How well would Skaven fit into 40k?

No.

Buy Primaris Space Marines.

-GAMES WORKSHOP MARKETING DEPT.

I would legitimately love a Hrud faction with the Skaven aesthetic. Nurgle-ish without all the guts and fatties.

Effectively:
>Tau guns
>Built by orks
>Fuelled by chaos
>Led by grots
What could go wrong?

If I were to do skaven in 40k, here is what I would run them as:

>dark eldar
Another user has done some awesome work already with this, even making a comic to tell the story, a hemonculis goes insane and uplifts a bunch of rats to become his new coven. cool stuff

>renegade guard
lots of rabble with primitive and unstable ranged weapons and questionable loyalty. pretty much describes skaven to me

>genestealer cults
they burrow up from underground. need i say more

I always hate these kind of threads because instead of critical thinking and imagining, we get dumb shit like "nah bruh just run them as this other faction that's nothing like what you're going for aside from a few extremely broad attributes"

>Tyranids and skaven are both swarms, totally the same!
>skaven and orks use bonkers technology, totally the same!
>genestealers and skaven both burrow from underground, totally the same!

Yes.

so play them as those 3 factions.

You'll see how well they fit in come August ;)

Skaven live the the webway. The webway is actually VASTLY bigger then what we've seen so far and that the eldar have only been skimming the surface of it and turns out that its rats all the way down.

Skaven maintain their own 13 member strong pantheon based on traits/things/concepts, skaven admire, I.e a god of thievery, distain, paranoia, ect. All of their gods are very recent (created in the last 20,000 years) and are still very young and weak however, the Great horned rat ((the skaven god of malice)) is as old as the skaven race itself and is a strait up equivalent force to the emperor. The younger skaven gods are their primarchs by comparison. Powered by their utterly IMMENSE population in the webway ( that may or may not be equivalent to everyone else (tyranids not counted) in the galaxy combined.) their ultimate game plan/victory condition is to allow their pantheon to grow in power and for skavendom to eventually subsume the warp into the skaven's own image. (By culling away enough non-skavens who leave a presence in the warp for them to dominate it)

Skaven lean toward ranged combat and warp. Their technological abilities tend to lag behind the imperium ((Skaven being space WW1 to the imperium's space WW2)) but they make up for it by having a surprisingly strong warp game.

Skaeven lore puts great focus on them being a being the true dark mirror to humanity. Humans are mostly decent folk with morals and stuff while Skaven are all backstabbing hellcunts, humans like the light, skaven like shadows, human civilization is bleeding out and the skaven are accumulating power.
Allies of convenience: dark eldar, necrons and tau( each for their lacking of warp presence)

I had the same idea about them infesting the webway some time back, glad to see it made sense to someone else too. I figured a lot of their advanced tech came from them tunnelling into the Black Library, where they keep getting their paws on scraps of ancient lore which they use to make devastating, but unreliable weaponry. The webway lets them pop up just about anywhere in the galaxy and it fits perfectly into the existing lore, which does state that vast sections of the webway are dark and uncharted.

>you want to play Tau? Well if you wanted a force who uses guns to shoot things, why not just play Primaris Marines? Totally the same!

Because T'au have rules and they aren't the same. Stats and point costs are different. Have you not played 40k for that long? Tau are actually a playable faction. So are Necrons!

They would be redundant. Their niche is already occupied by the Imperium of Mankind, which is superior to them in terms of shizo thech, unethical warfare and chronic backstabbing - basically all things that define skaven..

Are you missing user's point on purpose, or are you just dumb? He wants to imagine what they would be like and how they would play. "Just play Guard with rat models" isn't doing that at all.

Webway inhabiting is pretty much objectively the correct option for putting the skaven in 40k.

I do think that showing the skaven as a competing warp presence is a nice way to show that they are not pushovers and it gives them a nice flavour of being a horde faction that's good at warp magic while being mostly shooting(because horde/warp/mostly melee is already taken by chaos)

that's why just play Genestealer cult with rat models.

far more appropriate

>Skaven throwing themselves in front of the enemy to protect their leaders
>Skaven showing utter devotion to their leaders, sacrificing their lives without a moment's hesitation

That is not Skaven.

Yeah, the leader sends everyone else to die first.

