A brief primer on the history of The Ancestor of Famine by Spineshank Strangetails XIII
Librarian’s note: Acquired Autumn 1126
Text reproduced for cataloguing purposes, but best read in the original form:
Origins: The Calligar Connection
Before the Great Horned Rat was an ancestor, there was Calligar; known also as the Green Man, Rede, or Bear. He was a primeval ancestor of the wilderness, of fertility and decay, of raw tooth and claw. Presumed to have originally been an Elven ancestor, Calligar represented the untamed, chaotic heart of nature itself.
Author’s Note: Worship of Calligar is PROSCRIBED in Albion.
But the Empire of Tebron could not abide such wildness. In their bid to civilize the world, they created the Hunter, known also as The Stag, as a replacement for Calligar. The Hunter was one of the Empire’s trinity of ancestors (Hunter, Mother, Architect), a symbol of human domination over the wild. By diverting worship away from Calligar and toward the Hunter, the Empire weakened Calligar enough to imprison him beneath the earth, his bindings such that his followers forgot him.
The prison? The chaos-tainted circle of Reiskarg.
And so Calligar languished beneath the surface, trapped, forgotten and hungry. But those who still remembered the ancient ancestor would try to call on them again…
The Birth of the Skathen
The Skathen were not always ratfolk. They were once the Vermillion Elves; a proud, beautiful race of long-lived beings. But they had lost their fertility, almost certainly related to the activation of the Mordred Device, which targeted and destroyed elder races. They were dying. Their end was inevitable. Their bloodlines perished.
In their desperation, they turned to the imprisoned Calligar. The rites were led by a ritualist called Carsenir, whose skull Clan Hollowtooth now holds. Carsenir poured blood into the ground, blood sacrificed from their own kind, into the area around Reiskarg, hoping to reach the trapped ancestor and beg him for salvation.
But Calligar could not answer. He was too deeply bound, too far from them, his power constrained by the Empire’s enchantments. Something else heard their pleas.
The rites were answered, not by Calligar, but by something else. A thing of the wild and the hunt, born of Calligar’s raw power and the Hunter’s cunning intelligence. Some say Calligar fathered it. Some say the Hunter fathered it. Some say both did, each endowing it with their gifts, each hoping to shape it in their image.
One thing is certain: Calligar endowed it with the raw powers of disease and chaos. The Hunter endowed it with cunning and intelligence. And the resulting creature, then known as The Hunterchild or The Black Stag, came to maturity after Calligar’s imprisonment and became something more than the Empire could hope to control, something which had found -prey-
The rites of Carsenir succeeded in reshaping the Vermillion Elves. They became stunted, beastlike. They grew tails and whiskers. Their long lives were traded for survival and fertility. They became the first Skathen.
Other Vermillion Elves attempted to murder those who first survived the changes. But ultimately, all who resisted died, and the Skathen survived. A few Vermillion Elves escaped the curse by locking themselves away in time bubbles across Erdreja, but the rest became Skathen, they had the Hunterchild to thank for their survival.
The Creation of the Great Horned Rat
The Hunterchild was not yet the Great Horned Rat. He was something else, a creature of the wild, answering the prayers of the desperate, granting them survival when they begged for it. But he was not yet an ancestor.
That came later.
Fragments of documents speak of a ritual performed by the Skathen, a ritual to thank their savior, to honor him, to bind themselves to him forever. They did not know his name. They did not know his nature. They only knew that he had saved them, and that knowledge was all they needed.
He appeared to them in the traditional form of a black stag, proud and wild. But as the ritual progressed, as the Skathen poured their devotion into him, something changed, something evolved.
The Hunterchild possessed the skathen ritualist, black antlers ripped through his skull. His form twisted and warped. The black stag became something else; something of the rat, something of the swarm, something of the endless hunger that gnaws at the edges of existence. He stood tall and proud above the others.
He was no longer The Hunterchild nor The Black Stag. He was something new. Something terrible. Something magnificent.
He was renamed and worshipped now according to his appearance; this is the first manifestation of The Great Horned Rat as we now know him.
