From a Dead World (Skaven Quest)
- Thread starter Xantalos
- Start date
- Fantasy
The Dregs of Hell - Canon - Chimeraguard
Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
OOC: The reading about the sheer scale of sacrifices, and my looking into Warhammer Wiki about Hell Pit inspired this.
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The Dregs of Hell
Hell Pit is a city apart from any other in the Under-Empire, one that many could argue is the most horrific even by Skaven standards. Titanically over-populated, the city practically throbbed with the flesh of the living and the dying. Nine rings, each filled with laboratories, distilleries, breeding pits, and living quarters surrounded the inner citadel, winding like the intestines system of some gargantuan being. And deep within the grand stronghold lay grand and horrible towers, made of writhing flesh, where the Master Moulders and Mutators plied their dark arts. Even here, where they sat upon chairs that pulsed like beating hearts, and rugs of animated skin that moved with their owners, below was the home of yet more Skaven, entire shanty-towns lived around lakes of Warpstone-polluted water, the hundreds of thousands, millions of slaves scrabbling for scraps, wondering who among them would be the next to be devoured by some experiment, or harvested for extra flesh.
And now it was under threat. No one in the city, from the leading Mutators to the lowliest Skavenslave had missed what was occurring. The rise of Chaos and the coming of the End Times could be felt in the very bone of the Earth, as armies of Daemons materialized and walked the world and legions of Chaos Warriors rallied for the final war, the only conflict to have ever mattered that was about to be waged. Hell Pit was not their primary target, but it was with complete certainly that the Skaven knew this storm would eventually come to them. And so on a scale unprecedented in all of Skaven history, with the full backing of the Underlord, ruler of a united Skaven Under-Empire, the ratmen prepared their defenses, a titanic labyrinth to trap, hound, and crush any invader that sought to take the northern holdings of the Skaven, forged as one of the greatest monuments to the Horned Rat. But for the plans of the Grey Seers and Plague Priests to come to fruition, they would need titanic amounts of resources, one of the greatest concentrations of magical power. And they would need lives. Hundreds of thousands, and then more lives as fuel for the labyrinth.
It was fortunate then that Hell Pit was one of the areas to defend, for if there was one thing it had in surplus above all else, it was living beings. The mere proximity to the construction, bolstered by the knowledge that they were fighting for their very survival threw the inhabitants and rulers into a frenzy. Entire stockpiles of Warbeasts were offered up in sacrifice, armies of Stormvermin loyal to Moulder went out into the caverns, rounding up every stray animal that could be found, every escaped creation that had lived and bred for centuries. A shipment of Great Pox Rats that were bound for sale were redirected to the labyrinth, while the proximity to so many spare Plague Priests meant they were bred in unprecedented numbers for the sole purpose of dying in sacrifice. A particularly disliked(and disloyal) Warlord Clan protested the diversion of its purchases, and were promptly slapped with charges of treason and blasphemy against the Under-Empire and Horned Rat, the entire Clan also sent to join their former purchases as fodder for the tainted maze.
The Labyrinth drank and devoured the life-force of these wretched creatures greedily, consuming and devouring at a rate that one could equate the legendary Great Maw itself. And yet there was still more work to be done, for this massive sacrifice of life had only fueled the mundane parts of the labyrinth, and yet more sacrifice was needed to truly make the maze as it was needed. The rulers of Hell Pit wondered at what could be a suitable and large enough sacrifice to the task, when one particularly clever Skaven pointed out the existence of what was practically a second city's worth of lives.
The Lower Depths of Hell Pit, the bottom-most portions of the Moulder stronghold. For generations, it had been the dumping ground: The uncontrollable, the useless, the sickly, the weak, the failures, the prototypes, the dregs. This was an ecosystem of rancid flesh, and throughout Hell Pit cries from it could be heard as the miserable abominations fought each other for survival, atop the piles of those who had come before them. The vapors from the Depths were so vile, so sickening that many Skaven collapsed just from smelling them from a distance.
But now the Under-Empire had an unprecedented concentration of Pestilens assets in the north, and after some planning, its forces, along with those of Moulder and its subordinate Clans that came equipped for the job, descended into the Lower Depths. Buoyed by a religious fervor extraordinary even for Clan Pestilens, they beheld the sight with wonder. So much carrion, so much rot, so much decay, it was perfect. The descendants of centuries of Moulder's work on beasts found themselves hopelessly outmatched by a Skaven army that could not only survive, but thrive in the conditions. Emaciated fiends and bloated horrors were brought down with plague, gas, and nets, broods and hives dragged deep into the labyrinth for the final sacrifices, screeching in primordial terror, even their starvation-wracked minds realizing some terrible fate awaited them. More packs of feral creature-things lunged at the gas-masked armies of Moulder, but soon learned to fear and obey the crack of the whip and the jab of the Things-Catcher as their ancestors had. They to, were sent into the sacrificial tunnels.
The ecosystem of the Lower Depths continued to throb and hurl its entire complement of abominations, of hybrids, of monsters at the conquerers. Creatures more unconventional, more unrestrained, more grotesque were uncovered: from twisted Chimera-beasts of too many creatures fused at once, to tens-of-meters long amoeba-like beings, each one rendering hundreds of Skaven into a greasy sludge to be devoured. But in the end they to were brought to heel: Chimera battered and bruised by electric prods and spiked nets. Amoeba were infected with magic-derived microbes, which slowly and painfully broke them down cell by cell as their essence permeated entire tunnels of the Labyrinth.
