An idea I've just had, and which I'm deciding to share with the thread. It's a theory about the Great Horned Rat. It started by asking about the source of Skaven technology and then a funny answer came to me about it and then I started backwards building an explanation for it. Though even if I take away the technology angle, the theory still roughly works.
The funny idea was:
Question: why is Skaven tech more advanced? What is the source of Skaven tech? How long have Skaven had this highly advanced tech? Why isn't this technology spread out to other races or individuals?
Answer: the Great Horned Rat is doing the equivalent of a Connecticut Yankee with the Skaven. Partly inspired by the uplift idea (except done by somebody who is domineering and who wants nukes; but won't allow their civilization to gain nukes or fleshwarping until and unless he has Dystopian-or-Cyberpunk-setting tier control over his mortals) and partly inspired by "Hmm, the burning of Hoeth's Library by Asuryan... if that is an indication that that library had Advanced Technology... might that mean that the Gods have knowledge of advanced technology? If so, then; to the faithful person, this is a comfort because 'Wow, so even if we advanced to the level of the 20th or 21st century, or to Space Opera, the Gods would not be caught flat-footed and surprised by the tech? That is very comforting to know. To know that the Gods won't be... not obsoleted per se, but, lose power or influence in the face of technology and thus we won't lose our connection to them or their power. To the not as faithful or trusting person, this might be a 'Wait, they have advanced technology or at least know of it or where it might be found... and they're not giving it to us? Bad Gods!'"
Anyway.
That's why he is so tyrannical and domineering over the Skaven. And that is why the Skaven are able to/allowed to have advanced tech; because the Great Horned Rat judges that he has an adequate enough grip over their society such that the technology won't escape or be used without his oversight.
Or maybe that's backwards. Maybe the Skaven are just naturally good at developing technology -- the counterpart to the Dwarfs super-engineering race -- and the Horned Rat simply only allows them to advance in technology only so long as he is still in full control of them.
Or maybe the Great Horned Rat has nothing to do with their tech -- other than making sure that they can use dhar-tech without Chaos having a foothold on them, by being the Dark God that they worship -- and it was just a "Lessons Learned" from Nehekhara.
But, I liked the idea of a "Evil uplift attempt" theory instead. It makes the Great Horned Rat evil, somebody who decided to play with the daemon's tools for a reason, but still ultimately anti-Chaos. Though perhaps he'd probably be willing to even temporarily team-up with the existential threat that is Chaos, if he judges that he needs the short-term win or long-term gain against humans/elves/whomever more than he needs to never-work-with-Chaos. Very very realpolitik or ruthless. Chaos is the ultimate enemy, but if he can gain a win that gets him more territory or some other crucial advantage that would let him stand against Chaos better... well. ((In this, he would be acting just like the Chaos Gods act against each other; eternally willing to backstab each other for a gain. But he'd probably hate the comparison.))
Anyway.
The reason/motivation for this: Nehekhara fell, and maybe one of the lessons the Great Horned Rat learned from that was "Even if the Gods can roughly more-or-less get along and unite against threats... their mortal Cults might not be able to instantly respond easily. Even if the Gods do not jockey for power or position, their Cults will, and this will in turn ripple up to affect the Gods too; if nothing else because the strength or dominance of a God's cult will affect the God's power and thus their ability to fight Chaos and thus the Gods will care about that." Or perhaps some variant of, "The problem was that there was no one chief person in charge of things, who could have stopped everything, once they noticed the problem."
Or maybe it was just "The real problem was that we weren't controlling enough. We took too light a hand on our mortals, and this was the result! Next time, I'll create a fucking panopticon, that's what I'll do..."
And so hence his conclusion. The desire for control or domination over others may be the ultimate seed of all evil, perhaps. And what might lead a man, or a God, to evil is the belief that you know better than that lesson. Or just impatience or inability to play well with others.
So when Myrmidia and a few other Gods tried to start over again in Estalia or Tilea, tried to start shepherding or teaching another peoples, trying different ways, maybe teaching different lessons?
Well, the game-plan the Great Horned Rat was working from, was "Fine then, I'll do it myself!"
He wasn't going to teach Justice or Beauty or Chivalry or Mercy, and hope that this set of mortals would build a society able to stand up to Chaos and eventually a few millennia down the line maybe do something to beat them back a bit. No, he'd grab as much power from the others, and try a more domineering regime.
Raise a few select mortals to immortal status, whether that be to Council of 13 or Verminlord. The true believers. Not just true believers in something like "The innate greatness of the Great Horned Rat" or something self-gratifying like that. No no no. True believers in either "We think the Great Horned Rat, no matter his methods or means, is correct in how you have to fight or what you have to do to survive or to win" or "We have to beat Chaos, or at minimum create a civilization strong enough to stalemate Chaos, and this is The Only Way(TM). Or if not 'The Only Way', then at least it is the best way that the Great Horned Rat has seen, and we agree, even if it is a sucky path. And so we're in this. We're ride-or-die with him, forever."
