I love the Skaven, but I'm kind of curious what a "good" version of them would look like...

Skaven ARE the "Good" version foolish man-thing.

SQUEALER DID NOTHING WRONG

This one speak-talks the Horned One's own truth.

The only time I think they are "good" is when they get super curious

I assume they'd be more like forest rats then. Like Skaven are pretty much what happens when you let overpopulation happen. So I think they'd just be less insane and backstabbing. They'll still cheat, steal and lie, but they aren't going to be neurotic evil.

I think both groups of rats would be mind-fucked to see the other

"Nyeh, what clan-clan are you?!"

"What-what?! I clan Ozlaner! [Ostlander] What clan you-you?!"

You're better off making a rat race with lots of bells and the number 13, like an user said. Skaven are a personification of the worst qualities of humanity. I think there was some rebel clan though, iirc.

Communal collectivist society underground who has to fight grudgekeeping dwarves because they threaten to swarm their mountain kingdoms. At odds with the e.pire because the criminal element use them like fodder .

A strong emphasis on the clan before the rat and live every moment as if were your last and make your mark in the clanrat history

Treat them as Salarians so speak

Doesn't the horned rat hunt every rebel and ensure that skaven society stays as shitty as possible?

>What is Redwall?

Why not just go for Mouslings rather than rats?

This too.

Not as far as I know.
But he has come out and say that genocidal wars among the skaven amuses him.

Easy way to get this is to take any given skaven, and kill it

Aren't the Lizardmen the "good Skaven" in a sense anyway?

see mouse guard, mice templar or redwall.

Scribe is best-best rat

Lizardmen aren't 'good' by any stretch of the imagination. They will happily torture and murder anything that doesn't belong to the great plan they received from space aliens millennia ago.

None of the factions of order are 'good'. That's a major point of the setting, Order could easily diddle Chaos if they could all stop being massive dicks and fucking with each other.

Think about the universe 27 rat experiments. Make a set of skaven like the beautiful ones. Take a more dapper color scheme and make them pretty. Still a little Grimdark but that's what immed8atly comes to mind

Sounds like someone is buttmad for nothing because they got punished for not following proper orders

Technically speaking, Redwall rats are just as bad

Ever seen the Secret of Nimh? I liked it a lot as a kid.

youtube.com/watch?v=UlddepR-iRg

Skaven are beasts of chaos, its in their very nature to be evil. A good version would probably be just somebodies pet rat.

But lets ignore that for now, I reckon a good race of skaven would be family orientated, working hard to preserve the brood and trying to make sure each generation is healthier and stronger than the last without resorting to the corrupting influences of warpstone.

Make them act like real rats A.K.A the sharing communal, cleanliness liking folk that they actually are.

The skaven are a resourceful, clever and communally concerned race of lean humanoids. Skaven settlements can be found in places out of the way of other races and are focused on mundane prosparity. They tend to build small but well crafted homes and follow hobbies like tinkering and spellcrafts.

Skaven families extend beyond blood ties, an individual's entire clan is treated as kin and skaven clans will defend their collective homes ferociously. These communities will eventually grow and split off to form new clans who will migrate to find a home of their own.

Odd question, but are Skaven the most incorruptible race in all of Warhammer? I mean yeah, they're murderous, cowardly, untrustworthy, putrid filth to a rat, but when was the last time one turned his back on the Horned Rat because Slaanesh promised to make his fur darker and shinier and told him he'd have all the breeders he could wish for if he'd just do Slaanesh one little favour?

Then again I haven't played or kept track of the lore in over a decade.

I think no chaos god invest in them. They are mostly short lived, pretty stupid at times and extremely shortsighted. Not exactly world conquering champion material

Lizards are the purest. They are anti chaos flesh robots after all

I don't know, I could see a lot of merit in corrupting a powerful warlord and having him order his clan to do your bidding. Granted, it's probably only a matter of time before the grey seers catch wind of this and brand him a heretic, but still a lot could be done in a short amount of time with near limitless numbers at your command.

Pretending to be the Horned Rat in a vision to a powerful and "stupid" Skaven lord seems like exactly the fuckery Tzeentch would pull in all honesty.

