So they're more treacherous than the word bearers?
Yes, they would make the word bearers look like college freshmen in treachery school.
Oooh.
That's a pretty... word bearers are my favorite.
Are they all Arabises? Like, every one of them?
Arabis would get outplanned by the average Skaven, because Arabis can trust someone is
listening to his BS. There is not a single Skaven in all of Skaven-dom who is not expecting
the guys next to him and then the 500 behind him to stab him in the back.
Hello, law criminals, and welcome to another episode of Law Crimes. I am Hal, and joining
me today are Andy, Colin, and Eli, and we are here to discuss the race that does not exist,
in brackets according to Sigma, for everyone out there. Our topic today is the Skaven,
the Rat Men, the Vermintide, and I will hand it over to Eli to helm our beginner section,
take it away, Eli.
Oh, I need to sit down.
I don't think that was Eli, I think the spirit of that quill just inhabited his body.
I don't know, credit to whoever, whoever the guy who reads the gotric and felix books,
he's a true master of the Skaven.
I feel like you've, wow, I'm overstimulated from that.
I think I've been fight or flight, honestly.
That's too much.
Sort the musk of fear.
We all know that Hal is a big fan of the Skaven since the last episode when he said,
daddy ratty.
Daddy, we want to know more about the daddy ratty. That's why we're all here.
Hit us with the law.
I do have an actual little bit of lore.
So, the Skaven are the massive giant empire of cunning, glorious rat men that live in the bowels
of the earth.
Countless rat ways connect to the many under cities all across the land.
Many such cities are located under major pathetic man thing establishments such as Nolm,
the capital of the Skaven, by the way, Skavenplight.
There's a big one below Nolm.
The Skaven are easily the most numerous and grand race and if they were to band together,
they could take over the entire world.
But unfortunately for them, the average Skaven is full of cowardice.
Not cowardice, no, Skaven are cowardly.
They're intelligent and self-preserving.
I mean, cowardice is a proud good thing.
But treachery is also a very large reason why they can't ever get as much done as they should.
And it runs extremely rampant amongst their society.
The betrayal is food and drink to the average rat for who else would I look for other than me?
But due to the genius and ingenuity of the great Skaven race,
the ratmen highly favor strength in numbers and will almost never fight a battle unless
they see losing as completely impossible.
So too, to the brave and cunning Skaven commanders,
lead from the back rear because it is superior Skaven tactics.
While the many lesser races of the Warhammer world are arrogant,
this is nothing compared to Skavenkind, for they are the rightful owners of the world,
the superior and righteous warriors of the great horned rat.
Each individual rat thinks themselves to be the best and every failure is clearly due
to incompetent lackeys or some ruse of treachery woven by other Skaven.
Their society is split up into distinct clans which hold their own specialties
ranging from military might, technological genius, the spraying of plague,
and unimaginable monstrous creations of flesh.
The four major clans are Clan Eshin, the sneaky guys, Clan Skryre, the technological guys,
Clan Mulder, the monster mashers, and Clan Pestilens which are like Nergal rats.
The stinky ones.
The nergal's not there, they're just very stinky.
The stinky ones.
The ones that haven't been in the shower for a while.
The ones from Vermintide that show up to steal all of your health.
They're really ugly.
ALICE Damn, he roasted them, they looked.
He's not wrong.
RILEY It's like all the blessings of Nergal
and the religion of Nergal, but without Nergal, they're just gross.
RILEY Eli, I can't believe you've been drawn into
the clutches of rat shaming.
It's not good.
RILEY I also honourably mentioned you,
Clan Morse, because Quick Breadmaker is from there, and he's a big epic Skaven.
Anyways.
ALICE Breadmaker?
RILEY His real name's Quick Headtaker, but he's...
ALICE Breadmaker?
RILEY Breadmaker.
RILEY Makes a bread, yeah.
ALICE Yo, he got me rhyming, fan.
RILEY Oh, you know the good old Breadmaker.
Oh, innit?
ALICE I just pictured Donald Duck, and he dives
into the pond of golden coins.
I'm just picturing that now, because that's a little like, insane.
RILEY Yeah, screw you, Duck.
Sorry, wrong Duck.
ALICE Wrong Duck.
RILEY Law crime there.
ALICE Yeah, glorious warp stones and warp dust and heads.
Greek loves his heads.
He's probably the best duelist of all the Skaven,
and all the land, because Skaven are better than everyone, don't forget it.
Anyway, we will go deeper into the Great Clans, further into the film video.
Yes, yes.
Well, the rats are powerful in the sense they have great numbers.
So too is their engineering far beyond any of the other societies.
They construct incredible and volatile weapons of war that can tear beings to pieces with
a tidal wave of warp stone bullets, or evaporate an entire structure with warp lightning.
The society is generally dominated by the largest and smartest rats,
and a loose hierarchy is set in place, starting at Skaven slaves, then to clan rats,
and then to other superiors, and eventually all the way to the top,
you have the Grey Seers, and then the Council of Thirteen.
The society is run largely by warp stone, a glorious green little rock that they use as
money, they use it for magic, they use it to make machines,
to huff it, and to take steroids, all of this stuff.
You say huff it?
Yeah.
They like, they have a line, like on the table, at a club.
Yeah.
Damn.
You're... that's a bit too much, and I'm like,
That's the idea that the Skaven are on PRTs, like, oh, what's your cycle?
Oh, you know, yeah.
Skaven, Skaven.
Yeah, this is warp stone, you're probably never heard of it though, you just got on the note.
Yeah, they got the Skaven bodybuilding competitions with rat ogres and stuff.
Warp stone is very tasty and very addictive.
We'll talk about more of it a little bit later, I think, but I think we'll get to that later.
A little bit later, I think.
But for now, we will delve further into the glorious grand realm of the Skaven,
with guidance from the greats most wise of masters.
Colin, may you proceed if it is the wishes of the great seer, almost benevolent master.
I would be happy, please, to continue the lore.
Very good, yousus.
Is there any questions?
There are many questions.
My question is, can Colin do a better Skaven impression?
That's what I'm thinking.
I can attempt to.
I actually have a question of my own, and that is, Eli, how much do I need to pay you
to read your wedding vows in the Skaven voice?
Oh, man, oh, she'd be so unhappy.
Marriage?
Yes, yes.
Oh my god.
You gave me my divorce papers, yes, yes.
I have one question, which is about Clan Pestulence, because I unfortunately got
reminded of that video.
It's Clan Pestulence, the one where it's the one with the video about the guy who pranks his
roommate on the door by unleashing a God-torn fart.
I hope to link this in the actual chat, sorry, in the comment section, for no reason, because
this is Clan Pestulence in a nutshell.
Remember when Little Crimes was a serious channel?
When?
What do you mean when?
I didn't mean either.
Our first line was necrocene.
First utterance.
The first utterance.
Cure me, Lily.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas, Colin.
Happy, happy holidays and good luck holding down the Christmas ham.
I'm ready, Colin.
Hit us with the Skaven.
I feel like I should get it out of the way first.
Now I will discuss Skavendom.
Yes, yes.
Oh.
Yes.
Very nice.
Throat the unclean was my...
Clan Molder.
Yeah, Throt.
Throt's my main man.
Anyway, to begin the Skaven Expert Lore section, why don't we read a poem?
Not, you know, high school cringe love poem.
Sorry to anyone who's ever in one of those.
But instead a poem known as the Doom of Kavzar.
This is the origin story, you should say, of the Skaven.
Now, once upon a time where in between the city-states of Talaya and the nation of Astalia,
there was a city known as Kavzar.
And unlike pretty much anything else in Warhammer, there was the men and dwarves lived together in
pretty much perfect harmony.
The dwarves, of course, lived underground in the mountainous sections and the humans lived above,
but there was...
There wasn't really any problems between them.
And one day they decided they wanted, in order to honor their gods, build a tower as high as they could.
And they did.
They began construction, but eventually they hit the Minecraft world height limit.
They couldn't build any higher.
And just as this happened, along came a mysterious stranger.
Now, the legend is conflicting details on this, which translates to Games Workshop has
waffled back and forth of the lore.
He might have been evil, he might have not been, but either way, he gave the citizens of Kavzar an
offer.
If he...
He will help them complete the tower and in return he asks for nothing but to build a monument to his
own god on top of the tower.
And they agree, the citizens of Kavzar, and lickety-split.
Towers are done in just a little bit more time.
And like I said, the details conflict a bit.
The citizens might have shorted him payment.
They might have not done that and he was just evil.
But either way, the tower was completed with a bell on top of it.
And one night the bell began to ring as the tower was opening.
It rang once, twice, all the way up to 13 times.
And the 13th time, the doom of Kavzar was sealed.
And as the days went by, warpstone, which, to talk about that for a moment, take chaos and then turn
it into a rock and you have warpstone.
It began to rain from the sky, mutating the crops, mutating the animals, mutating the people,
killing people, everything unpleasant.
The crops failed as storms ravaged the land and harvests were poor.
So the people began starving, men and dwarf. And most relevant to the story,
Lurats began growing larger and larger in size and at a certain point they began
devouring the people of the city alive if they were caught alone.
