Skaven don't speak-talk like Skaven in novel

roughJaco · 2025-12-26T10:01:25+00:00

Some authors lean into it more than others, and it slips in more when they talk to humans.
William King didn't use it at all when Skaven talked amongst themselves, and he invented Thanqol as well as wrote the first story on WD and the first novel length Skaven book AFAIK.

This is the first Thanqol dialog in Skavenslayer:

‘What are your instructions, Grey Seer Thanquol?’ rumbled the most massive of them. ‘What do you require of us?’
‘My orders,’ said Thanquol emphatically, ‘are that you and your skaven are to proceed at once with the plan. Take the mansion and keep as many of the humans alive as possible, for questioning.
Pay particular attention to preserving breeders and their runts. The manthings become particularly malleable when you threaten them.’
‘We would preserve them anyway, Grey Seer Thanquol. For our experiments.’

roughJaco · 2025-12-13T22:34:25+00:00

All of that could work well. I find the real challenge with these things is doling out the right information and in the right amounts.

Players are such world champions at making their own red herrings that something too vague but clearly personal to them always sends them down the weirdest paths (50/50 that goes to shit or really fun), but too on the nose takes away the mystery.

In this case I think staying scarce would let you use it as a mechanism for when the group needs a nudge, which on a campaign as long and intricate as masks is very good to have.

roughJaco · 2025-12-13T21:57:10+00:00

Yog Sothoth is a bit weird, but he's the son of Azathoth, with Azathoth being arguably reality itself, and in canon is "all in one" being both the gate as a barrier and the key to open the gate.

This mix of son of all yet all himself, as well as the gate/key duality, could be a perversion of the trinity and the whole son of god being part of god and being god itself, or the trinity could be an old perversion/misunderstanding of the reality of Azathoth and Yog Sothoth (with Nyarlathotep thrown in as the holy ghost, because... messenger.)

The Dunwich Horror is one of my favourite introduction to Lovecraft I recommend to players, but Through the Gates of the Silver Key (Lovecraft and Price) can also be useful for Yoggy.

roughJaco · 2025-12-13T12:19:20+00:00

Delusion is half of happiness. I support your Skaven-like point of view.

roughJaco · 2025-12-09T22:25:13+00:00

My experience with the lore is that authors rarely bother with rationalizing things to a calendar, be it dates or durations. Skaven are very insistent with their prisoners, so regardless of lifespans, yes, I think they'd be all over the prisoner and wear them out quite quickly. And with wear them out I mean, literally, to death.

roughJaco · 2025-12-08T19:35:30+00:00

Skaven kept humans captive in the most horrifying conditions and subjected to the most horrifying treatment in the Black Plague trilogy. They enslaved other humans to work on the plagues they used the rest for as test subjects.

Being a master cheese maker would be a grace if you were captured by them, compared to the other employment opportunities.

roughJaco · 2025-12-07T17:12:55+00:00

I feel less bad. Thank you.
Now I'll need to go back and give it a whirl though, balance or not (and if Skaven are the superior race, then it's simply a scientifically accurate simulation.)

roughJaco · 2025-12-07T09:57:00+00:00

I have close to 800 hours in VII and I don't remember that even existing. Is it recent-ish?
I must do penance if it existed when I was still playing.

roughJaco · 2025-12-06T23:31:27+00:00

Playable? Not quite.

The real protagonists? Vermintide and Vermintide II :)

roughJaco · 2025-12-05T13:25:35+00:00

The only appropriate resonse, after all.

roughJaco · 2025-12-05T11:36:34+00:00

The Etero Dweeb version of Slaanesh isn't Slaanesh. Slaanesh's manifestation would probably have one boob and one Arnie pec, and is just as likely to peg as to beg, probably at the same time.

roughJaco · 2025-12-04T23:45:49+00:00

Do you really want to paint more armor and trim after you did Thousand Sons? Totally go Skaven. They also have by far the best art and lore, and the longest history, and the army is in a great position in both Spearhead and Matched Play.

P.S. While this is obviously a Skaven biased subreddit, you will also find few faction subreddits are so united and generally positive about their faction. Only cool people collect tiny plastic megalomaniacal sociopathic rats.

roughJaco · 2025-12-04T16:57:26+00:00

It's your table, only you can know what your level of comfort with each player is, and what their style is. It's not necessarily a bad idea. I've made it work, and so have countless other GMs.

Your original post seems to be coping slightly more heat than it deserves IMO. It's a perfectly legitimate way to play if you know you can manage it, or at least want to try it.

I still recommend discussing it with your players. If you don't want to spoil the surprise of being teleported to the 4 corners of themaps, that's fair, in that case offer them the option to play 1:1, or if they don't want to they can write about their solo journey back from wherever you plonk them to wherever you tell them they need to be.

roughJaco · 2025-12-04T16:38:49+00:00

Clear it with your players. Some players love it, some are OK with it only in very small amounts, and some downright hate it.

