SUNDAY MUSINGS - THE RATMEN COMETH
There is a persistent myth in tabletop gaming that great ideas arrive fully formed. One designer has a flash of inspiration, scribbles something on the back of an envelope over lunch, and by tea time an iconic faction has been born. It is an attractive story because it is wonderfully tidy. It is also almost never true. The reality is usually far messier, involving years of half-formed concepts, discarded sketches, conversations around cluttered studio desks, and dozens of creative minds unknowingly building upon one another's work. If ever there was a race that perfectly reflects that process, it is the Skaven. It seems oddly fitting that a civilisation built upon countless tunnels should itself have been created through countless creative passages, dug by different people over several years before eventually joining together beneath Nottingham.
The popular narrative tends to begin with Jes Goodwin, and whilst that isn't entirely wrong, it is incomplete. The Skaven that first appeared during the mid-1980s bear only a passing resemblance to the race we know today. More importantly, the Design Studio that created them was fundamentally different from the one that exists now. Modern Games Workshop operates with concept teams, intellectual property managers and clearly defined departments. Early Games Workshop was considerably more organic. Sculptors spoke to writers. Writers argued with artists. Artists suggested rules. Editors invented characters. Nobody seemed particularly concerned about staying in their lane because, frankly, there weren't many lanes to begin with. The company was still discovering what it wanted Warhammer to become, and nowhere is that collaborative philosophy more obvious than in the birth of the ratmen.
Like so many ideas in fantasy, the seeds were planted long before Games Workshop ever touched them. Intelligent rats had already enjoyed an impressive literary career. Fritz Leiber's The Swords of Lankhmar introduced organised rat-creatures living beneath the city decades before the first Skaven miniature emerged, complete with unsettling echoes of the Council of Thirteen that would later become central to Skaven society. Likewise, Dungeons & Dragons had long featured wererats skulking beneath civilisation's foundations, proving that rodents and dark tunnels were already well-established companions in fantasy literature. Yet this was never how Games Workshop operated. The Studio rarely copied ideas outright. Instead, it had an uncanny ability to ask a single, deceptively simple question that transformed familiar concepts into something unmistakably its own. What if Orcs behaved less like Tolkien's monsters and more like football hooligans? What if Elves became tragic, decadent survivors rather than aloof woodland archers? What if Chaos wasn't simply evil, but temptation, mutation and entropy wrapped together beneath the influence of Michael Moorcock and heavy metal album covers? The Skaven followed precisely the same path. They did not begin as an attempt to invent ratmen. They began by asking what a civilisation built by rats would actually look like.
Before that question could be answered, however, somebody had to change the way Citadel Miniatures thought about miniatures altogether, and that somebody was Bryan Ansell. It is difficult to overstate Bryan's importance to the development of Games Workshop during the early eighties. Prior to his influence, Citadel largely produced collections of individual fantasy miniatures. Wonderful collections, certainly, but still collections. Bryan saw something much larger. He understood that people did not simply collect figures. They collected worlds. They became invested in identities. Instead of producing "Ratman with Spear" and "Ratman with Sword", the Studio increasingly began asking who these creatures actually were. Where did they live? Why did they fight? What did they believe? What made them culturally distinct from everything else on the tabletop? That shift in philosophy cannot be overstated because it fundamentally changed the purpose of sculpting itself. Miniatures stopped being isolated products and became ambassadors for entire civilisations. Without Bryan Ansell creating that environment, there is every possibility that the Skaven would have remained another curious footnote amongst hundreds of wonderfully eccentric Citadel figures.
Then came Jes Goodwin.
It has often been said that Jes Goodwin is one of the greatest miniature designers Games Workshop has ever employed, but that description almost undersells his contribution. Jes did not simply sculpt miniatures. He designed visual languages. One only has to look across his extraordinary body of work to see the pattern emerging. The Eldar possess graceful, sweeping forms that communicate arrogance and elegance before a single word of background has been read. The Tyranids move with predatory purpose even when standing perfectly still. Genestealer Cults blend industrial grime with religious fanaticism in every buckle, cable and respirator. The Skaven follow exactly the same philosophy. Their earliest incarnations were little more than anthropomorphic Chaos Ratmen, interesting enough but hardly revolutionary. Somewhere during those formative years, however, the question changed. Instead of asking what ratmen might look like, Jes began exploring what a civilisation of rats would actually become.
The answer seems obvious now, which is perhaps the greatest compliment one can pay any designer. Rats do not fight honourably. They swarm. They steal. They multiply with astonishing speed. They infest forgotten places. They flee from strength before overwhelming weakness. Every aspect of Skaven society grows naturally from those simple biological observations. Their architecture burrows beneath everyone else's. Their armies rely upon overwhelming numbers. Their weapons are dangerous even to their own users. Their politics reward betrayal because betrayal is merely another survival strategy. Even their posture communicates nervous opportunism. The genius lies not in inventing individual ideas but in allowing every idea to reinforce every other until the entire civilisation feels inevitable.