Now the humans of the city turned to the dwarven entrance to the quarters and said,
Hey, let us in. Things are really bad up here.
And then the dwarves in response said, Go to hell, Umgi.
We have no room. We don't care to have you in here. Piss off.
So night two comes by, the humans come around to the dwarven keep again and say,
Hey, can we come in now? And the dwarves say, No, go away, Umgi.
We still don't want you. Also, we have no food. Rats ate all of it.
Third time, third day, third night. It's getting even worse.
The rats are even bigger now. The people are done asking politely.
They bang down the tolls to the door. The door is locked.
The people are done asking politely. They bang down the tolls to the doors to the
dwarven keep and they find two things. One, a bunch of freshly picked clean
dwarf skeletons and man sized rats that have devoured them whole.
And then the doom of Cavzar ends to the sound of screaming humans and rats
devouring them.
Damn, that's eerie.
This is, I think I remember one part, which I think I remember this is,
this is what got me to Warhammer fantasy years ago.
And I remember the part, I don't know if this is what you're about to say,
but it's the part where they said they look into the dark, don't they?
And they see all these like eyes. Yeah.
Lights up. And that was nightmare fuel for me for quite a while.
They see, they see nothing but red beady eyes and when the torches are put forward,
there's rats.
There's also, there's a couple other accounts of how the Skaven came about.
My personal favorite other than this one is that the sea god, Manon,
cursed a bunch of sailors who were stranded on an island and turned to
cannibalism to take on rat like forms.
And if that's what that one's true, thank you, Manon, for making the world
infinitely worse.
That being said,
infinitely better.
Part, yeah, of course part infinitely better Skaven are best best.
Also causing the end times as well.
Also causing the end times as well. So.
We're not to that lore yet. I have to talk about it, but we're not there yet.
We're having fun times.
And as far as the doom of Kavzar goes, copies of that poem keep mysteriously
disappearing and people who know about it keep ending up dead.
So that's probably the canon one.
Now, the Skaven are now a thing, much to the delight of me and Eli
and the horror of everyone else in the Warhammer world.
So to talk about them a bit before I get into their history,
they're a race of rat men located everywhere.
There's only two nations or regions, I suppose, that don't have the Skaven.
One is the high elven continent of Ulthuan,
because Ulthuan, unlike every continent ever, doesn't actually go down to the
seabed. It's a floating island.
So it's kind of hard to dig a tunnel through the water.
And the wood elf realm of Athel Loren, because it's a magical forest.
And when the Skaven try and dig into it, the tree branches come alive and impale
them. So they learned eventually it's not worth it.
Nice. Yeah.
Impale. Don't mess with nature.
That's their motto.
Yeah. I just imagine they get strangled.
Impale. Whatever the forest feels like doing to them today, that's what happens to it.
Fair enough.
It's quite a wacky forest, Athel Loren. But for now, it's rat time.
So as Eli mentioned, the Skaven, they're quite numerous.
In fact, I would say they outnumber every other race by several factors of 10.
And their science as well is also well beyond any other race.
They have energy weapons, because in this Renaissance era period of the world,
the Skaven just stole a bunch of weapons from 40k.
They have demonic flamethrowers. And of course, what else would you expect in a
fantasy setting but nuclear weapons?
Because yes, this is fair and balanced.
Is it that kind of thing with it reminds me of that that passage of if you gave a bunch of monkeys,
like infinite monkeys time, they'd write Shakespeare.
Is that basically just how the Skaven did it?
There's just so many of them who are bound to like develop stuff because there's so many of them.
Pretty much exactly how the Skaven invent things.
If you throw enough rats at a problem, one of them is going to have a breakthrough.
And then the others nothing to do with hygiene.
No, and then the others are going to kill him and copy his breakthrough.
I think there wasn't wasn't there in 40k, weren't they originally in like early editions in 40k,
which are now the race called the Hrud?
Yeah, they are not mistaken.
The Hrud used to be more or less space Skaven and now they're weird aging monster things.
I think they're like that describes like oily, which is like,
you know, I mean, but apparently they have like they still carry.
I had the piece of I just looked them up recently.
Yeah, I'll go to the inklings from Splatoon.
Basically, I think they had like, it was about they have like,
they have musket guns at one point and I was like, oh, man, they still have a Skaven vibe still.
Yeah, but obviously the Skaven are the superior form.
Of course, 40k is worse off for them not being in it.
The people in the people in it are better off, but the setting is worse off.
They power all of this stuff from Gatling machine guns called Rattling guns.
I can't let that one slip by to sniper rifles to their vehicles.
Everything they have is powered by warpstone, which I said, like I said,
raw chaos solidified into a rock.
It powers their stuff, energy weapons, whatever.
They use it to boost their magical power by snorting it.
Or eating it, which again, they also just straight up eat it.
And they're pretty much the only race that can do that without instantly dying or turning into a chaos spawn.
Further proof of Skaven superiority.
Just yuck.
I'm assuming that other races can use the warpstones for their own.
It's not just the Skaven who are harnessing it.
No, it's just the others can use it, but nowhere near the same extent that the Skaven do.
Right.
Is it kind of like radiation, like if you can work around it, but like not really, like a human couldn't really work around it too long.
Yeah, it's otherwise they'll pretty much become mutated by the raw chaotic energy.
And especially in the human nations, mutations get you put on the chopping block pretty quickly.
So generally, of course, suffer not the mutant to live.
40k and fantasy share that.
Good.
Eesh.
Hell was it a fan.
It's not the official opinion of law crimes, let's just say that.
Anyone dares to think that.
But it is too fair.
We do enjoy the vibe, at least.
Apologies to all of the X-Men I've offended.
No.
I should move on.
Let's.
Who do you believe was one of the X-Men certs fair game?
Life for the Skaven is a pyramid scheme where shit flows downhill.
The Council of the Skaven, which I'll get into more later, rules over the mall.
And then it goes down from there to the average Grey Seers and Warlords of the Clans to whatever you can call the merchant classes of the Skaven, like clan molar scientists or warblock engineers.
To the humble rank and file clan rat, to the Skaven slave who have a life expectancy of about five minutes.
The average Skaven lives to about thirteen years, and almost none of them get to that age.
Anywhere close.
Oof.
Yeah, it's not good being a Skaven.
The four great clans rule with the most power, while there's also lower ranking clans known as Warlord clans, and Thrall clans who basically lend themselves out to whatever clan will take them.
All the while, everyone involved in this is just constantly trying to backstab each other, get one up. Thrall clans want to be Warlord clans, the Warlord clans want to be Great clans, the Great clans want to keep everyone else below them.
It's just constant backstabbing. I cannot emphasize enough how much the word Skaven is synonymous with treachery.
And I'd go so far as to say they're the evilest race in any Warhammer setting.
Ooh, that's fighting words there.
Yeah, you might say demons are pretty evil, and you're right, but-
In their nature, though, at least.
It's in their nature, and they do have some good things.
You know, Slenesh is also, as much as she's the god of excess, she's also the goddess of pleasure, which isn't inherently bad.
Zinch is hope, Nergal loves his followers, and I don't like saying nice things about corn, so I just won't.
Heh.
Bravery and honor and all that for those who would be yelling at me.
So they're more treacherous than the word bearers?
Yes, they would make the word bearers look like college freshmen in treachery school.
Ooh.
That's a pretty- word bearers are my favorite.
Are they all Erebus's? Like, every one of them?
Erebus would get outplanned by the average Skaven, because Erebus-
Wow.
Erebus can trust someone is listening to his BS.
There is not a single Skaven in all of Skavendom who is not expecting the guys next to him and then the 500 behind him to stab him in the back.
And I hate Erebus.
I hate Erebus.
It's fun with the Skaven, though, because it just goes- they're so silly.
Hashtag Erebusy.
Erebus.
Erebusy, no.
Put it out of the way early.
Ugh. I hate it. We can-
I hate it. He deserves it, though, to be fair. Erebusy.
That's- and it's indeed- this treachery is the only reason they haven't conquered the world, because, again, they outnumber everyone, they out-tech people, although their tech is, shall we say, not the most reliable.
Sometimes more likely to blow up in their face than the enemy's.
But reliable enough that in a fight, it'll kill something.
It's just they fight each other more than anyone else.
They hate the other races more than each other, but it's by the barest of margins they hate the other races more than each other.
I cannot emphasize enough how slight of a margin.
But to the misery of everyone else, there's always more Skaven.
You're not getting rid of these things.
As for their clans, these are the ones that influence their culture the most, to the extent that while there are clans with their own unique traits that the other great clans don't have, most of the Skaven clans will in some way be like this great clan, but with these traits on top.
So to start us off, Clan Mulder, because I'm playing them in Total War at the time of recording this podcast, so they go first.
Mulder is the Beastmasters and the mad scientists, at least biological.
Frankenstein's monster, they would yawn, say they've done it before, and then graft another five arms onto it just to be funny.
They create all of the biological monsters the Skaven use, and this gives them huge influence because what they create is very, very deadly.
And unlike the weapons of the Skavendom, a monster can't blow up in your face.
It might eat you, but on the field of battle you can point it at an enemy and it will reliably turn that thing into a red stain.
