Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
The broader point here could honestly be about half a dozen topics, but a discussion elsewhere about the nature and inherent moral standing of the Skaven from Warhammer Fantasy was what sparked this, so.
If you open up the Warhammer Fantasy wiki page on fandom.com, it paints a pretty strident picture;
So, as far as the Skaven go, let's take a moment to do some due diligence and make sure these books actually say these things, and if so, in what context. The observant among you might be looking at the thread title and have already figured the answer is 'no' and 'badly distorted', respectively, but it is too late, the exits have already been sealed, so sit down, shut up, and read on.
p.18-29 of Warhammer Armies: Skaven (7e) covers the 'History of the Skaven' chapter, and is semi-objective in tone, though it stresses that the truth is little-known; "As such, certainties are scant when dealing with Skaven history. Legend rather than recordings mark major events ... The few records maintained by Skaven are produced by individual clans and are so biased that they serve as propaganda at best." (p.18), and the wiki's statement appears nowhere in it. There are mentions of periods where an assembled council of what seem to be Grey Seers passed down a commandment for "... the Children of the Horned Rat to spread across the world, to multiply in the dark places, to gather strength." (p.18), and a time when the Council of Thirteen invoked the Horned Rat to halt civil war, whereupon he commanded that the war "... must cease. The Skaven must spread corruption in order to inherit the world and assure his full return." (p.25), and that afterwards infighting among the clans duly ceased, that "... once again the Children of the Horned Rat began to work towards their true destiny - mastery of the world." but while these make the outlook of Skaven leadership plain they're pretty quiet about the outlook of the average skaven in their tunnel.
p.38 and p.42 of WFRP 2e: Children of the Horned Rat are both from Ch.3, Skaven Society, which is again, semi-objective. Some topics it answers clearly, but information is couched in a, 'as best we can put together' tone that leaves many things open to interpretation; p.37 for instance notes that, "When food is scarce and space in their under-empire is at a premium, the Skaven have been known to stare death in the face with nary a flinch," and offers potential reasons why, but no objective truth. It also stresses the importance of the cultural element of the Skaven outlook; they are "raised in a turbulent society espousing survival above all other things. The methods Skaven use to survive are restricted only by the severity of their consequences, and even these repercussions are overlooked in the face of extreme danger." so it is not altogether hostile to the idea that the ambition and treachery of the Skaven is a matter of nurture rather than nature.
That aside, the wiki material up to the first citation is a semi-accurate summary of a broader idea; the book makes an interesting point about how centuries of playing the blame game seems to have rendered Skaven compulsively predisposed to believe that their own failures must be the result of external sabotage, but statements such as 'there is no such thing as pity, remorse, compassion, or cooperation' do not occur, nor does the bit about believing themselves a 'supreme master race'. There is, further in the chapter, the following excerpt; "The average Skaven knows little about the folk who walk the ground that roofs their warrens, but he hates them nonetheless. Men, Dwarfs, Elves, and any of the other terrestrial races are seen as competitors for the Skaven's birthright, mere obstacles to world domination. To rule the world, it must first be cleansed of these lesser races in order to make room for the Skaven hordes." but this is still not a statement of what every Skaven believes, so much as a general cultural attitude towards neighbouring species.
The supposed bit citing p.42 does partially show up, but in a subtly and importantly different form. The wiki has it that the Horned Rat is "... the embodiment of all things the Skaven are or ever will be," while CotHR instead puts it that the Horned rat, "... represents all things the Skaven are, or wish to be." That is, the Horned Rat does not embody all the Skaven are or can be, but rather is an ideal that they aspire to. It's an important distinction; the former is a thing of inherent nature, the latter is an active cultural effort.
So much for the falsehoods of an unreliable wiki.
So, what's the real Skaven outlook? Well, we have exhaustive portrayals of compulsively ambitious chronic backstabber Skaven, sure, but it pays to keep in mind who these Skaven are. Grey Seers, warlords, aspiring clan officers - these aren't the average Skaven, these are those Skaven who buy into the clan structure enough to have an official post within it, and who are trying to climb up to better and comfier posts, with softer footstool-minions. The clans dominate Skaven society, but, "Of all the teeming masses, only the worker dregs, the shiftless Skavenslaves, are more numerous than the Clanrats" (Warhammer Armies: Skaven (7e), p.34), and "The Under-Empire is run by slave labour. Skavenslaves perform all menial tasks, including mining, tunnelling, and food production. ... the majority of slaves are Skaven born into bondage, the lowest class of a hierarchical society. ... It is not unheard of for Skavenslaves to survive a battle, although this is inconvenient for overpopulated lairs. In desperate times the boldest of Skavenslaves may be granted a chance to become Clanrats." (ibid, p.36).
