Pilers

Created by Adam Tingley // Wreckerdwarf

Placeholder Giblin by Katy Smith

The act of gathering the food for the rodent cattle is incredibly important. Keeping the rodents from getting too hungry is a fine balance but one that often flip flops into hunger or overfed. Keeping them fed requires a certain level of organisation which the goblinfolk lack at the best of times. Those tasked with going around and gathering all the foodstuff for the rodents are known as the Pilers. These lucky folk are generally outfitted with a rake, shovel and some containers. They shuffle around and rake up anything that is bloody and squishy into a clump. Using shovels, they move the slop into containers to take back to camp. Closely following devastation, tragedy and death, the Pilers can be found sweeping through. Unlike other scavengers and opportunistic goblins attempting to make a living, the Pilers are at these sites in an official capacity. Usually hired by the more prominent ratkeepers, they’re told to always be on the lookout for the freshest of parts. The finer the blood, the more the rodents will enter a frenzy and increase the chances that one of the rodents will be transformed into a ratbeyir. Amongst the scrap tribes, these workers have an even more important but somewhat unintentional role of slowing down the rate that the fuelling sickness spreads. Taking infected and discarded goblin body parts and adding them to the feed of the rodent cattle of the area. Amongst the more spiritual tribes, the Pilers take on the form of amateur surgeons and are used to removing live growths on the magick inflicted shamans when the food-stock for the rodents gets to dangerously low levels. Regardless of the source of the meat, it is made good use of. When bringing back to the rodent cattle pens, the most potent and fresh pieces of flesh are picked out and set aside by the ratkeeper in charge. Then the remainder has its liquid and solid parts mostly separated. The more solid parts are then added to the troughs for rodent consumption. The blood is kept back for frenzy training the rodents that show transformational promise. In the event that the rodents are not fed, they will just take food wherever they can get it. Usually it’s in goblin form. It’s a very sensible idea to take their hunger seriously and keep their bellies full.