Since the most ancient times of legend (1985), tales have been told of foul ratmen, burrowing and lurking just below the surface of the world. These Chaos Ratmen almost immediately became one of the mainstays of Warhammer – and now they’re back in a starring role for the latest edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar.
These adorable* vermin quickly caught the imagination of Warhammer fans. While the folk of the Old World scoffed at the idea of intelligent giant rats, ascribing such reports to encounters with Beastmen or beer, on this planet hobbyists were already painting up chittering hordes of Skaven and devouring early rules and lore articles about them like, well, like a hungry rat with a block of cheese.
Over the course of various Ravening Hordes books, White Dwarf articles, and roleplaying game books, we learned the history – and what passes for organisation – of Skaven society. In 1993 this material was gathered into an Army Book that managed to be both fun and entertaining yet also dark and terrifying – a combination that remains a hallmark of the Skaven – and the rise of Skavendom was assured, yes-yes.
The Great Clans
The people of the Old World continued to deny the existence of Skaven – after all, what need is there for giant ratmen as an explanation for such mundane everyday horrors as people going missing, grain shortages, or outbreaks of disease? The wise, however, were poring over these great tomes and learning much of the Children of the Horned Rat.
Skaven society is divided into clans, which constantly jockey for power, sabotage their rivals, rise to prominence, splinter into smaller clans, and devour each other. This mirrors the flea-bitten rabble that make up the vast bulk of Skavendom – each hoping to claw their way up the still-lowly ranks of the Clanrats, and from there rise to become one of the cunning and ambitious rulers of their kind. In the World-that-Was, such clans were known as 'Warlord clans', while the Age of Sigmar calls them the Clans Verminus.
Amongst this furred ocean rise a few truly dominant clans, buoyed by viciously-guarded trade secrets. There were four so-called 'Greater clans' in the World-that-Was – Clan Skryre's Warlock-Engineers were brilliant (or mad – perspectives vary) scientists who combined engineering genius with dark magic to produce the many strange inventions and weapons of the Skaven. Clan Moulder's bioengineering expertise saw them mutate, breed, and graft Skaven and other creatures to create powerful monstrosities, while Clan Eshin were masters of stealth and assassination, and the fanatical Clan Pestilens were devoted to disease, brewing and spreading strange plagues to weaken the world above and aid the inevitable rise of the Skaven. Clan Pestilens were based far from the Skaven’s main city of Skavenblight, instead making their home in the jungles of Lustria – a distance that often left them at odds with the other Great Clans, and which kept them busy fighting against the Lizardmen, precursors to Age of Sigmar’s Seraphon.
In the Age of Sigmar, these malevolent monopolies have become cut-throat conglomerates, each a Great Clan that expands into myriad affiliated lesser clans – the Clans Skryre, the Clans Pestilens, and so on – and have been joined by the Clans Verminus and the Grey Seers of the Masterclan.
All that keeps these feuding clans vaguely in line is the Council of Thirteen – a group of 12 influential Skaven (the 13th seat kept symbolically empty for the Horned Rat) tasked with arbitrating disputes, plotting grand inter-clan schemes, and flagrantly abusing their authority. Of course, these Lords of Decay are also constantly scheming against each other, so the Grey Seers – magically-gifted, pale-furred prophets who commune directly with the Horned Rat – intervene periodically. Though the Grey Seers are typically just as busy scheming against each other as carrying out the will of their god...
This hierarchy would remain intact in the Mortal Realms, though the Great Horned Rat would attempt to tighten his grip by appointing a Shadow Council – a group of thirteen Verminlords, his personal daemonic servants – to secretly manipulate the Council of Thirteen. Needless to say, this simply added another layer of intrigue and scheming.
Skaven Hallmarks
When they go to war, the Skaven are like a great tide of fur, fangs, and blades, driven ever onwards by the terrible, gnawing black hunger that afflicts them all. Vast numbers of rats wash over and destroy whatever pathetic fools dare to oppose them, but they bring more than numbers – the Great Clans have devised many powerful tools of war, certain to assure their victory.
Perhaps the most famous centrepiece is the Screaming Bell – since the earliest legends about them, the coming of the Skaven has been heralded by the sinister tolling of bells, and throughout their history (since 1992 AD or Imperial Year -1600, depending on which world you’re in) Grey Seers have ridden to war on carriages bearing powerful magical bells. This iconic model later received a glow-up**, and the sound of bells still heralds the coming doom that is the Skaven.
