Well, the Imperium is at least a *little* less backstabby, though that may go hand-in-hand with the lower social mobility
You Are Wrong About Skaven Morality, or, Stop Citing The Warhammer Wiki You %*$%'s
- Thread starter Imrix
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Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired
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I sadly admit I used to be one of those people, when I started in on this universe I trusted the wiki wholeheartedly because it looked well sourced. When I finally had a chance to start actually reading those sources, relevantly in this case Children Of The Horned rat, boy oh boy was I in for a huge surprise in how much more open ended and ambiguous the universe was really meant to be.
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Just discovered this mini-essay/thread, for some reason some people thought it was something that perhaps I might be interested in. 
grimely
Twink Death Sufferer
More generally, you can just use the other wiki. Lexicanum – The Community Created Wargames Encyclopedia
It's far more stringent and better sourced.
It's far more stringent and better sourced.
16 characters
Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired
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Sure but for those without a hold of primary sources it has the disadvantage of having far less articles overall. I could be off but I think they have no coverage of say The Court Beneath: AKA the fate of the sons of Brettonia. I could be wrong but I think they also don't really trust the RPG as a primary source which I can get if I squint but like...IDK recent RPG stuff covering say The Moot and Lustria seems consistent with other canon and well written, etc.
Like yes accuracy is great but this article is tiny The Moot - Warhammer - The Old World - Lexicanum
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
It's the age-old choice. You can have great piles of content at your fingertips, at the cost of accuracy. You can have stringently fact-checked truth prepared by the work of others, but only a small bowl of it. Or you can put in the work yourself and find or assemble a large body of truths, at the cost of your own time.
The warhammer.fandom wiki will supply you with piles and piles of articles and wordcount, some significant percentage of which will be blithering horseshit. Lexicanum has a comparative paucity of content, but is more accurate. Or you can do the deep-dive of comparing the two's articles on a given topic and checking the citations to see what the truth is, if you've got hours to spend cross-referencing books rather than minutes opening a browser tab.
You can't have all three.
The warhammer.fandom wiki will supply you with piles and piles of articles and wordcount, some significant percentage of which will be blithering horseshit. Lexicanum has a comparative paucity of content, but is more accurate. Or you can do the deep-dive of comparing the two's articles on a given topic and checking the citations to see what the truth is, if you've got hours to spend cross-referencing books rather than minutes opening a browser tab.
You can't have all three.
Cloak&Dagger
Definitely Insane
Or you can go to 1d4chan and get Warhammer lore that is deliberately shit, and plenty of it! Who cares about the actual story when you can read an even more dramatized version of it?
It even has NSFW pictures!
🧠
Sworl
Sparky
As it happens, I've recently watched two youtube videos that address this very idea:
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- Mid-Atlantic
Though, of course, you can say the same of the Chaos-loving Norscan raider lord or the super-frothy Sigmarite Witch Hunter.
You could even say it about, say, dwarven kings, because while their society is a lot more likeable, damn but some of the things the dwarves get up to are fucked up psychologically, and the people in charge very much do have either a vested interest in keeping things that way, no surviving ability to imagine doing things otherwise, or both.
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my only interactions with this property have been through cultural osmosis, this website, and that fanwiki i now know to be unreliable.
it's like, i have irl friends excitedly-enthusiastic about warhammer, who'd tell me things about it or try to get me invested in it, but whenever i try to look anything up about it, it's all grimdark monolithic morality where there is no good anywhere or nothing to attatch oneself to. I just cant get invested in it. The one and only warhammer thing i've ever found that i've liked is the communist rat quest here on this site.
it's like, i have irl friends excitedly-enthusiastic about warhammer, who'd tell me things about it or try to get me invested in it, but whenever i try to look anything up about it, it's all grimdark monolithic morality where there is no good anywhere or nothing to attatch oneself to. I just cant get invested in it. The one and only warhammer thing i've ever found that i've liked is the communist rat quest here on this site.
