Discussion Skaven - Good, Bad or just Incompetent?

I want to see how you all view skaven so that i can be as truthful to your image of them as i can in my story. if you vote, just drop a quick comment to explain so that i can understand.

(and yes, i know skaven are "bad" but i want to see your views on them as a species - are they the perfect society? is it amazing that they still exist?)

Good, bad, or incompetent at what exactly ?
they are good at inventing, bad at empathy, and incompetent at safety safety testing.

I have chosen good. They aren't incompetent, their magic is destructive and their technology while faulty still rivals the greatest that men and dwarfs have. They're cruel, and due to breeding habits and over population they have an everyone is expendable attitude, which allows them faster, and more accurate testing on magic, potions, weapons, etc. Their genetic research alone disqualifies incompetence.

Bowser said:

Their genetic research alone disqualifies incompetence.

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Hmm.. research sounds like the wrong word...more like "hey, lets beat up the smallest one here and inject him with this strange glowing rock. something interesting might happen..."

.... it's more trial and error....
mostly error, but there are a Lot of test subjects.
...so.... SCIENCE!

...voluntary? Oh, of course. Me and my rats volunteered them...

oi, @Bowser stop liking and start commenting!

I'd say incompetent.
Quantity has a quality of its own, but Skaven rely almost entirely on it.
Let's swarm enemies because we can afford heavy losses.
Let's test bizarre tech and use it extensively, because when things go wrong we can afford heavy losses.
Let's cut each other's throat because we are deeply egocentric, even if cooperation could improve the chance to dominate as a race.

Their frenetic rate of reproduction balances the massive losses they suffer, tnx to their total incompetence. If they were more united, they'd rule the world.

Their incompetence overshadows their badness.

Games Workshop does not do anything that's not cranked up to 11 (out of a possible 5).

Example: Grimgor, the Black Orc is a badass and the Skaven leaders treat their minions as being very expendable.

So when Grimgor goes on vacation he'll enter a Skaven tunnel and start slaughtering every rat in sight. The Skaven leaders don't want to waste good troops on him so they sacrifice tens of thousands of slaves. That challenges my ability to suspend my disbelief on this fantasy world. The Skaven use clever tricks on everyone but Grimgor. Collapse the tunnel on him. Poison the tunnel. seal the tunnel on either side and let him starve, or if you ARE going to sacrifice hordes of slaves have them gradually fall back in the direction of some subterranean monster or enemy you want Grimgor to take on.

If the Skaven truly have infinite reserves they should be able to take over the world but their infighting is too much. Besides sheer numbers, they have amazing monsters, adequate magic, and amazing technology. They have assassins with thousands of kills under their belt. They have hordes of shock troops as well as sickeningly elite troops. Somehow for centuries on end, the Skaven rat-eat-rat society is perfectly balanced on a tiny platform. Slightly more cooperation and they win. Slightly less cooperation and they destroy themselves completely.

Orcs and Goblins self sabotage themselves, but they form out of spores. What's your excuse Skaven?

Otzi'mandias said:

oi, @Bowser stop liking and start commenting!

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If I weren't always busy I would comment more. Usually either at work, or out with the girlfriend or friends. So like is the better option for me in most cases.

Killer Angel said:

I'd say incompetent.
Quantity has a quality of its own, but Skaven rely almost entirely on it.
Let's swarm enemies because we can afford heavy losses.
Let's test bizarre tech and use it extensively, because when things go wrong we can afford heavy losses.
Let's cut each other's throat because we are deeply egocentric, even if cooperation could improve the chance to dominate as a race.

Their frenetic rate of reproduction balances the massive losses they suffer, tnx to their total incompetence. If they were more united, they'd rule the world.

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I agree but consider...
-their lack of organisation makes it so much harder for other races to topple them. eg, beat up sigmar (yup, not that easy, i know) and the sigmarians will fall apart. Beat up Screech Verminking, and the next powerful rat will take over, and no-one will care.
-

Scalenex said:

Orcs and Goblins self sabotage themselves, but they form out of spores. What's your excuse Skaven?

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Probably their racial brain has been cooked by warpstone...

Otzi'mandias said:

I agree but consider...
-their lack of organisation makes it so much harder for other races to topple them. eg, beat up sigmar (yup, not that easy, i know) and the sigmarians will fall apart. Beat up Screech Verminking, and the next powerful rat will take over, and no-one will care.

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That's true to a certain point.
Organized races may suffer a lot if they lose their main leader, but their organization help them to resist the hard times.
HE weren't wiped away after Caledor's death; Dwarfs survived the loss of Grimnir.

