Editing Skaven (section)

=== Society ===
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If you do not know much about rat social behavior, you might be surprised to learn it is fairly well developed and includes among other things evidence of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa16P4nFgD8 rodent altruism]. As you might expect, GeeDubs ignored it entirely to make the Skaven more grimdark and work on people's stereotypes of what rats are like rather than how rats interact. Skaven society is literally cutthroat when it comes to promotions (but luckily not [[PROMOTIONS]]). In a world where you have chaos warriors who can honor the chaos gods by killing/raping/infecting/getting minions caught up and expended in complex plots, beastmen which are in a similar lot as chaos on top of animalistic aggression who still practice a survival-of-the-fittest pack-mindset based loyalty, orcs that are hardwired to love to scrap, goblins who are no strangers to backstabbing and dark elves who've literally made assassination and treachery an art, the Skaven have managed to collect the gold medal in (f)ratricide. After receiving said award they promptly began killing each other to see which Skaven individual got to keep it; the conflict continues to this day, with no resolution in sight. The '''only''' reason why their society has not murdered itself into extinction is because of a very high reproductive rate. Despite their teamkilling tendencies they obey the Grey Seers, the prophets of their god the [[Horned Rat]]. Although this obedience is done purely out of fear, it is done without question. Except for the other Grey Seers.

====Hierarchy====
The Skaven race is ruled over by the [[Council of Thirteen]], Skaven of such evil they have been chosen by their vile god and manage to survive the constant threat of assassination, most likely because everyone is too afraid of these uber-ratmen to go near them. Although they squeak big about their plans for world domination, they are too busy trying to outdo and kill each other. Despite the name there are only twelve Councillors; the 13th seat is symbolic and reserved for their god and woe betide anyone that tries to sit on it! To become a member of the council all any Skaven need do is touch the sacred Black Pillar and challenge a current member for his seat in a duel. In practice it has been over 200 years since someone actually manage to pull it off, which is a minor point in favor of the current crop of leaders on it - though a large part of it is that touching the Black Pillar has a tendency to make rats explode.

Beneath the Council of Thirteen are the Grey Seers and the Warlords. Horned, grey-furred skaven pups are raised to be the priests and magic users of Skavendom that act on behalf of the council. Ironically enough the Skaven are more prone to throw around claims of [[HERESY]]! than the Sigmarite Empire. Not showing proper reverence to the Horned Rat brings down his wrath on the offender and everyone around him, so they take a dim view of anyone who misses their services. Secular Rodentism is not something which is going to catch on in Skavenblight. There is a hard cap on 169 (13x13, 13 being a sacred number to the Skaven) Grey Seers at any one time, though there are a bunch of apprentices waiting in the wings for one to die. Skaven being Skaven, one of the most popular pastimes of said novices is making slots available through assassination. Warlords are those lucky rats that have managed through guile, luck, accomplishment on the battlefield and the elimination of rivals to get in charge of a Clan. There is a Seer Lord on the Council of 13 and sometimes you get a Grey Seer warlord with his own clan, but that's usually the exception.

Beneath them, you have an upper crust of prominent individuals within the clans: Warlock Engineers, Master Molders, Plague Priests, Assassins, Chieftans, high ranking officers and so forth. Either through command of some arcane skill or having armed rats behind them they have wealth, better accommodations, hosts of underlings and regular access to breeders. This is also roughly where the Albino Guard rank, since they're basically the Skaven version of [[Custodes]].

Underneath them are those with a modicum of cultivated value: the merchants, the technicians, the packmasters, the rank and file of the Stormvermin, the apprentices to the great ones, the Gutter Runners, the overseers, skilled workers and so forth. All of which have to some degree or another got their position by struggling tooth and claw and are with it some measure of power and authority. Most of them rose from the Clanrats. Those poor bastards live in poverty packed up like sardines and have to work hard for their daily Skavenbread™ and fight tooth and claw to keep what little they've amassed. They make their petty schemes, jump on what opportunities they can and form and break alliances of convince at the drop of a hat. All of which to carve out a niche, establish a power base and clawing their way up the org chart. Far more likely they end up murdered, expended in battle, blown apart in some accident, killed by a superior making a point or deemed surplus to requirement and left to starve.

But even these wretched rats have it better than the Skavenslaves. They are the remnants of defeated clans, the pups deemed surplus to requirements if not quite bad enough to be culled, those that earned the ire of their overseers and those whose power struggles failed them and avoided being killed. Their status is somewhere between "Native in the Belgian Congo" and "Pig in a Factory Farm". Clanrats may be exploited, but Skavenslaves are actively worked to death, thrown at the enemy to absorb arrows and are fed a meagre diet of scraps, garbage and each other. That's when they are not being taken to the butcher's block so their betters can enjoy a meat dinner and have some leather. The best they can hope for is that a good deal of their superiors fuck up and die or that their clan conquers another leading to enough shuffling in the org chart that they can get promoted to clanrat status. But while clans do wax strong and skavendom produces a lot of said fuckups it also burns through skavenslaves like nobody's business.

