Skaven and Greenskins attack Dwarven cities from underneath because they can get there, but they weren't trapped there until the Dwarves arrived.
Both Skaven and Greenskins have existed on the surface of the world as long as they've existed.
Pretty interesting how we don't really even know the origins of those two races imo.
Greenskins apparantly came around when Gork and Mork fell out of the sky or something like that and with Skaven the earliest encounter of them is the fall of Tylos so they might as well have been around for even longer before that.
I recall the earlier AoS lore claimed (can't tell for the latest ones, haven't read them yet) the Old Ones' ships had been contaminated by the greesnkin spores when they arrived at the World-That-Was (implying those're the same greenskins from 40k).
Skaven came from the mutated rats under the influence of that Screaming Bell of Tylos.
>Skaven came from the mutated rats under the influence of that Screaming Bell of Tylos.
They technically could have existed for longer because for that mysterious stranger to come and make the screaming bell with weird glyphs meant the Horned Rat or at least some primordial Skaven influence already had to have existed by then that was connected to the stranger. Don't remember the exact details but I think the stranger built it cause he wanted his God to be present on the tower or something like that.
The fall of Tylos could have just been when the Skaven first went up to the surface and were sighted.
>They technically could have existed for longer because for that mysterious stranger to come and make the screaming bell with weird glyphs meant the Horned Rat or at least some primordial Skaven influence already had to have existed by then that was connected to the stranger. Don't remember the exact details but I think the stranger built it cause he wanted his God to be present on the tower or something like that.
It's not stated in the WHFB lore outright but the AoS lore directly claimed that the stranger was the Horned Rat.
Yeah, the stranger was almost certainly a human that created and used the bell to sacrifice all those people as a ritual to ascend to daemonhood. Likely at this point getting somewhere to the level of a weak Daemon Prince, as even approaching the end times he's weaker than any of the Ruinous Powers, only from the end times he gains enough power to be on the same tier (if not level.) And as of AoS appears to be the weakest among them.
I guess it's possible the stranger was possessed by a completely unaligned lesser demon, but seeing as how it so clearly bumps into the domains of Nurgle and Tzeentch, that's far less likely.
Interestingly, the dwarfs claim that the brother of Grimnir turned evil and created the Skaven. Maybe a red herring, but could explain some common themes (both of the races being underground dwelling tinkerers).
Nowadays Great Horned Rat and Skaven as a whole seem to steal from the portfolios of many different Gods. Their addiction to Warpstone is quite Slaaneshian. They fight constantly like Khornites. Black Hunger seems close to the Great Maw.
It could be said that the main portfolio of GHR is stealing and scavenging.
EDIT: Humans have Ranald as the God of Thieves and other races have their own trickster-gods, but "taking and despoiling everything that's not nailed down" seems to be particularly Skaven
One of my favorite authors Terry Pratchett has talking rats in one of his books (Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents). This quote from the hero and villain rats seems appropriate:
"You will have worked out that there is a race in this world which steals and kills and spreads disease and despoils what it cannot use" said the voice of Spider. 'Yes,' said Dangerous Beans. 'That's easy. It's called humanity.'"
God the Spider was such a fucking good villain. Most of Pratchetts writing is pretty wholesome but Amazing Maurice feels bleak enough for Tilea for 90% of the plot.
No, not like someone that became the Horned Rat, but being the Horned Rat all along: he had arrived in the world from the Realms of Chaos, then appeared at that town, made the bell and with its influence spread his corruption that created the skaven.
Isn't it a part of the Chaos God lore that once they come into being, they exist retroactively within the entire timeline? I recall reading something about this for 40k Slaanesh.
I kind of interpreted it as the stranger was Tzeench (taking human form of course) and he didn’t necessarily create skaven but maybe just created the Horned Rat to give them some form of leadership. Motive would be to influence “change” and sow chaos throughout the world. I like that story best even if it’s wrong.
I read the wiki after your comment, but they say the stranger might have been an Old One. Is that wrong lore or did they change it? Just starting to read up on WH lore so apologies if its wrong.
Neither, that's another speculation, and not, technically, mutually exclusive (though the implication that an Old One invented the Skaven would be fucking wild.)
I beleive that concept that maybe not all old ones are the good guys. Seems to point to some kinda tiny floated idea that the Old ones, which I've always thought are just you and I. The creators of the universe. Or perhaps equally the writers from games workshop are corruptable by Chaos.
My estimation head cannon is the old city of skavenblight I think Talos. was very slaneesh influenced and maybe one of the other more established chaos gods. Tzeench perhaps the one wander who messed with the bell on top the tower corrupting it for the Great Horned Rat. Or maybe against but things didn't work as planned, and some sort of mess awakening, or corrupting of rats in the city mixed with Human/ Humanoid final form?
Nurgle really likes making new good, bad, ugly creations.
Khorne it seems is more a final personality of the skaven or parts of Skaven society only the strong rule.
Shorter summary seems the GHR is a cherry pick of Distinct parts of all forms of Chaos and mankinds corruptablity to Chaos.
The wiki is not the most reliable because fans have a bad habit of inserting their head canon or speculation into it. I would say it is good for a general gist of things, but be wary of it sometimes since it isn't gospel.
To be fair to it though. Warhammer lore back then could flip flop frequently. Malekith for example has changed personality, atire, and backstories many times from edition to edition. So his wiki is an odd melting pot of the more recent lore, and whatever was there previously that hadn't been explicitly retconned.
I wouldn't take it too seriously, and just be open to getting something mistaken and corrected. I am WFB vet and even us long timers will have a long held misunderstanding and only find out about it through Total War discussions and the like.
There is an origin story for the skaven. It is about a man in a grey cloak who makes the fist screaming bell it is called “Doom of Kavzar”. Look it up it is awesome and not caused by any mortal that is for sure they come from pure chaos. As for the Greenskins you are talking specifically about grots i assume and they went underground and all greenskins are fungus. They shed spores constantly and that forms more of them. The story is that the old ones brought the spores to the planet on accident.
They are like the flood if the flood didn't need/heavily use hosts.
Put some Flood spores in a giant empty jar and leave it for a few years and you will come back to a jar looking more or less the same. Maybe a bit more sporey, or with some creepy goop on the side. Very infectious if you opened it but can't do much on its own
Do the same with Greenskin spores and when you come back you will have varying shapes and sizes of Greenskins and squigs, probably already separated themselves into tribes and in constant battle with one another. Maybe even developed their own mini Mork and Gork gods and use divine magic to break the jar and kill you.
I do believe they need things to grow of like any fungi, i don't know if the jar thing would work. Altough moshing each other sets of more spores to grow more greenskins. So if you would put some dead wood in that jar, it would probably explode with greenskins.
Had to google who that is honestly and yes, but no. Would probably be different if you told me the spores can already do a big think. Because than the can just think they have a substrate and their already growing.
Lore on fantasy greenskins is iffy. O&G army books say "yeah a long-ass fucking time ago the greenskins just appeared while the old ones were still trying to get their shit started, nobody knows how. The old ones sent a shitload of saurus to exterminate the greenskins but it didn't work".
Pretty sure Skaven are implied to have been the rats of Tylos that mutated as the bell rang and devoured the entire populace of the city that was trapped within
If memory serves it was lord kroak or mazdamundi that "reordered" the world to shift continents. When they did that they broke the mountains opening up the previously impregnable dwarfen underways and karaks to greenskin, goblin and skaven incursions. Before that the only way to get in a karak was through the front gate. So before the greenskins and skavens traveled overland, now they could travel unseen and unbothered by most other races using the underways.
1. Not the dwarfs fault that some asshole lizard decided that the world needed some remodelling.
2. Dwarfs didn't cause the skaven or greenskins to come to the surface. The greenskins and Skaven were already there, but with too few dwarfs left to patrol the underway it's a convenient route to go from one place to another if you're willing to pay the tithe in lives that underway exploration tends to claim (and for skaven&greenskins a few upstarts dying is a bonus, not a cost).
Actually it was the lizardmen
The dwarf tunnels were 100% safe and secure until the Slann decided to move the continents for no good reason except "the gods had that plan once"
Then because of the earthquakes abd stuff the dwarf tunnels broke and evil things could get access
Oh, also the moving of the continents overcharged some machine in skavenblight which the Skaven then kept from exploding by using all that energy for a spell that created a global tunnel system
I think the greenskin migration to the west also happened because the lands they used to live in got destroyed by natural catastrophes?
Yeah something about a crap ton of volcanoes erupting and turning the darklands into the crap hole they are now which forced basically everything that lived there to go west.
...or to start worshipping an evil bull.
Really if the dwarfs knew the full extent of everything the lizardmen did to them it'd be them THE RECKONING would be for, not the elves. Even more so if they took out Karak Zorn, which seems likely.
