One skaven was typically an easily defeated opponent, but as they grew in numbers the threat they represented increased exponentially. A pack of skaven was enough to menace a small village. A minor clan often outmassed most typical greenskin tribes and could threaten the holdings of most human nobles if presented an opportunity. A fully developed warlord clan could present a major danger to entire sub-polities of a nation if sufficiently roused. The last time a Great Clan committed significant force to a military endeavor, it threatened the entire Sigmarite Empire.
Now the collective effort of seven of the ruling clans of skavendom marched on the Plain of Bones. Millions of clanrat slaves, thousands of Eshin acolytes, Skyre technowizards, alongside hundreds of Rictus necromancers and Grey Seers all marched together under the banner of the Skaven Army. Officers of the USA commanded regiments made up of multiple different clans with a seasoned ease, singing earsplitting, chittery marching songs with an enthusiasm that slowly infected those around them. They were going to war in the name of the Under-Empire - as Skrettek and her brethren prepared spells of terrible potency, drawing the winds of magic to them like an unstoppered leak, and the hissing, clanking machines of Skyre were loaded up with their fiendish ammunition in preparation for the coming battles, the war fervor of the USA spread amongst the army like a cloying fog. Crooked teeth grinned, claws were sharpened, and guns were loaded as the skaven were bolstered by the enthusiasm of their fellows and thus encouraged their fellows in turn. Even the necromancers of Rictus, removed far enough from the rhythms of life that made up this psychological loop, built their own quiet anticipation at the prospect of getting to experience - and thus steal - the handiwork of some of the masters in their necromantic field.
As the skaven approached closer and closer to the Plain of Bones, signs of the undead infestation began to reveal themselves. Great swathes of the ground had been picked clean, every bone extracted for use in the armies of the dead. The air slowly began to stink of dark magic as they went further in, and the Grey Seers became more and more alert as time went on, their warpstone dependencies rising in the back of their skulls. The sky itself - already stained a turgid grey from the constant volcanic activity that swathed the Dark Lands - took on a darker tone, the stink of undeath seeming to twist and pervert the very air, which hung heavy with a cloying aura of dust and bone.
At last, they ventured far enough that they found their foe, waiting for them amidst the choking smoke and ash falls drifting south and east from the Ash Ridge mountains.
Legions of skeletons faced the skaven advance with empty eyes, armored in black metal and gripping wicked swords or halberds. The dead of every race imaginable were amongst their ranks - bearded dwarf skeletons stood alongside the hulking bones of dead ogres and the slender forms of elven corpses. Yet in death they were all united in servitude, and whether human or ork or eight-limbed mutant skeleton they all stood with the same unity of purpose, waiting for their foe in utter silence. Scattered amongst the more common dead were towering wights resplendent in the arms and armor they had been buried as kings in. Their presence acted as grounding rods for the web of necromancy that animated their fellows, allowing their masters to more easily control them. Forty thousand dead beings were arrayed thusly, and though a force of this many undead would be a great threat to many mortal nations, it was nothing before the assembled might of the skaven, who outnumbered it many times over.
But they were not the only components of the undead force. Entire collectives of ghouls and hulking Crypt Horrors slavered at the sides, bred for many generations in their master's stronghold. Vast packs of enormous wolf corpses stood next to companies of silent warriors on skeletal steeds, ready to charge in from the flanks. Behind the main lines of skeletal infantry, undead archers nocked arrows to bows that had not been fired in hundreds of years, ready to fire with all the accuracy they had possessed in life. At the rear lines of the army were a smattering of ramshackle catapults constructed solely of bones, possessing many elongated chains made up of detached arm and leg bones, ending in great clawed hands clutching rocks, ready to fling them at the oncoming enemy. Flocks of mutated skeletons circled the skies above, taking the shape of man-sized bats and eagles, with eye sockets that burned with witchfire.
And for all the dread force an army of such potency and variety commanded, the material undead were not the strength of the disciples of Nagashizzar. The necromancers in their order had long since passed the point where raising corpses presented a challenge to them, and had traveled to the mausoleum of the first of their kind to delve into the art that lay behind commanding not the body, but the spirit. As the titanic horde of the ratmen drew close to their lines, they drew upon their reserves of dread power, calling those wraiths they had bound to their service.