Problem I find with Skaven is that they never go for half measures. Nearly every single Skaven plot hatched is world ending or will drastically alter the status quo (well until End Times when they then blew up the moon, destroyed a lot of the non-army book races, and wiped out a lot of Dwarfs, e.t.c.) which means that in the fluff they have to lose or face some form of massive setback that causes their doomy weapon of doom to not work correctly.

I'd say it's also this never by halves attitude that causes them to appear incompetent and for their weapons to often completely fail. For a Skryre engineer, your invention must be as powerful as possible. Sure, it's more effective to make better weapons and armour, but there's no glory or show of utter power and devastation. Of course, this just means that they focus on making something more visually killy without little thought to reliability or safety (well, Warpstone /is/ one of the most powerful fuel sources going...but is more random than a Tzeentch convention.)

To me, Skaven are desperate to prove themselves over the faceless vermintide of their society and to do that to most require the most daring of plots and the most devastating of weapons. They are cursed with forever trying to grasp at new heights whilst every single fellow around them is trying to topple them and reach the new height themselves. Then some dwarf with a mohawk shows up and ruins everything.

Burn the Heretics! Purge the filthy rats! Build a wall so no more can get in and expel the ones that are already in our land!

On a less rhetorical note, I don't know much about skaven lore aside from what comes across in the Lizardmen sources, and by sources I mean what I have read in the Lustria campaign book about clan pestilens trying to take over the entire continent of Lustria. Plus the wiki and the skaven lore video from arch warhammer.

I never really imagine the skaven as "good" except in maybe a very nasty, anti-hero sort of way. Incompetent yes, especially in a hilarious and dark-nasty pinky-and-the-brain sort of way. Even though there isn't much skaven lore in the Lustria book one thing that came across to me was the genuine malice and hatred that the skaven have for the rest of the world. All the other races (humans, dwarfs, even the orcs) get to live up on the surface with the sun and the green trees and stuff, but the skaven are relegated to living down in the dirt. They are tiny, downtrodden, weak, cowardly, no genuinely good qualities that make them stand out in comparison to every other race. Gives them a giant short-man complex, they REALLY want to prove they are better than everyone else. The skaven would like nothing less than to get rid of all the lumbering surface-dwellers and take over their lands and livelihood for themselves, turning them into slaves and live the good life as the rightful rulers of the world, because they deserve it. They will do ANYTHING to get to this end, even if it means killing off half their comrades to get their, or selling their souls to forces beyond their entire comprehension, like Nurgle in the case of clan Pestilens. Makes me wonder if any other of the skaven have sworn their loyalty to other gods, like Khorne for the assassins who have literally killed thousands of targets in their lifetime, or the changer-of-ways for the really sneaky and scheming skaven masterminds.

Getting sidetracked. I vote bad, because at the end of the day I love how the lore paints them: as a threat that no one (except maybe the dwarfs) truly understands the scope of the danger they pose to the world, and their undying malice that would wipe out the rest of the world's races if they paused backstabbing each other long enough to do it. And because in the good, the bad, and the ugly movie, the bad was an awesome dude and could totally have been a skaven.

Warden said:

On a less rhetorical note, I don't know much about skaven lore aside from what comes across in the Lizardmen sources, and by sources I mean what I have read in the Lustria campaign book about clan pestilens trying to take over the entire continent of Lustria. Plus the wiki and the skaven lore video from arch warhammer.

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Even if you never plan to paint a single rat (I actually painted a few rats, ZOMBIE rats) it's worth opening an account on the Under-Empire just to read their awesome fluff. I cross-posted some stories on U-E when they involve Skaven a lot. Both Bob and I have entered the Skaven short story contests occasionally. We even each won one!

Your big paragraph describes the general Skaven condition well, but Skaven are not homogenous zombies. There are a lot of stories involving Skaven who show loyalty and compassion to at least a few other Skaven, if not the race as a whole. Regardless of the level of social standing the Skaven have, any friendship based story tends to resemble a prison setting story where individuals band together to make the best of a terrible situation. Tiny acts of goodness struggle to mean anything in Skaven society but their tragic nature makes for good stories. Clan Ostrel, the clan I created for my Southlands fluff bucks the Skaven trend. By Skaven standards they are loyal and tight knit. The bulk of the clan's members are exiles who felt joining Clan Ostrel was better than being killed for some real or imagined slight against a peer or superior. Still extremely treacherous by Human standards but at least I can wrap my head around them.

Generally Skaven are NOT associated with Nurgle. The Horned Rat is like a new challenger against the Big Four Chaos lords. There have been fluff pieces involving "blasphemous" Skaven turning to Nurgle. There is also some fluff speculation on whether the Horned Rat and/or Nurgle are manipulating the other, but generally the two disease freaks are not connected. The Warhammer world is such a horrible place to live, why have one supernatural bringer of pestilence when you can have TWO.