You can't be backstabbed if everyone's in front of you.

Also can't be back stabbed if you're a genestealer because your followers are utterly devoted to you via telepathy. Genestealers act nothing like skaven, and aside from a few superficial similarities these factions are nothing alike.

but the Hurd are Eldar from the future

The eldar, especially the Harlequin, with the assistance of the few Inquisitors who have been let in the Black Library, in an attempt to slow the growth of their gods/warp-presence, are conducting a massive coverup of the NotSkaven's existence, to the point of exterminating worlds that experience undeniable evidence of them, because the gods seem to be feeding off of fear, and the more people fear them, the stronger they become.

Eh, MECHANICALLY, GSC is the closest that we will likely come to something workable for a conversion-army unless geedubs actually prints something... which they won't. You just rename some of the abilities. Instead of "Unquestioning Loyalty" you call it "Meat-Shields" etc...

However, fluffwise, there's lots of room to play, and I think this thread is actually taking advantage of this.... also a little bit of this thread

We already have one space china in 40k

Brand new race that just achieved sentience, and have next to no tech abilities. Instead they have a crazy high psyker rate and love such short lives that it turns them all into little Stalins.

The whole race enthusiasticly falls to chaos upon hearing of it, enter the webways through a forgotten gate as part of a scheme to take over the black library, are opposites of Eldar.

Short lived, no sense of personal sacrifice, breed yearly in gigantic litters, willingly sell their souls to chaos.

To make them feel seperate they coild even have a gulliotine political system: everything is put to a vote and the majority rules. Their leaders don't last long and are often en-officed against their will only to be executed for incompetence soon after.

I think they'd fit in quite well as an up and coming race in a casual civility with Chaos, or well the reasonable prongs of Chaos anyway.

PERSONALLY, If we're gonna do it, we better do it right.
I WANT SQUAT - SPACESCAVEN - FREEGRETCHINS 1V1V1 WAR!!

Skaven models as stand-ins for GSC are a great idea. I have a bunch of rats from the Isle of Blood and will totally try some conversions.

How about we try listing what the 13 skaven gods each represent?

Malice: Horned rat. Is the oldest and most powerful skaven entity. Was once a freeform god of chaos, now utterly consumed by the skaven's constant outpour of his namesake.

Envy: Second skaven god. Was created when the skaven population first discovered the eldar before the fall.

Paranoia: Was eventually formed during the height of the eldar dominance where all skaven feared that they would be wiped out by the god-like eldar.

Cowardice: Created at the sime time as paranoia and from the same causes.

P.s We really need to work on an actual homebrew codex for these guys on 1d4chan. Every time this conversation of 40k skaven comes up great ideas get flung to the wall and they are never allowed to stick.

>Hordes of T3 dudes armed with wacky backfiring tech, like a combination of Orks and Imperial Guard.

So...renegades and heretics with mutant rabble, got it

I think the Skaven should have some kind of strange obsession with keeping on the Mechanicus of mars good side.

>Malice
Dude. Duuuuuuuude. This is perfect.

I suggest:
Greed
Laziness
Spitefullness(?)
Ambition

The Skaven Clans serve as good ideas for the Gods - some renaming required (used clan names for simplicity)

Moulder - Mutation and change for its own sake. Not a master planner but one who wants unrestrained growth, mutation and conflict.

Skyre - Technological progress at any cost; cruel experiments, malfunctioning tech, stealing and adapting xenos tech.

Eshin - The bloodthirsty assassin. Kills targets dead and quietly, unless it succumbs to bloodlust in which case it's more of a 'fox in the henhouse' scenario'

Pestilen - Plague and disease, naturally. Revered and feared because it will also spread disease to its own side as well as the enemy. Blesses its followers not with disease immunity (ala Nurgle) but rather with fevered energy/vitality - the diseases they have will kill them eventually, but whilst infected they are possessed of manic energy and vitality.

All the Skaven Gods should be inherently flawed in some way that works against skaven society as a whole, whilst benefitting their own followers, in my view.

5 user, there are 5 major clans.

Clan Mors

oh sorry, I meant 'the useful clans' as inspiration

I won't fall for you.

Dominance: Created very recently following the trend of skaven warparties collecting, selling and breeding captured cpopulations to use as their slaves.