I have a nightmare once, which was, I'm not gonna lie, this is an actual nightmare, where I turned around and there was like a rat ogre, and it was like, it was just, eyes locked on me.
You know when it's like, you know the film Get Out where the guy runs and the guy, and he doesn't break away until the last second? I had that nightmare, but with a rat ogre once.
And it was like, it was doing his run, his shoulders were like, you know, his shoulders were moving, and it was just, that's what I have in my head of the rat ogre.
And before it ended, he just, he stopped, he turned around and went, don't eat cheese before you go to bed.
I don't remember the end of it, I don't remember how it ended, but I definitely remember having that thought, and I thought, even now, how awful that is.
Oh no!
Whoever is listening to this and sleeping, or trying to go to sleep, enjoy that thought. Have fun.
Remember, there are no rat ogres in your walls.
Your floors, however. A bit of squash, a bit of squash.
Oh, but some Skaven even use what they create as bodyguards or mounts, because there's no horses in Skaven Dawn, but there is a regular rat the size of a horse, so that does the job well enough.
And they have their own magicians, though their presence in lore and tabletop is pretty minimal, lore-wise, because the Skaven Council has declared their version of magic to be illegal and wrong, because it's not the Grey Seers on the council using it, therefore don't do it.
Wait, so the Skaven have a Council of Nikea thing going on?
This is more of a literal council, like the bodyguards and body of the Skaven.
They have had some events where their god, and unlike the Emperor, they didn't lie about not being a god, told them to say, told them directly to do things, but we'll get to that because it's important for what's coming.
Nonetheless, though, their creations still have both science and dark magic used to it. If you look at the Hell Pit Abomination, you need some wacky science and magic to get that thing to not die immediately.
Their main city is of course known as Hell Pit, where the Abominations get their name from.
Pray you never have to go down there. It's called Hell Pit. I probably don't need to explain further than that.
It's in the north, isn't it, near Kislev.
It is. It's above Kislev, right below Norske.
It makes sense that it's near the Eastern European, like me, centered faction, because misery loves company. I'm glad we have that kind of link to it.
It's also in the region called Troll Country, so there's a lot of monsters there, and since they're the monster clan, they just pop up to the surface, kidnap a couple trolls, and go, all right, what are we making today, boys?
Lord Verminckin is their leader, the one who sits on the Skaven Council, though throughout the Unclean is the main Mulder character, and that's something that, just as a heads up, the main Mulder characters, the main characters of each Skaven clan, are pretty much the ones that were chosen to be legendary lords in Total Warhammer.
So if any of these names sound familiar to you, that's probably why.
Throt has an extra arm, and instead of an eye socket, he has Warpstone jammed into it, and this makes him, one, strong, and two, very, very, very hungry.
So he's a big fan of eating.
They also have Gorich, who Throt took a Norscan berserker that Archaon said was going in time out forever, and jammed his brain into a rat ogre, and he's just a warm...
Yeah, he's a...
Awesome.
He's not happy with the situation, but he doesn't exactly have much other choice because he'd have to fight Archaon to come back, and that's not happening.
There's no HR department.
The Chaos Gods do not have an HR department.
After them, Clan Skryre, mad scientist but with machines.
If you need a machine gun, energy weapon, you go to Clan Skryre.
They're also the ones who make the Hell-powered nuclear missiles because they just go nuts.
They have power armor, they have life-elongating technology, which, again, to be fair, not many Skaven get access to that, and they even develop...
The Velopode, that's not a word.
They even develop telephones with a device called the Farsqueaker, which is just a beautiful name.
Is that the one which I think I know who they communicated with specifically with one of those?
Is that the one where it relates to 40k?
It will, and I will get to that when we talk about the no-good, horrible, very bad and...
I won't spoil then, I won't spoil.
Yeah, we'll get to that.
Hello everyone, editing Colin here.
Immediately after recording, I realized I'd done screwed up bad.
I forgot to talk about the exact thing you just heard.
So for clarification, the people the rats called were the Eldar.
They found a Lizardman device that was essentially one of their own Farsqueakers, dialed it, and then it called the Eldar.
Or rather, it called the people who sounded elven but alien.
Well yes, this could theoretically also be the Lumineth Realm Lords.
Elves but alien? Come on.
Anyways, back to your regularly scheduled program.
Other inventions they have is, of course, the Doom Wheel, which...
You know that car General Grievous, that circle thing he had in episode 3?
Oh, that thing.
Yeah, running away from Obi-Wan under the bridge.
Imagine that and cross with a hamster wheel, and then put a lightning gun inside of it.
Is that like when people... you see videos of people and they put themselves in a tractor tire and then go down a hill?
It's pretty much that.
Sorry, for my UK audience, it's when people chase the wheel of cheese down the hill and they break their legs.
If everyone knows about this race. Do you guys know about that race in the UK?
I have seen clips of it. I've seen clips of people absolutely crumbling down.
It's very appropriate because obviously the rat is chasing cheese.
But that's what I'm picturing now, is that's like the design, right? The wheel?
Pretty much, yeah. It's got a little like...
Like the World War I, you know those old tractor tanks that they had the big metal grid thing behind it?
Like to help steer? I don't know what I'm talking about.
Like a rudder?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The tanks were the first ones that had the rudder. It has like that behind it.
But it's also just a big wheel.
Big wheel go boom. Big wheel. Wheel with the rat on it. Wheel with the rat.
Pretty much.
That's the vibe.
Their devices are often as fatal to the user as to whoever it's pointed at, which is actually reflecting their tabletop rules.
For example, the warp lightning cannon. You can choose to overcharge it, which might double its damage output. It might explode.
Damn.
I had to say, like Elmer said, the question why? Otherwise, it's the Skaven. There is no why. There is why not.
Because there is the option. That's actually a funny thing about the Skaven. They're incredibly, not cowardly of course, they're intelligent. They lead from the back.
But they also love quick routes to power. Like someone put it online, I saw. If you give a Skaven a potion, it's got a 50% chance of doing nothing, a 25% chance of killing them, and a 25% chance of letting them breathe fire. They're taking that every time.
It doesn't matter how dangerous it is. If they see quick route to win, they're taking it.
Imagine especially like, oh, you could have done what and you chickened out. You wouldn't hear the end of it.
Or some other rat would have done it or taken the potion anyway.
That's exactly why they do it. It helps them with the backstabbing.
Their pressure is real in the Skaven.
Their premier special character is Ikitclaw, who's also one of the people who invents a lot of the weapons you see on tabletop, such as the doom wheels and in Total Warhammer, the nuke.
Next up, Clan Eshin. Just imagine Master Splinter but make him evil.
You have Clan Eshin. They're the Skaven spies, assassins, espionage, whatever needs to be done.
Little is known about them, but that's entirely due to their own machinations. They don't want anyone to know what they're up to, what they're doing.
Very secret. The reason they're ninjas is because they went to the country of Nippon, which is Japan, and someone taught them how to be ninjas.
I don't know why they thought that was a good idea to teach the rabid rabies rats how to be ninjas, but someone did.
Get on them.
Have fun figuring that lore question out.
That has thrown me. I didn't realize they taught them.
I couldn't find an answer to why they did it, so I have to assume someone thought it would be really funny for whoever had to deal with it.
I was just really spiteful. They were like, I'm going to die soon.
People teach their dogs to get beers out of fridges, so I feel like this is the next step.
What if their dogs do worse than that?
I wasn't going to go there though.
No, you don't have to.
We found you friendly on this channel.
Their lair in Skaven Blythe is pretty small, but that's on purpose. They don't want people to know what they're doing.
And anyone who tries to break in to find out what's going on is never heard from again, so it's working out for them.
Their premier character is Deathmaster Snitch. He's the most renowned assassin in the Warhammer world by far.
Some of his escapades include murdering someone in complete secrecy, despite the fact he was surrounded by armed guards and in a locked room.
He didn't break the lock in the door. One day the guards went to check on him and they found his corpse.
So he's pretty good at getting where he needs to be.
And I have to skip ahead to the end times because it proves that Snitch is really cool, but also I hate this lore.
He killed the High King of the Dwarfs after a massive battle. I'll get to that when I talk about the end times.
We like Dwarves.
Pain. But he hates end times.
I love the Dwarfs. I hate what happened to Thorgrim, but it's canon so I can't ignore it.
Many kills that aren't his are attributed to him to boost his legend.
And you might think the Skaven, as cowardly as they are, would go, hey, I did that.
Give me the credit I deserve because they're also power hungry.
But anyone who, again, tries to get one up on old Snitch then has to deal with Snitch in person.
And you do not survive that. So they suck it up.
His exact location is also never known to him or never known to anyone but him and Ashen's leader.
I just know where he is.
He has no idea. That's hilarious.
He's got amnesia.
His Google Maps cannot connect to the local Wi-Fi.
That's how he's so good at it. If he doesn't know where he is, you don't know where he is.
He's got murder-based outside. That's what's going on.
Oh man. Oh my god.
Oh, the Skaven flubbing all over the place. But his location is known only, of course, to him and their leader, Nightlord Sneak.
The Skaven name is not subtle.
Oh, I love that name so much.
Sneak, Shadow. Just might as well get him all off the list at that point.
