Red Bands: Deepkin military is powerful and well-organized, but its generals never stop keeping an eye open for promising recruits. War schools are present in any major Burrow and each Shieldchief is instructed to bring forth recomendations for his most brilliant soldiers. This scrutiny is made under demanding parameters, but those that pass the mark are picked up, given additional training and then welcomed into the ranks of the Red Bands.

Crack formation, the Red Bands are formed by those that showed exceptional martial prowess. Old veterans, battlefield champions, prodigies of military schools, they are all singled out, given armors and weapons blessed and enscribed with runes of powers and then grouped into hard-rock units of elites. They receive better pay and better treatments than regular soldiers, but in exchange their training regime and the expected level of discipline and combat performance are much higher. To mark their new status, a single, red band is painted along their tails.

In battle, the Red Bands are used to steady wavering battlelines, hold back the fiercest aggressions, and face enemies that would send anyone else running for their lives. Where the crucible of danger is, the Red Bands will be called to. This has made them into somewhat romantic figures and a great deal of Deepking bards have composed songs about brave Red Bands facing terrible monsters without a flinch. It's a testament to the dangers they are called to fight that relatively few of these songs tend to aggrandize reality.

Even amongst a warrior people, the Red Bands are great warriors and defenders all, expert both in massed combat and single challenge, and their hard-won renown made so that the their mark has assurged between the Deepkin to emblem of courage and strenght in the face of even the most terrible of dangers.

Skavenslave Rakritt halted his escape and turned back.

From where he was, up above the cliff, he could see the entirety of the battlefield.

On a side, daemons came, capering and howling and gurgling and hissing, a tidal wave of flesh and metal that was all but unstoppable.

On the other… skaven? He wasn't sure. Maybe it was the terror roiling through him.

These skaven formed a single, ordinated block, pitifully small compared to the horde bearing down on them. Still, they held to silence, not one of them moving. Their spears were lowered, waiting for the charge. The runes inscribed on their armors seemed to glitter and weave into the gloom, like there was an inner fire glowing from within.

Watching them, Rakritt felt something stir into his verminous heart. He didn't know what it was, but it terrified and excited him at the same time.

The Skavenslave blinked. One of the armored figures in the first rank, he was raising his weapon into his direction. The spearpoint caught the little light streaming into the cavern from above, becoming like a flame, like the skaven soldier was holding a torch aloft. For a moment, Rakritt felt sorrow and longing, like a memory of better times long lost.

He turned, and ran, escaping from those feelings just as he escaped from the battle. He didn't see the two enemies meet, but deep in his mind that small flame flickered still, holding a humble promise that he could not name, passed unbroken through time, flame and blood.

Path Warriors: The Church of the Radiant Goddess is a major power of the Under-Kingdom, omnipresent at all levels of Deepkin society. But, while temples and cathedrals attend to the masses, other, smaller religious comunities dot the Under-Kingdom.

Called Abbeys, these are fortified complexes, usually built into fairly isolated and sometimes even dangerous places, that live off charity and autonomous means. Their inhabitants are those Deepkin that felt the need to dedicate their own lives to religious pursuit and the service of the Goddess. These monks do works of common utility, like maintaining a road or assisting the sick, but it's not their main motive. They search for a deeper connection with their Goddess, believing that they can reach it through following Her dictates of brotherood, praying, working and, most of all, training their minds and bodies.

Abbey Monks take chastity oaths, forsake the pursuit of pleasure and focus all their efforts into the search for physical and mental perfection, believing that the closer they get to it, the closer their connection to the Mother will be. The philosofical foundation and the means are furnished to them by The Right-Handed Path, a millennia old doctrine that meld together study, prayer and training. Following it, the Monks learn to trasform their bodies into deadly weapons. They can toughen their skin until it become as strong as tempered steel, they can shatter stone with a single blow of their bare hands, they can run faster than a gallopping horses and jump many times their height, they can move with dizzying speed. More, they unlock hidden potential of the mind, becoming able to do feats that border into the superhuman (or super-rathood), like being able to hold their breaths for dozens of minutes at the time, or slow down the heartbeat until it's almost stopped, falling into a deathlike trance where virtually no food is required.

The marvels offered by the Right-Handed Path are manifold, but they don't come cheap. Only through complete dedication and sincerity of soul and mind these abilities can be unlocked and better mind and body can be obtained. As such, only the monks that started to train from ratlings can hope to become true Path Warriors.