Greed: Mannifested in the early days. Greed being one of the strongest driving forces in the skaven mind it comes as little surprise that one of their deities represents it.

Spite: Falls under the domain of malice.

Ambition: Created in the aftermath of the eldar' fall where the skaven seeing that the overpowering presence of the eldar wain collectively began dreaming of their own compete ascension to galactic supremacy.

Laziness: I can't think of a good point in 40k lore that the skaven could get a laziness god. Are skaven even lazy at all?
Moulder-> Mutilation. The god of skaven mutilation was created after skaven empire discovered and began doing trade with the dark eldar supercity. Inspired by the eldar' craftsmanship the skaven began doing the same to their own people.

Skyre-> Cleverness. Had fanifested upon the sucsusful launch of skavendom's very first working starship.

Eshin-> Caution. One of the first skaven gods to manifest alongside malice, greed and pride by being one of their most basic urges.

Pestilen-> Blight?. I can't really think of any emotion/'Ideal' that fit with the spreading of dieseses.

Here's an idea. Grey seers are skaven blanks and serve Malice, while skaven psykers are split in service to the 12 lesser gods.

>Nurgle-ish without all the guts and fatties
Thats nor Nurglish than.

>Pestilen-> Blight?. I can't really think of any emotion/'Ideal' that fit with the spreading of dieseses.

Suffering/Torment - the God cares not who is having a bad time, as long as someone is.

Alternate makeup of the Skaven pantheon
First amongst them still needs to be Malice, because... yes
>1: Malice
12th-9th among them are the big 4, but the simple skaven interpretations of them
>Hate
>Infect
>Plot
>Breed
8th-5th are aspects of the gods overlapped
>Hate+Plot=Backstab
>Hate+Infect=Die
>Infect+Breed=Fecundity
>Breed+Plot=Patricide
Then the final 4 are the uniquely Skaven virtues of
>Envy
>Paranoia
>Cowardice
>Impatience

I just realized that "Conspiracy" is a much better overlap for Breed+Plot
>Breed+Plot=Conspiracy

Some of these should be changed. They have to much overlap and are quite specific. Infect and breed are simular enough that I'd group them as one thing, hate is a part of malice, backstab is part of scheming and I don't see any stealth or ego represented.

>Malice (The horned rat/Malal/Skaven's!Khorne)

>Breed (Skaven's!Nurgle)
>Scheme (Skaven's!Tzeentch)
>Excess (Skaven's!Slannesh)

>Sneak.
>Dominate.
>Spite.
>Ego.
>Envy.
>Paranoia.
>Cowardice.
>Impatience.

Skaven are building their

>Pestilen-> Blight?. I can't really think of any emotion/'Ideal' that fit with the spreading of diseases.

Schadenfreude.

I like everything except for this
>Malice (The horned rat/Malal/Skaven's!Khorne)
>Skaven's Khorne

Malice is already an existing chaos god, and 40k doesn't need more Khornewank. Khorne needs to be a seperate god from Malice, and definately NOT the #1 god. Remember, Khorne is also the god of honorable combat, Skaven are the opposite of.

If we seperate Malice and Khorne, and make Malice... you know Malice, and Khorne

>Malice (The horned rat/Malal)

>Breed (Skaven's!Nurgle)
>Scheme (Skaven's!Tzeentch)
>Excess (Skaven's!Slannesh)
>Gnash (Skaven's!Khorne))

>Sneak.
>Dominate.
>Conspiracy (Spite was too much like malice)
>Ego.
>Envy.
>Paranoia.
>Cowardice.
>Impatience.

That actually makes 13, while you've currently only got 12

the hrud are skaven in spave mate
already there

Well maybe the Hrud secretly populate the dark corners of the webway, and the tiny little hints that rogue traders and inquisitors have encountered are just the tip of the iceberg.

Stop trying to ruin out headcanon homebrew fun

That's actually a fresh take on skaven while keeping their identity fleshed out.

>>Dominate.
>>Spite.
>>Ego.
>>Envy.
>>Paranoia.
>>Cowardice.

You guys forgot one of the main skaven aspect:

Hunger

Maybe
>Hunger
can replace
>Ego
because for all the failings of the Skaven, pride is not one of them.