Generally, Ashen does not involve themselves in the civil war that happens every five minutes in Skavendom, except to sell their services off to the highest bidder.
They don't want the spotlight because they're the Sneaky Clan, but they're happy to profit.
Now, the last great clan. There are one and a half clans left, but this is the last great one.
Clan Pestilence, the Plague Rats.
Yeah. This is my favorite.
They worship the Horned Rat, the Skaven god, as an aspect of disease and decay.
A lot like Nergal, but unlike Nergal, the Horned Rat doesn't have any friendly grandfather aspects to him.
He's just a prick.
Just despises all of them, I bet. Even the really powerful one, just like, nah, bro, you're lacking.
The best you can hope for out of the Horned Rat is he finds you funny.
And that's not me making that up. That is genuinely something he has said before.
You say the joke and you get the hell out of there.
Yeah, and then you leave before he can eat you.
They went to the continent of Lustria many years ago and got stranded when they dug their way back to the Old World by tunneling under the ocean, because of course the Skaven can do that.
They had changed from regular Skaven backstabbing treacherous pricks to sickly treacherous backstabbing pricks.
And upon returning, they demanded breeding rights, a massive amount of warpstone, and a seat on the Skaven council, which caused the Skaven civil war, the first great one.
And ended with them getting what they wanted, but they were severely damaged by it, so, you know, even on all accounts.
Lord Nurglitch is the clan leader. There's again, unsubtle naming, Nurgle, Nurglitch.
And Lord Skrulk is the premier special character.
Lord Skrulk saw Lord Nurglitch and was so awestruck by how disgusting Nurglitch was that he tore his eyes out, because he would never see anything as beautifully disgusting again.
Yeah.
The Horned Rad, one of the only, I say this is nice, one of the only beneficial things he's ever done to anyone else, is he gave Lord Skrulk the ability to see without his eyes, though it's in hues of decay.
Because if he gives you a gift, it's gonna suck.
Lord Skrulk is A, despite being a walking sack of diseases, very strong and fast, and B, has so many plagues on him that standing near him can turn you into soup.
Oh my god.
Yeah, he's, he's quite the character.
He also carries one of the books of the Lieber Bubonicus, the original text of the clan Pestilent's faith.
So imagine some sister of battle walking around with the original, like Tisial Divinutatus, that's the, that's the-
Yeah, the holy book.
Yeah.
Imagine some sister battle walking around with that, and that's Lord Skrulk.
Right.
Just, just, just nowhere near as like pleasing to the eye.
Yeah.
Just like, no, no, no.
Yeah, and then a thousand times more disgusting, the look at him.
Is he like when you drop your ice cream in like the, on the floor and it has like hair on it and stuff?
That's what anyone who comes within a ten foot radius of him looks like.
Yeah, but you lick it with your eye, because it's like, it's like, oh.
Yeah, enjoy that.
To be fair, he'd probably lick up the people soup.
Oh yeah.
Tasty.
Just walks around with a ladle just like, not bad.
Oh man.
Second to last clan, clan Mors.
They're not a great clan, but they're not far from it.
Those bitches there.
They're there.
They're like the, they're like the side character who's almost a main character.
Not quite, but everyone loves them all the more for it.
But gets no maidens.
Gets no maidens.
Maidenless.
I know, because maidens.
Tier first clan, clan Mors, maidenless.
I've said it.
I'm saying it right now.
It's official statement of law crimes.
Maidenless.
Good Lord.
They specialize in infantry.
There's no mad science.
There's no plagues.
There's no mad scientists.
But with genetics this time, just drowning you in rats.
But unlike other Skaven clans, they're kind of, they're kind of weird.
They're almost brave.
Almost honorable.
Almost loyal.
Rising in this clan, you can actually do it by being a good soldier and not stabbing everyone in front of you in the back.
That being said, if you're not caught stabbing your leader in the back, then, you know, that works just as well.
You just can't be as obvious as you can be in the rest of Skavendom.
That's, that's the sticker here.
Their infantry are actually trained and properly armored from clan or to Stormvermin, unlike the other Skaven clans where the Stormvermin at best are armored.
And everyone else is just told to have fun with it.
Have fun catching arrows.
Warlord Nodwell is their leader, though Queek Headtaker, as usual, is their legendary character, supreme character.
Big surprise.
He takes heads and collects them as trophies.
He can hear what they have to say and they offer him everything from warning to criticisms.
They have different personalities and they're completely unrelated to whatever race he takes them from.
Like, I think one of the Orc heads he has is actually pretty wise, which is really, really funny to me.
The criticism part is hilarious too.
Because I just imagine like you chose to wear that today.
Like, if you're a dead spirit, you must get petty.
Just like anything.
Just dressing him down.
One of them is a rival Warlord that he killed and it offers him the most criticism.
Others praise him.
Others say, hey, this might be a good idea, champ.
Why don't you try this one out?
And I'm going to send the first quote. Andy, would you mind reading this for me?
Did I do it in Escaven voice or what I assume is Escaven voice?
That is entirely up to you.
Okay, let's have a look.
Everyone, they can't be concerned for Queek sanity.
Perhaps you worry less for what is in Queek's head and more on keeping what is in yours.
Is that any good?
That was pretty good.
Damn, I don't think we could follow that.
That's pretty tough.
That was awesome.
To be honest, I modeled it entirely off Eli's performance.
So if it's any good, you have Eli to thank for that.
You're not super in the knowledge on that.
So you literally don't.
I've just copied Eli's homework.
I liked it.
Copied pretty well.
Queek is like an actual, actually pretty honorable, if I remember correctly.
He is.
He's like I said, like Klanmors embodied, almost brave, almost loyal.
Leads from the front.
Leads from the front, the most unscaven-like of qualities.
That's why he has to tell people, be less concerned for what's in my head and be concerned with what's keeping in yours.
Because people think he's a bit of an oddball, understandable for Escaven.
But he doesn't take anything from them.
So, quite the badass.
Isn't that why his tactics work, isn't it?
Because they expect him to behave like Escaven and then he just does the opposite.
Everyone doesn't know what to do.
His power is Uno Reverse card.
And then a rat comes screaming at you with 60 miles an hour pinwheeling weapons around.
Yo, check out that spiral dude.
Yeah, he's uh...
I think he's pretty successful in the end times as well.
He is.
He kills a very important Dwarven leader, which we will get to.
What is it with Escaven killing Dwarves?
I get that kind of like bit of fire.
It's once I'm known with the clans and I get to their history, I will be happy to tell you what's up with Escaven killing Dwarves.
You like Dwarves? I don't want them to die.
They're cool, but that's Warhammer.
Nothing cool can go get them unmolested.
That's true.
Now, the last thing before I get into their history.
The Grey Seers and the Council of Thirteen.
Neither are great clans, but they're the leaders of Escaven society.
If Escaven's born with grey fur and will eventually grow horns, they're taken from birth to be trained as Grey Seers, the mages.
Their worship is the horned rat's chosen and they carry out his will on the material plane.
It makes them mostly immune to the backstabbing of other Escaven, except for other Grey Seers.
But this isn't really out of respect. It's because they fear the guy who can wave his hands and then you explode.
They, uh, pardon me.
The horned rat, of course, being the Escaven's god, they love decay and ruining everyone else's things.
The Escaven are not nice.
The Council of Thirteen, meanwhile, consists of Grey Seers and the most prominent of the Clan Warlords who have avoided being backstabbed, betrayed and broken by their fellow Escaven.
They have ultimate power, all twelve of them on the Council.
Anyone want to take a guess who the thirteenth seat is reserved for?
Andy, you have to guess this one.
You have to.
Who's the thirteenth seat?
Uh, no, just tell me. Put me out of my misery.
Oh, come on. It's symbolic.
Sorry, what was the quote? Sorry.
There's...the Council of Thirteen only has twelve Escaven on it. Who's the thirteenth seat for?
It's a symbolic seat.
Symbolic seat. Uh...
Should I know this?
It's for the horny, horny god himself.
Oh, for the god? Oh, he can do that? I thought he'd be like an immaterial thing.
He's usually off in the Realm of Chaos in his own little awful corner of it.
But it's a symbolic thing. They reserved the thirteenth seat for him.
Oh, okay. Yeah, that's why I was like...
But I thought he wouldn't manifest as a thing.
Never mind me. He's like a streamer. He doesn't have legs.
It's a sin. Not talking about streamers.
Legs are not confirmed.
I'm going to bring up YouTubers again. I'll do it. I'll do it.
Yes, do it.
But although you say that, Andy, unlike many, many gods in Warhammer, he can be proactive, which again, we'll get to.
Oh, I have the better joke. It's like Metaverse.
He is Mark Zuckerberg.
Legs haven't been made yet.
At the time of recording.
They're adding them in, though. They'll be here in thirteen years.
The seats occupied by actual Skaven are arranged like a clock. Now, it's going to be a weird clock because thirteen hands, but they're arranged so that the seats closest to the thirteenth one, where the Horned Rat is, have the most power on the council.
And the ones farthest away have the least. So again, kind of weird.
But imagine twelve and one like imagine thirteen is at the top of the clock. Twelve and one both have the most power and six and seven have the least power.