Still, when the call of war sounds, the gates of the Abbeys swing open, and units of Path Warriors march out, clad only in the humble clothing of humble life. Led by their masters, these formidable warriors go to add their occult might to the armies of the Under-Kingdom, their pursuit of perfection leading them into defence of Her children like it has led them during the time of peace.

On the battlefield, the Path Warriors act as heavy-hitting, high-speed units, moving across the field with incredible quickness to bring tremendous charges against the enemy. Shields splinter under their blows, while blades rebound upon rock-like skin. As they fight, they train and so, punch after punch, they strive ever closer to their coveted goal.

Trust me, it's what i thought too. Ratmen, cowards, easy prey to offer to the Gods. And for a time, it went like that. We butchered a lot of them rats, made the blood flow nicely for the Hound.

But then these different ones showed up. No, it wasn't like they were bigger or anything, they were just more ratmen, with rags and all, but these ones didn't run. They came at us, howling and jumping.

We laughed then. What ratmen could do after all? These ones didn't even have weapons. We formed the shiedlwall, thinking that another easy offering was on its way.

That was when things started to go wrong. Them rats, see, they jumped like damn frogs and, gods, they were fast! They vaulted over our shields and, before we managed to realize what was happening, they were amongst us, kicking and punching. Sure, you say, what a rat's punch can do? Well, i don't know what those rats ate, but they had hammers instead of fists. Hrergar, he was right beside me, he raised his shield to block one of them. The rat just cleaved through wood and iron with his leg and smashed him down, just like a boulder thrown by a catapult. Gods be blessed, i heard my kinmate's bones break there. And you can stay sure that Hrergar didn't get up anymore after that.

What did we do? What could we do? They were all amongst us, fast as lightning and slippery as damn crows. We tried to hit them, even managed to get a couple of good blows in. But them rats, and may the Gods strike me down if i lie, they felt like they were made of rock. Our axes barely managed to scratch them. And meanwhile they went to business all over us, breaking armor and bones like they weren't even there.

We held on for a while, but when the Huscarl went down, his head caved in by a fist, well, there we decided that we had had enough. You get only one life to dedicate to the Powers, have to keep it tight to yourself, right? For myself, it didn't go too bad. Ask Torvar over there, he still can't bear to see rats. But, to be fair, that has more to do with the other rats, the really big ones. Yeah, i am going to need a refill if you want to hear about them too.

Underdwellers: There are those Deepkin whose knowledge of the dreaded underworld is beyond compare even amongst their subterrean kind. Survivalists, hunters of monsters, guides, pioneers, trackers, they brave the dangers of the darkness to map secret paths or bring back to their Burrows rare and powerful materials, be it the liquid light that spill from secret sources in the abyss or the hearts of dreaded beasts of the deep. When war comes, they are recruited into elites units of Underdwellers, the best guerrilla fighters of the Under-Kingdom.

Underdwellers stalk the darkness, moving unseen and unheard across shadows and crags. Snipers, elite skirmishers, monster slayers, they can stand motionless for days, a long-range musket in their paws. When the moment comes, a single shot rings and monsters and commanders drop dead, specialized ammunitions lodged right in their vitals. Nor their patient handiwork ends with this. Landslides are triggered upon unsuspecting invaders, firing mechanisms of warmachines are found rigged, rations fouled, animals poisoned. When retaliance is brought, the Underdwellers have already disappeared, slinking away through hidden paths known only to them.

Masters of stealth, sabotage and assassination, the Underdwellers rivals the dreaded Assassins of Clan Eshin in their works. Their life-long trainings toughen them up until their skins are leathery and their senses sharp as blades. They can contort themselves into impossibly small cracks in the rock, managing to infiltrate even the most heavy defences and to escape the most dogged pursuit. It is said that the best amongst them can even pick up vibrations in the air through their whiskers, seeing enemies even when nose and eyes cannot.

On the battlefield, they act as elite skirmishers and assassins. Dressed into battered light armor, often augmented by the workings of the Mage-Engineers, they stalk the shadows, bringing blade, bullet, bomb, poison and claws to bear against the most fearsome monsters the enemy can deploy. Quickly they strike and quickly they are away, before any retaliation can be brought, leaving only dead in their wake.

