What if the Skaven existed in 40K, but they weren’t a xenos species?
What if they were descended from the rats of Terra?
What if the Skaven existed in 40K, but they werent a xenos species?
What if the Skaven existed in 40K, but they weren’t a xenos species?
What if they were descended from the rats of Terra?
Skaven arent xenos AFAIK. Back in times of Gotrek and Felix they were theorised to be heavily mutated humans. Besides that they are heavily intertwined with the skavenblight creation myth. Skaven that dont worship the great horned rat are difficult to call skaven.
You've got it slightly wrong. Beastmen are men who became like animals. Skaven are rats who became like men. It's a subtle distinction, but a meaningful one. OP is basically asking for skaven to be...themselves in 40k. I dunno what niche they'd fill, since 'chaos/genestealer cults' already fill the 'parasitic vermin in the underhive' quota.
>Skaven are rats who became like men
Not really a proof of that, their origins are obscure, and theres a spell that turns humans into skaven
What if the Skaven are the result of Warpstone waste being excreted by the Golden Throne, making the race technically an accidental creation of the Emperor
That would be silly but also sounds like something that could happen.
Even sillier;
What if the reason they worship the great horned rat is that from a certain angle, that's what the emperor on the throne looks like.
Wouldn't it be fricked up if skaventech was equivalent to pre-heresy technology? Like these rat-beasts, completely inhuman, not only are fueled by the god-emperor but have kept the knowledge of his Imperium far better than humanity ever could. Only to use their knowledge against them.
>I dunno what niche they'd fill, since 'chaos/genestealer cults' already fill the 'parasitic vermin in the underhive' quota.
As much as I like skaven, basically all of their gimmicks are taken in 40k already:
>glowing green bullshittium rocks
Necrons
>ramshackle shitty tech
Orks
>having the most advanced firepower in the setting
Necrons/Admech/Tau
>Tunnels and drills
GSC
>Leaders throwing their lackeys in front of bullets and blades
GSC
>Overcharging weaponry at a risk of damaging your own units
Everything with a plasma gun and chaos space marine dark pacts
>Disease mechanics
DG
>Frankenstein monsters
DE
>Poisoned weapons
DE and both nid armies
>Being the contrarian chaos choice who worships a special snowflake power instead of the big 4
Cogs of Vashtorr, soon
oh and also
>armies composed of fractious microfactions with their own gimmicks
DE
Also to add that the Tyranids cover the "Hordes of Vermin" trope.
the contrarian chaos choice who worships a special snowflake power instead of the big 4
Isn't that just the Black Legion?
I don't understand the niche argument. Why they can simply stay true to their Fantasy counterparts, and include everything you just listed as some sort of a unpredictable mixed bag? They don't really need to excel in any of those, either.
It's not necessarily a rule but I fear that it could end up like Votann where it's a weird mishmash blob that doesn't appeal to anyone
It would appeal to furries.
Yeah, but you forgot the most important niche.
40k has no space ratmen.
True and real
>having the most advanced firepower in the setting
>no mention of LoV
That's going in the book! The T'au literally bought their ion tech from the kin.
the old in universe legend speaks of human children mutating weird , and rats growing bigger.
Its a open mystery and should stay that way.
I hate when autists want hard facts in a fantasy setting.
>he takes creation myth as objective fact
You're a fricking idiot.
It's not the Skaven's creation myth, it's the Tilean and Dawi accounts of their arrival.
Dwarfs believe that the skaven are the spawn of an exiled dwarf god who turned himself into a rat because he sucked at metalworking
Citation?
>There's a legend that the Skaven are all descended from Skavor, the son of Gazul, cousin to Grimnir. Skavor, like Gazul, was younger than his brothers and lacked the skill for working stone or shaping metal. He was rightly exiled for this, so he went away into the deep-earth and learnt how to shape his flesh instead of shaping metal turning himself into a hideous rat-beast and swearing venegance on his blood-kin. And this is why the Dwarfs fight the Skaven as hard as we fight the Greenskins, though the Ratmen have wreaked far less damage upon us: because many of us believe that the Skaven come from our blood. We fight them not just to settle our grudges, but to shed our shame.
>~ Thurin Strongblade, Runescribe of Karak Alnor .
From Children of the Horned Rat, and later mentioned in TWWIII
>mentioned in TWWIII
So, noncanon Gankerslop
What a stupid post. You worded this as if being mentioned in TWW renders previously canon things non-canon.
>From Children of the Horned Rat
>From Children of the Horned Rat
>From Children of the Horned Rat
>Gankerslop
It's actually fascinating how illiterate people on this site can be
I don't recall any such theory from CotHR. There is one that the HR is/was a renegade Old One. 'Theory' is the key word here, because the the identity of the man from the Doom of Kavzar has never been confirmed.
