Adeptus Ridiculous - SKAVEN: YES YES | Warhammer Fantasy Lore

Episode Date: May 26, 2024

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculousThe Skaven are a race of humanoid rat-men, who inhabit the caves, tunnels, mines, and sewers of the Warhammer world. They control a vast Under-Empire which reaches from the Southlands to Kislev and from Estalia to the Far East.The god of the Skaven is the Horned Rat, whose high priests form the Council of Thirteen. The direct agents of the Council are an order called the Grey Seers. Most of Skaven society is organised into innumerable clans, all of which are ruled by the Council. The four Great clans mercilessly dominate the weaker Warlord clans.Support the show

Welcome everybody to another episode of Detective Ridiculous, where we cover the only thing more frightening than Warhammer Real Light. Before we get started, if you would like to support our podcast, go over to patreon.com slash adeptus Ridiculous, and check out all of the rewards, including our fantastic Discord, Hostors, and HD Format, All Digital, as well as bloopers if they happen. Plus, check out the merch site at Orchid8.com. link in the description where you can get physical versions of those posters as well as all kinds of other great merch to rep your at least top seven podcast. We better be more than top seven. Check it out. Hey. Check it out.

All right. That's stuff. DK, you have told me on record that you are going to hold me hostage for most, if not the entire day. Yeah. How's that going to happen? How's that going to happen? So, hey, buddy, I have a confession to make here. So, you know, we...

How to put this? Kill them. Today's not actually an episode of Detective Ridiculous. And so... What? Today's not an episode of Detective Ridiculous. Shai and I decided to go back, behind your back. and we decided, you know what,

we need to pull the trigger on him. We need to finally do it. You went over my helmet? Yes, as big as your helmet is to protect that forehead. We went over it and we pulled the trigger and we're like, you know what, it's time. It's time.

We got to talk about Warhammer Fantasy today. Oh, God damn. I'm sorry. We had to do it to you. Goodness. We got to do the hammer of ridiculous. We had to do it to you. of ridiculous?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Maybe it takes off. Maybe it doesn't. But it's time we went off those rails. It's time we talked a little bit about that Patreon goal we had a while ago and doing maybe talking a little bit about some rat people. Oh, and what timing, of course, because the rat people just got a bunch of new minis.

Yeah, Shai was telling me that. And I was like, we did it again. The prophecy has been foretold. This needed to happen. All right. You know, in honest to God, in honest to goodness stuff, for our viewers at least, I don't actually hate fantasy or anything. I got no issue with it. It's just like in the world of sci-fi and like high fantasy or old school lore of the ring style fantasy.

I grew up very sci-fi-pilled, very Star Wars pilled. I also was never a big fan of Lord of the Rings, which everyone was always like kill him right now. beat him death with hammers. I mean, it's just not your fancy. It's just, you know. It's not my fancy. It's not your preference. You don't hate it.

You don't. It's just not your thing. I don't. Maybe I do hate it. Maybe I hate it to death, but. Wow. I was just going with the, like, the anime vibe. It's just not your thing.

No big deal. You don't like anime. It's not the end of the world. Everybody's got preferences. Like, whatever. Who cares? But regardless, I mean, the main reason I never gone to work, Hammer Fantasy, despite them having arguably the best models of them all, is because one

bankrupting hobby at a time, please. Fair enough. One at a time. Thank you very much. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. So before we get started, it needs to be said that we're going to be focusing specifically

on like eighth edition of Warhammer Fantasy. And we are completely ignoring Age of Sigma. and the end time. Wait, is Warhammer fantasy different than Warhammer Age of Sigma? I thought Sigma was the fantasy right now. It is a fantasy, but like Warhammer Fantasy is different from like Age of Sigma. Like they are actually two separate things because I thought the same thing that you did. And then Shy was like, no, stupid.

They're like, they're separate. So we're not talking Age of Sigma and we're not talking about the end. End Times, which if you've played Vermintide, Vermintide kind of takes place, or at least Vermintytee 2 anyway, kind of takes place sort of near the beginning of the end times. But like I said, those are kind of fraught with their own little problems. Wait, I thought Warhammer End Times was the end of Warhammer fantasy.

Yep. And they didn't. So it's really, it's a pain because it was like, oh, you know, this is going to be like the end of it. But then they were like, um, we don't want it to be the end. So they start making new stuff. And like I said, it's, it's a lot. It's a lot, dude.

It's a lot. That's why we're ignoring it. But I need to understand at least a little bit of this. So there's Warhammer Fantasy, which is the original. And then Old World is the new reboot of fantasy. And Sigma is the sequel to the end times, which is what killed fantasy. Mm-hmm. Yep.

That's all that hard to understand. I mean, yeah, I guess This is Warhammer, man. It gets so much worse. True, true. When you say it like that, it's not so bad, but then it's, I don't know. To me, it was just like, what are you doing? What are you doing?

So, anyway, we're ignoring all that. We're focusing specifically on 8th edition, and we're going to speed run through what the world is like here. And hopefully, maybe somewhere down the line, we can do a more detailed, you know, video on like, oh, this is what it was actually like. But anyway, so. Rats. We have the old ones. They show up. They're like the sort of god creators. They make your very typical fantasy races. Elves are good with magic. Dwarves are dwarves are dwarves. They hate each other. Humans are rolling around in sort of, you know, their little empire. Lizard men are hanging around. They think they're like the perfect creation and everybody else is wrong. So how do we make the world better? Kill everybody. And the Skaven. Okay. I don't know much about lizard men. So that's new to me.

The lizard men, I would love to do an episode on the lizard men. I have only scratched the surface on them, but the lizard men are just like, you know what, we're perfect, and everybody else is flawed. So the only way to make a truly perfect race, but only lizard men, kill all the bad people. That's hilarious. Right? And, of course, as we'll be talking about today, the Skaven. Also, Shai just posted a map of 8th edition, and it is like a one-to-one of Earth. This is just Earth.

Yeah, right. It is like a one-to-one of Earth. This is an AI generated version of Earth. Like, you've even got Nippon over there, and it's like, wow, really? You couldn't. Okay, Games Workshop. You couldn't, like, just come up with your own. I like how, why is what Russia is supposed to be the chaos wastes?

No reason. Actually, no, that's the whole northern area, I guess. Never mind. No reason. No reason. All right, it's fine. It's fine. But, yeah, so old ones make all that. And they're all kind of flawed and stuff. And they're like, oh, we can fix them. And then chaos shows up.

Chaos just, and the old ones are like, you know what? Nope, can't fix this. F this. I'm out. You guys can figure this stuff out for yourself. We are out of here. Wait, are the old ones also again, like the nematodes that made the necrons, the same old ones?

Or are these different kinds of old ones because we're in fantasy? These are like fantasy old ones. They're basically like the gods of creation. They made everything on Earth and they made all the races. And once chaos showed up there, just like, nope, I'm out. We're done. You guys figure this

out for yourself. Who cares? I'm gone. So chaos arrives and they just bail? Yeah, chaos arrives and they're just like, nope. We're out. Oh, so it's two totally separate universes. I always thought, like, fantasy was just, was 40K, but just, like, in 5 million BC. So, yeah. Also, thank you for supplementing the information here, shy.

She is giving us information as well. I had two weeks to figure this out. So I'm trying to speed run this a little bit. So, if we're going to do a Warhammer Fantasy episode, then what? better faction to start off with than those creepy, skittering, backstabbing rat bastards, the Skaven. Now, before we get into the episode, a few things I need to get out of the way. First, like I said, this was kind of like a two-week notice, so I didn't have a ton of time,

and there is a lot. There is so much information on the Skaven, so there's going to be a real good chance that I might miss a bit of stuff here and there, might miss your favorite character, your favorite event. So just understand that I did the best I could. Also, I don't play the tabletop. I can't tell you how good or bad their stuff is. But I can tell you their minis look phenomenal.

Like, by and large, the minis I've seen, they are delightful. The fantasy miniatures are absolutely crushing. Oh, yeah. It's a little sad how good they are, compared to some of the things we get in 40K. Yeah, we'll talk about this specific one later, but my favorites are the vermin lords.

They're so cool. Oh, my God. Like, if I ever get, like, really good at painting, I need some vermin lords. They're so badass. Look at that thing. I like the, wait, is that last one, the vermin lord? That is a vermin lord, yes.

Okay, that's pretty awesome, but it's not... Wait, so this is fantasy. So the new rats that got the new minis are, Sigma minis. Yeah, I guess. Oh. I don't know the new ones. Sorry.

Then we don't get rattling mini guns in this world. Oh, no, we totally have rattling mini guns. Oh, yay. We absolutely do. All right, that's what I'm happy about. All right. So let's talk Skaven. Most people have a basic understanding of what the Skaven look like.

