My seasick stomach shimmied in tune with the bobbing of the waves, reminding me that I'm not cut out to be a sailor.
       Cheery despite the foul temper of their Wolf boss urging them onwards, the team of four Porcupines muscled the boat through the undulating waves with hearty pulls at the oars.  A young, ill-at-ease Squirrel named Quincy sat beside me, his bushy tail flicking nervously, while his large, dark eyes occasionally darted towards the ominous bulk of our goal, the Duchess of the Quistonsee, an apparently crewless merchantman drifting on her anchor.
       I felt a more immediate concern than the Duchess or those in the boat with me.  I swore my innards lurched and reeled with malicious glee, making me grateful I hadn't eaten breakfast this morning.  Heaving a meal over the side of the boat would have cost me what little dignity I had left.
       Only the Wolf seemed unsympathetic to my plight, snapping his teeth at the Porcupines, at Quincy, even at the waves with a viciousness born of suppressed fear rather than malice.  Too busy rowing the boat, the Porcupines gave me little more than a few sympathetic glances and the occasional reassuring word about getting my sea legs.  Quincy took the time to briskly massage the ring and pinkie fingers of both of my paws, especially near the pinkies' knuckles.  Helloise help me, it actually worked, quashing the seasickness down to something I could manage.  Had Quincy been of a female bent, I might have asked him to marry me, race difference be damned.
       Quincy's ministrations also provided us with a practical benefit.  Of the people in the boat, only one knew how to slay monsters – me, Rafferty Gilfane, a Wolf-Dog witch hunter of uncertain pedigree and very certain talent.
       How did I end up seasick in a boat?  The priests call Helloise our Savior, but I think She is also a trickster.  It didn't surprise me that my pursuit of an Ombrist necromancer brought me to Port Spar, one of the two important seaports here in Bisclavret lands.  The Ombrist proved to be typically uncooperative, keeping undercover and forcing me to stay in town longer than I wanted to.
       I don't like Port Spar.  Twenty or so years ago, the late Duke Tremaine de Bisclavret lowered fees and taxes in his seaports in an attempt to divert foreign trade from the city of Triskellian.  Instead, his typically questionable reform resulted in an increase in criminals in Port Spar, from pirates and slavers to the nigh-mythical Invisible Guild.  Today, Port Spar walks a knife's edge between rampant lawlessness and the authorities' ruthless efforts to keep order.  I didn't appreciate the Ombrist for bringing me to this cesspit.
       While I sniffed around for clues to my quarry, the Duchess of the Quistonsee dropped her anchor out in the middle of the harbor and ignored the hails of the suspicious harbor patrol.  A boarding party investigated, only to vanish mysteriously.  The harbor patrol followed up with a boarding party full of Wolves ready for trouble.  They would have shared the same fate had not one of the Wolves thrown himself overboard.  Badly mauled, he babbled to his rescuers about "monster giant Rats" before dying of shock and blood loss.  Unwilling to risk the spooked harbor patrol towing one of their prize ships out to sea and sinking it, the owners of the Duchess, a company called Gloria-Scott Shipping, sent an agent to hire me.  With no progress to speak of in finding the Ombrist, I agreed to take the job.
       At first, the job sounded easy enough.  Find the monsters and kill them, my usual fare.  I became a witch hunter because I wanted to make a difference in the world, to prove that this Wolf-Dog could stand up to any pure-blooded Bisclavret Wolf.  I thrilled at the thought that I could help beat back the forces of darkness and make my bit of the world safer for honest citizens.  I loved the idea of laughing in the faces of those who enjoyed hurting others via the dark arts.  I enjoyed battling sorcery-born monsters seeking to harm innocents.
       I didn't count on getting green about the gills on the way out to the Duchess.  Perhaps Helloise wanted to remind me not to get too cocky.
