Sleepless rat

The sleepless rat is a rodent magically bred by the resistance of the Free Republic of Avelax to fight the onirarchs. The sleepless rat gets its name because it counteracts the effects of dream magic (and therefore metonymically of sleep itself); sleepless rats have the ability to destroy dreamstuff by chewing through it, being able to reduce strong walls and fortifications and even batirines to intangible wisps of ambient magic.

The resistance uses sleepless rats as a tool of sabotage and infiltration and as a weapon against batirines and dreambuilt. They may release sleepless rats near the walls of buildings they want to enter or talismans they want to destroy, or let loose a horde of sleepless rats to harry a batirine they want to eliminate. Many resistance cells have large banks of cages full of sleepless rats in their headquarters, which they carefully tend to maintain their population against when they will be required for use against the onirarchs. Sleepless rats also make popular pets among resistance members, though of course pets they have to keep out of sight of the dreamlords' minions.

Some anarchical resistance cells have been known to just release sleepless rats at random on the streets, in the simple hopes that they'll cause as much havoc and damage to the onirarchs' property as possible This hasn't been as devastating a tactic as the resistance has hoped; sleepless rats can be very useful when employed for specific purposes, but wandering through the streets they are fairly easily hunted down and exterminated, and while a few do manage to escape and continue breeding, and there are in fact wild populations of sleepless rats in some areas of the Republic, those few that exist don't do enough damage to seriously weaken the onirarchy. Still, even if the wild sleepless rats aren't going to deal a major blow against the dreamlords, they do still form a minor thorn in their side, and the onirarchs have even been forced to create a new kind of batirine, the lasset, to deal with them.

Sleepless rats look very much like normal rats, though their eyes have a silvery tinge to them not immediately obvious except on close inspection, and their tails are slightly thinner. There are also slight differences in the shape of the head and ears and the proportions of the legs, but these are likely to be detectable only to an expert. Their fur is usually gray in color, though some black or white specimens have been known. In most biological particulars, a sleepless rat is similar to its nonmagical relative. It does actually gain sustenance from the dreamstuff it destroys—or rather from absorbing the dream energy thus released—, and can be quite healthy sustaining itself entirely on that diet, if enough dreamstuff is available, but if not a sleepless rat can also live on the same sort of diet as a regular rat.

Although it is not the reason for their name, it is coincidentally true that sleepless rats that regularly consume sufficient dreamstuff do not, in fact, sleep. Without dreamstuff in their diets, they do sleep like regular rats, though their motions and squeaking in their sleep imply it may be troubled and unpleasant; most rebels are careful to supply their rats with enough dreamstuff to allow them not to sleep, though making up the bulk of their diet with more readily obtained foods.