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- Drachyench on Discord
Warhammer Fantasy suffers heavily from a lot of 40K fans treating it as 1:1 in themes, Factions being fantastical expies of 40k ones [or, at best, the reverse], that Vermintide takes place in the apocalyptic timeline, etc.
As a result it has a number of Flat Wrong fandom perceptions, such as the Empire being a fantastical Imperium lead by a bloodline of divine god-Emperors with a population kept in line by pro-human propaganda and fantastical Sigmar monotheism. Or the High Elves being an expy of Biel-Tan Eldar who just can't stop getting hard about the idea of eradicating the Empire & Bretonia to reclaim their old colonies. That Dawi conservatism is justified and right and the only bulwark against the coming darkness. That the Warp exists. Etcetera, etcetera.
This isn't to say there's nothing grim about WHFB or the like. But a lot of that grim (especially pre-8E) was from being a fantastical setting where the centric Human polity has already had its golden age and has started to get complacent. That unlike Mordor there is no one Evil Bad whom if defeated in a titanic battle of Good v Evil would shatter the hordes and bring ceaseless prosperity. It's polities v polities. There's some Churches that are good and humanitarian and Care For The People, and there are some Churches that care about their power and prestige over all other concerns.
As a result it has a number of Flat Wrong fandom perceptions, such as the Empire being a fantastical Imperium lead by a bloodline of divine god-Emperors with a population kept in line by pro-human propaganda and fantastical Sigmar monotheism. Or the High Elves being an expy of Biel-Tan Eldar who just can't stop getting hard about the idea of eradicating the Empire & Bretonia to reclaim their old colonies. That Dawi conservatism is justified and right and the only bulwark against the coming darkness. That the Warp exists. Etcetera, etcetera.
This isn't to say there's nothing grim about WHFB or the like. But a lot of that grim (especially pre-8E) was from being a fantastical setting where the centric Human polity has already had its golden age and has started to get complacent. That unlike Mordor there is no one Evil Bad whom if defeated in a titanic battle of Good v Evil would shatter the hordes and bring ceaseless prosperity. It's polities v polities. There's some Churches that are good and humanitarian and Care For The People, and there are some Churches that care about their power and prestige over all other concerns.
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- Georgia, US
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This sounds like you've been listening to too much fanon about Fantasy tbh.
Warhammer Fantasy isn't 40k, everyone is not equally awful and it's not nearly so consistently grimdark. The Order factions are all realistically flawed nations who despite their internal issues are still led by generally good people and stand by each other when it's needed most. When compared to the utter depravity of the Skaven, Dark Elves, Greenskins, and Chaos they might as well be Pure Good.
Some fans like to pretend otherwise (mostly the ones who are primarily influenced by 40k and bring that influence to Fantasy discussions) but at absolute worst Fantasy is moderately gray factions who are trying their best vs the darkest black imaginable. It's not at all devoid of nuanced factions to attach yourself to, essentially all the Order factions can qualify to one degree or another.
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- Location
- Drachyench on Discord
It's, in fact, one reason I'm kind of disappointed Nehekhara is getting lumped in with Destruction come Warhammer: Old World.
Don't get me wrong it's thousands of micro-nations of Undead each of whom are lead either officially via Divine Right rulers [who range the entire spectrum of such human rulers in terms of benevolence / malevolence, ambitions, etc] or unofficially via a Functionally Untouchable Priest caste. You can readily make arguments that they aren't a Force Of Good. But at the same time, barring good ol' Arkhan, they're generally all mortal in their behavior too. These aren't people who want to see the world burn because hahahaha fire crackle good. They don't throw people into a giant meteor-mouth that crashed on them and whispers dark urges in their minds.
They're...
