With his lip still trembling, he slowly nods “yes.”

"Good and you can keep my water skin, I have another I can use." She pats him on the back and walks off to join Natasha by the doorway.

"See anything?"

 (Natasha shakes her head.)

"I think I can stick my head in one of the holes and get a look. Stone, be a dear and come with me just in case I run into trouble."

(Natasha waits for Stone to follow, carefully walks out, gets down on her knees in front of the large hole near the door and sticks her head down to try to scout the bottom lair. She will get her head back up as soon as possible as to avoid getting noticed by whoever is down there.)

Perception: 18

Jacob sighs and squats down next to the vagrant, "One rat so much as sniffs my boots and I will shove both of them up your ass." as he unlocks the manacles while glowering at him, and stows them back away,.

Stone escorts Natasha to the edge and stands guard as she peers over.

Penelope: As you walk to the doorway, your summoned Rat Swarm follows you.

Jacob: Donnar fearfully nods in acknowledgement and rubs his now un-manacled wrists. He reaches over to where the dog was cooking and finds a chunk that wasn’t blown away by his Thunderwave on the floor. He blows on it to knock off some of the excess dirt and holds it up to you as a peace offering.

Natasha and Stone: With Stone as a guard, Natasha carefully peers into the open hole in the upper pier. You see no light sources below, you only have moonlight. You see a lot of debris from the upper pier and beyond that you see some movement of small creatures, you assume more rats. You see nothing humanoid below from this spot.

OOC: Would Penelope know anything about rat folk in general? (Is there any kind of check I can make?)

"Oh I know, I'll ask the rats. Excuse me little ones, do you know where the rat folk Creel is hiding?" Penelope will ask the swarm.

With a wry, almost inaudible chuckle, "I'm good, thank you. But here..." he reaches into his pack and takes out about a day's worth of rations and hands it to Donnar. "... maybe this will mean something to you. It'll certainly taste better than dog."

Then he'll stand with a creak and head for the others.

(OOC: I think it would be a History check since Ratfolk are humanoid. It would have to be a high roll since Ratfolk only live on this continent and you’ve never been here before.)

Penelope: The swarm looks at you with confused looks on their faces. (OOC: the swarm is not actually a swarm of rats but fey creatures taking the shape and characteristics of rats. See Conjure Animals) The other random rats around you look at you and then over to Donnar. 

Donnar looks at the rations and water-skin that the party has given him and says, “It’s alright, show them.” 

The rats run out the door and over to the ladders. They take no care to avoid the rotting parts of the pier, since they don’t weigh enough to cause a collapse. They look back at you and wait for you.

History check (for the heck of it): 15

Stone carefully follows the rats.

Assuming she'll opt to follow the rats as the lightest among us, Jacob tosses the end of his rope to Natasha and firmly wraps the other end around his arms, bracing himself, "... in case the wood gives out..."

(Natasha grabs the rope and ties it around her waist. She then lights a torch and slowly goes down to the left ladder, ready to climb down as soon as everyone else is in position to back her up in case something is down there.)

Stone waits at the top of the right ladder, prepared to slide down it should Natasha need him.

Penelope: You can’t recall any specific knowledge about Ratfolk. You assume they’re just like people, only “rattier.”

(Do you want to join the rest of the party?)

Yes, Penelope will follow after the group.

(Natasha climbs down the ladder first and takes a better look around now that she has a light.)

In case you need another Perception Roll: 22

Natasha: The rats scurry down the ladder and you slowly and carefully follow with your lit torch. When the rats reach the bottom, they run off to the east. When you get beneath the upper pier, you stop and look around.

Directly in front of you is the same debris you saw from above.

To the west you see that larger rats roam this area, crawling around an eight-foot-tall pile of trash. Beyond the enormous rats’ nest, a hole and darkness cuts off access to the western end of the walkway. 

To the south you see a rocky beach. Debris covers the dirt and rocks along the river shore. Two corpses rest among the flotsam: a skeleton with gnawed bones, and an intact body resembling that of conjoined twins.

And to the east, where the rats went, you see hole in the lower pier and beyond it what looks like an outline of a massive rat’s nest in the darkness. You notice that this eastern area looks tidier than the other rat’s nests.

Your party waits above.

What do you want to do?

Seeing that Natasha made it safely down the ladder on the left, Stone heads over to that ladder and follows her down.

(Natasha moves to allow Stone to also come down the ladder. She goes partly back up the ladder and calls out to Jacob and Penelope.) 

"Um, I think you should come down here."

(She then describes to them what she sees.)

"That hole to the east seems like something we should check out, but I don't feel like getting ambushed while we do it. We need to scout the west and take a look at those bodies on the beach before we can move forward."

(Natasha waits for the rest of her party and then motions to them that she wants to check out the bodies on the beach first.)