Did the skaven kill Valten?

[Urgat]

I miss Valten as a young lad. For some reason, he grew six feet of beard in a single year. I don't know how it happened, but the young Valten was a brilliant model.

Well, more to the point, I'd say that for some reason he grew from young to old Valten in a year

[Memnos]

I didn't like the young Valten model, to be honest. It was a good sculpt, but looked far too much like Fabio. Adult Valten looked like someone to be taken seriously.

It depended on how you painted it. It looked more like Conan to me: Long hair, muscles, angry looking.

[redshylock]

Snikch will go after the person who framed him... so all we need to do is to find out who is still alive at the end of SOC but is now dead.

[SkawtheFalconer]

I dont think anyone falls into that category as the fluff essentially rewound after SoC/with onset of 8th, to the point where SoC hasn't happened yet?

[Darkminion]

Snikch doesn't even exist. He has been Shadowblade in disquise all this time. Shadowblade got tired of hanging around the stinking rats and took a day off to kill Valten, just for fun. He then threw the filthy warpstone blade on the ground and went home to be in time for Malekith's 5000th birthday party.......

It's not that hard guys...Not everything is shrouded in mystery....

D...

[TheDungen]

Ha that would be a great plot twist that shadow blade and snitch was one and the same. Especially if they leave it hanging if he realy is snitch or really is shadowblade.

[Ultimate Life Form]

Anyway the case is closed as a top secret surveillance tape suddenly surfaced.

[warboss6820]

oh crap where has that been hiding the whole time
CURSE YOU EVIDENCE YOU HAVE RUINED THE DEBATE!!!!!!

[grumbaki]

<puts on his tinfoil hat>

I think I see a zipper on the skaven's back. Obviously it is a halfling, disguised as the deathmaster. And after snikch killed the halfling, he took the credit for the kill anyways.

[Tarian]

The other option is that the Skaven did do it, then planted the obvious evidence because *obviously* they wouldn't point at themselves, so it must not be the Skaven, or so it appears.

Or in shorthand:
Skaven did it.
Skaven planted obvious evidence that they did it.
Evidence is so obvious, that it obscures the fact that they did do it.
Profit.

[azhagmorglum]

I like what people can find in (very) bad-written fluff ...

[unwanted]

Aside from the fact that there's a lot of terrible misunderstandings and general weirdness going on in that book, Children of The Horned Rat, the WHFRP-sourcebook, flat out stated that Snikch did it. On the other hand, they forgot to add the Germanic titles and naming practices to most of the Empire-Man-things described in the book, and also had the Dwarfs discover stolen gunpowder on Skaven corpses some time between -1200 and -420 IC, then making the first gunpowder to drive back Skaven and greenskins in -380...

[Wesser]

Valten was a promising child.

Ironically he was struck by a twin-tailed comet at birth so nothing happened.

Archaon turned his map upside down and invaded north instead.

Mannfred overslept and failed to raise any dead guys

Grimgor was occupied discussing poetry and gardening aesthetics with GReasus Goldtooth.


Nothing happened really. The whole story was part of tax evasion scheme by the Church of Sigmar, ably performed by Volkmar who wasnt killed or resurrected by ddaemons ofc

[Locust Disciple]

Skaven did it.
Skaven planted obvious evidence that they did it.
Evidence is so obvious, that it obscures the fact that they did do it.
Profit.

Now that may be my new favorite theory, I chuckled when I read that. That's actually how I think of the Skaven and their mindset. Along those lines, I can actually imagine a scenario of that sort playing out amongst the Council of Thirteen. They are capable and vicious enough to orchestrate an assassination on a high value target as a way of demonstrating their power and sowing fear. However, their innate paranoia and byzantine logic leads to them not being able to reconcile the "send a message of fear" and "let no one know we exist" goals. The actual kill then ends up being carried out with the self defeating goal of "send a message of fear in such an obvious way that the blame is safely displaced and no one knows it was our message." That's just my personal take on how they operate, the reason they haven't swept away everything else is that their lethal potential is guided by a bizarre mentality that only makes sense to them.

