Lucius chose the name Vermin Herder as a deliberate nod to the Great Horned Rat's guise as a shepherd during the construction of the Great Bell of Doom. As his daemonic emissaries, they were to act as sheepdogs, ensuring the fractious, infighting Skaven maintained a veneer of unity when his divine will demanded it.
As warp-spawned entities, the nature of these lesser daemons was dictated entirely by the emotions that birthed them. Lucius knew that in time, any Skaven who caught the Great Horned Rat's eye might be elevated to daemonhood, or even the rank of Greater Daemon.
But what was Lucius's immediate goal?
To win the Great Game, of course! Even as a Chaos God, one could not afford complacency. In the World-That-Was, racial deities like Hashut of the Chaos Dwarfs or the Great Maw of the Ogres were numerous; should they fall in the wars of the gods, they would be utterly extinguished.
Lucius's towering form rose. The Great Horned Rat manifested differently depending on the clan that worshipped him: Clan Eshin revered his aspects of stealth and assassination; Clan Pestilens worshipped the lethality of his plagues; while Clan Moulder and Clan Skryre venerated his unbridled, mad ambition for evolution and artifice.
With his current divine power still coalescing, Lucius could only imbue his daemons with a single dominant aspect. After some deliberation, he chose the fervent ingenuity of Clan Skryre.
With a sweeping gesture, the frantic essence of Skryre flowed into the Vermin Herders. Though they resembled female personifications of the Horned Rat, they lacked his signature horns. Under the influx of power, their mottled fur turned a uniform, sleek grey, and their frames became wiry and agile.
"Yes-yes, Master! We need-need more... more THEFT!"
Infused with Skryre's obsessive mania, these daemonic Skaven instantly became the equivalent of mad scientists, deranged architects of ruin with a bottomless hunger for Warp-technology.
Lucius smiled with grim satisfaction. Just as the daemons of the Ruinous Powers tempted mortals with pleasure, disease, schemes, or slaughter, these Skryre-daemons would act independently to hunt for forbidden technological lore.
Soon, the Vermin Herders began erecting Skryre Workshops within the Horned Rat's domain. Thick, chaotic clusters of cables, looking like tangled black noodles, rapidly carpeted the landscape. As the workshops hummed with malevolent energy, more Vermin Herders began peering from the Warp into realspace, their eyes fixed on any technology ripe for the stealing.
"Messy, but an improvement. It offers a certain... security," Lucius mused. He conjured a throne before his great bell tower and sat, watching the Skaven spread through the galaxy like a virulent blight.
Lore whispered that in the Old World and the Age of Sigmar, the Horned Rat's favorite pastime was carving his commandments into stone pillars. Over eons, his domain had become a forest of infinite columns. To Lucius, this suggested the Horned Rat possessed a hidden, twisted sense of Order.
However, the Skaven were notorious for ignoring their god's decrees. Even during the great Vermintide, the Horned Rat had to intervene personally, dispatching Verminlords to forcibly unify the Council of Thirteen. Lucius decided he wouldn't waste his breath on laws they wouldn't follow.
Suddenly, an unfamiliar psychic signature brushed against the borders of his realm. It was common for Warp entities to prowl the edges of a god's domain, but this presence was potent enough to pique Lucius's interest.
Outside the realm, Be'lakor, the Dark Master and First-Damned of Chaos, stared at the burgeoning domain born of such rapid, violent faith. He felt a searing pang of envy. If he could seize the source of this devotion, he might finally ascend as the Fifth God, a true rival to the Four.
Driven by greed, Be'lakor prepared to breach the sanctuary. Clearly, this was not the Be'lakor of the Old World; had he been, he would have recognized the treacherous race that had spent aeons undermining his every scheme.
Unfurling his great black wings, the First-Damned shattered the realm's fledgling defenses with a surge of psychic might and plummeted into the domain.
"Be'lakor?" Lucius whispered. Within his own realm, nothing was hidden. He knew this "First-Damned" well, the professional failure of the Old World, the Age of Sigmar, and the 40th Millennium alike.
"Heh. Let's see what the jester thinks he's doing," Lucius chuckled.
Be'lakor landed amidst a sprawling ruin of mismatched architectural styles and eras. He threw back his head and laughed. "The Dark Master, Be'lakor, has arrived! Lowly creatures, prostrate yourselves and surrender all to me!"
Infuriated by the intrusion, the Vermin Herders launched a frantic counter-attack.
"Squeak-squeak! Y-Yahahaha!!"
Shouldering brass Warp-generators, the daemons brandished Warp-lightning Staves like some deranged Skaven branch of the Adeptus Mechanicus, unleashing volleys of crackling green lightning and Warp-fire.
Be'lakor contemptuously raised a kine-shield, letting the lightning patter against it like harmless hail. With a casual sweep of his Blade of Shadows, he sent a wave of dark energy rippling outward, vaporizing hundreds of Vermin Herders instantly.
"Hahaha! To find such potent daemons in a nascent realm... this is surely the moment of my apotheosis!"
As Be'lakor basked in his perceived triumph, the sky, already choked with storm clouds, began to churn. From the center of a localized warp-cyclone, a gargantuan, horned rat-skull manifested.
Be'lakor looked up, his wings flared wide. "Submit! I am Be'lakor, the First-Damned! Serve me, and I shall grant you, little godling, infinite knowledge. You shall be second only to me!"
Lucius could barely contain his laughter. This was the man who was passed over for Archaon, the shadow-thief of the Mortal Realms, and the "unbeatable" daemon who got humbled by mortals in the 41st Millennium. Be'lakor clearly assumed this new god was weaker than himself.
"Heh. Foolish thing." Lucius's voice, amplified by his divine form, shook the very foundations of the realm. He reached down with a hand larger than a Blackstone Fortress and swatted the air.
"AAAGH!!"
Be'lakor's bravado vanished the moment that colossal hand closed around him. He hadn't expected this "new" god to possess such terrifying weight. Realization dawned too late: the race fueling this god must be more fanatical and numerous than anything he had ever encountered.
Gripping the First-Damned like a squirming rodent, Lucius sneered, "Jester, what is this treachery?"
Be'lakor struggled, but he was pinned by the absolute authority of a god in his own home. Cold sweat broke out across his shadow-fleshed brow.
"I wonder... if I kill you here, will you stay dead? Or should I tear your soul apart to kitbash my own Greater Daemons?" The massive skull leaned in, Lucius's voice vibrating through Be'lakor's very essence.
The threat worked. Be'lakor's arrogance collapsed into desperate groveling, a skill he had perfected over millennia.
"Wait! Wait! Forgive my intrusion! I can serve you!" Be'lakor blurted out. "I possess secrets of the Warp and the Materium that you surely require! As a new god, you must know that the Eternal Game is far more brutal than the wars of mortals!"
Lucius grinned. Be'lakor was a clown, a cosmic stirrer of trouble, but his knowledge was an asset. Killing him was less amusing than milking him for information.
"Intriguing. Show me your worth then, 'Little' Dark Master."
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