Almost Forgotten
Skavenblight was long dead.
The Pillar had been smashed. The council slain. The rats scattered and hunted. It was said that the Reborn Goddess did the deed, as she fought the horned rat- both as big as clouds across the sky! For fourteen days and fourteen nights they waged war as Gods once did at the dawn of the world, until she broke his power and cast him down. In the many years since, a new deep water port has grown up along the edge of the bay that was once a marsh.
Without the supernatural hand balancing treachery and reward, the rest of the empire almost immediately ate itself alive, and offered next to no resistance as their many enemies moved in for the kill.
It has been a hundred years since a skaven has been seen alive. The grudges, oh so very many grudges, have been struck out, and a celebration announced across the Karaz Ankor. Even now the merrymaking continues.
In the early morning sunlight, a bundled and hunched figure climbs towards the western gate of Karak Eightpeaks. The dwarven gatewarden, eyes bloodshot but not bleary, meets it a hundred paces from the closed gates. (Pre-sighted canon meant that with small numbers of unknown entities, getting them to stop in the right place was a greater challenge than protecting the dwarf.)
"Hail traveler! By the edict of King Belegar the Refounder, all those without grudge against them may enter upon swearing an oath of peace and stating their business. Remove your hood and swear."
The bundle bowed it's head and reached forward, slowly drawing it's hood back and down. First revealed was a nose, black and twitching. A snout, furred. Two beady eyes. And last, a pair of round, fuzzy ears that flipped down nervously.
The gatewarden rubbed his eyes, then reached for his ax.
The skaven drew a deep breath.
"I am Chirit, of no clan-lineage, and I swear that I shall stay-dwell peacefully and without offering offense-threat for as long as I am permitted-allowed. I hear that there are no longer grudges against-upon those of my kind, and so I come to seek-beg entrance."
At this the warden paused his swing.
"Aye, you speak the truth about grudges rat, but that was only because you were all dead. What in the ancestors names possessed you to just openly walk up here?"
"Almost all ARE gone-dead. I know nothing of those who schemed-existed before me, save the few sneak-rats who bore and taught-raised me, and they knew nothing either. We cannot even read the old language. But I hear-listen of those who hunted us, and their forgiveness-release, and the vast stores of knowledge they hold-guard behind their gates, about every thing that has ever been.
"So my business-quest, oh stern-fierce guardian, is to seek to know who-what we were, and what we made-did, and why the world hated us."
The warden slowly holsters his ax. The rat looks at him. He imagines it to have an air of resigned fatalism, whiskers twitching.
"We have no grudges against you, aye. You swore the oath, aye. There is at least one partial precedent, I suppose. And your goal is solid, the knowledge you seek exists within the Library. But you are skaven. This decision is one for the king. Wait here."
A/N- in which Mathilde's library becomes a way for skaven to claw their way back.