Lords:
Warlord: Picked by the ranks of the Oathsworn, the few ratmen born with horns, Warlords are those that showed the most attitude for the art of command between their brethren, and stand amongst the best of the best that the Under-Kingdom can offer.
The magic woven upon them from birth grows them to hulking strenght, making each of them into a powerful warrior fully capable of cleaving a Rat-Ogre in half with a single swing. Still, the Warlord's true strenght lie into the mind. A Warlord is an accomplished tactician, having passed the majority of his life between study and training. Before commanding armies on his own, he will have passed though countless screenings, as well as having sharpened his fangs as a pupil to an elder Warlord on campaign, learning both from accomplished generals and the field of war itself.
On the battlefield, the Warlord stands at the rear, noble bearing and calm countenance as all around his advisors discuss and messengers bring news; his hulking frame is bedecked with magnificent armor crafted by the greatest Mage-Engineers, blessed sigils wrought by Ur-Shaskar blaze upon the polished metals. With keen sight, he observes the battlefield, drawing from his wealth of knowledge and experience to follow the flow of battle and change his tactics as situation demands. It is often said that a veteran Warlord doesn't notice a possible point for a breakthrough as much as he smells it, so much his ability to read enemy formations is engrained into him.
When the time comes, the Warlord receives his weapon, always a magnificent piece, maybe augmented by the working of the Leagues, from an aide and takes to the field. A band of Oathsworns brethren comes behind him, bodyguards that are as strong as their lords and will lay down their lives for him. Together, they form a wreaking balls of power that smashes though enemy elites, while the Deepkin soldiers squeak into exultation at seeing the might of their leader.
Warlords are inspiring figures, considered by the Deepkin to be both blessed, great champions that raise to the highest glories, and cursed by a destiny that shackles them to duty forevermore. And still, they bear that destiny with pride and stubborness. Their faith into the Goddess and her design for her children is unbreakable, matched only by the hatred they have for the Horned Rat. They are born and bred to fight and lead, and nurture an unwavering loyalty to the dream of a Skavenkind freed from the corruption of Chaos. It's a dream they feel they have come into this world to realize, and will fight the hardest to make it a reality.
Ur-Shaskar: Risen from the ranks of their exalted order, the Ur-Shaskar are the most revered religious figures of the Under-Kingdom. They are the oracles of the Mother and their words are credited to come from the Goddess herself. Where a Ur-Shaskar goes, religious fervor rises to a fever pitch, masses of skaven swarming to bear witness to her hallowed presence.
A Shaskar doesn't rise to this exalted rank by political connections or intrigue; only the most zealous, the most pious, the most spiritually pure can hope to reach it. There's no council of peers to bribe and to negotiate with, only the Goddess herself can nominate a Ur and her eyes pierce though any lie. When the time comes for her blessing to fall upon a worthy, the other Shaskar see their sister radiating the light of the Mother; without a word, they kneel before her, recognizing her as their superior and guide. Ur-Shaskar usually stand as at the head of the Church, sheperding the masses, while some search for deeper communion with their Goddess or wander across the Under-Kingdom, divine whispers leading them to unperscrutable objectives. Still, should the Mother's call bring them to the battlefield, they don't hesitate to enter the path of war. In such cases, they act as advisors to the Warlords, their insight keenly given attention to, or even take command themselves, the secular commanders bowing to their higher understanding.
The Ur-Shaskar are living conduits of the power of the Goddess. Their magic is of divine source and as such its power is overhelming. With a gesture, they can smite the enemies of the Deepkin with hammers of light, call the comets from the sky or project courage in hearts and new vigor into limbs. The Goddess gift them with visions, allowing them to see uncoming dangers and steers the faithful to safety.
They don't make use of the Winds; their might comes from the Mother and from the heart of the world itself. As such, they are anathema to Chaos. In their presence, Daemons scream in pain and horror, their bindings to the material world unreveling. Storms of Winds are becalmed and warlocks find their spells fail and disappear. Corruption is contained and burned away. There are even stories of gigantic Chaos Spawns burned to a cinder by purifying fire, their souls set free while their mutations burned away until only the original body remained.
