How can their society even conceivably function?

That's not how reproduction works and we all know it.

>Skaven: we breed breed really fast!

>Rational outsider: How do you feed yourselves? Everywhere you inhabit seems like a total wasteland.

>Skaven: um.....we eat EVERYTHING! Even other skavens when they die die!

>Rational outsider: Have you ever heard about thermodynamics?

so you're saying the truth is racist?

Do you often try to rationalise fictional societies of non existent beings?

Probably would have been more interesting at least logistically if they had genders, rather than just towering pillar of breasts giant females.

Like their entire lives consist of warring, slaving, and humping, and there's so many plus the usual skaven lack of value for life that even pregnant females aren't afforded any better privledge and still prodded forward to die in droves like the rest.

Though the towering breast pillar does win points at least for making them even more abnormal.

>Faction gets to be the epitome of Chaotic Stupid and yet not only maintains a sustainable population, but also wins an incredible number of against foes that are superior in almost every way and has Sci-Fi level Technology.
>Person asks How can this be explained aside from author favoritism?
>"H-hey man, t-their just fictional, s-s-stop being so critical."

This is a Wargame, and Wargames (in a perfect world, or in a well written one at least) shouldn't have designated protagonists, antagonists, or other such things that only manage to function the way they do because of plot armor. If you want your super-duper evil Rats to being intimidating or even notable with such a stupid social structure, you better have a damn good reason for it.

Also, wasn't there an user who was writing something in the last thread before it died? I wanted to see the rest of it.

>Can a more cartoonishly evil socity even exist?

Well, the W40K Imperium exists, so, yes. Yes it can.

Everything is political on the internet. EVERYTHING.

Posts like this sustain me. I'm like a reverse troll, I lurk here to here intelligent shit.

I feel like a lot of the skaven bullshit can be explained simply by warp magic bullshit.
Dumb warp rat favors them and makes them able to survive from them doing anything and everything he wants.

Skaven grow crops though.

>>worships a god of EVIALS!!!!

To the Skaven he is a god of Skaven supremacy.

>Backstabs each other at the slightest provocation.

No. Though they may entertain the thought they won't backstab unless they're sure to succeed or desperate enough.

>ALL of them are cowards, lazy and general assholes of the highest caliber.

Not true. They vary in personality. Queek is not a coward. Ikit is not lazy.

>ALL addicted to radioactive meth.

It's more of an upper class thing. Thanquol was addicted but most Skaven won't get the chance to consume warpstone regularly.

>Rampant plagues that they are not immune to

They have good resistance to most contagions.

>Presumably all sorts of inbreeding going on.

Why would you think that? How would inbreeding affect monster ratmen anyway?

>ALL of them have egos the size of the universe.

Not true. Main characters tend too because it's funny, but the seething masses are quite subservient.

>Not a single attempt at long term harvesting.

They do harvest. Black corn is a Skaven crop that they can grow in the marshes around Skavenblight.

>They die at the age of 20 without magic and are naturally stupid.

They don't need to live long to accomplish things when they mature quickly, and Skaven are actually quite intelligent, being one of the most technologically sophisticated races.

How did industrial Britian survive? It's the same thing, but less evil.

>less evil.
india, hong kong and tasmania all say hi

Hong Kong was almost non-existent before Britain, and India did benefit, its pre-Britain rulers were every bit as assholeish as anything Britian could muster, only Tasmania has any right to really call Britain evil.

>imperialism was bad
When will this meme end?

Hong Kong was chinese land that was literally bought with a boat full of Opium. Worlds biggest drug deal, and calling that anything better than morally ambiguous is pushing it. India did benefit, but the actions of the british were definitively evil-millions were killed or starved, all productivity was based around exporting anything valuable, etc. It brought India crashing through to modern technology at the time, but it certainly was evil. Tasmania was straight up genocide. They were a genuine Evil Empire. Nothing wrong with that today, but still

>Hong Kong was chinese land that was literally bought with a boat full of Opium. Worlds biggest drug deal, and calling that anything better than morally ambiguous is pushing it.