Not even the rotting flesh of the dead was spared, Pestilens requisitioning practically the entire lot of up, some to help replace stocks spent in the creation of the defense of northern Skavendom, but yet more carcasses and piles and mountains of carrion were also sent to be devoured by the Labyrinth's hunger, offerings of pestilence and decay to the Horned Rat. Meter by meter, bit by bit, the entire Lower Depths was emptied of its former inhabitants, picked clean of meat in a matter not unlike the tides of Skaven that suffered from Black Hunger, that of their victims left not a single edible morsel, but only picked-clean and gnawed bones.
Yet more sacrifices trickled into Hell Pit and the north from across the Under-Empire, the resources of the Underlord allowing a vast selection of exotic offerings. Thousands of Chaos Dwarves, the last of their kind taken from civilians "lucky" enough to have survived this long, now conscripted as sacrifices in a device expected to repel armies, some of which may have included their own kinsmen serving within the Everchosen's horde. Villages of Cathayans overrun by Nippon, the Shattā-on having demanded a vast number of these specimens as additional payment for services rendered. Gorger packs from the Mountains of Mourne, driven out of their hiding holes by the rise of the Dragon Ogres into the heavily occupied Dark Lands, where they were ruthlessly hunted down. In Troll Country, just above Hell Pit, the remaining "Roppsmen" that had survived the passing of Archaon were hunted down and rounded up, alongside Norscan villagers left under-guarded by the grand musterings. A macabre procession of the doomed marched down the same pathways that the Lower Depths inhabitants had been dragged down, and none would be escaping with their lives.
For the leadership of Hell Pit that had organized this death on such a massive scale however, their minds had already turned elsewhere. The cleaning of the Lower Depths had been somewhat costly, but it had also opened a tremendous opportunity, as the formerly unusable dumping ground had been picked clean and ready for expansion. Some had been absorbed by the Labyrinth itself for defense purposes, elsewhere Clan Pestilens had laid claim to the bottom-most levels of even those Depths, where no regular Skaven had a hope of surviving. Yet still more remained for infrastructure to be built upon, and for Hell Pit to grow ever larger and even richer than before. Shipments of precious resources that flowed in from the Dark Lands provided enough to finance this expedition. The Mutators and Moulders poured over maps made of their new possessions, conferred with a number of Clan Horripila leaders who by necessity were present to oversee movement into the formerly disease-ridden Lower Depths, and greedily began planning another phase of glorious expansion, and with it: wealth.
That such an opportunity had come at the head of a consumption of life on a scale of hundreds of thousands, millions, and the death of what could be considered an entire ecosystem of generations of living beings was of course, scarcely worth mentioning or recalling. In death, the Dregs of Hell Pit would serve a far more useful function than they ever had in life.
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The Dregs of Hell
Hell Pit is a city apart from any other in the Under-Empire, one that many could argue is the most horrific even by Skaven standards. Titanically over-populated, the city practically throbbed with the flesh of the living and the dying. Nine rings, each filled with laboratories, distilleries, breeding pits, and living quarters surrounded the inner citadel, winding like the intestines system of some gargantuan being. And deep within the grand stronghold lay grand and horrible towers, made of writhing flesh, where the Master Moulders and Mutators plied their dark arts. Even here, where they sat upon chairs that pulsed like beating hearts, and rugs of animated skin that moved with their owners, below was the home of yet more Skaven, entire shanty-towns lived around lakes of Warpstone-polluted water, the hundreds of thousands, millions of slaves scrabbling for scraps, wondering who among them would be the next to be devoured by some experiment, or harvested for extra flesh.
And now it was under threat. No one in the city, from the leading Mutators to the lowliest Skavenslave had missed what was occurring. The rise of Chaos and the coming of the End Times could be felt in the very bone of the Earth, as armies of Daemons materialized and walked the world and legions of Chaos Warriors rallied for the final war, the only conflict to have ever mattered that was about to be waged. Hell Pit was not their primary target, but it was with complete certainly that the Skaven knew this storm would eventually come to them. And so on a scale unprecedented in all of Skaven history, with the full backing of the Underlord, ruler of a united Skaven Under-Empire, the ratmen prepared their defenses, a titanic labyrinth to trap, hound, and crush any invader that sought to take the northern holdings of the Skaven, forged as one of the greatest monuments to the Horned Rat. But for the plans of the Grey Seers and Plague Priests to come to fruition, they would need titanic amounts of resources, one of the greatest concentrations of magical power. And they would need lives. Hundreds of thousands, and then more lives as fuel for the labyrinth.
It was fortunate then that Hell Pit was one of the areas to defend, for if there was one thing it had in surplus above all else, it was living beings. The mere proximity to the construction, bolstered by the knowledge that they were fighting for their very survival threw the inhabitants and rulers into a frenzy. Entire stockpiles of Warbeasts were offered up in sacrifice, armies of Stormvermin loyal to Moulder went out into the caverns, rounding up every stray animal that could be found, every escaped creation that had lived and bred for centuries. A shipment of Great Pox Rats that were bound for sale were redirected to the labyrinth, while the proximity to so many spare Plague Priests meant they were bred in unprecedented numbers for the sole purpose of dying in sacrifice. A particularly disliked(and disloyal) Warlord Clan protested the diversion of its purchases, and were promptly slapped with charges of treason and blasphemy against the Under-Empire and Horned Rat, the entire Clan also sent to join their former purchases as fodder for the tainted maze.