"Bring it down!" Shieldchief Tagguz frantically waved his spear, signalling for his soldiers to advance.

More Underrunners joined the group circling the Abyssal Troll. They poked at the monster with long pikes, but he seemed barely to register.

His club, a massive fungus-encrusted stalactite, swung, and a bunch of Deepkin were sent flying.

Tagguz cursed, ducking to avoid a flying soldier. "Shoot that thing, dammit!" He shrieked.

Gunrats and Underrunners unleashed a flurry of bullets and arrows. But it wasn't like they hadn't been trying. The Troll was riddled with holes already, but his flesh regenerated almost as quick as they could wound it. Even then it didn't go otherwise; arrows pinged off his stony hide while bullets were just pushed out from closing wounds.

Tagguz was out of ideas, and the expressions of his soldiers told him that he wasn't the only one. "K-keep shooting!" He shrieked. "Don't stop! Don't stop until it's in pieces!" .

Suddenly, a bunch of projectiles flew through the air. There was a series of small crashes, and the Troll watched with dumb puzzlement the oil now covering him.

Something bright hit him and he went up in flames.

The troll staggered, tiny brain trying to catch up. He wobbled outside the circle of Underrunners, the ratmen quickly moving aside to let him pass. He had barely made ten steps away that the ground gave way under him, and he disappeared with a mildly surprised grunt.

Wide-eyed, Tagguz watched the hole. He heard steps behind him, and turned. A group of raggedy-looking Deepkin were stalking away, already disappearing amidst shadows and rocks.

"Yeah." The Shieldchief said, still bewildered. "That works too."

One of his Underrunners spat into the hole, just to emphasize.

Warmage Brotherhood: Good tactics, strong leadership and unflinching discipline are paramount to a powerful army, but it never escaped the Deepkin that only too often only the might of magic can secure victory. Still, the use of the Winds have always been seen with suspect in the Under-Kingdom, its leaders considering it a temperamental and dangerous tool. For this reason, Deepkin magic tends to come not from the emanations of the Realm of Chaos, but from the divine might of their Goddess and the inherent strenght held into abyssal rock and fire. Deep underground, where flame flares with wrathful life and stone speaks with grinding voice, there is power to be found for those that search and the Deepkin have searched for much, much time. They have become apt to call magma and rock to crush and burn their enemies, and to push back the Winds and the taint of Chaos through the invocation of the natural world.

The Leagues and the Church form the twin column of Deepkin magic, and together they pool their strenght to form the Warmages Brotherhoodd. Groups made up with auspicious numbers, in equal parts Church acolytes and lower-level Mage-Engineers, these battle mages form into Choirs, matrixes of power where their join their strenght into a single one. Together, they unleash the rage of the earth against the enemies of the Under-Kingdom or call upon the Goddess to make her mercy shine upon her beleaguered children.

Moving across the battlefield upon clanking carriages provided by the Leagues or flying palanquins sustained by divine breath, the Brotherood (or Sisterhood) provides unvaluable magical support to the armies of the Under-Kingdom, acting as magic artillery, shield provider and bulwark against corruption and magical onslaughts.

Yrshask

The Yrshask, or Principle of Prudence, is one of the core believes around which the Under-Kingdom has shaped itself. Roughly meaning "growing unseen to might", it represents the belief that only by remaining hidden by their Corrupted brethren the Deepkin can eventually make a reality of their long-held destiny. This is deeply felt at every level of Deepkin society, to the point that has become somewhat part of their national identity and, more importantly, shaped the course of their entire history.

From the birth of their nation and all along its expansion, the Deepkin has made their utmost to keep their existence a secret. The Under-Empire swells to monstrous proportion and there was no doubt that swift destruction would have been the only end for them, should they be uncovered before the time was right. Magic, sabotage, politics, nothing has been left aside to avoid such a fate. Even during its moments of major fragmentation, the governants of the Deepkin have always kept the need for secrecy at heart. When, where and how contact was to be made with the world outside was held under strict government control, the routes along which the Kingdom had to expand were decided and enforced under the most demanding authority. When the needs rose. even the most extreme solutions weren't discarded, be it the forced relocations of entire Burrows, the wholesale extermination of Skaven Clans or the destructions of entire underways.