They're ratlings. They're rat people that sort of live and crawl in their under empire of tunnels and cities. and their capital city is in Skaven blight. In fact, they are probably living in tunnels right under you, right now. You don't even know it. And the Skaven, they're like evil incarnate. They aren't like shades of gray, well, except for their fur. Their morality is not shades of, they are all absolute terrible, evil bastards.

All of them, every single one. But why? But why? That's just how they're bred. that you are born and raised to be this way in Skaven culture. There is no other way to be. They are evil.

They are just pure, chaotic evil. There's nothing good about them. Okay. And as far as like the origins of Skaven, there isn't a whole lot to tell you because the Skaven they don't keep a written history.

They don't write down their history because by and large, the Skaven don't give a damn about their species. as a whole. Each Skaven kind of sort of just cares about himself. How can I get the most power? How can I get the most wealth? And how can I keep that? And Skaven are also incredibly like sort of egotistical, evil, and they'll never take the blame for anything. If ever something goes wrong with a singular Skaven, it's not my fault. It's not my fault. My underling messed it up. If I missed a shot, no, I didn't. It's because,

my spotter screwed it up or something else happened. It's never my fault. Wait, so these rats feel like they're like orcs, but instead of just being like, having a good time crumping, they're just like

maniacally evil. Yes, they are maniacally evil. They are super evil. And we'll talk about, you know, why they're doing this because they do have sort of a goal. But it...

So I think more like orcs in the way of like they're everywhere, they're a big horde and they're constantly like using tools that break on them and they don't really have a much of a care of their own life. In that sense, in that sense they are very orc-like. In the way that you just said, they are, yes. They seem more grot-like, actually. I mean, true, they do have, like, because they're so egotistical, they do have, like, Shai said, they have an insane care of their life because they want to survive, they want power,

they want to keep that power, and they want to push down anybody that would challenge them for that power too. So an individual scaven would probably care a lot about their own life. So, yeah. Why isn't it like they just die in droves then all the time? Because they do. Because they absolutely do. Also, well, since we mentioned Ork. Orks.

Orc players would probably appreciate the fact that the Skaven are, like we said, they're routinely trying to, like, kill each other and backstab each other. And the only reason that the Skaven have not completely taken over the world is because they just, they can never be united for long. They can never all focus on one specific goal. They are so power-oriented. They're so backstabby and killy and like, I want to be the best. No, I want to, that they're always backstabbing each other.

There's always a civil war going on. They're always killing each other so they can never really band together long enough to completely take over. Also, generally speaking, the Skaven are like always hungry. They're always hungry, and obviously they are quite fast because they're like little rat bastards. I think on average the Skaven's lifespan is a very. around 20 years. But again, they're such a, like, malevolent and violent species that most of them, probably a majority of them will make it like 10 years or less before either an enemy kills them

or a fellow Skaven stabs them in the back and takes their life. The Skaven are also relatively weak. Like, if you got one Skaven to fight one member of basically any other race, one V-1, that Skaven's going to lose horribly. like absolutely horribly they are not strong by themselves at all every race knows it the scaven know it and this is where you get like the scaven are just super cowards if a scaven is in a fight that it thinks is like a fair fight it's probably going to run for its life it is going to avoid a one v one conflict at all costs they are massive cowards um one of the things about a scaven like we said

they're kind of fast. So running away is like one of their strong suits. If they need to run away from a fight, they're out. So they're very cowardice in that way, but they're also very quick to leave. Oh yes, they are very quick to leave a fair fight.

And they're very, very, very fast. But that's kind of the thing with the Skaven. Sure, one Skaven, no threat. No big deal. A regular human with like, I don't know, a pickaxe could easily, take down one scavin, you're not ever going to run into... Yeah, fighting one scatven. You are never going to run into just one scavin, because what the scavin lack for in

physical strength and everything, they more than make up for in numbers. Like, if you kill 10 scavin, there's probably like a hundred more scavin to take their place. They will overrun you like a vicious, bloodthirsty tide. Wait a minute. They're not like orcs, they're like goblins. It sounds like your fantasy goblin style thing. Easily spooked, can be killed by one person, but they're like, there's so many. I guess kind of.

Like a fantasy goblin. Like a fantasy goblin. Like a D&D. Like a D&D goblin. Okay. At least from like what I'm imagining like the like, do they speak in that kind of like chittery, kind of like, I mean, you make a kind of thing. So we'll talk about their language, but I mean, they are, they do speak like you would imagine a rat to speak where it's just very quick like,

like, oh, they don't speak like English? No. Oh, sorry, not English. Like they don't speak like a language language. We'll talk about it later, but I believe it's quickish is what the Skaven language is called. And like I said, it's this very fast. type of language. So like Shai said,

everything they do fast. We do it fast, we do it quick. You got to live fast. You live fast, you die fast. All right. The Skaven also rely super heavily on Warpstone for like all of their technology, all of their society.

And Warpstone is essentially like pure solidified chaos energy. If you could turn chaos energy into a mineable resource, it's warpstone. And they use this stuff, like I said, for their technology, for society, they use it for breeding, they use it for mutating themselves. Slaves are experimented on with it. Their war machines run on this stuff. Like one of their primary goals in life for the Skaven, get all the warpstone. Mine every bit of warpstone you can find get the warpstone. Is that why they're always

underground in the mines and stuff so they can get more warpstone? Yes, but also because they're just shittering rat bastards as well. So yes, yes, yes. So I mean, hey, sometimes they'll find that warpstone in a tunnel and sure,

you know, but yeah. I also saw that they refer to warpstone as being the godstone because they are firm believers that warpstown was bestowed upon them by their deity, the horned rat, which we will talk about. Warpstone is also their currency. They mine this stuff, this warpstone, and then they kind of like chink, tink, tink,

into little tokens, and they make warp tokens, and that's like one of their currencies. And in regards to Skaven history, like I said, they don't keep records. They don't care about their past. All they care about is the right now and the future. where they conquer the world. They just overrun it, and there's only Skaven. Not the website I want to go. Do not want to go to Only Skaven.

Only Skaven. Only rats. Only rats. Don't want that one. No, thank you. But the earliest and probably most well-known documentation of the Skaven is this story called the Doom of Kavzar. And like almost all copies of this have just,

conveniently disappeared from the Imperium's records. And I think the only copy of this story is in a place called Tilea, which is where this thing happened. So it's kind of a long story, but we'll try and get through it fast. So the doom of Kavzar is basically about humans and dwarfs living together in harmony. The humans live above ground. The dwarfs live below ground.

The humans tilled the fields, the dwarfs get in the underground mines and they kind of, you know, they work in harmony. You know, one gets the food, the other gets the minerals. Hooray, we're great. And one day, the humans and the dwarves decide, you know what, we have it so good. We should make a monument to honor the gods

who have blessed us with this just incredible life. So they want to build this massive tower. Think of like a tower of Babel, right? I hope I'm saying that. Is it Babel or Babel? Anyway, it's a tower. Babel. Babel?

Wow. Tower of Babel. Tower of Babel. Who cares? That wasn't even close. Anyway, they want to make a tower that essentially reaches to heaven so they can be like, God, thank you so much. You're really doing, you're doing great.

You did us, you did this real solid. Problem with towers like this is they take a long time to build. Generations would pass, and this thing is still nowhere close to being finished. One day, mysterious man stops in town, and he's like, hey, you guys want, I can finish that thing literally by midnight. The only payment I asked for is you let me put a monument to my own deity at the top there

and hey, I'll do this thing for free. So of course, the humans are like, sure, what have we got to lose? He's going to do it for free. I've seen that thing unfinished for literally my life, my dad's life, my granddad didn't even see it done. Sure, go for broke, dude.

Give it a shot. So he's like, all right, cool, cool, cool, cool. Come back at midnight, I'll be done. And as midnight approaches, it gets like really cloudy. Like, it's almost like pitch black at the tower now. But as it gets closer and closer to midnight, humans return to the tower. And oh shit, it's actually finished. He did it.

And at the very top of the tower is, you know, it's what the stranger promised he'd leave. It's a great horned bell. It's this big bell at the top. But they're like, oh, man, our father's, father's father's. tower is done and we can we can go to this tower we can pray we can thank the gods oh boy what a good time but at the stroke of midnight the great horned bell starts chiming and it chimes 13 times getting louder and louder until the humans are just like clutching their ears and just running for the hills um 13 chime crack of lightning illuminates the sky and the humans are like um that's not what

we were expecting when this tower finished. This is not good. Next morning, their town still covered in darkness. It is raining like a torrent. And every night, that damn bell is chiming 13 times. Dong! And the rain is making it impossible for them to harvest the fields. And this is going on for weeks. They can't harvest because the rain is too much. There are these massive chunks of hail that are. destroying the crops, destroying parts of the town.

So the humans go to the dwarfs and like, guys, we need some help. The dwarves are like, dude, we don't, we do not care. I was about to say dwarves are like, uh, sucks to suck, bro. Yeah, the dwarves are like, dude, we do not care. We're underground. Your stupid rain and your stupid storm doesn't affect our minds. Get out of here. We have work to do.