The Labyrinth drank and devoured the life-force of these wretched creatures greedily, consuming and devouring at a rate that one could equate the legendary Great Maw itself. And yet there was still more work to be done, for this massive sacrifice of life had only fueled the mundane parts of the labyrinth, and yet more sacrifice was needed to truly make the maze as it was needed. The rulers of Hell Pit wondered at what could be a suitable and large enough sacrifice to the task, when one particularly clever Skaven pointed out the existence of what was practically a second city's worth of lives.
The Lower Depths of Hell Pit, the bottom-most portions of the Moulder stronghold. For generations, it had been the dumping ground: The uncontrollable, the useless, the sickly, the weak, the failures, the prototypes, the dregs. This was an ecosystem of rancid flesh, and throughout Hell Pit cries from it could be heard as the miserable abominations fought each other for survival, atop the piles of those who had come before them. The vapors from the Depths were so vile, so sickening that many Skaven collapsed just from smelling them from a distance.
But now the Under-Empire had an unprecedented concentration of Pestilens assets in the north, and after some planning, its forces, along with those of Moulder and its subordinate Clans that came equipped for the job, descended into the Lower Depths. Buoyed by a religious fervor extraordinary even for Clan Pestilens, they beheld the sight with wonder. So much carrion, so much rot, so much decay, it was perfect. The descendants of centuries of Moulder's work on beasts found themselves hopelessly outmatched by a Skaven army that could not only survive, but thrive in the conditions. Emaciated fiends and bloated horrors were brought down with plague, gas, and nets, broods and hives dragged deep into the labyrinth for the final sacrifices, screeching in primordial terror, even their starvation-wracked minds realizing some terrible fate awaited them. More packs of feral creature-things lunged at the gas-masked armies of Moulder, but soon learned to fear and obey the crack of the whip and the jab of the Things-Catcher as their ancestors had. They to, were sent into the sacrificial tunnels.
The ecosystem of the Lower Depths continued to throb and hurl its entire complement of abominations, of hybrids, of monsters at the conquerers. Creatures more unconventional, more unrestrained, more grotesque were uncovered: from twisted Chimera-beasts of too many creatures fused at once, to tens-of-meters long amoeba-like beings, each one rendering hundreds of Skaven into a greasy sludge to be devoured. But in the end they to were brought to heel: Chimera battered and bruised by electric prods and spiked nets. Amoeba were infected with magic-derived microbes, which slowly and painfully broke them down cell by cell as their essence permeated entire tunnels of the Labyrinth.
Not even the rotting flesh of the dead was spared, Pestilens requisitioning practically the entire lot of up, some to help replace stocks spent in the creation of the defense of northern Skavendom, but yet more carcasses and piles and mountains of carrion were also sent to be devoured by the Labyrinth's hunger, offerings of pestilence and decay to the Horned Rat. Meter by meter, bit by bit, the entire Lower Depths was emptied of its former inhabitants, picked clean of meat in a matter not unlike the tides of Skaven that suffered from Black Hunger, that of their victims left not a single edible morsel, but only picked-clean and gnawed bones.
Yet more sacrifices trickled into Hell Pit and the north from across the Under-Empire, the resources of the Underlord allowing a vast selection of exotic offerings. Thousands of Chaos Dwarves, the last of their kind taken from civilians "lucky" enough to have survived this long, now conscripted as sacrifices in a device expected to repel armies, some of which may have included their own kinsmen serving within the Everchosen's horde. Villages of Cathayans overrun by Nippon, the Shattā-on having demanded a vast number of these specimens as additional payment for services rendered. Gorger packs from the Mountains of Mourne, driven out of their hiding holes by the rise of the Dragon Ogres into the heavily occupied Dark Lands, where they were ruthlessly hunted down. In Troll Country, just above Hell Pit, the remaining "Roppsmen" that had survived the passing of Archaon were hunted down and rounded up, alongside Norscan villagers left under-guarded by the grand musterings. A macabre procession of the doomed marched down the same pathways that the Lower Depths inhabitants had been dragged down, and none would be escaping with their lives.
For the leadership of Hell Pit that had organized this death on such a massive scale however, their minds had already turned elsewhere. The cleaning of the Lower Depths had been somewhat costly, but it had also opened a tremendous opportunity, as the formerly unusable dumping ground had been picked clean and ready for expansion. Some had been absorbed by the Labyrinth itself for defense purposes, elsewhere Clan Pestilens had laid claim to the bottom-most levels of even those Depths, where no regular Skaven had a hope of surviving. Yet still more remained for infrastructure to be built upon, and for Hell Pit to grow ever larger and even richer than before. Shipments of precious resources that flowed in from the Dark Lands provided enough to finance this expedition. The Mutators and Moulders poured over maps made of their new possessions, conferred with a number of Clan Horripila leaders who by necessity were present to oversee movement into the formerly disease-ridden Lower Depths, and greedily began planning another phase of glorious expansion, and with it: wealth.
That such an opportunity had come at the head of a consumption of life on a scale of hundreds of thousands, millions, and the death of what could be considered an entire ecosystem of generations of living beings was of course, scarcely worth mentioning or recalling. In death, the Dregs of Hell Pit would serve a far more useful function than they ever had in life.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
How utterly delightful!
- Location
- Tulsa Oklahoma
Nice and clean. Nothing better than turning the useless waste of society into something beneficial. The labyrinth seems to be the greatest example of Scaven recycling in history. Now, if only we were also able to translate the abundance of biological materials in our other dens into something useful.
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Woah damn, that's actually really really nice. My thanks, I'll likely be able to get the last section done to a higher standard now.
