Fanfic / The Earth Bet Vermintide

Taylor Hebert, Queen of Skaven

Tap-tap-tap the pommel thirteen times,
And listen as the dark bell chimes.
Listen-listen, yes. Hear the bells toll,
Listen as it warps your soul.
A bell's chime to make sure all goes well.
And cast the dreaded Thirteenth Spell.

— Taylor Hebert/Warlock Engineer

The Earth Bet Vermintide is a Worm/Warhammer crossover written by Beastrider9, initially as a one-shot, before the author decided they liked the premise and expanded it into a larger story.

When Archaon the Everchosen rejects the gifts of the Great Horned Rat, the spurned deity decides to find someone else out of pettiness and tosses a shard of warpstone into the abyss. The (un)lucky person turns out to be one Taylor Hebert, having just been stuffed into a school locker by a trio of bullies. She is imbued with a multitude of powers, with which she is to complete a single mission: bring ruin in the Horned Rat's name, or face his wrath.

Sometime later, having taken the cape name Warlock Engineer (or simply Warlock), Taylor begins to enact her plan to reduce the world to ruin and bring about an age of rats, aided by an ever-growing army of slaves—human and rat alike.

It can be read here on SpaceBattles.com and here on Archive of Our Own, and is complete.

---

This fanfic contains examples of:

