A little idea that I had for a long long looooooooong time.

Actually, I pictured it like a variation of the classic tale "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" starring
my violin playing, rat loving Martin and named it (completely creatively *cough cough*)
"The Pied Fiddler"

>> In this story Martin is the son of a goodhearted magistrate of a prosperous town called Tharleal, but the family gets betrayed
by a councilman (I called him Quintus XP), who accuses the magistrate of witchcraft because of the possession of a skull shaped violin (that
apparently is the reason for the prosperity of Thareal). The magistrate family gets exiled and killed by assassins, sent by Quintus. All - apart
from Martin, who is found in the blood of his parents and siblings by a group of traveling bards.

19 Years later: Martin is all grown up, remembers pretty little of his true past, but plays his fathers skull violin and (sometimes unwillingly) charms people
and animals alike. On their travels they stumble across the "legend" of the "Rat Town" - named by the fact that it had a rat plague for over 19 years - and
that magistrate Quintus promised a generous reward for anyone who rids the town of the rats. And since Martin is rather font of rats (he has a grey pet rat
called Eureka), he decides to go and tackle that task.

Coming to the town he gets a cold welcome and a lot of mistrust towards his "profession", but he proofs that he is capable of the impossible task, when the
townspeople watch him untying a rat king (google it... if you dare. It's a bit gut wrenching for a rat lover -_- ). The townsfolk trusts him
and his pet rat now but Quintus is onto him when he sees the violin the fiddler is playing.
While Martin prepares and fulfills his task of "rat catching", he gets celebrated a hero and awaits his payment. The council takes its sweet time to get the
promised reward and so the fiddler decides to stay in the town and finds a friend in Harlen, a woodsman from outside of the town walls ( Mirri's boy).
Together they research the history of the town, which once was called Tharleal (surprise surprise...) and Martin realizes what happened to his family.

In that time Quintus hatches a plan to get rid of the fiddler for good. He hires a spellcaster to charm the children of Tharleal and kidnap them, to then blame
the fiddler for this crime. The plan works: The children leave the town under the powerful spell and get trapped in a cave in the hills. Once Martin enters town
again to collect his reward, he gets arrested, accused and thrown in the dungeon. Harlen and Eureka (who fled to the woodsman after Martin's arrest) find
out about the plan of Quintus and tell Martin in the dungeons.
He comes up with the idea of using the rats to track and safe the children and expose the
sinister game of the magistrate. With the help of his friends Mart can escape the dungeon and reclaim his violin to command a legion of the rats - he guided
out of the city - to find the children in the mountains. Once they all (rats and children) get back to Tharleal, Quintus gets exposed, beaten and Martin gets asked
to take the position of his late father and bring prosperity back to the town. He accepts... only under the condition that the rats can live in the town, alongside
the people. The "Rat Town" Tharleal is back and it is better than ever under the leadership of the "Pied Fiddler". <<



Phew! That was a long one ^^;
So yeah, that is the story behind this. I so can see it to become a new Pixar film XD It would be better
than the CG remakes of 90s Disney classics.

© Martin by me