It helps to be able to see the sheer scale this game operates at. I lose track of it sometimes mentally, drift off from that feeling of, well, the tide of vermin. You're actually really good at zooming in to those smaller scales and showing how even just the preparations for the ritual that's due to be enacted could be seen as a fully-fledged campaign in and of itself, an entire miniature ecosystem flushed out and consumed and presenting opportunities in its aftermath. Hell, it's almost like the cleansing of a 40k underhive in miniature.
It's stuff like this that helps me see both the metaphorical forest and the trees within. So thank you.
It helps to be able to see the sheer scale this game operates at. I lose track of it sometimes mentally, drift off from that feeling of, well, the tide of vermin. You're actually really good at zooming in to those smaller scales and showing how even just the preparations for the ritual that's due to be enacted could be seen as a fully-fledged campaign in and of itself, an entire miniature ecosystem flushed out and consumed and presenting opportunities in its aftermath. Hell, it's almost like the cleansing of a 40k underhive in miniature.
It's stuff like this that helps me see both the metaphorical forest and the trees within. So thank you.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
With these dregs and waste removed, this could serve as a potent opening for moving in mass elements we wish integrated, like Horriplia's health stuff or the USA's ideas between Skaven, as Skavenkind adjusts to fill the openings.
Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
I was thinking Horripila personally, as a result of both Clans being protected by the Labyrinth(plus Horripila doctors were used by Moulder to ensure no sickness from the Lower Depths got loose.)
Though the bottom-most portions are now Pestilens territory because of all that beautiful rot. I imagine in the future that will lead to an increase in the number of plague-beasts like the Great Pox Rat.
End Times 2 Results - The Norscan Tunnels Part 3: The Infinite Warren
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
The tempest from the north raged and billowed south, and the holy men of the skaven convened to complete their sacred work. The labyrinth was drinking in the torrent of the winds of magic hungrily, and the dark power invested into it was growing in intensity and scope as the days passed. Soon it would be too powerful to properly manipulate, to control, and it would be corrupted and swallowed up by the chaos gods. Such heresy could not be allowed to happen.
The corrupt geometry of the labyrinth was analyzed and thirteen points where the shifting power within would be susceptible to manipulation were found. Many of these nexuses of energy were within the maze itself, and so protection was needed. Pestilens wove great nets of disease around its priests, invisible auras of vile microorganisms that hung heavy around the priests they infested and ate the very air. The Grey Seers retrieved great vats of warpstone from their sacred stocks and enacted multitudinous dark rituals to force it into protective artifacts - monstrous-looking masks in the image of the Horned Rat that covered their heads, glowing medallions and rings that would absorb excess energy attempting to intertwine with their auras, and other things, each Seer having a hand in crafting his or her talismans. Many on both sides perished in the course of crafting their protection, but compared to the fates they could suffer in the labyrinth it was considered a merciful death.
Thousands of grey seers and plague priests set off into the labyrinth, and skaven from the newly cleansed Hell Pit to Scalpel Spire sighed in relief as their religious authorities departed. Twelve groups centered on the confluences of power dispersed sporadically throughout the spatially distorted labyrinth, relying more on their innate magical senses rather than their eyes to guide them, for the curdling dark magic that was ever-present in the inhospitable mausoleum that was the maze had shifted the very bounds of its dimensions - any ordinary being lost within its twisting tunnels would never find their way out as tunnels paradoxically turned upon themselves and stretched out far longer than they actually were. But the hungry souls of the wizard-priests found their way to the nexus points, and there they brought their holy structures - great bells that screamed high, thin notes with each peal on their warpstone surfaces, ancient cauldrons encrusted with the residue of a thousand plagues, an aura of divine rot build up like layers of sediment. Six nexuses were claimed by Pestilens, and six by the Grey Seers.
The thirteenth nexus, at the very center of the labyrinth, was where Kritislik and Skrolk headed. Helkic followed nervously in their wake as the two religious leaders traced ritual circles and set up complicated patterns of dark sigils in the floor. The dark was smothering in the tunnels, even for her dark-vision, and the evil light given off by the magical arrays illuminated Kritislik and Skrolk with fell green radiance. The air crackled with overlapping arcs of magic as the sacred thirteenth hour rolled over, and Helkic shrank back into a small corner as they began.
The ritual used was one familiar to both Pestilens and the Seers, to infuse an object with the Horned Rat's will. It normally required thirteen hours of intense concentration and prayer, but the roiling mass of energy in the maze was powerful enough that this iteration would require thirteen days. The twelve outlying nexuses tamed the dark power around them with intonations of the sacred bells and binding sub-rituals conducted over plague cauldrons, drawing it in as invisible skeins of corrupting force and molding it into what they desired. The Seerlord and Papus Pestilens at the center of it all directed the efforts of their underlings, grasping the processed energy they produced and drawing it into the central nexus, where they used their magical might to concentrate it yet further, drawing in the energy of the entire maze down to one point.
Helkic stayed awake for the first three days, her paranoid eyes watching her superiors for signs of betrayal, but found nothing, nor did the maze seem to change at all. When she awoke on the fourth day, however, there had been a shift. The air seemed smaller, if that was possible, and what little light persisted in the nexus had vanished. She could dimly perceive thirteen exit points in the cavern they were in, air currents gusting softly out of each, both hot and cold. The currents swirled around the walls and over her fur in strange patterns, and the echoing whistles they produced almost seemed to sound like whispers.