And so the humans like, all right, that kind of. sucks, but whatever. And even when they try and go prey at the tower, when it's not, dong, dong, they're just shut out of the tower. The doors are shut, they're locked, they can't do anything. And so things are getting super bad. They're noticing that their food stocks are getting eaten by like vermin and rats. Their newborns were being born twisted and malformed.

Disease and illness are running rampant, killing the populace. it was super bad to be in this town in Tilea. And so once again, they go to the dwarves and they're like, you know what? We need help. And the dwarves are like, you know what? So do we. Your stupid storm flooded the mines. We can't do anything.

We barely have enough supplies for ourselves so you can proceed to get the fuck out of our minds and they slam the door in their faces. Oh, okay. That's not necessarily how I thought I was going to go. Yeah. It is not good. It is not a good time. And the humans are trying everything. At one point they get so desperate, they are praying to chaos.

If they can remember the name of a demon prince, like, please, look, whatever you got to do with you? You want our firstborn child? Fine. The thing has been born, malformed, and disgusting anyway. Take it. But nothing works. Nothing happens. Nobody comes to their age.

So they're like, you know what? Screw it. Those dwarves, we know they have supplies. We're invading the mines. And we're taking what we need. screw what they say. And so they do. They break down the doors of the dwarves

like haul or whatever. And all they find are the bones of all the dwarves. They're all like gnawed up. And as their torches light up, the gnawed bones left behind, suddenly these beating orange red eyes just light up one by one

until it is just an infinite number of red eyes. fall upon the humans and they are just completely and utterly overwhelmed and flooded by the rattling horde. Who is this dickhead who put the Great Horned Rat symbol up there? I'm not really sure. He's just some flunky. That's just, I guess, probably some chaos flunky, but nobody knows who he is.

He just showed up, built the tower, put the bell up. Could have been Zinch. Zinges would love to do that. That would be such a Zing's. thing to do. I was about to say like the great, I mean the great horned rat Okay, so this is a different universe from 40K so I have to like pull it away from my my con like wait

it's different universe for 40K but zinch is still here. Yeah the chaos gods are still here Yeah, yeah I know I know I know The chaos gods are still here we still have Zinch we still have all them okay okay okay whatever but this is this is not okay it's different universe all right different universe same gods it's fine

it's fine um Okay, right. But there's also another god, and that's the Great Horned Rat. Yes, we'll talk about him later. He's not really a chaos god. He's like one step below chaos god. He is a deity, but he's not like a proper, exalted chaos god like corner zinch. But he is a god nonetheless.

Shai's going to get mad at me again for this, but it's like a gork and work situation where it's like they're gods, but they're not like, they're not like God's gods. They're like the chaos gods, but they also are still gods. Well, so literally the horned rat makes itself like known. Like, so it is proper a thing. It's not like sort of like, oh, they might exist. They might not exist. It's just the orks prey them into existence or something like that.

So he does actually exist. But Gork and Mork are gods in fantasy too? Oh, didn't know that. Look, look, man, I focus mostly on the scaven. I didn't know that Gork and Mork and Mork are. literally gods in wherever fantasy. But it's a different universe

than 40K, right? Okay. Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, all right, it's fine. All right, the great horn wrap, the chaos gods exist, but the great horn rat is also like an actual other god as well.

Yeah, it's like a lesser god, but still a god. Okay, fine. It's still very powerful. Still very, very powerful. All right. Chilling. Chill, big chilling. Good, good, good, good, good.

I'm just, it's just difficult because it's like, this is only, this is only about fantasy, awesome. And then you're like, also Gork and Morker here. And I'm like, what? Yeah, they just recycled some stuff. Okay, all right. All right, fine. I'm slowly accepting this.

Okay. Hey, it's okay. Hey, that you are giving this a chance after we just like bumrush you with this. To be fair, that's pretty commendable. All right? I'm not going to give you too much guff for, you know, feeling that kind of way. So, bells are. are a big part of, uh,

yeah, bells in the number 13 are a big part of the horned rats. Oh, they have their own, they have their own God number as well, huh? Yeah, yeah.

Gotcha. And so a lot of the units, and I'll talk about this later, they will actually use a great horned bell, and this thing will chime, and it essentially, it works to debuff the enemies because it makes the enemies

absolutely crazy, but it makes the rattlings, like it buffs them up. It gives them that, like, just that bloodless, like, oh yeah, I got to kill. Oh, yeah, I got to kill. I'm a little scavin, and I hear the bill,

and it makes me a little crazy, and I got to kill. I'm a red. I love the cream. I love the cream. Yeah, brother. Anyway, so, the scaven honestly and truly believe that they are just the superior life form, and that the world rightfully belongs to them.

They just have to take it. The scavin, and we just talked, about the horned rat a little bit, but the Skaven all worship the great horned rat, their deity. Every Skaven worships the great horned rat. And as we said, he's not really like your greater chaos god. He's not a Sleeneh. He's not a corn. But he's like right under them on the chaos deity tier list, if you want to call it that. And the horned rat sort of represents everything that a Skaven aspires to become. He's basically immortal. He is sort of. super sneaky, super cunning, super smart.

He will devour anything in his path. He will eat anything endlessly. And he just leaves rot and decay in his wake. He is the all-powerful great-horned rat. And so a lot of the fear of the great horned rat is obviously because he's their deity. but also he is like his hunger doesn't really differentiate or discriminate between friend and foe. And so the scavener like, uh-oh, if we piss off our God and we fail him, then it is entirely possible that he's going to eat us.

He's going to eat every single one of us if he gets mad because he just, he don't discriminate. He'll eat everything. And so in order to sort of satiate his hunger, the scavin every day will give him blood sacrifices to appease him, to hopefully satiate that endless hunger and make him be like, hey, look, see, you like us, we're good, we're just like you. So this goes along with their need to never, ever die and fear of their life is because they also need to make sure their God doesn't turn on them. yeah they they definitely have this massive even though they worship him they have this massive fear of the great horned rat because if he gets mad at them eat him so it's very it's very a cult occult like or like um like because well i mean the great horn rat image that shy posted there has like a bunch of ruins and stuff and it's very uh you know it's very like cult like uh the occult you know oh sure sure sure are definitely, I definitely cult-like. And as far as the blood sacrifices go,

doesn't matter if it's a scaven or a human. Just needs to be a sacrifice. The race, the creed, doesn't matter. What does seem to be making a difference is the age of the blood sacrifice. Apparently, if you offer up a sacrifice that's kind of old and haggard and kind of on death's door,

then it's like the horned rat is like, well, I guess you're, tried, and I guess this will do, but the horned rat, the horned rat prefers its young sacrifices. Oh. Yeah. How young. Um, you know what? I didn't look into great detail about it.

Uh, I just saw a thing on the wiki that was like, yeah, it prefers younger sacrifices. And I was like, okay, that's good enough for me. Not going to delve into that. The rats, the rats are going to go into your home and grab your child from the cage and then just drag it, drag it away to a horrible, demise. Yeah, probably. Yeah, it's Warhammer, isn't it? That's not great. Nope. Nope. Blood sacrifices are also used to sort of appease the great horned rat if the Skaven screw up. Like, if they just totally screw up an invasion, lose a war, catastrophic losses, even for the Skaven,

then they're just like, we got to have a mass blood sacrifice, because if we don't, there's no way we're explaining this to our God. And if we don't explain it to him and we don't get him other blood sacrifices, his anger's going to make him eat us. Wait, isn't that like a cyclical issue though? Because like, okay, we wage war, horrible slaughter for the Great Horn Wrap. And if we fail our war, we need to make sure we do a horrible slaughter to make up for our failure of having horrible slaughter?

Yeah, pretty much. Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be a horrible slaughter. Like just any time they completely screw up or fail at something, they're just like, oh, mass blood sacrifice. We got to sacrifice a lot of stuff. We got to sacrifice. But isn't it for their God? Like you said when they screw up and fail at something, isn't the thing they're attempting to do for their God normally murder, death and destruction? Yeah, kind of.

Yeah, it sounds like they're sacrificing in both the good and the bad times. Yeah, they kind of are, aren't they? So. Okay. I mean, I just want to make sure I got it straight. I just want to make sure I got this correct. That's fair. That's fair.

It seems like the whole point, the rats are just endless violence. Oh, absolutely. The Skaven are violence incarnate. Absolutely. Also, the horned rat at one point passes down like this set of 169 commandments to the Skaven. The sex number. I know. But he passed it down to the Skaven.

gray seers. We'll talk about them later too. Essentially, they're sort of the priest mages for the scaven. They're sort of like the, the mages that interpret the will of the great horned rat. And on this thing, on this big pillar, which I just posted the picture of it, it's a pillar made of warpstone. And apparently, it has like 169 commandments, and this list is so convoluted, hard to understand, so vague and so open to interpretation, that the scavin that read it are like, I don't get it,

but it sounds like as long as we're just not caught doing something bad, everything's fair game. So, yeah, just don't get caught doing the bad stuff. Hooray. And these 169 commandments are on that big pillar, and that big pillar is made of war. Warpstone, because everything in Skaven culture is made of warpstone. How do they...