Of course, a civilisation requires more than appearance, and this is where Rick Priestley's contribution deserves far greater recognition than it often receives. Rick has always maintained that his greatest interest lay not simply in writing rules, but in constructing believable worlds that functioned according to their own internal logic. The Skaven became perhaps the finest demonstration of that philosophy. Rather than existing as generic villains, they developed competing clans, distinct political interests, theological divisions, economic systems and technological philosophies. Clan Skryre pursued engineering with reckless enthusiasm. Clan Moulder turned biology into industry. Clan Pestilens elevated disease into religion. Clan Eshin weaponised assassination. Above them all sat Grey Seers manipulating prophecy whilst the Council of Thirteen ensured that no alliance lasted longer than absolute necessity demanded. None of these ideas exist in isolation. Every institution reinforces the central premise that Skaven society functions through ambition, paranoia and perpetual internal conflict. Remove any single piece and the entire structure becomes weaker.
What makes this particularly remarkable is that none of it feels artificially assembled. Many fantasy settings create depth by continually adding new material until encyclopaedias become inevitable. The Skaven instead achieve depth because everything grows organically from one foundational concept. They are not humans wearing rat costumes. They are rats attempting the impossible task of constructing civilisation. Every contradiction that follows is both hilarious and horrifying.
That duality may be the most British aspect of the entire creation.
It is impossible to discuss the early Design Studio without acknowledging its extraordinary sense of humour. This was an office populated by Rick Priestley, Richard Halliwell, Graeme Davis, Nigel Stillman, Bryan Ansell, John Blanche, Jes Goodwin and countless others whose imaginations seemed incapable of remaining serious for extended periods. Early Games Workshop never viewed humour as something that undermined darkness. Quite the opposite. The two strengthened one another. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay could present horrific mutations and existential dread alongside rat catchers whose greatest possession was a small dog. Dark Future could depict civilisation collapsing beneath nuclear apocalypse whilst simultaneously parodying consumer culture. Judge Dredd revelled in grotesque satire whilst remaining genuinely disturbing. The Skaven inherited exactly that balance.
Their names border upon the ridiculous. Thanquol. Queek. Ikit. Skrolk. Snikch. Their speech patterns verge on parody. Their inventions explode with comforting regularity. Every Skaven genuinely believes himself to be the cleverest creature alive whilst simultaneously assuming everyone around him is plotting exactly the same promotion. They are absurd. They are comic. They are also responsible for some of the darkest moments in Warhammer history. That balancing act is extraordinarily difficult to achieve, yet the Studio made it appear effortless because they understood something modern fantasy occasionally forgets. Comedy does not diminish horror. It amplifies it. The laughter catches in your throat precisely because the consequences remain deadly.
No discussion of the Skaven would be complete without John Blanche, whose contribution was less about invention than atmosphere. Jes gave the Skaven their anatomy. Rick gave them their society. Blanche gave them their soul. His artwork transformed subterranean tunnels into claustrophobic nightmares of rusted iron, diseased flesh and impossible machinery powered by glowing fragments of warpstone. Before Blanche, the Skaven were fascinating. After Blanche, they became unsettling. The Under-Empire ceased to resemble a collection of underground caverns and instead became a festering industrial hellscape where theology, plague and engineering collided beneath flickering green light. His paintings suggested smells as much as sights. One almost expected to catch the scent of damp stone, smoke, sewage and corruption simply by turning the page.
Looking back after four decades, perhaps the greatest achievement of the Skaven is not that they became popular, but that they became complete. Fantasy literature is filled with races built around singular gimmicks that eventually exhaust themselves. The Skaven never suffer that fate because they were never designed around a gimmick. They were designed around a coherent idea explored from every conceivable angle by a group of creators working together during one of the most fertile periods in tabletop gaming history. Bryan Ansell fostered the ambition to build worlds instead of product lines. Jes Goodwin imagined a civilisation through visual design. Rick Priestley gave that civilisation politics, religion and history. John Blanche wrapped it all in filth, decay and nightmare. Richard Halliwell, Graeme Davis, Nigel Stillman and numerous others enriched that foundation through scenarios, background, humour and decades of careful expansion until the Under-Empire stretched beneath almost every corner of the Old World.
Perhaps that is why the Skaven continue to endure whilst countless fantasy races have quietly faded into obscurity. They were never simply monsters to be fought across a tabletop. They were the product of a remarkable creative ecosystem where artists, writers, sculptors and designers constantly challenged one another to ask one more question. What would rats invent? How would they worship? Why would they betray one another? The answers became one of fantasy's greatest civilisations.
Like the tunnels beneath the Old World itself, the Skaven were never dug by one pair of claws. They were built collectively, passage by passage, until one day the rest of us looked down, heard scratching beneath our feet, and realised something extraordinary had been there all along.
REFERENCES USED IN CREATING THIS ARTICLE
Rick Priestley, Designing Warhammer interviews and seminar talks (particularly his discussions on collaborative studio world-building).
Jes Goodwin Interview by Gav Thorpe (2017), discussing his design philosophy and early work on Warhammer races.
Warhammer Community – Designing the New Skaven While Respecting the Classics (2024), featuring Jes Goodwin reflecting on the original visual language of the Skaven.
Bryan Ansell interviews in Realm of Chaos 80s and The Games Workshop Story discussing the evolution of Citadel into cohesive fantasy ranges.
The Stuff of Legends archive for the chronology of the early Chaos Ratmen miniatures and Jes Goodwin's original sculpts.
White Dwarf issues 98–102 (1988), containing the original Skaven articles that established much of the race's identity.
Warhammer Armies: Skaven (4th Edition, 1993), which consolidated much of the background created during the late 1980s into the definitive version that still informs Skaven lore today.