On the seventh day, the wind had stopped, and some measure of light returned to the maze in the form of a faint ... greenness that never appeared directly to the eye, but instead always seemed to come from behind the observer. Sounds echoed through the corridors of the labyrinth, the skittering of millions of tiny claws on stone and the quiet rustling of fur-clad bodies pushing past each other. By the tenth day the faint light had resolved itself into a sea of emerald pinpricks staring out from the dark at the corners of the eyes, and quiet whispers echoed from out of sight into the minds of those in the maze. What exactly they said was indistinguishable, but for the promise of a quiet end. Helkic felt furry bodies brushing past her if she stayed still too long, and slept no more even as her eyes grew bloodshot and bleary.
By the thirteenth day, it was ready to come to a conclusion. The hungry eyes of the dead stared openly at the living from the dark, and the walls rippled to the touch. There was no escaping the omnipresent sense of claustrophobia, and even the air became impossibly crowded, breath being stolen out of mouths by invisible presences. The tiny whispers had become louder, audible even over the nonstop pealing of the sacred bells, and the things they said were frightful and awful.
As things begin, so they often end. So it was that at the thirteenth hour of the thirteenth day of the ritual, the betrayal Helkic had been agonizingly watching for finally happened. It was so quick that she almost did not see it, and could not discern who had struck first. Instead she felt it in her gut as a horrible wrenching feeling as the energies that had been painstakingly built up alongside each other were now grasped and used to strike at each other, to cut down, to kill. It felt as though her guts were being ripped out and her brain bitten in half, and she vomited black bile as the auras of the Seerlord and the Papus Pestilens exploded into violence. She watched helplessly as the two struck at each other with the accumulated power of the millions of deaths that had gone into this place, every attack rippling outward into the magical structure of the labyrinth and ripping their collated work asunder more and more. The clashing magical fields tore at Helkic's very soul and drove her to her knees. Her skin cracked and her eyes bled, and every breath she took was like crawling across a mile of glass.
It was a subjective eternity until she managed to stand. She only dimly perceived the battle happening in the background, her mind had no space for it. Her entire focus was on the here and now. She could feel in her bones the magical architecture of the labyrinth warping out of the shape they had forced it into, as what must have been all the rest of the Seers and Pestilens acolytes joined in the battle of their masters. Had all this really evaded her notice? She forced the question out of her mind. No space for doubt if she wanted to live. The collapse of the labyrinth would kill her. Skrolk would live. Seerlord would live. Not she. Labyrinth had to stay. Had to be completed.
Blunted, rotting claws shakily scrabbled in the earth. Nerve endings lit up in silent fire as a circle was drawn. Pain pushed through. Survival paramount. Sigils etched, gleaned from observing superiors. Careful, careful. Warpstone dust drawn from hidden pocket in robe. Sprinkled in sigils. Had to do this right. Remember the words, what were the words?
She couldn't remember the words. Her flesh had failed her. But there was one other option. Her mind recoiled instinctively, but other option was death. Survival was paramount. Breath taken in. Lungs bleeding, torn. She could feel them leaking. They worked, that was enough.
The ritual had been on the cusp of completion when the skaven had turned on each other. Even as its structure was assailed by the corroding energies of the two factions of wizard-priests who wished to twist it to their own specific vision, it hungered for the culmination of its purpose, for completion. As the Grey Seers and Plague Priests battled all around her, as two ancient titans amongst skaven leapt at each other and bit and clawed and tore next to her, a bespectacled priest named Helkic Stain stood upright on shaking legs and called out something that froze both Kritislik and Skrolk in horror.
Though it tore her trachea to shreds as it climbed out of her throat, Helkic's voice emerged loud and clear as she called one of the Horned Rat's 13 Names.
The fighting stopped as the air stopped. The labyrinth itself froze, horrific anticipation oozing out of the very walls.
As both the Seerlord and the Papus Pestilens turned tail and ran, the floor beneath Helkic's feet became rats. Like a metastasizing cancer, they chewed outwards at the fabric of reality and transmuted it into more rats, infinitely black of fur with piercing green eyes. The carpet of rodent flesh flowed outward from the centerpoint of the maze, consuming the walls, the air, everything was consumed and became silently chittering rats with emerald eyes. The countless dead were consumed and remade into strange, horrific things stalking the maze, emaciated skaven-like things with thin blades that stared with bulging eyes, horned beasts that lurked in ever-present shadow and other, more fell beings. The attention of the Horned Rat himself had been drawn to the labyrinth by the incantation, to a far greater degree than even Kritislik had wanted. He had seen the nesting ground his children had created and claimed it as his own, and none of the souls within had protection. Many were devoured as they fled in terror from the thing spoken of in the oldest scripture.
It was said to be the nesting place of the Horned God himself. Time and space meant nothing there, utterly subservient to his will, and those who trespassed would be devoured by the walls themselves as they wandered the endless passageways. It had many names in the ancient tomes of Skavenblight: The Under-All, the Horned Labyrinth, the Hungry Catacombs, The Birth-Nest of All Vermin, but the one most often used was The Infinite Warren.
The Seers and Pestilens priests escaped with naught but a third of their numbers devoured, and it was counted as a blessing. Kritislik and Skrolk parted ways quickly, neither keen to dwell on what they had brought into the world.
Of Helkic Stain, there was no sign.
A chaos lord named Khalrath Bearcrusher led his army of Baersonling berserkers to the Hell Pit late in the year as blizzards both real and magical blew ferociously. He commanded an army of over ten thousand warriors, blessed by the gods to be able to take on ursine form, becoming creatures capable of biting through plate armor and ripping mortal men in half. He was accompanied by hulking daemons, spectral wolf-like creatures that slavered for blood and could track their prey through the boundaries between worlds. Even the slaves he drove before him were blessed with holy rage by Kharneth, and would fell five normal men before falling. He saw taking the skaven city as a way to gain favor in the eyes of the gods, and he hungered for the flesh vats of the Master Moulders. His was an army that could take on a force ten times its own and come out victorious.
