MAPLEWOOD — Residents of Maplewood and the surrounding areas are advised to exercise caution following a significant increase in ratfolk activity in and around the town. This press has confirmed that the uptick correlates directly with reports of residents providing food to ratfolk encountered near the inn and former bazaar area.
The arithmetic of this situation is straightforward: a ratfolk who has found a reliable food source will inform every associate they have. Those associates will inform theirs. What begins as one or two ratfolk accepting scraps becomes, within a short period, a substantially larger population drawn to the same source. This is not conjecture — this is simply how ratfolk operate.
The economic implications are secondary to the immediate medical concern: direct contact with ratfolk carries a documented risk of Rat Scratch Fever, which presents as severe and persistent itching and does not resolve without intervention. The only known treatment is the Remedy Ritual, which requires ritual components to perform.
Ritual components are a limited resource. The cost of treating a preventable illness is not borne by the patient alone, but by every person who might subsequently require that ritual for a more critical need. In practical terms: a ritual spent on Rat Scratch Fever contracted outside the Jenny is a ritual unavailable for a lycanthropy infection contracted by someone protecting a loved one.
The ratfolk are not in need of charity. They are not hungry. They are, by nature, opportunistic — and a resident offering food is, by their assessment, a resource to be cultivated.
Do not cultivate them.