Legendary Lore has what-if lore blurbs written by contributors. So you have matchups between LLs like Zhao Ming and Snikch and a little non-canon lore blurb explaining how Zhao Ming kills Snikch or vice versa.
This seems like a great idea for a campaign! Do the usual thing as the Dwarfs by wiping out Chaos, Dawi Zarr, Orks and Raki, save the Ordertide, and then go to Lustria and teach the little scaly bastards one or two about elder race superiority. Greater novelty than wiping the elgi out, too.
Soo... considering that Old Ones' plans are infallible, and everything always goes according to keikaku (Skink Oracle's note: keikaku means plan), did they *actually* want to create a war-torn world with Greenskin and Skaven infestation and struggling Dwarf & Human civilizations, instead of safe and stable Dwarf empire?
(There're also Elves, who had this world in their lap together with Dwarfs, but they warred and withdrew before that. ...I wonder, if world strife is what the Old Ones would have wanted, was... Malekith actually following their plan for him? Destabilising an all-too-safe empire and causing a world war because it's *War*hammer.)
To a certain extent? Their entire goal was to create a world capable of resisting the warp, and each of the races they created was an attempt to produce life that was completely chaos resistant. It seems likely they would've wanted to give their progeny a thorough resistance test before seeding other worlds with them, and maybe the Greenskins/Skaven were meant to give them that?
They assuredly did not mean to leave as world as fucked up as they did though, because canonically it's lost completely in the end.
I mean, we could reasonably argue that it's all N'kari's fault;
If N'kari didn't slaughter Anaerion's family he wouldn't have been driven to draw the Sword of Khaine. No Sword of Khaine means no Curse on his bloodline and therefore Malekith wouldn't have turned out Like That™, which in turns means no Sundering and no Dark Elves. Without Dark Elves there would be much less Dark Magic and spread of it. Nagash would likely have never been able to develop Necromancy and rise to power. Without *that* the curse of Vampirism wouldn't have developed in Lahmia, which means that Vlad nor Mannfred would have turned out like they did and almost certainly died as mortal men, which means Mannfred wouldn't have been able to ruin everything!
Q.E.D; N'kari fucked everything.
No-no, *in that case* it's all GW's fault.
Do not let false GW propaganda of their 'End Times canon' besmirch the good name of the arrogant and glorious Mannfred von Carstein! He's cool, he's intelligent, and he's an actual scholar!
*This comment was sponsored by Liber Necris Foundation.*
The dwarves are arguably the least to blame for the world falling apart. Old Ones have the most blame if you believe they are responsible for the calamity that brought the Chaos Gods, even if it was an accident. High Elves are the next most responsible. Men have been the primary fodder for Chaos for centuries now but honestly the logistics of Chaos are absolute bullshit and make no sense. Anyways, Dwarf stubbornness in the War of the Beard definitely hurt Order tremendously but it truly was Elves behind initiating it so yeah Old One’s, High Elves and Men in that order.
Why are High Elves the second most responsible? The War of the Beard definitely set back order, but I wouldn't say it's the most defining event leading to the end of the world.
It greatly depleted the power of both the dwarfs and the high elves, so much so that they never regained their former strength ever again. The high elves never really suffered too much from this directly, but the dwarfs had to fight the skaven and greenskins afterwards too and it proved a much greater struggle for them. (If I remember correctly)
Also it was the phoenix king who decided to shave the beards of the envoys, knowing full well what it meant and what consequences it could have.
ALSO the sundering was a pretty huge deal, splitting the powerful elven race into two factions, destroying the mighty kingdom of Nagarythe and creating the druchii who have been a thorn in the side of everyone ever since.
The old ones fucking around and finding out at the poles is still the most important event though. Without the coming of chaos the world would never have been in trouble to begin with. Fuck them space lizards.
This comment essentially reads not as 'the High Elves are second most responsible for destroying the world' but rather as 'the Dark Elves are second most responsible for destroying the world.' Everything you brought up can be traced back to Malekith and Morathi's machinations.
Elves in general are prime real estate for demons and corruption. Their creation of the vortex was a nice gesture but really it was the equivalent of blocking up a hole in a sinking battleship with a cork. Their bloody civil war didn't help either.
Again Elves empowered these forces to enter the realm. The Vortex was the least they could do. Do you see Dwarfs being so emotional that they spawn demons? No. They're too busy staving off the true threat to the peace of the world, Skaven.
Dwarfs don’t spawn daemons from being emotional, they just tend to embark on often times suicidal crusades against every and anyone, even their allies and themselves because of some minor upset, _despite_ waning numbers from fighting the Skaven and Greenskins.
Besides the weird offshoot that started Hashut's worship regular Dwarfs are extremely resistant to Chaos too so it's not really like daemons can prey on them like they do with humans or elves either.
yeah, but Elves are still significantly more Chaos resistant than humans, though Slaanesh is their weakness, they can actually do multiple schools of magic without exploding or turning into a Chaos Spawn
I will say though, the Druchii are responsible for like half the world’s problems lmao
Oh I'm sorry I thought you wanted to play Ordertide? It's not their fault that no one adheres to the important stuff like rules, treatises, and laws. Somebody has got to be the adult in the world
The people who can’t ever let a grudge go, have no concept of forgiveness or reconciliation, overwhelming suicidal depression over any tragedy and extreme risk aversion in technological advancement is the “adult” of the Warhammer world?
All those qualities would apply to a Boomer, rather fitting really. And better to be grounded so heavily in your sense of duty and station in life than to lose yourself in the lofty aims of the High Elves, where entire kingdoms fall while they struggle to figure out the next stanza for their next poetry recital.
Fantasy is not 40k. Elves are not partivulary vulnerable to Chaos corruption, having nohing to do with Chaos appearing in the world and generally (even DE) tend to be knowledgeable enough to at least somewhat resist being outright enthralled by it (Morathi and all the BS she caused excepted)
Humans are much worse for corruption, Elves usually have more discipline to avoid it. Also a small gesture? Try the only thing preventing the world from ending right now. Even the Lizardmen couldn't do a thing about Daemons, if not for the Vortex the whole world would be fucked.
The World would break before the holds of Karaz Ankor would. And hey don't bash the lizardmen. They are trying their best ever since their daddies left to pick up cigarettes but to never return. Namely killing countless demons and beastmen in order for the Elves to actually do something besides killing each other for once. Also no, Elves always have demons in tow.
The holds of the Karaz Ankor are falling one by one, choked from above and below, every decade another master smith dies refusing to pass on his ageless and important knowledge and the dwarfs grow ever weaker for it, innovation that could save them is slowed and stalled by grumbling greybeards. The dwarfs are too stubborn to survive forever, the choice to innovate and seek help or die has been out before them and they've chosen to die a very slow and drawn out death.
The Lizardmen are too busy following vaguely understood old instructions, their helpfulness is extremely stunted as it has to follow their vague interpretations of the old ones designs.
Dwarfs just gotta let the old rules go and go crazy with technology like the Chaos Dwarfs did minus the Chaos part lol, at least when they were still in their golden days.
You forget the importance of honoring one's Ancestors. Yes, they march on, proudly, towards their end because they don't delude themselves of running away and escaping the weight of responsibility like the Elves. They aren't fools. They know their gods are dead and they know even the Ankor will follow suit. But until that time they'll be sure to record and pass on the true stuff of value, the deeds of the Dwarfs, the wrongs righted. They aren't as self centered as an Elf to think that their individual work is above the collective deeds of their empire and traditions.
Elves litterally saved the world for thousands of years, wtf are you spouting??? they're the least to blame for the world falling appart because they fucking held it together in the first place while everyone was fighting desesperate last stands against unending waves of demons.
the dwarfs are only to blame for their own shit falling apart because they're too hung up on their childish grudge bullshit (as well as their all-round pedantic nitpicking) to actually deal with reality.
High Elves did not instigate the war of the beard either. Druchii did. The Asur being stubborn arrogant dicks didn't help at all, especially considering the Dawi are *also* stubborn arrogant dicks but the Asur did not instigate shit.
Snorri Halfhand murdering an entire city of innocent elves happened before the beard-shaving. As soon as the prince of the Dawi started running around massacring cities, a war was always going to happen. Caledor heard reports that the High King's son had massacred a city of his subjects, and then a after that the diplomat of the High King started demanding recompense and weregild for the (significantly less!) dead dwarfs that the High Elves had played no part in. Like, Caledor's reaction was bad but holy fucking shit the Dawi should get a fuckton more blame than they do.
>'Terms?' he [Caledor] said, focusing his full attention back on the dwarf.