Across the breadth of the dead army, a pallor of grim fog appeared out of the aether, obscuring all within. There was naught but silence for a minute, and then the souls of the dead began to materialize out of the air. They appeared as they had in the moments before their deaths, bludgeoned Bretonnian specters standing side by side with gutted Tileans and ravaged Imperial faces. They were grim in aspect as well as appearance, sucking all warmth out of the air and leaving only the chill of the grave in their wake. More than that, they were legion, outnumbering their material counterparts many times over. Such were their numbers that the air thickened and became opaque towards the core of the army, filled with spectral limbs and the cloying longing that was the only emotion they were capable of. In places the ghosts drifted together, ectoplasm merging together into collectives of malevolent intent that reached for the living with many outstretched hands. Around the necromancers themselves, Cairn Wraiths holding dread scythes and wearing cloaks that obscured their movement passed into being, hovering around their summoner like cloaks of evil mist. Bone-white specters of evil women long dead appeared sporadically, their thin lips sealed together with ethereal twine that slowly became undone as their sunken eyes stared at their living foe.
The army the Conclave of the Undying King fielded was the collection of the world's most powerful necromancers gathered over thousands of years, a testament to the terrible strength of will such creatures had. Warlords the world over would balk at the prospect of fighting such a foe, especially considering it would only swell in numbers if not defeated outright. It presented a tactical and strategic nightmare for any mortal nation that dared to oppose it.
Paskrit looked upon it in all its glory and laughed with a grim humor, for she outnumbered them five to one even counting the ghosts, while the plentiful warpstone-powered guns and war machines among her forces would let her rip those spectral foes to shreds just as easily as any fleshy foe.
There was no pre-battle negotiation, no recognition of the initiation of hostilities - both sides knew what they were there for. Paskrit gave the order to fire from her position atop a hill not far from the battleground and a great cloud of ammunition and energy arced up from the back of her army, whistling mortar shot and sizzling warp-lightning bolts alike crashing down into the ranks of the undead, shattering bone with concussive force and searing ectoplasm with emerald radiance.
"Wave-volley fire!" Paskrit ordered as the undead began to move forth, skeletal legions running forth in merciless unison as their ghostly counterparts drifted through the air.
The undead cavalry and direwolf mobs peeled off to the sides, seeking to circle around the frontal layer of chaff clans and attack the more vital parts of her army.
In response Paskrit merely snorted and sent yet more regiments of slaves out to intercept them. She was sending them to their deaths, but their numbers would arrest the momentum of the undead cavalry, and she could already see her subsidiary commanders taking initiative and wheeling Shratnel Guns up to areas that the skeletal knights and their warbeasts would attempt to hit.
The undead army surged forth, a mile-wide swathe of bone and spirit coursing towards the skaven. Though it was ravaged by shot and storm from the skaven lines, hit by everything from explosive lightning conjured up by the Grey Seers to the corrosive ammunition of Plague-Claw catapults, it continued on, proving to have the same grim resilience as the creatures that made it up. Despite the best efforts of the necromancers of Rictus, any undead which was not wholly obliterated continued to function, in some cases even reassembling themselves.
The cloud of flying skeletal beasts dove forth ahead of the army, flying high to avoid being fired upon as they flew over the bulk of the skaven army and then diving upon the war machines and artillery, losing many of their number from a storm of exploding shells sent their way. Still, the flying terrors wreaked havoc among the crews of the devices when they managed to break through, disrupting the constant stream of stone-shattering firepower put out.
Such was the scale of the erupting conflict that Paskrit could not deal with every problem on her own, instead directing the overall shape of the battle and trusting sections of it to her subordinates.
The skaven she had put in charge of defending the artillery proved her trust in him well-founded, driving off the undead flyers with a counterattack composed of blender cart-pushing rat ogres shielding teams of Ratling Gunners, who shredded the fragile wing bones of the creatures with a hail of green bullets.
While its subsidiary elements harassed the skaven behemoth, the primary mass of the undead army drifted inexorably forward, taking a brutal pounding from the artillery of the ratmen but seemingly uncaring of the fact. Under a nigh-constant rain of whistling bombs and crackling energy, the mass of undeath advanced to a position no less than a hundred yards from the skaven lines and halted in unison, close enough that a portion of Paskrit's guns were hitting her own chaff troops - rendering most of those hit down to a chunky paste.
