Darkstarling said:
So he's cowardly for different reasons than the culturally lauded ones!
...or, hear me out, he's got crippling imposter syndrome because he's secretly a hero. Keeps up coming up with cowardly reasons to do heroic acts.
Pucelle said:
Ah the reverse Cain syndrome. Skaven that wants to do heroic things, but knows how much his society look down upon that so pretends to be the scheming backstabbing morally bankrupt Skaven that the others laud as the ideal Skaven.
Dragonofelder said:
My personal interpretation is that Liarfast Cane is a Mors Chieftain, with a noted record of scurrying away to what seems like a safe place, only to run into an enemy flanking maneuver/sorcerer doing a ritual/etc etc. He's aided by his personal slaverat Nurgen - who is not a Plague Priest, not matter how infested he looks. Maybe Liarfast saved him from Clan Pestilins or similar, earning his undying loyalty.
cjdavis103 said:
I can see plenty of ways for Cain to be a real force for good as a Skaven there even before we consider him potentially civilizing the Skaven under his command by accident
Mulman said:
So he finds a posting away and settles in for standard Skaven living. Only it doesn't turn out that way, some other Skaven come along and try to wipe him and his clan out but he finds a way to defeat them, showing his strength to his fellow clan mates.
How does this sound for the premise of a fic?
How Creen Killfast Became the Warlord of Clan Fester
When Rasnit, a Gray Seer and De-Facto Warlord of a previously small and insignificant Warlord Clan by the name of Clan Fester (the official title of Warlord was owned by another skaven, but the whole damn Clan knew full well that any authority he held was at best a polite fiction maintained by Rasnit for appearance's sake), had hired me on the spot to fill a recently-opened vacancy in the ranks of skaven who managed and kept track of his ever-growing horde of warpstone tokens, at first I couldn't believe my luck. The pay was good, the work was fairly straightforward and easy, and better yet I had a whole fortress' worth of defenses between me and anything that might be inclined to kill me.
Of course, there had to be a catch. The catch, in this case, was the reason my employer had been so desperate to fill the gap in his clerical staff as quickly as possible; as I quickly learned, he was paranoid enough to make the likes of myself seem like the physical embodiment of carefree idiocy. And unlike me, he wasn't the smart kind of paranoid, either; just the twitchy and impulsive kind. Which nearly got me killed when his personal vault got raided, and he walked in on me the exact moment I discovered that it had been emptied without permission. Have I mentioned that I happened to be standing in the vault at the time, staring dumbfoundedly at its now-nonexistent contents?
Fortunately, my aide, a man-thing from a far-off land called Kislev, proved to be quicker on the sorcerous draw than Rasnit, and while the hail of icy shards he threw the Gray Seer's way didn't kill him, it did distract him enough to buy me the time I needed to draw my custom-built pistol and plant a bullet right in his family jewels… and not the kind of 'family jewels' incorporated into his garments, if you get what I mean. Normally, such a move is a great way to gain the eternal enmity of another Skaven, and thus a near-guarenteed death sentence for the poor fool stupid enough to do it to a Gray Seer, but this time it ended up saving my life; the aforementioned Gray Seer was already hellbent on killing me, and the damage to his private parts left him in so much pain that by the time he'd rallied his faculties and regained the ability to fry minds with his warp lightning, I was well out of range, and Jurgen had followed suite.
Unfortunately, the path I took in my frantic scramble to get out of there before Rasnit recovered from getting his gonads reduced to a fine red mist and made good on the threats he was throwing my way at the top of his lungs ended up intersecting with the path of the thieves. Who dropped all pretenses of being meek, harmless man-thing slaves, threw off the rags they'd used to conceal their nature as servants of one of the four fucks (the one who fucks you literally, to be specific), and came at me with knives and swords, bows and arrows, and crablike pincers the instant I crashed nose-first into their leader. Not too much of an issue, as me and Jurgen made short work of those mutated man-things… except we did it in front of a not insignificant chunk of Clan Fester's population, the alleged Warlord of the Clan included.
And then, right as the last thief fell, one of Rasnit's skaven slaves showed up to inform the Warlord that the gray-furred bugger had died. From a bullet to the groin. A bullet fired from a weapon that didn't chamber warplock rounds.
The Warlord looked at the slave. And then at the pistol I was carrying. The pistol I'd designed to chamber mundane gunpowder and and firearm balls (because I'd rather not huff toxic warpstone fumes every time I pulled the trigger, thank you very much).
And then he did what any sane, reasonable Skaven would do in his position; he bowed down at my feet, and bestowed upon me the title of Warlord of Clan Fester right there on the spot.
And it was all I could do not to let loose a high-pitched squeal of mortal terror at the thought of being shoved into a position of leadership in a Warlord clan, full of twitchy skaven who would take even the slightest opportunity to stab me in the back and take my place. And that was before I knew the sort of trials and tribulations my newfound status as Clan Fester's Warlord would drag me through...