We can pin this transformation between 0AF and 497AF, between the victory of the Empire and the cataclysm that ended it, and most likely before 130AF, by which time Albion was firmly under Empire control. The Clan Skulls of the Skathen were those of Carsenir’s ritual team; relics of the first transformation, objects of immense power. Skathen clans wage war for them to this day.
The Nature of the Great Horned Rat
The Great Horned Rat is not an ancestor of virtue. He is not an ancestor of justice. He is an ancestor of survival, and survival is ugly. It bites and scratches back.
He represents the raw, primal truth that the world is a nest of vermin devouring each other, and that the only choice is whether you live as the biter or the bitten. He does not pretend to love his followers. He does not offer comfort. He offers a deal: get strong, get smart, or get eaten. He does not pity the dead, he simply consumes them.
His aspects reflect this:
The Conqueror (Lord of the Lash) embodies the warlike, arrogant, feral nature of survival through domination. He teaches that the strong rule and the weak serve, and that there is no other law. He takes what he pleases and kills those who get in his way.
The Plaguebearer (Lord of Poxes) embodies survival through corruption. He teaches that disease and decay are tools to weed out the weak and strengthen the strong ; a lesson learned from Calligar’s gift of disease and chaos.
The Innovator (The Great Genius) embodies survival through cunning ; the gift of the Hunter, channeled through the Hunterchild’s intelligence and transformed into the hunger for knowledge and advancement.
The Fleshgifter (The Swarmfather) embodies survival through proliferation. He teaches that the swarm is his true body, and that each scurrying form within it is a vessel of his will. He cares for his children knowing that each one strengthens him.
The Scuttler in the Walls (Shadow of Murder) embodies survival through subterfuge. He teaches that the greatest victory is the one your enemy does not see coming. He forgives any trespass in the name of survival and promotes treachery.
The Crisis of 1106: Calligar’s Return
For centuries, The Great Horned Rat reigned supreme as the sole ancestor of the Skathen. But the bindings on Calligar had weakened over time; the Empire that had imprisoned him was long gone, and his power was returning, albeit slowly.
In 1106, the Conclave of Elder Races hatched a cunning plan. They would turn all the Skathen back into Vermillion Elves, gaining an instant giant army to send against the remaining younger races. Calligar, still trapped beneath Reiskarg, was their instrument, which would bring about a turning point for the Conclave’s war.
By this point, many of the Skathen Clans had turned, or been beguiled, to worship Calligar instead of the Great Horned Rat. A creature known as Knottedtail, believed to be a pawn of Baba Yaga, led this seduction. The Skathen were divided. The Great Horned Rat’s power was waning and Calligar was supernaturally convincing.
Only the Copperspirals and Firetails are known to have strongly resisted and remained true. The Hollowtooth clan resisted to a lesser extent. The rest were lost.
The crisis came to a head at the “When Two Worlds Collide” event in April 1106. The Vipers, Jackals, and Harts initially supported Calligar. Indeed, Sultan Vinn’Egar of the Jackals led a rite to empower Calligar on the Friday evening, many others gave power to and supported the weakened ancestor under Reiskarg.
But then they saw the truth. They saw what the Conclave intended. They saw that Calligar’s return would mean the destruction of the Skathen as they knew them – the end of their identity, their culture, their very existence.
They changed sides.
Sultan Vinn’Egar and Sheikh Rhattel En’Rholl Al’Fayed took prominent parts in rites to the Great Horned Rat to undo their earlier work. They came into contact with several Clan Skulls. They looted a set of robes of erisite protection from a Conclave research camp, making them Conclave targets (though it is not known if the Conclave noted their names) We remember their betrayal and consequent weaseling out of it.
The Great Horned Rat regained ascendancy. The Conclave’s plan was stopped. Most or all of the Great Seers, possessed by Knottedtail and Calligar, were killed for their treachery. Skathen had suffered a great loss to secure collective survival.
The Aftermath: Firetail Ascendancy
The events of 1106 left most clans leaderless. The Great Seers were dead. The clans reeled from the loss of their spiritual leaders and the withdrawal of Calligar’s power. In the inevitable ratty scrabble for power, all turned inward.