So, slaves make up the majority of Skaven population and the labour pool, enough that they outnumber the clans wholesale, there is a clear social division between even the lowest Clanrat and the slave population, and promoting Skavenslaves or granting them other forms of upward mobility is a desperate measure at best. The clans, then, can be likened to the aristocracy and standing army of the Under-Empire, with the whole rest of the Under-Empire, basically everything we would imagine as 'civilian' life, composed of Skavenslaves. The average Skaven is not a scheming warlord; the average Skaven is a slave.
What, then, is the character of this average Skaven? We largely don't know. Where published material explores the outlook of Skaven characters, it tends to, as you might expect, follow the kind of Skaven characters who are dramatically useful to somebody else's story, the kind of people who show up on a battlefield or as antagonists in a Gotrek & Felix novel or the like. We know a fair bit about what your average Imperial or Bretonnian or Kislevite farmer or merchant or craftsman is like, because there are novels and RPG supplements which have cause to cover that to provide texture for a story to move through in the Empire or Bretonnia or Kislev. But there's vanishingly little of this with the Under-Empire, on account of it not being a terribly conducive environment for questing through, save perhaps as hazardous forays into enemy territory. One of the few accounts we do have comes from Thanquol's Doom, chapter 12.
If I have a broader point here, it's this: some fanwikis are reliable. Hell, some of them take it too far in the other direction - I'm given to understand that Bleach's fanwiki has evidentiary standards so strict that it won't reference elements of the plot and setting unless they're stated outright, no matter how heavily implied they are. The Warhammer wiki is not that. It's basically taken every edition's material, smushed them all together with at best highly opinionated paraphrasing and the approximate reading comprehension of a mouldy turnip. It is garbage that a raccoon would turn up its nose at.
For the sake of not coming off looking like a clown college dropout, don't blindly cite the fandom.com wiki for Warhammer. By all means open it up if you're looking to quickly check something (although to be honest even then I'd go to Lexicanum instead), but never take it at its word. See what sources it cites, and check them instead - the game's been out of print for closer to a decade than not at this point, there's enough copies of at least the army books floating around that this isn't unreasonable.
If you open up the Warhammer Fantasy wiki page on fandom.com, it paints a pretty strident picture;
Problem: basically all of this is horseshit, and it's far from the only time this wiki has lead people astray. Maybe ~70% of the time it's fine, at least for cursory references, but the rest of the time you get wild nonsense like assertions that Araby has friendly trade relations with Lizardmen based off a bizarre misreading of a story from the 6e Lizardmen army book (that one's still cited on the main page for Araby, mind you), or the bullshit about the Knights Panther being a bunch of bigots known for their fervour against mutants and Arabyans that's floating around... I forget exactly where, but I do remember the kerfuffle it caused in @Maugan Ra's Heirs of Sigmar GSRP here on SV, and hunting down the page in the Empire army book it cited to find it merely stated they picked up their distinctive heraldry from a crusade in Araby.
So, as far as the Skaven go, let's take a moment to do some due diligence and make sure these books actually say these things, and if so, in what context. The observant among you might be looking at the thread title and have already figured the answer is 'no' and 'badly distorted', respectively, but it is too late, the exits have already been sealed, so sit down, shut up, and read on.
p.18-29 of Warhammer Armies: Skaven (7e) covers the 'History of the Skaven' chapter, and is semi-objective in tone, though it stresses that the truth is little-known; "As such, certainties are scant when dealing with Skaven history. Legend rather than recordings mark major events ... The few records maintained by Skaven are produced by individual clans and are so biased that they serve as propaganda at best." (p.18), and the wiki's statement appears nowhere in it. There are mentions of periods where an assembled council of what seem to be Grey Seers passed down a commandment for "... the Children of the Horned Rat to spread across the world, to multiply in the dark places, to gather strength." (p.18), and a time when the Council of Thirteen invoked the Horned Rat to halt civil war, whereupon he commanded that the war "... must cease. The Skaven must spread corruption in order to inherit the world and assure his full return." (p.25), and that afterwards infighting among the clans duly ceased, that "... once again the Children of the Horned Rat began to work towards their true destiny - mastery of the world." but while these make the outlook of Skaven leadership plain they're pretty quiet about the outlook of the average skaven in their tunnel.
p.38 and p.42 of WFRP 2e: Children of the Horned Rat are both from Ch.3, Skaven Society, which is again, semi-objective. Some topics it answers clearly, but information is couched in a, 'as best we can put together' tone that leaves many things open to interpretation; p.37 for instance notes that, "When food is scarce and space in their under-empire is at a premium, the Skaven have been known to stare death in the face with nary a flinch," and offers potential reasons why, but no objective truth. It also stresses the importance of the cultural element of the Skaven outlook; they are "raised in a turbulent society espousing survival above all other things. The methods Skaven use to survive are restricted only by the severity of their consequences, and even these repercussions are overlooked in the face of extreme danger." so it is not altogether hostile to the idea that the ambition and treachery of the Skaven is a matter of nurture rather than nature.
