History NightmareFuel / Warhammer

** Dampening the horror a bit is the fact that as long as you are not on their "to kill list" (Chaos, Skaven, Dark Elves), they ignore you as long as you don't provoke them (most non Skaven sacrifices are due to provocation). Adding to it is how they can do horrific acts of brutality and genocide ([[KickTheSonOfABitch namely to things]] that pretty much deserve it) yet their minds are literately hard-wired to be incapable of feeling malice, more machine than man.

* It has been said that the Skaven are the most evil race in ''Warhammer'', and it makes sense. Vampires will happily enslave entire populations for food and servants, but EvenEvilHasLovedOnes. Dark Elves are cruel and have a culture based on slavery, but they are more driven by historical grievance and a few can rise above it. Goblins are cruel and conniving too, and Orcs are brutal savages, but both have what you could charitably call friendships and both will cry if their pet Squig dies(though not in front of everyone else), and Ogres can form genuine friendships as well as side with the "good guys" on occasion. Chaos Warriors are like Orcs but they can be prone to VillainousValour sometimes. It can be argued that even Chaos itself represents some of humanity's positive attributes as well as negative ones. Heck, even the Beastmen can be somewhat sympathetic considering their tragic FreudianExcuse, as cruel as they are. The Skaven have '''nothing''' you can say positively about. Love, friendship and honour are all alien concepts to the Skaven psyche. All their lives are spent in ambition, paranoia, cruelty and hatred at everyone and everything else, eating others while trying to stay off the menu themselves.

* A great deal of their horror comes from the hordes of pissed-off dinosaurs at their beck and call. From stampeding herds of Stegadon crushing all in their path, to packs of raptoresque Cold Ones stalking through the undergrowth, up to flocks of Ripperdactyls pouncing from the sky to shred unwary prey apart. The prehistoric beasts of Lustria certainly make exploring this continent a suicidal prospect.
* Canonically, there are no dragons in Lustria. Why? Enter the Carnosaur. A hulking theropod resembling a brutal fusion of a tyrannosaur and a raptor, they’ve earned their place as Lustria’s apex predator. They’re such bloodthirsty predators that dragons effectively became extinct in Lustria because of them, as Carnosaurs would rip their throats out while they slept.

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* Gorgers. Basically, if a baby Ogre is born without a paunch, the Ogres will sacrifice it to the Great Maw by throwing it down into a cave. Usually, they die. Sometimes, they find a tunnel into an even deeper cavern, often filled with Warpstone. And, of course, there are the many other baby Ogres living down there too who have suffered a similar fate. And the warpstone mutates them into even bigger, larger versions of Ogres. Of course, there's not much to eat down there besides, well, each other. So basically, ''they fight and eat one another'' until the largest eats everyone. And then, ''whomever survives, breaks free to the surface''. '''''AND HE'S STILL HUNGRY'''''.

* The Great Maw. A comet with a face that, when it hits the earth, creates a huge desert full of mutated beasts, then burrows through the earth, leaving a huge pit the size of an inland sea which is rimmed with undulating rows of teeth. And the Ogres worship this thing, and make pilgrimages to it. And what's more, it is rumored that it has burrowed through the core of the world and out the other side making a huge, fanged whirlpool. And, looking at a map of the warhammer world, you can see that the approximate location of this whirlpool is an area of sea marked 'no ships return from here'.

* The Empire - the hallmark DarkFantasy CrapsackWorld, with cultists, witch hunts, occasional pogroms and horrors lurking behind each corner.

* Bretonnian Knights. [[LightningBruiser Killing machines on horseback]] with supernatural ward save.

* The Dark Elf Bloodwrack Medusa, anyone who meets the gaze of one will have their eyes burst and bleed to death from every pore in their body.

* Sigvald the Magnificent is one scary bastard once you get past his foppish flamboyance. He's a self-centered, narcissistic, bloodthirsty hedonist who eradicates anybody he considers ugly, crude, or irritating and destroys entire cities on a whim. Oh, and he has a [[ImAHumanitarian taste for human flesh]] too.

* In this setting, Chaos has armies of goat-headed psychopaths lurking in the forests. Let's not forget that at least some of those goat-headed psychopaths are born of human parents...

* Chaos Dwarfs are essentially the darkest interpretation of their untainted kin you can imagine, married to advanced weaponry and demonology. The Dwarves are determined, honor-bound, and masterful in their crafting. The Children of Hashut are merciless, willfully immoral, and utterly bent on dominating all other races to their control. They slaughter droves of slaves just to keep their vast forges working. Much like Chaos worshipers, the blood and agony of sacrifices is quite literally the lubrication that allows their society to function, only its scaled up to an industrialized level. They summon daemons, which they then bind to huge living suits of armor, sometimes several at a time, each enraged abomination powering a different part. They scheme and plot against each other at every level, yet still resolutely hold true to oaths of loyalty, only they're a lot more creative about working around the wording of those oaths.
** Unlike the Dwarves, they don't wait for generations to introduce or update new technology. Oh, no. If it works, then it goes into mass production, because like their kin, ''everything'' they make is flawlessly constructed. Improved Hellcannon? Dreadquake Mortar? Even more lethal and destructive K'Daai daemon? As long as it works, they'll build them and sell them and use them without hesitation.
** It's stated repeatedly in the lore that the Chaos Dwarves ''enjoy'' inflicting hideous suffering on the lesser races. They have a deep-seated need to control and dominate others, best expressed by torturing everyone else under them. Unlike the Dark Elves, however, this is literally ''built'' into their genes, another example of ancestral Dwarven perfectionism and craftsmanship brutally twisted by disaster, the Dark Lands, and their evil god.

* Let's not forget the supposed origin story of the Skaven. It's pretty horrific too. A peaceful town where humans live above ground and dwarves below in harmony decides to build a great cathedral. It takes many years, and they almost despair until a mysterious stranger offers to complete the tower in a single night if he is allowed to add his own dedication to the gods. The townspeople agree and the tower is built with a great horned bell. The Bell tolls 13 times. Darkness floods the streets over the next few days. Warpstone falls from the sky in a horrific hail. Humans and dwarves turn against one another as deaths and violence escalate. After months, the humans force their way into the dwarven side of the city to demand aid, and only find gnawed bones, ruins, and thousands of bloodthirsty ratmen. The humans were annihilated that night.

* It has been said that the Skaven are the most evil race in ''Warhammer'', and it makes sense. Vampires will happily enslave entire populations for food and servants, but EvenEvilHasLovedOnes. Dark Elves are cruel and have a culture based on slavery, but they are more driven by historical grievance and a few can rise above it. Goblins are cruel and conniving too, and Orcs are brutal savages, but both have what you could charitably call friendships and both will cry if their pet Squig dies. Chaos Warriors are like Orcs but they can be prone to VillainousValour sometimes. It can be argued that even Chaos itself represents some of humanity's positive attributes as well as negative ones. The Skaven have '''nothing''' you can say positively about. Love, friendship and honour are all alien concepts to the Skaven psyche. All their lives are spent in ambition, paranoia, cruelty and hatred at everyone and everything else, eating others while trying to stay off the menu themselves.

* There's also their attitude towards friendly fire. In game, it's forbidden to shoot into melee, because you don't want to hit your own troops. Skaven, IIRC, have a special rule called "Life Is Cheap", saying that you not only can, you should shoot into melee and fry your own troops, since that's the best way to slaughter the enemy, and damn your own troops.