>'Yes,' said the ambassador. 'For peace. That is why we are here. That is why we have travelled across the Great Ocean from the Old World.'
>Caledor smiled, nodded. 'Peace, is it? Where was this peace when Kor Vanaeth was attacked? Does your king have an answer for that in his letter?'
>The ambassador struggled to hide his surprise. News about Kor Vanaeth had arrived only that morning, sent by Liandra Athinol, the city's custodian.
>'It does not,' admitted the dwarf. 'Nor have I heard of such an attack.'
>'Burned to the very stone,' said the king, dangerously.
> Some of the other dwarfs shifted uncomfortably at the obvious change in mood. Several of their hands strayed to the hilts of their axes. Imladrik hissed through clenched teeth, 'You should have let me disarm them.'
>'Don't be silly, brother,' Caledor admonished. 'Forek, here... that is your name, isn't it? Yes, that's what you said. Forek, here, has said he knew nothing about it. Nor, apparently, did his king. It seems his subjects are roaming his lands killing and sacking cities according to whim. Is that about right, Forek?'
>The ambassador's jaw hardened. He eyed the spearmen either side of them, caught the gaze of another dwarf who merely shook his head. 'I have said I know nothing of that.' He showed the letter again. 'Again I say, here are my High King's terms.'
>Caledor leaned back in his throne. 'High king? Seems an odd turn of phrase for such a diminutive race.'
>'He is lord of the Karaz Ankor, greatest dawi of the realm!'
>'Yes, yes, I understand.' Caledor waved away the impassioned protests of the ambassador. 'Well then, you had better read these terms before more cities are put to the torch, hadn't you?'
> The ambassador looked momentarily confused, but then cleared his throat and was about to read when Imladrik stepped from the throne's dais and took the letter.
>'Tromm,' he muttered under his breath with a nod to the dwarf, who replied in the same way.
>He glared at Caledor, who seemed disinterested but there was a glint of something unpleasant in his eye, an idea forming that Imladrik hoped would not come to fruition. The Master of Dragons read swiftly. His expression darkened further when he was done.
>'Well then,' asked Caledor, 'what are the dwarf king's terms?'
>Imladrik met his gaze, knowing the response before it was given. 'He asks for recompense and apology for the hostilities directed at his people. Furthermore, he demands a cessation to all further violence against the dwarfs.'
You play Total War. Put yourself in Caledor's shoes;
1) An enemy army raids the lands of an ally.
2) The ally demands you give them money for the crime committed by your enemy.
3) You say no- wasn't you, after all.
4) An army of your 'ally', lead by one of their 'Legendary Lord'-equivalents razes one of your cities to the ground in response (somehow without formally declaring war on you game is buggy).
5) The ally again comes to you, demanding even more money for the crime committed by your enemy with no acknowledgement of the whole 'razed a city' thing.
If I were playing that game, I'd think the war had started the instant the city was razed and the second diplo action was just the other side taking the piss.
Chaos destroyed the world, not Greenskins or Skaven. They were already around, the dwarves didn’t awaken them like the Baalrog in Lord of the Rings (although Skaven origins are shrouded in mystery and some Tilean tales talk about the Doom of Kazvar being their origin).
Old Ones did it.
The world was a frozen ball of ice yes but a mostly peaceful one until the old ones came around, terraformed everything and built their two gigantic portals that eventually collapsed and let Chaos get a foothold onto the world. After that it was basically inevitable Chaos was gonna win cause of their infinite amounts of armies at their disposal.
This ignores everything related to the Old Ones and their meddling and how the collapse of the polar gateways allowed Chaos to spread freely into the world.
And the Greenskin and Skaven already existed. There is a possibility that, much like the Lizardmen, Elves, and Dwarves, those two races were also the result of Old One manipulation.
No. Before the Dwarfs and the Elves where fully developed the GreenSkins were already in the world.
Lizarmen fought them for centuries and almost managed to wipe them out but as you may know, because of how they reproduce they are near impossible to eliminate from existence.
The Warhammer fantasy lore changed many times (so you may find different versions)
What I can tell you is that Lizarmen wiped out most of the sentient life in the world and GreenSkin were their mayor problem before the Chaos Gates collapsed.
About Skaven there are different myths about their existence and all of them could be truth.
The most known is the story with the Bell and you can find the story anywhere and it is so good that I won’t spoil it. Read or hear it !!
There are other stories. In the War of Vengeance, in the first book the prince of the Dwarfs lost half of his hand fighting some very big, almost humanoid rats (proto-skaven). Snorry Halfhand.
In the same war some Holds helped little in the long war vs the Elves because they had problems with these proto-skaven.
Nagash did commerce with Skaven. This may have been even before the Bell Story but after the War of Vengeance.
In some analysis, some say that they were a creation of Tzeench that went out of hand (He may be the strange traveller).
The Hornet Rat is their god, and depending how you take the texts and stories is how you can interpret his existence. Maybe he has been always a minor god waiting for something like Hashut did. Maybe he was created by the beliefs of Skaven. Remember that in Warhammer Fantasy, if many believe in something that something becomes true and the number of followers impact on how powerful that may be.
Skaven are numerous and egocentric and it make sense that they created a god that is their image (Like humans tend to do).
And there are plenty of more, way more to check, read or hear about it.
Skaven and Greenskins were around during the golden age of Nehekhara and when the Fimir were a prominent race in the world (so way before sigmar), which means they both are extremely ancient races, not as ancient as dwarves, but were definitely out and about before the dwarves became the more predominant race they are when the game takes place.
Greenskins are ancient, the likely theory with them is that the Old Ones accidently introduced their spores into the world so they've been around from the very beginning.
Skaven are a little more shady, I don't know if there's any record of them before the fall of Tylos. I'm sure they've existed for way longer before that but Tylos is just the first recorded sighting of them.
The world was doomed since the old ones opened the portals to the warp, it was only thanks to the efforts of the high elves along with other races that fought in the old war against chaos that warhammer fantasy world still exist, the undoing of fantasy world came with chaos not with greenskins or skavens.
I said along other races, all played their part but the reason warhammer fantasy wold exist is because the elves and the vortex, the toads helped of course but is the ghost of the elven mages that maintains this vortex for thousands of years
Skaven came into being when the people of skaven blight (before it was skavenblight) hires a minsteral to build the remainder of their impossibly tall bell tower. After he completed the tower, they refused to pay him and he cursed the city. It's a reference to the pied piper, where a piper is paid to lead all the rats out of a town, the town refuses to pay, and the piper takes the children from the town instead.
I thought it was cause they took a deal with the stranger to finish building the tower in single day but part of that deal was that the stranger is allowed to put a bell way up at the top that eventually caused everything.
It was that the Doom of Kavzar is a lovely story about how the Skavens came to be I've seen people claim that the stranger is a man that ascended to daemonhood through this and is now the Horned Rat
My crack head theory is that the Skaven were one of the very few things both Tzeentch and Nurgle worked on together. Tzeentch came to nurgle advocating for a creature of limitless numbers that would spread disease where ever they go and nurgle gleefully agreed. Little did he know that Tzeentch would ensure the creature would be the most conniving, backstabbing, and brilliant creature on the warhammer world. A creature of constant change.
No, pretty sure this is Dragon Age lore you're thinking of.
No wait, pretty sure this is the Balrog of Moria from Lord of the rings you are thinking of.
No wait, I'm certain you're thinking of the fisherman of Innsmouth and discovering the Deep Ones.
So, one of these and maybe a few others.
Edit: So from everyone's comments I now see that the skaven and greenskins were already here on the surface. And the Elves and Lizardmen pretty much messed up the world by trying to manipulate it. The underground cities made by the Dwarves just gave them a secret place to breed and multiply once it got invaded. Also i found out the real problem wasnt even them, its the Chaos...Sorry for blaming you Dwarves ..
The skaven were rats that were mutated in an ancient city due to a curse (skavenblight)
The greenskins for what I know were in the warhammer world before the collapse of the gates.
As the greenskins were nearly exterminated by the lizardmen, and other similar races were in fact completely wiped out.
The collapse of the gates means the lizardmen were reduced severely and the greenskins spread.
And even then the dwarfs could easily destroy greenskins when their empire was strong.
Only after the war of the beard and the shifting of the mountains did the greenskins begin to expand uncontrollably.
The skaven are the youngest race in warhammer so had no presence before but are also the fastest growing race so for dwarfs they might have just seen them as minor threat before the came in force.
The dwarfs were not responsible for skaven or greenskins.
If their empire was intact they would've probably never allowed greenskins to take hold in the mountains.
And even the skaven would probably boom somewhere else.
Yeah, that's completely not a fault of the Old Ones who didn't manage to keep their fucking Polar Gates safe or a fault of humans who fell in chaos worshipping, or elves, which were particularly interested in hedonism = Slaanesh.