The land was practically empty so it's not like any unfortunate natives got pushed out.

Me too, don't get me wrong, parts of it were bad but i'd wonder what kind of state india would be in if it didn't happen for example.

china was selling a bunch of goods to britain in exchange for stirling currency. losing all of that specie in a one-way flow of trade was considered an existential threat to the economy by economists and financiers of the time, so something had to be done to correct the trade imbalance. something the chinese would buy with their specie. hence, opium. not saying that it wasnt a dick move, but the empire at the time actually tried to justify it as economic self defense.

It wasn't evil, but was meant to only benefit the homeland not the colonies. Also racism developed as part of the superiority/inferiority thing.

I think the Drow win as they are so stupidly evil their God has to intervene from time to time so that they don't murder themselves out of existence

Story goes as it was told to me was Jess Goddwin and a few of the other sculptors at GW back in the late 80s were having a night at the pub after work, so they're shitfaced and talking shit about work when one of the other sculptors bets that Jess can't sculpt a rat-goblin, he takes the bet and goes home later that night, the next morning he rocks up to work with the proto-Skaven in tow and shows it off. The other guys are impressed and this then eventually leads to a whole range of what became the Skaven.

GW was a very different beast back then. Very different. I'm pretty sure that the Fimir came about after a round of bong hits.

>REPRODUCE BY RAPE
Probably.

But seriously, here's a nice article on them.

terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2014/04/07/bizarre-bestiary-fimir/

>Last I checked rats in real life are actually, smartie social animals
Fucking this. If the Skaven got a retcon where their society was based closer to what rats are actually like they'd be far more dangerous and scary. They'd also be the best friends you could ever have if they were on your side.

I get that part, but not sure why Hong Kong was brought up alongside other nations, Hong Kong wasn't fucked over, China was but then looking at Chinese history they are every bit as cruel and decadent as Britian, perhaps moreso.

>Everything is political on the internet. EVERYTHING.
I like candy bars.

Fucking liberal propaganda
>candy bar = chocolate often
>chocolate = black
trying to normalize race mixing with your (((candy bars)))

Is this warhammer only, or just stupid BBEG species in general, because I've been trying to get more into the star wars rpgs lately and im having a hard time figuring out how the sith ever managed to be a real threat to anyone.

They're supossed to be the scary half-mythical rats that cause plagues and sink ships. What sort of animal that was really evil would you have made into the numerous backstabbers?

I was under the impression that they're meant to become extremely desperate from a lack of food, so that they attempt to raid the good guys just to feed themselves.

It seems kind of depressing from a lore perspective.

They live in a society akin to rats in a utopia situation, there was a pretty famous experiment preformed with rats where they were afforded unlimited resources but limited space. This caused them to basically degenerate into hyper violent gangs or lethargic loners obsessed with aperance they would eat their own children and purposefully eat spoiled food in groups. Eventually there was no going back and every rat either dead alone or killed each other till none were left.

All a cartoonishly evil society needs to thrive is for good society to do nothing.

>WOW THIS GENERIC LIZARD RACE IS SO CREATIVE
>UM RAPE IS HORRIBLE THO YOU GUYS, IT RUINS THE MONSTERS LORE

The rape monster lore is literally what makes them interesting. It's unsettling and reveals they are a race of demonic spawn. That writer is a fag

>All a cartoonishly evil society needs to thrive is for cartoonishly good society to do nothing.
>and lots of anvils.

FTFY

>Me too, don't get me wrong, parts of it were bad but i'd wonder what kind of state india would be in if it didn't happen for example.
Literally the Middle East but 10x worse.

>Start to 1:39
youtu.be/0dv2VZU4Q3w

Actually the writer points out that it's intended to be part of a strong connection to Celtic myth. It just also sounds like something made while high.