The Horned Rat is already a chaos god (kinda). You usually don't betray one god for another, because that's the kind of contract you don't want to break if you value not spending all eternity getting your soul shredded bit by bit.
Same with chaos dwarfs.
And tomb kings, because SETTRA DOES NOT FUCKING SERVE, HE RULES

It might be because the Horned Rat IS Skavendom. Sure, the Big Four might have certain aspects of Skaven life in their portfolios, but the Horned Rat is the purest and truest expression of what it is to be Skaven. What exactly can the others offer a Skaven that the Horned Rat can't give them?

There's a Skaven clan called Clan Jamcreermin, and they were comprised of Skavenslaves that wanted to not be slaves. The leader, Scabbicus, was killed after the Council of 13 promised freedom to the Skaven that identified him, at which point he was killed.

Me? I like to think of him as Skaven Alpharius, impossible to know for certain if he's truly dead. He's probably not on the side of Chaos but definitely not aiding the good guys.

Fuck. Now I actually want to make a Jamcreermin army.

Seems pretty easy, it'd be lab mice that try to mirror human/dwarf/elf technology, maybe even view human wizards as semi divine since they created them by accident or something.

>And tomb kings, because SETTRA DOES NOT FUCKING SERVE, HE RULES
Best part of the ET.

I never saw Scabbicus as a good guy, especially since (iirc) the entirety of the people that worked for him ratted him out. Scabbicus was probably shooting to get to the Council of 13 and tried to use Skavenslaves to get there.

That's a perfectly valid explanation. It's just entertaining to think of a Skaven that nearly manages to conquer the Under-Empire by being pragmatic.

>"Look-look, instead of making our females obese breeding-sow-sows, why not just let them breed-breed naturally? That way we're not kill-killing each other over space, breeding access and food-food."

>"Why-why are we breeding dumb-dumb Rat Ogres? Wouldn't it make sense just to make-make ones that follow-follow orders?

>"And why-why did we even let that idiot Ikit Claw build a planet-busting bomb-bomb? It would have killed us too!"

So make them not skaven?

clan pestilans is pretty heavily implied to worship nurgle thinking its horned rat

Not really, I've seen the idea of "lol pragmatism" and while it's kind of funny, the idea of losing everything that makes Skaven awesome for a gag is really really lame.

So, there is this race called Squires in my setting.
The huge knight order once got a request to help a small country out. They accepted and temporarily became a ruling class of that society. At the same time, they became victims of court intrigue, and lost every single chapter of their order. Remnants of this order established a military dicatatorship/ theocracy in newly obtained land. For helping out their neighbor in times of need, their mage-king gifted them few specimen of perfect servant race, the rat people.
These rats are intelligent, though not creative, caring, kind and clean. They are very altruistic and heroic, they work as marksmen, messengers etc. in army. They work as cleaners, waiters or administrators in cities of this country. They are not furry, there is nothing ''sexy'' for humans about them. Due to their noble nature, knights treat them like a race of little brothers, and kindly call them Squires. Normal citizens sometimes despise them for ''taking our jobs'' or ''being bootlickers'', but they helped the populace in times of need too many times, and such view of them is considered marginal. They breed at normal rates and have intuitive idea on the social niche they have to fill, so they never create trouble for the population by overbreeding, its always enough of them (And they eat children if its too many of them, its the only disgusting trait about them).

It's more that they are more focused on the Horned Rat's aspect as a carrier of disease and a harbinger of decay, rather than disease and decay proper, separating them from out-right Nurgle-Worship. The Grey Seers don't like them, though more because they keep their own priesthood in defiance of the Grey Seers than for theological reasons.

Their numbers is the only way they survive.
Without it they'll fall to the rest of the Warhammer world's dangers.

I actually feel that Pestilens has it's priesthood for theological reasons and Grey Seers are the less religious.

The Grey Seers do actually have a reason for being what they are, as their horns and coloration are a direct blessing from birth from the Horned Rat that they are His representation in Skaven society. The priest (Grey Seers and Plague priests) are also the only skaven that can actively preform magic, meaning that the Horned Rat backs both.

