The Skaven of Age of Sigmar are ratmen devoted to the Great Horned Rat. Their society centres on Blight City and competing clans whose rivalries coexist with a shared drive to conquer and consume. Gnawholes connect their strongholds with the Mortal Realms, carrying corruption as well as invading armies.[1]
The Council and the Great Clans[edit]
The Council of Thirteen sits above a shifting collection of powers. Grey Seers of the Masterclan claim privileged access to the Great Horned Rat, while the Great Clans supply different kinds of expertise. Eshin provides assassins; Skryre builds warpstone-powered machinery; Moulder breeds and alters beasts; Pestilens cultivates disease and religious fanaticism.[1]
An army can bring these specialisms together through bargains, threats and temporary common interests. Cooperation does not erase the participants' ambition. This makes a mixed force intelligible without assuming all its leaders belong to a stable, unified command. The faction's political instability is part of its organization, not a reason to assume every scheme must fail.[1]
What the Vermindoom changed[edit]
The 2024 opening of the Hour of Ruin describes the Vermindoom as a successful Skaven catastrophe. Rituals corrupted the realms' magical pathways and forced parts of Blight City into them. The largest intrusion struck Aqshy, transforming a substantial part of the Great Parch into the polluted region called the Gnaw.[2]
Other realms also suffered incursions and areas of corruption known as Lands Anathema. These places became footholds for further attacks. A description of the Skaven as merely a hidden population waiting beneath other civilizations misses this major change: their expansion visibly remade territory.[2]
The Hour of Ruin[edit]
The official 2025 historical recap follows the consequences. Vizzik Skour leads his Great-Grand Gnawhorde from the Gnaw and promotes the construction of Warpshatter Bells. At Hel Crown, the Hallowed Knights destroy one of those bells at great cost, while the Skaven overrun the island. Fighting then presses against the Adamantine Chain.[3]
These named places and events offer a route into the setting's chronology. They also show why a blanket claim that Skaven infighting always saves their enemies is unreliable. The published story contains both successful Skaven expansion and specific acts of resistance.
Finding the right context[edit]
This page concerns the Mortal Realms. The Old World Skaven belong to an earlier setting and should not inherit the Vermindoom as an event in their own present. The Stormcast Eternals overview covers the opponents central to the Skaventide conflict. Use the unit and character entries below for individual subjects, and dated official rules for their current tabletop profiles.
Units
- ClanratsBattleline · InfantryThe numberless rank-and-file of the warlord clans: cowardly, expendable, and all but unstoppable in the tide, for behind every fallen clanrat wait a hundred more.
- DoomwheelWar Machine · War MachineA colossal rat-powered wheel of warpstone machinery that spits warp lightning as it rolls, steered only nominally and feared equally by both sides.
- Gutter RunnersAmbusher · InfantryElite assassins of Clan Eshin who strike from shadow with poisoned blades and throwing stars, then melt away before the alarm is even raised.
- Hell Pit AbominationBehemoth · MonsterA writhing horror of stitched flesh and warpstone from the flesh-labs of Clan Moulder, so unnatural it heals its own wounds and refuses to stay dead.
- Plague MonksBattleline · InfantryFrothing zealots of Clan Pestilens who count their diseases as blessings, hurling themselves into battle to spread the Great Corruptor's contagions blade-first.
- PlagueclawArtillery · War MachineA towering Clan Pestilens catapult that lobs barrels of festering, disease-ridden filth over the enemy line to rot armies alive from within.
- Rat OgorsElite · Monstrous InfantryHulking fusions of rat, ogor, and worse from Clan Moulder's flesh-pits: mindless vat-grown muscle goaded into the enemy by whip-wielding packmasters.
- StormfiendsElite · Monster InfantryRat ogors surgically fused with warpstone weaponry by Clans Moulder and Skryre, lumbering walking gun-platforms that spew warp-fire, lightning and shredding claws.
- StormverminElite · InfantryThe biggest, blackest-furred elite of skavenkind, armored in true steel and drilled with halberds: bodyguards to warlords and the hard spine of the verminous tide.
- Warp Lightning CannonArtillery · War MachineA Clan Skryre engine that focuses raw warpstone energy into a searing beam of green lightning, as likely to vaporise its own crew as the foe.
- Warp-Grinder Weapon TeamTroops · InfantryA Clan Skryre tunnelling team wielding a warpstone drill that chews through rock and armour alike, boring assault troops up beneath the enemy's feet.
- Warplock JezzailsArtillery · Weapon TeamLong-barreled sniper teams of Clan Skryre whose warpstone bullets crack armor at extreme range, turning enemy champions into cautionary tales from a safe distance.
Characters
- Ikit ClawThe Iron-FramedClan Skryre's iron-framed Chief Warlock: the greatest weaponsmith of the under-empire, patiently assembling a doomsday arsenal worthy of his own legend.
- Lord Skreech VerminkingDeathmaster of the Great Horned RatThe first and greatest of the Verminlords, an immortal daemon forged from the souls of thirteen Grey Seers to serve as the right claw of the Horned Rat himself.
- Queek HeadtakerThe HeadtakerThe most feared warlord of Clan Mors, a killing-machine of a skaven who takes the skulls of every worthy foe he slays and hangs them from his back-banner.
- ThanquolThe Horned Rat's ChosenThe most infamous grey seer in skavendom: a sorcerer of genuine power and catastrophic ambition, forever one scheme ahead of the ruin he leaves behind, and never without a Boneripper.
- Verminlord WarpseerShepherd of the Great AscendancyA far-seeing daemon of the Great Horned Rat who plays skavendom itself as a gamepiece, steering the under-empire toward the promised Great Ascendancy.
Subfactions
- Clan EshinThe clan of shadows: assassins, spies, and gutter runners schooled in silent murder and hired out to the highest bidder. Eshin's killers answer only to their own inscrutable masters, and the mere rumor of their involvement has ended Council feuds before they began.
- Clan MoulderThe flesh-shapers of skavendom, whose packmasters and master moulders knead muscle, warpstone, and screaming vermin into living weapons. From their flesh-pit laboratories come giant rats, rat ogors, and stranger things, sold by the cage-load to the rest of the under-empire.
- Clan PestilensFanatical plague-priests who worship the Great Horned Rat as the Great Corruptor and labor to smother the realms beneath the Great Plagues. Their frothing congregations of plague monks march behind censers of billowing filth, spreading contagion as weapon, sacrament, and prayer in one.
- Clan SkryreThe warlock engineers of the under-empire, fusing dark sorcery with warpstone-fueled machinery into weapons that obliterate the enemy almost as often as the operator. Skryre workshops sell lightning cannons, poisoned-wind devices, and doomsday engines to every clan wealthy enough to pay, and keep the true horrors for themselves.
Sources & further reading
- Warhammer Age of Sigmar Faction Focus: Skaven. Warhammer Community, , Overview: Great Horned Rat, Council, Masterclan and Great Clans. Accessed .Official source checked during the 2026-09-29 assisted audit; whole-page human review pending.
- The Hour of Ruin Is Upon Us: This Is What It Means for the Mortal Realms. Warhammer Community, , Vermindoom, the Gnaw and Lands Anathema. Accessed .Official source checked during the 2026-09-29 assisted audit; whole-page human review pending.
- History of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: The Hour of Ruin. Warhammer Community, , Vizzik Skour, Warpshatter Bells, Hel Crown and the Adamantine Chain. Accessed .Official source checked during the 2026-09-29 assisted audit; whole-page human review pending.
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