And of course the Skaven are experts in more than just magic – the genius of the Clans Skryre combine ingenious artifice with delicious warpstone to create many incredible (and entirely reliable, when not being sabotaged by treachery, yes-yes) weapons. Nothing epitomises this more than the Doomwheel, one of the greatest achievements of the Warlock-Engineers of Games Workshop. This fan-favourite contraption later received an updated plastic version, which can still be seen whirring across the battlefields of the Mortal Realms, blasting enemies with warp lightning and crushing them beneath its bulk.
With all these mighty weapons and their great cunning, it is perhaps surprising that the Skaven did not conquer the World-that-Was, and have not gained control of the Mortal Realms.*** Alas, the Skaven are ambitious, treacherous, and paranoid, and their plans often fail due to infighting and treachery – or to general happenstance ascribed to treachery, leading to actual treachery in the reprisals.
Nevertheless, the Skaven still claimed many great victories – they masterminded the first death of Nagash to seize his stronghold, undermined and captured countless Dwarf holds, and killed nearly 90% of the Empire’s population with a great plague. Clan Pestilens’ next great plague was less of a success, however, leading to a Skaven civil war that lasted from c1850–2302, during which they had little interaction with the wider world and fell back into myth.
In the 2500s (Imperial Calendar) and the late 2000s (Gregorian Calendar), though, the Skaven were doing very well, rampaging across the battlefields with reunited purpose and glorious new plastic models. No doubt they would have soon conquered everything had not some fellow named Archaon ushered in the End Times.
The Age of Sigmar
It’s often said that life is cheap in Skavendom, and that the Great Horned Rat thrives on internecine conflict – and while this is true, it also seems that he has a certain fondness for his furry children (or, at least, he finds them entertaining enough to preserve). When the World-that-Was was torn asunder, and the other gods made their escapes using their vast magic or by joyriding on broken bits of rock, the Great Horned Rat did something none of the other gods cared enough to do – he saved his children. Stuffing his mouth with as many Skaven as he could fit – and who hadn’t already been sacrificed for his glorious ambitions – before scurrying off through holes in reality that only a rat-god could find, he bore his squirming cargo to the newly formed Mortal Realms and the safety of the newly clawed-out sub-realm of Blight City.
Skaven have thus been around since the start of Age of Sigmar, burrowing secret gnawholes through reality (unlike inferior humans, aelves, or duardin, Skaven don’t need realmgates to get around****), constructing and improving the great Blight City, and scheming as always to ensure their inevitable victory.
They have been led in this glorious work by Skreech Verminking, the most powerful and cunning of the Verminlords. Known as the Rat King, Skreech is supposedly a gestalt daemon, formed from all 12 members of an ancient Council of Thirteen whom the Great Horned Rat had long ago cast into a sub-realm as a punishment for their treachery and ambition – the same Council that masterminded the defeat of Nagash in the World-that-Was.
And with the Skaven interference in Nagash’s great ritual to create the Shyish Nadir at the start of the Soul Wars, this means that Skreech has technically saved the world from the Great Necromancer twice, making him a far greater hero than upstarts like Sigmar or Teclis, yes-yes.
Aside from a few brilliant moves like this, the Skaven have seemed relatively quiet during the Age of Sigmar. Almost as though they’re up to something. Maybe they’re hoping everyone will start to forget that they exist, which has served them well in the past. Or maybe the Great Horned Rat has been busy preparing for his grandest scheme yet…
Rumours of late have it that there has been a vast incursion of Skaven into Aqshy, that they now control all the land east of Hel Crown and will soon be in a position to threaten the heartlands of the Great Parch, and perhaps eventually even Hammerhal Aqsha itself. Madmen speak of eerie green light beyond the mountains, and the terrible clanging of brass bells. They say that the loathsome ratmen have burst forth in other realms too, that nowhere is safe from the rise of the verminous tide.
But that’s just rumour. The stout warriors of the Freeguilds and the mighty Stormcast Eternals have defeated every threat to Hammerhal before, and this latest one will be no different. The followers of Chaos are a pathetic rabble, the Skaven most of all. Nothing more than a bunch of overgrown vermin who sometimes make a little trouble far from civilisation, nothing to worry about…
* Not the word we would choose ourselves, but the whispers that come with the scratching in the walls must be obeyed.
** A Skaven term referring to something that got better looking, derived from how proximity to the glorious green glow of warpstone leads to mutations.
*** YET.
**** And if your gnawhole doesn’t take you exactly where you meant it to, that’s obviously due to treachery by your underlings rather than any failing of glorious Skaven sorcery.