Skaven
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"It would be ugly to watch people poking sticks at a caged rat. It is uglier still to watch rats poking sticks at a caged person."
-Jean Harris
Technologically advanced rat people in the Warhammer Fantasy setting, you will be hard pressed to find a more unlikeable race out there. Ugly, evil creatures that spread plague wherever they go and topple kingdoms for fun and profit. Due to their chronic backstabbing disorder, nobody trusts them (except Dark Elves, who have a treaty with them that both sides betray at times), likes them, or wants to be 'allies' with them. As one can expect, they are rather bitey.
So who are they?
The Skaven are a race of walking humaniod rats with dubious (but not to be underestimated) intelligence and a hideous feral cunning out to conquer the world in the name of their God the Horned Rat and for their own personal gain. Each Skaven is pure evil and this is not racism speaking here; by instinct each Skaven is self-obsessed, paranoid, greedy, doesn't give a rats ass (hehe) for their family and race's well being if their own is at stake, and find the concepts of love, honor and friendship to be so alien they can't comprehend them (to give context for this, a greenskin in the End Times event was traumatized by the loss of his beloved Squig while Skaven have never at any point been shown to have an attachment to any living thing). The only thing a Skaven hates more than its own kind is non-Skaven and this gives the ratmen the vaguest ability to work together when they have a common enemy, otherwise they would fall on each other like, well, a pack of rats.
No-one knows where they came from but it is suspected Tzeentch had a hand in their creation through Warpstone and a hideous amount of mutation and generations of breeding with normal rats. There's a poem in the Skaven codex called "The Doom Of Kavzar", written in universe in the Warhammer world's equivalent of Italy that may explain their origins. To summarize;
- Humans and Dwarfs lived together in city, and decided to build a Noblebright Tower of Babel rip-off to thank the gods for their prosperity. But even Dorf engineering couldn't complete it, so they got some mysterious stranger to complete it who added his own dedication to the gods in a giant bell. Then the temple sealed itself shut, the stranger disappeared, and terrible things happened. The weather turned bad with constant Warpstone-laced rain, crops failed and rats multiplied while growing bigger and smarter. Older fluff said the stranger cursed the city because the people cheated him of payment for finishing the temple, newer fluff just makes him out to be evil and mysterious. Realizing things were becoming Dwarf Fortress, the humans asked the Dwarfs for help. The first time the Dwarfs turned them down after calling them wimps for complaining about rain. The second time they were rebuffed was due to the rats eating all the Dwarfs food. The third time the surviving humans got desperate and smashed open the Dwarf gates to demand their help. But all they found were bearded Dorf skeletons and well-fed, but still hungry, hordes of rats and the poem ends with them eating the humans to the soundtrack "...of dying screams and hideous chittering..." (tl:dr a wizard met humans and dwarfs, someone was swindled so magic happens that makes Skaven)
And the rest, is history...
They live in a massive underground empire (with the Horned Rat being the God Emperor,ironically far more successfully than the OTHER Emperor) called Skavenblight which spans through the Warhammer world like the Underdark. No one trusts them quite rightly and few other races resist killing them on sight, which is reciprocal. They are more numerous then any other race in the world and only one enemy keeps them truly in check: themselves.
Clans
Skaven society is divided up into a number of clans, many, many clans, the most important ones being:
Clan Pestilens (Plague monks and guro fetishists) basically diseased ridden little-more-then-alive zombie vermin who are barely kept in check. For fun they like to make up newer, deadlier plagues and a few times have come close to conquering Skaven-kind entirely.
Clan Eshin (Ninja rats and assassins) using the skaven's natural speed to it's upmost, while you may laugh at the idea of an assassin-rat, you won't when you see a nasty black blur with poisoned knives coming at you.
Clan Moulder (Master Mutators) They make all manner of nasty giant mutants, all themed around rats and usually using one of their fellows as the basis for the monster. Rat Ogres are the most well known of the critters used by their forces, although flying rodents, wolf-rats, and giant tunnelling rat-mole monsters all exist. Notably, their clan symbol resembles a strand of DNA.
Clan Skryre (Steampunk rats, they use radioactive arquebuses (though an arquebus is much shorter and less rifled than a jezzail), warp lightning and magitek. Also DOOMWHEELS).
The bulk of the clans are 'Warlord Clans' which are made up of massive and we mean MASSIVE numbers of Skaven clanrat warriors who are capable of drowning opposition under their sheer weight in numbers. Thankfully they are often too busy trying to stab each other in the back, which helps keep the vermin population under control.
Society
As you may expect (if you do not know much about rat social behavior, which is fairly well developed and includes among other things evidence of rodent altruism, or work on people's stereotypes of what rats are like rather than how rats interact), Skaven society is rather literally cutthroat when it comes to promotions. In a world where you have chaos warriors, beastmen, orcs and dark elves the Skaven have managed to collect the gold medal in fratricide, which after receiving said award they promptly began killing each other to see which Skaven individual got to keep it. 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, without question. Except for the other Grey Seers.
