Gryphos
Auror
So recently a tiny bit of inspiration came to me (as they do) and before I knew it I had an overwhelming urge to develop it further. Just something to put in the archives of ideas.
The idea was for a story set in a civilisation of sentient anthropomorphic rats. Basically picture your kind of Italian renaissance city, but inhabited by rats instead of humans. The story likely wouldn't expand too much on the world itself but focus on the single city.
What I've been brainstorming is how the society and its values would be inherently different from that of humans. One thought that's struck me is the fact that inheritance would be very different for a species that gives birth in litters. If a hum a king dies the title goes to their eldest, but with rats all the >6 children were born at the same time. My idea was that the king would name in his will who would inherit his title.
Then there's the general problem of having so many children. In the wild this isn't really a problem as very few survive to adulthood, but what about when predators aren't an issue. An immediate thought is that the population could still be kept at a reasonable rate of growth by disease (which did kill a lot of children by in ye olden days). But that detail's still bugging me.
Any other ideas on how a society of rats would differ from our own?
The idea was for a story set in a civilisation of sentient anthropomorphic rats. Basically picture your kind of Italian renaissance city, but inhabited by rats instead of humans. The story likely wouldn't expand too much on the world itself but focus on the single city.
What I've been brainstorming is how the society and its values would be inherently different from that of humans. One thought that's struck me is the fact that inheritance would be very different for a species that gives birth in litters. If a hum a king dies the title goes to their eldest, but with rats all the >6 children were born at the same time. My idea was that the king would name in his will who would inherit his title.
Then there's the general problem of having so many children. In the wild this isn't really a problem as very few survive to adulthood, but what about when predators aren't an issue. An immediate thought is that the population could still be kept at a reasonable rate of growth by disease (which did kill a lot of children by in ye olden days). But that detail's still bugging me.
Any other ideas on how a society of rats would differ from our own?