It's just because they get so much warpstone, like there's just so many things for them to get. Yeah, they have, their whole goal is to just get warpstone, so they have a lot of it. And they use it for everything. I also read somewhere that the horned rat specifically made these 169 roared. rules in such a convoluted weird way because he thought it would be super funny to watch the stupid Skaven toil and try to figure out what they meant and he just thought it would be funny.

The Great Horn Riot seems like kind of a dick. Hey, he's everything a Skaven aspires to be. So, you know. I mean, I'm just, you know, I'm just like, I just want to make it clear that like, if I'm understanding the Great Horn to rat correctly, he's a bit of an asshole. You're not wrong. He absolutely is. He absolutely is. Is that the depiction of him in...

Wow. Let's put shy. Shy. Let's put shy. Shy. Get in the box. Look. Hey, I am very comfortable with who I am, but I mean, she's not wrong. No, get in the box, shy.

She's not wrong. Like that, what is that? Total War Warhammer 2? That's not, that's, she's kind of right, though. Like, let her cook, dude. To jail. Let her, let her cook. All right.

Jail. Let her cook. She can cook in prison. Now I mentioned the gray sears and that's going to be kind of my transition into the sort of hierarchy of the Skaven. So at the very tip top of Skaven society is the Council of 13. And this council tries to keep the Skaven in check and make sure that the species as a whole is kind of heading in the right direction because their end goal as the Skaven is to achieve what they call the great ascendancy. and this is more or less the day that all Skaven completely conquer the earth.

It is just wall-to-wall scavin. And it's also the day that the horned rat is like, okay, not only are all of my children going to conquer Earth, but because of that, because I have a literal planet worshipping me, I am going to ascend myself into being a chaos god. And then I'll be able to rule over the chaos gods as well. problem is they're Skaven So the council

More or less are always like Arguing with each other Or they're making some kind of scheme To make sure they don't lose their seat on the council And that they don't lose all their power So they don't usually get a lot done The council consists of the leaders Of the four great clans

Of the Skaven There are also some warlords Of some lesser clans that get a seat and there's always one empty seat. And this one empty seat is always reserved for the horned rat himself. It's like an empty seat and it's like, oh yeah, if ever there is a stalemate, we ask the great horned rat what he thinks. And again, his will is translated by the gray seers,

which is kind of bullshit because the gray seers are like, like I said, they're like the fervent, powerful priests that worship the horned rat, devote themselves to him. They're very special. They are very respected. They divine the will of the horned rat. So they, the gray seers, also have a seat on the council. So they can just be like, oh, yeah, we the graciers, uh, you know what?

We've divined that the horned rat totally agrees with us and is voting in our favor, hold the L losers, and they kind of sort of get an extra vote whenever they need one on the council. So technically the gray seers have two seats. So they, so they. So they not only are backstabbing asshole rats, but they're also politicians. Yes, they also have politician rats that are like, yeah. Even, even, well, I guess, you know, the politician rats should be a little crazy. I didn't even think there could be such a thing as scaven politics.

There is. Considering how many there are and how fast they die. Yep, but they're always scheming. They're always trying to backstab each other. They're always trying to get more power. they're always arguing. And it's also entirely possible to usurp one of the spots on the council. All you have to do is touch the 169 commandments, that big ass spire made of warpstone.

And if you can survive touching it, then that means you are worthy of a spot on the council. What happens when you touch it? Well, you could die. Uh-huh. You could die. Or if you don't die, then, you know, you're, hey, you're ready to be on the council. Doesn't end there, though, because once you've touched it and you're like, hey, look at me, dad. I'm ready for the council.

You still have to challenge one of the council members and kill said council members to take their seat. apparently it is also possible to take one of the seats by just straight up destroying a council member's clan like just obliterating them and ending them from existence like i guess you can just you know take care of their clan and then it's like oh they have no power nobody's going to back them up so it's going to be super easy to just assassinate them take their spot kick him out um so i don't know how often that happens because killing a whole whole clan. It's kind of a lot to get a seat, but anyway. I, that's, it's shenanigans. It is indeed shenanigans. Yeah. But yeah, as, as shy said, to clarify, their politics move faster than usual, but they form alliances, break alliances, conquer each other, help each other out, turn on each other, yeah. Sometimes that only takes like days.

All within, because they move in incredibly quick speeds. Yes, they're rats. They're all. but again the council of 13 are like sort of the leading body of the Skaven and again they kind of don't get a lot done because they're Skaven like we just

discussed you know they just want to stay in power they only care about themselves that Skaven 101 but I kind of want to talk about those great clans that occupy the seats so to keep this as concise as possible Yeah the four in the parchment Four great clans yeah Now obviously it's the Council of

13, so there are still lesser warlord clans that are in there, but I feel like it's kind of more important to just talk about the four great clans and hope to God that this whole thing takes off and we can cover all the clans on a later episode or something. But before we talk about the clans, I kind of got to talk about the gray seers first. We've sort of mentioned them in passing a few times, but the gray seers aren't technically one of the great clans, I don't think, but they still hold a seat. on the council of 13 because again they're like the main priests of the horned rat like we said so if they're ever like hey you should do this or they advise you on how to do anything

it holds extra weight because it's like oh well they're the voice of the horned rat we all worship the horned rat like we should really take their advice to heart um so yeah if they tell you to do something you damn well better do it because it's almost like the horned rat himself told you to do it. They're also very, like, in a fight, they're actually pretty strong because they also have, like, really potent magic. They're like proper sorcerers.

And from what I read on the wiki, they also have the ability to summon a vermin lord if they need to, which we will talk about later, but just trust me, you do not, you do not want them to summon a vermin lord. Do the gray seers, do they have like models? Are they like things you can field? How many are there? How many are there?

Are they just like like a conclave of, of like warlock? Yeah, it's kind of like a conclave of like warlock priestmaids. I am fairly sure that they, that you can field them. I have, I cannot imagine that you wouldn't be able to field one. Yeah. I mean, are they, is there anything like, so obviously, so wait, do all the They have a great paint named after them?

Oh yeah, that's a good point The Gracier Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right That is a paints Yeah, I was painting yesterday I was like, oh, Gracie or Gray? Let's go, I'm gonna ambush Bricky with this tomorrow The, wait, so they

Are they like the defaicc? Is it kind of like how in old medieval times There's like the king and everything like that But they always defer to the bishop Because the bishop speaks with the thing of God Is that like the grace ears kind of like that? Yeah, more or less they are the advisor more or less.

Religious leaders. Okay. Yeah. Mage advisors, religious leaders, yeah. Do they, I'm assuming they also

like can cast powers Yeah, they definitely do. Also, does the warp exist? The warp exists, right? Yes, the warp exists.

Where the warp stone probably comes from, I assume. Yeah, warp stone. I was gonna ask shy about how the orcs came to be in fantasy,

but I don't want to I don't want to veer this off course too much. But anyway, as it should be obvious, the gray seers all have gray fur. It's not unheard of for a gray seer to actually have white fur or be like an albino scavin. But fur color is actually a rather important identifier in Skaven culture that we'll touch on a little bit later when we're done with the four great clans. But yeah, long story short, you respect and you listen to a gray seer because they speak for your god, probably hold like the most political power out of any Skaven, and they wield magic that will absolutely obliterate your face.

Obliterate your face. Oh yeah, your face will be obliterated. Okay, okay. Now, of the four major clans, we first have clan Molder. They specialize in making like these horrific mutated creatures. No one is super sure how they go about experimenting on and making these crazy. creatures. They make the rat ogres. I don't know if you've seen a rat ogre before, but they're like big, like massive bolt-up. They look like a rat ogrean, almost. But that's them. Those are their

experiments. And obviously, it involves a lot of warpstone. You can see all the glowy green nonsense on them. Chances are they have been experimented on heavily with Warpstone. Um, so that's... Warpstone. So are they like slaves that have been just like, let's see what... Let's throw Warfstone at them and see what happens. Yeah, there's a lot of experimentation done on slaves. There is a...

But they're rat slaves, right? Or are they human slaves? They're... Well, probably a little from column A, a little from column B. I don't think they discriminate on what their slaves can be. If they capture you, congratulations. you're a slave and you're going to get experimented on whether you like it or not because you're in scatven hell now.