The Skaven race is ruled over the by 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-ratman 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 (just like in real world politics!). Despite the name there is only twelve Councillors; the 13th seat is symbolic and reserved for their god and woe betide anyone that tries to sit on it!
Although unintentional on the side of writers, there are circumstances where real life rats can become Skaven-like. In 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 adequate access to comforts and food. Fights are more likely to occur and more likely to be fatal, cannibalism for some becomes preferential to their normal diet with these cannibal rats remaining in groups and shunning all other contact, some will refuse to go on living and will simply waste away for no medical reason, many begin to self-harm and in a few cases chewed off limbs for absolutely no observable reason. Some will intentionally destroy toys they come across (this is why we can't have nice things!) while in small populations they only play or ignore them. Rates of homosexuality increase and heterosexual rats become more violent towards each other with some literally hatefucking their partners to death (these two behaviors may explain the bizarre amount of Skaven porn on the internet), and mothers refuse to have anything to do with offspring. 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 intentionally made themselves fucking insane by choosing to live in horrible conditions and to overpopulate (Of course Skaven have been written like this before the experiment was conducted, so its merely an interesting coincidence rather than inspiration). Theoretically, 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, which they have in Age of Sigmar.
Deity
The Skaven worship their creator the Horned Rat, a god as sickening and vile as they are. God of disease and vermin, thankfully he gets the crap kicked out of him by Sigmar and Sotek on a regular basis and frankly anyone that feels like having a go. He got fed up with such bullshit at the End Times, telling the Skaven to stop backstabbing eachother and get shit done, which they proceed to do by destroying many cities. He also made a deal with the Chaos Gods as he cannot defeat them.
As of Age of Sigmar, Slaanesh was kidnapped by three Elf gods that were formerly mortals (Tyrion, Teclis, Morelion) at the manipulations of Tzeentch and the newly-appointed HNIC of all Chaos Archaon. This resulted in Nurgle and Khorne immediately voting with them to boot him out of the pantheon and the Great Game and promoting Horned Rat to proper Chaos God in his place. Horned Rat immediately renamed himself Great Horned Rat, but found out that the big kids table was full of backstabbing assholes with absolutely no respect for each other, and somehow even less for him. When the Chaos Gods gave Archaon their blessings, Archaon rejected his and spat directly in his face for daring to presume GHR can bless the self-righteous ass that is Archaon.
Army
Skaven are your standard easily abused horde army. Lots of cheap vermin, whose numbers allow them to easily ignore their one theoretical weakness: shitty leadership, backed up by more expensive and/or specialized units, that are in theory unreliable but will still wreck your shit moar consistently than most anything else by sheer volume. Also, DOOMWHEELS.
Under current rules they are have always been considered overpowered, except for a brief period where DoC reigned thanks to your Spiritual Liege. They have now reclaimed their mantel, since 8th edition heavily favors mass infantry blocks, and the Skaven can easily throw out a block of 100 models for less than what some other armies will spend on a lord, no, I'm not exaggerating, which under the current rules is virtually unbeatable.
Fun Facts
- They consider the number thirteen to be lucky/holy. This a reference to how thirteen is seen as unlucky in Western society. However, several real-life nations/cultures consider thirteen a lucky number.
- Grey Seers regularly ride giant bells on scaffolds into battle
- DOOMWHEELS
- Their leaders lead from the back, to get a better view of the battle of course and not due to the meatshield tactic.
- They can improve anything, with the additional of magical radiation rocks!
- GIANT LIGHTNING CANNONS
- Backstabbing little bastards, they'll fuck you up five different ways without you even knowing about it, if you're lucky.
- Skaven do not abide by any codes of honor or battle etiquette, and as such, they WILL bring a gun to a swordfight (and even then they'll try to steal your sword beforehand).
- Skaven have a combination of ego and incompetence that would make Starscream look down his nose at them.
- Skaven do NOT think about the potential consequences of anything that they do. Taken to its logical conclusion in The End Times when they blow up one of the moons and nearly destroy the planet when it falls on it.
- THEY HAVE THE GREATEST TECHNOLOGY BUT DON'T KNOW HOW THE FLIP IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
DIE DIE MANTHINGS!
The above sentence clearly illustrates the quirks of skaven language: they often say certain monosyllabic words twice (words like "die die" and "fool fool" are popular) Also, they often end the name of a species with the suffix -things, so manthings, dwarfthings etc. etc. to indicate that non-Skaven are not people (although considering their backstabby natures it isn't as if they're trying to avert sense of shame or horror from killing others, which is why humans dehumanize during war).
Female Skaven
In their only mention in the fluff, female Skaven are described as essentially mindless giant sky-scraper sized living wombs covered in lactating breasts that only exist to constantly dribble baby Skaven like a faucet and to eat thanks to the Skaven tendency to "improve" on nature artificially. In one of the Gotrek & Felix novels, a Skaven is rewarded by his superior by being given permission to mate with one (the implications are mind-boggling).
