This was not a romance option. It was almost certainly not a conventional romance even by the extremely strained definitions I've used for this project.
And yet, as a sign of how much someone was
loved it suffers few rivals indeed.
I can but do as our god commands.
Lady Magister Gray, Saint of Ranald
It is a wonderful day in Skavenblight, and the Council of Thirteen are horrible rats.
That lasted for a very long time. Millenia, even.
And then one day, it wasn't.
It starts with a bang. An Eshin Sorceror is seen in public, already a rare event, and they approach the Black Pillar. There is excitement, as while it has been centuries since the last successful challenger to the Council of Thirteen, this is a far more qualified challenger than has tried in that time. Assuming they don't explode on touching the Black Pillar's warpstone, of course. And they don't. The Black Pillar explodes instead, tearing the symbolic heart of the Council of Thirteen's rule out, killing the 12th Councillor who was head of Clan Eshin, and proceeding a wave of detonating warpstone across the city, in generators, contraptions, defenses. Assassins strike. The Skaven leadership is not decapitated, though; the strikes seem random, leaving their structure of command pockmarked with inconvenient but manageable holes. The only other member of the Thirteen to die is the current representative of Pestilens. If not for the very public nature of how this started, Clan Eshin might have faced annihilation, but the situation is too confused.
The Clans gather their defenses and prepare for the enemy who must surely be among them. But the enemy is not. In the swamp, red banners are raised. Armies appear. Most are also Skaven, but not all. Here and there is a battery of Imperial cannon, a contingent of Tilean crossbowmen or pikes. Clan Mors and its allies, once slain, now reborn, march to war upon Skavenblight.
The Horned Rat's rage is legendary, but it is the Horned Rat, and its rage is not terribly well-channeled, with many more Skaven leadership falling to its wrath leaving more holes in their leadership. Still, the armies of Skavenblight march to meet the foe, for the city has no walls in the normal sense, being far too ramshackle in nature. The oldest weapon of the Skaven is turned against them again. Hundreds, even thousands, betray the old order for Clan Mors. A plan worked on for more than a century is carried off, and if it does not go smoothly in every aspect, it only spreads more confusion and fear in the process. In desperation, Skreech Verminking itself is summoned to lead the army.
The daemon prince of the Horned Rat is met by a human in a grey cloak and a tall hat. One who has no face, about whom the mists of the swamp in morning curl in a loving caress. But the Horned Rat knows who this is, even if no mortal can quite seem to remember. She is the leader of Mors now, the avatar of vengeance for a Clan abandoned by its god and its race, and the very fact of her nameless, faceless nature as she passes unseen and unnoticed was part of why so many Eshin chose to join her, and considered a sign of her near-divinity among many of her other furred followers. After all, their new god prowls unseen.
"The Skaven will serve the Horned Rat for eternity!"
"They were never yours. Qrech taught me that."
And as Skreech Verminking falls under one of the finest Dwarven blades made in the last millenia, the Horned Rat finds itself sitting at a table, facing a man who always smiles, never blinks, and has every ace that has ever existed up his sleeve. And in a very real sense, the Horned Rat has already lost.