And still, the veil of secrecy wouldn't have probably held on if not for two, vital elements. First of all, the inherent chaos of the Under-Empire. The gigantic nation is so large, disordered and decentralized that to keep an effective control over even only a part of it is ludicrous at best. The Lords of Decay themselves have no idea of how many clans actually exists nor where the Empire's borders are. For them, Skavendom is only an inexhaustible source of fodders for their armies, a chaotic mass of clans that rise and fall like an overgrown garden. As long as their armies swell, they don't care for names or faces, nor it would be possible for them to learn them all.

This has played vastly to the help of the Deepkin in their endeavour for secrecy. Countless times uncorrupted ratmen have met their counterparts, only to be brushed off as just another bunch of corrupted skaven. In the ocean that is Skavendom, the Deepkin are only another sea. This fact is so efficient, in fact, that the Deepkin lords didn't lose time in implementing in their own strategies for secrecy. Down the centuries, entire Burrows have been decked into the trappings of Clans loyal to the Council of Thirteen, with Kinlords masquerading as corrupted Warlords and going as far as to enter the backstabbing political scenes of the Under-Empire and give hospitality to Grey Seers. As such, the Under-Empire has become, once again, its own mortal enemy.

The second, even more fundamental, of reasons is the Goddess and her servants, the Shaskar. If the Horned Rat never noticed the existence of Skaven untouched by his will is only because the Mother has laid a veil upon his eyes and his daemonic servants. Through the centuries, this glamour has held true and not even a shred of doubt about his supremacy over his verminous children has ever passed through the Horned One's mind. While the Goddess acts upon the divine realm, her mortal servants channel her might into gigantic rites that erase the notion of the Deepkin from the minds of all of Skavendom. Before the Unification, the main task of the Shaskar was just this, to shield the children of the Goddess from the gaze of their lost Father.

And still, as succesful it has been, this endeavour is always a source of great distress for the priestesses. They avoid it as much as they can and, if pressed to talk about it, they keep their words on the argument at a minimum. It is like it provokes them a great deal of pain, but if it's so no Deepkin has managed to know why. The Mother take her children's pains upon her shoulders, protecting them at every turn, but none of her burdens she shares with them. Maybe, as she touches the mind of he that was her mate long ago, her sadness swells and, like a overflowing cup, some drops of it fall upon her chosen priestesses, tears of divine mourning. And yet, one can only guess about the mind of the true divine…

Warmoler cavalry: It's a testament to the dangerousness of the deeper underworld that during all their centuries of existence, the Deepkin managed to find only relatively few beasts peaceful enough to be tamed. Amongst them, the Moler stands as the workhorse of the Under-Kingdom.

Large as a bear and heavy just as much, the Moler is a rodent-like, tightly furred creature similar to a mole, but provided of large, rotund eyes and somewhat longer limbs. It's not fast, but it's strong, tame and possesses incredibile endurance. Molers are used everywhere into Deepkin society as bearers of burden, to pull carriages, into the energy-producing wheels of the Leagues and, of course, war.

Its docile temperament made preparing Molers for war a somewhat dodgy proposition, but generations of selective breeding have allowed the Deepkin to breed a subspecies of bigger, stronger and more aggressive Molers, called, appropriately enough, Warmolers. The process is still in its prosecution, though, and many runts are born with every litter, used then to form the Runters.

Warmolers are clad into heavy armor, their strenght allowing them to hold easily both it and the weight of a fully armored ratman, and then grouped into formations of Warmoler cavarly.

On the battlefield, Warmolers act as heavy shock cavarly, their mass allowing them to build up such momentum that they can barrel through the toughest enemy formations. While his mount use teeth, claws and weight to deadly effect, the ratman atop is armed with a shield and a long, halberd-like weapon called Longlaive. Both a spear and a long-hefted cleaver, its used by the knight to skewer opponents on the charge and then to chop left and right as the Warmoler wade through the enemies.

Training to become a Warmoler rider is long and hard, but once done knight and mount act and fight as one, becoming a fierce opponent for any that would dare to challenge them. Warlords are known to mantain household guards of these mounted troops, using their own money to equip them and keep them trained and ready for battle.

Of the Under-Kingdom

The central core of the Under-Kingdom is situated under the southern World's Edge Mountains, south of the Mortis Tarn; it confines to the west with the Land of the Dead and to the East with the barren lands of Cursed Lahmia. It's an isolated position, well away from any major power, made even more so by the fact that the Deepkin dwell to a higher profundity of their corrupted cousins - they owe their name to this attitude -.

