Slave

*"Oh, woe is me! What did I do to deserve this?"*

## Basic/Special

(CotHR) Without Slaves, Skaven society would collapse. These miserable wretches are bought and sold for Warpstone Tokens on the slave blocks in the major communities of the Under-Empire. When they arrive at their new homes they find endless toil and pain: clearing new tunnels, feeding the Rat Ogres, becoming food for their masters, and serving as test subjects for some new Clan Skryre or Clan Moulder enterprise are only a few of the many possible fates that await Skaven Slaves.

### Secondary Profile

**Skills:** Blather, Common Knowledge (Skaven), Concealment, Perception, Search, Speak Language (Queekish)

**Talents:** Acute Hearing or Excellent Vision, Flee! or Hardy, Natural Weapons

**Trappings:** None

### **Career Exits**

Clanrat, Clawleader, or Any (see special rules).

**Special Rules:** Unlike all the other new careers described in this chapter, any race can automatically enter this career. It costs no experience points to enter, merely the circumstances of enslavement. Any character enslaved by the Skaven must succeed on a Will Power Test each week of enslavement, or immediately exit their current career and assume this one. Non-Skaven Slaves must stay in this career until they somehow find a way to escape captivity. Assuming they do, they can attempt a Will Power Test each week thereafter. A successful Test allows them to resume their previous careers.

## A Day in the Life

A slave’s day starts when he is whipped awake from inadequate sleep, and thrown disgusting, half-rotten food, which he must fight over with his fellow slaves. The skaven go through the ranks, pulling out the bodies of those who died in the night and cutting them out of the chain. Sometimes the living slaves are allowed to feast on the bodies of the dead; for many slaves this becomes their greatest hope.

The day is filled with hard labour, of whatever sort the overseers need. Slaves who are not quickly put to back-breaking work become terrified, because that means that they have been chosen for some experiment, or as food. Those who die during the day are pulled from the chains when the overseers notice, which may not be until the work is over. It is hard to work chained to a corpse, but any slave who lets that slow him down can expect a flogging.

When the day’s work ends the survivors are thrown food to fight over once more, and then are allowed to drop into exhausted sleep where they stand.

It is a bleak, hopeless existence. For the most desperate of slaves, death becomes a more attractive option as time passes.

## Little Known Facts

Many slaves of the skaven go mad, and a few even come to believe they are skaven. Whispered rumours among the slaves say that those who go truly mad are mutated into skaven as they sleep, and that the chains are lost during the mutation. Some slaves see this as their only hope of escape, and pretend to believe they are skaven in the hope that it will break their minds.

The skaven do not separate male and female slaves, and very occasionally a female slave becomes pregnant, although the poor nutrition and hard work make this unlikely. Carrying a child to term is even more unlikely, and human babies look like tasty treats to most skaven. Nevertheless, there are a handful of children in the tunnels, protected by a group of slaves as allies unbound by chains.