       Unfortunately, with the seasickness ebbing, another worry of mine tramped to the forefront of my thoughts.  I don't like the dangers I fight chewing up and spitting out bystanders, especially someone who had so kindly eased my queasy belly.  The Porcupines and the cranky Wolf would stay in the boat, which relieved my mind tremendously.  However, as I lacked the skill to clamber onto the ship myself, I needed Quincy to climb up one of the lines trailing the ship and throw down a ladder for me, thereby putting him at risk.  I silently vowed I'd get him out of there safely.
       The Porcupines paused near one of the lines, interrupting my worry before the seasickness could court it like a desperate old maid.  The Wolf reached out with a boat hook and snagged the line.
       "Get your lazy tail up there," he snapped, passing the rope to Quincy.  The Squirrel took it with an anxious tail quiver.
       "Hold on," I placed a paw on Quincy's shoulder.  "If you see so much as a whisker of anything scary, get yourself out of there.  Leave any rodents of unusual size to me."
       "Listen, mutt, he'll do his job, whether he likes it or not," the Wolf growled, tossing in a few choice expletives.  "You!  Get your fat rodent tail up there and throw down the bloody ladder!"  The Wolf glared at Quincy, daring him to complain, but the Squirrel only gave something resembling a nod – or an attempt at a seizure.  I couldn't fault his shaky nerves.  The anticipation before meeting a monster would jangle even the most stalwart warrior's nerves.
       "Your job doesn't include getting killed," I said, ignoring the Wolf's snort.  Quincy gulped, nodded again, then zipped up the line with an enviable skill and speed only a Squirrel could pull off, reaching the ship in mere seconds.  The Porcupines rowed us over to the side of the ship where Quincy soon slipped down a rope ladder with wooden rungs.
       I made a last minute check of my stuff – sword, dagger, chain mail under my shirt, oilcloth bag, head, feet, tail.  I looked as ready as I would ever be.  Taking a deep breath to tamp down the faint nausea still pooled in the pit of my stomach, I mounted the ladder.  I had a job to do.
       I'm not very familiar with ships.  I couldn't tell if sending Quincy up to bring down the ladder counted as standard operating procedure or something improvised to help baby-sit a landlubber like me.  I did know it smelled wrong.  The ladder should still have been dangling down after the survivor of the previous boarding party had fled the ship.  Who had pulled it back up?
       I found Quincy waiting for me at the top, unharmed but shaking like a leaf in a windstorm.  His head jerked around as if he expected to see hordes of monstrous giant Rats burst through the deck at any moment.  His tail danced and flicked so frantically I bet it would have jumped ship and ran all the way back to the docks had it not been attached to Quincy's rear end.
       "The c-c-captain's c-cabin's over th-there," Quincy squeaked through his chattering teeth, pointing more or less towards a door set underneath a higher deck at the aft end of the ship.
       "Great," I checked over the side of the ship for the boat.  "Could you tell your friends we're all right?  I have something important I need to do."
       "Yeah," Quincy's head spasmed in another nod.  He nudged past me and leaned over to wave at his comrades, giving me the perfect opportunity to seize him by the collar and the seat of his pants and throw him overboard.  Quincy squealed as he plunged into the water.
       I didn't waste time congratulating myself in making sure Quincy had missed the boat, instead whirling around and yanking my sword from its scabbard.  The giant Rats couldn't have missed Quincy's scream.  I could feel my heart thunder in my chest as I carefully made my way to the captain's cabin.
       Whatever influence had been keeping the Ombrist from poking his nose out from hiding must have been affecting the giant Rats too.  I reached one set of the stairs leading up to the higher deck, but saw nothing more than an occasional blood stain.  My sword at the ready, I edged over towards the door Quincy had pointed out.  I shot a quick glance around the ship's deck, my ears perked for the slightest sound of claws scraping wood or bodies slithering to attack while my nose strained for the merest whiff of foul monster body odor.
       A fast peek at the door revealed I needn't bother going for the handle.  Someone had bitten the handle off the door, gnawing huge gashes in the wood in the process.  It looked like the work of infuriated Rats, only much bigger.
