The Great Maw Rat's first communion in the mortal world was a tremendous success.
The delicious dishes made from dangerous insects by his divine emissaries soothed the ratmen, while the miracle of the worship ceremony spread throughout the entire Mejeva hive-city in increasingly exaggerated versions.
At the end of the festivities, Black Servantson announced that the Great Maw Rat would spread the wonders of the communion to every hungry believer. The four master chefs were equally generous, and soon taught the simplest methods for preparing insect meat.
Salt-baked insect meat, for example, required no advanced techniques. With a certain alchemical solution, even the most foolish ratman could follow the recipe and make plenty of jerky.
It might not taste good, but it was filling and somewhat nutritious.
Most importantly, it was easy to gather.
That very night, many ratmen ran out of the hive-city to search for worker insects in the nearby shadows. The swarm hadn't focused its attacks on the Eternal Rift, so there was only one relatively small nest here. The ratmen had never made a point of attacking it, since they thought insects tasted awful, but things were different now.
Murphy couldn't sleep in the ratmen's hive-city that night, with all its noise and chaos, so he went out for a walk. Before he'd gone far, he saw group after group of excited ratmen carrying off worker insects they'd captured and bound hand and foot, delivering them to the "divine emissaries." The Star-Soul Eagle, looking utterly helpless, was surrounded by a crowd of ratman "chefs" learning how to make jerky from him.
Many other ratmen had been sent to butcher the worker insects.
They killed the weakly attacking insects by smashing them with rocks, then, under the enthusiastic guidance of players who were bored enough to bray