The devotion the Ur-Shaskar can evoke is awe-inspiring. Even the lowliest of Deepkin will fight all the harder in their hallowed presence, keeping hope even against impossible odds. The Deepkin will give their lives to protect their beloved oracles, but this doesn't mean that the Ur-Shaskar will stand behind and let them do all the work. Many Ur are more than ready to take to the frontline, their blows augmented by the arcane might coursing though their veins. More than a Greater Daemon has thought victory assured once reached melee range with a withered priestess, only to be sent flying back in pieces from a thundering blow by a staff blazing with light. What's more, the Ur will defend their faithful, their god-given mission protecting the children of the Mother; to their songs, blows will fail to find their marks while the weapons of the Deepkin will hit with unerring accuracy; shields of light will raise to block incoming projectiles, harmful magic will be dispersed, its effects nullified.
All the Ur-Shaskar are rewered figures, each of them a powerful icon of the Deepkin soul and of the fight against corruption. They are the eyes and voice of the Goddess, their souls blazing with faith and power. Is it they that bear the ancient promise of purity and is it them that will lead the children of the Goddess to its conclusion, whatever it might be.
Great Father: The Patriarchs are fearsome warrior, each of them given might enormous by his rebirth. And still, there are those between them that stand higher still. Some are hermits, returning to the Under-Kingdoms in imoments of great peril, others are heads of enormous Lodges, having fostered generations of children and grandchildren; all bring the weight of centuries with them.
They are called Great Fathers, and are the oldest of the Patriarchs. Their whiskers are long, their fur gray and their memory stretches far. They have seen much, learned much, witnessed much and all of their knowledge, they bring to war. Age has only added weight to their bodies, making them as great and powerful before a younger Patriarch as this one is before a Deepkin that haven't seen the Mausoleum yet. Their minds are untouched by the long years; instead, they have learned the art of patience to its bottom, a trait that make them into terrifying opponents. A Great Father will wait, day after day, with seemingly endless calm, for his enemy to make a mistake, before unleashing, like a thunderbolt, complex plans born from the experience and abilities of centuries. Frenzied Minotaurs charges will find their prey slip away, Deepkin already moving their formation to cut off the monsters from the support of their smaller brethren, while skirmishers will harry them to destruction, not a single mark found by their bloodgreed. Goblin ambushes will find the defenders ready to meet them, just as another assault comes from seemingly nowhere. There's no part of the art of war that the Great Fathers haven't touched in their long lives, no methods or tricks that they haven't mastered.
Each death they have bore witness to is a pebble in the pits of their soul, each child they had to bury a smoking spark hidden beneath the ash. And when the time comes for them to take the field, all they have accumulated comes to the light, erupting into displays of anger and might that are awesome to behold. Doombulls are wrestled to the ground, Wyverns dragged down from the sky with chains, Warbosses stomped flat, Cygors crushed by their own thrown back projectiles, Dragons pierced through by oversized bullets. An enraged Great Father is a match even for a Greater Daemon, his strenght all but supernatural. Spells bounce off their wrinkled bodies and they are able to shrug off insane amounts of punishments, all the while they hand over the punishment for the deaths of their beloved children.
Born by the tomb and bred upon the life of the ages, the Great Fathers go. For their children, they march. For their children, they battle. For their children, they will triumph.
Ura the Silent
There are many names between the Deepkin to call a particular Patriarch. The First Father, He-Who-Endures, the Evilbreaker, the Hammer of Daemons, Father War, the Great Guardian, the Oathbearer and many more, but he's most known by the name of Ura the Silent.
When talking about him, legend go together with truth, and it's impossible to say where one ends and one begin. An enormous amount of stories, songs and ballads the Deepkin have wrought about him, each a mirabolant adventure in some far away parts of the world. Some stories says that during his youth, he was captured by the bloodthirsty Dark Elves, and brought into their frozen motherland together with his family. In a arena whose floor was made of bones, he would fight for the entertainment of the cruel lords of that land, crushing anything they threw at him. But not as strong as he his family was, and he was forced to watch as they, one after the other, breathed their last, powerless to save them. And then, with heart as cold and ice and bright as fire, he went into a terrifying rampage, flooding the arena with blood, making a mountain of the dead, smashing columns and breaking doors, until the twisted coliseum fell apart with a scream of horror, their lords buried into its blood-stained stones.
Other stories speak of his imprisonment into dreaded Hellpit, where he and his two brothers and two sisters were experimented upon by the mad scientists making their domain there. Into filth and despair he lived, his flesh and will too strong to fail to perverted science, but not so for his brethren, changed and remade into a single, monstrous being. They would sing to each other in the darkness, and to their mournful songs, Ura broke his bonds. His destructive rampage through Hellpit made the hells themselves tremble, his howls of fury and anguish raising to drown the sounds of the malformed fiends he tore to pieces.