That or you could change
>Excess
to
>Gorge

At that point both
>Gorge
and
>Breed
would sort of be a combination of nurgle and slaanesh, and maybe there could be some disagreement among inquisitors as to which one is nurgle and which one is slaanesh, and if it makes a difference.

The Horned Rat: God of Malice, head of the Pantheon, He Who Hates

The Brood-mother: Goddess of Infestation, Sister-Consort of the Horned Rat, Mother of a Thousand Young
Skyre: God of Schemes, Brother of the Horned Rat, The King of Puppets
Grutnik: Goddess of Excess, Sister-Consort of Skyre, The Opulent
Gritus: God of Hunger, Eater of Souls, He Who Gnaws The World

Skrittlespike: God of Sneaking, Shadow-cloaked, The Snitch
Mors: Goddess of Domination, Conqueror of a Hundred Burrows, The Enslaver
Skurvy: God of Conspiracy, Breaker of Clans, The Back-stabber
Skab: Goddess of Ego, Mirror-furred, Queen of Perfection
Griskill: God of Envy, Hateful Runt, The Ruiner
Scruten: Goddess of Paranoia, Sister of Thorns, Mistress of Fear
Gristleback: God of Cowardice, Scarred-back, The Unending Retreat
Ektrik: Goddess of Impatience, Fool-scientist, The Thoughtless Doom

Took nearly all the names from Skaven Clans. I imagine the Lower Eight are the offspring of the Four and the Rat. I imagine the Brood-Mother to be the goddess of plague and procreation, hence Infestation.

Thoughts?

I like it

Skaven as Sisters?

Doubling down of the theme of the four ""chaos"" skaven gods being the skaven interpretations meant to eventually subsume the originals like they did with Malice.

I gotta say.....We're really making something great here.

Changing gears now that the gods are finished. How are skaven relations to the various existing races?

I'm thinking

>Chaos: Removing chaos in it's current form is their long term objective.

>Tyranids: THEY'RE GOING TO EAT THE GALAXY! KILL KILL THEM!!!

>Imperium/Eldar/Orks: Enemy races who threaten them and who influence the warp. They must be culled to a reasonable population of zero.
>Tau: An ideal slave race.
>Necrons: They have conflicting goals.
>Dark eldar: Currently maintaining a fragile peace agreement.

I like what we're doing here.

and by Malice you mean Malal?

Horned Rat should be above the big 13

>Dark Eldar
I think they should at least be in a state of Cold War. The skaven invest the webway, right? So ultimately, they would want to infest The Dark City as well. So the Deldar can be willing to trade and use the Skaven against their foes, but both ultimately know that the Dark City is a near perfect staging ground for Skaven efforts. Both the Skaven and the Deldar think they can outsmart the other.

As homes, the Skaven drag large ateroids into the Webway with them and contrusct massive moon-sized clusters of rock that they crudely strap to one another, creating their burrows within.

The last three seem kind of off to me. They're not virtues, even to a Skaven's mind. For instance paranoia is by definition irrational and unproductive. Besides, isn't it more or less part of conspiracy?

Cowardice isn't a virtue either. Avoiding a fair fight isn't good because it's cowardly, but because it's cunning. And haste rather than impatience.

One think you are missing on the relations front is manipulation and fuckery.

As a whole the imperium might be something to be torn down but individual planets or systems could no doubt be of use especially if their links to the wider imperium can be broken.

I may be wrong, but in Necromunda, "space-skavens" were mentioned
also the Hrud were in the first edition (you know, Rogue Trader) technically space-skavens
and playwise, you could say that the Tyranids are the Skavens in 40k
and you could also play Mantic's DeadZone if you want to play Spaceskavens

Haste rather than Impatience I totally agree on. Knowing life is often short and brutal so you have to get shit done if you are to have any chance of survival, and even then a lot of luck.

Cowardice could be seen more as self preservation above all else. While planned use of it certainly comes under schemes/cunning the straight up instinctive fight or flight at a given second could be separate.

Paranoia or more general Fear plays into that too. Perhaps Paranoia and Self Preservation are a little too overlapping ... could just make them twin gods though.

>Skaven

>Homes

Lol.

