#like solely by the book person who hates any improvisation or 'rule breaking' (kipperlilly); gratuitously 'edgy' nihlistic player who doesn

[camillahex]

okay i've been thinking a lot about the rat grinders (abbreviated as rgs) and here are my ideas on the different roles they could have this season and an analysis of their appearance so far (putting this under a read more bc it got long)

major antagonists - the rat grinders are directly involved/responsible for whatever the big bad is this season. something like they are causing the quangles in order to get aguefort to leave school and take over w/ Grix to change everything to be hyper rules oriented in order to fuck over the bad kids or take over the world or whatever the big bad actually ends up being. quite frankly, i don't think this is at all likely and it wouldn't make for a very good story imo

minor antagonists - not directly in league w bb but indirectly a part of the problem. one theory i've seen around is they have somehow reprorammed grix (potentially with henry the artificer teacher who has the same last name as the rg bard) and are trying to change the school bc they are fed up w agueforts loosey-goosey ness (this is mainly based on kipperlilly) and they tangentially aid the big bad by doing this as well. i think this is more likely and could be good depending on how it unfolds

antagonistic but not antagonists - feud stays purely in the academic/school life. the rgs maybe show up the bad kids a little, do better than them in classes or at sports, take some of the wind out of their popularity (like at this now abandoned party), maybe kipperlilly even wins pres - but it's not deeper than just being the school worsties of the bad kids

reluctant allies - kind of plays off previous; rgs and bad kids end up having to work together at various points and even battle together (maybe for like the big finale battle) bc they can recognize that saving the world id more important than their school feud

genuine understanding - also plays off previous two; interactions lead to interpersonal conflict at first but through being forced to work and battle together they each begin to see that there is more to the other. bad kids acknowledge that rgs have a lot of raw skill and strength in their own right (as already evidenced by mary ann's athletics and kipperlilly's inplied rogue abilities) and that it takes a lot of dedication and (especially) discipline to work as a party killing rats for three hours every day. rgs acknowledge that large-scale adventuring requires a certain loose attitude for the "rules" and that having being specifically subject to arthur aguefort's chaos may not necessarily be a good thing

now, narratively speaking, i think the rat grinders as a party will have immense specific strength and skills, but will not be prepared for more "real" life or death battles. improvisation really is the better part of planning (thanks calroy) and a plan never survives first contact with the enemy, but they likely have not needed to create complex, or on the fly plans, or improvise when the bad guy throws out some insane shit, while simply killing tens of thousands of rats, spiders, and tree gremlins. none of those beasts would have taught them how to practically deal with ranged weapon attacks or any kind of spell attack, and i could also see them not being the best with playing to each others strengths and covering each others' weaknesses due to the sheer monotony of only ever battling the exact same creatures. i'd also be surprised if they have any experience at all with genuinely dying and having to be revived or even with going into unconsciousness. i do think classes go over that kind of thing but learning the theory of something and then actually having to apply it under pressure are two radically different experiences.

one thing that could complicate this is that the rgs have recently gotten a new cleric party member, who we know is a transfer from highcourt, helioic, and loved by kristen's parents (as an aside, this is going to be so juicy and cause so much conflict w kristen, i'm so excited). clerics are pretty vital for parties going on intense adventures, being the strongest healers of the group, so there are two ways i see a cleric introduction as having to occur. one, is that the rgs have never had a cleric and spending your days killing low level creatures likely does not create much in the way of life threatening scenarios or injuries a long rest couldn't heal. and now that they feel they're strong enough, they want to move to more extreme adventures and feel they need a cleric to make it work

however, option two is that the rgs did have a cleric, and that at some point their cleric fully died. as we've learned, parties who have a member die immediately go on pass/fail and don't have to do a yearly project. if this happened to the rgs last year (or maybe even their first year, i forget if the pass/fail was only through the year or not) they would not have had to do the sophomore year project, and it would explain how they've manages to keep only killing low level creatures. also, this could be especially narratively significant, because, the bad kids had party members die on their very first day of school, one of which was their cleric kristen. they were only revived by aguefort committing ritualistic murder-suicide to bring them back to life. this could definitely read as preferential treatment from aguefort, even though the bad kids could have been anyone and aguefort was just doing his own plan to sneak into heaven and stop being poisoned. a dead cleric would be another level of parallel the rgs would have with the bad kids and could be an aspect of their resentment.

on a more meta/symbolic level, i feel like the rgs, and in particular kipperlilly and her campaign spiel, are representative of an intensely regimented, regulated education system where everyone must do the exact same things, get the exact same help, and all be measured on the exact same axes of success, in a very standardized testing kind of way. now, abstractly, in a vacuum, in a perfect world, this is fine; this is equal treatment under the rules. but the realities on life and people are messy and complex. there's any number of reasons why someone might need more help, different accommodations, and be measured on a different metric of success than someone else and none of it makes it preferential treatment; it's just that everyone has different needs. the solution should always be more diversity in accessibility, not less.

and to bring it back to the narrative, we've been told that adventurers, and by extension the students of the adventuring academy, are basically vigilantes doing, uh, extralegal vigilantism. a regimented system based on grinding out experience by killing rats in the woods would in no way produce successful adventurers, just like really strong exterminators. the things the bad kids have gotten in trouble doing are things it has been explicitly said they are supposed to be doing ad burgeoning adventurers, and the only reason they got in trouble in the first place and weren't allowed to do their thing solving mysteries (as presumably, many many parties before them have done) was because aguefort was missing. even when adaine was kidnapped by fallinel, the school protections she invoked protects all of aguefort's students. we have heard many times that students throughout the adventuring academy's history have been encouraged to act as the extralegal vigilantes they are training to be, and haven't seen anything that suggest it's only been selectively applied to favorites

ultimately, i hope that the realization develops that the school has been failing both the rat grinders and the bad kids. we haven't seen a lot of the rat grinders but based on kipperlilly's complaints i think it would be a failure in a lack support in helping the students find their own adventures (as opposed to just keeping on going killing rats in the woods) and/or a lack of protection for when they bite off more than they could chew (if they did in fact have a cleric who died). for the bad kids, it would be a lack of support and accommodation for when you do find a big adventure and can't keep up with schoolwork, a failure to recognize and interfere when you see students struggling before it reaches a critical breaking point (kristen and fig being close to expulsion), a lack of support wrt university funds/scholarship or required school supplies funding (riz and adaine), a refusal to recognize when students exceed in ways outside of the typical curriculum (gorgug and fabian).

the enemy is the system, not your fellow classmates