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Thing is Grand Alliances have a good few oddmen-out.

FleshEaters aren't really allied to Nagash - he sort of herds them at times, but overall they are utterly insane and just doing their own thing.

Order is full of odd ones. From Ideoneth who openly prey on other races for souls; Daughters of Khaine who sort of prey on people as well; Slaan who are off on a world of ideals and ideas of their own that make your average haughty Aelf look friendly and social.

Skaven are still a force of Chaos; of Ruin and Rot. That they are to the side of the big four actually makes sense. You can well envision that Skaven are gnawing on the underbelly of the Mortal Realms, but also the Great Horned Rat is gnawing at the underside of the Chaos Realm as well. Stealing Slaaneshs' shiny things; tipping Khorne's skullpiles over; Chewing Nurgles prize plant-things and messing up Tzeentches neatly ordered papers

Yeah, Skaven are for sure a chaos army, no questions about that. Just b.c they don't play nice with oher chaos doesn't mean they are not chaos, think of them as the Chaosest of all chaos.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Yeah, Skaven are for sure a chaos army, no questions about that. Just b.c they don't play nice with oher chaos doesn't mean they are not chaos, think of them as the Chaosest of all chaos.

Skaven don't like-respect even other Skaven, all other Skaven weak-fools to be devoured.

GW's best and most original creation - style, culture, language - its all great. Esepecially since there are NO good skaven, no one of kind Dark Elf Rangers with two swords (that spawned a million like him), no redemption - they are all truely horrible - love 'em

One of the Inferno/Novella stories even details on a trip to Shyish that they saw Nagash's armies assaulting the Skaven Realm of the Dead. Which means that unlike the regular Chaos followers, who's souls all go to the Chaos Realm, the Skaven still have a "mortal like" death realm (albeit one with doom-wheels and enough undead power to hold Nagash at bay)

Yep - and even that place is horrible.

https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ruin

Yes thats my point, they are the most chaos of all chaos

 dan2026 wrote:
Yeah I know Skaven always did have a vague Chaos connection. But to me at least it feels like they don't really fit in with the other Chaos players.

They will never exactly be part of the big 4. No matter where they try and lump the Skaven God. The Big 4 have been the big 4 forever and this applies to 40k as well, where Skaven don't exist.
Then aren't Chaos mortals or part of Archaon's crew.
And they aren't Chaos Beastmen either. At least not exactly.

Skaven kinda feel like the odd man(rat) out.

But hey that's just my opinion. Skaven are full Chaos now, for good or for worse. Maybe it's just because I knew them so well from old fantasy, that they feel so weird in AOS.

Not following any of the big 4 doesn't matter or do you think that the chaos dwarfs(worshipper of hashut) aren't chaos either

Not to mention that in the Lore right now The Great Horned Rat probably has more power and influence than Slaanesh.

terry wrote:

 dan2026 wrote:
Yeah I know Skaven always did have a vague Chaos connection. But to me at least it feels like they don't really fit in with the other Chaos players.

They will never exactly be part of the big 4. No matter where they try and lump the Skaven God. The Big 4 have been the big 4 forever and this applies to 40k as well, where Skaven don't exist.
Then aren't Chaos mortals or part of Archaon's crew.
And they aren't Chaos Beastmen either. At least not exactly.

Skaven kinda feel like the odd man(rat) out.

But hey that's just my opinion. Skaven are full Chaos now, for good or for worse. Maybe it's just because I knew them so well from old fantasy, that they feel so weird in AOS.

Not following any of the big 4 doesn't matter or do you think that the chaos dwarfs(worshipper of hashut) aren't chaos either

the AoS chaos lore that I'm aware of basically has it that there's only The Great Horned Rat, Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh as the Chaos Gods in the Chaos Warp. Of them only The Great Horned Rat takes belief form all Skaven, meanwhile the other four take belief from all the other races of the Mortal Realms that they can corrupt. It's not really presented that there are any other major Chaos Gods within the Warp. Even the multitudes of clans and groups that worship gods other than "the big four" or even "chaos" itself are typically shown as being tricked by Greater Demons of the Big Four. The Warcry Warbands, for example, each worship a different god who isn't one of the Chaos Gods. However whilst the clans don't believe they are, the reality is that behind the illusion of the god is a Greater Demon - remembering that most mortals will never ever deal direct with a Chaos God and will instead interact mostly with the Greater Demons. Even The Great Horned Rat is the same, he's only appeared to his Skaven a handful of times if that; most of the time he deals with the Verminlords who then deal with the Skaven directly.

Of course this doesn't mean that there might not be other Warp entities that could rise up to be a Chaos God at some stage, but the Mortal Realms sounds very much like the major five gods are the only ones having any real influence on the Mortal Realms and within that setting. Honestly in the Old World and even in 40K lore, where there are technically "more" potential Chaos gods around, the big four are still the only ones of any worth that get mentioned today. I'm aware that way back in the early days there were more Chaos Gods and even an original fifth who was lost (Baal - Bale something like that).