Skaven live in the twisting tunnels of the webway where they have constructed a great number of mega-warrens that they use as the staging grounds for their raids into realspace as they haul in whatever raw materials they can and send it to the factories lodged deeper inside the warrens.
+To haste over impatience.

I like cowerdice as is(skaven be great at it) but paranoia needs to change. How about impulse?

THEN GIVE ME NON-MONOPOSE KITS! FUCK!

Homes, pile'a poopoo you just happened to be sleeping on the same time, same thing, the point is they have set cities and the likes.

>you could also play Mantic's DeadZone if you want to play Spaceskavens

Which you should, because the system is lightweight done right and at this point the fluff is a great deal more decently written and coherent than 40K now.

EXPLAIN YOURSELF

IN THEORY, seeing as now you can play Tyranids, Astra Militarum and Genestealer cult in the same army, you could probably make a pretty bitching count-as army that actually does perform to expectations of an actual skaven army.

On the fuckery part:
>Imperium
Humans make good slaves and food. Once their wills are broken, they will not effect the warp. Steal slaves first, destabilize second (encouraging revolution or succession), then finally swoop in, take everything useful back to the burrows, leave nothing but ruins.

>Eldar
Can't be enslaved properly, much too psychic and bring slaanesh's attention, so just cull them and move on. Frequently used as fall-guys to cover for Skaven manipulation ("Yes-yes, man-thing, the Eldar sabotaged the refinery, we merely wished to chase them away.")

>Orks
Easy to manipulate, but also have a nasty habit of eating Skaven. Poor slaves, as more than a few burrows have learned after being overrun by Orks. Will sometimes be used as an artificial crisis (Orks arrive, cause problems, Skaven arrive with "solution")

>Tau
Excellent slaves, except for their short lives. If Ethereals can be assassinated, manipulation is even easier. Skaven frequently play on the idea of being a potential client race, though once word gets out this tactic will fail spectacularly.

>Necrons
More than one Skaven has awoken a Tomb World to make raiding easier

I'm in favour of haste over impatience, but I think Paranoia and Cowardice are good fits. A foolish skaven schemes but doesn't not watch his own back, but a equally foolish skaven is preoccupied with fear and doesn't scheme.

Maybe they want the dark city to turn it into a 40K version of Skavenblight unless they already have something like that in their own part of the webway.

They look too clean.
The armour looks too well made.
All of it looks new, undamaged and not plundered from the corpses of their brothers at all.

Stylistic thing ain't it?

Always do Clan Skryre and Eshin as pretty clean, dirt and filth is for the rubbish warlord clans and plague monks. The weapons are all verdigrised up, but that's where I stopped dirt wise. Mantic's Veer Myn are closest to Clan Skyre fluff wise being ruled by a Matriarchy and engineer class.

Having seen a few rats in my time, they're always extraordinarily clean and healthy looking in my experience.

What if they were originally from one of the Eye of Terror worlds, and brought to sapience by the sheer amount of warp energy?

Makes sense, Commoragh would obviously be the biggest piece of real estate in the webway. Skaven will want that real estate and the dark eldar want the city to keep growing further into the webway. Conflict is going to be an inevitability.

So what is 40kaven tech like? Is it upgraded version of their Fantasy stuff?
What are their space-ships like, if they have them?
How is their technology powered?
Do they have a warp-stone equivalent?

Skavanged and stolen tech taken from other races, cobbled together to make it work somehow.

Hull of an imperial ship, eldar weaponry, ork reactor, stuff like that

I'm pretty sure 40k Skaven were at least mentioned once back in 3rd.

Massive hordes of Space!WW1 troops/machines with weak magic charms that supported by a large population of casters.

>Le skaven can't build their own stuff meme.

I don't think much needs to be changed to implement skaven in wh40k.

Their origin:
Humans long before the heresy were doing experimenting on rats. They ended up creating proto-skaven - rat-human hybrids with very high birth rates and very high maturation rates. They also had the ability to transplant pieces of flesh from one of them and sew it onto the other and have it work out. Due to a fluke, they also had a natural resistance to the warp. The facilities ended up getting consumed in a warp storm. Inside the warp, the skaven survived and thrived and evolved. Their birth rates, their maturation rates, their ability to receive transplanted flesh, and their resistance to the warp, all increased dramatically.