Is it? I have a quick question. Is it kind of like meant to mirror?
Now, this is a weird. This is going to be a very like out of nowhere reference. But like, you know, the last supper and how like all the apostles of that. Is that like a kind of thing?
I'm sure I've seen an image of the Skaven.
No, I was. It's yeah, that's there really. I don't know. I don't know if it's honestly I don't even know if it's fan art or official, but I'm assuming fan art.
I don't think Games Workshop would put out official artwork of the rat supper.
Yeah, but he's put a picture on the on the video.
That'll blow my mind if you've seen it and I haven't. That blows my mind. Yeah, it's there. I've seen it.
Wow. Really good. I'm on the same wavelength as some twisted man.
I don't know if that was intentional, but at least one other person has made that connection now.
And as for the other thing about the power, the person, any Skaven can veto the person opposite their seat.
So despite being the weakest seven can veto 12, one can veto six, vice versa. It keeps it almost in check. They're all again.
They're all constantly scheming and trying to backstab each other, but it kind of almost keeps them in check.
As for getting on the council, you can of course, you know, perform great deeds by whatever standard that Skaven clan is considering a great deed.
Oh, there's two pieces of artwork for it. Oh, my Lord.
I've fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole. I've also found one of like the emperor and the Primarchs and Karl Franz and some guys with weird hats.
I found all sorts of last supper ones for some reason. I need that one stat.
You got it. There it is. Oh, but before I sight read, some of us are thinking that those are all the Total War games.
Oh, God, I'm going to get. I got to get a scheme of the rats for becoming on the council of 13.
Like I said, you can backstab and get your way up there or you can touch a Skaven relic known as the Black Pillar and challenge a sitting member.
Though this hasn't happened a couple of hundreds of years, partially because trying to out scheme someone on the Skaven council is a monumental task.
And also partly because any rat who touches the Black Pillar has a tendency to explode.
So that's kind of a self solving problem for the council members.
Is it like it explode on like immediately after touch or is it one of those and then the and then the few days they died?
No, they touch it and then they explode.
It's like time bandits at the end, whereas the parents and they find the chunk of evil in the microwave and the firefighters and what's this and the kids like, Mom, Dad, don't touch it. It's evil. And they just poke it. They blow up.
It's amazing. It's pretty much that. Yeah. You touch the evil rock, you blow up.
Nice. And there are many Graciers, all of whom incredibly powerful, but their premier special character before I finally get on with the history,
undoubtedly that cool. I God, I love him.
He's living proof you can do nothing but fail constantly and still move up in life because that is all he does.
He's on the one hand, to give him credit. He's one of the strongest mages in the setting.
He's gotten head to head with the strongest users of other races.
He almost wrestled wrestled the Dwarven Hindenburg out of the sky and he regularly snorts warpstone in such amounts that even other skaven says he should probably back off on that a bit.
Wow. Already crazy magical.
They're getting like the skaven equivalent of AA meetings from I do need to slow down.
Listen, we're all doing it. You got to back off.
Tell us how you feel.
Imagine a skaven intervention meeting that would be weird. They probably just stab you to steal whatever you say like there's a lot of stabbings, but it'd be interesting to watch.
You've not been betraying lately. What's wrong? Yeah, what's going on? I caught you sending like a well wish to someone. Are you feeling all right?
Write down your secrets in this book.
On the other hand, I think although everything he does goes wrong.
It's not his fault. No, of course. It's always the fault of underlings or shoddy equipment.
Never mind the fact that he usually buys things on the cheap. He saves on the warp token.
So it's worth it.
He regularly goes to blows with Godric and Felix.
Yeah, he's so impressively incompetent that until like in the letter third of the Godric and Felix books, they didn't know it was him.
They just thought it was a bunch of random encounters with the skaven.
He'd been like fighting them for like 20 years or something. Yeah. And they didn't even realize it was the same rat.
When they found that out, he finally captured them and he starts evil monologuing.
And they, Godric and Felix just look at each other and go, who is this?
He hears that and to say his ego is a bit bruised.
He almost fades, doesn't it? He like goes woozy.
He starts like tripping over himself.
He's one of the best characters ever.
Oh, God, I love him.
At one point, a slan captured him, which just to give you a picture.
The skaven are viewed by the slan as worse than demons.
And the slan let him go because it foresaw that Thanquil would cause more damage to the skaven than killing him ever could.
My God, that's literally for those who would love a bit of history, isn't that the exact thing Salahuddin did to the guy in Jerusalem?
Oh, my God, is it not? He's probably a robber or something, isn't it?
You know who I'm talking about in history. Yeah.
And he'd let him go because he was more damaging to the kingdom of Jerusalem alive.
That just reminds me of the Allies when World War II was happening. They were like, Hitler does such bad decision making.
He does more damage to his own army than we ever could.
So like, yeah, don't bump him off. He's doing the damage himself.
Stop the assassination attempts. We let this guy figure it out on his own.
And his crowning achievement, which is just the funniest to me, is when he tried to summon a vermin lord, which is a skaven greater demon.
And instead of doing that, the mummified gray seer's paw he used was cursed somehow.
It was probably cursed the moment that Thanquil touched it because he's Thanquil and ruins everything he touches.
And instead of a vermin lord, he summoned Scarbrand.
Oof. Corn. Good ol' corn.
Yeah. This caused all of the dwarf and skaven forces that were there to just go berserk and just murder each other.
Scarbrand, of course, joining in.
Queek Headtaker was also there, and he learned pretty quickly gray seers aren't the worst thing ever.
And Thanquil, for his troubles, just left. Just walked away.
He does not pay for his crimes very often.
He always finds a way to blame someone else. It's very funny.
It's impressive.
If his troops fall back, then it was obviously a rival and Skaven Blight sent him bad troops that would run away at the first sign of danger.
Stuff like that.
Of course. And now that all the clans and characters are out of the way, further history.
Most skaven, it should be said, don't actually know or care about their history.
They'd tell you their own personal history happily, but as far as most of them that aren't on the gray seer council who presumably have some records care about,
Skaven history is now when we don't rule the world and soon when we will rule the world.
That's pretty much all they care about.
North Korea method.
Are they like perpetually in like BC and A? They're always in BC and they're not in AD yet.
It's before conquest and after devour of service.
So not long after the doom of cabs are the skaven began to expand, but they realized pretty quick we don't have a lot of food and space.
So because to give them any credit, they don't do it.
They don't do anything by halves.
They cut corners, but they at least try to make it grand when they cut corners.
They began building a massive machine powered by warpstone and magic to help just instantly expand the capital of Skaven Blight.
It did to be fair, and it also blew up and destroyed most of Skaven Blight and the Skaven race.
And it also just started destroying mountain ranges because when they screw up, they screw up big.
And if you were wondering why the dwarves hate the Skaven so much, it's because Skaven decided to put an addition out of their home
and blew up the Dwarven Empire by accident, which in turn allowed orcs to just pour into dwarf holds, orcs and goblins,
and start the period the dwarves know as the Time of Woes.
Don't tell anyone this, but the Lizardmen also helped because some mountains Feng Shui wasn't aligned, so they decided to just move the mountain with their minds.
But he wasn't an Ares, he was a Taurus, so he wasn't feeling right that day.
But the dwarves don't know that, so don't tell them that.
But thankfully there was now a lot more holes in the mountain than there was previously, so the dwarves expanded all across the Old World.
And one of these expansions took them to the mountain of Cripple Peak. Did not make that name up.
I'm about to say it's not nice.
I did not make that up, it's named Cripple Peak.
It's a little dicey that one.
I'm aware.
Just a little.
Blame old 80s Warhammer lore, I didn't write that.
Often. Often.
Oh man, that's not even the worst of it. By far.
Oh no.
Ferris Manus, Horvus Korax.
Arcan land.
But, uh, insensitive peak is where they came to conflict.
Conflict, good lord.
Conflict with none other than the great necromancer Nagash himself.
Who, if you don't know much about him, I made a video about him, shameless plug, pardon me.
He is, uh, he scares the chaos gods.
That should tell you all you need to know about him.
I said ratty daddy a couple episodes ago.
This is bone daddy.
This is bone daddy support.
Calcium daddy.
Calcium daddy, I hate that.
Marrow mummy.
Makes it seem healthy.
Bone daddy.
Marrow mummy's funny.
And, uh, once the skaven entered Nagash's home, the home he stole for himself,
they both, they began fighting for a century straight.
And after a hundred years they both realized that the other side is just not running out of bodies to throw at each other.
Because Nagash, the name the great necromancer should tip you off.
He just raises the corpses of whatever dies.
But there's never not more skaven to throw at a problem.
So this is fantasy's equivalent of the Octaria sector where it's like the orcs versus the tyranids.
Yeah, it's just constant, throw more men at it.
Imagine World War I where it's over the trenches, lads.
And it's about that level of productive for everyone involved.
Eventually they decide, alright, we're just gonna truce, it's not worth dealing with it.
None of them trust each other, of course, but they have better things to do.
So they come to a deal.
The skaven will mine Warp Storm for Nagash and in exchange they'll get to keep a pretty big, pretty big hunk of it.