Other stories tells that the first part of his life he passed into the Realm of Chaos itself. Shackled to a pillar of brass and iron together with his brethren, he endured the torments of Daemons, watching in horror while his brothers and sisters broke under the torture and were consumed by the pillar, their screaming faces appearing on its twisted surface. In anger, Ura broke his bonds and used the chains to throttle his jailer to death. He then destroyed the pillar, freeing his brethren's souls, and embarked into an epic journey that would see him return to the material world.
All the stories agree on some points, but, most importantly they agree on two things. First, after his escape from whatever place he was imprisoned to, Ura took to the world, embarking into an epic journey full of adventures and legends. And second, Ura is the same priest that, together with the three priestesses, led the first Deepkin migration that brought to the foundation of Haven. For this reason, he is called the First Father. He, as much as the Goddess herself, is father of all the Deepkin and as such is honored.
Of his later life, legends and myths became even more numerous and wildly immaginative. Many stories see Ura at the four corners of the world, engaging in mortal combat against the most powerful enemies or conquering impossible odds. He would have exchanged swordblows with the Witch-King Malekith, leaving his mark upon the dread sorcerer's armor before jumping off the impossibly tall walls of Naggaroth and making his escape. He would have fought dragons, sending wicked ones plummeting from the sky after having pierced their swings with javelins or humbled prideful ones by sneaking while they slept, stealing all their treasures and then tying their legs and feet and swings together. He would have assailed a human city, alone, just to save a ratling, putting the army to flight before escaping with his prize. He would have walked into the greatest halls of the dwarfs, having obtained access by guile and cunning. He would have plunged a poisoned spear into the Wild King Orion's heart, before showing the cure to her Queen Ariel while disguised as a god. He would have faced the immensity of the oceans with only a raft as its ship, travelling to the far east, where Cathay stands, to Lustria, where he spoke with the great frogs that hold rule there, to even fabled Ulthuan itself by latching to the back of a sea dragon. There, he would have stolen a spark from the great flame of Asuryan, gnawed barks from the trees of the Queen's Groove, outwitted mages and defeated proud warriors. He would have walked the deep ways of the earth, where fire burn bright and rocks speak, seen the breath of the heavens, visited the flying castles of the last Titans and still more.
So much is told by songs and stories that it's almost impossible to undestand what's truth and what's not. The only appearances of Ura that the Deepkin can be completely sure of is when he has appeared to help them. Always, in a time of crisis and uncertainty, the First Father appears, his guidance leading the children of the Goddess to triumph and salvation.
Still, a cycle of myths remains a must around the campfires, the one that speak of the adventures of Ura into the Realm of Chaos.
These stories say that he stalked the lands at the northern edge of the world, where the breath of the Gods waxes strong, and killed the terrible monsters of those tormented lands, then using their pelts to fashion himself a disguise with which he passed through the gates into the Realm of Chaos. There, through a convuluted series of adventures, he played any kind of insults and challenges to the Chaos Gods and their servants. He stole the skulls of his brethren from the Skull Throne of Khorne, set ablaze a wing of the Palace of Pleasures of Slaanesh, punctured the great cauldron of Nurgle, broke the Shimmering Halls of Tzeentch and a moltitude more, defeating and baffling daemons. Then, back on the material plane, he fought the attempts at revenge of the Gods, like weaving a sack of his own fur and used it to bag the three heads of the Great Hound Karanak, sent by Khorne, forcing the beast to run around blind until it had to get back to his master to be freed from the sack. And so on, enough to fill book after book.
Whatever the truth lies, Ura is amongst the most revered figures of the Deepkin pantheon, second only to the Mother herself. He appears to them as a great Patriarch, his massive form covered by a heavy robe, stained and worn-out like after a long journey. A cowl covers his head, from which his snout emerges, sniffing softly. His eyes glow into the darkness beneath the cowl, burning like stars. In a paw, he holds a long staff of weathered wood befitting of a pilgrim while in the other he spreads incense with a heavy censer. He's a figure imbued with regality and strenght, radiating calm and steadiness. Where he stands, the sky darkens and storm clouds gather, while far away the thunder rumbles, announcing to the wicked that retribution has come.
The Deepkin worship him as one of the founding fathers of their race, the one thanks to they can decide their destiny and fight against corruption. And still, to them, he's not only this; he's also a true God, a Deepkin that has trascended mortality to ascend to a higher plane of existence and that now stalks the land to defend the children f the Goddess and punish the wicked. They believe that as long they fight the darkness, Ura will be there to watch over them, their greatest champion and the custodian of the promise that for all the Skaven, one day, the dawn will return.