Fairly mundane humanity. At its best and worst. Just locked in an immortality they did not want [or, in a monkey's paw kind of way, did] dealing with an absolute ecological collapse of their homeland and the succession crisis' you'd expect if every ruler in the Mediterranean from 1000 BCE to 0 CE suddenly found themselves resurrected at once. When they push north it's not to see the world turned to ash and corpse but because they're Kings and Queens and Princes and Princesses who see an opportunity to expand their borders or vie for more prestige back at home. Which see again "You can most definitely argue this Is Not Good / Ideal" but to go back to my previous post is not Grim Dark but simply Mundane Horrors with a fantastical bend.
Don't get me wrong it's thousands of micro-nations of Undead each of whom are lead either officially via Divine Right rulers [who range the entire spectrum of such human rulers in terms of benevolence / malevolence, ambitions, etc] or unofficially via a Functionally Untouchable Priest caste. You can readily make arguments that they aren't a Force Of Good. But at the same time, barring good ol' Arkhan, they're generally all mortal in their behavior too. These aren't people who want to see the world burn because hahahaha fire crackle good. They don't throw people into a giant meteor-mouth that crashed on them and whispers dark urges in their minds.
They're...
Fairly mundane humanity. At its best and worst. Just locked in an immortality they did not want [or, in a monkey's paw kind of way, did] dealing with an absolute ecological collapse of their homeland and the succession crisis' you'd expect if every ruler in the Mediterranean from 1000 BCE to 0 CE suddenly found themselves resurrected at once. When they push north it's not to see the world turned to ash and corpse but because they're Kings and Queens and Princes and Princesses who see an opportunity to expand their borders or vie for more prestige back at home. Which see again "You can most definitely argue this Is Not Good / Ideal" but to go back to my previous post is not Grim Dark but simply Mundane Horrors with a fantastical bend.
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
Well that fucking sucks. This is the first i've heard of it. Next they'll retcon Araby out entirely and say all that land is just Nehekharan, at this rate of simplifying things. Fucking idiots.
Pardon the off topic post. As a fan of Nehekhara, I'm not very happy to hear about this.
Pardon the off topic post. As a fan of Nehekhara, I'm not very happy to hear about this.
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16 characters
Sick and tired of being Sick and Tired
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- Alta California
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- They/Them
I apologize for my ignorance but can you please elaborate on this? Khorne, Slannesha and Nurgle, etc. exist but not the warp? Or do you just mean you don't think it's the same warp because of things like the old Nehekaran afterlife/ brettonian weirdness??
Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
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- Devon
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The Warp... may or may not exist in WHF. There's certainly a place where all the daemons etc. come from, and there's been hints around the edges that the WHF planet was at least partially seeded/terraformed/whatever by aliens (primarily in the Lizardman armies books), but I don't know if we've ever had a concrete 'yes the Warp exists exactly as it does in 40k'.
There's a popular fanon interpretation that WHF is just set on a planet that's in 40K, but that one's never been true, AFAIK.
There's a popular fanon interpretation that WHF is just set on a planet that's in 40K, but that one's never been true, AFAIK.
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
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Afaik, its a popular fanon interpretation among those that come into WHF via 40k. For 'solo' WHF fans, its never been popular and has in fact been disliked as it essentially consigns the WHF side of things to being a blip on the galactic scale game that is 40k.
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To be fair early Warhammer did have direct references to 40k (heck not even just early Warhammer- Total War Warhammer 3 is curated by GW and it has a literal chainsword as a unlockable item) and Chaos is essentially identical. It's obviously not canon but it's not just 40k fans trying to project their preferences onto Fantasy.
It relies on a fairly selective examination of the evidence and is ultimately incorrect but I can see why someone might come to the conclusion that they're in the same universe.
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I'm a bit confused on what you're saying here. Are you saying the Skaven aren't that bad, and that not all of them are conniving to be at the top?
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- Drachyench on Discord
It should be noted that they're called "Warp" because they use Warpstone / Wyrdstone, not because they are demonic weapons. Now admittedly you could vaguely argue that this is semantics as then "What is Warpstone?", but that in itself is iffy as Warpstone is. Uh. Not consistent across writers.
