The Under Empire

=The Under Empire=

http://greywolf.critter.net/images/ahq/runes/skaven-hornedrat.jpg

Location
Hidden

Races
Skaven

Government Arrangement
Council of 13. Consists of the Twelve most powerful Clan leaders, including the four major Clans and leader of the Grey Seers, and are known as the Lords of Decay. The position of seat thirteen is filled by the Horned Rat, the Skaven diety.

Economic Strength
Skaven trade is based largely on supply and demand. The currency of the Skaven is Warpstone, a powerful magical rock formed from concentrated Dark magic. Warpstone is the basis of trade, and is used to purchase everything, from weapons and equipment, to slaves and monsters.

Military Arrangement
Every clan maintains a constant supply of warriors and when a clan marches to war it takes pretty much everything. Each clan is lead by a Warlord, and below him are his lieutenants. To progress in Skaven society, it's not about who you know, it's about how you can manipulate them. Promotions usually come when the skaven who wants it assassinates his immediate superior.

Government/Military Officials
The Council of 13 presides over all of the Under Empire, but each clan is effectively a seperate state, only losely held together by the Council. There are many civil wars fought in the Under Empire, but because the Skaven realm is hidden from creatures on the surface, very few are known about.

Military Strength
The strength is always determined by the amount of clanrats and slaves a clan can throw at the enemy. Each clan has varying degrees of weaponry and armour, and depending on how much warpstone is traded, also determines amounts of warriors and weapons from other clans.

Magic Level
Skaven are not natural wizards, and very few develop magical abilities. The only exceptions are the Grey Seers. The Grey Seers are the prophets of the Horned Rat, and are seen as spiritual leaders. Although they are held in high regard by other skaven, they are not immune to the paranoia and backstabbing nature of the skaven race. Many a Grey Seer has found themselves on the receiving end of poisoned blade when a Warlord has felt their position is threatened, and repercussions are usually few and far between.

Background
There isn't much information to be found about the Skavens' history, although they are known to have come into existence a long time after the birth of Man and Dwarf. The most that can be gleaned about their history is from the Tilean story 'The Doom of Kavzar'. According to this story, the human and dwaven inhabitants of Kavzar lived the good life, the humans harvesting the fruits of nature, whilst their dwarf neighbours mined the large amounts of ore to be found beneth the city.

One day, the people of Kavzar decided to build a tower in honour of their gods, a tower that would reach towards the sky and peirce the clouds. However, work on the tower was slow, and eventually, the people of Kavzar despaired at the thought of ever completing the tower. In this time of despair came among the people a man who claimed that he alone could complete the tower; all he asked in return was the right to add his own dedication to the gods to the top of the tower. The people, seeing that they had nothing to lose, aggred to the mans proposition.

The next day, the people came back to the tower, to find that it had been completed. The tower stretched on and on into the sky, peircing the cloud themselves. At the top of the tower hung a hugh, horned brass bell. As the people continued to gather, the bell at the top of the tower began to toll, its horrible, booming sound reaching into the very souls of the people. Thirteen times the bell tooled, and upon the thirteenth toll Morrslieb appeared above the tower, casting the tower in a forebodeing greenish light. Freightened by the demonic sounds of the bell, the people fled to their homes.

During the following days, the sky darkened as a heavy rain began falling down upon the city. The people huddled in their houses, the implications of the appearence of Morrsleib and the continous toling of the bell being to frightening to consider. Days turned into weeks, as the rain continued to fall in ever greater amounts, now accompanied by large hailstones which crushed the humans croops.

As the weeks passed, large rats began appearing across the village, consuming what food remained in the city, and, when that ran out, hunting the humans.

The humans had demanded that their dwarven allies help them in their time of need, but the dwarfs had refused to help them, citing that what food they had was barely enough to feed their own kin. Now that the humans had no food left themselves, they took up what weapons they could find and marched into the dwarfs realm beneath the city.

What they found there, however, wasn't the food and shelter they had been hoping for. Instead, they found the dead dwarf warriors, now little more than dried husks, and the gleaming eyes of hundreds of man-sized rats. As the torchlight from their torches start to filcker and die out, the rats decended upon the humans, ripping and tearing at them with fevered fervour.

In the ruins of the ones great city of Kavzar, now renamed Skavenblight by its new rulers, the Skaven built their capital, and from there, they started to spread to all the corners of the world.

Society of the Skaven
Skaven society is structured into two types, the Warlord Clans which supply the basic Skaven warriors, and the Major Clans which provide more specialist troops. There are four Major Clans, Clan Pestilens, Clan Eshin, Clan Moulder, and Clan Skryre. As already stated, if a Skaven wishes to advance, murder and assassination are the most common forms of progression, and are classed as death by natural causes by the skaven.

Anatomy of the Skaven
A Skaven universally resemble a giant rat, about as tall as a dwarf and half as broad, with about as much muscle as a human. All of the body, except the tail, are usually covered in fur (although their may be some bald patches were the skaven has sustained injury or has som unnatural growth, like a horn for instance). The majority of Skavens are physically weak and feeble by most standards across the world. They usually come in overwhelming armies but can overrun even the most hardened veteran by sheer weight of numbers.