So, all right. Yeah. And their main stronghold is a place literally called Hell Pit. Sorry. It's just, it's just, this is, this is very, very on the nose. Very on brand. And the surrounding area of Hell Pit is like crawling with Savage

beast. That's where they get a lot of their bestial sort of experiments. So they're literally like wolf rat hybrids that are running around because they just experiment on them. And they are ruled by a warlord named Nodwell

and check out his title. He is Supreme and Merciless War King Tyrant General Nodwell. Supreme and Merciless Lord King Tyrant. Supreme

and merciless war king tyrant general. That's his title, Nodwell. Also, before we move on to the next clan, Shai, please tell me you have on cue a picture of the chimera rat that they are said to have made, because that is like the perfect depiction of, hey, look at what Klan Mulder is cooking.

Anyway, while, oh, actually, Shai posted a description of Hell Pit, for I cannot forgive the revulsion I felt upon seeing those flayed bodies rotting in the sunlight on the morrow, nor can I repress the memory of the rat things beneath the gibbous moon the eve before, that these creatures wrought such horror before my very eyes willingly and with relish is far less frightening to me now than the fact that nobody else will believe my tale. Yeah, they just, that's a rat chimera, that they, that clan molder was like,

this will be a good idea. That is an old miniature. It is a very old mini. I don't think you can run it anymore, but it's just, that is like, that's Clan Mulder. But it has, like,

still like a spiky arm. It still has, like, that spiky arm, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, like the, the pew-pute or the stabby arm.

It's pretty funny. Mm-hmm. Uh, next up is Clan Scrier. And they are specifically known as sort of like the Stark Raving Mad Engine. here clan. And they're the ones that are making all those crazy green warp stone infused machines

and weaponry that you've probably seen in Vermintyde. Yes, all of the, all like the gas masks and stuff. They're the ones making the warp stone mini guns or the green warp flamethrower thing. They're like, and they're also like full-fledged warlock. So warlocks. And they're pretty good at like, oh, this thing is full of warpstone energy, cool. I'm also going to put a bunch of arcane power into it too. Which, while the warpstone weapons are also very powerful, they can also at times be ever so slightly unreliable. Yeah, blows up in their face all the time kind of thing.

Yeah, I do not think it would be hyperbole to say that more Skaven have died to their own weapons, backfiring, exploding, or just not working the way they're supposed to. then have died from just straight up enemy combatants. I'm not sure that's hyperbole. It might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but there are a lot of scavin that just died out. Why is my weapon back? I mean, it sounds like what Warpstone does.

Yeah, that's kind of the thing. But again, there's so goddamn many scavin, it kind of doesn't matter. So the clan scribe is just like, oh, that thing blew up, eh, we'll try something else. We'll keep doing it until it works, even if it does blow up like, you know, a hundred thousand Skaven. Eh, whatever.

No worries. And again, there are countless stories of them being like, guys, we just made a new war machine, hooray, and it just explodes on first use. Which, since we're talking about it, the Skaven have kind of an odd way of looking at an event like that, right? Like, you would think if you are in a military troop and, you're in a military troop and, you And you see that a huge swath of Skaven have just blown up in this green flame of destruction. You'd be like, oh, my God, I'm so pissed.

This is so stupid. But generally speaking, as long as the enemy died too, the Skaven are like, oh, hey, huge dub. Yeah, huge dub. Well, well, because they're, well, the people who say huge dub are the ones that are still alive. Yes. Because all the friends are dead also. Do you even have friends? Loosely.

They have clanmates, maybe? I think they will say that they're friends just to like be like, oh yeah, I'm going to tell you I'm your friend, just so you'll put down your guard and one day I can stab you in the back and take everything you hold dear to yourself and have it for me. So do Skaven, like, because they move at such an insane speed and like mentally and all that kind of stuff, Does that mean, like, within the course of an hour, someone has already met, plotted the demise, and then executed another Skaven individual, which would in reality be like a three-month coup in human terms or something? Oh, I'm sure. I'm absolutely sure they have done that.

Yeah, Shai's like, now you're getting it. Now you're understanding the way a Skaven works. There have been Skaven that were like, yeah, I am going, this guy's my rival, and I am going to make sure that his gun malfunctions. blows up, it blows up him, it blows up everybody close to him, and they're all their friends, and it does that, and the guy that blew up never even knew they were rivals. He's like, I don't even know you, dude. And the one Skaven was just like, oh yeah, I'm plotting in my head, he's my main rival, he's this, he's that, he's that, man, we never even met and I'm somehow your rival. What the fuck is going on? Yeah, but at the same time, you would, the other Skaven would do

the exact same thing to that person. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, they would. Yeah, yeah. So they're going, you're getting it. You're getting it. So they're going through basically the entire, the entire, like, situation of, of betrayal, murder, mass genocide. But there's so many of them and it all happens within the course of, like, hours.

Yes. Yes. That's true. Most scaven are kind of expecting. backstabbing, so you know. Also, since we are speaking of Skaven malfunctions,

it should also be noted that as I said earlier, nothing's ever a Skaven's fault, right? Like, Skaven ends up missing a shot and bullshit I did. No, I didn't. It was the Spotter's fault. Of course I didn't miss shot. The scope is busted. My gun exploded and killed half my squadron

because Warpstone is basically physical, chaos, material, and makes no sense. Well, I killed a few dude. so, you know, it's fine. Um, just one of those scavin things that feels like it needs repeating. Like, they will never take fault for anything. So, Clan Scrier is never like, oh, our weapon messed up? No, it didn't.

You used it wrong. No, it didn't. You probably, I don't know, push the wrong button or something. All right. I'm seeing, I'm seeing where I got, I got turned around. I, because I was originally thinking of the orc stuff, but orcs are like chaotic neutral. but these people are just like completely awful individuals.

They are just straight evil. Bottom right hand corner of it just chaotic, chaotic, chaotic. Chaotic evil, evil, chaotic, chaotic evil. There is no gray area with them. They are just straight up evil. Yep. Is this because the Great Horn rat is evil and therefore they must appease their God by being evil?

Or are they just born this way? I think baby I was born this way. so they're just they're just they feel more like Chukari in some of their methods than anything it probably has a lot to do with oh you know the great horned rat is this way too

so I need to aspire to be him as well there's probably a little bit of that but I think baby I was born this way that's just awful they're just purely okay I can kind of see the appeal because in a way there's not a whole lot of like depth

like I'm sure there's like some depth but there's this much depth to it as like as like how you want to make your funny so it's not about the the deep internal everything of the scaven it's about the situation as the scaven find themselves in almost it seems like definitely they're that goofy yep yep um anyway next up on the clans we have the plague months monks of clan pestilins and their name kind of sums up what they're all about right they love spreading plague, rot, and decay. And they actually have a very different idea of the horned rat.

In the main aspect that the part of him that deserves worship, the part of him that everybody should really focus on is his ability to spread plague and disease and rot, but also he can create life. He can make scaven. So they're just like, oh, that's what we should really focus on. you know, so they worship the horned rat a little different.

Wait, but Nurgle still exists in this universe. Yes, he does, and we will we'll talk about that. And so, remember how I mentioned that the council does a lot of arguing, there is a fair

chance that Klan Pestolence is in the middle of whatever they're arguing about because Klan Pestilans, they fucking hate the Grey Sears. They think, think the gray seers are spewing just the biggest, hottest

load of shit ever. They are misleading all of scavenkind. They're focusing on the wrong aspects of the horned rat. They don't actually speak for them. They are just false prophets. It's really no big secret that Klan Pestolins probably wants to bury

the gray seers in the ground, but they can't because the gray seers are just so highly looked upon by everybody else that it is, it's impossible to do anything without their approval. Also, because of the way Clan Pestolence fights with, like, disease, like, literally one of the things that they'll do is they will specially breed Skaven full of disease and rod and decay

and all manner of terrible, and they will just let them loose in enemy territory. Like, they'll just let them loose in the sewer and then... Then they'll just cover them with disease. They also have these like twisted plague monk type figures that they carry this censure around that has a warpstone in it and it just spuse plague smoke that infects anyone nearby. If you're still warframe pill, think a harrow, but his censure is just full of like this gnarly green. But also it's, but also like, wait, is warpstone just, is warpstone just? like a Macuffin? Can it just be made into whatever the hell they feel like? Um, you know, it kind of sort of is, I feel like it kind of is a muguffin because it's like, oh yeah,

of course they can do that with Warpstone. It's just solidified chaos energy. So of course it can do the thing. So I feel like it's what it seems like. It's a little bit of a Macuffin, a little bit. It just kind of like can become whatever it wants because it's Warpstone. Yeah, and yeah, kind of, kind of. The plague months, monks, I don't know why I keep calling them that, they infect themselves literally with disease, and that sort of empowers them. And it also serves to like empower anybody in clan pestilins.

It kind of buffs them up. But anyway, because of that, because of the way they fight with disease and they will literally infect themselves with disease, there are a lot of Skaven that actually believe that clan pestilins doesn't worship the horned rat at all, but instead they might actually worship Nergel, which naturally doesn't sit too well with the other clans that they might be worshipping something other than the great horned rat. So I'm assuming clan pestilence is one of those clans that everyone just kind of despises. Yeah. Except for clan pestilence.