• 13 Is Unlucky: For Taylor and her minions, this trope is inverted since 13 is their sacred number. For everyone else, it's played straight.
• Action Girl: Dragon. She's able to—with some help, admittedly—fight Skarbrand non-stop for over an entire day!
• Affably Evil: The Hobos are pretty chill when they're not doing Taylor's dirty work. They even take being turned into Skaven completely in stride.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg:
  • Taylor knows she is overmatched against Lung, and rats aren't particularly proud.
    Taylor: I am but a humble scraper-scavenger. Gathering flashy bits, and shiny things the man-things throw away. You may call me Warlock Engineer or just Warlock… Actually, you can call me whatever you want if it means I get to go-go.
  • Jack Slash tries repeatedly to talk his way out of trouble when Daemon Prince Taylor comes for him in retaliation for Ankle-Biter's death.
• All Your Powers Combined: While Taylor's fighting style seems mostly based on Ikit Claw, she can also unleash and control plague clouds like Lord Skrolk, summon (and control) beasts like Throt the Unclean, move about as stealthily as an Eshin assassin, and accidentally summons Skarbrand like Grey Seer Thanquol.
• And Then What?: If the Skaven conquered the world, they would have no more external enemies to fight, so what would they do next? The answer is simple: kill each other. To get around this and secure an alliance between the Skaven and her necromancer parents, Taylor declares that they will simply cross dimensions like the Horned Rat did and invade other Earths. It works.
• Animal Motif: Rats, of course.
• Anti-Regeneration: Exposure to warp taint greatly slows Lung's healing. He's still incapacitated when Armsmaster finds him, and recovers only slowly in his cell. And then he turns into a Chaos Spawn.
• Avenging the Villain: Taylor is out for blood after Jack Slash kills Ankle-Biter.
• Awful Truth: Danny is devastated when he learns that Taylor is Warlock.
• Bad Boss: Taylor zig-zags between this and Benevolent Boss, having no tolerance for failure and being an obnoxious jerk, but she also is perfectly willing to reward successful minions, too. She also puts up with a surprising amount of sass from several of them.
• The Bad Guy Wins: The story ends with Taylor successfully conquering all of Brockton Bay and turning nearly the entire city's population into Skaven. The only capes that haven't been turned are Armsmaster, Dragon, Burnscar, Bonesaw, Panacea, Uber, Leet, and Emma (now calling herself Survivor). Taylor then trades the Fellblade to Alexandria in exchange for Cauldron turning a blind eye to any Skaven activity outside the dome surrounding the city.
• The Beastmaster: Bitch uses attack dogs. After being turned into a Skaven, she is put in charge of Wolf-Rats.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Taylor and her crew can come off as rather goofy at times, but they also commit drug smuggling, enslavement, murder, and terrorism with surprising effectiveness.
• Blunt "Yes": Taylor asks Tattletale if she (Taylor) would ever lie to the latter? Tattletale responds with this trope, and Taylor isn't even angry.
• Breath Weapon: Taylor can unleash clouds of plague-inducing gas this way. In her Daemon Prince form, she can breathe Warpfire.
• Brutal Honesty: Taylor is well aware that Skaven are delusional, narcissistic megalomaniacs (herself included) whose constant in-fighting is a massive handicap—and she accepts it, because it's really all they can be.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Averted, surprisingly. Taylor is actually able to exert enough authority over the Skaven to keep them (barely) united against external enemies.
• Combat Pragmatist: The Skaven don't believe in fair play when it comes to combat, and Taylor is no exception.
  Taylor: Always bring gun to sword fight, and steal-take enemies sword beforehand, poison enemy too and improve self with warpstone... and the gun probably-might be a Doomwheel.
  Squealer: That's a mouthful, but good-great words to live by.
• Cool Bike:
  • Armsmaster has one. It's so cool, in fact, that Taylor has her rats disassemble it so she can use the parts to build a Doomwheel.
  • Taylor's Doomwheel is both this and absolutely insane.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: Taylor can be rather cowardly against especially strong opponents, but back her into a wall and she will pull something out that you won't like, something Lung learns the hard way.
• Crazy-Prepared: Taylor has infected her body with a plethora of diseases that will spread rapidly if she is killed, forcing capes to fight her nonlethally.
• Daddy's Girl: Danny is the only person towards whom Taylor shows any sympathy.
• Darkest Hour: Chapter 71. Following Skarbrand's defeat, Taylor immediately attacks the capes and summons her army, together with the undead forces commanded by her parents. Quickly surrounding the heroes, Taylor closes the chapter by declaring that Brockton Bay now belongs to the Skaven, and orders them to rampage through the city.
• Deal with the Devil: Alexandria makes such a deal on behalf of Cauldron with Warlock. In exchange for letting the Skaven take over Brockton Bay, Cauldron will be given the Fellblade, which Warlock claims will allow them to kill Scion.