Eventually, however, Nagash continues his storyline and his ambitions would lead him to not only destroy his homeland of Nahecara,
but attempt to cast a spell that would kill everything on the world at once, all of it, and then raise them as undead under his command.
And this is not the only time because it has happened very, very rarely.
But the first time probably that the skaven would ever help another living being of their own volition.
They created a blade of purest warpstone known as the Fel Blade, gave it to the last living Nahecara known as Alcadi Zar, who was just a real champ, and told him to have at it, bud.
So my favorite part of that is they didn't they make it in Skaven Blythe and they had to carry it all the way.
For reference, Nahecara is south of Skaven Blythe in the Warhammer world.
And they had their rats, the skaven had to carry it and they had to have a huge pack because the skaven, they'd carry it for like a good 30 minutes and then it would just drop dead.
They would just carry the blade and the blade would kill it and then the next one would pick it up.
They can hold warpstone, no problem for the most part. Not this thing.
Now that's a chain gang.
That's what it was.
Like the Baton Pass, but extreme.
A mile long chain of rats when one died, the next got to hold it.
And they even gave him magical assistance while he was fighting Nagash because even with the Fel Blade, Alcadi Zar wasn't quite up to it.
And so between the skaven somehow deciding to help another race and Alcadi Zar, Nagash was slain at the cost of Alcadi Zar's life.
And two Skaven Grey Seers, but they're not important because they were just there to help Alcadi Zar.
That's his story.
He isn't just for reference as well, if you're new to Alcadi Zar. They helped not even a human, they helped a vampire.
I'm pretty sure Alcadi Zar was turned into a vampire by Nea Kara.
He was actually the last living...
Oh, I thought it wasn't... is he the same one as he escaped Neferata when she tried to make him into a vampire?
That's Vladdy Daddy.
No, no, this is like a... I swear, like in the story, like she made him, Alcadi Zar was meant to be like her kind of puppet thing and he escaped and he was like the last living son.
I thought he was a vampire, wasn't he?
She might have tried that. I admit I have to brush up on my vampire counselor, I will admit.
But he was not a vampire.
Future episode, definitely.
Teaser. But no, he was not a vampire. He was the last living Naheqiren because Nagash needed him as a focal point for the spell.
Okay.
Also, Nagash didn't die because death is at most inconvenient to him, but the Fel Blade did make it so that he's poisoned every time he dies and comes back weaker.
Love that. Nagash is just like, death, death is cringe, ugh.
Yeah, it doesn't stick with him.
But this gave them to their credit after Alcadi Zar wanted off to die, they chucked Nagash's bones into a big furnace to melt them, so they tried. You can't fault them for not trying on this one.
Give it a solid go.
Exactly. Their next great move was to attack the Dwarf Hold of Karak Eight Peaks.
And initially, they couldn't get past the dwarves because dwarves have this metal called Gromril, which is the closest you can get to having power armor in fantasy.
Gromril?
Yep, it is a fancy metal, Gromril.
I like that, it's just like, Gromril, please?
Nice.
Unfortunately for the dwarves, the Skaven invented flamethrowers shortly afterwards, as well as what's called Poisoned Windglobes, which is basically portable mustard gas.
So that got through the dwarves. Not all the way though, the dwarves were still stuck in.
Which is when the Skaven formed a plan with the Night Goblins. They coming from above, the Skaven coming from below, and that pincer attack was too much for the dwarves to handle, even with all of their stubbornness.
And after still several centuries worth of fighting, Karak Eight Peaks finally falls.
Though, to give again, the dwarves their credit, fighting never truly ends, as many dwarves would forever attempt to reclaim it, chief among them being the Angrin clan who once ruled it.
If you're a fan of Belgar Ironhammer from Total Warhammer, that's who he comes from.
Of course, that being said, it was just a three-way mosh pit between Skaven goblins and dwarves for the rest of time.
Also, it's not really important, but it should be mentioned one of the dwarf holds was conquered by a clan Morbidus, which is very close to clan Morbius.
Morbidus?
I was about to ask you, and it's been taking the same thing.
Not super important to the storyline, but I couldn't let that one go when I was reading about it.
Important lore that you can't leave the video without knowing about the Morbidus reverence, clearly.
I could not let that one rest.
And to move forward next, around year 17 in the Imperial calendar, shortly after the best god emperor, king whatever, Sigmar, took power and created the best empire, the Empire of Man.
The Skaven decided meanwhile that it's time for a nice 600 year civil war.
That's what happened when clan Pestilence came back to the rest of the Skaven, like I mentioned earlier.
To sum it up, Pestilence returned and everyone just starts killing each other.
It's mostly Pestilence versus everyone else, but you know, there's chaos going on. Perfect time for some backstabbing, am I right?
Is Pestilence the most powerful? I could never gauge them.
They wax and wane a lot more than any other clan. They become the most powerful for the second civil war to come up later.
Other times the other clans see they're becoming the most powerful and smack them down. So that is pretty frequently changing.
And when you say civil war, that implies that they ended it.
I guess it's like the war on paper, you know what I mean? The war is official, like, okay, we're at war.
That's a good point. To clarify, a Skaven civil war means they're not pretending like they're not going to backstab each other.
When it's an official civil war, it's just, we ball. So that's the difference between business as usual and civil war.
As this was going on, clan Eshen assassins towards the end stopped their neutrality and pledged allegiance to the Council of Thirteen.
And as Pestilence Warlord and Warlord fell to their assassins, they sucked it up and stopped trying to take over all of Skavendom.
They still got a seat on the council, though, and now with all of the Skaven as closely being united as they can ever said to be,
they turned their attention at the first time to the surface world proper.
And 600 years later, around 600 in the Imperial calendar, they begin burrowing under the Empire of Man until they're under damn near everything.
And 500 years later in 1111, I see the Skaven created the Black Death.
I'm not making that up. It's called the Black Plague. The Black Death.
The rats just did it on purpose in this world, and they sent it across the Empire of Man and it killed over half the population, much like our own world.
I have a question. Yes.
So is this kind of where Vermintide games are?
No, not yet. Not yet.
About 1500 years before the Vermintide games.
Okay. Never mind.
It's the same vibe, to be fair, though.
We're a little bit early, yeah.
But it's it's much the same for the people of the Empire in terms of what it would have been like as winter ended of the year of the Black Plague.
They finally thought things could get a bit better.
They made it through the season.
Spring is coming.
Maybe they can begin to rebuild.
And then hundreds of thousands of rats poured out from under their feet, and they did not get a chance to rebuild.
City after city fell until it was largely only Altdorf, Nuln, and Averheim left standing.
There was also Mindenheim was also left, but it was pretty much under permanent siege.
The Skaven rounded up any humans they could find to be used as either manual labor or food and clan pestilence as a result of the Black Death became ascended in power.
Like you were saying earlier, Hell, this is when they become more powerful again.
There are two things that the Empire had going for it, though.
One is that now this I admit this not going to sound like a positive, but do hear me out.
The ruling Emperor at the time was massively, incredibly incompetent and did nothing to help the situation.
But the Skaven decided to assassinate him, probably just for the fun of it to demoralize anyone left.
But he was so unliked that if anything, people were happy he was finally gone.
Is that the same is that the same Emperor's the one who when Marienburg left the Empire like that unpopular one or just a different much earlier one?
I think it's a different one because if I remember correctly, Marienburg only seceded a couple of decades before modern Warhammer fantasy.
Okay, okay.
But his death allowed the man who would become known as Emperor Mandra, the Skaven Slayer of Mindenheim together, the crusading army to take the fight to the rats once more.
This alone might not have worked, except the Skaven did not check that the plague didn't affect their own ranks just as much as mankind.
And the Black Death then swept through the Skaven ranks shortly after it was done ravaging humanity.
Isn't that exactly what happened in history when Scotland, like the Black Death affected England and the Scots said this was God punishing them.
So then they invaded and then the Black Death then went to Scotland.
I think you might be right. I'd have to double check that.
You have to double check in case we're wrong.
It does sound familiar.
If it's wrong, it's a historic crime.
Historic law crime.
Well the sirens are going off, so.
I think we screwed up.
They've heard it.
Between these two things, the Skaven were pushed back underground.
There was a last act of petty vengeance.
The Skaven assassinated him in his sleep.
But still, he not only saved the Empire, but set up sewer watches in every city so the Skaven could never again overrun Sigmar's realm.
Sewer watch. That's a shift you don't want.
Yeah, it's not popular and even worse for them.
It shortly after becomes official policy of the Empire to not acknowledge the Skaven's existence.
And as their attacks faded from memory, at most they're regarded as a form of beastman.
And at worst, you can get killed for mentioning them by a witch hunter.
Sewerjack, not a great job, but it keeps it safer.
So thank you, Mandrake, for that one.
They also tried this again in Bretonnia a couple years later.
They named it the Redpox this time, but it's the same thing this time around as well.
Very tragically, before it could spread to the rest of Bretonnia, the Baron in charge of the city they unleashed it in just burned down the entire lower class section of the city so it couldn't spread.
Was this Muselheim?
I believe.
Remember which Bretonniain, I mean, you would be very happy with any Bretonniain city burning down.
