[Mapping the Trench: Intrigue, 87+19+4(Library: Skaven)=106]
You slip through the Skaven defences easily enough and enter the heart of the Karak. The Cavern of Stars was once a crystal cave that the Dwarves laboured for generations to transform its natural beauty to one of the most beautiful places in the Old World - or so go the stories. It was also the place where the Skaven first emerged in Eight Peaks, the floor falling away to reveal a sea of rats that poured in every direction, for the Cavern of Stars was the intersection of the Underway from the Citadel and five of the Karags. Now every crystal is long gone, and there's no telling why. Did they see some industrial purpose for them? Did they decide they like them, and a thousand rats each stole a piece of beauty for themself? Or did they shatter it simply because they didn't make it?
You shake the thought lose and climb down through the missing floor into the Trench. Your progress is slow as you avoid the teeming masses of Skaven going every which way, and there are some rooms and even entire segments you can't enter without breaking your Substance of Shadow on the sickly green light within, but over several days you're able to map the heart of Clan Mors' domain. And it's not just information you gather, as when you lurk for that long you learn where the most important parts are, and lingering in them allows, every so often, for opportunity to fall into your lap.
[Rolling...]
That the Skaven had an entire internal economy was still bizarre to you, but the proof is right before your eyes as in their chittering language they haggle and bicker and exchange tiny shards of warpstone as currency, the tension in the air not stopping them for a moment. Most everything that changes hands seems to be powered or enhanced by warpstone, and just because you might be unharmed by Dhar doesn't mean you're going to start carrying it around. Two adjoining stalls draws your attention and you watch in sickened fascination as a cart of fresh corpses is unloaded from one battle or another, and the corpses are hauled over to a slab for a freshly-sharpened cleaver to be applied. On one side, fresh meat is delivered to bubbling soup bowls and skewers danging above a fire; on the other, the armour the rat was wearing is piled up to be sold to some new wearer, still sticky with the blood of the previous owner. Hideous, yet efficient.
A particularly large rat is currently on the slab, and the rat that pulled the cart is having a loud altercation with the one that wields the cleaver over it. You approach, keeping your distance from the cooking fires and trying to angle yourself for a clearer view. You thought so - though it's covered with leather bindings to keep it in place on a body it was never meant to protect, that's definitely Dwarven craftsmanship. 'World's Edge Armour', the Skaven call it. Dwarves have a variety of names, each more outraged than the last. Gromril plate from a fallen Ironbreaker, clumsily adapted to protect a Stormvermin or Chieftain of note. No wonder the two rats thought it worth fighting over.
As the cart-puller learns why he probably shouldn't have started a fight with a Skaven already holding a cleaver, you cut the straps and roll the corpse out of the armour. By the time the butcher looks up from his latest work, you're gone, and so is the armour he just killed for.