>THE MONSTER RACE SHOULD NOT BE DOING ANYTHING MONSTEROUS

I hate these faggy SJW types.

celtic myth itself mostly sounds like a collection of stuff made while high, so i can see why anything based on it would lead to speculations about drug use

Fuck off you snicker-licking cuck

>are naturally stupid.
Where does it say this?

>Tasmania was straight up genocide. They were a genuine Evil Empire. Nothing wrong with that today
Wat

>trying to normalize race mixing with your (((candy bars)))
Oy vey I've been found out it's a chocolate shoah with a nougaty Nazi center

It does suck that they weren't popular. They're deeply rooted in myth to the point where it's exotic and interesting, unlike most of Warhammer which is surface level "DO YOU GET IT THEY'RE LIKE FAE FOLK" sort of shit.

So basically Chaos?

Warhammer Dwarves have a society that should have collapsed a long time ago.

Drow get micromanaged by there god
Both keeps them from getting to stable and stops them slipping into total anarcy

moar please

Definitely more so, no one in Britain ever forced children to bind their feet so they couldn't run away from arranged marriages when they grew up.

>Warhammer Dwarves have a society that should have collapsed a long time ago.
yea, no

[Citation Needed]

It's called the behavioral sink. The most well-known experiment involving the concept was called Universe 25.

It's also the inspiration for The Secret of NIMH.

Dwarves know more than any other race how to prevent collapse. They build the best mines.

They start generations-long blood feuds at the slightest provocations and do not believe in compromise or negotiations. They've raised an army then razed a city over a payment dispute of a single gold coin.

fantasy societies defined purely by being EVIL are generally stupid, yeah. as are ones that define a broad set of arbitrary moral/character traits/norms that ALL abide by without question.

the skaven society isn't entirely without real life mirror, though. firstly, they're a parody of fascism, and fascist governments tend to have a lot of similar traits (relentless infighting, shitty super science stuff, racist/nationalist ideology full of doublethink, etc). There are also prisons/criminal societies, which also have similar traits (very "shame"-based, social position maintained by violence, "clans"/gangs and offshoot gangs, drug use, male, most members die very young, TONS of posturing). So, Skaven society isn't really that far off from what is seen irl, just inflated and made into a caricature because that is more fun.

Individual skaven, imo, aren't "evil", and that's not a very descriptive term anyways. A lot of their nastiness can be ascribed to cultural shit, but they're still prey-minded and appear to have innate problems; the pressures of survival, however, force the vast majority to adopt something akin to a survivalistic "street" ethos that encourages violence and paranoia that accentuates their predisposed nastiness. There are skaven that buck the trend, and skaven that do "unskaven" things like seek profit via smuggling drugs to humans, or operate with unusual tenacity or loyalty. Its hard for a clan to really step out of line, though, since the grey seers serve as ideological purifiers that intentionally promote socially maladaptive traits since it keeps the clans from uniting (another fascist-style trait).

there's also just a lot of their society that isn't brought up or noticed since its a wargame and they're meant to serve as a particular archetype. But they do have boring things like bureaucrats.

some of this is my own fan wank shit, some of this is actually covered in the WHFRPG book "Children of the Horned Rat"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink

lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/researchHighlights/Environment/rats.aspx

So does Bretonia.

what is clearly needed to oppose the evil fascist rats and their broken system is a commurat revolution: its time for the common skaven proletari-rat to overthrow the corrupt ratocracy, and cheese the means of production from the lying seers and their warlord thugs!

