Kratch Doomclaw watched Tretch Craventail scurry away with his reward, a surge of pure loathing boiling in his gut. Yet, for the sake of the clan's expansion and the fragile morale of his underlings, he was forced to honor his word. Even among the Skaven, there are times when a promise must be kept, if only to maintain the hierarchy of treachery.
Warlord Kratch watched the sniveling Craventail vanish into the shadows, his frustration mounting. To vent his ire, he ordered his subordinates to bring forth the captured Ork Warboss for a bit of sport.
Though the clan's second-in-command was a cowardly wretch who lived on sheer luck, Kratch Doomclaw was a brutal warlord who had carved his way to the top through raw violence. Clad in his custom Warp-Power Armor, he stood nearly three meters tall. He wielded a massive Warp-blade in one hand, while his right forearm had been surgically fused with a high-purity Warp-Claw.
"WAAAGH! Ya scrawny fur-ball! Come 'ere and fight me propa!"
The Warboss stood some five meters tall. He had been dragged in by a dozen Stormvermin using heavy chains to bind his limbs, and even then, the Skaven remained wary, relying on potent warp-toxins to keep the beast subdued.
Kratch sat upon his rusted throne, watching the greenskin giant thrash and bellow. He stood up, paced toward the Warboss, and hissed, "Green-thing... where-where did you crawl from? What lies ahead? Speak-tell!"
The Ork's response was a deafening roar and a massive fist!
Even stripped of his mega-armor, the brute's rage-fueled strike was more than a dozen Stormvermin could restrain. His fist swung like a wrecking ball toward Kratch's rodent face.
A lesser Warlord might have been decapitated, but Kratch Doomclaw was a legend who had fought his way into the Council of Thirteen. His expression darkened; his body moved like a blur of lightning. He sidestepped the blow and, in a single fluid motion, his Warp-blade severed the Ork's arm, a limb thicker than the torso of a Stormvermin.
Skaven biology, driven by a hyper-active metabolism, grants them preternatural speed. It is a gift that often manifests as twitching, hyperactive movements, but it also leaves them perpetually ravenous, teetering on the edge of the Black Hunger.
"Heh-heh... Talk-speak, or die-die!"
Kratch's mood shifted instantly. He signaled the Stormvermin to release the chains. Facing the one-armed, berserk Warboss, Kratch danced around the beast with fluid lethality. With every dodge, his blade carved away another organ, another strip of muscle.
Eventually, through his exquisite butchery, the four-meter Warboss was reduced to a limbless trunk, a massive slab of meat collapsing like a stone pillar onto the deck.
Kratch gave a cold snicker, licking the foul ichor from his Warp-Claw. The pungent scent of Ork blood sent him into a state of heightened euphoria.
"Throw him to the Moulder-things... let them do-do as they wish!"
With the command given, Kratch turned his attention to a few Gretchin who had been pinned to the floor by Stormvermin boots. "Speak! Or I make you suffer... forever-long!"
Having seen their "boss", who in their eyes was the reincarnation of Gork and Mork, summarily diced into mincemeat, the Gretchin began kowtowing frantically, spilling everything they knew.
"You say... you say a place called the Nak-Nak-mund Gauntlet? A territory many fight for? What gauntlet is this?" Kratch Doomclaw listened intently. These runts had fled from somewhere called the Nachmund Gauntlet. Their boss had claimed it was the only way through for the "Human-meats," and every faction in the galaxy was there to scavenge and raid.
They had participated in an assault on a world the humans called Vigilus, only to be broken and scattered by the Imperial defenders.
Protected by the Great Horned Rat and possessing the innate resilience of half-warp creatures, the Skaven were largely indifferent to the Great Rift that had sundered the Imperium. But when Kratch heard this place described as a vital passage for the humans, memories from a "world-that-was" flickered in his mind—shadows of strategic chokepoints long lost to time.
"Move-scurry! That is where Clan Rictus shall find true wealth-gold!"
With a clear objective, Kratch issued the order. The massive Clan Rictus fleet adjusted its course, plunging toward the Nachmund Gauntlet.
As a cunning Warlord, Kratch was no mindless brute. Guided by the phantom tolling of the Great Bell within the Great Horned Rat's realm, the Rictus fleet soon reached the Warp-space surrounding the corridor.
No sooner had they arrived than they were sighted by a fleet of Drukhari raiders, their ships like shards of dark glass.
The Skaven had encountered the Dark Aeldari before. Though the raiders managed to board the Skaven ships and slaughter thousands in the initial surge, they were soon overwhelmed by the sheer, suffocating weight of the swarm.
A rain of boarding pods slammed into the Drukhari vessels. Thousands of vermin poured into the elegant Aeldari halls, their claws and teeth gnawing through delicate circuitry, their filth defiling the pristine craft. Eventually, after the Drukhari Archon had personally butchered over a hundred Stormvermin, his head was claimed by the blade of Rikcruk Sliceblade.
It was a mere diversion. The Drukhari vessels were lashed to the Skaven fleet, to be refitted by the Warlock Engineers of Clan Skryre, and the armada pressed on.
Kratch soon realized the Gretchin had not lied. The Nachmund Gauntlet was a vital artery of the galaxy, and it was deafeningly crowded.
They observed fleets of the Imperium, Chaos, Orks, Aeldari, Tyranids, and even the metallic Necrons. Weighing his strength, Kratch realized he could not swallow this territory alone.
"The Great Horned Rat does not... does not ask you to conquer it all," the attendant Grey Seer said, leaning on his staff. "The Great Horned Rat wishes only to mercifully cover every living-breathing world with our claws! Skaven... Skaven shall be everywhere in the galaxy! Yes-yes!"
The Grey Seers served as priests, sorcerers, and advisors. When Kratch sought the divine will, the Seer provided the answer.
Kratch bobbed his head in agreement. "Yes. Even if the surface is not-not ours... the underground shall belong only to the Skaven!"
The Clan Rictus fleet began to fracture. Small landing craft, carrying Breeder Queens and Skaven cohorts, were launched like industrial refuse toward every inhabited planet and artificial world in the Nachmund Gauntlet.
As for the main host of Clan Rictus, they set their sights on the most critical jewel of the system—Vigilus.