WHF Rat Queens

Another older piece of fan writing for WHF. This time focusing on the Skaven. General body horror and gross warning.

Master Moulder Kretch Crosstooth is working on a secret project. In a secret laboratory in the northern wastes he aims to create an enhanced strain of breeders.

Protean, self sustaining, and a scourge. She could breed with multiple skaven and give birth to ratlings at the same. Instead of being fed she could just devour the fetuses inside of her. Her output more then enough to curb her hunger. Her mind stunted as to no longer need the drugs to keep the typical breeder docile. And to top it all off all her children will carry a sexually transmitted virus meant to make preexisting breeders infertile.

Kretch dubbed them his Rat Queens. "The perfect plan to corner the market!" according to him. Destroying everyone's access to a resource then selling it at a premium claw over fist, a tride and true skaven tradition. The amount of warpstone and power from it could both make clan moulder and him tower over the rest of skavenkind.

That is, once he gets it working. The research was already taxing due to needing a constant supply of breeders, made worse since he needed to keep this secret. If he wasn't quick enough eventually one of his underlings will mess up and lead his enemies to him.

He was right to be worried, for his newest delivery of breeders were followed by a snitch. It would be less than a month before his destroyed lab would be found by hit squads sent by his rivals.

A week before they arrived Kretch had done it. It looked like a failure at first. The breeder melting into the typical soup of fluids after the initial insemination of the altered sperm. Before slowly reformed and solidified in a pile of wrinkled naked flesh. She was alive and very hungry.

Skaven slaves were ushered into the chamber and ordered to mate. They were of course confused, until wombs formed on the surface of the Rat Queen. Soon more and more slaves were pushed into the room as the Queen expanded and formed more wombs.

In the neighboring viewing room Kretch was getting lost in his own fantasies of grandeur at the sight. It took the loud and wet thwump of a slave being mashed against his window to knock him out of it.

Shapeshifting limbs shot out of the Rat Queen, grabbing and compressing the slaves into meatballs. Wombs reformatted into long toothy maws and fought with each to devour what was left of the slaves. As it ate it lurched towards Gretch's window, a starfield of black eyes opened and gazed upon him.

What Kretch didn't understand was that his process didn't make the breeder birth the rat queen, instead the breeder was transformed into the rat queen. She felt as if she had finally surfaced the water after eons of drowning. Vague memories and feelings became clear and horrifying. Those black eyes exuded pure malice at not just the quivering wreck she beholded, but at every disgusting skaven that ever was.

Kretch wanted to run but only ended up falling out of his chair. His arms turned to jelly as thoughts of either running away or activating the failsafe to kill the abomination. So he only pathetically spasmed on the floor as the rat queen watched with delight. Her eyes then rolled back.

From behind him he heard the doors connecting this room and the lab being ripped out of their frame. A wave of cloudy water came crashing through and flooding the room. Kretch tried to hold his breath but had the wind knocked out of him as a heavy weight hit him in the back. Followed by countless more. Crushing his bones and devouring him as he barely held onto consciousness.

Tiny squeaking hairless maws emerged from the water. Devouring either each other or following any scent they could to find fresh meat. Within the day the first brood of the rat queen had annihilated the lab.

The only ones spared were the remaining breeders being stored there. They instead became the next generation of rat queens. Turning the accursed laboratory into their new nest. A new home where they can plan and stage their revenge against skavenkind.