Part the Second - Essentia Rattōrum
I. Foundational Influences
But, for right now, I'm more interested in the iconography and visual presentation (especially as this issue provided all the artwork in that WFRP entry).
First off, Skaven get a logo! How adorable is that?
To that end let me point your eye towards the 3ed army list's rules for Skaven heroes:
& warpsquealers, and we'll need to fit Pestilens in there
(in 3rd they mostly used warpscrolls).
Skaven in 3rd could also field Chaotic Hosts, something that carried on into 4th edition but had disappeared from the game by the time of modern hammer (another thing TOW could have brought back).
Before we move on, I just want to take a minute to highlight Warhammer Armies' rules for Warpstone Charms
I really like this approach. It's very "Skaven-flavoured" and it gives a decent small advantage for a fair point cost (even in TOW economy), basically allowing any Skaven Hero a chance to cheat fate and scurry away to fight again,
Oh, while we're talking about third edition, brief tangent. I think TOW missed a trick here by not bringing back magical musical instruments, I loved those. I'm going to have to model at least one for me unit - I'll be doing a lot of customization for unit command models, and I just think of the creative possibilities. Ridiculously big instruments ending in carvings or castings of rat/demon/skull heads, instruments requiring two models to operate, even some ridiculous anachronisms like guitars (something I'm going to keep in my mind when I start on my undead army, which is a small, tiny little project in comparison).
Also tangentially, while I appreciate Pete Taylor's Skaven army, the first fully painted Skaven army I ever saw, and I looked over those pages so many times they fell out (well, I mean, it was crap binding anyways, my first copy was just a stack of pages in a file folder by the end, but those pages fell out well ahead of the others), it is not really going to be an influence on this project. The bright saturated colours on lime green bases with largely mono-pose units is more of a prototypical form of the McVey style that characterizes Middlehammer.
And speaking of Middlehammer, the next puzzle piece in my personal definitive expression of Skaven is the first Skaven army book, which intersects with the (ahem) tail end of the Goodwin era.
Here we get the final distillation to the lore to form the core conception, with vital additions including a timeline integrating them into The Old World's history, the story of the Fellblade and how Clan Eshin engineered the defeat of Nagash, and the first appearance of the Pied Piper by way of Robert Chambers legend of the Skaven's origins The Doom of Kavzar. Not to mention the first official rules for the iconic Screaming Bell, the first appearances of the Doomwheel, Verminlord, Skavenbblight, and (IIRC) , and Skaven's first special characters (Deathmaster Snikch, Ikit Claw, Lord Skrolk, Queek Head-Taker, Thanquol & Boneripper, and Throt the Unclean).
And the interior art of the Skaven army book, by John Blanche, Wayne England, and especially Mark Gibbons was a source of constant fascination for young Tristram.
II. Inspirations
Nico
I think it is fair to say that in my estimation, Nico is the ideal, the most effective overall Chambers tribute, and visually the most impressive. He sets the standard that I will strive to meet.
Stonecoldlead
Sebastian Suski
CULT OF THE
FOUR-ARMED EMPEROR
SKAVEN HAVEN
As an aside I am aware of the fact that by the technicality of The Old World's subsystems regarding heavy chariots, that can be read as neither the Plague Furnace nor Screaming Bell allowed to join units. I think, as indicated not just by common sense, but also that no attention was called to this drastic deviation from lore and all prior interpretations for Warhammer Fantasy (not counting Warmaster) and moreover completely contradicts the description accompanying the rules, that this is a case where the spirit of the rules is more important than the technical wording. In other words, I plan to ignore it until the inevitable FAQ rules patch.