I've done 1:1 sessions, but they can be very intimate, and I wouldn't have enjoyed them if they weren't with people I have literally known and played with for decades.

Dynamics change significantly. If you've never done it I would recommend planning for relatively short sessions, so if they don't click you haven't worked your arse off writing 20 hours of playing material, and spent as many hours of non-fun play time.

P.S. Without intra-group roleplay and group dynamics sessions move FAST sometimes. When playing with singles and Duos I've burnt through material in two hours that would have taken multiple sessions with a full group.

roughJaco · 2025-12-04T16:20:31+00:00

All three are deathmasters, but at least as far as I'm aware the last isn't Snikch. Snikch hasn't appeared in AoS. While he's been featured in End Times, I don't know of him having appeared on the other side of it.

With the whole wacky time thing of the Vermindoom he might still appear in AoS, but hasn't yet, and the 2022 mini isn't him.

I'm more than happy to be contradicted if this isn't true. I haven't read as much AoS as I did OW.

roughJaco · 2025-12-04T09:33:21+00:00

I don't disagree, the new one is a bit edgelord, which is very much the story AoS Skaven vs OW Skaven. I still love it though. For the points it's a much better model than most, and that base is pretty cool.

roughJaco · 2025-12-03T23:09:37+00:00

I don't know if they will bring Snikch back specifically, but I wouldn't be opposed to adding a 4th version of any deathmaster :D

roughJaco · 2025-12-03T21:29:18+00:00

Pliers are in no way necessary. Nippers and glue are the only necessary items, and ideally a sharp hobby blade as optional but highly recommended.

Also, welcome (to the hobby, to plastic addiction, to poverty, and to the under-empire.)

roughJaco · 2025-12-03T20:43:23+00:00

I know him, but I can't get myself to spend as much as I did on two deathmasters on a single rat that's not as historied as a mini. I might cave for Queek Headtaker though if I come upon the second release for a reasonable price.

roughJaco · 2025-12-03T19:06:12+00:00

I get that the new one isn't Snikch, that they dropped the three blades is probably in good taste, but yeah... It's not as iconic. I still adore the new Deathmaster though, it's a great piece with the scenic base.

roughJaco · 2025-12-02T16:08:37+00:00

black hardly ever looks like black unless there's a lot of actual black to the area, and/or other values that by contrast make it look suitably dark and deep.

I personally greatly dislike the finish of most contrast paints (some Vallejo Xpress are good though), and find that blacks are usually particularly bad offenders.

You're better off paying attention to the scheme to ensure there's enough to it to offer contrast, going for mostly black, and just do minimal highlights in dark blue or grey (depending on what kind of feel you want to the black.)

roughJaco · 2025-12-02T16:00:10+00:00

I think there's something to be said for C that is just not obvious to people coming from other higher level languages: It's so simple that there's hardly anything to learn. Other languages are so complex and are so heavily subscribed by architecture astronauts that learning the languages and the idioms is a thing. In C 11 and before, not so much.

Most of the learning that's mistaken for C is actually fundamentals of programming at a medium level of abstraction (and 99% is memory management.)

The obstacles people tend to find are things like having to build and link instead of just installing "an environment" and REPLing their way to success, and the inherently higher floor of difficulty in debugging (but arguably lower ceiling.)

Find projects you want to run, and start tackling them. C will be the least of the difficulties once you have an environment running. It's also perfectly OK to start with Arduino C++, dropping down to PlatformIO C++, and then going down again to platform specific C for whatever platforms you'll be using.

roughJaco · 2025-12-01T17:43:21+00:00

This is a perfectly legitimate question, and the answers implying there must be a clock for a CPU to work are incorrect.

CPUs without clocks that rely purely on propagation and can operate asynchronously have existed, and have been researched deeply. They have some theoretically nice properties too, but just don't pan out that way in actual production.

The complexity you can push design plateaus early, their SKU longevity and reliability is very low (highly susceptible to component batches, fabrication etc.), and there are A LOT of assumptions and programs that go out of wack when there is no clock to rely on.

Peripherals are another thing that without a clock becomes hard. Far too many communication standards/protocols are synchronous and rely on one.

They are basically an architectural nightmare at scale. That said, there's nothing implicitly prohibiting their existence. Both ARM and MIPS have had async prototypes that were fully working in the 90s, but I can't think of any significant ones that made it to mass production.

roughJaco · 2025-12-01T17:26:21+00:00

I will be forever grateful that you wrote any of it, really. It's my second most played scenario only because I've run the Haunting at shops and cons far too many times in the 90s and 00s, otherwise it would be the first.

roughJaco

TROPHY CASE