• Dead Man's Switch: Director Piggot wants a kill order on Warlock — until Panacea discovers that her body is saturated with the Lore of Plague, which would release all manner of devastating magical diseases if she were killed.
• Death Is Cheap: After becoming a Daemon Prince, Taylor cannot truly die unless the Horned Rat wills it. Any fatal damage just sends her to the Realm of Ruin until she's kicked back into the mortal plane by her amused boss.
• Dirty Coward: Taylor is incredibly powerful and dangerous, but she will, in true Skaven fashion, break and run if her life is truly in peril. Unless her home is threatened.
• Disney Villain Death: Skarbrand is seemingly disposed of this way.
• Don't Tell Mama: Taylor is determined to keep her dad from learning about her activities. He eventually finds out, anyway.
• The Dragon: Taylor serves as the Horned Rat's Everchosen.
• Drives Like Crazy: According to Squealer, if a Doomwheel's driver has some level of control over it, they aren't going fast enough. Taylor agrees and goes apeshit while assaulting Kaiser's base.
• Dumpster Dive: Taylor regularly does this, looking for trinkets or junk she can use for various reasons.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Taylor convinces her necromancer dad and her resurrected mom to help her destroy Empire 88.
  • Taylor, hopped up on rage, decides to face Skarbrand, but, lacking the power to do this alone, has no choice but to accept aid from the heroes. The moment this problem is dealt with, she backstabs them.
  • The ragtag alliance that forms between Armsmaster, Dragon, Burnscar, Bonesaw, Panacea, Uber, Leet, and Emma at the end of the story after everyone else in Brockton Bay is turned into a Skaven and the only way for the remaining heroes and villains in the Bay to survive is to work together.
• Entitled Bitch: Emma Barnes has the gall to proclaim to Taylor's face that the latter owes her for obtaining her powers. Taylor is having none of that.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: When Taylor talks about enslaving people, Alec points out that Grue is black, but Taylor doesn't care about skin colour at all.
  Taylor: Everyone-one is equally worthless under me-me.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Taylor loves her parents unconditionally, and seeing her dad in danger is enough to make her rage overtake her cowardice. She also, despite butting heads with him, is truly fond of Ankle-Biter, and flies into a rage when Jack Slash kills him.
• Evil Genius: Taylor considers herself to be this, and given her creations, she's not wrong to think so.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • The entire plot is kicked off by the Horned Rat throwing a petty tantrum over Archaon not wanting any blessings from him.
  • Taylor herself is incredibly petty, taking delight in mocking her slaves and enemies alike. She also likes stealing money ostensibly so it can lead to economic ruin, but really so she can blow it on frivolities.
• Explosive Results:
  • Taylor has a theory that Robert Oppenheimer wasn't actually the first to make nuclear weapons, just the first to survive doing so.
  • Mush is told to "pull the lever" but can see two, so he picks one at random — and the Warpstone Boiler explodes in warp flames.
    Taylor: Wrong-wrong lever Mush!
    Mush: Oh, sorry-oops. Why we even have that pulley-lever?
• Fantastic Drug: Warpstone is supremely addictive, and anyone who ingests it will inevitably want more. It also renders them vulnerable to the Thirteenth Spell, which turns them into Skaven.
• Fingore: One of Taylor's experiments blew off three of her fingers. They grew back after she consumed enough warpstone.
• Food as Bribe: Taylor's preferred method of getting her slaves to carry out missions is to promise them warpstone. Since warpstone is supremely addictive, it always works. Later, she expands this to peanut butter jars and cheese wheels, as well.
• Forced Transformation: Anyone whom ingests warpstone—willingly or not—is in danger of being turned into a Skaven if Taylor subjects them to the Thirteenth Spell.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: Being a story about Skaven, bells get a lot of focus. The dreaded Thirteenth Spell is always cast after Taylor rings a hand bell thirteen times.
• Forgot About His Powers: When Tattletale urges Taylor to deal with her dad being a necromancer, Taylor forgets to simply administer her into silence until Tattletale reminds her of it after her lecture is finished.
• Gasshole: Skidmark is quite flatulent.
• Gatling Good: Ratling Good. Taylor carries around a Ratling Gun that fires warpstone.
• Gone Horribly Right: Taylor's failures tend to cause more trouble for the heroes and innocent bystanders than her successes do. She even acknowledges this during a conversation with Glory Girl and Panacea, and later acknowledges her tendency to "fail upward".
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Taylor's first attempt to summon a Verminking because she botches the spell by forgetting to sacrifice souls. Instead of a Verminking, she ends up summoning Skarbrand to Brockton Bay.
