Within the lightless expanse of the Under-Empire, the Skaven erupted in a cacophony of screeching adulation. Lucius watched the reeking vermin scurry before him, yet he felt no revulsion, only the absolute clarity of command. He could feel their very souls tethered to his will, as if they were extensions of his own limbs.
Their worship was a tangible force, reshaping him not only within the tides of the Immaterium but grounding his transformation. He was no longer merely a man in a black robe from the legends of the World-That-Was; he was becoming the true Great Horned Rat.
Lucius still did not comprehend how he had been cast into this godforsaken universe. He only knew that when he first awoke, clad in black and clutching a shepherd's crook of rat-hide, the power had been instinctive. The man-eating rodents of the hive's sump-sewers had swarmed him, chittering in a fever of recognition, prostrating their ugly, twitching heads in worship.
Drawing upon the fractured racial memories of the Skaven, he had overseen the construction of a Great Bell within a sewer system the size of a continent. When he struck the bell thirteen times, the four-legged pests began to rise, their spines cracking and elongating until they walked upright.
For over a century, Lucius and his vermin-kin multiplied within the labyrinthine guts of Hive Zavka. During this gestation, Lucius, relying on his memories as a scholar of the old world's lore, molded the souls of his subjects like wet clay. He engineered the Twelve Clans into existence, breathing life into the four Great Clans of his memory.
Under his guidance, Clan Skryre scavenged and dissected the technological leavings of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Clan Moulder abducted the hive's most depraved bio-savants to refine their flesh-crafting. Clan Pestilens rose as the fanatical priesthood of the rot, while Clan Eshin mastered the shadows, refining their art by hunting the Death Cult Assassins that haunted the hive, much as their ancestors had once studied the arts of Nippon and Cathay.
The lethality of the 41st Millennium had accelerated their evolution. In less than a century, Skaven ingenuity, fueled by the sheer desperation of the setting, had surpassed the "World-That-Was" by leaps and bounds. Even the lowly Clanrats, who once considered a rusted spear a luxury, now carried erratic rat-lock pistols loaded with warpstone-tainted rounds.
Now, after a hundred years of lurking in the dark, Lucius was ready to unveil his masterpiece.
Hive Zavka was a vertical nightmare, a spire larger than ancient nations, and ostensibly the domain of the Genestealer Cults. Though the hybrids had toppled the planetary governor, the wastes beyond were a chaotic tapestry of Imperial remnants, Chaos cultists, and marauding bandits. Deprived of their "Star Children," the Genestealers had become the Imperium's most ironic "loyalists," holding the spire against the encroaching tides of Chaos.
But the hive's foundation was a sieve of ancient tunnels and abyssal shafts, a paradise for the Skaven.
The vanguard of the invasion belonged to the shadows of Clan Eshin. Leading the rot was the Nightlord Sneek and his shadow-hand, Deathmaster Snikch. Eshin Night Runners and Gutter Runners, draped in camouflaging stealth-cloaks, manifested silently across the Sump. They clutched monomolecular blades and warpstone throwing stars, appearing like ghosts in the steam-choked corridors.
Deathmaster Snikch led the Eshin Triads—Death Runners equipped with silencers, sonic-bafflers, and toxic smoke canisters. Their mission: the decapitation of high-ranking targets and the sabotage of promethium depots.
Because the Genestealer Cult effectively governed the hive, they were, for the moment, the "Emperor's most devoted servants." Snikch and his team slipped into a primary armory, their unnatural stealth bypassing the cult's heightened senses. With a flick of a weeping blade, Snikch disabled a Cogitator before distributing warpstone-demolition charges.
The first explosion rocked the hive. In the vertical hell of a hive city, such sounds were common, but this was different. As sickly green smoke began to billow, an ancient, malevolent bell began to toll from the depths.
The first toll. Countless rats, the size of mastiffs, erupted from sewers choked with millennia of toxic waste, swarming both humans and hybrids with suicidal ferocity.
The second toll. Alongside the beasts came the Slave-rats—gaunt, bipedal horrors driven to a cannibalistic frenzy by starvation, throwing themselves at any living thing with jagged scrap-metal.
The third toll. The lesser clans began their ascent. They drove tides of slaves before them, followed by organized ranks of Clanrats armored in scavenged PDF flak-plate and brandishing warp-rifles. Behind them came the Warlords, mounted in ramshackle technological exoskeletons and flanked by Stormvermin—massive, six-foot-tall brutes encased in "Skaven-pattern" power armor, wielding Storm-shields and warp-halberds.
The lower hive dissolved into total anarchy.
"For the Four-Armed Emperor!"
The Genestealer hybrids retaliated with heavy stubbers, lasguns, and industrial mining lasers. Neophyte hybrids and terrified civilians alike joined the fray. Surprisingly, the cultists acted as "model citizens," defending the hive's populace with professional zeal against the verminous tide. They built barricades from scrap and rubble, pouring fire into the chittering masses.
The Slave-rats died by the thousands, their bodies piling into grisly ramparts. But then, a terrifying mechanical roar drowned out the screams. The slums of the under-hive were shredded by spinning, serrated blades. Through the dust, the hybrids saw it: crazed rat-men in green-tinted power rigs, shrieking as they piloted massive, bladed metal wheels directly into the defensive lines.
Doom-Flayers and Doom-Wheels tore through the barricades, harvesting lives in a spray of gore. The survivors were instantly swarmed and consumed.
Yet, this was merely the distraction. While the defenders were bogged down in the Sump, the true Skaven host, the monstrous creations of Clan Moulder and the devastating warp-weaponry of Clan Skryre, was already bypasssing the carnage, striking directly for the Mid-Spire and the aristocratic heights above.