The Great Horned Rat has a big bonus of the other four in that he doesn't have to compete with any other god for his races belief. Though interestingly the fact that Skaven Souls go their own Death realm within the Mortal Realms suggests that the power and land that the Great Horned Rat holds within the actual Chaos Warp might not be as extensive as the other gods. Again its presents that idea that he's true to his people in being somewhat to the underside of things - pulling and gnawing rather than establishing a huge land of his own.

You may be thinking of Malal. He was a canon Chaos God in very old lore. His schtick was being the god of chaos against itself. Basically an anti Tzeentch.

There is concept art around of Daemons of Malal, I've attached the Greater Daemon of Malal.

I believe what happened is that Malal was created by a freelance designer. GW severed ties with them, but the designer legally owned the IP so GW couldn't reference it any more.

 Overread wrote:

terry wrote:

 dan2026 wrote:
Yeah I know Skaven always did have a vague Chaos connection. But to me at least it feels like they don't really fit in with the other Chaos players.

They will never exactly be part of the big 4. No matter where they try and lump the Skaven God. The Big 4 have been the big 4 forever and this applies to 40k as well, where Skaven don't exist.
Then aren't Chaos mortals or part of Archaon's crew.
And they aren't Chaos Beastmen either. At least not exactly.

Skaven kinda feel like the odd man(rat) out.

But hey that's just my opinion. Skaven are full Chaos now, for good or for worse. Maybe it's just because I knew them so well from old fantasy, that they feel so weird in AOS.

Not following any of the big 4 doesn't matter or do you think that the chaos dwarfs(worshipper of hashut) aren't chaos either

the AoS chaos lore that I'm aware of basically has it that there's only The Great Horned Rat, Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh as the Chaos Gods in the Chaos Warp. Of them only The Great Horned Rat takes belief form all Skaven, meanwhile the other four take belief from all the other races of the Mortal Realms that they can corrupt. It's not really presented that there are any other major Chaos Gods within the Warp. Even the multitudes of clans and groups that worship gods other than "the big four" or even "chaos" itself are typically shown as being tricked by Greater Demons of the Big Four. The Warcry Warbands, for example, each worship a different god who isn't one of the Chaos Gods. However whilst the clans don't believe they are, the reality is that behind the illusion of the god is a Greater Demon - remembering that most mortals will never ever deal direct with a Chaos God and will instead interact mostly with the Greater Demons. Even The Great Horned Rat is the same, he's only appeared to his Skaven a handful of times if that; most of the time he deals with the Verminlords who then deal with the Skaven directly.

Of course this doesn't mean that there might not be other Warp entities that could rise up to be a Chaos God at some stage, but the Mortal Realms sounds very much like the major five gods are the only ones having any real influence on the Mortal Realms and within that setting. Honestly in the Old World and even in 40K lore, where there are technically "more" potential Chaos gods around, the big four are still the only ones of any worth that get mentioned today. I'm aware that way back in the early days there were more Chaos Gods and even an original fifth who was lost (Baal - Bale something like that).

The Great Horned Rat has a big bonus of the other four in that he doesn't have to compete with any other god for his races belief. Though interestingly the fact that Skaven Souls go their own Death realm within the Mortal Realms suggests that the power and land that the Great Horned Rat holds within the actual Chaos Warp might not be as extensive as the other gods. Again its presents that idea that he's true to his people in being somewhat to the underside of things - pulling and gnawing rather than establishing a huge land of his own.

Ruin appears to be a Demi-realm not part fo the Mortal Realms itself
Confirming what is or what is not a god is tricky - there are things that are worshipped but may not exist, or be aspects/greater daemons of other Gods, or subverted as with Morathi and Khaine.

https://ageofsigmar.lexicanum.com/wiki/Deity

So...Malal’s avatar looks like a scaly Bloodletter that took a daemonette, stretched her out into a long tube and shoved her up his own butt to be a tail? Somehow...I think we’re all better off with him being gone.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
So...Malal’s avatar looks like a scaly Bloodletter that took a daemonette, stretched her out into a long tube and shoved her up his own butt to be a tail? Somehow...I think we’re all better off with him being gone.

We're talking a long time ago here to be fair! A lot of stuff from that time was pretty janky. Check out this guy.

And people say the model design in Sigmar is a bit out there!

Ahh good old Tzeentch! I'm reminded that the old pink horrors had a walking drum drummer

http://greywolf.critter.net/images/ahq/minis/gallery/pink-horror-drummer.jpg

 timetowaste85 wrote:
So...Malal’s avatar looks like a scaly Bloodletter that took a daemonette, stretched her out into a long tube and shoved her up his own butt to be a tail? Somehow...I think we’re all better off with him being gone.

Ah yes, a chaos god that doesn't have uniform look, the worst kind of chaos god!