I've heard that the only way for female skaven to escape their breeding blob destiny is to be born a gray seer.
Is this true, are there canon female gray seers?

youtube.com/watch?v=JdKI1wj-JpI

So does that mean that Skaven women can't be blessed by the Horned One?

skaven woman don't exists there is only giant sacks of breeding machinery. They are not even sentient. No, no skaven waifu for you ratfucker

Skaven females are still born normally are they not?
They're turned into breeding blobs by surgery and warpstone fuckery as far as I know.

no, they are born like that

Clan Moulder might have just figured how to induce full-body mitosis in existing breeders.

Yeah, but priests are the only ones going whole-hog with the religious aspect, while Seerers just say "Daddy likes me best so make me a bell."

>They're turned into breeding blobs by surgery and warpstone fuckery as far as I know.

Source.

Skaven are cute-cute!

The idea of a race that doesn't value life, outbreeds everything through questionable means and just throws lives into the meatgrinder pretty much goes against what anyone would consider "good".

You could have a good hivemind that does all those things, but the moment the replaceable drones become individuals in their own right it takes a dive into evil.

I know this is getting into the realms of bad fan fiction territory, but hypothetically if you somehow obtained newborn Skavem shortly after birth, kept it totally away from any other Skaven influence and people that wanted to murder it, fed it, treated it well and so on, is there any chance it could grow up to be a decent person, or are all Skaven just dicks at a genetic level.

dick at genetic level

Whatever the writer wants, user. Just about any setting with an Evil Violent Race explores that.

Good and noble ratties, and that are more like IRL rats (clean, social, friendly) that breed massively and spread out across the world because they took it upon themselves to combat evil and darkness wherever it be.

And maybe they do it in secret too, like good silent protectors so most people don't know about them, if you want to go that extra oomph of Skaven. Either way, making them good isn't too hard even if you take literal Skaven; just do what they normally do, but they focus their efforts against evil rather than good.

Personally I love the idea of Skaven being assholes down to the genetic level.

Shit, so I couldn't have one run errands and clean my house in exchange for Skaven snacks?

I'm pretty sure at least some of their more "objectionable" traits are instinctive. Not to mention, if word gets out what you're doing, you'll be burned at the stake so quickly you could be served as a flambé.

Skaven don't serve evil, they serve themselves and themselves exclusively.

>tfw skaven behave more like cats than rats
Cats are the vicious assholes. Rats are good.

If you want good rodents, you'll find them in redwall

Returning home one day, you find that your adopted rat son has killed the neighbor's dog to restock your larder, dug a hidden escape route leading from your basement to sewers "just in case you need it" as well as having squirted musk over all your furniture to deter intruders.

"Well hey, champ, that's, uh... that's great work there. It's even more impressive since I was only gone half an hour."

He's a well-meaning lad.

That scenario is not explored in any official source so there's no canon answer although, given the grimdark nature of the setting, them being intrinsically bad is more likely. Skaven are typically described as 'creatures of unredeemable evil' by humans but OTOH you could argue that their living conditions don't help.

To help you get the big promotion you've been gunning for at work, your rat son sneaks into the home of your primary competition and stabs him thirty seven times in the chest, thus ensuring your rise up the corporate ladder. He doesn't understand why this isn't appropriate, but he still squirted the musk of apology all over your new rug when you chastised him.

The Skritt from the Guild Wars 2 setting are what I think of when trying to imagine non-evil Skaven.

I mean as long as you feed it I guess? They are only really assholes cause they have to be to survive but I still think they are assholes on a genetic evil. If you were to feed such a creature it would probably not backstab you cause you feed it and keep it alive and thus it would like (as a tool but it's better then nothing) and it would probably go around and torture things smaller then itself as a pastime. I imagine raising a skaven would be like raising a psychopathic child

Also it would betray you at the drop of a hat if it gets a better offer somewhere else. Or if it thinks it can set itself up with a better deal.

If you replace food with money and car rides, it's sort of like raising a teenage daughter.

Skaven are good boys!!!

Except Skaven are far more likable and willing to listen to reason.

Make it a side effect then. They serve themselves first and foremost, and decided for the time being that getting rid of evil is best for them. Good people, they don't really concern themselves with. Maybe eventually they could come to turn on them when evil is gone, but for now it's alright, and evil isn't going away anytime soon.