Secured by its isolated position, the fledgling Under-Kingdom has steadily expanded through the centuries with only relatively minor setbacks. The Deepkin have reached the Wolf Lands to the north, tunneled west until the Lands of the Assassins, travelled the Kingdom of Beasts to the East and extended to the south well beyond even the fabled Lost Hold of Karak Zorn and in the mysterious South of the World, this their privileged expansion route for its being out of the way of the major powers of the known world.

Still, the Deepkin owes owe much of their isolation to the level of depth they usually make their homes in, deep enough that the air is hotter than the levels above, and it's not uncommon to find places where the blood of the earth runs free. This deeper network intertwine with the one used by the Corrupted, but the Skaven above usually don't descend into it. Their culture brings them to look above, not below, and widespread legends of terrible monsters lurking in the dark keeps them from venturing deeper that they need to. These legends are both true and false. True, because, yes, in the depths of the earth there are things best left undiscovered, and false because life is possible, even there.

The network of tunnels used only by the Deepkin is as much as tangled as the one above, but the Deepkin primarily use only a fraction of it, confining their movements to just a limited number of tunnels considered safe. To stray in the depth is to go into danger and, to avoid it, many of these tunnels are painstakingly cleared and maintained, and many branching openings are sealed shut. Down the centuries, this has allowed the Deepkin to build a somewhat safe network of routes that keeps their Kingdom together and allow for trade to flourish. The greatest of these routes, usually the ones connecting the Great Burrows, are true arteries of life, travelled daily by thousands of Deepkin with every kind of merchandise.

Juggernaut: The technological prowess and vast government support of the Leagues appears in scant more impressive ways than with the powerful Deepkin Juggernauts.

Invented by the genius Mage-Engineer Ratanius, a Juggernaut is a technomancy marvel, a great wheeled carriage covered with metal plates and provided with a single, hull-mounted cannon. A furnace burns at the center of the machine, its fire harvested by the deepest abyss, and provides motion to the massive wheels as well to the rotating turret of the cannon.

In the claustrophobic compartments inside, the crew scuttles tirelessly amidst pumping pistons and oil-leaking gears, maneuvering steam valves, reattaching cables and making sure that furnace pression stays stable. A commander, said Chief Juggernauter and invariably a Mage-Engineer, controls the situation outside through a periscope and squeaks orders about movement and mechanical matters. A driver holds the wheels, peering through little slits. A gunner man the cannon, reloading and firing as soon as the order comes. A three-skaven team push muskets and crossbows into slits, loosing bullets and bolts on the enemies around.

The rest of the crew, from three to five, is composed by assistants that take care that the machine keeps working at peak efficiency. As powerful as the Juggernaut is, it's still somewhat of a temperamental technology and continuous care must be levied upon its mechanisms, lest the fire furnace roars out with less than pleasant outcomes. This continuous hazard makes so that Juggernaut crews are considered a bit jumpy by their fellows Deepkin, something not helped by the sometimes smouldering fur or the shrieks at the smell of grease.

Still, the Juggernaut makes for a powerful addition on the battlefield. The warmachine can plough through enemy lines, squashing all in its paths under its great wheels while loosing volleys of cannonballs and shrapnels from its battle cannon. If one can go over the gouts of flames occasionally discharging through the vents and the panicked shrieks from inside, and one must do so for science, Juggernauts makes for truly powerful allies.

"Well done, my friend! Well done!"

Mage-Engineer Tirrik smiled nervously at the beaming Warlord.

"What courage in that charge!" The burly commander practically radiated joyous pride. "And that cannot shot! Pinpoint accuracy! Straight trough that ugly monster's heart! A glorious, glorious thing, i tell you, worthy of our forefathers! I will make sure that you and your crew receive a commendation for that, be sure of it! Now, another toast! To our heroes!"

The banquet erupted into roars and cheers, and Tirrik made his best to not sweat too much. Better if nobody found out that the only reason the "glorious charge" and the "pinpoint shot" happened was because his crew had panicked over an almost ruptured furnace. And, while everybody ran around screeching, he couldn't see where he was going because his driver and gunner were hugging his head, screaming that they were all going to die.

Tirrik took a nervous sip from his drink, nodding to himself. Yes, League business. And then, it was such a good evening. Better not to ruin it with technical details.