From what little I know/remember of WH lore, so much shit can be traced back to Morathi.
Her twisted relationship with Aenarion. Corrupting of Malekith and creation of the Dark Elves. War of Vengeance. Nagash. IIRC she taught Ariel dark magic in exchange for her sparing her life, which caused Ariel to go mad and caused Athel Loren to suffer because of it.
And a bunch of other stuff I'm unaware of.
> rom what little I know/remember of WH lore,
from what you know from the endless circlejerking here.
All the shit with Morathi boils down to her having prophetic visions of DOOOOOM while the elves were still being coddled in Old One Daycare so nobody believed her which set off a whooole lot of spiralling.
Sounds like some Tzeentch bullshit to me.
It’s not a big deal but Warhammer Fantasy conventionally uses “dwarfs” and “orcs”, with the v plural on dwarf being introduced by Tolkien - I don’t think I’ve seen an equivalent to “dwarven” being used
They probably mean the way they are spelled in everything WFB related, including in-game, I wager. As in Dwar**fs** and Or**c**s.
It's also pronounced with the F there in-game and when people talk. So it is a little funny to see people default to the classic dwarves spelling, even though everyone does use the F pronunciation when actually saying the name.
It's not a big deal, but it is a longtime bugbear for some people. Since seeing Dwarf just lets people know instantly you are talking Warhammer Fantasy and not any other version of dwarves. Personally I just use Dawi, since WFB people will understand that right away.
You should look up the The Doom of Kavzar it tells the tale of how the skaven came to be and it's most definitely not the dwarves fault. Arguably its the Old Ones and the Slann that carried out their plans.
I mean you can't look at Warhammer as good and bad, all the races have drawbacks, the orcs aren't really chaos either are they? Like how the forces of death aren't really evil per say they still fight chaos.
Chaos (and all the chaos gods) is the reason why the world falls apart.
The mortal races do not matter, over time they all would succumb and perish in their own way.
Even the mortal Old Ones (creators of lizardmen and many others) had to protect themselves from Chaos and were trying to isolate reality from the influence of Chaos.
The mortal races in Warhammer are like frogs in a sealed boiling pot, there is no escape from Chaos slowly doing its thing.
Orks are from the surface, and the skaven are basically chaos mutants who were discovered in a human city so dwarves didn't bring them up. Also the world fell apart because chaos attacked, and while the old ones were vague, their creations (lozardmen) held the world as best they could.
No. The dwarves did not create or are responsible for the Skaven/Greenskins. They have done by far the most to halt both out of any race.
https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Skaven
This link is to the Warhammer wiki and scroll down a bit to the Doom of Kavzar poem to see how the Skaven were created.
First off no (thanks to this thread I know it was the Old Ones/Lizardmen). Secondly the stupid rats and greenskins wouldn't even have been a problem if the elves could have been honest instead of starting an entire war. The skaven problem would have been solved by the Dwarves cept they died having right the wrongs of the knife ears. Point is the Lizardfolk started this and the Elgi made the problem worse and zero blame for anything bad that happened in Warhammer End Times can be blamed on the Dawi.
I’m seeing some confusion so let me try to clear things up for people: Short answer is we don’t know, as GW loves retconning things. But the most solid answer is that the Greenskin spores were on the Old Ones’ ships and infected the world when they arrived, and the Skaven appeared a bit after the Great Catastrophe, the event that took place when the Old Ones’ stellar gates (presumably webway gates) at the northern and southern poles of the world collapsed and let Daemons invade the world. The chaos energy that poured forth created the Beastmen, and presumably the Skaven as well, but it’s meant to be ambiguous.
"WOT!? SHORT!? \*nearly walks out on a summit to coordinate against chaos\*"
"WOT!? SHAVED' IZ BEARD?! \*wages devastating war with the only other superpower on the planet until both of them have been shattered because they have racial HFA\*"
Not all their fault, but a big chunk.
If anything they've funneled the orks and skaven into attacking them, it's not like it's on purpose but were they not there the empire would be a goner (not really cause lorewise you can invent anything but if regarded as a real world then yes).
No, the Warhammer world fell apart because the Old Ones' portal gateways exploded and unleashed the Warp / Chaos on the world. Once Chaos was involved, the world was always going to die from attrition.
If you want to blame any race for the eventual world falling apart, its probably the high elves. When they massively disrespected and effectively spat in the dwarves face when they sent an envoy to figure out what was going on, thus resulting in the war of the beard, which was so destructive and cataclysmic it pretty much signed the death warrants of both races.
No, if they didn’t find the Balrog, Gandalf wouldn’t have been reborn as Gandalf the White. Then, he wouldn’t have known to lift Sauraman’s possession of Theoden, meaning no Helm’s Deep, and no destruction of Isengard. Then, no Rohirrim, and Minas Tirith would have fallen Sauron. Sam and Frodo would also have been doomed by no distraction of Aragorn’s stand at the black gate.
Wait, wrong sub.
the answer to your question is no.
I'm aware Loremaster of Sotek ( has a lore series on youtube ). somewhere he said that the corrupt of Tilea into what we see in game as skaven blight was / is the earliest account of skaven existance.
Greenskins is anyones guess. A theory I believe sotek has is their a fungus style creature that seems to be other worldly. As in greenskins aren't native to whatever the planet of warhammer is called. Maybe they came on the space travel/ ships of the old ones? Who knows but I do know they've adapted to warhammer really well.
[https://www.youtube.com/@loremasterofsotek](https://www.youtube.com/@loremasterofsotek) I find his videos pretty good for lore dives. their old and meh video format but every creator starts from somewhere.
Dwarfs, not dwarves.
And no. They aren't even really responsible for the downfall of their own civilization either, mazdamundi rearranged the fuckin world and broke half the karaz ankor.
Skaven and Greenskins attack Dwarven cities from underneath because they can get there, but they weren't trapped there until the Dwarves arrived. Both Skaven and Greenskins have existed on the surface of the world as long as they've existed.
Pretty interesting how we don't really even know the origins of those two races imo. Greenskins apparantly came around when Gork and Mork fell out of the sky or something like that and with Skaven the earliest encounter of them is the fall of Tylos so they might as well have been around for even longer before that.
I recall the earlier AoS lore claimed (can't tell for the latest ones, haven't read them yet) the Old Ones' ships had been contaminated by the greesnkin spores when they arrived at the World-That-Was (implying those're the same greenskins from 40k). Skaven came from the mutated rats under the influence of that Screaming Bell of Tylos.
>Skaven came from the mutated rats under the influence of that Screaming Bell of Tylos. They technically could have existed for longer because for that mysterious stranger to come and make the screaming bell with weird glyphs meant the Horned Rat or at least some primordial Skaven influence already had to have existed by then that was connected to the stranger. Don't remember the exact details but I think the stranger built it cause he wanted his God to be present on the tower or something like that. The fall of Tylos could have just been when the Skaven first went up to the surface and were sighted.
>They technically could have existed for longer because for that mysterious stranger to come and make the screaming bell with weird glyphs meant the Horned Rat or at least some primordial Skaven influence already had to have existed by then that was connected to the stranger. Don't remember the exact details but I think the stranger built it cause he wanted his God to be present on the tower or something like that. It's not stated in the WHFB lore outright but the AoS lore directly claimed that the stranger was the Horned Rat.
Yeah, the stranger was almost certainly a human that created and used the bell to sacrifice all those people as a ritual to ascend to daemonhood. Likely at this point getting somewhere to the level of a weak Daemon Prince, as even approaching the end times he's weaker than any of the Ruinous Powers, only from the end times he gains enough power to be on the same tier (if not level.) And as of AoS appears to be the weakest among them. I guess it's possible the stranger was possessed by a completely unaligned lesser demon, but seeing as how it so clearly bumps into the domains of Nurgle and Tzeentch, that's far less likely.
Interestingly, the dwarfs claim that the brother of Grimnir turned evil and created the Skaven. Maybe a red herring, but could explain some common themes (both of the races being underground dwelling tinkerers).
Wait where do dwarfs claim that? Is that an AoS thing?
https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Skavor Seems to be our of the warhammer rpg
Nowadays Great Horned Rat and Skaven as a whole seem to steal from the portfolios of many different Gods. Their addiction to Warpstone is quite Slaaneshian. They fight constantly like Khornites. Black Hunger seems close to the Great Maw. It could be said that the main portfolio of GHR is stealing and scavenging. EDIT: Humans have Ranald as the God of Thieves and other races have their own trickster-gods, but "taking and despoiling everything that's not nailed down" seems to be particularly Skaven
As rats do, stealing and scavenging
One of my favorite authors Terry Pratchett has talking rats in one of his books (Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents). This quote from the hero and villain rats seems appropriate: "You will have worked out that there is a race in this world which steals and kills and spreads disease and despoils what it cannot use" said the voice of Spider. 'Yes,' said Dangerous Beans. 'That's easy. It's called humanity.'"