They entered the tunnels beneath the skaven city and were never seen again. Their boundless hunger for blood was overshadowed by what they encountered beneath the earth, and they were torn apart body and soul.
Superweapon Created: The Infinite Warren
Part of the Horned Rat's daemonic realm, the Warren has been manifested underneath skaven-held territory in Norsca due to the undiluted faith of Helkic Stain preserving and enhancing the works of Seerlord Kritislik and Papus Skrolk, which otherwise may have been destroyed in their struggle to impose their creed upon it. It will effectively guarantee that any attacks by the Forces of Chaos on the Hell Pit or Scalpel Spire by any but a major hero unit will fail. However, it is not friendly to anyone, skaven or foe, and as such any authority assigned in Norsca will inevitably suffer significant casualties until the proper research is conducted. See the Superweapons tab in the Technology threadmark.
Helkic Stain has vanished within the Infinite Warren! However, the Papus Pestilens is insistent that she is not dead. See Heroes threadmark.
The corrupt geometry of the labyrinth was analyzed and thirteen points where the shifting power within would be susceptible to manipulation were found. Many of these nexuses of energy were within the maze itself, and so protection was needed. Pestilens wove great nets of disease around its priests, invisible auras of vile microorganisms that hung heavy around the priests they infested and ate the very air. The Grey Seers retrieved great vats of warpstone from their sacred stocks and enacted multitudinous dark rituals to force it into protective artifacts - monstrous-looking masks in the image of the Horned Rat that covered their heads, glowing medallions and rings that would absorb excess energy attempting to intertwine with their auras, and other things, each Seer having a hand in crafting his or her talismans. Many on both sides perished in the course of crafting their protection, but compared to the fates they could suffer in the labyrinth it was considered a merciful death.
Thousands of grey seers and plague priests set off into the labyrinth, and skaven from the newly cleansed Hell Pit to Scalpel Spire sighed in relief as their religious authorities departed. Twelve groups centered on the confluences of power dispersed sporadically throughout the spatially distorted labyrinth, relying more on their innate magical senses rather than their eyes to guide them, for the curdling dark magic that was ever-present in the inhospitable mausoleum that was the maze had shifted the very bounds of its dimensions - any ordinary being lost within its twisting tunnels would never find their way out as tunnels paradoxically turned upon themselves and stretched out far longer than they actually were. But the hungry souls of the wizard-priests found their way to the nexus points, and there they brought their holy structures - great bells that screamed high, thin notes with each peal on their warpstone surfaces, ancient cauldrons encrusted with the residue of a thousand plagues, an aura of divine rot build up like layers of sediment. Six nexuses were claimed by Pestilens, and six by the Grey Seers.
The thirteenth nexus, at the very center of the labyrinth, was where Kritislik and Skrolk headed. Helkic followed nervously in their wake as the two religious leaders traced ritual circles and set up complicated patterns of dark sigils in the floor. The dark was smothering in the tunnels, even for her dark-vision, and the evil light given off by the magical arrays illuminated Kritislik and Skrolk with fell green radiance. The air crackled with overlapping arcs of magic as the sacred thirteenth hour rolled over, and Helkic shrank back into a small corner as they began.
The ritual used was one familiar to both Pestilens and the Seers, to infuse an object with the Horned Rat's will. It normally required thirteen hours of intense concentration and prayer, but the roiling mass of energy in the maze was powerful enough that this iteration would require thirteen days. The twelve outlying nexuses tamed the dark power around them with intonations of the sacred bells and binding sub-rituals conducted over plague cauldrons, drawing it in as invisible skeins of corrupting force and molding it into what they desired. The Seerlord and Papus Pestilens at the center of it all directed the efforts of their underlings, grasping the processed energy they produced and drawing it into the central nexus, where they used their magical might to concentrate it yet further, drawing in the energy of the entire maze down to one point.
Helkic stayed awake for the first three days, her paranoid eyes watching her superiors for signs of betrayal, but found nothing, nor did the maze seem to change at all. When she awoke on the fourth day, however, there had been a shift. The air seemed smaller, if that was possible, and what little light persisted in the nexus had vanished. She could dimly perceive thirteen exit points in the cavern they were in, air currents gusting softly out of each, both hot and cold. The currents swirled around the walls and over her fur in strange patterns, and the echoing whistles they produced almost seemed to sound like whispers.
On the seventh day, the wind had stopped, and some measure of light returned to the maze in the form of a faint ... greenness that never appeared directly to the eye, but instead always seemed to come from behind the observer. Sounds echoed through the corridors of the labyrinth, the skittering of millions of tiny claws on stone and the quiet rustling of fur-clad bodies pushing past each other. By the tenth day the faint light had resolved itself into a sea of emerald pinpricks staring out from the dark at the corners of the eyes, and quiet whispers echoed from out of sight into the minds of those in the maze. What exactly they said was indistinguishable, but for the promise of a quiet end. Helkic felt furry bodies brushing past her if she stayed still too long, and slept no more even as her eyes grew bloodshot and bleary.
By the thirteenth day, it was ready to come to a conclusion. The hungry eyes of the dead stared openly at the living from the dark, and the walls rippled to the touch. There was no escaping the omnipresent sense of claustrophobia, and even the air became impossibly crowded, breath being stolen out of mouths by invisible presences. The tiny whispers had become louder, audible even over the nonstop pealing of the sacred bells, and the things they said were frightful and awful.
