Lord Skreech Verminking

Lord Skreech Verminking Comes in 61 components and is supplied with a 120mm x 92mm oval base and can be built as an alternative to a Verminlord Warbringer, Warpseer, Deceiver or Corruptor.

Skreech Verminking, also known as the "Rat King" and "Skitzlegion", is an Exalted Verminlord Daemon of the Horned Rat, the largest of its kind, and the legendary head of the Shadow Council of Thirteen, who truly rules the affairs of the Skavendom and the Realm of Destruction , the domain of the Horned Rat in the Realm of Chaos.

There was a legend among the Skaven that one day the "Thirteen Headed" would rise. It was said that this so-called "Rat King" would herald a new era and bring nearer the Day of the Great Supremacy, when the Horned One would emerge and the entire Known World would be turned into a corrupting nest of the Skaven.

The history of minking began long ago, in another age of the world. The rising race of Skaven had recently uncovered a giant Warpstone meteor buried in the craggy mountain known as Cripple Peak. It was then and still is the largest deposit of this coveted substance that the rat people have ever found.

The Skaven weren't the first to claim it, however. Cripple Peak was the domain of the father of necromancers - the great and terrible Nagash. He had turned the mountain into an undead stronghold, and his shambling minions were digging deep beneath the earth to extract the Warpstone for some necromancer of the Great Necromancer

So it was that the Skaven waged war and invaded the lower mines of Nagashizzar, or the "Cursed Pit" as the ratmen called it. An endless battle of attrition began, in which the Skaven pitted their great numbers against an enemy that could never be slain.

The war dragged on for years, then decades. The ruling council of the Thirteen of Skaven craved the boundless power the warpstone offered, but no matter how many rat-men warriors they sent into the conflict, they could not break the stalemate. For his part, the Great Necromancer could not find a way to banish the skaven that plagued the tunnels beneath the mountain, and was therefore unable to carry out his own dark plans.

In the end, Nagash offered the Council of Thirteen an unholy pact. In exchange for peace between the undead and the ratmen, the Great Necromancer provided the Skaven with warpstone mined beneath Cripple Peak. After much deliberation, the council agreed and sealed the pact. In truth, the Council wanted all of Warpstone, but even their reserves were limited. This compromise offered at least some return.

Nagash soon sent rotting emissaries to the Council of Thirteen. He offered more Warpstone if the Skaven would lure greenskin tribes into the Cursed Pit. The council agreed, but also doubled the number of their spies, intrigued by their enemy's plans. At first there was little to report. However, it soon became clear that powerful magic was at work. Storm clouds of energy revealed a spell the Great Necromancer used to reshape the world itself. The Council of Thirteen hastily assembled, for Nagash's Great Ritual was underway.

Through their peering orb, the skaven saw what they feared. Far to the south, a countless legion of undead flowed north like a river of bones. Millions of the restless dead strode relentlessly toward Nagashizzar in perhaps the mightiest army the world had ever seen. Before that host the living would be snuffed out like a candle flame in a black hurricane.

For the first time, the Council of Thirteen voted unanimously on a proposal before them - they had to stop Nagash. Unsure whether their weapons could harm a being of such stature, one of the Lords of Decay suggested forging a blade from the purest warpstone, and he oversaw the work. And so it went, with each member contributing to the task at hand. Finally, one last council member sent spies through secret tunnels to get the newly forged Warpstone Fellblade into the hands of an unwitting farmer.

The Skaven plan worked - but only just. Nagash was cut into a thousand pieces. But even in defeat, the Great Necromancer had lashed out at his foe. Far away in Skavenblight, the Council of Thirteen was struck by the arcane feedback of this spell.

It was so strong that two of the Lords of Decay dropped dead with blood spurting from their eyes and ears. But it was over - the most powerful necromancer the world had ever known was stopped. The skaven rushed to collect the pieces of Nagash and took them to the warforges to be destroyed. Without his great will, Nagash's undead legions were worth no more than bones in the desert.

After Nagash's defeat, the skaven grew strong and multiplied. They have dug tunnels and built many nests deep beneath the Worlds Edge Mountains. In Nagash's absence, the Skaven had been willing to claim entire swaths of the surface world for themselves, and the Horned Rat was pleased. But his pride soon turned to anger as petty rivalries and internal squabbles sapped all momentum from the skaven's progress.

Enraged, the Skaven deity grabbed each of the Lords of Decay of the Council of Thirteen and placed them in a dark hole in his realm. There they met the members of their council who had been killed by Nagash's spells - for the Horned Rat had been debating how to reward these supplicants. How long the Lords of Decay stayed in this pit is unknown, for time passes strangely in every corner of this shadowy limbo.

In this hellish pit there was nothing to sustain the fallen Lords of Decay save the scraps of failed plans thrown at them by the Horned Rat. So, day after day, year after year, the disgraced Lords of Decay could do nothing but gnaw at missed opportunities, set claws and quarrel.

In the end, the Horned Rat gave in. He also loved his children, faults and all, and since then not a single council had surpassed the deeds of that exiled group. With a huge claw, the Horned Rat pulled out its stray parishioners. What emerged from this pit, however, were not twelve Skaven Lords of Decay, but a single entity - a hideous amalgamation of the entire former Council of Thirteen.

Twisted and tailed, they were now one writhing creature. The Horned Rat looked at the creature he had forged and decided it wasn't quite enough. With a searing black flash, the rat god fashioned the twisted form into a form he pleased—that of a verminlord, one of his demons—and with a final, puking belch, anointed it with a dose of his own divine power. With horns still sprouting and wriggling, the Verminlord rose from that filth baptism, and so Skreech Verminking was born.

Verminking was a Verminlord like no other. He embodied the stealth of the Eshin Clan, the arcane talent of the Gray Seers, the technological insight of the Skryre Clan, the flesh-working prowess of the Moulder Clan, and the martial ambition of the Warlord Clans. Although Clan Pestilens had not yet been formed at the time of Nagash's fall, the ancestors of their founders belonged to this Council of Thirteen, and they too now resided in Skreech's twisted body.

Thus, Skreech Verminking possessed a great knowledge of disease, along with a burning zeal to spread that corruption on behalf of the Horned Rat. Finally, after so long in the black pit, Verminking was free. He stared into the mortal world, clawing at the thinning walls that separated the shadowy realm of ruin from the mortal realm, eager to unleash himself.

Skreech was one of the four Exalted Verminlords who came to the mortal world during the end times, the others being Lurklox, Soothgnawer and Vermalanx. While these Exalted Verminlords were left to pursue their own pawns and machinations, Skreech drew close to young Gray Seer Thanquol when the Seer summoned a Verminlord, as he was the Horned Rat's chosen instrument. Skreech emerged from The Shadows of the Desolation Realm and hoisted his tiny load upside down by his ankles, proceeded to fondle the seer's horns and explain his intention to aid him.

First, Skreech gave Thanquol another rat ogre, whom the seer named Boneripper. From there, the vermin lord hauled Thanquol back and forth, covering unimaginable distances around the world, from Nuln to Lustria and beyond.