Beneath the Mortal Realms seethes a second, hungrier world. The skaven, verminous ratmen breeding in numbers no census could survive, have gnawed an under-empire through the roots of reality itself, their tunnels linking realm to realm through reality-eating rents called gnawholes. At the heart of the web festers Blight City, a vast and perpetually collapsing metropolis wedged into the cracks between the realms, where uncounted trillions scheme, starve, and swarm. The free peoples raise walls against orruks and daemons; the skaven simply arrive from below.
Above it all (and below, and within) looms the Great Horned Rat, youngest and hungriest of the great powers of Chaos: a god of entropy, corruption, and the devouring multitude. He offers his children no paradise, only permission: everything in the realms may be theirs, provided they take it, and take it first from each other. His will is interpreted, self-servingly and at knifepoint, by the Council of Thirteen, the masters of the Great Clans, while his daemon verminlords step out of the gnawholes to nudge skavendom along paths only the god can see.
Skaven civilization is treachery, codified. Status is never given, only taken; every warlord stands atop a ladder of poisoned rivals, and every underling below him is patiently sharpening something. The Great Clans each perfect a different instrument of ruin (Skryre's warpstone machinery, Pestilens' holy plagues, Moulder's flesh-shaped monsters, Eshin's silent killers), while numberless warlord clans supply the tide of bodies that carries them all to war. Fueling everything is warpstone, solidified sorcery that serves the under-empire as currency, fuel, sacrament, and slow poison all at once.
The terrible arithmetic of the skaven is that they could win. If the under-empire ever rose as one, no wall, ward, or god-forged army could hold back the tide, for the realms sleep on a floor that is already hollow. What saves civilization, year after year, is the skaven themselves: every grand assault betrayed from within, every conquest sold out by its own conquerors. Yet the Great Horned Rat is patient as rot, and he requires only one night, a single night, on which all his children bite in the same direction.
Units
ClanratsBattleline · InfantryThe numberless rank-and-file of the warlord clans: cowardly, expendable, and all but unstoppable in the tide, for behind every fallen clanrat wait a hundred more.
DoomwheelWar Machine · War MachineA colossal rat-powered wheel of warpstone machinery that spits warp lightning as it rolls, steered only nominally and feared equally by both sides.
Gutter RunnersAmbusher · InfantryElite assassins of Clan Eshin who strike from shadow with poisoned blades and throwing stars, then melt away before the alarm is even raised.
Hell Pit AbominationBehemoth · MonsterA writhing horror of stitched flesh and warpstone from the flesh-labs of Clan Moulder, so unnatural it heals its own wounds and refuses to stay dead.
Plague MonksBattleline · InfantryFrothing zealots of Clan Pestilens who count their diseases as blessings, hurling themselves into battle to spread the Great Corruptor's contagions blade-first.
PlagueclawArtillery · War MachineA towering Clan Pestilens catapult that lobs barrels of festering, disease-ridden filth over the enemy line to rot armies alive from within.
Rat OgorsElite · Monstrous InfantryHulking fusions of rat, ogor, and worse from Clan Moulder's flesh-pits: mindless vat-grown muscle goaded into the enemy by whip-wielding packmasters.
StormfiendsElite · Monster InfantryRat ogors surgically fused with warpstone weaponry by Clans Moulder and Skryre, lumbering walking gun-platforms that spew warp-fire, lightning and shredding claws.
StormverminElite · InfantryThe biggest, blackest-furred elite of skavenkind, armored in true steel and drilled with halberds: bodyguards to warlords and the hard spine of the verminous tide.
Warp Lightning CannonArtillery · War MachineA Clan Skryre engine that focuses raw warpstone energy into a searing beam of green lightning, as likely to vaporise its own crew as the foe.
Warp-Grinder Weapon TeamTroops · InfantryA Clan Skryre tunnelling team wielding a warpstone drill that chews through rock and armour alike, boring assault troops up beneath the enemy's feet.
Warplock JezzailsArtillery · Weapon TeamLong-barreled sniper teams of Clan Skryre whose warpstone bullets crack armor at extreme range, turning enemy champions into cautionary tales from a safe distance.
Characters
Ikit ClawThe Iron-FramedClan Skryre's iron-framed Chief Warlock: the greatest weaponsmith of the under-empire, patiently assembling a doomsday arsenal worthy of his own legend.
Lord Skreech VerminkingDeathmaster of the Great Horned RatThe first and greatest of the Verminlords, an immortal daemon forged from the souls of thirteen Grey Seers to serve as the right claw of the Horned Rat himself.
Queek HeadtakerThe HeadtakerThe most feared warlord of Clan Mors, a killing-machine of a skaven who takes the skulls of every worthy foe he slays and hangs them from his back-banner.
ThanquolThe Horned Rat's ChosenThe most infamous grey seer in skavendom: a sorcerer of genuine power and catastrophic ambition, forever one scheme ahead of the ruin he leaves behind, and never without a Boneripper.
Verminlord WarpseerShepherd of the Great AscendancyA far-seeing daemon of the Great Horned Rat who plays skavendom itself as a gamepiece, steering the under-empire toward the promised Great Ascendancy.
Subfactions
Clan EshinThe clan of shadows: assassins, spies, and gutter runners schooled in silent murder and hired out to the highest bidder. Eshin's killers answer only to their own inscrutable masters, and the mere rumor of their involvement has ended Council feuds before they began.
Clan MoulderThe flesh-shapers of skavendom, whose packmasters and master moulders knead muscle, warpstone, and screaming vermin into living weapons. From their flesh-pit laboratories come giant rats, rat ogors, and stranger things, sold by the cage-load to the rest of the under-empire.
Clan PestilensFanatical plague-priests who worship the Great Horned Rat as the Great Corruptor and labor to smother the realms beneath the Great Plagues. Their frothing congregations of plague monks march behind censers of billowing filth, spreading contagion as weapon, sacrament, and prayer in one.
Clan SkryreThe warlock engineers of the under-empire, fusing dark sorcery with warpstone-fueled machinery into weapons that obliterate the enemy almost as often as the operator. Skryre workshops sell lightning cannons, poisoned-wind devices, and doomsday engines to every clan wealthy enough to pay, and keep the true horrors for themselves.
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