• HA HA HA—No: After Taylor is temporarily killed during a fight with Purity and is sent to the Realm of Ruin, she figures she can at least put off talking to her parents. The Horned Rat responds with this trope before flicking her back to the realm of the living.
• Hellfire: Warp-infused flames have enough chaos in them that they're able to temporarily overpower Lung's fire and burn him. Stopping, dropping, and rolling doesn't put them out, either.
  It was hypnotic to watch the fires burning at Lung’s silver scales, scorching them in odd ways. Slight discolorations in the green flames looked like rending claws and teeth were assaulting Lung, and Taylor found them hypnotic enough that she forgot she was running away for a second.
• Hell Is That Noise: The chiming of a bell signifies that something bad is about to happen.
• Horns of Villainy: Taylor sports a pair of massive horns. Initially, she had to destroy them each time they grew out to keep her powers a secret from her dad, but over time, she started letting them grow out.
• Human Sacrifice: Rather than turn Purity into a Skaven, Taylor sacrifices her to the Horned Rat in order to summon the Fellblade.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Skidmark quotes this trope verbatim, although he's using his fake surrender as an opening to run, not fight.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Taylor and her crew see no problem with eating human flesh, living or dead.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Taylor gets impaled multiple times during her fight with Night and Fog. Since she's a Daemon Prince, she tanks it.
• Insult Backfire: Taylor isn't bothered at all by being a literal rat, and as a servant of ruination, she's very much a Card-Carrying Villain.
  Glory Girl: I'm pretty sure they make PSAs about people like you.
  Taylor: If not, they should, maybe I will make-make my own.
• It's All About Me: Her father and mother aside, Taylor cares only about her own advancement.
• Kick the Dog: Taylor captures and enslaves the Undersiders, then turns them all into Skaven.
• Kleptomaniac Villain Protagonist: Taylor is an unrepentant thief, with even her battle gear consisting of things she stole and/or dug out of the trash.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Defied by Taylor, who boasts that Skaven are "very good at avoiding karma, and letting others pay it for us."
  • Alongside Emma and Sophia, Madison mocked Taylor over the tragic death of her mother as part of their bullying campaign against her. Both of Madison's parents wind up as casualties of Leviathan when he attacks Brockton Bay, their deaths leaving Madison emotionally devastated and unable to stop crying in her sleep.
• Mad Scientist: Taylor becomes one, combining both Ikit Claw and Throt the Unclean in terms of what kinds of experiments she conducts.
• Mad Scientist Laboratory: Taylor builds one, and uses it liberally for constructing weapons and experimenting on living beings.
• Magic Knight: Befitting of a warlock engineer, Taylor wears heavy armor and wields a halberd, but also employs warpstone-fueled spells.
• Meaningful Name: Ankle-Biter's first act upon being resurrected by Danny is to bite Taylor's ankle. She takes it in stride and strokes him with her fingertips.
• Mighty Roar: Taylor unleashes one after assuming her Daemon Prince form for the first time in response to Ankle-Biter's death at the hands of Jack Slash. Even Skarbrand notices it.
• More Dakka: The first thing Taylor builds for herself is a Ratling gun, which she puts to good use escaping from the ABB.
  Taylor found that being capable of laying down an ungodly amount of firepower in an extremely short period of time appealed to her on a primal level, and it did wonders for her bravery at the moment, alas, sticking around was not in the cards.
• Naked People Are Funny: Taylor is left buck-naked after her Daemon Prince transformation wears off. It's implied that the Horned Rat did that just to amuse himself.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Emma Barnes and Shadow Stalker/Sophia Hess directly caused the events of the story by tossing Taylor into her locker, thus allowing the Horned Rat to make contact with her. Taylor mercilessly rubs this in Hess's face before turning her into a Skaven, and then does the same to Emma much later down the line, though not before using her as a guinea pig.
• No Kill like Overkill: Jack Slash gets beaten to a bloody pulp by Taylor, impaled by a plastic flamingo, and bisected vertically by Skarbrand, with the latter squashing one half under-hoof.
• Noodle Incident: The Horned Rat calls Himself "Usurper of Slaanesh" at the end of Chapter 75, meaning he's now one of the four primary Chaos Gods.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Skaven don't normally conduct safety tests, so Taylor is caught by surprise when Tattletale suggests conducting one on Echidna, though she begrudgingly agrees to it.
• One-Man Army: Skarbrand is an unstoppable juggernaut who can take on a small army of heroes and hold his own with little trouble.
• One-Winged Angel: Taylor's Daemon Prince form, which she unleashes after Ankle-Biter's murder at the hands of Jack Slash. Here is the author's depiction of it.