But Clan Firetail was different.
Thanks to their focus on unliving and necromancy, they had avoided the fate of the other clans. Their unliving members were immune to mind effects (a blessing of their dark arts at the time), and so they had not been possessed or beguiled. They had remained true to the Great Horned Rat throughout the crisis.
As the other clans collapsed into infighting, the Firetails waged a very successful war on the Sandrunners, who reeled from losing their Grey Seer and much of Calligar’s power. The Firetails seized large amounts of Arabian territory.
Splitskull, the unliving leader of Clan Firetail, became one of the most powerful Skathen in Erdreja. The Firetails became the dominant clan during that era.
Knottedtail’s End
Knottedtail, the creature who had led the seduction of the Skathen, survived the events of 1106. It continued to scheme, to plot, to serve its true master… Baba Yaga.
It took until the Gathering of 1109 for Knottedtail to be destroyed. Once again, it was the Firetail Jackals who were instrumental in its destruction. The serpent’s head was finally cut off. The Great Horned Rat’s enemies were scattered. Stability returned.
The Great Horned Rat Today
Today, the Great Horned Rat is the most prominent ancestor of the Skathen. He is worshipped in all five of his aspects, and his power is immense. The Council of Thirteen, once shattered, has been rebuilt. New Great Seers have been chosen. The Skathen are recovering, repopulating, rebuilding. You may even know some yourself.
But the Great Horned Rat does not forget. He does not forgive. He remembers that his children turned against him. He remembers those that were beguiled by Calligar, seduced by the promise of their old forms. How foolish his children were.
He does not punish them. He does not need to. He simply reminds them, through plague, through famine, through war, that he is their only hope. That without him, they are nothing. That without him, they are prey. That by his power, all can be eaten.
He is the gnawing at the edges of existence. He is the hunger that cannot be sated. He is the truth that in order to survive sometimes one must do what is necessary, not what is moral, clean or kind. He is hope, not that things will be perfect, but that they will not end, because you will cling to life just to spite those who would see you die.
He is the Swarm and the Swarm is Him.
Timeline
| Date | Event |
| -144AF | Mordred Device created |
| 0AF | Victory of the Empire |
| Pre-130AF | The Great Horned Rat born (between 0AF and 497AF, likely before 130AF) |
| 130AF | Skathen aid Sithis to create Sentinels in Teutonian Great Forest |
| 497AF | Cataclysm of Water; Calligar’s voice is heard no more |
| 1106 AF | “When Two Worlds Collide” – Calligar’s attempted return; Great Horned Rat regains ascendency |
| 1109 AF | Knottedtail destroyed at the Gathering |
| 1118 AF | Great Chaos War, Golgamoth, GHR, Sister Bethany and Mordred all battle for supremacy, Golgamoth Wins |
| 1119 AF | The Jailer seals The Great Horned Rat with The Hunter Sending Him back to Albion as his punishment, Clan Firetail cease worship of The Great Horned Rat, Clan Hollowtooth resurges within Albion |
| 1122 AF | Great Horned Rat and Hunter followers perform a rite to grant the Great Horned Rat his own tree within Albion’s grove, severing most of his ties to The Hunter |
| 1126 AF | The Great Horned Rat destroys Vortigern’s vines |
The Thirteen Commandments of chaos:
Gruesome Guidelines of the Great Horned Rat
As chittered forth from the foetid tongue of his putrid avatar
I. Thou shalt spread disease as both a blessing and a curse, for it separates the weak from the strong. To cleanse oneself is to admit one’s own weakness.
II. Survive by any means at your disposal, as an individual, as a clan and as a swarm. Death is the final failure of the weak. a hero is a fool by yet more foolish a name.
III. Gnaw not upon the feeding hand, unless the food fails to come, then dine upon not the hand but the corpse entire.
From famine draw your strength.
Iv. Multiply without number, without cease, for the swarm is my true body, each scurrying form within, a vessel of my will.
The egg is a meal too vast for a single maw to consume.