Paskrit did not halt her fire; if anything the rippling thunder of the skaven guns only increased in pace as she watched the undead formation spread out to minimize the concussive effects.
"Why wait-delay?" An aide pondered. "They accomplish little-nothing but being targets by standing there, and their army-clan will not grow-swell in the meantime."
The words triggered something in Paskrit's mind, a lightning-quick series of realizations based off of various minor details she had taken in during the preparation for this war. The clouds, the smell, the landscape, the positioning. Questions of how the army of bone-things could win, and where the army came from.
"Send-drive the slave clans forward, into the teeth of the bone-things," she snapped. "Continue rate of fire by the guns, and tell-demand the Grey Seers to prepare-charge their greatest spells of lightning. Quick-fast," she barked, and the aide scurried off to issue her orders.
As he did, Paskrit fixed her eyes on the skies above the undead army, looking intently for any disturbances in the layer of clouds that hung above the battlefield.
Prodded by the 'encouragement' of the Army's officers and the pointed reminder of the much more deadly weapons the other components of the horde had that were pointed at their backs, the ablative layer of slave clans ponderously rolled forth, countless skaven screaming and dying under the force of their own artillery as they progressed towards the unflinching face of the undead enemy.
In the back of the army, cabals of Grey Seers chanted and sacrificed screeching captives under their bells that began to glow a dangerous green, the collective effort of hundreds of the wizard-priests drawing the winds of magic to them like sinkholes, concentrating the power of their horned god in preparation for what was wished of them. The air grew taut around them, countless evil whispers appearing in the minds of those close to the bells.
All the while, Paskrit and her command staff scoured the skies with spyglasses, searching for any hint of what the Warlord-General feared.
---
"Forward, slave-things!" Tretch Craventail screeched, expertly snapping his corded whip against the backside of a nearby slave who was beginning to reconsider the prospect of charging the skeleton army in front of him. Cowed by the crack of his whip and his fearsome demeanor, his contingent of slaves turned their backs to him and continued forward.
As soon as their eyes were off him, the stern expression on Tretch's face melted off, replaced with naked worry. How had he ended up in a scenario like this, driving his abject inferiors forth into the teeth of the enemy under the orders of an Underlord who would never understand the great struggles Tretch had gone through?! Everything he had done up to this point had made sense at the time!
After his return to Crookback Mountain, Tretch had initially spent as much time as he could in the mountain lair, loath to leave it after his excursion to the sands of Nekehara. As far as he was concerned, the outside world could go rot! He would just stay in his burrow and trick dullard skaven out of their food for the rest of his life. And that was exactly what he had done, until the Bonelord returned to the mountain.
Tretch paid his clan leader the proper amount of fearful respect, just as any skaven worth their skin would, but Kratch Doomclaw had always rubbed him the wrong way on an instinctual level. This feeling of deep-set unease had only intensified upon his return, and disquietingly soon all the necromancers were giving off that feeling, like his gut was screaming at him that they did not belong in the world.
Life in Crookback Mountain became misery for poor Tretch, who swiftly decided he was better suited trying for a life elsewhere. He used his position as a slave-driver to take some slaves and supplies and made for the Tower of Gorgoth, thinking he could sell the slaves to the warlock-engineers there for the funds to go to Glassbowl, which was quickly growing the arteries of travel most large skaven settlements did.
His trip had initially been uneventful, but upon his arrival at the Tower he found a great army mustering at its base, and being the highest ranking skaven of Rictus in the area he was immediately taken in by the damned Army rats and questioned as to where the rest of his clan was. Thinking quickly, Tretch spun a story of him being appointed official liason for Rictus to properly engage with other clans in lieu of disturbing the necromancers during their work, which got him enough freedom from the USA's scrutiny to plan another daring sneak-away-in-the-night plan.
He had just managed to gather the necessary supplies when his erstwhile clan arrived at the Tower, which of course caused the whole chain of lies he had constructed to unravel when it was revealed that no, he wasn't a liason for Rictus but in fact a filthy runaway traitor rat. The USA bound him in chains and handed him over to the tender mercies of Rictus, and Tretch had voided his fear glands as he braced for a most painful death.
