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Skaven as Horde: New Horde Faction

[ Updated for Vampire Coast patch! ]

This mod implements a new Skaven faction, simply named Thanquol's Rats, which uses standard Horde mechanics we can see with Beastmens or the Warrior of Chaos. They're playable in the Mortal Empires campaign.

Thanquol the Grey Seer (and Boneripper) is the ruler, faction leader and Legendary Lord of this new Clan, and starts north of the Kislev kingdom, not far from their ally Clan Moulder.

Usual skaven factions remain unchanged (apart from the food effects which adds some horde effects).

• New Legendary Lord: Thanquol the Grey Seer.
  
• Custom faction effects and Lord traits.
  
• New horde buildings, based on standard skaven ones.
  
• Rites functional with two new rites tailored for this horde faction.
  
• Technology tree with custom technology nodes.
  
• Custom character skill tree for Thanquol and 4 new skills for regular lords.
  
• Two new quests to unlock legendary items for Thanquol.
  
• Chapter objectives.
  
• Campaign victory conditions.
  
• Usual Skaven features such as Skaven corruption, menace from below or food management.

Thanquol is the Legendary Lord of this faction, and is known to be one of the greatest Grey Seer the Under-Empire has ever known. He comes with a custom character skill tree and can use a combination of both the lores of Plagues and Ruin.

Its infamous bodyguard Boneripper is implemented as a mount, unlocked at rank 9. He is unbreakable and has a once per game ability implemented in-game with a Doomrocket.


Faction effects: Monstrous Horde

• Research rate +20%
  
• Campaign movement range +10%
  
• Income from razing settlements +25%
  
• Speed: +15% for melee infrantry units.

Lord effects (Lord's army)

• Enables poison attacks
  
• Missile resistance: +10% for infantry units
  
• Ambush success chance: +25%

Hordes gain access to an entire custom buildings set with emphasis on upkeep reduction like Beastmen or the Warrior of Chaos, and buildings with usual Skaven economy boosting income from all horde buildings. A choice has to be made, especially at the beginning of the campaign, whether to develop military strength and recruitment options or economy.

Each new building requires an additional amount of growth, as usual (2 then 4 etc.). Recruiting new lord requires growth as well. New skaven hordes could be created, either to enforce military strength or incomes, or both.

At the end of the game, Thanquol's Rats could consist on a myriad of hordes with really strong economy as a good amount of technologies and character skills both boost income and growth for all characters and hordes.


This faction gains access to 4 rites, with 2 new ones:



The entire Skaven technology tree has been re-implemented for this faction, with technologies that usually improve loyalty or have provinces effects changed to be more targeted to horde factions (like bonus to horde growth or Income from all horde buildings). Note that required building to unlock the first technology node have been removed.

A new technology chain is present at the left of the technology screen with bonus to income from razing settlements, casualty replenishment rate, horde growth and income from all horde buildings, with increasing effects for each of the five tier. Each tier requires a set amount of gold to unlock.


Thanquol comes with a custom character skill tree, with both the lore of Plagues and Ruin available. Most of the tree is based on the usual skaven skills with some unique skills to unlock (3 in the campaign line, 2 in the unique skill line).

Grey Seers and Warlords available for recruitment have been slightly changed to include the new horde character skills (Ravenous expansion, Razing settlements, Draftmasters and Tribes of the Horned Rat).


Two legendary items and associated quests have been created, unlocked at rank 8 and 12.

• Warp-Amulet: Gives ward-save, melee defence, miscast base chance reduction, increase in winds of magic power reserve, upkeep for all units, armour, horde growth and the Regenerating Flesh ability.
  
• Staff ot the Horned Rat: Gives ward-save, melee attack, weapon strength, magical attacks, casualty replenishment rate, recruitment cost and income from post-battle loot.

The quest for the Warp-Amulet makes you fight a rival skaven clan who knows the location of the talisman. The quest for the Staff of the Horned Rat lets you fight angry savage Orcs whose lust for this magical staff is known to all.


A full set of custom chapter missions is available in campaign (all based on Queek's one) and victory conditions are functional.

The short campaign victory conditions requires to defeat both Kislev and Kraka Drak factions, as well as razing an amount of 20 settlements and raiding for 5000 golds.

The long campaign victory conditions includes the above conditions, plus demands to defeat the entire Empire factions (like Beastmens).


This mod edits start_pos tables, so any mod editing these will likely conflict. Other than that, any mod editing the Skaven races may conflict as well, or not being active for this newly added faction.

Not compatible with SFO or the Faction Unlocker. I might work on a submod though to make it compatible with the Faction Unlocker, like adding these Horde capabilities to one of the Skaven faction available in the unlocker.

• Thanks to TorinoGT and this site[wall.alphacoders.com] where I found the loading background image.
  
• Thanks to Mad Marx for his [Mortal Empires] Tabletop banners and emblems where the Clan Eshin flags and banners used in this mod comes from.

Also, huge thanks to all members of the C&C Modding Den Discord where I find all kind of modding tips and useful links and resources.


I tested this mod rather extensively, but since it has a pretty big scope I might have let issues here and there. If you encounter any bugs or things that seem unexpected, please feel free to let me know in the comments section below. I'll try to fix them asap.