       I nudged the door, but someone had shoved something against it.  I closed my eyes to pre-adjust them for the dim lighting in the cabin and waited for several seconds, focusing all my attention through my other senses in case a giant Rat decided now would be a good time to introduce itself.  I also took the time to gather my wizardly senses, drawing up energy from inside myself and readying it to mold into spells.
       Because our profession required us to face off against wizards and monsters, we witch hunters needed a basic understanding of magic.  Many of us opted to learn some of the easier spells for a little bit more of an edge against our foes, but such cross-training came at a cost.  We couldn't sling swords or spells as effectively as a warrior or a wizard.  To counterbalance that, we did learn to be more adaptable and more capable of switching between different types of attacks.
My strength lay in Elementalism, the most basic and easiest to learn of the magical disciplines.  I knew some Theurgy, better known as white magic, but only enough to scare the undead and to worry necromancers.  Against other types of magic, I relied on quick wits and quicker footwork.
       As I stood there with my eyes closed, I noticed the seasickness lying low in my stomach, perhaps frightened by its apparently insane host ready to fling himself at horrible, body-mangling danger.  I almost laughed at it, but instead twirled around and rammed my shoulder into the door, shoving it open about halfway.  I opened an eye and squeezed my tall frame through, my sword poking about, ready to skewer anything unfriendly.  The foul stink of death, blood, and filthy bodies assaulted my nose, but nothing tried to beat up the rest of me.  How disappointing.  If this kept up, I might swear the giant Rats didn't exist.
       With a paw over my overpowered nose, I blinked open my other eye and searched the cabin with my eyes and ears, easily picking out the large body lying on the bed.  A check behind the door for anything hiding there revealed only a small chest pressed against the door.  I listened hard, but I heard no sounds of breathing.  I opened up my wizardly senses and scried for white or black magic spells, but found nothing I could recognize, either because it happened too long ago or because I lacked the sensitivity to detect anything.  I warily walked over to the bed and peered down at the biggest rodent I had ever laid eyes upon.
       I had seen big members of the rodent races before, usually standing in Merced Dale to be sold into slavery.  The biggest rodent I had personally ran across had been a stoic Capybara, her tiny ears not quite reaching my shoulder.  Otherwise, Porcupines such as those back at the boat counted as the tallest I usually encountered.
       This giant Rat looked nothing like them.  It reminded me of one of the usual sort of Rats living throughout the island of Calabria, only bulked up to something more my size.  From the huge, furless tail sprouting from its massive rump to the notched and mutilated ears on its head, the giant Rat looked like one ugly son of a female burindent.  Even in death, corded muscles and tough-looking sinews bulged under mangy gray fur matted with grime and blood.  Paws as big as those of a full-grown Gorilla's hands came equipped with some nasty-looking claws encrusted with more blood.  Yellowed incisors a Bat could use as daggers stabbed out from its jaw.  The tattered remains of some sort of cloth encircled its hips preserving what little modesty it had left.  Gashes and cuts along its body, including some made very recently, revealed it had seen some unpleasant times within the past few weeks.  From the looks of things, I guessed the boarding parties had given as good as they got.
       "You need a bath," I remarked, but the giant Rat answered me with the silence of death.
       I felt letdown.  I had hoped I would run across a live monster Rat, if only so that I could feel as if I had earned my pay.
       I may be overconfident when it comes to fighting bad guys, but I didn't get this far by borrowing trouble.  Since no giant Rats intended to accommodate me, I sought out my secondary objectives, the captain's log and any charts I could scrounge up that might reveal what the Duchess had been doing while out to sea.  I found the charts scattered across the deck, with two lying on a table, pinned under a triangular instrument I didn't recognize.  I checked the charts on the table and found it curious they displayed the coastline along Bisclavret lands.  As I rolled up all the charts, I discovered the captain's log lying underneath them.  Stuffing the logbook and the charts in my oilskin bag, I securely tied the bag closed and slung it over my shoulder.  With a foot, I pushed aside the small chest.  From the lightness of the chest, I suspected the idea had been more to keep the door closed than to keep anyone out.  With my sword out in case I ran across another giant Rat, I walked out of the cabin.