Whichever one is gone is happy for me. I think it was Bastogne, but it might have been Paravon as well.
You really do hate Bretonniains so much.
I hate everything that has to do with them.
They tried it again a few decades later and this time it almost worked. It actually worked a little bit better than it did in the Empire.
But then the Wood Elves came to bail them out, which again, tragic.
Because they survived.
Yes, because Bretonnia wasn't eliminated. They survived. So thank you Wood Elves, you screwed up on that one.
Damn.
After that, round two of Civil War, this one 400 years long.
Clan Pestilence again decided to start shit, having already gained three seats on the council, and this time, because of that massive power boost they had, the entire Skaven governing body was essentially defunct.
Because they had enough seats to veto the other members and enough power behind them due to the Black Death giving them so much influence that they could tear apart Skavendom all on their own without the element of surprise this time.
This one was even messier because Warlock Engineer Lord Morskedar of Clan Skryre took control of Skaven Blight.
And after that, it wasn't even Everyone vs. Clan Pestilence anymore.
It was just, you see a different Skaven clan, start swinging.
And it only ended when the Grey Seers came to every single Skaven clan and gave them an ultimatum to appear at the Vermintide Festival, and again, that's not a real thing, or that is a real thing, or be destroyed.
And as much as people were happy to stab them in the back if they could, no one wanted to miss this festival because this was a celebration of the Horned Rat, and you don't want to mess with them.
So, either entire clans went, or some of them only sent a single representative, but once everyone was accounted for, all 169 Grey Seers entered the chamber, performed a ritual, and summoned the Great Horned Rat himself onto the Material Plane.
Wow. He gets off his chair every now and then.
There's more than corn, just sitting around all day.
Oh yeah.
The first thing he did was just start grabbing handfuls of Skaven and eating them for several minutes straight, until he was full.
And then he told them that while he found all this infighting to be unbelievably funny, it's time for them to stop.
Once more, it's been 400 years, it's time for another crack at the surface world.
And while the Skaven numbers had been kept in check by the end of Civil War, now that their god told them to cut the crap, they began growing exponentially once more, and returned their attention to the surface.
Villages were conquered, or just straight up kidnapped around Skaven Blight, and across the world indeed.
Now knowing that their god was directly telling them to get their act together, they were again almost unified, and soon everyone from dwarves to night goblins to men and elves were under assault.
This is where we get to the fun bits of Skaven again.
They almost conquered the city of Noln once again, and indeed they did manage to burn a lot of it to the ground, but Gottrick and Felix were there, so that just didn't work.
They almost destroyed a revolutionarily dwarf airship, known as the Spirit of Grugni, once again led by Thanquil, but Gottrick and Felix were there, so that also didn't work.
They built a submarine, don't know how, they did, and almost stole a magical high elven harp from a sunken elven city, that if played would allow the dark elves to drown not only the realms of man, but also Ulthuan, because that's the most elven thing the writer could think of.
And again, Thanquil was leading this operation to get the fancy elven harp. Anyone want to take a guess why this one didn't succeed? Who could have been there to stop it?
God damn, I love Gottrick and Felix.
Congratulations Hal, you win this quiz.
I love that, because I've read Elf Slayer, ironically it was my first Gottrick and Felix book, and it just always seems like, huh? They accidentally win every time.
And Thanquil is just pulling his hair out, because he has any hair, because he just can't get a win that guy, it's so sad.
Almost at the end as well. It's sad, but it's so funny, he just keeps running into the two people that have nothing but the ability to put his schemes in the ground.
He deserves it. I mean he deserves it, but poor Thanquil, one day he'll get his time in the sun.
Until the end times though, this was the state of affairs, they would try and do something, and while they would get some success, at the end of the day they would be held back.
More often than not by Gottrick and Felix.
Then, someone who really liked the Skaven started writing their lore.
There's of course Warhammer Vermintide games, where the Skaven surround and destroy the cities of Uberswreik, despite the best efforts of the Uberswreik 5 or 4, doesn't matter.
And that's kind of what's repeated across the entire Warhammer world.
To make it quick, I'm just gonna breeze through all of the countries they destroyed.
They conquered T'Lia, they conquered Astalia, they completely wiped out the Lizardmen who were prepared for demons, but not rats.
They helped destroy Cathay, they were involved in overrunning the Empire, and they blew up Morsliab, the Chaos Moon, with a big cannon they built.
I was gonna say, don't forget, rest in peace my boy, the moon.
The moon of Warpstone.
The moon?
Yeah, the moon.
Like Zelda.
No, they literally blew up, no they didn't blow up the moon, excuse me, they threw the moon, didn't they?
No, they, I was gonna say, I got ahead of myself, pardon me.
First they pulled it towards the moon, or pulled it towards the planet, just like Zelda, and then Clan Skryre realized they were being shown up, so they blew it up.
When you had the moon.
And then like, moon chunks started landing everywhere, didn't it?
They did, the only reason that the end times didn't end there was because the Slans sacrificed themselves to blow up the moon rocks, slamming into the planet.
Oof.
Because when you're going for gold, you might as well go all out and blow up the moon.
They, and Queek Headtaker gets his time in the sun, and finally fully takes over Karak Eight Peaks from the dwarves and night goblins, killing Belagar Iron Hammer of Clan Ingrond,
before High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer kills him in, as much as I hate the end crimes, this is a really cool segment.
The end crimes.
The end crimes, yeah.
That should be the new, that's actually a perfect time.
That was accidental, but that was a very good flub.
As much as I hate them, this is a really cool bit of lore where he just lists every single wrong in the great book of grudges that Queek has done before ending it with the murder of Belagar Iron Hammer and then killing Queek.
So, shame for Queek, but by God is that cool.
What's not cool is what comes next, because remember how I said Deathmaster Snitch killed Thorgrim?
Yeah, Thorgrim, once he realized it was time to retreat from this battle, forgot to close a doorway behind him and Snitch got him that way and stabbed him in the back.
Oof.
It's also worth mentioning, Thorgrim has runes on his armor specifically to prevent this, but fantasy needed to end, so they just didn't have him anymore.
Didn't they forget about Skarsnik too? Was Reddit?
Yes, they just forgot about Skarsnik.
For Andy, that's like a Night Goblin character. He was quite beloved. A lot of people like him because he was quite crazy.
He was actually the prophet of Mork. It's not just Gasgol of Gork and Mork like in fantasy, or 40k.
I was greedy. I'll have one or the other, it's fine.
The goblins are a lot more important than grots, so Mork got his goblin prophet, and then after he was around at Karak Eight Peaks, the writer just forgot about him.
That's why we hate the end times.
Yeah, that's why we don't like the end times here.
Really the only things they didn't end up destroying though was Naggaroth, the Dark Elven Kingdom, which a Coronate army destroyed after all of the Dark Elves left to go to Ulthuan.
And Ulthuan itself, which the elves did a fine job of blowing that up in their civil war.
They also did try to stop Nagash from gaining power and coming back, and even stab him with a Fel Blade again, but this was after he'd eaten a god, so it didn't really do anything by this point.
They did, however, blow up his magic pyramid with underground nukes.
Didn't they do that more than once? I swear.
They did more than once.
I'll be getting to that because we're jumping universes for that little gem.
Chill, chill, chill. Leave my pyramid alone.
Good lord.
And despite all these successes, the Horned Rat somehow decided that despite the fact that if they could do all this, they could probably face chaos, the Horned Rat decided they couldn't actually face chaos, so we allied with them instead.
Despite the fact, again, the Skaven took out well over half the world during all of this.
And remember what I said about the Horned Rat finding things funny?
And that's what he likes.
He ate the Council of Thirteen, the mortal Skaven, and then put Thanquil in charge.
Yes.
Because who else deserves to be in charge?
As the Warhammer world comes to an end, the Skaven, in order to survive, teleported Skaven Blight into the warp. Thanquil and the Great Horned Rat work together.
Because, again, as much as Thanquil is a clown, he's the Horned Rat's silliest clown fighting his funniest battles, he's still a powerful wizard.
And Age of Sigmar will be quick because, unfortunately, they're not up to too much in that.
As it begins, the Skaven somehow manage to dig so aggressively and deeply into the warp, which, as a reminder, is infinite in size, that they crashed it halfway back into reality.
Now they can dig tunnels between the realm of chaos and reality to appear pretty much wherever they want to, up to and including areas completely blocked off from chaos, and probably under Khorne's throne if they really wanted to.
That would be hilarious.
Kind of like the Rat Webway, except not OSHA compliant, because sometimes things get lost in it, including demons, and they're just gone forever.
Is it like a Corsart place in America that no one likes? Like Florida? The one with all the alligators underneath the city?
That would probably be Florida.
Is that what it's like? Just like the alligators are everywhere.
I like to imagine it's like Wyoming.
Just imagining a lost property full of demons is a bit of a weird image.
You had to explain the Wyoming part to us, because I think all the rest of us are not from the state.
Because Wyoming doesn't exist, much like the realm between spaces the demons get lost in.
Fair enough, fair enough.
Shout out to anyone from Wyoming.
Yeah, anyone from Wyoming, please just type in, I'm from Wyoming in the chat.