The thing about Drow is that their goddess is a strange half-ancestor-deity half-demon-lord who constantly corrals them into doing fuckstupid things for her amusement, and instead of helping the race flourish she gives them power just to watch them topple each other (and occasionally scratch out at the surface) for her amusement.
Lolth is some shitty girl playing with her dolls and smashing them into the things she build instead of actually aiding them like the other gods, who give their power to proper champions and heroes.

here's the damn good reason:
it makes thematic sense

>aside from author favoritism?
It's not favourism. It's making a fantasy army concept without thinking about possible ramification.

they're addicted to radioactive meth, it's made them stupid

Also even in real life societies there are counter-cultures, the Skaven are just counter culture and use Evil as their own word

Beings don't do what they think is wrong, they do what is right to them and acting the way they act while calling it Evil because Evil is a word their enemies use is mocking

No, they aren't described as "forced by society to be assholes".

They're described as inherently narcissistic, rapacious, cruel and hypocritical.

Skaven never describe themselves as evil though.

That was actually a subplot in one of the Gotrek and Felix novels, it ended about as one would expect with the leader of the commurats getting delusions of godhood within the first ten seconds and then they all die because Rat Stalin was only about half as smart as he thought he was and half as brave as he needed to be.

Skaven society is a tyranny moderated by assassination.

It works because most skavens are more cowardly than they're ambitious, and the most ambitious skaven are never quite paranoid enough to avoid assassination forever.

It's a very fragile equilibrium of power that also relies heavily on how much resources they can plunder from other races and on how strong their devotion to the Horned Rat is.
Expectedly, Skaven history is full of massive civil wars that are only stopped when they come across a new plentiful resource or when their god directly intervenes to make them stop killing each other.

if you want to analyze at a fictional rat society in a wargame on a sociological level, you have to be able to draw your own conclusions, because the authors don't actually give a shit about realism (and really, realism can take a damn hike when it conflicts with what the authors want: if its not real to have a race of starscream idiots, then well i guess its not real????). it can be fun to flesh it out but that requires either being an official GW canon maker or just kind of fuckin along with what you think makes sense.

I think having a race be "inherently x" or "innately y" because Reasons is boring and is going to always result in societies that don't really make any sense when analyzed, and I think its worse when the work goes "well actually ALL members of species x are y". Human societies can produce incredibly broad changes in behavior without having to say that x or y is "innate". So, I look for real life societies and subcultures that are similar, and extrapolate from there. take it or leave it.

ha ha noice.

pretty close to the actual arc/fate of some proto-communist uprisings in China, actually.

>I think having a race be "inherently x" or "innately y" because Reasons is boring and is going to always result in societies that don't really make any sense when analyzed, and I think its worse when the work goes "well actually ALL members of species x are y". Human societies can produce incredibly broad changes in behavior without having to say that x or y is "innate". So, I look for real life societies and subcultures that are similar, and extrapolate from there. take it or leave it.

You're wrong to think that and your approach of worldbuilding sacrifices thematic purity in favor of character diversity. Which is not appropriate for a wargame with clearly defined factions

I don't think that the two things are inherently in conflict. There are plenty of wargames based on real life conflicts where the sides can fill thematic roles, without having to ascribe innate characteristics to their members: you just don't consider that sort of thing since it is largely irrelevant to the gameplay, rather than undermining it. And character diversity can serve to reinforce thematic points, as well, as those characters are defined by their relationship with the theme and the rest of their group. In Warhammer Fantasy, I think part of the appeal is based on being able to put your own personal touch and twist on your own troops, and demanding conformity to arbitrary traits can just undermine that principle and deny the ability to explore a thematic archetype.

Because they don't bother themself with such human concepts but if you actually manage to put a Skaven into a conversation and explain what the word evil means they probably would agree that they are evil.
Not that it is any kind of insult for them.

if a member of isis sat down and told you what evil was, i doubt youd agree with their conclusions

I think that you forgot to add the detail that their god is also the god of backstabbing.

The chaotic evil god of treachery and backstabbing has to stop their own people from treachery and backstabbing.

What the fuck is wrong with drow?

The frequent typos were what put the shits up me, but this passively offended tone when it gets to the "rape monster" part of the mist dwelling daemon blooded rape monsters is fucking annoying. Yeah, it's awful, it's meant to be, they're fucking monsters!