[Lord Dan]

So either:

1) The fluff isn't well thought out, and the writer's idea of intrigue was: "Karl Franz shifted his weight awkwardly. How could this have happened? How could anything have slipped past such a heavily armed patrol? The only clues were ominous at best: a mysterious, skaven-looking symbol spray-painted on the wall and a poisoned blade with a signed confession by someone named "Deathmaster S. of the Skaven clan Eshin". The evidence seemed to point no-where."

2) The fluff is quite well thought out, and the writer's idea of intrigue was: "Luthor Huss shifted his weight awkwardly. How could this have happened? How could anything have slipped past such a heavily armed patrol? The clues left behind were obvious: a skaven-looking symbol spray-painted on the wall and a poisoned blade with a signed confession by "Deathmaster S. of the Skaven clan Eshin". Clearly whoever had done this wanted a guilty party to be assumed. From the corner of his eye, and only for a fleeting moment, Luther thought he saw a smile cross the face of Karl Franz has he surveyed the room..."

[Athelassan]

Or option 3: the background was written as (2) but has been interpreted by subsequent writers and developed along the lines of (1).

[Arnizipal]

2. It was someone else and he wanted to put the blame on the Skaven. This leads to the following questions:

a) Who has a reason to kill Valten? Well... a myriad people, Karl Franz not being the least suspect (but are you really think he would do such a thing?). However the one important reservation is that the culprit must actually know of the Skaven's existence.

b) So why the clues? This cuts most of the suspects from the list, though it's not really any help because we still don't know who's in the know. Furthermore, the perpetrator must believe framing the Skaven is a convincing and viable tactic. Which I think it's not. For the reasons that Skaven never leave clues and most people don't believe in them to begin with. Seriously there's so many enemies; surely the killer could have thought of a more obvious choice. For example the sigil of a rival faction. The Skaven thing is not a version you can sell to the general public. It is only a good tactic if it is intended as a message to someone special who knows the meaning. Who could be so special? Karl Franz or Huss maybe; the rest won't care.

Conclusion: The Empire has several reasons to remove Valten, but they have little motivation to put the blame on the Skaven of all 'people'.

Huss knows of the Skaven, and has a large following in the Empire willing to riot for Valten's cause.
Huss is the one that needed to be convinced the Skaven killed his messiah.
The general population has been told that Valten has left and will return when the Empire most needs him again (much like Sigmar).

For some reason BL gets a lot of hate around here. To be perfectly honest, I find that most of the background in BL novels (with one or two egregious exceptions) is superior to that produced by the Studio these days. Doubly so for the Black Industries stuff for WFRP2, which never got the audience it deserved.

It's a bit hit and miss with BL. The Nagash trilogy discarded pretty much the entire plot set out by the Liber Necris and Night's Dark Masters, and even dedicated background books (like the one accompanying the Storm of Chaos, written in character by Olde Wierde) sometimes have glaring errors in them.

So...Karl Franz hired Snikch then?

Best explanation, though maybe not the most logical one.

Aside from the fact that there's a lot of terrible misunderstandings and general weirdness going on in that book, Children of The Horned Rat, the WHFRP-sourcebook, flat out stated that Snikch did it. On the other hand, they forgot to add the Germanic titles and naming practices to most of the Empire-Man-things described in the book, and also had the Dwarfs discover stolen gunpowder on Skaven corpses some time between -1200 and -420 IC, then making the first gunpowder to drive back Skaven and greenskins in -380...

Children of the Horned Rat went out of its way to attirbute just about any impressive mishap that ever happened to the human and Dwarf realms to Skaven.
Remember that time that Greenskins captured the Dwarf king? Of course you don't, because Sakven did it.
Remember that time that Gorbad Ironclaw razed Nuln? Of course you don't, because Skaven did it.