Two key facts of this hierarchy are ''Shit Flows Downhill'' and ''The Rodent Staircase''. To a high ranking Skaven everyone else is a rival, either an immediate threat or a potential one waiting for the means, so you gotta keep a lid on them. Subordinates are to be given the minimum they need to accomplish their tasks, some rewards if they exceed expectations, and nothing else. If they step out of line they can be beaten. If they cause too much trouble they can be replaced with some up and coming Rat eager to not be a skavenslave. If things are going badly for you, assert your dominance with a show of force. Even if things are going well, you should put the fear of the Horned Rat into your underlings just to remind them who's boss to be on the safe side. This comes before the fact that Skaven are vindictive little shits that have no qualms about taking out their frustrations on others. A sternly worded Letter to a Warlord from the Council of Thirteen will lead him snapping at his second in command and will eventually manifest itself in clanrats biting the tails off Skavenslaves because they'd been the subject of the ire of their overseers and need to re-assert dominance.

Likewise if you want to get up (and as mentioned ALL Skaven want to go up all the way), you need to not only excel or have some useful talent but also deal with the million other rats out there with the same ambitions. If you want to survive in the slave pits, shiv your neighbor and eat him to get enough calories so you'll have the strength to see another day. If the clawleader's favorite mug has gone missing, say the guy who's always admired it stole it to bring down the bosses wrath upon him so you have one less rival, the boss's wrath is directed elsewhere and if you happen to be right he just might throw you a bone for being (due to the lack of a better word) loyal. Apprentices could and should steal the ideas of their fellows to become Warlock Engineers. Attempting to police the Skaven to stop such backstabbing is usually an exercise in futility, especially since whatever Police Rats you can scrounge up will inevitably engage in said activities on their own. Not that it matters much in most cases, there is always a fresh stream of replacements and those eager for dead rat's shoes. At most murder provides an excuse for removing individuals that they don't like in a move that is slightly less likely to spark the paranoia of your rivals. A good Skaven leader knows how to use this competition to keep his minions in line and to get the most out of them. A bad Skaven leader is going to end up on the barbecue sooner rather than later. This is the case from birth, even for those whose role was determined at birth like grey seers and stormvermin have to fend off both ruthless instructors and backstabbing fellow applicants. Nobody is unscathed.

==== Misc ====
Although unintentional on the side of writers, there are circumstances where real life rats can become Skaven-like. In a series of social experiments involving overpopulation designed to see what effects human overpopulation in cities like New York or Tokyo could be paralleled, rat populations with far too many beings in far too small an area begin to go, as individuals, insane while the group becomes far more violent despite having more than enough food and water to sustain the entire population. When a high-density population that shows these behaviors is given more area to roam in by having another set of open cages attached or being shifted to smaller population cages, the behavior remains the same meaning the rats have been permanently mentally damaged; only with successive generations do they regain sanity. So in a way, Skaven have inadvertently made themselves fucking insane by choosing to live in horrible conditions and to overpopulate. <s>Theoretically</s> [[Warhammer Adventures|Kreech from Warhammer Adventures]] shows that saner and more level-headed (if not necessarily less evil) generations of Skaven could emerge if the species got access to more room and better conditions, and was completely removed from its old environment and the previous rats who inhabited it.

In fact, if the root of the Skaven's evil nature could be traced to both their terrible environment and the terrible culture that both feeds and feeds off of that environment rather than anything genetic, theoretically, there ''could'' actually be ''good'' Skaven if they were somehow separated from Skavenblight immediately after birth and raised outside of it by someone willing to give them a chance. However, seeing as how the primary…“engines” of Skaven reproduction are heavily guarded in the very heart of Skavenblight, and literally every other race in Warhammer is hard-wired to kill the mangy rat-bastards on sight (and with FUCKING good reason), such a thing will almost certainly remain purely theoretical. Especially since all that trouble would ultimately amount to little more than proving a petty point, with little to no real pay-off beyond making the Horned Rat personally pissed off at you (then again there are [[Tzeentch|some]] that might find ''that'' outcome a goal in and of itself).

Funnily enough, in real life the common rat is actually highly social, friendly, adaptable, clean, curious and even altruistic of all things, even in wild Population much less human pet rats (fancy rats). One could imagine the Skaven in some noblebright/nobledark Warhammer setting basically out-compete all the other races and then dragging them kicking and screaming (at least not the [[Chaos Warrior|crazy ones]]) into some wider federation or empire while turning the world into an atompunk (warp-punk?) setting. Wait, this sounds [[Tau|awfully familiar]]...