Ratling Gun

The mad engineers of Clan Skryre have gifted the Skaven with many terrible weapons, but few are so gleefully lethal as the Ratling Gun. This whirring contraption of spinning barrels and clattering gears is cranked by a crew of ratmen, spewing out a ceaseless torrent of warpstone-tipped bullets that can scythe down an entire regiment in moments, so long as the wretched thing does not blow apart first.

Like all Skaven war-engines, the Ratling Gun is a triumph of ambition over safety. Its barrels glow and warp with the corrupting energies of the warpstone rounds it fires, and it is as likely to jam, overheat, or explode as it is to function as intended. The weapon-teams who crank it are half-mad with the same reckless greed that drives their whole race, and they care little whether their storm of bullets tears through the enemy or the packed ranks of their own slaves, so long as something dies in droves.

When a Ratling Gun does function, the results are horrific. A single sustained burst can leave heaps of shredded bodies where a proud regiment once stood, and the sound of its whirring barrels sends a shiver of dread through any who have faced it before. The Skaven, of course, are utterly indifferent to the carnage they inflict upon their own kind, for in the teeming under-empire there is always another slave to crank the gun and another to be cut down by it.