"You caused me unnecessary consternation, Tretch," Kratch Doomclaw had rasped from atop his throne of bones. "You abandoned your generously given post and stole my property for your own sake." His pallid claw reached out and grabbed his staff made of a giant's fingerbone, and Tretch cringed away. "However," the Bonelord cackled, "Your ingenuity impresses me. Perhaps it will let you survive - you will be placed in the vanguard of the coming battles, driving slaves forward when they shrink back. Come out intact, and perhaps you will become the 'liason' you pretended to be."
Tretch had sighed in relief upon hearing the pronouncement, but it was an empty pleasure - his blood was chilled by the impossible prospect before him.
As bad as that ordeal had been, Tretch now thought of it with something approaching fondness compared to the chaotic hellstorm that was this battle. The air was choked with smoke, the shriek of the artillery was nigh-deafening, what ground he could see was littered with explosive debris and mangled corpses. The oppressive silence of the undead was somehow worse than that, and the slaves that he was supposed to 'encourage' kept dying!
He was snapped out of his musings when a Deathflinger shell landed on the group of skaven next to him, throwing bodies everywhere like the blow of a god. Tretch whined in terror, which his slave regiment mistook for a bellow of rage. They surged forward lest they feel his wrath and Tretch was forced to run to keep up with them, else he'd be left exposed without any meatshields on the battlefield.
The wall of slave clans had almost reached the undead ranks when it happened. Tretch's eyes, somewhat obscured by grime and gore, saw the clouds bulge downwards in one spot as though the Horned Rat were reaching down through with one colossal claw. Then the bulge burst open and titanic creatures from the ancient past dove out of the sky.
They flew through the air without skin, sinew or scale. They were naught but bone held together by timeless will, and pale light burned in their empty eye sockets. Each of them was gargantuan, the size of a castle at least, and they were legion. Forty ancient dragon skeletons dove out of the sky, driving a great curtain of air before their passage, and the skavenslaves broke at the very sight of them. Tretch was one of the first who ran, instinctual fears rising to the forefront of his mind, drowning out all thought. Dragons meant fire. Fire meant pain and death and burning meat.
The dragons drifted over the lines of undead with an almost stately elegance, and unleashed an apocalyptic curtain of fire upon the buckling wall of skavenslaves. The air rippled and cracked from the sheer heat, while stone and flesh alike melted under the pale green death the ancient skeletons breathed from their empty jaws. They continued their lazy course toward the skaven army, continuing to lay down an unending stream of ghostly fire, for they were dead with no need to breathe. Behind them, the undead army finally began to move, streaming forth into the breaches the dragon's paths of fire had left, their bones becoming scorched and cracked from the residual heat still contained within the rock.
Tretch was in a blind panic as he ran as fast as he could, his heart rattling and his lungs wheezing fit to burst. Foam flecked his mouth and his fur stood on end. His vision narrowing, mind cutting out any thought aside from how he could run.
He scrambled past mobs of slaves too starved to run, shoved his way around other slavedrivers who were not as experienced with running away as he was, and once his lungs finally buckled in desperation for air, he risked a glance behind him.
A leviathan of black bone drifted silently through the air high above and behind him, its troll-sized maw exuding a column of green-white fire four meters across. Curtains of ghostly flame rippled out from where it impacted against the ground, catching on the fur of nearby skaven and continuing to flicker on the scorched rock even after it passed. All the moisture in Tretch's mouth fled at the sight of the apocalyptic line of flame gliding towards him, burning its image into his retinas as his body froze, unable to turn away.
[Tretch Survival Roll: 81. Pass]
Tretch did not hear the mob of panicked slaves until they abruptly trampled him in their haste to escape the encroaching line of fire and death. He was knocked into the ground and kicked in the head several times by scrabbling feet, and in the resulting state of unconsciousness did not see the flesh of the slaves blacken and bubble as the dragon's flame passed to the side of them, melting their skin and muscle into an insulated pocket of rendered fat and hide that he was able to breathe in, despite the extremely high temperature within.