As things begin, so they often end. So it was that at the thirteenth hour of the thirteenth day of the ritual, the betrayal Helkic had been agonizingly watching for finally happened. It was so quick that she almost did not see it, and could not discern who had struck first. Instead she felt it in her gut as a horrible wrenching feeling as the energies that had been painstakingly built up alongside each other were now grasped and used to strike at each other, to cut down, to kill. It felt as though her guts were being ripped out and her brain bitten in half, and she vomited black bile as the auras of the Seerlord and the Papus Pestilens exploded into violence. She watched helplessly as the two struck at each other with the accumulated power of the millions of deaths that had gone into this place, every attack rippling outward into the magical structure of the labyrinth and ripping their collated work asunder more and more. The clashing magical fields tore at Helkic's very soul and drove her to her knees. Her skin cracked and her eyes bled, and every breath she took was like crawling across a mile of glass.
It was a subjective eternity until she managed to stand. She only dimly perceived the battle happening in the background, her mind had no space for it. Her entire focus was on the here and now. She could feel in her bones the magical architecture of the labyrinth warping out of the shape they had forced it into, as what must have been all the rest of the Seers and Pestilens acolytes joined in the battle of their masters. Had all this really evaded her notice? She forced the question out of her mind. No space for doubt if she wanted to live. The collapse of the labyrinth would kill her. Skrolk would live. Seerlord would live. Not she. Labyrinth had to stay. Had to be completed.
Blunted, rotting claws shakily scrabbled in the earth. Nerve endings lit up in silent fire as a circle was drawn. Pain pushed through. Survival paramount. Sigils etched, gleaned from observing superiors. Careful, careful. Warpstone dust drawn from hidden pocket in robe. Sprinkled in sigils. Had to do this right. Remember the words, what were the words?
She couldn't remember the words. Her flesh had failed her. But there was one other option. Her mind recoiled instinctively, but other option was death. Survival was paramount. Breath taken in. Lungs bleeding, torn. She could feel them leaking. They worked, that was enough.
The ritual had been on the cusp of completion when the skaven had turned on each other. Even as its structure was assailed by the corroding energies of the two factions of wizard-priests who wished to twist it to their own specific vision, it hungered for the culmination of its purpose, for completion. As the Grey Seers and Plague Priests battled all around her, as two ancient titans amongst skaven leapt at each other and bit and clawed and tore next to her, a bespectacled priest named Helkic Stain stood upright on shaking legs and called out something that froze both Kritislik and Skrolk in horror.
Though it tore her trachea to shreds as it climbed out of her throat, Helkic's voice emerged loud and clear as she called one of the Horned Rat's 13 Names.
The fighting stopped as the air stopped. The labyrinth itself froze, horrific anticipation oozing out of the very walls.
As both the Seerlord and the Papus Pestilens turned tail and ran, the floor beneath Helkic's feet became rats. Like a metastasizing cancer, they chewed outwards at the fabric of reality and transmuted it into more rats, infinitely black of fur with piercing green eyes. The carpet of rodent flesh flowed outward from the centerpoint of the maze, consuming the walls, the air, everything was consumed and became silently chittering rats with emerald eyes. The countless dead were consumed and remade into strange, horrific things stalking the maze, emaciated skaven-like things with thin blades that stared with bulging eyes, horned beasts that lurked in ever-present shadow and other, more fell beings. The attention of the Horned Rat himself had been drawn to the labyrinth by the incantation, to a far greater degree than even Kritislik had wanted. He had seen the nesting ground his children had created and claimed it as his own, and none of the souls within had protection. Many were devoured as they fled in terror from the thing spoken of in the oldest scripture.
It was said to be the nesting place of the Horned God himself. Time and space meant nothing there, utterly subservient to his will, and those who trespassed would be devoured by the walls themselves as they wandered the endless passageways. It had many names in the ancient tomes of Skavenblight: The Under-All, the Horned Labyrinth, the Hungry Catacombs, The Birth-Nest of All Vermin, but the one most often used was The Infinite Warren.
The Seers and Pestilens priests escaped with naught but a third of their numbers devoured, and it was counted as a blessing. Kritislik and Skrolk parted ways quickly, neither keen to dwell on what they had brought into the world.
Of Helkic Stain, there was no sign.
---
A chaos lord named Khalrath Bearcrusher led his army of Baersonling berserkers to the Hell Pit late in the year as blizzards both real and magical blew ferociously. He commanded an army of over ten thousand warriors, blessed by the gods to be able to take on ursine form, becoming creatures capable of biting through plate armor and ripping mortal men in half. He was accompanied by hulking daemons, spectral wolf-like creatures that slavered for blood and could track their prey through the boundaries between worlds. Even the slaves he drove before him were blessed with holy rage by Kharneth, and would fell five normal men before falling. He saw taking the skaven city as a way to gain favor in the eyes of the gods, and he hungered for the flesh vats of the Master Moulders. His was an army that could take on a force ten times its own and come out victorious.
They entered the tunnels beneath the skaven city and were never seen again. Their boundless hunger for blood was overshadowed by what they encountered beneath the earth, and they were torn apart body and soul.
Superweapon Created: The Infinite Warren
Part of the Horned Rat's daemonic realm, the Warren has been manifested underneath skaven-held territory in Norsca due to the undiluted faith of Helkic Stain preserving and enhancing the works of Seerlord Kritislik and Papus Skrolk, which otherwise may have been destroyed in their struggle to impose their creed upon it. It will effectively guarantee that any attacks by the Forces of Chaos on the Hell Pit or Scalpel Spire by any but a major hero unit will fail. However, it is not friendly to anyone, skaven or foe, and as such any authority assigned in Norsca will inevitably suffer significant casualties until the proper research is conducted. See the Superweapons tab in the Technology threadmark.
