Franz Lohner's Chronicle - Ratty Thoughts

An absent-minded man of mysteries, Franz Lohner relies on his bulging journal to keep track of occurrences, intrigues and arguments around Taal's Horn Keep. Sometimes his notes are even useful, believe it or not. The Franz Lohner Chronicles are extracts from that journal.

It occurs to me that I don’t talk much about the ratties, which is a bit strange when you think about it. I mean here we are up to our collective neck in the blighters and I’ve not really recorded my thoughts for posterity, such as it may be.

I suppose I just take it all a bit for granted what with me living through it as I do, but even now there are countless thousands of folk in the Empire who don’t believe the skaven are actually real. I mean, they know that the sewers are full of horrible flesh-hungry monsters with nasty big teeth, but to the common or garden citizen, the skaven are just another form of beastmen.

Understandable enough, really. I mean, something comes for you with a rusty blade, your primary concern’s putting the critter down before it chews your face off, ain’t it? But warfare founded on assumption ain’t a winning proposition. What works against beastmen don’t always work against skaven, and vice versa. Case in point, while beastmen are capable of brutal courage - the strongest and meanest always rising to the top – skaven are cowards and schemers to the core. They’re only winning while they think they’re winning, and if they think they’re losing? Well, the battle’s pretty much over.

The problem is, there are so many ratmen that it can take a while to kill enough of them to drive home the point. That’s why yours truly, master strategist that he is, has focused the Ubersreik Five’s efforts on attacking the ratties where they’re strongest. Nothing like a punch through solid armour plate to make a fellow think twice, if you follow?

I know what you’re thinking: if the skaven are so cowardly, and we’ve been kicking them so much, why are they still at it? Well, I did wonder about that myself. They should have packed this in and cleared off back to their tunnels ages ago, but my spies tell me - and yes, I do have informants in the ratty ranks, there’s nothing easy with a species that lives for betrayal - this is almost, sort of, kinda a holy war now, withthe Great Horned Rat personally chivvying the skaven into the campaign.

A revolting development. I suppose it was only a matter of time, but it gives me the chills nonetheless - not least because it goes a long way to proving that Kerillian was right all along, and this world of ours is closer to circling the drain than I thought. Still, it don’t change much. We’ll keep killing the little rotters until the lesson takes. And if the Great Horned Rat wants to show his face, we’ll put the boot in there and all. After all, knowing the skaven this all-powerful god of theirs is probably just a slightly taller than average ratman with an opera cape and some transparently insincere confidence. Maybe ten minutes in a room with Kruber and this’ll all be over.

A body can hope, can’t he?