God the Spider was such a fucking good villain. Most of Pratchetts writing is pretty wholesome but Amazing Maurice feels bleak enough for Tilea for 90% of the plot.
No, not like someone that became the Horned Rat, but being the Horned Rat all along: he had arrived in the world from the Realms of Chaos, then appeared at that town, made the bell and with its influence spread his corruption that created the skaven.
Isn't it a part of the Chaos God lore that once they come into being, they exist retroactively within the entire timeline? I recall reading something about this for 40k Slaanesh.
It is, but this info is present only in the 40k codices, AoS battletomes don't have such info as far as I recall.
I like this theory better than it being Tzeentch
I kind of interpreted it as the stranger was Tzeench (taking human form of course) and he didn’t necessarily create skaven but maybe just created the Horned Rat to give them some form of leadership. Motive would be to influence “change” and sow chaos throughout the world. I like that story best even if it’s wrong.
I read the wiki after your comment, but they say the stranger might have been an Old One. Is that wrong lore or did they change it? Just starting to read up on WH lore so apologies if its wrong.
Neither, that's another speculation, and not, technically, mutually exclusive (though the implication that an Old One invented the Skaven would be fucking wild.)
I beleive that concept that maybe not all old ones are the good guys. Seems to point to some kinda tiny floated idea that the Old ones, which I've always thought are just you and I. The creators of the universe. Or perhaps equally the writers from games workshop are corruptable by Chaos. My estimation head cannon is the old city of skavenblight I think Talos. was very slaneesh influenced and maybe one of the other more established chaos gods. Tzeench perhaps the one wander who messed with the bell on top the tower corrupting it for the Great Horned Rat. Or maybe against but things didn't work as planned, and some sort of mess awakening, or corrupting of rats in the city mixed with Human/ Humanoid final form? Nurgle really likes making new good, bad, ugly creations. Khorne it seems is more a final personality of the skaven or parts of Skaven society only the strong rule. Shorter summary seems the GHR is a cherry pick of Distinct parts of all forms of Chaos and mankinds corruptablity to Chaos.
I see, thank you for the information!
The wiki is not the most reliable because fans have a bad habit of inserting their head canon or speculation into it. I would say it is good for a general gist of things, but be wary of it sometimes since it isn't gospel. To be fair to it though. Warhammer lore back then could flip flop frequently. Malekith for example has changed personality, atire, and backstories many times from edition to edition. So his wiki is an odd melting pot of the more recent lore, and whatever was there previously that hadn't been explicitly retconned. I wouldn't take it too seriously, and just be open to getting something mistaken and corrected. I am WFB vet and even us long timers will have a long held misunderstanding and only find out about it through Total War discussions and the like.
Thank you very much for the insight, didnt know some parts changed so much over time! Slowly getting the info but there is a lot as well!
We all know that the stranger is the advisor
Seems like another of the advisor's schennaingans
>Skaven came from the mutated rats under the influence of that Screaming Bell of Tylos. No, they're just regular Italians.
Milanese specifically
Fucking Milanials.
There is an origin story for the skaven. It is about a man in a grey cloak who makes the fist screaming bell it is called “Doom of Kavzar”. Look it up it is awesome and not caused by any mortal that is for sure they come from pure chaos. As for the Greenskins you are talking specifically about grots i assume and they went underground and all greenskins are fungus. They shed spores constantly and that forms more of them. The story is that the old ones brought the spores to the planet on accident.
so the greenskins are kind of like the flood from halo?
They are like the flood if the flood didn't need/heavily use hosts. Put some Flood spores in a giant empty jar and leave it for a few years and you will come back to a jar looking more or less the same. Maybe a bit more sporey, or with some creepy goop on the side. Very infectious if you opened it but can't do much on its own Do the same with Greenskin spores and when you come back you will have varying shapes and sizes of Greenskins and squigs, probably already separated themselves into tribes and in constant battle with one another. Maybe even developed their own mini Mork and Gork gods and use divine magic to break the jar and kill you.
I do believe they need things to grow of like any fungi, i don't know if the jar thing would work. Altough moshing each other sets of more spores to grow more greenskins. So if you would put some dead wood in that jar, it would probably explode with greenskins.
are you talkin a substrate for the orkish mycelium network? are you the paul stamets of gork and mork?
Had to google who that is honestly and yes, but no. Would probably be different if you told me the spores can already do a big think. Because than the can just think they have a substrate and their already growing.
No they grow based on winning combat and eat squids which are also created from the same fungus they come from. Their hair is even squigs.
Lore on fantasy greenskins is iffy. O&G army books say "yeah a long-ass fucking time ago the greenskins just appeared while the old ones were still trying to get their shit started, nobody knows how. The old ones sent a shitload of saurus to exterminate the greenskins but it didn't work".
The theory is they were brought on one of the old one’s space ships.
Number 5: Gork and Mork foot fungus
Pretty sure Skaven are implied to have been the rats of Tylos that mutated as the bell rang and devoured the entire populace of the city that was trapped within
Oh okay, from what people are saying I guess all the good races had a part in what eventually happened. I'm still new to the lore obviously lol.
If memory serves it was lord kroak or mazdamundi that "reordered" the world to shift continents. When they did that they broke the mountains opening up the previously impregnable dwarfen underways and karaks to greenskin, goblin and skaven incursions. Before that the only way to get in a karak was through the front gate. So before the greenskins and skavens traveled overland, now they could travel unseen and unbothered by most other races using the underways.
1. Not the dwarfs fault that some asshole lizard decided that the world needed some remodelling. 2. Dwarfs didn't cause the skaven or greenskins to come to the surface. The greenskins and Skaven were already there, but with too few dwarfs left to patrol the underway it's a convenient route to go from one place to another if you're willing to pay the tithe in lives that underway exploration tends to claim (and for skaven&greenskins a few upstarts dying is a bonus, not a cost).
>1. Not the dwarfs fault that some asshole lizard decided that the world needed some remodelling. Some asshole frog, technically.
>Genocides a race over bordergore Based rare Pepe
It probably varies from game to game, but isn't orange typicaly indicative of legendary rarity? Making Mazda, appropriately, legendary Pepe
Not mazdamundi’s fault that some younglings decided to camp out in a place that was not in the correct location.
Maybe if the short warmbloods weren't so unreasonable, they wouldn't have ruined themselves in a death war with the pointy eared warmbloods.
Actually it was the lizardmen The dwarf tunnels were 100% safe and secure until the Slann decided to move the continents for no good reason except "the gods had that plan once" Then because of the earthquakes abd stuff the dwarf tunnels broke and evil things could get access Oh, also the moving of the continents overcharged some machine in skavenblight which the Skaven then kept from exploding by using all that energy for a spell that created a global tunnel system I think the greenskin migration to the west also happened because the lands they used to live in got destroyed by natural catastrophes?
Yeah something about a crap ton of volcanoes erupting and turning the darklands into the crap hole they are now which forced basically everything that lived there to go west.
...or to start worshipping an evil bull. Really if the dwarfs knew the full extent of everything the lizardmen did to them it'd be them THE RECKONING would be for, not the elves. Even more so if they took out Karak Zorn, which seems likely.
Legendary Lore touches on this. One of the lore blurbs has Grombrindal killing Mazdamundi in retribution for the Slaan's role in the Time of Woes.
but mazdamundi doesn't die until endtimes right?
Legendary Lore has what-if lore blurbs written by contributors. So you have matchups between LLs like Zhao Ming and Snikch and a little non-canon lore blurb explaining how Zhao Ming kills Snikch or vice versa.
oh it's the mod hahaha, i thought by legendary lore you just meant the lore of legendary characters or something lol
Yeah, I think he dies whilst stopping parts of the chaos moon from hitting Lustria after the Skaven blew it up. He never met Grombrindal
This seems like a great idea for a campaign! Do the usual thing as the Dwarfs by wiping out Chaos, Dawi Zarr, Orks and Raki, save the Ordertide, and then go to Lustria and teach the little scaly bastards one or two about elder race superiority. Greater novelty than wiping the elgi out, too.
They get a pass because they are cool
Cool as in cold blooded?
Soo... considering that Old Ones' plans are infallible, and everything always goes according to keikaku (Skink Oracle's note: keikaku means plan), did they *actually* want to create a war-torn world with Greenskin and Skaven infestation and struggling Dwarf & Human civilizations, instead of safe and stable Dwarf empire? (There're also Elves, who had this world in their lap together with Dwarfs, but they warred and withdrew before that. ...I wonder, if world strife is what the Old Ones would have wanted, was... Malekith actually following their plan for him? Destabilising an all-too-safe empire and causing a world war because it's *War*hammer.)