Repurpose some Old One Spawning Pool technology or Spawning Pool mechanics or magics, or maybe fleshwarping magics, into creating Breeders. Work out ways to use dhar and warpstone, the tools of the enemy. Perhaps work on ways to try to claw away the Chaos Gods conceptual dominance over, e.g., plagues and stuff; or maybe you aren't trying for something esoteric and tricky here, maybe you simply have Clan Pestilens because you yourself were a God with knowledge of technology and biological sciences or fleshwarping and it simply means that you got both Clan Moulder and Clan Pestilens as a result.
Maybe corrupt some Dwarfs or Kobolds into Skaven. Or maybe they were always Skaven, a race of animals serving or being watched over by one of the Old Ones' creations, and you simply turned them from pre-historic Skaven race to current-type Skaven Empire-Skavens.
Then, once you have your society and your control over society... you spread into the underground passageways and Hedge-esque places, too. Stake and occupy territory. Hold ground. Etc.
Interestingly, this could also be why the Great Horned Rat is okay or at least sanguine about the constant civil wars in Skaven society; because so long as the Megacorps Clans, or Clan-like structures, are in place and loyal to him... it's more-or-less fine to him who holds power, so long as they're not too much of a fuck-up. The real threat is heresy/apostasy. The real threat is not civil war -- in a civil war, all that changes is the mortal boss, same as the old boss, not the God boss -- but revolution. Of people getting the idea of not-serving-the-Great-Rat-at-all.
Constant civil war is acceptable or at least something he can put up with, especially if he can crack the whip when the time really matters. A revolt against his strictures or his beliefs though? Especially if an ideology caught on and stuck? That would be very bad, because it would be an angle that the Chaos Gods would love; because it would provide leverage for them to pry open the Great Horned Rat's vise-grip on his people. Any prospective revolutionaries would be driven to extreme measures to overthrow the Skaven leaders or the Clan structure anyway; and if or when they can't use the Great Horned Rat's miracles, and if magic is hard to come by, and if the other Skaven have dhar-tech just like they do... where else are they going to find an edge? Nowhere else but the Chaos Gods. Even any revolutionaries with good intent... well, either they would have to adapt truly horrible guerilla warfare strategies, and keep at it for a long long time -- something that might fuck over their mentality and harden their hearts anyway -- or they'd turn to other patrons. Though Morghur would be an interesting alternative patron to turn to...
The only other way would be for a Skaven group or clan to flee somewhere isolated, and to get allies or be sheltered by humans/elves/dwarves/dragons/whatever. But they'd have to be sheltered or allied in pepetuity. And the Skaven Clans might see them as free targets to loot. Or Chaos might ponder at infiltrating them and usurping them and turning them against the rest of Skaven society anyway. Big risk, uncertain payoff. And you have to trust Skaven in the first place anyway. And convince your own people to trust and work with Skaven too.
Sometimes groups or peoples are just sort of screwed or stuck or in an unpleasant equilibrium like that, in Warhammer Fantasy. Some groups get "constant, grinding, decline from your golden age." Some get Malthusianism or "an awful Nash equilibrium" or "medieval Cyberpunk" -- Warpstonepunk? Dharpunk? -- or something.
Cathay and the Cathayan Dragons, by contrast, might be getting "They're territorial super-predators who... basically, are now forced to participate in a civilization at-large, rather than being solitary territorial super-predators." This means they're still territorial about Their Territory/Things, they just now consider their stuff to be people or political map or guilds or companies or monasteries of monks or cultural territory too. Which means that attempts to encroach upon their political or cultural sphere of influence, is psychologically seen as the equivalent of an attempt to encroach on a dragon's physical territory. Except since these are living people and entire cities or culture-groups we are dealing with... they organically compete and interact with each other anyway, as a matter of life and living. Which means it's not always an attempt to steal a Dragon's property. But sometimes it is, because it's a plausibly deniable way to do so! And sometimes it isn't. And the Dragons just have to deal with that to some extent; and the humans have to deal with the Dragons. And so, maybe things get a little bit Shadowrun-esque in Cathay. And also at the same time, the Dragons there are all related to each other, being descended from a dragon (and maybe his Old One wife or something?) so they're... I dunno if they'd consider each other somewhat familial or have increased rivalry instead, dunno. They've also been at this for thousands of years, and probably know they can't, or shouldn't, kill or fully dominate each other into the dirt even if they had a killing shot at the other; because killing or utterly defeating a sibling or rival would be bad in the long term. Socially and familial-y and political and strategically. But they're still territorial predators. And powerful and prideful. And etc. And also, their people live very ordered lives -- the use of Azyr is great for organizing things and making a bureacracy or centralization more efficient than in IRL! -- perhaps too ordered and conformity-esque, or too "we the Dragons know better what is good for you", as some of them inevitably turn to a God of Hope and ambition and Change in order to Change this equilibrium and so semi-habitually they have to purge Tzeentch cults that come about as a result of some bureaucrats or nobles scheming... And so Cathay has built up to a rough equilibrium of society, and magic and technology and population, that it can support when backed by the might of Dragons and the cleverness and magical know-how of Dragons. And also the downstream effects of such society too, not all of which are great (even if it weren't for any hypothetical theorized the-Dragons-are-somewhat-compete-y-with-each-other ideas) but, well, all nations or cultures or environments have tradeoffs and circumstances and you just live with it. That's life.