Skaven are small, weak, dumb, disorganised, cowardly, scheming, have poor aim, are unskilled, etc. In an unarmed fight in the octagon, the average guardsmen would beat 2 or 3 typical skaven.
Skaven outnumber even the orks. Everything bad about orks, skaven are worse. At least orks are strong and have big muscles and are brave.

Their technology is almost all bad.
Ork technology is like 85% real, 15% magic. Skaven technology is like 10% real 90% magic. They can endure the harmful effects of their hastily built warp technology. They can tolerate the effects of the webway/warp when most others would die.
Most skaven warp technology is ineffectual and unstable.
They regularly take catastrophic losses from moving through the warp or from their own technology backfiring, but that's okay because they can easily replenish their numbers.
The average clanrat or slave rat isn't armed with warp technology or anything high tech, just a crude gun and a knife, both inferior to the typical loadout of a guardsman or ork.

Skaven rarely use vehicles. Their numbers are too high and their typical soldier is too bad and their vehicles are too bad to justify it. Besides, they spend almost all of their time inside tunnels.

Yes, I know I said they don't need to be changed that much, then suggested a huge change.

In WHFB, their engineers are competent and smart. Their technology is amazing and arcane, but unstable. I just don't think this would fit in well in 40k. I don't think a VERY NEW species of degenerate rat-men should be on the cutting edge of technology in the same universe as species who are billions of years old (eg the eldar and necrons),

Still waiting for 40K Skaven

>How well would Skaven fit into 40k?
>Lets say they chill in a warp rift for a few thousand years first so they have the numbers and technology.

What do you mean 'would they fit'...

>is just a form of beastman, abhuman, or mutant, and should be dealt with accordingly.

No shit! What does OP think lives in the sumps at the bottom of the Hives? Besides plague zombies that is...

When it comes to creating abominations, Dark Eldar are artisans.
Skaven have the innate ability to readily accept transplants as well as a resistance to the harmful effects of the warp. When it comes to creating abominations, skaven are like a sweatshop that makes crappy knockoffs.

Think of skaven engineers just stitching together random pieces of flesh, throwing in some warpstone, throwing on a few sharp pieces of metal, and they're done.

This should play a bigger role in a 40k implementation of skaven.

They're called Hrud, user
1d4chan.org/wiki/Hrud

Skaven in WHFB have warpstone and wood as visual motif.

Skaven having wood as a visual motif doesn't really make a lot of sense in WH40K, considering the rarity of forests, the skaven living underground and the lack of wood to steal from other factions.
In WHFB they tend to use a lot of copper-colored and brass-colored metals, which I think could be used more frequently in WH40K skaven to compensate for the lack of wood.

What about warpstone?
You could bring it back from 1st and 2nd edition and claim that it's always been there.
You could say that it's some rock in the warp that only skaven care about.
You could make it sort of like tiberium. Perhaps skaven farm it, use it in their technology, weaponise it directly and have a resistance to its harmful effects.

Warpstone doesn't really seem to fit with the asthetic style we have been crafting up though. 40kaven have a theme of schizo-tech, body modifications and the casting of evil cleric spells.

If we really have to include their warpstone then how about saying that it is a material from the warp that naturally Sinks to the 'sea floor' of the webway and that's where 40kaven get their warpstone suply from.

They harvest vast quantities of the stuff to unnaturally empower their gods.

As for their overall structure, just copy it directly from WHFB, it's good as is. No problem. You could change the names but I don't see the point. "Yeah I copied it but at least I changed the names". No point changing it just for its own sake.

That being said I never did like the idea of clan pestilens, and I think their name is pretty lame too.

>If we really have to include their warpstone then how about saying that it is a material from the warp that naturally Sinks to the 'sea floor' of the webway and that's where 40kaven get their warpstone suply from.
I like that idea
The skaven hang out in the shitty parts of the warp, and the warpstone tends to go there too. Most other factions don't want anything to do with the stuff.

Not a fan of the other gods idea. I prefer sticking with the horned rat and just the horned rat.

Surely the shitty parts of the warp are just all of it.

What if warpstone a product of Skaven themselves? Like they have some gland that accumulates warpshit and they get removed and processed into warpstone. This gives them another thing to fight one another over, and means they build everything out of little pieces of their former comrades.

don't like that