Consider the following: We know that underdecks of imperial starships are infested with horrifically mutated and evolved monstrous beasts that can trace their lineage back to the humble Rattus Rattus. We know that the official stance of the WHF Empire is that Skaven aren't real and don't exist. We know that any book from an Imperial everyman's point of view will necessarily be affected by propaganda and misinformation.
Let me finish by reminding all that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
They poke at this in some Necromunda fluff, with some of the rats being so big and mutated that some say there are humanoid ones out there
Seems like the best way to do it. Just make skaven abhumans. Find them in necomunda gangs, space pirates, imperial or tau auxiliaries, etc.
Listen, I don't fricking care how they do it or what dogshit excuse they have to elaborate to make it happen.
If Skaven officially become a thing in 40k, then I'd consider give a frick about the setting. Also I want to see redditoids seethe, so it's a win-win situation.
>Listen, I don't fricking care how they do it or what dogshit excuse they have to elaborate to make it happen.
What about bringing back the theory that the Tyranids are fleeing from something and that something is the Space Skavens, with Tyranids being an out of control Space Moulder superweapon that blew up in their faces.
If you think anyone would seethe about it more than fa/tg/uys you're moronic.
Yeah, you're probably right.
seems to be the case in point, but I can see some redditoids malding even harder.
You ARE the redditoid, kid
>If Skaven officially become a thing in 40k, then I'd consider give a frick about the setting
Good thing the redditrats never will be a thing so we never have to deal with your redditor ass gayging up 40K
Already a thing with dogs in traveller.
Ogres --> Ogryn
Dwarves --> Squats
Eldar --> Eldar
Tomb lords --> Necron
What's wrong with ratlings which already aren't a xeno species? If you're just cloning everything without modifying anything you might as well not even have two settings.
Isn't because of Ratlings being the direct equivalent of halflings?
You're absolutely right. I forgot halflings even existed in WH and that in 40k ratlings was the nickname and they were officially Halflings back in RT days.
They'd probably just be beastmech that work for the dark mechanicum. As a skaven player, I'm telling you they really wouldn't be that interesting if imported to 40k.
They'd probably still be treated like abhuman mutants and eventually turn to chaos.
If you want to run a skaven army I'd recommend going with Mantic's Veermyn armies and playing them as GSC.
I don't know any other serviceable space rat army proxies.
You wouldn't be able to actually prove it and the difference may be semantics. I point to the Jokero in this case.
Consider that the Jokero are *technically* this in the sense they are also orangutans and would be perceived as a Terran animal species. Until someone discovers the Jokero were as old as the War in Heaven at least.
So then you would have ambiguity about whether Terran rats were xenos or not.
i imagined that they would be artificial abhumans like beastmen
moved from 'foul xenos' to 'foul mutants' category - response: 'exterminatus'
>EXTERMINATUS
On Holy Terra?
Let's fricking go!
I want that for a Dark Heresy campaign
Rocks aren't free.
If they could do space dwarfs why can't they do skaven?
see
And you act like Votann aren't having trouble finding a niche of their own since GSC took the blue collar miner aesthetic.
>How would you include/justify Skaven in 40K, specifically Necromunda, on a thematic level? How would you want them to differ from their fantasy counterparts?
remove warpstone, use brutalist industrialist cyborg aesthetic rather than the magitech alchemy look they have in fantasy
>skaven clan gets lost in the great skitterleap at the end of the world, or perhaps it created a gnawhole in the wrong direction during the age of sigmar, ends up scattered on an imperial world and develops among the garbage of hive cities
>eventually expand silently to other worlds and get in touch with the other forces of chaos, though contacting the horned rat is not as easy here, but his cult is growing strong even among the cultists of the underhive
>skaven aid chaos cultists spread on various imperial worlds and prepare for rituals and uprisings, often arming competing cults so that they can scavenge on the imperial tech of the inevitable strike forces sent to stop them
>though in possible cooperation cooperation with cargo cults, chaos cults and misbegotten sewer mutants, they're in constant opposition with the other forces of the underhives, such as gangsters, imperial patrols, genestealer cults and hruds
>the smaller groups travel within imperial vessels or haphazardly built tubular spaceships worming stealthily (if it wasn't for their extreme length, the silhouette of a tubular ship is very small by 40k standards, not fit for void combat, either as a target or as a weapon platform, but it makes boarding actions easy as nestling within space hulks to build bigger lairs) their way into the void (artificial gravity created by the centrifugal force of the rats running in the corridors of the ship); sometimes their ships get tangled with each other and form a ball-like megastructure
>the winds of magic don't flow directly into the world like on the old world or the age of sigmar, so warpstone is extremely scarce, they have long consumed all the one they originally had when arriving into this galaxy to build the first gnawholes and from those they have found new ways to harvest energy sources: their interdimensional tunnels dig in the cracks between the webway and they have started to erode the material of that sub-reality with wild abandon, sometimes causing whole parts to collapse on themselves and let in waves of daemons, much to the horror of the eldar; others attach half-robotic leeches to the hulls of imperial vessels, where they scrape at the warp energy condensing like water on a glass on the gellar fields, of course in these cases too daemons are likely to follow.
use gene stealer cults rules
mortian and mantic models
there done
Ngl this aesthetic would fit into 40k so well, would really add some horror to the setting. Bonus points if survivors of the steel swarm are subject to torturous experiments and turned into suicide chargers, like fleshpounds from killing floor.
