The four known Chaos Gods of Warhammer have gained a new member. A giant rat now belongs to their cool quartet and is causing trouble in the world of Age of Sigmar. Will it also appear in the popular Warhammer 40,000? MyMMO explains.
Chaos is the, well, chaotic force of the universe as a counterbalance to order, which is represented by humans, elves, and dwarves. Chaos seeks disorder and destruction – roughly speaking.
In fact, the pantheon of Dark Gods in the Warhammer world consists solely of Nurgle, Tzeentch, Khorne, and Slaanesh. However, in the fantasy version of the world, Age of Sigmar, a fifth god has ascended.
Already in the summer of 2024, Games Workshop, the company behind Warhammer, officially confirmed the Horned Rat as a new Chaos God. And this new god has quite a lot to offer.
The God of Evil Ratmen is the newest Chaos God
The Horned Rat is the only god worshipped by the Skaven, a race of nasty giant rats. Skaven live only for reproduction and to stir up unrest. To clarify: The rats have no use for gold. Nevertheless, they mine it just so that no one else can have it.
The Horned Rat is exactly that: a giant rat with twisted horns, whose depiction somewhat resembles Beelzebub. It represents – similar to Nurgle – disease, disorder, and decay. Additionally, it is the reason why Skaven can wield magic at all.
The Skaven have built an entire religion around the Horned Rat with rules and laws. They adhere to the 169 commandments (which come from 13×13; 13 is the holy number of the Horned Rat). Similar to other Chaos Gods, the Horned Rat has different “aspects” that are revered to varying degrees by individual Skaven clans:
- The tail-whipped conqueror, worshipped by the Verminus clans
- The Great Corruptor, the model of the Pestilens clans
- The Great Inventor, who inspires the inventions of the Skryre clans
- The Breeder clans worship the Twisting Progenitor
- and finally, the Murder Shadow is considered the patron of the Eshin clans
Will Warhammer 40,000 soon get a giant rat as a new god?
If you are now thinking: “Sounds cool, but it would disrupt the sci-fi setting of Warhammer 40,000”, you are probably right. And that is very unlikely to happen.
The worlds of Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy or Age of Sigmar are strictly separated. Although they share many aspects, they are self-contained and independent worlds. Games Workshop has emphasized this several times. Warhammer 40,000 is not the “future” of Warhammer Fantasy.
This is evident even in the fact that Slaanesh exists in the world, even though it is actually only born through the hubris of the Aeldari many thousands of years in the future. Then again, time for Chaos simply runs differently.
However, it is unlikely that the Horned Rat will make it into the world of Warhammer 40,000, simply because there are no Skaven there. While it is not completely out of the question, as Games Workshop has all the freedom to experiment with things, it would likely require finding a way to meaningfully bring rats into space first. And currently, the newest race is a collection of space dwarfs: In Warhammer 40,000, there are space dwarfs, and they are even tougher than in Deep Rock Galactic