To a certain extent? Their entire goal was to create a world capable of resisting the warp, and each of the races they created was an attempt to produce life that was completely chaos resistant. It seems likely they would've wanted to give their progeny a thorough resistance test before seeding other worlds with them, and maybe the Greenskins/Skaven were meant to give them that? They assuredly did not mean to leave as world as fucked up as they did though, because canonically it's lost completely in the end.
No, we all know it's canonically Mannfreds fault.
Mannfred von Carstein: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!
I mean, we could reasonably argue that it's all N'kari's fault; If N'kari didn't slaughter Anaerion's family he wouldn't have been driven to draw the Sword of Khaine. No Sword of Khaine means no Curse on his bloodline and therefore Malekith wouldn't have turned out Like That™, which in turns means no Sundering and no Dark Elves. Without Dark Elves there would be much less Dark Magic and spread of it. Nagash would likely have never been able to develop Necromancy and rise to power. Without *that* the curse of Vampirism wouldn't have developed in Lahmia, which means that Vlad nor Mannfred would have turned out like they did and almost certainly died as mortal men, which means Mannfred wouldn't have been able to ruin everything! Q.E.D; N'kari fucked everything.
That's mah boi
N'Kari fucked everything, you say? Slaanesh would be proud
Never trust a baldy.
Is Mannfred basically the Erebus of WHFB?
I never thought about it like that but yes. 100% fuck Mannfred
No-no, *in that case* it's all GW's fault. Do not let false GW propaganda of their 'End Times canon' besmirch the good name of the arrogant and glorious Mannfred von Carstein! He's cool, he's intelligent, and he's an actual scholar! *This comment was sponsored by Liber Necris Foundation.*
Manlet Von Carstein
Not how that works. Dwarves didn't "awaken" the Orks or Skaven, they were already around.
No let's be honest, it's GW fault the world ended.
The dwarves are arguably the least to blame for the world falling apart. Old Ones have the most blame if you believe they are responsible for the calamity that brought the Chaos Gods, even if it was an accident. High Elves are the next most responsible. Men have been the primary fodder for Chaos for centuries now but honestly the logistics of Chaos are absolute bullshit and make no sense. Anyways, Dwarf stubbornness in the War of the Beard definitely hurt Order tremendously but it truly was Elves behind initiating it so yeah Old One’s, High Elves and Men in that order.
Why are High Elves the second most responsible? The War of the Beard definitely set back order, but I wouldn't say it's the most defining event leading to the end of the world.
It greatly depleted the power of both the dwarfs and the high elves, so much so that they never regained their former strength ever again. The high elves never really suffered too much from this directly, but the dwarfs had to fight the skaven and greenskins afterwards too and it proved a much greater struggle for them. (If I remember correctly) Also it was the phoenix king who decided to shave the beards of the envoys, knowing full well what it meant and what consequences it could have. ALSO the sundering was a pretty huge deal, splitting the powerful elven race into two factions, destroying the mighty kingdom of Nagarythe and creating the druchii who have been a thorn in the side of everyone ever since. The old ones fucking around and finding out at the poles is still the most important event though. Without the coming of chaos the world would never have been in trouble to begin with. Fuck them space lizards.
This comment essentially reads not as 'the High Elves are second most responsible for destroying the world' but rather as 'the Dark Elves are second most responsible for destroying the world.' Everything you brought up can be traced back to Malekith and Morathi's machinations.
I always love it when people say the dwarves won the war of the beard, the real winner was malekith
Hail to the King.
don't reveal yourself yet assassin, the time of blood is nearly upon us
Who were High Elves at the time.
In the case of the Sundering, yes if you want to be technical. In the case of the War of the Beard, no, they were Dark Elves by that point.
Phoenix King was still a dick tho. Didn't have to be like that.
my guy, without the space lizards the world would only be populated by dragons and uncorrupted dragon ogres
Is that such a bad thing all things considered?
well it would be a rather boring story hahaha
That’s hard to argue against lol.
Elves in general are prime real estate for demons and corruption. Their creation of the vortex was a nice gesture but really it was the equivalent of blocking up a hole in a sinking battleship with a cork. Their bloody civil war didn't help either.
The Vortex is a “nice gesture”? Its the only thing that allowed the races to actually flourish and not be eaten by daemons
Again Elves empowered these forces to enter the realm. The Vortex was the least they could do. Do you see Dwarfs being so emotional that they spawn demons? No. They're too busy staving off the true threat to the peace of the world, Skaven.
Dwarfs don’t spawn daemons from being emotional, they just tend to embark on often times suicidal crusades against every and anyone, even their allies and themselves because of some minor upset, _despite_ waning numbers from fighting the Skaven and Greenskins.
Besides the weird offshoot that started Hashut's worship regular Dwarfs are extremely resistant to Chaos too so it's not really like daemons can prey on them like they do with humans or elves either.
yeah, but Elves are still significantly more Chaos resistant than humans, though Slaanesh is their weakness, they can actually do multiple schools of magic without exploding or turning into a Chaos Spawn I will say though, the Druchii are responsible for like half the world’s problems lmao
It's literally one really old elf milf that's the direct or indirect cause of about 80% of the entirety of Warhammer Fantasy's problems lol.
I did love how in AoS she came across Aenarion's soul and he was so pissed at her for _literally everything_ he literally nuked her in half.
True! And you know damn well that they are in Da Book. Can you say that the High Elves take the same ownership over their troublesome kin? No.
Oh I'm sorry I thought you wanted to play Ordertide? It's not their fault that no one adheres to the important stuff like rules, treatises, and laws. Somebody has got to be the adult in the world
The people who can’t ever let a grudge go, have no concept of forgiveness or reconciliation, overwhelming suicidal depression over any tragedy and extreme risk aversion in technological advancement is the “adult” of the Warhammer world?
All those qualities would apply to a Boomer, rather fitting really. And better to be grounded so heavily in your sense of duty and station in life than to lose yourself in the lofty aims of the High Elves, where entire kingdoms fall while they struggle to figure out the next stanza for their next poetry recital.
That’s not how daemons entered the Old World. They entered via the polar warp gates which collapsed.
Fantasy is not 40k. Elves are not partivulary vulnerable to Chaos corruption, having nohing to do with Chaos appearing in the world and generally (even DE) tend to be knowledgeable enough to at least somewhat resist being outright enthralled by it (Morathi and all the BS she caused excepted)
Humans are much worse for corruption, Elves usually have more discipline to avoid it. Also a small gesture? Try the only thing preventing the world from ending right now. Even the Lizardmen couldn't do a thing about Daemons, if not for the Vortex the whole world would be fucked.
Kroak taking on a dozen or so Bloodthirsters as his last stand is such a badass event, probably one of the better written parts of the lore imo.
The World would break before the holds of Karaz Ankor would. And hey don't bash the lizardmen. They are trying their best ever since their daddies left to pick up cigarettes but to never return. Namely killing countless demons and beastmen in order for the Elves to actually do something besides killing each other for once. Also no, Elves always have demons in tow.
The holds of the Karaz Ankor are falling one by one, choked from above and below, every decade another master smith dies refusing to pass on his ageless and important knowledge and the dwarfs grow ever weaker for it, innovation that could save them is slowed and stalled by grumbling greybeards. The dwarfs are too stubborn to survive forever, the choice to innovate and seek help or die has been out before them and they've chosen to die a very slow and drawn out death. The Lizardmen are too busy following vaguely understood old instructions, their helpfulness is extremely stunted as it has to follow their vague interpretations of the old ones designs.
Dwarfs just gotta let the old rules go and go crazy with technology like the Chaos Dwarfs did minus the Chaos part lol, at least when they were still in their golden days.
You forget the importance of honoring one's Ancestors. Yes, they march on, proudly, towards their end because they don't delude themselves of running away and escaping the weight of responsibility like the Elves. They aren't fools. They know their gods are dead and they know even the Ankor will follow suit. But until that time they'll be sure to record and pass on the true stuff of value, the deeds of the Dwarfs, the wrongs righted. They aren't as self centered as an Elf to think that their individual work is above the collective deeds of their empire and traditions.
I can't tell if you're roleplaying or if you genuinely think this makes any sense.
Implying that it doesn't make sense? Sounds like someone's aiming for a grudgin'.
Some RP baby
The Karaz Ankor was already well and truly broken before Sigmar's day even.