V. Hide thine schemes in shadow, veil thine plots in lies, for to part the seeing from the being is the act of the smart-thing.
VI. That which is built by the slow and the proud, tear down with swift claws and hidden teeth. All that rises must fall, and in its rubble we shall build our nests.
VII. The strong-thing rules, the weak-thing serves. To lead is to be obeyed; to question is to be eaten.
There is no other law.
VIII. All things rot, all things rust, all things fail. Place thy trust not in stone nor steel, but hasten the inevitable decay of thine enemies’ works.
IX. The sharp mind is a greater weapon than the sharp claw. The plan which wins the war is greater than the strength which wins the battle.
X. erisite is my blood upon erdreja, its scent my breath. Seek it, covet it, consume it. It is the stone that is not stone, the power that unmakes and remakes, it is evolution unending.
XI. When the great enemy rises, the swarm shall unite! When the enemy falls, the swarm shall feast! Only when the feast is done shall the swarm turn upon itself once more.
XII. Those who squeak in my name shalt inherit the egg. The final ascendancy comes when all others have failed, and the horned ones sit upon thrones of gnawed bones atop the ruins.
XIII. Follow no law, nor command, nor oath, unless it serves. This includes my previous commandments, as well as this one.
A Treatise on the Final Gnawing
Being the True Doctrine of the Afterlife in the Realm of Ruin, and the Rightful Fear of All Skathen
Preface: The Only Truth
Let those who dwell on the surface believe in golden halls and tranquil ends. Let them pray to their silent deities for mercy. We, the skathen, the children of The Great Horned Rat; name our Ancestor in the dark tongue, for from His shadow did we first scurry and we know the only truth that matters.
There is no peace. There is no reward. There is only Ruin, and the eternal hunger that waits there.
This treatise is not written to comfort. It is written to remind. For a skathen who forgets his fear is a skathen who is already easy prey, meat for the taking.
Part I: The Realm of Ruin – Our Inheritance
When the breath leaves a skathen’s lungs, whether by blade, plague, betrayal, or the simple failure of an aging heart, the pattern does not ascend. It does not linger. It is dragged, for the Ancestor claims what is His by right of dominance.
The Pattern falls through the cracks of reality, down through the gnawed tunnels of existence, until it plummets into the Grey Sea. This is no water of the mortal world. It is the congealed sweat of a billion terrified skathen, the tears of the dying, the oily runoff of a thousand thousand warrens. The pattern sinks, choked, spinning, until it is vomited forth onto the shores of Ruin from His gaping maw once again.
And what shores they are!
Mountains of refuse, taller than the peaks of Erisia, composed of gnawed bone, rusted metal, spoiled warpstone-dust, and the shredded parchment of broken pacts. These are His collected treasures to behold!
Skies of bile-green gloom, lit not by sun or moon, but by the sickly glow of the Ancestor’s own scrutinising eyes, which watch and judge always what scurries below.
Tunnels that bleed. Passages that breathe. Corridors that shift and close like the throats of starving things. Teeth that gnash, tongues that taste, jaws that bite.
The skathen dead do not arrive as warriors. They arrive as wretches; naked, fur-matted, clawless in spirit, their cunning stripped away. They are the lowest of the low, even lower than a Clanrat in the mortal world. And they are not alone.
Part II: The Lords of Unlife – The Outer Gnawing
It is here that the second terror reveals itself. For the Realm of Ruin is not a private burrow. It is a contested territory, and the greatest competition of the Ancestor of Corruption is the collective horrors known as the Lords of Unlife.
These are not Ancestors, as the man-things name them. They are the embodiments of the cold, silent, patient hunger of the tomb. They rule the planes beyond Ruin, and they despise the skathen’s frantic, scurrying energy. Where our Ancestor is fever and plague and frantic reproduction, the Lords of Unlife are stillness, silence, and absolute finality.
Their legions, bone-constructs, pattern-siphons, and the hollow-eyed echoes of dead kings, invade Ruin constantly. They do not seek conquest in the mortal sense. They seek to claim. They wish to snuff out the skathen pattern entirely; not to eat it, not to torment it, but to unmake it. To turn the skathen’s eternal chitter into absolute, eternal quiet.