Appearance and culture
A skaven is essentially a crossbreed of a rat and a man - in that they are in appearance large bipedal rats with intelligence sufficient to use weapons, make tools, and converse in a developed language. Most skaven stand four to five feet tall and have brown fur (which darkens as their strength grows), although this can vary. White and grey-furred rats are prized among Skaven litters, as grey and white-furred skaven often become grey seers, and black-furs often join the elite Stormvermin corps. Most skaven have luminous eyes and long tails. Skaven with black fur are usually stronger and taller than other skaven and make up a substantial part of Skaven armies. Albino skaven are rare but not unheard of. An average skaven has a lifespan of about 20 years but higher members of the Skaven society can live much longer (possibly owing their extended life to drugs/magic or to the effects of warpstone)

Male skaven are workers and warriors. Females are docile and barely intelligent, and spend much of their lives hidden away in the nest to breed. Female skaven typically produce three to five litters a year, each containing 20 or so young.

Council
The council sits at a long table with the seats at top and bottom empty. The top seat is the symbolic seat of the Horned Rat. Therefore, the most powerful members sit to the left and right of the Horned Rat and share equal power. Each member is the equal of whomever sits opposite him. The council are constantly shifting allegiances, backstabbing, cheating, lying, and hiring assassins to kill each other — much to the amusement of their malevolent god. It is often noted that, if the Skaven organized themselves properly, they could probably rule the world. However, they are far too paranoid to ever band together. Each member of the council is open to replacement at any time. The applicant must simply challenge his rival to a fight to the death; if he wins, he takes the place of the loser on the council.

The current Lords of Decay have been in their seats for over 200 years. The current Council members include:


 * Lord Kritislik- Seerlord
 * Lord Morskittar-Lord-Warlock of Clan Skryre; seat 12
 * Nurglitch VII-Arch-Plaguelord of Clan Pestilens; Nurglitch I brought Clan Pestilens to prominence by defeating Lord Vask for a place on the Council of Thirteen.
 * Kratch Doomclaw-Clan Rictus
 * Warlord Gnawdwell-Clan Mors
 * Lord Sneek-Nightlord of Clan Eshin
 * Lord Verminkin-Packlord of Clan Moulder; occupies seat 9
 * Lord Paskrit-"Warlord-General of all Skavendom";seat 4
 * Kritislik-occupies seat number 1 on the Council,
 * Morskittar-; hence these two are the most powerful of the Lords of Decay.

Below the council are the Grey Seers, prophets of the Horned Rat himself, and powerful sorcerers. Grey Seers have prophetic powers and are usually grey-furred; hence the name. While the Grey Seers are often physically weak, they make up for this in cunning, guile, and the use of magic. Most other skaven fear and hate grey seers in equal measure. The most feared symbol of the Seers is the "Screaming Bell," a massive, horned bell mounted on a carriage and pushed into battle, the daemonic chimes enthusing the skaven hordes.

=Skraven Clans= The rest of skaven society is organised into innumerable clans. Four clans are traditionally more powerful than the rest: Clan Pestilens, Clan Moulder, Clan Eshin, and Clan Skyre. These four are collectively known as the Great Clans.

Clan Moulder
Clan Moulder is based in the far north, where Master Moulders use warpstone in a mad combination of alchemy and genetic engineering to breed all sorts of monstrous beasts for war. They are a very wealthy clan, and rent out their beasts for other Skaven to use in battle. Their most common war-beasts are the wolf-sized Giant Rats and the enormous Rat Ogres, anthropoid vermin four times the size of a man whose massive, filthy claws can take down even a heavily armoured knight. Their lair, known as "Hell Pit" greatly resembles hell from Dante's Inferno, consisting of nine levels of laboratories, a barracks, and a giant colosseum hanging from chains and a level where their most powerful creatures are kept in pitch darkness.

Clan Pestilens
Clan Pestilens is based in the southern part of the world, and has been the cause for both of the two Skaven civil wars. The clan was considered lost in the jungles of Lustria, but when it resurfaced, it was changed. The rats of the clan had become completely devoted to The Horned Rat in his role as the harbinger of disease and plague. They are immune to most diseases and use the very plagues they worship as deadly biological weapons against the other races. Due to their diseased bulk (and the fact that they are used to experience pain), their plague monk troops are extremely tough, and deliriously fanatical in combat. They also use rats infected with various foul contagions, and the deadly plague censers, flails laden with burning warpstone, that emit lethal poison gas.

Clan Eshin
Clan Eshin was also considered lost for a long time, having traveled to the far Eastern lands of Nippon and Cathay. When they returned, they had changed as well. They were now stealthy assassins, skilled in the art of the silent kill. They are feared throughout the Under Empire as the long arm of the law. Their prices are exorbitant, but their results are unmatched. They played a large role during the Great War, although they were unseen, they contributed greatly. They field Night Runners, cheap expendable units of skirmishers. Those night runners that survive go on to learn the skills to become the veteran Gutter Runners which are far more skilled and efficient. If they survive for much longer, the very best become the elite and incredibly deadly assassins unparalleled in the entire World (save for possibly those of the Dark Elves).

Clan Skryre
Currently, the most powerful Clan is Clan Skryre. These Skaven have devoted themselves to the study of magic and blending it with insane science and engineering. Thus far, their engineers have created many deadly machines: the Ratling Gun (a warpstone-based Gatling gun), the Warpfire thrower (a warpstone-based flamethrower), the Jezzail (a extremely long-ranged warpstone rifle which is so large that it has to be carried by two skaven), and the fearsome Warp-Lightning Cannon. They also employ Warlock Engineers, who harness the winds of magic to devastating effect.