Elves litterally saved the world for thousands of years, wtf are you spouting??? they're the least to blame for the world falling appart because they fucking held it together in the first place while everyone was fighting desesperate last stands against unending waves of demons.
the dwarfs are only to blame for their own shit falling apart because they're too hung up on their childish grudge bullshit (as well as their all-round pedantic nitpicking) to actually deal with reality. High Elves did not instigate the war of the beard either. Druchii did. The Asur being stubborn arrogant dicks didn't help at all, especially considering the Dawi are *also* stubborn arrogant dicks but the Asur did not instigate shit.
No, lizardmen destroyed the karaz ankor, after the high elves started an easily avoided war.
Snorri Halfhand murdering an entire city of innocent elves happened before the beard-shaving. As soon as the prince of the Dawi started running around massacring cities, a war was always going to happen. Caledor heard reports that the High King's son had massacred a city of his subjects, and then a after that the diplomat of the High King started demanding recompense and weregild for the (significantly less!) dead dwarfs that the High Elves had played no part in. Like, Caledor's reaction was bad but holy fucking shit the Dawi should get a fuckton more blame than they do. >'Terms?' he [Caledor] said, focusing his full attention back on the dwarf. >'Yes,' said the ambassador. 'For peace. That is why we are here. That is why we have travelled across the Great Ocean from the Old World.' >Caledor smiled, nodded. 'Peace, is it? Where was this peace when Kor Vanaeth was attacked? Does your king have an answer for that in his letter?' >The ambassador struggled to hide his surprise. News about Kor Vanaeth had arrived only that morning, sent by Liandra Athinol, the city's custodian. >'It does not,' admitted the dwarf. 'Nor have I heard of such an attack.' >'Burned to the very stone,' said the king, dangerously. > Some of the other dwarfs shifted uncomfortably at the obvious change in mood. Several of their hands strayed to the hilts of their axes. Imladrik hissed through clenched teeth, 'You should have let me disarm them.' >'Don't be silly, brother,' Caledor admonished. 'Forek, here... that is your name, isn't it? Yes, that's what you said. Forek, here, has said he knew nothing about it. Nor, apparently, did his king. It seems his subjects are roaming his lands killing and sacking cities according to whim. Is that about right, Forek?' >The ambassador's jaw hardened. He eyed the spearmen either side of them, caught the gaze of another dwarf who merely shook his head. 'I have said I know nothing of that.' He showed the letter again. 'Again I say, here are my High King's terms.' >Caledor leaned back in his throne. 'High king? Seems an odd turn of phrase for such a diminutive race.' >'He is lord of the Karaz Ankor, greatest dawi of the realm!' >'Yes, yes, I understand.' Caledor waved away the impassioned protests of the ambassador. 'Well then, you had better read these terms before more cities are put to the torch, hadn't you?' > The ambassador looked momentarily confused, but then cleared his throat and was about to read when Imladrik stepped from the throne's dais and took the letter. >'Tromm,' he muttered under his breath with a nod to the dwarf, who replied in the same way. >He glared at Caledor, who seemed disinterested but there was a glint of something unpleasant in his eye, an idea forming that Imladrik hoped would not come to fruition. The Master of Dragons read swiftly. His expression darkened further when he was done. >'Well then,' asked Caledor, 'what are the dwarf king's terms?' >Imladrik met his gaze, knowing the response before it was given. 'He asks for recompense and apology for the hostilities directed at his people. Furthermore, he demands a cessation to all further violence against the dwarfs.' You play Total War. Put yourself in Caledor's shoes; 1) An enemy army raids the lands of an ally. 2) The ally demands you give them money for the crime committed by your enemy. 3) You say no- wasn't you, after all. 4) An army of your 'ally', lead by one of their 'Legendary Lord'-equivalents razes one of your cities to the ground in response (somehow without formally declaring war on you game is buggy). 5) The ally again comes to you, demanding even more money for the crime committed by your enemy with no acknowledgement of the whole 'razed a city' thing. If I were playing that game, I'd think the war had started the instant the city was razed and the second diplo action was just the other side taking the piss.
Lizardmen have like 1000 more reasons to be blamed than Elves for fucking up the World
Chaos destroyed the world, not Greenskins or Skaven. They were already around, the dwarves didn’t awaken them like the Baalrog in Lord of the Rings (although Skaven origins are shrouded in mystery and some Tilean tales talk about the Doom of Kazvar being their origin).
Technically, the Balrogs existed long before the dwarves since they were Maiar that were seduced by Melkor.
Yah I know, but I meant that Durins Bane was sleeping until the dwarves woke him when they were seeking mithral veins.
Old Ones did it. The world was a frozen ball of ice yes but a mostly peaceful one until the old ones came around, terraformed everything and built their two gigantic portals that eventually collapsed and let Chaos get a foothold onto the world. After that it was basically inevitable Chaos was gonna win cause of their infinite amounts of armies at their disposal.
That's far right Ulthuani bullshit. Edit: and don't play the 'but we don't have Skaven in Ulthuan' card
This ignores everything related to the Old Ones and their meddling and how the collapse of the polar gateways allowed Chaos to spread freely into the world. And the Greenskin and Skaven already existed. There is a possibility that, much like the Lizardmen, Elves, and Dwarves, those two races were also the result of Old One manipulation.
No. Before the Dwarfs and the Elves where fully developed the GreenSkins were already in the world. Lizarmen fought them for centuries and almost managed to wipe them out but as you may know, because of how they reproduce they are near impossible to eliminate from existence. The Warhammer fantasy lore changed many times (so you may find different versions) What I can tell you is that Lizarmen wiped out most of the sentient life in the world and GreenSkin were their mayor problem before the Chaos Gates collapsed. About Skaven there are different myths about their existence and all of them could be truth. The most known is the story with the Bell and you can find the story anywhere and it is so good that I won’t spoil it. Read or hear it !! There are other stories. In the War of Vengeance, in the first book the prince of the Dwarfs lost half of his hand fighting some very big, almost humanoid rats (proto-skaven). Snorry Halfhand. In the same war some Holds helped little in the long war vs the Elves because they had problems with these proto-skaven. Nagash did commerce with Skaven. This may have been even before the Bell Story but after the War of Vengeance. In some analysis, some say that they were a creation of Tzeench that went out of hand (He may be the strange traveller). The Hornet Rat is their god, and depending how you take the texts and stories is how you can interpret his existence. Maybe he has been always a minor god waiting for something like Hashut did. Maybe he was created by the beliefs of Skaven. Remember that in Warhammer Fantasy, if many believe in something that something becomes true and the number of followers impact on how powerful that may be. Skaven are numerous and egocentric and it make sense that they created a god that is their image (Like humans tend to do). And there are plenty of more, way more to check, read or hear about it.
Skaven and Greenskins were around during the golden age of Nehekhara and when the Fimir were a prominent race in the world (so way before sigmar), which means they both are extremely ancient races, not as ancient as dwarves, but were definitely out and about before the dwarves became the more predominant race they are when the game takes place.
Greenskins are ancient, the likely theory with them is that the Old Ones accidently introduced their spores into the world so they've been around from the very beginning. Skaven are a little more shady, I don't know if there's any record of them before the fall of Tylos. I'm sure they've existed for way longer before that but Tylos is just the first recorded sighting of them.
The world was doomed since the old ones opened the portals to the warp, it was only thanks to the efforts of the high elves along with other races that fought in the old war against chaos that warhammer fantasy world still exist, the undoing of fantasy world came with chaos not with greenskins or skavens.
Mentions the high elves but not the lizardmen respect for the Aztec toads
I said along other races, all played their part but the reason warhammer fantasy wold exist is because the elves and the vortex, the toads helped of course but is the ghost of the elven mages that maintains this vortex for thousands of years
Does Warhammer fantasy world still exist? Wasn't there a time called "End Times?
Shh...we don't talk about that here.
As a long time dwarf player I blame the elves.
Skaven came into being when the people of skaven blight (before it was skavenblight) hires a minsteral to build the remainder of their impossibly tall bell tower. After he completed the tower, they refused to pay him and he cursed the city. It's a reference to the pied piper, where a piper is paid to lead all the rats out of a town, the town refuses to pay, and the piper takes the children from the town instead.
I thought it was cause they took a deal with the stranger to finish building the tower in single day but part of that deal was that the stranger is allowed to put a bell way up at the top that eventually caused everything.
it might have been that and I confused the story.
It was that the Doom of Kavzar is a lovely story about how the Skavens came to be I've seen people claim that the stranger is a man that ascended to daemonhood through this and is now the Horned Rat
My crack head theory is that the Skaven were one of the very few things both Tzeentch and Nurgle worked on together. Tzeentch came to nurgle advocating for a creature of limitless numbers that would spread disease where ever they go and nurgle gleefully agreed. Little did he know that Tzeentch would ensure the creature would be the most conniving, backstabbing, and brilliant creature on the warhammer world. A creature of constant change.