       And came face-to-ugly face with another giant Rat.
       We stared at each other for a split second, the monster Rat as dumbfounded as me.  Then it screeched, slashing its claws at my face.  I ducked and jabbed my sword at its belly, dropping my bag without letting go of it.  Handicapped by the ache of my eyes adjusting to the bright sunlight, I missed as the giant Rat leaped back with an angry hiss.
       "How do ye do, neighbor?" I edged away from the door, trying to buy some time.  "Mind if I borrow a cup of — yowch!"  Faster than I expected, the rat lashed out at me, catching me on the sword arm.  I leaped back, thumping my shoulder against the bulkhead and yanking my paw free of my bag.  I barely kept from dropping my sword as I scrambled back.  The giant Rat snapped its huge choppers at me and scurried into the cabin.
       "Does this mean you're out of sugar, too?" I knew a cue when I saw one.  Sheathing my sword and grabbing my bag, I dashed for the side of the ship.  An earsplitting wail persuaded me to forget about the ladder.  With a cry of "Gardyloo!", I jumped ship.
       I came up spluttering, my paw desperately gripping the strings of my bag.  Treading water as best as I could, I tried to swim over to the boat.  The Porcupines met me partway, taking the bag and helping me scramble into the boat.  A gasp from Quincy made me ignore the throbbing, stinging pain in my wounded arm and look up.
       The monster Rat crouched on the Duchess' railing, its hideous muzzle contorted into a fierce snarl and its madly bulging eyes glinting red in the sunlight.  I could see it bore several wounds like those of its dead companion.  I ignored the Wolf's muttered prayer to Helloise and the Porcupine's grunts as they threw themselves into rowing away from the Duchess as fast as they could and instead wracked my brains on how to get it into the water.  Perhaps I could test the theory I had come up with concerning the giant Rats.
       "Hey, Ugly!" I yelled at it, remembering an insult I once heard from an angry bar patron.  "I met your mother on the street at the nunnery!"
       It serenaded us with another shriek worthy of a boiling teakettle.  The giant Rat leaped at us, its powerful legs launching it through the air.  Thanks to the Porcupines' heroic rowing, it missed the boat by a couple of feet and slammed into the water, drenching us with its splash.
       The giant Rat swam up to the boat with amazing quickness and tried to climb over the side.  An oar whacked it on the head, treating us to an annoyed hiss that sent shivers down our spines.  The Porcupine swung the oar for another smack, but the monster Rat caught it in its teeth and swiftly chewed the paddle end to pieces.  The Porcupine wrenched his oar free and stared at the tooth-mangled end in mute shock.
       I tore the boat hook out of the stunned Wolf's paw and stabbed it into one and then the other of those humongous paws gripping the side of the boat.  The giant Rat hissed again as I menaced it with the boat hook, forcing it away from the boat.  I could almost see it figuring out how best to slip by me and tear out my throat.
       With a cackle that made Quincy flinch, I shouted a few words, using them to focus my mind and mold an Air Elementalism spell, directing energy from within me through the boat hook and towards the giant Rat.  Electricity popped and sizzled, and a miniature lightning bolt sparked out of the metal point of the boat hook, zapping into the giant Rat's nose with a thunderous crack!  The monster Rat convulsed and sank below the waves.
       We waited for a few minutes, the Porcupines putting some distance between us and where the giant Rat went down, but our erstwhile opponent never came back up.
       Once Quincy calmed down enough to bandage my wounded arm, we returned to the Duchess to check for any remaining monster Rats.  I found the corpses of three others down in the hold, lying among a pile of gnawed bones and the partly chewed remains of the missing members of the boarding parties.  Once I convinced myself that the giant Rats had departed the land of the living some time ago, I got out of there as quickly as I could.