For no reason, we need to know.
Aside from that though, it's largely business as usual for the Skaven, trying to take those in the surface world for themselves, gain ultimate power.
The only difference is there's even more of them now, as the clans of the Skaven are now types of clans with millions each.
So instead of it being clan pestilence has millions of rats in it, there's thousands of types of clan pestilence, each with millions of rats.
There's just exponentially more Skaven, that's the age of Sigmar lore.
You like Skaven, there's more of them.
They tried to invade before the rest of Chaos showed up, and got destroyed, so they waited until the other four Chaos Gods showed up.
Three actually, Slymesh was put in jail.
Very sorry, Eli.
Their most noteworthy accomplishment was when Nagash once again tried to gain power with magical pyramids, the Skaven blew it up again.
I'm sensing a theme here.
I'm slightly sensing a theme.
Much like the T-Ridans exist to eat whatever needs to be eaten in 40k to keep the plot from moving forward, the Skaven exist to keep Nagash from moving the plot moving forward.
I kind of imagine it like the Skaven just walking past and they're like, just looking at the Piz build, it's like, oh, it's like a nice square, but what shape is that building?
To give Nagash credit, these pyramids were upside down and floating this time.
He thought that would keep them from digging under them and blowing that up, which it didn't.
They still managed it.
They also, a different group of Skaven on their way to screw with Nagash, dug into the bottom of an ocean in Nagash's realm and drowned half of Skaven Blight.
And then when the water was done pouring in, it's an ocean in the realm of the dead, so zombies started pouring in the Skaven Blight.
That's awesome.
That's really cool.
This also revealed the existence of the identity of Deepkin to Nagash because he'd been looking for the people that kept stealing souls from him who couldn't find them.
So despite the fact that the Skaven ruined their plan, it still helped.
Anyone want to take a guess who was in charge of all of this?
Sure hope it's Thanquil.
It was Thanquil.
He survived the end of the world.
He's now known as the Great Lord, a very influential seer, though again, he still screws up a lot.
And before we end Thanquil, as we know, can never have nice things.
Ever.
Never.
Ever.
I'm going to try and send something into the general.
Did that go through this time?
Yes.
I see it.
Hal, a quote for you to lead.
What happened with this quote is Thanquil, after all this time, was pretty secure in his power base.
He would screw up sometimes and he'd have to cover his tracks, but not that much because he's top dog escaping them now, aside from the Horned Rat, of course.
And then someone else made it through the end of the world.
Though he doesn't have Felix on his side anymore, Gottrick, despite wanting nothing more than to die, survived the end of the Warhammer world.
Yeah.
They say the guardsman, the planet broke before the guard did.
The planet broke and Gottrick just didn't.
He just kept going.
They did Felix so dirty, though.
Oh, I know.
And so, Hal, would you like to read a quote of what Thanquil said the moment he realized Gottrick was high?
It has to be a scary impression because we've all done one.
Come on.
I actually cannot voice that, so this will be rough.
It's quite alright.
He lives!
No, no, no.
It cannot be.
Not him.
Not again.
Not like this.
Oh, oh he's the same.
I want him dead.
Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead!
Ahh!
That's why I was...
...that's pretty good.
That's pretty good.
It was pretty bad, man.
It was pretty good.
Oh man.
I didn't bow from that.
Noghazi.
Enjoy that edit of that loud voice.
This time, Gottrick sees him as a proper enemy and is going to attempt to kill Thanquil in
revenge for Felix's father, who Thanquil had actually killed in the Old World.
But with that, that is largely the end of the Skaven episode.
Anyone have any questions?
I have emotions after that.
Man.
Oh lord.
That was a...I wish...if someone is just a 40k fan and they're wondering what the kind
of vibe of it is, definitely it's obviously comic relief, right?
The equivalent in a fantasy.
But also we have orcs, but Skaven are like a nude level of comic relief.
They're so well done with it too, because they can be played as clowns or as incredibly
serious.
Because on the one hand, you have anything Thanquil does, which is just fun to read about.
I didn't mention this earlier, but Thanquil gave us the wonderful quote of, there's more
than one way to skin an infant.
That's something to look forward to in Gottrick and Felix.
That's a bit too much there.
To be honest, I feel like what you were saying, it's like, it depends what perspective you're
standing from with the Skaven.
If you're a Skaven, if you're in Skaven society, it's kind of funny.
Or like the poor Empire citizen whose family have got like this pox or whatever, and their
family have been eaten by rats.
Not very fun for them, but you know.
Does my boy have a question?
Oh sorry, go ahead.
Obviously on the one hand it's a race of funny Dr. Doofenshmirtz rats, on the other hand
it's an endless tide of hateful vermin that want nothing more than you to die.
Yikes.
I was gonna ask if our main man, our Randy Orton slowly ran out, Karl Franz, has he ever
fought Skaven in the lore?
Off the top of my head, Skaven are not one of the enemies he fights the most.
His chief enemies would be the greenskins, orcs and goblins, as it is any proper emperor
of the Empire of Man.
And Chaos, who he's pretty good at dealing with, except for the fact the planet blew
up but don't worry about that.
He has of course fought the Skaven, but they're not given nearly as much prominence.
I guess one last bit is, Eli, ask Eli first.
Eli, what's your favorite clan out of all of them?
I think my favorite clan is probably Skryre.
I like Klad Morz a lot as well, just cause Kwek is such a Chad.
He's a little bit more, I'll say relatable there, I don't know why that word came into
my head, cause that's not right at all.
He's almost a good person by Skaven.
By Skaven standards, he's a saint.
I mean everyone loves Ikkikla.
Thank all.
Everyone loves Ikkikla and Skryre.
What about you, Colin?
What's your favorite?
Mine probably is Klan Morz, because the Skaven monsters are so uncomfortable to look at,
but in a good way.
Is that Molder or Morz?
Or Molder, pardon me, did I say Morz?
Yeah, it's Molder.
I have been flubbing so much this episode.
So good, low crimes.
Yeah.
That's pretty...
Cause Klan Molder, just the Rat Ogres, the Storm Fiends, which are Rat Ogres with machine
guns bolted to them, or flamethrowers.
They're just crazy.
I wish they had something of...
Cause obviously we've had in 40k, the return of the...
Oh my god, they're not Squats, what are they called?
Leaves of Otan.
The not Squats.
The Squats.
The not Squats.
And I mean, it'd be really cool if they had to fight, you know, I mean, if we had like
the, you know, they're essentially in the setting again.
So we have dwarves.
I guess all we're missing now is Skaven.
Yeah, the Rat Boys.
Barl accidentally creates the Skaven.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, that'd be amazing.
I think, I don't think it would take much for them to fit in either because their weapons
are already all powered by chaos.
Yeah, they just need some higher tech, a little bit higher tech stuff and they'd be there.
And they tie in a bit with the Nergal stuff as well.
He is actually one of the only other army you can ally with on tabletop.
Nergal demons.
Oh, pretty cool.
So yeah, only for clan pestilence though, you have to be the sick rats.
I think they're my favorite just because they have, like their aesthetic is so strong.
Like they're really, I like, is there one here, like obviously we all like dabbling
in Warhammer, but I love the painting side of it and doing painting is like Death Guard
and I mean, just making them look like someone threw up on your model in an artistic way.
Of course.
I'm a big fan of them.
They're just, that is so, you know, it's like with Erebus, you hate, you'd love to hate
it.
I love to hate clan pestilence though.
No, that's really cool, man.
Really cool.
They're probably my, I love and hate them.
I love them because like you said, so cool visually.
Vermintide makes me hate them because I turn around and they've taken half of my health.
The plague monks, right?
The plague monks.
Yeah, because the berserker enemies like that are so tough in that game that if you don't
have your ultimate, you're just down.
Yeah.
I guess I hope everyone listening, if you were new to Warhammer or just a 40k fan and
you're new to fantasy, I hope you enjoyed our little foray into the Skaven.
Hopefully we didn't scar you for life or hopefully the, you know, just develop to, you know,
Total Warhammer is a really good way to learn more about it or basically play with it.
Hopefully Total War 40k comes about one day.
That's how I got into this whole setting, Total Warhammer.
Yeah.
Anything Warhammer related that started the addiction.
And now we're all here, unfortunately, for all of the wrong decisions we've made.
Thank you all for listening.
Make sure to like, make sure to subscribe.
Does anyone else have anything to say?
And what's our next episode on boys?
If I'm remembering correctly, unless I'm looking at it wrong, Hal, I believe I am looking
at it wrong.
The next episode, you're still on it.
I could save this.
The next one.
I think it's corn, isn't it?
Yeah.
Corn.
So if I have to sit, listen and sit, I will say that between the next beginner to expert
podcast episode and this one, we also have something a bit special planned with fantasy
in particular.
So yeah, interesting.
So if you enjoyed, if you enjoyed this episode, this, the nap that special project, you're
gonna love it.
You're gonna love it.
Also Merry Christmas, everybody.
This will be out for Christmas time.
So Merry Christmas.
Christmas Eve.
Thank you all so much for watching and we'll see you all next time.
Peace.
Bye everyone.
Stephen Best.
Let's get started.
you