Thus, the dead skathen are caught in a war of two hungers:
The Horned Rat, who desires to gnaw and consume forever.
The Lords of Unlife, who desire to erase and silence forever.
And between them? The skathen pattern is the battlefield. It is chewed by His Ancestrals ; those great, horned beings who build fortresses of fused bone in the waste, and it is also hunted by the silent generals of the Unlife, who drag screaming Patterns into the grey stillness from which there is no return.
Part III: The Ancestor’s Hunger – Why He Does Not Save
The surface-folk ask: “If the Ancestor is so powerful, why does He not grant you paradise?”
Fools. All of them.
Our Ancestor does not love. He does not protect. He hungers. His very being is a maw. He answered the call and created the skathen not as children, but as teeth… teeth that gnaw the world while alive, and teeth that continue to chitter and writhe even in death, providing Him with endless sustenance.
The skathen afterlife is not a reward for service. It is a confirmation of service. In life, a skathen schemes, betrays, kills, and claws upward. In death, that same frantic energy is harvested. The Ancestrals do not rule Ruin, they feed upon it, siphoning the terror of the damned to empower their own endless wars against the Lords of Unlife on their very plane.
There is no throne for the righteous skathen. There is no feast for the loyal. There is only the pit, and the gnashing, and the knowledge that your suffering and the dissolution of your pattern is the very thing that keeps your Ancestor’s heartbeat thumping.
Part IV: The Root of All Fear – Why Death Is the Ultimate Defeat
Now we arrive at the heart of the matter. Why do all skathen, from the lowliest slave to the mightiest Seer, tremble at the mere whisper of death, why do they flee and hide from danger?
It is not because death is unknown. It is because death is understood.
First: The Loss of Self
In mortal life, a skathen has claws, fangs, cunning, thaums and erisite. He can scheme. He can flee. He can betray a rival to save his own fur. In Ruin, he has nothing. His cunning is worthless against Ancestral or Unliving generals. He is a passenger in his own eternal torment, helpless as a newborn pup.
Second: The Eternal Now
The skathen Pattern does not fade or reincarnate. It persists. And it remembers. Every betrayal it suffered in life is replayed. Every fear it felt is magnified. And there is no end. The surface-folk speak of “final rest.” There is no rest in Ruin. There is only more. More gnawing. More running. More hiding. More being found by the things that lurk beyond perception.
Third: The Two Evils
To be caught by the Ancestor is to be chewed forever; a slow, agonizing dissolution into the cosmic waste, your essence used to fuel the next wave of Ancestral assaults into the mortal realm.
To be caught by the Lords of Unlife is to be emptied, stripped of all emotion, all memory, all chittering life, until you are a hollow shell shuffling in the silent legions, neither dead nor alive.
Fourth: The Ultimate Insult
In death, the skathen cannot even betray his way to safety. There are no rivals to stab in the back, no alliances to forge, no erisite or gold to bribe with. The currency of Ruin is suffering, and every pattern is bankrupt from the moment it arrives.
Part V: The Wisdom of Fear
Thus, the skathen who fears death is not a coward. He is the only wise one. Those who run willingly toward death are fools.
Fear is what keeps the claws sharp. Fear is what keeps the eyes open. Fear is what drives a skathen to poison his rival’s meal before the rival can poison his. Fear is the engine of our entire civilization, our warrens, our plagues, our endless, glorious, frantic scrambling. Fear is what we offer to our Ancestor.
To stop fearing death is to accept Ruin. And to accept Ruin is to surrender to the Gnawing or the Silence; two fates equally abhorrent.
So let the skathen scurry. Let them scheme. Let them bite and claw and lie and steal. For every moment they draw breath in the mortal world is a moment stolen from the Realm of Ruin.
Every heartbeat is a defiance, not of the Ancestor, but of the inevitable.
And when that final heartbeat ceases? Let them at least say this: I feared. I ran. I survived longer than I should have.
That is the only epitaph a true adherent of The Horned Rat can claim.