That aside, the wiki material up to the first citation is a semi-accurate summary of a broader idea; the book makes an interesting point about how centuries of playing the blame game seems to have rendered Skaven compulsively predisposed to believe that their own failures must be the result of external sabotage, but statements such as 'there is no such thing as pity, remorse, compassion, or cooperation' do not occur, nor does the bit about believing themselves a 'supreme master race'. There is, further in the chapter, the following excerpt; "The average Skaven knows little about the folk who walk the ground that roofs their warrens, but he hates them nonetheless. Men, Dwarfs, Elves, and any of the other terrestrial races are seen as competitors for the Skaven's birthright, mere obstacles to world domination. To rule the world, it must first be cleansed of these lesser races in order to make room for the Skaven hordes." but this is still not a statement of what every Skaven believes, so much as a general cultural attitude towards neighbouring species.
The supposed bit citing p.42 does partially show up, but in a subtly and importantly different form. The wiki has it that the Horned Rat is "... the embodiment of all things the Skaven are or ever will be," while CotHR instead puts it that the Horned rat, "... represents all things the Skaven are, or wish to be." That is, the Horned Rat does not embody all the Skaven are or can be, but rather is an ideal that they aspire to. It's an important distinction; the former is a thing of inherent nature, the latter is an active cultural effort.
So much for the falsehoods of an unreliable wiki.
So, what's the real Skaven outlook? Well, we have exhaustive portrayals of compulsively ambitious chronic backstabber Skaven, sure, but it pays to keep in mind who these Skaven are. Grey Seers, warlords, aspiring clan officers - these aren't the average Skaven, these are those Skaven who buy into the clan structure enough to have an official post within it, and who are trying to climb up to better and comfier posts, with softer footstool-minions. The clans dominate Skaven society, but, "Of all the teeming masses, only the worker dregs, the shiftless Skavenslaves, are more numerous than the Clanrats" (Warhammer Armies: Skaven (7e), p.34), and "The Under-Empire is run by slave labour. Skavenslaves perform all menial tasks, including mining, tunnelling, and food production. ... the majority of slaves are Skaven born into bondage, the lowest class of a hierarchical society. ... It is not unheard of for Skavenslaves to survive a battle, although this is inconvenient for overpopulated lairs. In desperate times the boldest of Skavenslaves may be granted a chance to become Clanrats." (ibid, p.36).
So, slaves make up the majority of Skaven population and the labour pool, enough that they outnumber the clans wholesale, there is a clear social division between even the lowest Clanrat and the slave population, and promoting Skavenslaves or granting them other forms of upward mobility is a desperate measure at best. The clans, then, can be likened to the aristocracy and standing army of the Under-Empire, with the whole rest of the Under-Empire, basically everything we would imagine as 'civilian' life, composed of Skavenslaves. The average Skaven is not a scheming warlord; the average Skaven is a slave.
What, then, is the character of this average Skaven? We largely don't know. Where published material explores the outlook of Skaven characters, it tends to, as you might expect, follow the kind of Skaven characters who are dramatically useful to somebody else's story, the kind of people who show up on a battlefield or as antagonists in a Gotrek & Felix novel or the like. We know a fair bit about what your average Imperial or Bretonnian or Kislevite farmer or merchant or craftsman is like, because there are novels and RPG supplements which have cause to cover that to provide texture for a story to move through in the Empire or Bretonnia or Kislev. But there's vanishingly little of this with the Under-Empire, on account of it not being a terribly conducive environment for questing through, save perhaps as hazardous forays into enemy territory. One of the few accounts we do have comes from Thanquol's Doom, chapter 12.
Which paints a pretty clear picture of the average Skaven slave-warrior as a dupe who looks forward to a heaven of safety and abundant food, rather than a scheming black-heart aspiring to better themselves in the rat race of clan politics, or even to a heaven of getting to boss underlings about.
If I have a broader point here, it's this: some fanwikis are reliable. Hell, some of them take it too far in the other direction - I'm given to understand that Bleach's fanwiki has evidentiary standards so strict that it won't reference elements of the plot and setting unless they're stated outright, no matter how heavily implied they are. The Warhammer wiki is not that. It's basically taken every edition's material, smushed them all together with at best highly opinionated paraphrasing and the approximate reading comprehension of a mouldy turnip. It is garbage that a raccoon would turn up its nose at.
For the sake of not coming off looking like a clown college dropout, don't blindly cite the fandom.com wiki for Warhammer. By all means open it up if you're looking to quickly check something (although to be honest even then I'd go to Lexicanum instead), but never take it at its word. See what sources it cites, and check them instead - the game's been out of print for closer to a decade than not at this point, there's enough copies of at least the army books floating around that this isn't unreasonable.
Last edited:
