While far from the most interesting opponent to face, and unlikely to be a stalwart animal companion (though rats do make good familiars), rats and other vermin tend to show up often as a nuisance in the background. They are your smallest prey, that thing that gets on the ship and takes an exterminator to get off again and scuttles in the background in ship docks. If gathered into a sufficiently large swarm, they can even be dangerous!
This will be a more speculative post than usual, as getting rats (or other vermin) start to get small enough that they fall under the radar of GURPS stats. That’s fine, though, as there’s plenty of room for variation within the “guild” of “Vermin.”
A rat is an omnivore, though I think you could classify them as a cross between scavengers and gathering herbivores, as they seem to favor fruits and nuts and will eat dead animals they come across, but they’ll feed on grains, birds (eggs?) and insects. A rat is also a burrower, though not exclusively or even primarily, but I think it’s fair to classify digging as part of what they do. They’re also very small: a black rat can get up to 7 inches long (15 if you count the tail) and weigh up to about half an lb. “Rodents” can be found on every continent except Antarctica, according to Wikipedia, but I bet you can find them there now.
Space Rats in GURPS Space
When it comes to Mobility, we already know we’re looking at “walking” and “digging.” We can reasonably find that sort of creature in Arctic, Desert, Island/Beach, Mountain, Plains, Swamp or Woodland/Jungle. Thus, we can reasonably evolve rats in any sort of environment, though Swamps seem the least conducive and mountains the most (at least, going off of what GURPS Space suggests). According to Space, our move should be about 1.5, which we can round up to 2; my research suggests their real Move is closer to 4. I wouldn’t expect much variation here; I can imagine a climbing rat, but at that point I’d call it a “space squirrel.”
When it comes to Size, they’re obviously Small. GURPS Space SM -6 at 0.2 yards and 0.2 lbs, which would give them 1 HP, which is a really solid number in my book. If we were randomly rolling these up, they’d be most likely on Islands or in the Desert or Mountains.
When it comes to their Body Plan, rats have bilateral symmetry, two sets of limbs, a tail, a set of manipulators with Bad Grip (their forelimbs) and an internal skeleton. Bilateral symmetry is likely to remain in any example, because these creatures have to run and squirm through holes, and this is easier if they’re optimized in a single direction, as most bilateral creatures are. Four limbs also makes sense, as they behave a lot like gathering herbivores, so the ability to reach for and grab food is useful, so I would imagine them with at least four limbs, but more is plausible! And more dextrous limbs is also plausible. I see no particular reason for an internal skeleton: given their small size, they might be just find with an exoskeleton, and a hydrostatic skeleton might actually help them “squirm” better! Finally, the tail doesn’t seem especially necessary; they seem to primarily function as a way to shed heat, which is not something small animals generally need a lot of help with, and they help with balance, which is useful for a rat that climbs.
When it comes to Skin, rats obviously have fur, likely just normal fur with nothing special. They regulate their own temperature (warm-blooded) and they have continuous growth. I see no particular reason rat-like creatures couldn’t have just bare skin or hide, scales, feathers (at least downy structures) or an exoskeleton.
When it comes to Sex, rats have two sexes, they’re live bearing, and they’re definitely a r-based sexual reproduction strategy. I lean towards moderate, because I think they offer some care to their infants, despite having so many.
When it comes to Senses, rats seem to have weak vision, a broader range of hearing (ultrahearing), they have an excellent sense of smell, and it has whiskers and a relatively sensitive sense of touch. I think it’s plausible for them to have Night Vision as well (as they often move around in dark places).
When it comes to Alien Minds, we probably expect rats to be “Low Intelligence” which is to say, no smarter than most animals. This fits with them being small and r-strategy, but gathering herbivores can justify being a bit on the clever side. High intelligence or even lower intelligence is not implausible, and most actual mammalian stats I can find put rats at IQ 4. When it comes to mating behavior, I can’t find data, but I think rats might form temporary pair-bonds, or possible permanent, but not perfectly monogamous. When it comes to organization, rats tend to be highly social, so I would expect at least Medium groups.
This gives them a generic Psychological Profile of Chauvinism between 0 and +2 (maybe Racial Inteolerance), Concentration +0, Curiosity +0 to +1 (maybe nosy), Egoism -1 (Humble), +1 for Empathy (Responsive), Gregariousness +1 (Congenial), Imagination +0 and Suspicion +1 (Fearfulness 1).
Generic Space Rat Stats
There’s a few places you can get rat stats. Pizard, unfortunately, doesn’t have them, but Dungeon Fantasy 5 has a rather cinematic version. Here’s a somewhat arbitrary take.
ST: 1 |
Basic Speed: 6.0 |
SM: -6 |
DX: 12 |
Basic Move: 4 |
|
IQ: 4 |
Perception: 14 |
|
HT: 12 |
Will: 10 |
DR: 0 |
Traits: Bad Sight; Bad Grip; Flexibility; Night Vision 4; Reduced Consumption (Iron Stomach) 3; Semi-Upright; Sharp Teeth; Ultrahearing, Wild Animal.
Variations
Chitin
Okay, so one thing that pops out is that an exoskeleton is almost as probable for a small rat, according to space, as it is to have an endoskeleton. This likely comes down to the fact that small creatures benefit from exoskeletons. The largest creatures with exoskeletons get up 3 meters, according to the Speculative Evolution wiki. Such a creature would seem to obviously be some sort of large beetle, but ostracoderm fish have armor made of bone and dentin, and the pangolin has plates of keratin (“horny”) armor. So we could just as easily have a “bone-rat” if we wanted. This would mostly result in a rat that had a DR of about 2 to 5. or so, which makes them harder to stomp, which is a considerable improvement in survivability given that it has only 1 HP, but nothing most characters couldn’t handle.
Incidentally, bony, forward-facing armor might make sense, as they’ll often be in circumstances where they “face forward” in a burrow, and being unable to significantly hard their head might be a real advantage, but it would diminish their ability to “squirm” as they wouldn’t be able to “relax” the bonus plates of their head. It might not be too bad if the armor is tapered the same way a rat’s skull is, and the armor might make for a better anchor point for strong digging teeth, or the rat can use the armor itself to dig. I want to note that boars have broad “shovel faces” and a bone-face rat might have a similar sort of face, and burrow in a similar way.
A key problem with an exoskeleton, though, is it diminishes sense of touch, which is pretty key for a burrower, who are likely to already be blind or near blind. They might get around this with a different sense, or they might rely on vibration senses to know what’s in front of them. Incidentally, the sensitivity of whiskers seems to imply that furred animals might be pretty solid burrowers (though we know there are burrowers without fur). We can, of course, add some feelers for the chitinous rat.
Lens (Chitin Rat): -1 DX; Per -4; Acute Touch +2 (Feelers Only); Acute Hearing +4; Acute Taste/Smell +4; DR 3; Remove Flexibility. Replace Bad Grip and Semi-Upright with Hexapod, if you want a "giant space cockroach"
Lens (Bone-Face Rat): Blind; DR 5 (skull only); Vibration Sense (Ground)
Blob-Rat
What about no skeleton, or a hydrostatic skeleton? This is the sort of thing that provides structure to anemone arms, or your tongue. Why not just have the rat have “liquid under pressure” to provide it structure? Such a rat would be very squishy (Flexible? Double Jointed? Invertebrate?), which would help it get through things easily, but it might not support much in the way of defensive structures; this suggests more like a normal skin or soft-skin creature to me, which makes it far less hardy (HT 9, perhaps) and man would that thing splatter when you stomp it, and the lack of structure likely makes it a worse burrower. It wouldn’t have much in the way of a structure to anchor those chewing teeth or digging claws, after all.
Lens (Blob-Rat): Replace Flexible with Double Jointed; Vulnerability (Crushing x2)
The Toxic Rat
Rats seem to lack much in the way of defense. Why couldn’t it have poison? Snakes do that too. Well, there’s a few issues I’d see. First, the sort of teeth necessary to deliver venom is not the sort of teeth you can chew with. If they have superior digging claws, that might not be a major problem. They could put a stinger on their tail, but if they’re in a tight burrow, they won’t be able to bring that tail to bear. On the other hand, the rat could have a poison sac within, or simply be toxic. That would require a specific diet to maintain, but it would result in a considerable survival benefit, so much so that I don’t really see what the downside would be. Chances are, such rats would be very vividly colored to warn potential predators of how dangerous they are, the same way poisonous frogs are highly visible and distinctive.
Lens (Venom Rat): Sharp Claws; add Toxic Attack 2d (Cyclic, 6 hour-long cycles; Follow-Up, Fangs; Resistible, HT-2)
Lens (Poison Rat): Obvious (Vivid coloration); Toxic Attack 2d (Cyclic, 6 hour-long cycles, Resistible, HT-2) to anyone that ingests it.
The Clever Rat
What about little hands? Or a smarter mind?
If we treat them as a gathering herbivore, or make them gathering herbivores, they get pretty good odds of having manipulators (a roll or 6 or better on 2d is enough). If we add another set of limbs (say, six total), then the odds go up further (5 or better on 2d and normal manipulators on 7 and high manual DX on 10+). I’m not sure what the other limbs would do, though. It would then have four for walking and two for manipulating, but how often will it need to use all six at once?
Intelligence is similarly hard to justify. Being an omnivore already justifies about as much intelligence as we can out of a small, r-strategy species. Short of something like shifting them to k-strategy, it becomes hard to justify the biological expense without some serious and highly specific pressure that selects for intelligence rather than instinct and K-strategies definitely benefit from intelligence, which means our “smart rats” would likely occupy a different niche. In a sense, monkeys are small, climbing and quite intelligent gathering herbivores; this gives you a sense of how different a “smart rat” might start to looking.
A hypothetical strong-K rat would need to have a different defense than “predator satiation” and sheer numbers. The poisonous rat might be an option, or perhaps a moderate-K rat species that uses its empathy and large numbers to coordinate with one another.
Lens (Handsy Rat): Remove Bad Grip; add Extra Legs (Four Legs)
Lens (Clever Rat): +1 IQ
The Post-Apocalyptic Rat
Lens (Post-Apocalyptic Rat): Add +2 HT, Filter Lungs and Resistant to Metabolic Hazards +3.
The Spherical Rat
Why are rats bilaterally symmetrical? Well, probably for the same reason most things are: because movement favors a direction, and it makes more sense to orient towards a specific direction. But does it have to be that way? And can we think of any round, furry creatures that rapidly reproduce in sci-fi? I think we can!
I never saw one before in my life, and I hope I never see one of those fuzzy miserable things again. – Arne David, the Trouble with Tribbles
Spherical symmetry raises some problems very quickly, which shows why it’s likely implausible. It’s not impossible to get and doesn’t prevent us from being cute and furry, but how does it get around? It might scamper on little legs, but if we really, really want it to be a fuzzy ball, it should roll which is not actually unheard of in the animal world, and it might be possible to have a creature that can bounce, though I can’t find any references to it anywhere. So, we’re talking a spherical, limbless, tailless creature. Such a creature cannot possibly be a digger. I don’t think they could have an exoskeleton, but an internal skeleton or a hydrostatic skeleton could work. Let’s assume internal for now (likely a “basket weave” skeleton).
How would they eat? What would they eat? Well, they couldn’t easily manipulate material, so talking either a scavenger, because there’s no way it can hunt, or a simple grazer, in direct contravention to what our “rats” are supposed to be. They would likely have a mouth at their “base” that they would roll and maneuver to get onto. They’re probably more interested in grazing than in omnivorous behavior, though, especially given the source material.
For covering, we’d obviously go with fur for a literal furball. I’d prefer thick fur, which implies a colder environment, but the thick fur might be a way to help fend-off predators. However, it should be noted that I fur is pretty terrible for a rolling creature. I would more likely expect to see bare skin or possibly light scales. Thick armor plates, like a pangolin, would help it roll. But if we assume an arctic environment (probably more like tundra conditions), that might solve some of these problems: their thick fur keeps them warm in the cold, they can roll, and the snow will eventually melt off of their fur.