Helkic Stain has vanished within the Infinite Warren! However, the Papus Pestilens is insistent that she is not dead. See Heroes threadmark.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Just as well than.
That was quite diabolically beautiful.
That was quite diabolically beautiful.
Professor Vesca
Good News Everyone!
Should we punish the two fool-fools for threatening our work with petty ambition?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Do we even know they did that?
King Arthur
The Once and Future King
So, if he's a full hero now ... when does he move up to the Rictus slot and out of the Potential Hero slot?
Would Daemonbinding count?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Two things come to mind:
This could be the defense required to get the nuisances to back off while we improve.
And depending on how involved Nagash gets, it might very well be appropriate to match a god with a god, infinite undead with infinite daemons. Anything like that would be more complicated and have more aspects of course, but it's just a starting thought.
The idea of spending 13 dice at once on preparation, daemon-studies, improvement and then deployment of this thing across the world is...enticing, I admit.
This could be the defense required to get the nuisances to back off while we improve.
And depending on how involved Nagash gets, it might very well be appropriate to match a god with a god, infinite undead with infinite daemons. Anything like that would be more complicated and have more aspects of course, but it's just a starting thought.
The idea of spending 13 dice at once on preparation, daemon-studies, improvement and then deployment of this thing across the world is...enticing, I admit.
- Location
- the Netherworld Dood
Well then... I can only imagen the bullshit if they had not back stabbed at the last second.
The greatest danger to skavenkind is still Skaven it seems.
The greatest danger to skavenkind is still Skaven it seems.
Kairos123
Insomniac Extraordinaire
That is much more powerful than I was expecting. Yes, Chaos has a lot of heroes to go around, but it requires them to invest in taking our holdings across all of Norsca. That's far more than I was expecting for our investment even with the caveat that we cannot spend more in Norsca without Daemonic research.
For reference, our holdings in Norsca:
Yeah, giving them some back up or expanding on it would be nice, but I'd settle for it not being on fire anytime soon. Our holdings aren't that important to Chaos outside of the challenge inherent to getting through the Infinite Warren, they're more likely to be off doing other things.
I hope Helkic Stain just got ascended to Daemon Princehood or otherwise benefited from this. If those two would have wasted our dice with their rivalry... well, I would have had no problem putting them at the front line of every war and invasion.
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Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
Well, combined with the Verminfiend summoning, that's a good priority for research next turn.
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
That was entirely an acceptable result, though naturally also a useful lesson on just how far we can push heroes who don't like each other when on the same project.
I don't think this hugely changes our priorities on research given we frankly don't care about doing operations in Norsca.
It's fine, I'm content with just having them replenish from the sacrifices for a couple turns and generally bog down Chaos idiots for a good long time until one of the big generals finally walks over.
I don't think this hugely changes our priorities on research given we frankly don't care about doing operations in Norsca.
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
You do, but it's also pretty hard to come up with a good way to punish them if you wanted to - not only because of the tremendous influence they wield, but also because this project was basically a holy work on which you put the pope and nega-pope of the skaven on together. It's natural that they'd see it as a way to prove the superiority of their respective faiths.
When I write the section he's in - I just put that there to make sure I don't forget to move him when I do get to it.
Might help with further researches, but the stuff you need is down a different tree.
It wouldn't have resulted in as powerful a creation had there been no backstabbing, actually. The result would've been more in line with what Spectrum outlined, an enchanted maze full of hallucinogenic plagues and constantly shifting hallways to trap and crush the unwary. What you ended up getting was ... you know when you play Pokemon and get a 'mon that's higher level than your badge level so it doesn't always listen to you? It's kinda like that. Kritislik and Skrolk are really, really good, and with Helkic's pure belief helping preserve their work and amplify it you got a superweapon that uses stuff you don't actually have access to yet, hence all the daemonic stuff. But because you haven't got the tech, it also eats anyone that goes into it rather than sparing your guys.
My thanks! If it helps, I do still intend to release the full document as a whole thing when I'm done it all so people can read the whole thing at once if they so choose.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
I, think the only thing left that could down for the R&D is this:
King Arthur
The Once and Future King
Hrmmm.
Well, we know it specifically involves Daemonic stuff.
Exploitable Assets.
Can't be Chaos Dwarf War Machines, that requires Daemon Binding.
..........
The only thing that looks like it really applies here is this.
The Tear Beneath the Daemon's Stump - Underneath the citadel named the Daemon's Stump is that rarest of things, a stable warp rift. Situated behind many layers of defenses, the danger it offers is second only to the dark treasures that might be recovered from it.
So, I guess we'll throw some authority at that maybe? Throw a small invasion or two down there both to get some of those dark treasures and to figure out how to survive in that sort of environment?
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
That I'm counting as part of the Estalian campaign, since with both Ikit and Drazhoath with an Authority I'm pretty sure that clears up most/all of the war machines, if not put them into production right away.
Remember, you can improve on/research tech you already have as well as the stuff you get from other guys, which is what goes in Assets. In this case, it's almost certainly to do with gaining some familiarity with your native daemonic heirarchy.
Remember, you've actually seen the Infinite Warren once before, in the Greasus question answer.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Really, this isn't really a problem. We were going to be delving into the daemonic and Warp entities pretty soon regardless, after all. This just makes it extra useful and important.
Awesome! I love that shit.