• Pass the Popcorn: When a mutated Lung rampages through the city, Taylor and her crew simply watch the spectacle on TV. After she leaves, the rest of them decide to watch a replay—and beat the tar out of Mush for refusing to share the string cheese.
  He was found six hours later tied to the ceiling.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Taylor literally kicks a semi-conscious skinhead repeatedly, and ponders the idea of capturing more of them and launching them from a catapult.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Subverted. Taylor seemingly returns a woman's purse to its owner after brutally mauling the thief, but it turns out she swiped some money from it during said mauling.
  • Played straight when Taylor absent-mindedly strokes Ankle-Biter behind the ear.
• The Pig-Pen: Averted. Despite being the Everchosen of the Horned Rat and a carrier of many deadly diseases, Taylor bathes daily.
• Poke in the Third Eye: Regent tries to tweak Taylor's nerves, but is baffled by the changes to her nervous system.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Skaven are racist and sexist, though in the latter case there are some exceptions.
• The Power of Hate: Taylor declares that Skaven are born to hate everything, but their shared hatred for anything non-Skaven is just barely above their contempt for one another, giving them a common set of enemies to fight where otherwise they would be completely self-destructive (and they often are, anyway).
• Pragmatic Villainy: The Horned Rat gets fed up with Taylor's procrastination at dealing with her parental issues because they're interfering with her mission to bring ruin in his name, so he forces her to deal with the problem.
• Refuge in Audacity: Taylor has the guts to have her rats disassemble Armsmaster's motorcycle while she keeps him distracted with word games. He's so surprised when he finds out that he doesn't even pursue it.
• Sadistic Choice: Taylor forces Emma to pick which member of her family will die so she can trigger. Emma triggers before Taylor can make the choice for her, and a battle ensues.
• Sarcasm-Blind: When Taylor informs Tattletale that they can't destroy the Colosseum due to its historical significance and that they'll have to turn themselves in, Tattletale asks if she's serious?
  Taylor: OF COURSE NOT YOU FUCK-FUCKING IDIOT! BURN IT TO CINDERS!
• Sarcastic Devotee: Tattletale may be completely under Taylor's thrall, but is unafraid to berate her for making stupid mistakes or running away from her problems.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Whenever a situation turns badly for the Skaven, they leg it—or, to quote Taylor, "cheese" it.
• Self-Restraint: After going up against the Skaven, Bakuda is desperately relieved to be arrested by the Protectorate, sobbing into Miss Militia's shoulder.
• Shock and Awe: Taylor's halberd can emit warp lightning. Eventually, she learns how up channel it from her hands.
• Shout-Out:
  • Skidmark suggests calling the formerly human Skaven "parasplinters", a nod to Master Splinter.
  • Taylor tells Mush to pull a lever, only for him to pull the wrong one and cause an explosion. She berates him for it, and he asks why she built two of them.
  • In preparation for assaulting the city, Taylor tells her armies that "Many of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make."
  • Skarbrand's defeat is an homage to the defeat of the Balrog.
• Sickly Green Glow: Warpstone, along with everything connected with it, emits this. Heck, even Taylor's eyes glow a little.
• Spiteful Spit: Alan does this to Taylor when she has him tied up and gloats about how she's going to turn him and his entire family into Skaven after berating him for being a poor parent towards Emma. This earns him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from Taylor, who keeps wailing on him until he loses consciousness.
• Take Over the World: The end goal of Taylor and her slaves is to reduce the planet to ruin and rule over the ashes.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Skaven are addicted to warpstone, with cheese and peanut butter clashing for the Second Place trophy.
• Training from Hell: Taylor subjects Skidmark to this in order to turn him into an effective assassin.
• Troll: It's implied that Taylor becoming naked after resuming her human form was arranged by the Horned Rat for petty amusement.
• Unfriendly Fire: Taylor has no problem running over her minions while driving her Doomwheel. As far as she's concerned, it's their fault for not getting out of her way fast enough.
• Verbal Tic: True to canon, Skaven tend to repeat words or follow them up with synonyms for emphasis.
• Villain Ball: Taylor insists on psychologically torturing Emma, allowing the latter to trigger and escape. Tattletale berates Taylor for this later.
• Villain Protagonist: Taylor, full-stop.
• Villains Out Shopping: When not scheming or committing felonies, the Skaven prefer to simply watch old TV shows like Murder, She Wrote and The Golden Girls. And they do not like being interrupted.
• We Used to Be Friends: Taylor and Emma Barnes. They are now mortal enemies.
• Wrench Wench: Both Taylor and Squealer like tinkering with mechanics, with the first chapter even having a bunch of rats bringing Taylor's wrench to her.
• Your Mom: Skidmark insults Taylor's dead mother, and gets his head caved in for it.

---