Scalenex said:

Even if you never plan to paint a single rat (I actually painted a few rats, ZOMBIE rats) it's worth opening an account on the Under-Empire just to read their awesome fluff.

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It's really quite an extensive library of stuff there. I should know, I had to fix all the hundreds of broken links for the completed works and campaign story lists!

But back on topic. Pestilens have been hinted to be Nurgle worshippers but have also at times acted directly against Nurgle. It is certainly very suspicious how they managed to survive in Lustria by becoming diseased like that. But in any case, if I remember correctly they are at least buddied up with Nurgle in AoS.

Otherwise as far as the other Chaos Gods go, i'd say the most likely Clans that would turn to each God are:
Khorne: Clan Mors (possibly the most fighty and brutal Skaven Clan going. Their armour is bright red, their leaders are combat monsters, and Queek really likes claiming heads/skulls of his enemies.
Tzeentch: Clan Moulder (lots of mutation and flesh crafting...and that's just the Master Moulders themselves!)
Slaanesh: Erm...hm, not sure about what particular Clan would lean towards him/her/it. Though there is one Clan whose name escapes me who are so wealthy with Warpstone that they bling themselves out in the stuff and even brand themselves with the stuff. Lunatics.

I suppose the incompetent argument could use some more fuel. Let's see, there was a Grey Seer in the book Warblade or Thanquol in Grey Seer or Sharpwit's back up plan in Headtaker

Scalenex said:

Even if you never plan to paint a single rat (I actually painted a few rats, ZOMBIE rats) it's worth opening an account on the Under-Empire just to read their awesome fluff. I cross-posted some stories on U-E when they involve Skaven a lot. Both Bob and I have entered the Skaven short story contests occasionally. We even each won one!

Your big paragraph describes the general Skaven condition well, but Skaven are not homogenous zombies. There are a lot of stories involving Skaven who show loyalty and compassion to at least a few other Skaven, if not the race as a whole. Regardless of the level of social standing the Skaven have, any friendship based story tends to resemble a prison setting story where individuals band together to make the best of a terrible situation. Tiny acts of goodness struggle to mean anything in Skaven society but their tragic nature makes for good stories. Clan Ostrel, the clan I created for my Southlands fluff bucks the Skaven trend. By Skaven standards they are loyal and tight knit. The bulk of the clan's members are exiles who felt joining Clan Ostrel was better than being killed for some real or imagined slight against a peer or superior. Still extremely treacherous by Human standards but at least I can wrap my head around them.

Generally Skaven are NOT associated with Nurgle. The Horned Rat is like a new challenger against the Big Four Chaos lords. There have been fluff pieces involving "blasphemous" Skaven turning to Nurgle. There is also some fluff speculation on whether the Horned Rat and/or Nurgle are manipulating the other, but generally the two disease freaks are not connected. The Warhammer world is such a horrible place to live, why have one supernatural bringer of pestilence when you can have TWO.

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Thanks for the link, always more reading to do!

I like the idea of seeing the skaven as "tragic heroes." Showing loyalty in their own way, even in probably the worst society the warhammer world has to offer.

I agree that the skaven are not normally associated with Nurgle because they have their own horned god, main reason why I consider the plague-rats to be aligned with Nurgle instead is the line out of the Lustria book pg 62:

They have risen from the nameless band that penetrated the jungles of Lustria, the majority of its members succumbing to the tropical disease running rampant through the Lizardmen's realm, until the last remaining Skaven sealed their pact with a new god. They embraced their own new plagues and maladies as gifts, sicknesses so vile that they were able to shrug off the jungle-born plagues with ease.

Cool bit of fluff showing at least at the beginning clan Pestilens was all for the grandfather Nurgle, at least at one point. I also like the idea that Nurgle and the Horned Rat are actually trying to backstab each other for control. I could totally see plague-rats backstabbing each other (and Nurgle) if it suited them, and if the Horned Rat offered them a better deal...

Y'ttar Scaletail said:

Slaanesh: Erm...hm, not sure about what particular Clan would lean towards him/her/it. Though there is one Clan whose name escapes me who are so wealthy with Warpstone that they bling themselves out in the stuff and even brand themselves with the stuff. Lunatics.

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Maybe... Slaanesh doesn't need followers from skaven necessarily? I mean, the skaven reproduce faster, more frequently, and in greater quantities than every other warhammer race combined... I can't imagine that Slaanesh would disapprove.