>mfw
That General Grievous Doomwheel makes my dick hard.
Or give them genuine magic. Like an actual mage who isn't a psyker.
>magic that isn't the warp.
>something that doesn't even exist in warhammer fantasy
cringe OC faction shit
Cope
>newbie try to lecture someone
World Spirit magic like the Wolves use already exist, lorelet.
It's all but explicitly stated that it's a filter, rather than wholly unrelated, with an increasing body of cases where no-illusions Librarians click together perfectly with Rune Priests.
>My headcanon about a potential ongoing retcon should matter
No.
Given that "World Spirit" is also used for Exodite work with more than a few functional similarities, who are sure as shit working with psychic phenomena as Eldar? No, you're just insisting on moronic snowflakism in gaps that have been closed for well over a decade.
>Given that something else that I decided is the same to cope and I pulled a headcanon to plug a 'gap' that doesn't exist because world spirits not being warp related isn't a gap, you have to stop laughing at me
No.
3rd edition Codex: Space Wolves from the year 2000 gives the Rune Priest "Psychic Power - Storm Caller". Directly stating "These grim warriors have potent PSYCHIC powers based upon the native Fenrisian shamanic traditions".
I'd be citing 2nd edition if I could find a PDF, but the "Rune Priests aren't Warp power" is either a retcon in itself or was always a matter of unreliable narration.
You meet an Old One era World Spirit in the new Rogue Trader game and you're directly told it's not warp related, stop coping.
no, you're told it's not chaos.
No, you're told 'it's not warp sorcery at all'.
Skaven are just the Imperium of Man, especially Imperial Guard.
this will never not be the most moronic meme paraded around by furtrannies.
Eh, it's still better than "The Imperium are actually the good guys!" that some people sprout.
white dwarf magazine says they're the good guys so I believe them
>but muh satrical facism parady ludonarrative dissonance
nah homie if I wanted actual deep shit I'd read shakespeare stop trying to act smarter than you are
It make GW seethe so it's automatically good
Make them the good guys unironically. The nice pet rat people who go around saving entire species and the only reason they can't win is because they're too nice and keep trying to tard wrangle the galaxy into safety instead of just killing them.
Give them the cleanest most advanced tech and give them ships that generally go FTL in realspace with no warp, teleportation or webway bullshit.
Terrible idea. They should be an inadvertent source of good, their purely selfish motivations leading them to improve things for both themselves and any average human who happens to be dealing with the same problem. The concern is that while they make life more bearable, they harm humanity's overall war efforts, and if things start to actually properly improve, they'll quickly become a big problem.
So a variant of cat from red dwarfs backstory, in that they were originally pet rats that got stuck on a slow boat/extra galactic trip long enough to evolve and come back to find that things have gone completely to shit and everyone is a specieist butthole.
Also make them a bunch of furry free love/collectivist innocents who keep somehow avoiding being genocided because the universe finds the fluffy rat people trying to be friends with the cast of arseholes that is 40k hilarious.
Man I'm actually tempted to do a GSC cult army for these guys now.
That sound perfect.
Pathetic samegay necrobumping a dead thread
Nice reddit terms, homosexual.
no, it doesn't
it's cancerous cutesy furhomosexualry
Cope
Die mad motherfricker. The best part is the ratties would make people in universe seethe too, so you're already inadvertently increasing their integration into 40k by being assblasted.
the best part is that you'll have a nice day before any of your moronic suggestions find a single ear
Based
Based indeed
>Inb4 anon seethes and starts wailing about samegayging
Your boogeyanon has a point.
Methinks the ladyboy doth protest too much.
GW hire this man
Way back there was a species name dropped in a story about Karandras that looks like it could have been a reference to Skaven, or something Skaven-ish, in 40k but nothing ever came of it.
That makes me consider if 40k Skavens should keep their name or have something different, just like Dwarves are Squats.
Probably some wordplay with 'Rodent' or something, Idk.
They should literally be called Space Skavens
Squeakers.
With the hard R.
skaven comes from scavenge
take a random synonym and go through the same process
>skroun
>skaven-gers
sasuga GW. sounds like they got exterminated though.
Why would the fluff of where they came from matter at all
to put skaven in 40k all you need to do is change all the wood to metal, getting rid of warpstone is the worst take, chaos crack rock tech would be one of the best things to give them there own schtick in 40k
They do exist in 40k, though. There's a reason AdMech covers themselves with robes.
Sure why not? It's not like the setting can get worse at this point.
That's the fun part. It always is.
>muh hekkin reddit ratterinos!
>so cute-cute!
>much kawaii!