This is fantasy, and it's fiction, the advantage of fantasy is being able to make characters that perfectly fit an archetype, instead of just hinting at it on a collective, cultural level.

I don't just want a faction whose theme is "evil", or a faction whose role is that of the villain in a story, I want a faction of evil dudes.

And that is optimally achieved by saying "all my dudes are innately huge assholes" because it leaves no room for niceness in the faction.

If you just say "skaven are assholes only because their society/living conditions drive them to be assholes" then you can always say "oh then if they had different living conditions maybe they'd be nice", and that undermines the theme of the faction, because it makes their evilness purely contingent. Whereas if you say "skaven have a shitty society because they're assholes", then a nice skaven wouldn't be a proper skaven, and the skaven faction becomes purely, strongly evil, and that's much better in the context of that wargame.

I don't see how this is an accurate counter example.

But note they rarely fight offensively except for feuds and oaths, and their socities are mostly self-sufficent and have little strife or corruption.

Members of ISIS have a precise concept of what evil is. Skaven don't. In fact Skaven have no reason to reject that designation because the concept of "something that should never be done no matter the circumstances" is alien to them.

That comparison is terrible, proves nothing, and is a very transparent attempt to derail the conversation into a gratuitous circlejerk about how evil ISIS is.

get a grip, i used isis because if i used "nazi" for the stand-in then someone would have probably chimed in that the nazis were right

and yeah itd be alien as trying to tell a Roman or Mongol that they are "evil". they got a might makes right mindset. the point is, they'd view your beliefs, norms, and conduct as "weak", "stupid", or whatever their equivalent to "bad" is, rather than agreeing with you.

Then use romans or mongols as an example next time, instead of a culture that knows the concept of evil.

But gender is a social construct.

I suppose my own view is that "evil" as an archetype is a meaningless term. It doesn't do anything to explain why or how a group operates like that, and instead it just winds up coming off as very bland. I like to know the "why" of a group's behavior, since it helps get you into the mindset and motives more.

I don't sympathize with the argument that even the very idea an individual can be distinct in any way gets in the way of things. That doesn't even match GW canon about the rat bastards: there are skaven described as "unusually" brave and loyal, such as the council guard or various clans like Mange, and does describe how the various different levels of skaven society have different beliefs and attitudes due to circumstances.

I could go on, but I don't think we're going to see eye to eye on this issue. I think "inherently evil" as a faction's hat is completely meaningless and thematically random and flat, and doesn't let people "get in the head" of the faction as well, and limits creativity or expression on the part of the player. And I don't think it really impacts the outcome in terms of faction theme insofar it matters at all for a wargame, aside from having arrived at the same location via a more organic process.

They're actually smartie social animals. The description is propaganda designed to make them look bad, but they're clearly not actually that way, since that society wouldn't sustain itself.

Because big K. And sotekh are taking a nap.

Who let that Skaven in?

It's pretty much Bourbon France with Arthurian trappings. About as evil as the Empire.

hav u ever throught that MAN is the real monster??

...

Social darwinism.

Works pretty well in Russia.

terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2013/08/19/gender-representation-in-fantasy-settings/

>WAAAH, WHY DON'T FICTIONAL RAT PEOPLE FOLLOW OUR STANDARDS OF GENDER EQUALITY!!!

Where do these fucking people crop from?

If you took a skaven babby and raised it in a human household, would it still turn out to be an evil asshole?

yes

Why?
Is it in their genes?

Is there any lore on how Skaven that have been brought up outside of Skaven society act like?

They only "reproduce by spores" if you're one of those jizz-guzzling idiots that GW feed their bullshit to that believed that literally everything that GW produced must somehow be 40k, because that is precisely when that explanation became most widely accepted, and eventually it led to an alternative to Warhammer Fantasy where the old Skaven aren't really a thing.

If you are one of these people, Skaven are not in 40k and thus literally nothing you have an opinion on about this particular subject matters.