Yeah, everybody kind of side-eyes Clan Pestolence a little bit, and they're almost kind of a little on edge about him, and probably everybody might want to overthrow and just outright kill them. But, um, Clan Pestilance is really, really strong. Like, as you can imagine, Skaven history is rot with civil wars and conflicts among themselves. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I didn't even plan that. Wow. Wow. Wait, okay, hold on. I have to hear this. Shry says, D.K.,

what's the name of their leader? It's very subtle. Oh, shoot. His name is like Nergletch or something. Nergletch seven. Oh, my God. There have been, like, the leader of clan pestilence usually takes on the name Nerglich.

And so. Nerglich seven. Seven, seven, two. Oh, my God. Very subtle. Very subtle. Not on the nose at all. Nope.

But again, so Skaven history. rot with civil war and conflict among themselves. And honestly, at the heart of like a majority of these struggles was clan pestilence. I think Shai posted in chat that they caused like three civil wars that consumed the entire Skaven race. And they're still here. They've been a part of all of those. They're still here.

And they've actually come shockingly close to actually overthrowing the council of 13. So the Skaven might want them gone, and they might want to get rid of them, but they're also kind of like, um, they're also really scary and like we can't beat them. So I guess we kind of just have to get along and hope they don't fuck us over. Also, they're covered in pestilence and rot. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I don't want to die because I don't want to be closer to the pestilence people. Yeah, it's like you don't want to be close to them because they're full of literal disease and rot, but also it's just like they're really strong.

Like they're really, they're a pretty dominant force. It should also be noted that usually in battle, we talked about the screaming bell, the dong, dong, dong, dong, and it was in the origin story and everything. And, you know, usually the Skaven will use this as a way to buff themselves. It's a holy relic. usually it is used and maintained by a gracier. But clan pestilence are like, gray seers, bleh. And so they don't use a screaming bell.

Straight up just they don't use it. Instead, they use a relic called the cauldron of a thousand poxes. And from what I've read on the wiki, there are rumors that this cauldron of a thousand poxes was a thing they might have actually stolen from Nergel. Wait, stolen from Nurgel? Yeah, they might have stole it from like Nergel's domain somehow. Like the gardens of Nurk?

Well, I don't know if that's also a thing. Something like that. All I read was they might have stolen this cauldron of a thousand boxes from Nergel. Okay. Is Nurgel happy about this? Do we know? I'm not sure Nergel knows. And maybe he just doesn't care because he's like, well, Clan Pestlens is doing good work.

Oh, yeah, yeah. You can have it. Yeah. Maybe they're like, hey, with what you're using it for, you know what? You may have stolen it from me, but I'm good with it. I'm eating good. You know, eh. And it's a weird device because, like, apparently while the disease and stuff that spews from the cauldron can, like, absolutely mess up their foes, it can also, like, infect the scavin, too.

Like, if the scaven get too close to it, they get infected, and it doesn't, like, buff them. like you can actually like you know hurt them quite a bit um and apparently the caldron is uh also used uh so if a member of clan pestilence is like you know what i don't like my rank i deserve a promotion give me a promotion um they will literally lower that scaven into the cauldron and if that scaven survives getting just dipped like a crouton into this awful gunk, congratulations! You're promoted.

Well done. And if he dies, well, soup. More soup. More soup. I mean, this sounds very scavin to have the whole situation be like, well, you know,

you're scavin and everything, but we're the pestilence group, but you're not immune to, join the pestilence group. You're not immune to pestilence. Yeah, they are not. And so it's just like, well, good luck.

Yeah, I mean, because it's probably a lot more of that warpstone chicanery, right? Where it's like, oh, yeah, we love disease. We love rot, but we also kind of don't like it because it can kill us too a little bit. If we get too much of it, it'll absolutely kill us too. And last, but not least, is clan Eschen, which is another one that I was like, hey, Eschen Gray, let's go. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah.

They're basically the sneaky assassination clan that will, you know, if you pay them the right price and you give them enough like warp tokens, they'll go after anybody. As long as you're the highest bidder, yo, we got you. And there isn't a ton that's known about Clan Eschen's inner workings because as the assassination stealth clan, they don't want you knowing how they operate or what they're thinking. So if they find out that you've been sneaking around them and you know more than you're supposed to, you're getting killed. are getting absolutely obliterated.

So there's not a whole lot to talk about as far as like their history and stuff, because it's like one of those sort of pseudo-Mcuffins where it's like, well, we just don't know because they never talk about it. Right. But at the same time, I'm assuming that they think that everyone is suspicious because they're the scaven. That's true, too. That's fair.

I don't know who you are. And then they kill you anyway because they're like, he knew too much. He saw anything. A thing. Yeah. That's fair. And you'd think. that Clan Eshen would be like a council problem, like Clan Pestolans, because they're just so sneaky,

and they're such potent killers, and who knows what they're thinking. But by and large, they're very obedient to the council, and they kind of just do what they're told. They kind of just go with the flow, and they don't really cause anybody any big problems. I mean, obviously, people walk on eggshells around them because, you know, they're assassins. And also, they might just be biting their time because they have so many secrets that they know. They know like, oh, you tried to assassinate this guy. Ooh, that could come back to haunt you. And they, they kind of know a little bit of everything. So if they ever really wanted to and they ever felt like the time was right, they could be a real problem. Also, so like I said, Clan Eschen offers its service to

sort of like the highest bidder. And that got me thinking about like the currency and like, do they just do it for a bunch of warp tokens and stuff like that. And one of the funniest things about Skaven is, so Warpstone is in fact their main currency. But apparently it is very lore accurate that the Skaven in general love to collect and steal gold. Gold is completely meaningless and worthless to them, but they love stealing it because they just, they know it pisses everybody else off. They know that the dwarves and the humans and everyone love their gold and when it gets stolen, they get really pissed off and they hate it. So the scavener like, you know what? I'm going to steal it just because it makes you mad. I'm not going to do anything with it. I'm not even going to spend it. I can't

spend it. I spend warp tokens, but I'm taking your shit because it makes you mad. Because they're chaotic evil and they're all in their assholes. Yeah, pretty much. And that's sort of the super TLDR on the four great clans that sit at the head of the Council of 13. There are so, there's so much more to these clans, how they operate, the leadership structure, the notable members and stuff like that. But like we are already so deep into this thing that I kind of have to just TLDR it. Like I said, there are a bunch more like lesser warlord clans that have a seat at the table and they have some really, really cool people. But like, I just have to pray that this whole thing takes off and we can cover that some other

time. Now, for the regular populace of the Skaven, they're kind of broken up into this cast system that is largely based on the color of their fur, kind of like how we talked about before, where if you have gray, white fur, or you're an albino rat, or you're born with horns, you are rushed from birth to become part of the gray seers. Immediately, you will be raised as a gray seer. If you have black fur, the Skaven see that as a sign of like, oh shit, This black furred rat is a killer. He is a warrior. He's going to go on and do great things for the military,

and he is just, ooh, you're probably going to become like an elite guard to somebody really important. It's also not unheard of for Skaven to, like, want to die there for black, because they're like, well, I'm tired of being, like, a bitch. So I'm going to go ahead and die my fur black, and then everybody will think I'm a warrior. But even if you do that, you kind of have to back up your prowess, even if you dye your fur black, like, oh, cool, yeah, go. Let go be a high standing, high elite guard. Like, you're going to get immediately wrecked anyway.

So if you don't have the chops to do it, it doesn't really matter. Most other colors of fur kind of don't mean that much to the Skaven. They're just kind of like, oh, you're brown, you're beige. Eh, whatever. You know, they'll probably go on to be like a blacksmith or a crafter or a builder, or something kind of mundane like that. but from birth, the scavin are kind of taught to be just like ruthless, you know? And we'll, oh, we'll talk about the actual birthing in a second.

But the common... God. What? What? I said, I said, oh, God. Oh, okay. Yeah, we'll talk about it. But at birth, you know, the sort of common fur-colored welps are given like just the basic nessities to survive, you know?

just the basic necessities and you know here's a little food here's a little this here's a little that but it's never enough it's never enough for the children to like survive so scaven children need to fight and claw and backstab and do whatever they can to make sure that they have the food that they need to survive they need to clot their own siblings and if you're too weak to make it past this stage the scaven you're like good you were too weak we're too weak we called you. Get out of here. We don't need you. It's also, I also read that it was to prepare the young Skaven for just how life is going to be as a Skaven. You have to be stronger. You have to be more cunning. You have to

be willing to do anything to survive in this hellscape that we call life. Even if that means literally eating your weaker, younger sibling because you need sustenance. By the way, that actually happens. Plenty of Skaven just eat their younger, weaker siblings because, well, I need to survive and I will literally eat anything. I'm sorry. Shai said something that frightens me.

Yes, every Skaven so far has been referred to as a he. What do you mean by that? We'll talk about it. We're an hour and 20 minutes already into this? Yeah, there's a lot. We're closing in on it. I promise. We're not going to hit two hours, I hope.