Ostensibly Warpstone is the remnants of the Polar Gates and fragments of Morrslieb. But it's also assorted meteors in general [being the cause of and main attraction to Mordheim]. It exists in natural deposits which can be mined [see Nagashizzar]. The point is that it's a sort of concentrated Stuff Of Magic. Which breaks down into various winds as it leaks from the remnants of the Polar Gates. Which for that matter have their own realms which are screwy but not. Like. The Warp itself. The Realms of Chaos are places where things get fucky but not the sort of infinite mirror plane of emotion represented by the Warp. Likewise there's a bunch of other stuff such as the various afterlife realms, whatever you want to call the 'universe' Age of Sigmar takes place in, etcetera.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Demonstratably yes, this is so. My larger point is that the warhammer.fandom wiki is garbage and should not be relied on for... anything, really.
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
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The thing that burns me up about the fandom.wiki vs lexicanum is that lex at least puts in the effort to cite individual sources in context with footnotes, whereas the fandom wiki just vomits text at you and then lists the sources at the bottom. So if you want to know where a particular datapoint comes from and you don't already know? Good fucking luck, here's a list, it might be in there.
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- Canada
Interesting. As someone who mostly knows skaven from Age of Sigmar (I have like 10k points of the bastards.) This s an interesting read since in aos they are generally portrayed as pretty universally terrible with their place in grand alliance chaos elevating them into a rat shaped threat to existence. Part of that is probably the high fantasy nature of the setting and part of that is the fact that the great horned rat seems to take a more direct role in corrupting and manipulating the skaven into being murderous ego maniacal sociopaths.
Edit: grabbed my 3rd edition battle tome from my bag, I had a league game against Beasts of Chaos Last week (Skaven Victory! 18/17) Here is how the book describes the Skaven in the intro:
"Then Skaven are malevolent Ratmen that plague nearly every corner of the mortal realms. Cruelly ingenious, completely megalomaniacal and entirely without compunction, they are determined that their verminous empires will one day rule Supreme over all.
Few beings in existence embody the rampant anarchy of Chaos more fully than the Skaven these unscupulous vermin worship the great horned rat a god of famine treachery and desolation, and spend their entire lives plotting their own selfish advancement..."
I will say personally that I prefer them to be basically pure evil since in my mind mostly because I like to imagine them mostly as objects of satire showing off the foolish and destructive nature of blind self interest and superiority (both superiority of the self and superiority of the in group or tribe). They are Patrick Bateman an obvious monster camouflaged among the boardroom, Johnny Rico and his school Pals slowly becoming disposable fodder and SS commanders etc. Seeing them as basically walking political cartoons leaves them with less room for nuance but personally I think that would take away from their sting.
Edit: grabbed my 3rd edition battle tome from my bag, I had a league game against Beasts of Chaos Last week (Skaven Victory! 18/17) Here is how the book describes the Skaven in the intro:
"Then Skaven are malevolent Ratmen that plague nearly every corner of the mortal realms. Cruelly ingenious, completely megalomaniacal and entirely without compunction, they are determined that their verminous empires will one day rule Supreme over all.
Few beings in existence embody the rampant anarchy of Chaos more fully than the Skaven these unscupulous vermin worship the great horned rat a god of famine treachery and desolation, and spend their entire lives plotting their own selfish advancement..."
I will say personally that I prefer them to be basically pure evil since in my mind mostly because I like to imagine them mostly as objects of satire showing off the foolish and destructive nature of blind self interest and superiority (both superiority of the self and superiority of the in group or tribe). They are Patrick Bateman an obvious monster camouflaged among the boardroom, Johnny Rico and his school Pals slowly becoming disposable fodder and SS commanders etc. Seeing them as basically walking political cartoons leaves them with less room for nuance but personally I think that would take away from their sting.
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In fact, the opposite may have more support; I keep hearing about an official short-story that had the entire 40K universe inside of a snowglobe on top of some Imperial Magister's desk.