For breeding, I’d favor asexual reproduction or spawning, as neither requires special maneuvering or manipulation of the environment to achieve.
For senses, 360° Vision might make sense, but I can’t imagine a species that rolls would be able to orient with its senses at all unless it had some sort of “wheel and axle” or “ball in cage” structure, which is very biologically difficult. If we assume blindness, then the “hairs” might make sense as sensory organs. Blind furballs might have superior hearing, touch and vibration sense, but likely no sense of taste or smell. Given the likely disorientation that would come from rolling or bouncing, Absolute Direction might be nice.
Finally, a spawning or asexual organism with a Strong-R strategy is likely very low in intelligence: IQ 1 or 2 is plausible, perhaps even 1 with Cannot Learn. While there would be little in the way of bonding, they might still have exceedingly large social structures, or at least cluster near one another for “predator satiation” or “shoaling” strategies.
Their Psychological Profile is probably quite different; Chauvinism +1 (Racial Interolance); Concentration -1 (Distractible); Curiosity -3 (Incurious); Egoism -1 (Humble); Empathy +0; Gregariousness -1 (Uncongenial; an unexpected result); Imagination -2 (Hidebound; already a feature of a wild animal); Suspicion +3; (Fearfulness 2 and Cowardice).
ST: 1 |
Basic Speed: 6.0 |
SM: -6 |
DX: 12 |
Basic Move: 2 |
|
IQ: 2 |
Perception: 12 |
|
HT: 12 |
Will: 8 |
DR: 0 |
Attributes: Reduce IQ to 2 and Will to 8
Traits: Blind; Cowardice; No Fine Manipulators; No Legs (Bounces/Rolls); No Sense of Smell; Pitiable; Reduced Consumption (Iron Stomach) 3; Sharp Teeth; Super Jump (Bounce); Temperature Tolerance 4 (Cold). Vibration Sense (Air); Wild Animal.
The Spherical Rat, Take Two
Alright, let’s take the spherical rat a little more seriously, rather than just make a tribble.
(Spherical symmetry is) found in organisms that live in a 3-dimensional environment, submerged in a fluid dense enough to counteract gravity, and therefore they don't have any reason to privilege a specific direction: microscopic protozoans such as radiolarians, heliozoans and Volvox. – Speculative Evolution Wiki
Soil is a three dimensional environment that’s dense enough to counteract gravity, it’s just not fluid. Still, it’s not the craziest idea in the world to allow a creature that excels at maneuvering in three dimensional environments. We’re pushing the bounds of plausibility here, because a creature that’s focused in exclusively one direction tends to make a better burrower than a creature focused in six directions, because spherical symmetry tends to be more useful if you can get attacked from any direction and that’s unlikely in a burrowing creature (the point of being a burrowing creature is to remove angles of attack). Still, we’re trying to find some way to justify a spherical rat, so here we go.
Now, in this case, rather than go with a useless, limbless ball, let’s create a creature with six distinct sides. Each of these sides has a mouth for consumption or for burrowing. Each side also has its own sensory organs and a limb, likely a tentacle of some kind. It can pull itself in the direction of any of the six axis of three dimensional space and create more tunnel in that direction. This would be more plausible if they had the (highly cinematic!) Tunneling trait. I would also expect an exoskeleton: being a small, compact, highly structured ball, there’s not much benefit to flexibility, so an exoskeleton conserves the amount of structure they actually need and provide additional protection. The tentacles will be hydrostatic, of course.
What about sex? How does a thing covered in mouths and tentacles even breed? Well, I suspect that it breeds the same way it eliminates waste: it vomits it out of its mouth. This probably means spawning: they go to pools and dump their… whatever into the water and eventually more nightmarish, mouth-covered rat-balls drag themselves out.
For senses, I see Bad Vision, Colorblindness and 360° Vision; these don’t roll, so my previous objections are taken care of, and there’s a clear surface for them to have vision-spots. They may have subsonic, rather than ultrasonic, hearing, a sort of tremor sense, if they need to be aware of attack coming from any direction, including below. Despite their exoskeleton, their tentacles would act as sensitive feelers, so they’d have a normal sense of touch. Thy might not have a sense of smell, though: they might just bite things and see what they are. Absolute Direction makes sense.