Original Skaven Blood Bowl models had females, which had cheerleaders, which had four breasts each.
Since there's so little fluff on the subject, there's no way to know if ALL female Skaven are converted into baby factories or if it is the fate of unlucky few, with the rest being simply not represented in models similar to how the canonically gender mixed High Elf and Dark Elf redshirt soldiers all appear to be male (that's only with the latest models, the previous ones had customizable torsos; also Gameplay and Story Segregation).
In real life, eusocial rodents have only one queen (three times the size of a sterile male) who is sexually active. The other females are rendered temporarily sterile by her presence (hormone suppression).
Despite this, there's always the occasional OC on a generic model Lord or Hero depicting femSkaven who escape their fate.
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Canon image of a female Skaven. -
Skaven cheerleaders. -
Fanart of femSkaven. -
More fanart depicting femSkaven experiments.
Beastmen connection
So, since this is a race made of humanoid rats empowered by Warpstone (which is officially described as being Chaos energy manifest), you may be wondering whether or not they're Beastmen. Well, the answer is that it kind of flips back and forth. Way back in the early editions, yes, Skaven were explicitly a break-away faction of relatively stabilised Beastmen, even pitching in with the Hordes of Chaos or spawning Chaos Champions of their own. Since then, the connection has been downplayed extremely; the Empire generally describes Skaven as just "Beastmen who happen to look like rats", but there's no official connection between the two other than the fact Gray Shamans have horns that signal them as important (a classically Beastman trait) and the fact both are animals mutated by Chaos-stuff.
Warhammer 40k
While no direct space Skaven exist, there are ratlike mutants described in the fluff, rat-worshiping cultists in Necromunda, a mutant race called Ratlings which despite being more halfling than rat could be argued as a successor, the Imperial Guard itself which serves as uneducated and amoral xenophobes who are mass-bred and treated as currency by the Imperium with access to some nice and fancy toys which are more likely to cause teamkilling than damage to foes, and lastly there are the Tyranids who are 40k's version of ungodly numbers faction crossed with the Ogre Kingdoms motivation to eat everything in sight (though for different reasons). The Hrud used to be the Space Skaven, as in giant dieselpunk rat people, but that was pretty much retconned. They look different now (on the rare occasion they are mentioned in the fluff), so the only actual space Skaven are the Veer-Myn from Warpath by Mantic games. As usual, most of their models are, well not terrible, but not the greatest things ever,there is however great potential for a fantasy warlock engineer conversions. However, it does appear that the recent Skitarii model releases may have taken inspiration from the Skaven aesthetic (though not gameplay) with their many steampunk-styled weapons, most notably the Transuranic Arquebus and Radium Jezzail.
Age of Sigmar
As of Age of Sigmar, Skaven had survived the end of the old setting by teleporting Skavenblight to another dimension. When Horned Rat became Great Horned Rat he immediately drew Skavenblight into the Warp and created more of his Daemons. Skaven had a golden age where there was Warpstone everywhere to be found, they had the direct blessing of the Great Horned Rat, and unlimited space and potential around them. They promptly did the impossible and somehow dug so deep that part of the Warp collapsed into Skavenblight which collapsed into the material realm which is now made up of eight "nearly infinite" planets made of the former Winds of Magic. Skaven now have access to all of reality at once, and can appear everywhere from beneath Sigmar's throne to beneath Khorne's throne. As can be expected the tunnels are not stable and thus only the Skaven are willing to use them usually, as even immortal and deathless Daemons can somehow vanish into the space between spaces never to be seen again when Skaven are involved. Skaven have also had an exponential population boom, which is impressive considering they damn near outnumbered insects in the old setting. Each former Clan is now only a type of Clan; what was once the billions of ratmen that made up clan Moulder for example is now billions of Clans of billions of ratmen each which all identify as a Moulder type of Clan. Skaven thus far in the fluff have predictably allied most with Nurgle.
Despite this massive buff to their lore the arch enemies of the Skaven, the Lizardmen, have gotten a boost too. Slann have lost the ability to see the present and instead are nearly omniscient concerning the past and future which allows them to outplan their enemies (the statement was vague, and it may or may not include Tzeentch himself considering even Sigmar was able to create a wall Tzeentch couldn't see past). The Lizardmen themselves are now beings of pure light, who's blood cleanses all Chaos taint and turned Nurgle's most beloved champion into a clean and healthy human again while purifying an otherwise permanently desecrated pool of water. Their numbers are unending, and to make matters worse for our beloved ratmen there now exists an ancestral memory in all Skaven. At the sight of Lizardmen all Skaven suffer PTSD flashbacks to jungles and stalking lizards tearing out the hearts of their kin, despite having been born only a few years ago and having never encountered them before.
As a result, while Skaven were backstabbing fucks who were against literally everything in the setting including themselves, in Age of Sigmar they now have a clear arch enemy faction akin to the High Elves/Dark Elves of Fantasy.
Gallery
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The original Skaven Clans. -
Skaven don't play nice. -
FUCKFUCK ELFTHINGS!