       As soon as the others came aboard, the Wolf signaled shore for help in docking the ship.  Realizing I no longer exposed it to immediate danger, my seasickness roared back with a vengeance barely moderated by the massage I'd learned from Quincy.  When the Duchess of the Quistonsee finally docked, I got off as soon as I could, taking the captain's log with me.  I spent the next hour seated at a table in one of Port Spar's more trustworthy taverns, waiting for my stomach to settle enough for me to eat.
       "Good afternoon, Mycroft," I greeted my contact with Gloria-Scott Shipping without glancing up from the last entry in the logbook.  "Sorry about taking the book, but I needed to confirm something before I gave it to you."
       "Good afternoon, Mister Gilfane," the Wolf took a stool across from me, a guarded tone in his voice.  "Did you find anything enlightening?"
       "Plenty," I finally looked up at him.  "Turns out the captain had a few unwilling 'passengers' onboard."  I studied Mycroft for a moment, but the Wolf didn't so much as bat an ear at the thought of one of his company's ships hauling slaves.  I sighed and rubbed at an eye.  Seeing nothing to be gained by yammering on about the injustices of slavery, I frowned at the logbook.
       "Anyway, these 'passengers'," I peered at one of the last entries in the book, trying to make out the handwriting, but this attempt told me no more about the race of the "passengers" or where they came from than previous ones, "they happened to be under the protection of someone called Sumatra, shaman from what I gather.  When the Duchess was a day out from – Tejam?  Taiam? – this Sumatra appeared before the crew of the Duchess and demanded the release of his people.  Naturally, the captain tried to throw him in irons, but Sumatra placed a curse upon the crew – specifically on the Rats."
       "You mean," Mycroft's eyes widened.  "Those monsters were our people?"
       "Yes," I nodded.  "Sumatra turned them into ogres or whatever these foreigners call such monsters.  When he wrote this last entry, the captain didn't believe Sumatra.  I imagine he would now."
       "Our crew," Mycroft mumbled, stunned.
       "Part of the dangers of enslaving foreigners," I couldn't resist the jab.  I hurried on before Mycroft could rally himself.  "I figured something like that had happened.  You see, the giant Rats acted too much like sailors.  Someone sailed the ship into harbor.  Someone pulled up the ladder the other boarding parties used.  Someone knew how to use the right charts to get to Port Spar.  The way I figure it, Sumatra turned the Rats into monsters not just so they could kill the rest of the crew, but so that they could sail the ship for him."
       "Couldn't some of the other crew have survived?" wondered Mycroft, still trying to take the tragedy in.  "Maybe they sailed the ship?"
       "Sorry," I shook my head.  "All I found of the rest of the crew were bones long since gnawed clean.  Quincy did tell me one of the Duchess' boats was gone.  That could have been because of any surviving crew abandoning ship or, more likely, because of Sumatra and his people leaving when the Rats got them home."
       "And then they sailed all the way back here?" Mycroft wiped a paw over his gray-furred forehead.
       "Yep," I shut the logbook with a thump.  "Either they got away from Sumatra, or he didn't care what happened to them once he finished with them.  I'd say they came back here because they couldn't think of anywhere else to go.  Two died on the way, and the boarding parties took care of two others.  I finished off the last one.  Those Rats of unusual size exist no more."  I pushed the logbook over to him.
       "And that's it?" Mycroft pulled out a money pouch.
       "Looks that way," I shrugged.  "Makes for an interesting tale to tell the grandpups, maybe."
       Mycroft gave me an odd look, as if he expected me to say something more, but passed over my payment without further comment.  I swapped farewells with Mycroft, secretly hoping I wouldn't ever again ride a boat out on anything connected to the open sea.
       An hour later, I learned the Ombrist had just sailed out to sea on a ship.  If I wanted to catch him, I needed to do the same.
       Thank you, Helloise.
___________________________________________________________