As before, a spawning or asexual organism with a Strong-R strategy is likely very low in intelligence: IQ 1 or 2 is plausible, perhaps even 1 with Cannot Learn. These have less incentive to gather up, though, as they have other defenses than shoaling (their armor, their mobility and their superior senses), so we might make them solitary.
Their Psychological Profile is probably quite different; Chauvinism -2 (Broad-Minded); Concentration +0; Curiosity +0; Egoism +0; Empathy -1 (Oblivious); Gregariousness -3 (Loner); Imagination -2 (Hidebound); Suspicion +2 (Fearfulness 1);
ST: 1 |
Basic Speed: 6.0 |
SM: -6 |
DX: 12 |
Basic Move:2 |
|
IQ: 2 |
Perception: 12 |
|
HT: 12 |
Will: 8 |
DR: 3 |
Traits: 360° Vision; Bad Sight; Extra Arms (6 arms; extra flexible); Extra Mouths (6 mouths); Loner; Night Vision 4; No Legs (Rolls); No Sense of Smell (Sense of Taste Only); Reduced Consumption (Iron Stomach) 3; Sharp Teeth; Tunneling 1; Vibration Sense (Ground); Wild Animal.
The Carnivorous Swarm
What about murderous, meat-eating rats? How scary can we make these? If we want to embrace the idea of a rat swarm but make it more dangerous, what we’re looking at is something akin to a larger-scale army ant or a land-based (cinematic) piranha school. Such a creature would likely be a chaser carnivore, given their tendency to coordinate, but a cooperative pouncer is also plausible, but omnivore might be more appropriate: given the sort of nightmare I have in mind, they may need as much food as they can get, so they might devour and destroy an entire area.
Small size remains plausible, but the carnivorous rat is less likely to have protective coverings (which doesn’t make it much different from the normal rat anyway).
If we want to maximize the numbers of our carnivorous swarm, we would make them spawning, which implies that they’re cold-blooded, which also reduces their consumption needs. On the other hand, we could give them controlled metabolisms, so when food is scarce they can hibernate and once signs point to be being plentiful again, emerge. This fits with a “burrowing” nature too. Given an exceptionally voracious disposition, we might want to do something with all those extra calories other than just hibernate: we could reproduce asexually. This suggests a multi-sexual strategy, perhaps sexual spawning under normal circumstances, with asexual “budding” during a highly successful feeding season before hibernating again.
Their senses might change somewhat. Diggers tend to be blind, carnivores aren’t, but we could make them blind and give them some other extreme sense. If they’re blind, they’ll have exceptional hearing and amazing touch (+5 if blind, small and digging, which means on 2d we average 12, which is as high as we can go on the chart). Taste and Smell improves from being “chasing” carnivores, but if they “erupt” or simply devour everything they can and they spawn and bud, they might not bother much with taste and smell, which puts them at around “normal taste/smell” or no smell, but taste, which is an interesting approach. The intelligence could very well drop to 1 and Cannot Learn, which also fits: they’re just mouths that eat everything the come into contact with, and if the strategy doesn’t work and they die, well, there are plenty more where they came from.
Their Psychological Profile is probably quite different; Chauvinism +1 (Chauvinistic); Concentration +1 (Attentive); Curiosity -2 (Hidebound); Egoism -1; Empathy +0; Gregariousness -1 (Uncongenial); Imagination -1 (Dull); Suspicion +1;
ST: 1/5 |
Basic Speed: 6.0 |
SM: -6 |
DX: 12 |
Basic Move: 4 |
|
IQ: 1 |
Perception: 12 |
|
HT: 12 |
Will: 8 |
DR: 3 |
Traits: Blind; Bad Grip; Flexibility; Metabolism Control 2; No Sense of Smell (Sense of Taste only); Reduced Consumption (Iron Stomach) 3; Semi-Upright; Sharp Teeth; Striking ST 4 (Bite only); Vibration Sense (Ground); Wild Animal.
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