause the Cap’n weren’t using his dome!
- Found in the wreck of the Nocturne
I thought it was stated that putting a Rattus Faber into the sender - basically a vacuum tube system like at a drive through pharmacy or bank - was an affront to their dignity; the offended Rattus Faber refuses to continue working for the captain. Sir Fredrick Tanah-Cook’s explanation fits the facts very well.
Actually, I just checked the game. It’s not stated anywhere on the Faber card or in the shop where you buy them what happens to them after you “use” them.
Either these “affront to their dignity” ideas show up somewhere else (Nuncio? Pigmote?) or this is just a bit of a rumor.
And this is what happens when you want repair drones, but can’t incorporate them into the setting.
Honestly, change the name to repair kits (spare "parts" really) and be done with it. Who the heck uses anthropomorphs as consumables?
And BTW, is it just me or are they usable without the Ratsender? In that case nobody is flying anywhere.
P.S. Maybe the game assumes that you always have a hungry cat on board? And the cat is the only one who could be doing repairs on your ship while at zee? That’d explain why my zailors eat the stuff that I need for repairs, and how the rats can use that stuff as a weapons against the guinea pigs.
But that basically means that we have consumable cats now (including literary)… Not that much of an improvement…
edited by Red-XIII on 2/25/2015
edited by Red-XIII on 2/25/2015
edited by Red-XIII on 2/25/2015
[li]Before they changed it to the current description, the older, pre-release description of the Rattus Fabers said "no rat will agree to doing this twice" or something to that effect. If memory serves, the only reason you can’t use a rat more than once is because no rat is willing to be injected into the side of a damaged ship more than once. I wouldn’t worry about it, personally.