What's going on in thread?

When a fictional race is defined by traits that make them conventionally evil, you can't make them good without just attaching their name to something else entirely.

Just try to apply the main defining qualities of Skaven to humans. They backstab each other at every chance, they interbreed and have massive spawns that they do not care for, they are pestilent and corrupt, they don't value each others' lives and just about anyone in the position of power is batshit crazy.

Human skaven analog would be a crazy inbred tribe of incredibly hostile swamp people.

Oh bloody 'ell, not again!

It looks like there are a few rats here that need burning!

A crazy inbred tribe of incredibly hostile swamp people can be good if you keep them at arms length away from your city, and they act as a shield between you and the real evil and basically just fight evil nonstop.

Good for you at least, whom is trying to think of how they can be good.

That doesn't make them good. It's like sending the worst criminals your civilization has to go man the wall and fight whatever unspeakable evil your setting has, you're just getting rid of them productively.

>Good for you at least

Morally, alignment-wise, they may not be "good". But they can still be good.

Wrong. I wouldn't shag a skaven

Yes you fucking would, you liar. Just snort some warpsetone dust off her rows upon rows of bloated teats and you'd be up for anything.

They can only be "good" if they go against their nature entirely. The human analog doesn't really work too well because humans have different cultures and they aren't genetically tied to them.

In case of skaven, breeding in large broods and often is one of the primary qualities of their race and I doubt that humans would be able to consider a race like that "good". Humans like individuals, the idea of intelligent but at the same time incredibly disposable creatures should horrify anyone.

Self-sacrifice (for example, a soldier jumping on a grenade in order to save his buddies from certain death) is seen as heroic because it's rare and it underlines the bond that's stronger than the desire to live. If it was a default strategy, like some kind of ant drones rushing against an enemy without any hope of individual survival, it would be absolutely horrifying and not good.

holy shit mouse guard skaven would be awesome

wonder if someone would ever make a mod for it in total warhammer

>small group of skaven in bretonnia start to admire and emulate them in the same way bretonnia was inspired by the elves

Side idea: Virtuous Skaven, literally replace the clan themes with some of the christian virtues seen through ratty eyes:

>Clan Charitous
Believes in giving the bizarre and quite dangerous machinery and devices they're constantly make away to anyone who will take them, often to detrimental effect upon the person so gifted the devices. Also, due to a confusion about the similarity between the terms "charity" and "chariot", handle transportation via their many different kinds of chariots for all of Goodrat-kind.

>Clan Persistens
Full of rats who needneedneed to getgetget moving! Doing stuff! Need work done? Consider it done! Need a tunnel dug? No fear, already dug it for you before asking, got you a nice mile long tunnel, no need to thank me got to get moving!
A clan of constant activity, applied liberally and with the focus of a rain shower to any tasks that need doing and many more that didn't.

>Clan Patiens
The healer clan, masters of bringing relief to ailments, including such pesky ones as "not having enough eyes in the back of head" or "not being 4 times your usual size and strong enough to tear steel plate armor in half with your bare paws".
They mean well.

And finally
>Clan Cleanliness
Part priesthood, part government, focus on cleaning not just individual rats but society as a whole, with soap mainly but with fire if that's what the job takes.
Accusations that in their diligence in their persistent "war on dirt" they sometimes mix the "soapy water" and "flammable oil" barrels up are mostly baseless.

Entire race of goodrats used to be skaven-like, until they successfully got their Horned Rat equivalent and it all went a bit Eldar on them, decimated the race who repented and now seeks to deal with the whole "big ol evil god of evil wants to eat their souls" by focusing their previous evil and cunning towards partially understood concepts of "goodness" cribbed from the man-things they used to torment.

Instead of censure bearers we'll get incense bearers, and slaveskaven are now volunteerskaven

I wonder how would they get into disagreements with the Empire, Dwarves and Elves, seeing the dangers of their accursed kin who they look down upon as given themselves to the filth

I think this would be awesome desu a race of Lawful good hamsters/mice that fight Skaven tooth and...paw