@Warden, you managed to somehow miss the very point I was expecting you to make! But hey, the more unexpectedly complex lines of arguement the better.

Theres a bit of tension between the Horned Rat and Nurgle because, well, Skaven move up ranks by killing the weakest rat, and with slaanesh gone, Nurgle is the weakest rat.

So maybe a bit of backstabbing there, but on the same note, Archaon was a bit of a dick to the Great Horned Rat when he was given Dorghar 2.0 so maybe Archaon is the next target.

Or maybe being part of Chaos causes the Great Horned Rat to mature as a god and settle down on upgrading Skaven and laughing at their failings.

I have no idea.

I like rats. They are cute, and their natural behaviours are funny-endearing. They are good-efficient parents, and they benefit from and enjoy living in a simple society-colony. They may not share food in the sense of talking it back home to the wife and kids, but the colony members share the same trails-haunts and get the same food sources, apparently without fighting over them.

Even very young rats are good at being rats and good at making the most of a difficult existence.

And those are wild / feral / pest rats I am referring to. Pet rats are pretty dull and mere shadows of their free cousins.

Rats are also the scariest of the not-wanted-around the house animals that I catch by hand, and I regularly relocate 2 metre long pythons. I don't wear gloves for snakes. Gloves for rats are barely adequate. Even mice can bite right through my fingernail. The last time I pinned a big rat bare handed, I had the "it's easier to hold the tail of a tiger than to let go" experience because there was nothing within arm's reach that I could use as a effective weapon.

Anyhow. I like rats, I respect rats. And when they breed up in big enough numbers to cause damage or my wife notices, I poison or relocate them.

I like rats. Scalenex has heard the following story, so he can stop reading now.

When a family of rats make a nest in the hen coop, I can block the door, put on my gloves, catch as many as I can and put them in a little cage. The next day I take them on an adventure and release them in the wild on my way to work.

On occasion, my catching hasn't been gentle enough, and one has died from injuries later. I can put six cute little rats (mouse size, barely weaned) into the cage, and in the morning there will be five cute little rats. Sometimes there are little tufts of hair left. The remainder don't seem to be much bigger than before.

I stop liking rats for the few weeks after that happens.

I haven't used this experience in my writings about Skaven yet, but it is in the back of my mind.

I can't tell this story without taking about crows (so wake up @The Sauric Ace). I don't like crows. They eat my baby chickens when given the chance, steal eggs and even bully the larger chickens. My main gripe is that they are way too noisy for me to sleep through. They are magnificent and loyal birds, though, and way too smart to be easy to remove. I certainly respect them.

One time when I was releasing rats for a wilderness adventure, one ran the wrong way, away from the long grass and across the road. 2 cars missed it, but before it got to the far side a crow swooped down from nowhere, picked it up in its beak and flew with it back towards my house. If, as I now suspect, the two species are colluding, life for me and my chickens is going to get tougher.

In the scheme of WHFB naughty/niceness I consider Skaven to be firmly neutral. And like rats, chickens and crows, I think they are exceptionally good at being themselves. I have two big Skaven related stories planned in the Bob saga (books 6, 7 and 9, if I ever get that far) one where they are a cunning but subtle foe, the other where they are pragmatic enough to be reliable allies - both situations are in scope of their nature, and more interesting to me than mad destroyers. We've got orcs for that.

tl;dr - this whole discussion is a waste of time. We should just ask @SlanntaClause which list they are on.

The whole Idea about skaven is at both time kind of an interesting idea, in it of itself, but I kind of still don't like it. As with much else in the Warhammer canon I find them too,difficult to comprehend. Not as in their giant rats, create through use of inter dimensional magical mutagen, I read comics frequently so that's just an average origin story really. No I mean it this broader spectrum of different cultures and all, every races pretty much has this weird mentality of we're the good guys or we're the bad guys, soaking the life out of the world. And in a world with constant war, you need the bad guys to be ever present. What I'm really just saying is that the warhammer world is too gloomy for my positiv mind set, to fully get into. I like Song of Ice and Fire, as books and they too are gloomy, but the level of how that is represented is far different. The Skaven, and for that matter all the other "Bad guys" in the Warhammer world are all improbable, how could they even exist and have these armies if that is how they're suppose to be like? Skaven actually less so than Chaos and the likes, but I still wonder.

Maybe it's just me not getting into the whole background of the skaven or I am missing some important aspect, but yeah, skavens are just sort of meh too me.
I get how they can be a fun enemy to use in a campaign, but I still don't find them that interesting. Maybe it's just because their goblin, but also steampunk and furry

Oh and a Crow race in a fantasy setting would be like the Old Ones, but still alive and stealing eggs from Bobs all over the warhammer world