Author's Note



       How might various monsters of literature and legend be reinterpreted to fit in a world of anthropomorphic animals?  What might Black Shuck and his Black Dog kin be like?  How about the drop bears of Australia or the selkies of Ireland and Scotland?
       The above quote comes from one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short stories.  While the giant rat Holmes speaks about was probably meant to be one of a number of real and not-so-monstrous rodents, that's no fun for an adventure story.  Many Holmes fans have penned their own versions of the "story for which the world is not yet prepared", often creating some very monstrous rats.
       "The Giant Rat of Sumatra" appeared in Sanguine Publication's third issue of Claw Marks emagazine and is set within the Ironclaw - Jadeclaw world (here called Monderévélé ("Known World") for simplicity).  Sources for in-continuity material include the Ironclaw core book and its Bisclavret supplement.

Specific Notes from the story –

       "...the Duchess of the Quistonsee..." – The Quistonsee Ocean surrounds the island of Calabria, the setting for Ironclaw.  The map supplied with the Ironclaw core book appears to erroneously label it the Ouistonsee Ocean.

       "...to briskly massage the ring and pinkie fingers of both of my paws, especially near the pinkies' knuckles." – Quincy uses an actual anti-seasickness remedy.  According to certain massage techniques, the nerves of the ring and pinkie fingers are connected to those of the ears, including the inner ears where seasickness originates.  Quincy's massage is supposed to help ease the nausea by remotely calming the nerves in the inner ear.

       "The priests call Helloise our Savior, but I think She is also a trickster." – The vixen Helloise the Most Beatific serves as Ironclaw's analog for Christ with S'allumer, the Light of Creation, in the role of the Christian God.  The Testaments of Helloise are the equivalent of at least the core of the New Testament.  The worship of S'allumer is the state religion of the Bisclavret under the tradition of cuius regio, eius regio (the Duke's religion is everyone's religion, whether they like it or not), but the Bisclavret have a notoriously hard time living up to the ideals of Penitence of S'allumer.

       "...me, Rafferty Gilfane, a Wolf-Dog witch hunter..." – Rafferty's name comes straight out of the "Bisclavret Names" section of the Bisclavret supplement for Ironclaw.  "Gilfane" combines the prefix Gil- ("one who serves") with Skirfane, a river and area on Calabria under the control of the Bisclavret, a House of Wolves.  Rafferty's backstory has him born and raised in the Skirfane Greens to a Wolf mother and an unknown Dog father.

       "...my pursuit of an Ombrist necromancer..." – The Bisclavret supplement describes the Ombrists as secretive ancestor worshipers who may or may not dabble in black magic.  Rafferty's Ombrist apparently does.

       "I don't like Port Spar..." – This paragraph summarizes Port Spar and one of the reforms Duke Tremaine de Bisclavret enacted in order to modernize his lands (as further detailed in Bisclavret).  Triskellian is Calabria's largest city and capital, controlled by the Rinaldi, a House of Foxes.  The Invisible Guild is a criminal organization largely based in Bisclavret lands and is a constant source of headaches for wealthier citizens there...assuming it really does exist.  I figure Rafferty's opinion on Duke Tremiain's reforms to be common among more cynical Bisclavret.

       "...the owners of the Duchess, a company called Matilda-Briggs Shipping..." – After some waffling on my part, I finally decided to name the shipping company after the ship Holmes associated with his giant rat, patting myself on the back for my cleverness.  Originally, for some inexplicable reason, I named the company Gloria-Scott Shipping.  Oops.  Since it's been a while since the original version of this story was published, I figured no one would notice or care if I renamed it properly.

       "'...Leave any rodents of unusual size to me.'" – Chuan Lin of Sanguine Marketing asked me to sneak in a reference to the R.O.U.S. (Rodents Of Unusual Size) from The Princess Bride.  I thought his idea a good one, so I snuck in three.