Good Lord. Sorry, sorry. Anyway, language of the Skaven. It's kind of weird. We talked about it a little bit. It's called Queakish. And from what I've seen, it's kind of like that generic trilling that you'd imagine a rat to make.

And the sort of weird part about the language is that in its written form, it's like hieroglyphics. Like they kind of just use these little pictures to get their point across. And I saw in a lore video that there are certain instances in like marketplaces where they will leave a sheet of like pictographs. Like, oh, here's what I'm selling. And then they'll just like leave their musk on it. Because the scavin have such a crazy, accurate sense of smell that a scaven can very easily find another scaven using their musk. And on the topic of their musk, the scavin used that as sort of a communication tool as well. their musk can convey what emotions they're feeling to other Skaven.

Like there's a specific one called the musk of fear. Pretty self-explanatory. When a Skaven is like alarmed and panicking and bad stuff is going down, they just kind of as a reflex just, you know, they have this musk that just goes off and it tells everybody that they're scared and be warned, be careful, something's going down. It can also be used as like a sign of respect to like hire up Skaven. where it's like, oh, no, this high-ranking Skaven is coming by. Oh, I'm just immediately fearful.

There's also a musk of battle, which is a little misleading, because you would think that this was something that happened, like, oh, I'm in the throngs of battle, and I feel good. But it's actually a scent that happens when a Skaven city has reached max capacity, and there's, like, no more room for anything. And they're like, dude, we need to expand. We need to war. We need to conquer.

We need to get into a frenzy because if we don't, we got no more room for anything. So you know what? Civil War, let's do it. Let's kill each other. Let's do something because we are at max capacity. And apparently, the various emotional musks,

while they are very distinct to Escaven, to any other race, it just smells like urine and wet fur. Now... I don't like that, D.K. I'm just going to leave that out there. Not a fan. You don't like the...

You don't like the battle musk? Not a ton. No. You don't like the musk of fear? Shai, do you want to show him the picture that I, when I was looking up research on this, I, I was like, oh, you know, Skaven Musk is what I googled. You want to show him the first image that came up when I googled Skaven Musk? It's not great.

Not great. It's not great. Anyway, so, back to the birth of the Skaven. and a lot of people get the idea that Skavens are, they're all males. You know, we've said a lot of he, a lot of, you know, for Skaven. And the Skaven are not all males. So there is, I did find this rather unsettling quote about this topic. And it goes a little something like this.

It's very quick, very easy. There are no Skaven females, just Skaven brood mothers. The female Skaven are pretty much exclusively used to breed Skaven children, and they are kept in this drug-addled state of euphoria. They are in such a state that they cannot take care of themselves, they cannot do anything except get pumped full of more drugs and constantly breed more Skaven. They literally have slaves that will tend to anything the Skaven brood mother could need in terms of food. or keeping it alive or anything like that. And according to the wiki, a brood mother is typically 700 pounds and 10 feet long.

I don't like this. It sucks, man. It sucks. Being a brood mother, sucks. I mean, I like John Blanche. Great artists. Don't like this concept. Not a fan of that one. Give me the goon chimeras back.

I liked those a bit more. Why did you call them goon chimeras? Remember, it's the chimera from the Armageddon Steel Legion Kiroth episode. Oh, right, right, right. That's right, DeVia. I thought you were talking about the rat chimera. I was like, dude, no gooning to the rat chimera. All right, don't do that.

That's not right. Gotcha. Okay, different thing. Anyway, now, one of these single most important things to remember about the Skaven, they don't exist. Did you hear a story about the ratmen? No, you didn't. They're not real.

They're a fairy tale. you're a lying idiot. How in the, okay, I know what you're getting at with this. Like the human population says they don't exist, right? Mm-hmm. How the hell can they deny the existence of the, there's so many? I don't know what you're talking about. There's no such thing.

You're crazy. You're crazy. Here's a great quote on this, actually, that I found. It goes like this. It's from some dude that literally he ran into the scavin in the sewers. And the quote goes like this. I never saw nothing. There was no rat men.

You hear me? Just bad luck. Wilbur slipped and fell. That's all. He got careless, fell down a ladder, and onto his knife. Ten times. Just bad luck. But like, why, okay, if they admit that the ratmen are real, do they, like, do the

higher-ups like kill them? So. So. So. So. So. Here's what I could find. The reason that they do this, uh, it's something that they call the conspiracy

of silence. and it's because the Skaven are such a massive threat and the higher-ups in the empire know how much of a threat the Skaven could be and if anyone made public the knowledge of the Skaven existence if it was made common knowledge it would spread such a widespread panic and despair among the people so they try to keep it under wraps as much as they can And they're like, no, hey, listen, what, rat people? No, that didn't happen.

Fictitious wives' tales. Moms just tell that to their children to scare them before bed. And they basically fight the scaven threat in secret. Because they don't want the general public to know that there is this underground series of tunnels where these tides of just violent, bloodthirsty rats are just waiting to sort of get them. But like, but there's. so many. There are. They sure are. No, what are you talking about? They don't exist, dude. But there's so many of them. They're all underground and, and, you know, right, but that's like, that's like, that's like the higher ups are doing that. What about, what about the, what about the,

regular people? Actually, if I'm not mistaken, it's been kept such a secret. I don't remember if this was in a video or if it was on the wiki that I, that I saw this, it has been kept such a secret that if literally a soldier of the Imperium ran into a, scavin, they would not think, oh my God, that's a scaven, they'd be like, oh, that's a beast man. That's not even a scaven. That's a beast dude. Wait, the Imperium exists in this universe? Well, the empire.

Oh, the empire. Yeah, sorry. I'm still a little 40K coded, so sometimes I say Imperium instead of the empire. But yeah, their soldiers would be like, oh, that's a beast man. That's not even a scaven. I don't even recognize it as a scaven, you know? That's true. That's a good point.

Most of the population are just like, like, peasantry and, like, various things like that. Yeah, that's true. And chances are by the time the Skaven have overrun a city, it's too late for you to know about them anyway. Because they kind of, you know, they'll start, like, going after your crops or something. And then, like, little by little, it's like, oh, a couple people have gone missing. Oh, well, whatever. You know, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's warhammer fantasy. There are any number of reasons that people are going missing or getting killed or something.

Eh, it's no big deal. And then slowly gets worse. and worse and worse, and then suddenly you've got a literal tide of human-sized rats in your city, and nobody comes out alive anyway. So there's not, once the Skaven

decide to overrun a place, there's usually not a whole lot of survivors left to tell the tale about it. So, and honestly, the Skaven love the fact that the humans don't think they exist, because they don't want the humans to know about them. Because they're just like, if the humans don't know about us,

how are they going to prepare for us? Look at our numbers. Like, you're making our job easy. You know, we'll even help you out. From what I've heard, the scavin even, like, assassinate people that know about them because they're like, no, we don't want you to know about us. Ha ha, ha. Loser, suck it.

Wait, okay, okay. Okay, so this is mainly the human empire thing. This is not a, uh, I was about to say, like, I imagine the elves. Yeah, yeah. Okay, because the elves normally have, like, a large amount of knowledge of just the world. so. Yeah, and so if you remember the sort of origin story, the Bell story, the area near Telaia, they know that the Skaven exists because they're kind of really close to Skaven blight,

so it's kind of hard for them to not know that the Skaven exist. Also, the Skaven fucking hate the elves. They despise the elves. They're just like you because there's a lore video I was watching, and it was like, it's because the elves are just too goddamn fast. The elves are so quick that they almost match the Skaven, and the Skaven are like, I don't like that. Okay.

Do dwarves hate elves or Skaven more in this universe? Because I do imagine they would constantly be dealing with the Skaven because of their underground shenanigans. Yeah, the answer is yes. I don't know which one they would hate more. But yeah, I got to believe the dwarves are absolutely not fans of the Skaven because of their underground nonsense. Because 40K dwarves

Voton hate orcs the most because they're like wasteful But like fantasy dwarves Are definitely like a different Kind style Yeah So I don't know And that's kind of the super ultra

TLDR version on the Skaven Like there's literally so much more to them That I want to cover but we'd be here for days Trying to do it But before we cap it off, there are like a couple of like notable Skaven that I kind of have to talk about because it just, it just wouldn't be right if I ignored them. So just, just two real quick. So you can't really do an episode on the Skaven without bringing up thankwell. He's this grace ear that is either famous or infamous, depending on how you look at the situation. Like he's really well liked by the council of 13 because he's like, he's really smart, he's egotistical, he's a plotter. And, you know, even among the Skaven, like, wow, this guy's an egomaniac, and boy, he's self-serving, right?

But anyway, he also has a tendency to accidentally cause more harm to the Skaven than anything else. Accidentally? Yeah, accidentally. He never really plans for it to happen because a lot of times he just aims too high. Like, he's smart.