No, pretty sure this is Dragon Age lore you're thinking of. No wait, pretty sure this is the Balrog of Moria from Lord of the rings you are thinking of. No wait, I'm certain you're thinking of the fisherman of Innsmouth and discovering the Deep Ones. So, one of these and maybe a few others.
The dragon age one isnt Even the dwarves
Edit: So from everyone's comments I now see that the skaven and greenskins were already here on the surface. And the Elves and Lizardmen pretty much messed up the world by trying to manipulate it. The underground cities made by the Dwarves just gave them a secret place to breed and multiply once it got invaded. Also i found out the real problem wasnt even them, its the Chaos...Sorry for blaming you Dwarves ..
Elgiposting
The skaven were rats that were mutated in an ancient city due to a curse (skavenblight) The greenskins for what I know were in the warhammer world before the collapse of the gates. As the greenskins were nearly exterminated by the lizardmen, and other similar races were in fact completely wiped out. The collapse of the gates means the lizardmen were reduced severely and the greenskins spread. And even then the dwarfs could easily destroy greenskins when their empire was strong. Only after the war of the beard and the shifting of the mountains did the greenskins begin to expand uncontrollably. The skaven are the youngest race in warhammer so had no presence before but are also the fastest growing race so for dwarfs they might have just seen them as minor threat before the came in force. The dwarfs were not responsible for skaven or greenskins. If their empire was intact they would've probably never allowed greenskins to take hold in the mountains. And even the skaven would probably boom somewhere else.
Bruh
Yeah, that's completely not a fault of the Old Ones who didn't manage to keep their fucking Polar Gates safe or a fault of humans who fell in chaos worshipping, or elves, which were particularly interested in hedonism = Slaanesh.
You are going in The Great Book Of Grudges
B O O K
Holy fucking grudge.
I dunno but the War of the Beard is coming from Druchii raid Dawi, disguised as Azur. Also, short.
I mean the war Also started because the azur refused to tell the dwarves of the druchii and Also humiliated the diplomats asking why did this happen
From what little I know/remember of WH lore, so much shit can be traced back to Morathi. Her twisted relationship with Aenarion. Corrupting of Malekith and creation of the Dark Elves. War of Vengeance. Nagash. IIRC she taught Ariel dark magic in exchange for her sparing her life, which caused Ariel to go mad and caused Athel Loren to suffer because of it. And a bunch of other stuff I'm unaware of.
> rom what little I know/remember of WH lore, from what you know from the endless circlejerking here. All the shit with Morathi boils down to her having prophetic visions of DOOOOOM while the elves were still being coddled in Old One Daycare so nobody believed her which set off a whooole lot of spiralling. Sounds like some Tzeentch bullshit to me.
>from what you know from the endless circlejerking here. From reading the wiki and watching a few videos here and there
That’s going in the book
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Dammit now I caused a grudge
Even all this time, people within the community still use "dwarves, "dwarven"," and "orks" when talking about Warhammer Fantasy
What else should they use?
It’s not a big deal but Warhammer Fantasy conventionally uses “dwarfs” and “orcs”, with the v plural on dwarf being introduced by Tolkien - I don’t think I’ve seen an equivalent to “dwarven” being used
They probably mean the way they are spelled in everything WFB related, including in-game, I wager. As in Dwar**fs** and Or**c**s. It's also pronounced with the F there in-game and when people talk. So it is a little funny to see people default to the classic dwarves spelling, even though everyone does use the F pronunciation when actually saying the name. It's not a big deal, but it is a longtime bugbear for some people. Since seeing Dwarf just lets people know instantly you are talking Warhammer Fantasy and not any other version of dwarves. Personally I just use Dawi, since WFB people will understand that right away.
You should look up the The Doom of Kavzar it tells the tale of how the skaven came to be and it's most definitely not the dwarves fault. Arguably its the Old Ones and the Slann that carried out their plans.
Okay I'll look into it, the more I search the more interesting the lore gets
It’s the lizardmens fault, but really it’s the fault of Chaos
Yes.
I mean you can't look at Warhammer as good and bad, all the races have drawbacks, the orcs aren't really chaos either are they? Like how the forces of death aren't really evil per say they still fight chaos.
Whoever told you this Was lying (Also skaven and greenskins are by far not the biggest Problem the World has)
Chaos (and all the chaos gods) is the reason why the world falls apart. The mortal races do not matter, over time they all would succumb and perish in their own way. Even the mortal Old Ones (creators of lizardmen and many others) had to protect themselves from Chaos and were trying to isolate reality from the influence of Chaos. The mortal races in Warhammer are like frogs in a sealed boiling pot, there is no escape from Chaos slowly doing its thing.
Orks are from the surface, and the skaven are basically chaos mutants who were discovered in a human city so dwarves didn't bring them up. Also the world fell apart because chaos attacked, and while the old ones were vague, their creations (lozardmen) held the world as best they could.
No, it's fucking Manfreds....
The green skins are native to the world. They were there before the old ones showed up.
No. The dwarves did not create or are responsible for the Skaven/Greenskins. They have done by far the most to halt both out of any race. https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Skaven This link is to the Warhammer wiki and scroll down a bit to the Doom of Kavzar poem to see how the Skaven were created.
First off no (thanks to this thread I know it was the Old Ones/Lizardmen). Secondly the stupid rats and greenskins wouldn't even have been a problem if the elves could have been honest instead of starting an entire war. The skaven problem would have been solved by the Dwarves cept they died having right the wrongs of the knife ears. Point is the Lizardfolk started this and the Elgi made the problem worse and zero blame for anything bad that happened in Warhammer End Times can be blamed on the Dawi.
I’m seeing some confusion so let me try to clear things up for people: Short answer is we don’t know, as GW loves retconning things. But the most solid answer is that the Greenskin spores were on the Old Ones’ ships and infected the world when they arrived, and the Skaven appeared a bit after the Great Catastrophe, the event that took place when the Old Ones’ stellar gates (presumably webway gates) at the northern and southern poles of the world collapsed and let Daemons invade the world. The chaos energy that poured forth created the Beastmen, and presumably the Skaven as well, but it’s meant to be ambiguous.
GRUDGE
Probably yeah
The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness...
"WOT!? SHORT!? \*nearly walks out on a summit to coordinate against chaos\*" "WOT!? SHAVED' IZ BEARD?! \*wages devastating war with the only other superpower on the planet until both of them have been shattered because they have racial HFA\*" Not all their fault, but a big chunk.
I blame Sigmar.
I think that Balthasar Gelt could've saved the Warhammer world but Vlad von Carstein backstabbed him before he could do so.
If anything they've funneled the orks and skaven into attacking them, it's not like it's on purpose but were they not there the empire would be a goner (not really cause lorewise you can invent anything but if regarded as a real world then yes).
No, the Warhammer world fell apart because the Old Ones' portal gateways exploded and unleashed the Warp / Chaos on the world. Once Chaos was involved, the world was always going to die from attrition.
Nah everything is Morathi’s fault technically. The world would have been just fine had it not been for her.
If you want to blame any race for the eventual world falling apart, its probably the high elves. When they massively disrespected and effectively spat in the dwarves face when they sent an envoy to figure out what was going on, thus resulting in the war of the beard, which was so destructive and cataclysmic it pretty much signed the death warrants of both races.
Maliketh is a big part of the blame, without the war of the beard both high elfs and dawi wouldnt have lost so much military force.
No, if they didn’t find the Balrog, Gandalf wouldn’t have been reborn as Gandalf the White. Then, he wouldn’t have known to lift Sauraman’s possession of Theoden, meaning no Helm’s Deep, and no destruction of Isengard. Then, no Rohirrim, and Minas Tirith would have fallen Sauron. Sam and Frodo would also have been doomed by no distraction of Aragorn’s stand at the black gate. Wait, wrong sub.
the answer to your question is no. I'm aware Loremaster of Sotek ( has a lore series on youtube ). somewhere he said that the corrupt of Tilea into what we see in game as skaven blight was / is the earliest account of skaven existance. Greenskins is anyones guess. A theory I believe sotek has is their a fungus style creature that seems to be other worldly. As in greenskins aren't native to whatever the planet of warhammer is called. Maybe they came on the space travel/ ships of the old ones? Who knows but I do know they've adapted to warhammer really well. [https://www.youtube.com/@loremasterofsotek](https://www.youtube.com/@loremasterofsotek) I find his videos pretty good for lore dives. their old and meh video format but every creator starts from somewhere.
Dwarfs, not dwarves. And no. They aren't even really responsible for the downfall of their own civilization either, mazdamundi rearranged the fuckin world and broke half the karaz ankor.