       "My strength lay in Elementalism ...  I knew some Theurgy..." – As in many fantasy RPG, magic is incorporated into the gameplay.  The Ironclaw core book details the basics for five fields of magic.  One is Elementalism, in which the mage manipulates the classical elements of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, and a second is White Magic, claimed by the Church of S'allumer to be a manifestation of S'allumer's light upon the material world despite evidence that White Magic predates Helloise.  Here, I'm using Theurgy to refer to religion-based White Magic.  Also mentioned in the story is Black Magic, the destructive flip side to White Magic.

       "...If this kept up, I might swear the giant Rats didn't exist." – Here's the second R.O.U.S. injoke.

       "...usually standing in Merced Dale to be sold into slavery." – Merced Dale is a location in Harrowgate, the capital of the Bisclavret Duchy, where slave auctions take place.  "Standing in Merced Dale" is a common phrase among the Bisclavret to refer to being sold to slavery or to work for an unreasonable boss.

       "The biggest rodent I had personally ran across had been a stoic Capybara..." – The capybaras of South America are the world's largest living rodents, reaching lengths up to 4 ¼ feet (1.3 m).  South America has a prehistory full of giant rodents, including guinea pigs the size of bison.  Sanguine Productions has yet to identify where the South America analog is in Monderévélé.

       "...one ugly son of a female burindent." – Since the word for female canines wouldn't be vulgar in a world where anthropomorphic canines live, I figure this serves as the closest the Calabrians get to the insult.  A burindent is the Calabrian equivalent to real world canines such as wolves and dogs.

       "...pinned under a triangular instrument I didn't recognize." – Whether this is a sextant or the less common octant, Rafferty apparently doesn't know what it is.

       "Does this mean you're out of sugar, too?" – Europe in the 1400s (Ironclaw's approximate real world timeframe) knew about sugar cane for at least two centuries.  Though Rafferty is unlikely to have grown up in his highly rural home village knowing about sugar, he probably has encountered it on his travels since then.

       "With a cry of 'Gardyloo!', I jumped ship." – Chalk this one up to Rafferty's oddball sense of humor.  In olden times, people would shout "gardyloo" when they threw trash (including the contents of chamber pots) out the window, warning those on the street below.

       "'I met your mother on the street at the nunnery!'" – In other words, Rafferty just called the giant Rat's mother a prostitute.  According to Rose Lewis, "Never say you met a lady on the street.  'Er brother might 'ear you.  Always say you met her in the street."  I take that to mean meeting a woman "on the street" refers to hiring a streetwalker.  "Nunnery" was Elizabethan era slang for a brothel, a term William Shakespeare turned into a pun in Hamlet – "Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?"

       "'Good afternoon, Mycroft,'..." – I swiped the name Mycroft from Sherlock Holmes' brother, though this Wolf doesn't resemble the elder Holmes.

       "Seeing nothing to be gained by yammering on about the injustices of slavery..." – Sadly, slavery is still considered normal in Calabria.  However, a few, including Rafferty, believe it to be wrong.

       "'...someone called Sumatra, their shaman...'" – I had to squeeze in the name Sumatra somewhere, especially since Monderévélé most likely has no island with that name.

       "'...When the Duchess was a day out from – Tejam? Taiam? – ...'" – Since the Duchess had been visiting foreign shores, I thought to mention one of the as yet unpublished Monderévélé supplements as a tie-in.  According to Chuan, Taiam is almost exactly the area where I wanted the Duchess to have visited.  Rafferty's trouble in making out the handwriting of the Duchess' captain was my wiggle room in case Taiam hadn't fit and still is my wiggle room should "Giant Rat" end up not fitting the supplement when it's published.

       "'...Those Rats of unusual size exist no more.'" – There's the last of the three The Princess Bride injokes.