He's a really, really good Skaven. But he's just, sometimes he, he does the old Icarus thing and he flies just a little too close to the sun and everything just blows up in his face, kills his whole company, he'll be the only one to make it out alive. But a lot of times they're just like, well, I mean, the enemy's got killed too, and that's kind of all that counts. So good job, question mark. He also has a special mutated rat ogre bodyguard named Bone Ripper that was made from the bones

of his first bodyguard, which, after hearing my description of him, Thankwell goes through a lot of bodyguards, a lot of dead bodyguards. And as of late, the council is kind of not big fans of him actually, because his schemes are starting to fail more and more and more.

And honestly, I think this is kind of the funniest part about Thankwell, is his schemes keep... Wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry. Is Thank you, go ahead. top? Yes. Thank you's the one on top, and Bone Ripper is what he is writing.

That's such a funny-looking model. It's really great, though. I love that. I love minis like that that are just like, mm-hmm. But lately, thankwell's schemes keep getting completely thwarted, and no good comes out of them because there are these two guys that keep thwarting his plans. It's a human and a dwarf named Gottrick and Felix. And it's funny because,

like they keep foiling his plans completely on accident. Like, they don't even know Thankwell is involved. And they just somehow they stumble in on one of his plans and stop it from happening. And like in one of the books, all three of them meet. And Thank was like, oh, you guys. Oh, surely you know who I am. And they're just like, who are you? Who fuck are you?

And Thank will goes through this just massive ego death of, you can't be serious. you've been stopping my plans for 20 years, and you don't know who I am? You didn't know you were stopping my plans? Everything that happened, everything you did to me was purely by chance. And so that's sort of thankful. Is he just kind of, you know?

That's extremely, like, rat-pilled. Yeah. They have thwarted him for 20 years because just, whoops, we happened to stumble into it. We accidentally stopped your plans again. for 20 years. And when they finally meet, it is just pure ego death

on Thank you'll's part. So it's basically just like, oh, sorry, my bad. Yeah, kind of. You know, that's actually really funny though. And, okay, we're running out of control. This is the last one I'm going to talk about.

I got to talk about the vermin lords because they're just too cool not to. So vermin lords are basically your juiced up chaos exalted scaven. So they're scathing. demon princes. More or less, yes, they're like your scavin demon princes. And if a vermin lord walks by a mortal scavin, that scavin is just going to shit himself

with fear musk. Like he's just, oh my God, what the fuck is that? And the gray seers summoned them. And so you think the gray seers could, like, control them, right? They have some say, nope. The vermin lord's treat the gray seers, that was almost a Freudian slip. The gray seers, like, they were just little babies. they pick them up by the tail and they're like

aw, cute little gray seer oh look at your cute little horn, you're such a good little baby man and they can't do anything about it because it's a fucking vermin lord. And there are four different variations of vermin lords. There are deceivers, corruptors, warbringers, and warpseers

and for time's sake, let's just say they are pumped up versions of what the four great clans stand for. Okay, I was about to say that they sound like the hyperversion. So I'm assuming each four clan has like like their juiced up version. Basically, but nobody controls the vermin lords.

Well, the great horn rat is the only thing that a vermin lord fears. Just like any other scavin, if they... Is a vermin lord like built and summoned? So like if they, like demon prince stuff, so they die, the great horn rat will just like bring them back some other time later on? So the way that a vermin lord comes into existence is, So from what I read, it was just like the great horned rat is like, you know what? Vermin Lord!

And it just happens. And they just come into existence. A member of the council can also be exalted into a vermin lord if it proves like it's super worthy. Like, ooh, look at you. You've done so much good for me. Bam, you're a vermin lord. I also read that the vermin lords, along with the horned rat, actually had a shadow council of 13 in the realm. ruin. And they're

actually the big brains behind the Skaven. And last thing about the vermin lords is there specifically the big vermin lord is named the vermin king. He is like right under

the great horned rat and he's very cool. And I really want to do an episode on the vermin lords so I really hope everybody likes, shares, and subscribes. Escaven. Scavin. Rats. Skaven.

They're rat bastards. They are the epitome of rat bastards. I generally thought they were going to be a bit more like just, just like, I don't know, like a disease. Hmm. Like a rat disease.

Well, like, yeah, like, Skaven society is tyranny moderated by assassination. That's fair, actually. Yeah.

That's actually really funny. That's fair. Yep. Yep. Um, so it's just, it's just like, I don't know,

like, So they're pests. They're awful, terrible pests. But they're also, but they're also like just purely chaotic evil. Yep. You got it. That's the scaven. They are pure chaotic evil at an ungodly scale.

They just sweep over you in mass numbers, eat everything that is left behind, steal everything, and then probably just eat each other because we want more power. I mean, that's, at least, at least I understand it. Yeah. You know, so, I get it. I have been stressing this episode for like two weeks. I'm glad we have gotten it out of the way. And it, I don't know, I really like the Skaven now, actually.

And I, like I said, I hope we can do some follow-ups, maybe, maybe, I don't know. I get it. And that's what matters is I get it. You get it. Has it changed your opinion on fantasy? The Ska-it are awesome. actually quite fun. They're a very enjoyable thing. But I didn't realize

that this was 40K but it's not like the same universe as 40K. Yeah, they share a lot of similarities. But they still have the same gods and things and I'm like, okay, that one threw, that one's a bit annoying. Yeah, I was going to say, but it's still kinds of funny. I guess it's kind of the other way around, right?

Because 40K has all the same gods as fantasy because fantasy came first, right? So technically, It's the other way around. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, they were both random things cooked up in a basement in 1977. So, like, it doesn't really matter to me much. Yeah, fair enough, fair enough.

I just, I just didn't, like, I would have been, it's not even who stole from who. I don't care about that. I care about the fact that they're, that they're different universes. Mm-hmm. Like, this all took place on, like, old BC Earth back in the day. I'm like, I can work with this.

You know, it's all of our universe. Necron's are sleeping somewhere, blah, blah, blah. Oh, yeah, yeah. So you would have been more happy if it was all one timeline, and Warhammer Fantasy was just like a billion years ago. I'm not unhappy. I'm not unhappy. This was, this was fascinating.

I'm just, I'm, it's learning pains. It's learning pains. Sure, all right, all right. But we did it. We did it. You were expecting Detective Ridiculous, and you got Warhammer Fantasy. You got the skate.

And I got rats. I tried. I, like, that was the heavily edited ultra TLDR version of the Skaven too. Like, I, the only thing I probably could have cut was the, the doom of Cavsar and made that a little shorter and not gone into it as much. But everything else kind of needed to be there. No, I disagree. I think the, the doom of Casvar is the most important part. It's basically the origins of the rats.

Oh, sure. But, like, I, like, I could have, like, toned it down a little bit, you know, I could have short. That's the only place I could see being able to like, concise it anymore. I disagree. I think it would have better if we did a, if we like cut out all of the individual clans

and like a Skaven clan episode. I, so. But you get two for one, baby. Yeah, two for one, baby. I still want to do a clan episode because there's so much more to all those clans and there's so many cool people in them that, oh man.

Anyway, I would prefer to have a, all of the different, scaven units. I want to know more about the rattling gunners and the flamethrowers and the soup.

And the vermin lords. I want to do a Vermin Lord episode so bad. Their minis are so cool. Yeah, it's fine. Scaven these balls across the forehead. Shy's message.

Shai, haven't you done enough? What do you mean? Haven't you done enough? You already hoped and seethed and braided me because I called the orcs in the beginning.

What more do you need? from me. Oh! Oh, yes, you did! You did! Hold on! Wait, wait, wait, wait. We can't end the episode yet. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, this is a... Okay, I'm turning on you now, D.K. Hello!

Okay, what have you done? Hello, shy sending a message, and for once, it's not a death threat. Thank you for checking out our Warhammer Fantasy One Shot. If you like this episode and this topic, or if you didn't, I want to ask you to go to our Patreon page, link in the description and pin comment, there will be a freely, accessible, public poll. Do you want us to cover Warhammer Fantasy in the future? Do you not?

Do you want us to include end times or not? Talk about Age of Sigmar or just ignore it all and focus on 40K. Also, if you're interested in us covering fantasy lore, please consider subscribing to the Patreon if you haven't already, because that means we need to do our regular episodes, Book Club, Detective Ridiculous, and this new show. Which means we probably will have to get a lot more people to help us out with increased workflow so we can keep up the wonderful chemistry between our hosts. And by chemistry,

I mean, I sometimes want to dissolve D.K. in a vat of fucking acid. Thank you. There you go. All right. New episode idea. We put D.K. in the pestilence clan soup. Oh, no. I don't want to go into the cauldron of a thousand poxes. Listen, buddy, either you get cancer or you don't. And that's a risk I'm willing to take. Maybe it will ascend to me. All right, I'm jumping in. I'm jumping in. Give me the soup. Give me the soup.