The Sketh'kai Underhive
From the Depths, We Rise.
Lore
Beneath the mountains, the Sketh'kai breed in endless warrens. Part rat, part cunning intelligence, they swarm through tunnels and caverns with warpstone-fueled technology and plague-ridden priests. Their Clanrats fight in pairs, overwhelming foes with sheer numbers while Jezzail snipers and Spark Cannons tear through armor.
Sub-Factions & Player Colors
While every warband recognizes the overarching sigil of The Sketh'kai Underhive, regional kingdoms, ancient holds, and frontier marches march under their own heraldic colors and ancestral standards. In multiplayer matches, each player color represents a distinct historical sub-faction with unique lore and doctrine.
Primary racial banner displayed across battlefield command centers and fortress ramparts.
Bilge-Rat Corsair Fleet
Infesting the rotting pilings and storm drains beneath coastal harbor towns, the Bilge-Rat Corsairs take to brackish waterways with frantic cunning. They paddle rickety skiffs lashed from driftwood and stolen barrels, gnawing through mooring hawsers under cover of darkness to sink merchant galleons. In battle, the Corsairs mount stolen harpoon carronades on iron-banded timber carts, firing canisters of rusty scrap and jagged flints while swarms of dripping river-rats splash through marshes to swarm enemy flanks.
Voltaic Sapper Syndicate
The Voltaic Sapper Syndicate is the frantic experimental engineering arm of the under-cities. Its cavern workshops hum with copper dynamo coils, chemical battery arrays, and sizzling galvanic capacitors. The Spark-Tinkers believe any defensive impasse can be vaporized by introducing catastrophic amounts of electrical charge. Their long-barreled arc rifles fire energized lead slugs that pierce heavy iron pavises at tremendous distances, while their crowning terror—the rolling Grinder Engine—plows through enemy regiments while discharging unpredictable arcs of purple lightning into nearby crowds.
Rot-Coven Blight-Brewers
Dwelling in subterranean cesspools where toxic runoff collects into bubbling green pools, the Rot-Coven worships the sacred principle of decomposition. Their ascetics wear ragged burlap shrouds and flagellate themselves with copper chains, chanting ancient liturgies to the Great Gnawer. Their Blight Priests swing perforated brass censers that belch corrosive viridian smoke. Living soldiers caught inside these foul clouds suffer rapid skin blistering and lung convulsions, while the acidic vapor eats through mail links and rots timber shields in seconds.
The Chittering Clave of Nine Shadows
The Chittering Clave rules the sprawling subterranean burrow-realms through ruthless paranoia, poison-tipped daggers, and iron decrees. Nine masked warlords sit atop obsidian spires in the Vault of Nine Pillars, coordinating the movements of million-clawed hordes with cold calculation. When the Clave sounds the deep subterranean gong of war, endless tides of chittering swarm-fighters flood surface outposts. Their sappers excavate hasty breach tunnels beneath defensive ramparts, collapsing curtain walls and spilling legions of clawed shock troops directly into enemy keeps.
Blight-Quartz Dredgers
The Blight-Quartz Dredgers toil in deep volcanic fault trenches where volatile emerald quartz veins crystallize from boiling sulfur steam. The chronic radiation causes their hair to shed in patches and triggers uncontrollable whisker twitches, yet the Dredgers obsessively stockpile every glowing shard they can chip from the rock. Their projectile weapons fire slugs coated in unstable ground quartz dust. When striking metal or armor, these volatile crystals shatter and ignite into searing chemical fires that burn through plate and flesh with relentless virulence.
Pyre-Snout Trench-Burrowers
Living inside sweltering thermal tubes adjacent to active volcanic magma chutes, the Pyre-Snouts possess leathery, blackened hides impervious to scorching embers. They pump heavy sulfurous pitch from bubbling bitumen pools and store it under pressure in riveted copper back-tanks. In field actions, their flame siphon teams carpet enemy trenches in thick, clinging petroleum fire that burns even on wet stone and water. Entrenched infantry formations are flushed from protective earthworks in screaming pandemonium as walls of roaring fire engulf their redoubts.
Chimeric Flesh-Breeders
Murk-Deep is a sprawling underground labyrinth of iron cages, biological vats, and chemical surgical theaters. The Flesh-Shapers cultivate genetic mutations, grafting iron jaws, extra limbs, and hypertrophied muscle tissue to spawn towering bio-weapon monstrosities. Their most terrifying creations are the Behemoth Brutes—twelve-foot-tall titans of muscle and armored bone held together by crude iron staples. Pumped full of growth stimulants, these monstrous shock-beasts plow through shield walls like living battering rams, ignoring mortal injuries as their flesh knits together in mid-stride.
Iron-Trench Sapper Cohort
The Iron-Trench Cohort manages the vast subterranean transportation veins that knit distant burrows into a single empire. They keep thousands of disciplined digger teams equipped with hardened iron shovels and pickaxes, capable of excavating trench lines through granite gravel and dense clay overnight. In defensive operations, they transform open terrain into an impassable maze of mud ramparts, stake pits, and underground crawlspaces. Their diggers spawn in double-speed cohorts, allowing them to rapidly fortify front lines and establish mining hubs before rivals can react.
Albino Praetorians of the Pale Spire
Selected at birth from rare albino litters and subjected to merciless martial conditioning within the Pale Spire, the White Fur Guard are the only ratmen who practice unwavering battlefield discipline. They feel none of the cowardly flight instincts common to their kin. Clad in suits of blackened, articulated plate armor that contrasts dramatically against their snow-white fur, these Praetorians advance in locked halberd phalanxes. They hold bridges, gates, and mountain passes against overwhelming odds, fighting to the last whisker without yielding an inch.
Gutter-Blade Shadow-Stalkers
Operating from the lightless chasms of the Under-Warren, the Gutter-Blades are lethal masters of stealth, anatomy, and fast-acting paralytic poisons. Clad in soot-dyed silks and silent hide boots, they traverse ceilings, ventilation flues, and rafter beams with acrobatic grace. In campaign warfare, Gutter-Blade operatives slip behind enemy lines undetected. Dropping from high cliff faces or bursting from hidden grate shafts, they assassinate enemy siege engineers, mages, and commanding generals with poisoned shuriken before dissolving into the darkness behind blinding smoke pellets.
Heroes
Heroes level up in battle, choosing one of two abilities at levels 3, 6 and 9.
Riktooth the Warlord
WarlordA hulking Ironvermin warlord with a gnawstone-lensed eye. Riktooth leads the swarm with brute cunning, rallying trench rats into a frenzy of claws and blades.
Preferred Gear
Ability Progression
Swarm Frenzy
Iron Claw
Gnaw Rush
Rally the Swarm
Warlord's Command
Berserker Rage
Vexis the Plaguebrewer
Fester ShamanA hunched fester shaman whose toxic concoctions can melt armor and flesh alike. Vexis brews plagues that spread terror across the battlefield.
Preferred Gear
Ability Progression
Plague Bomb
Toxic Resilience
Brew of Madness
Miasma
Great Plague
Rebirth Brew
Whisper
AssassinA black-furred sniper assassin who strikes from the shadows. Whisper's long-rifle has claimed more officers than any plague.
Preferred Gear
Ability Progression
Shadow Shot
Camouflage
Poison Darts
Smoke Bomb
Assassinate
Shadow Network
Grindspark
War EngineerHalf vermin hulk, half spark-powered machine. Grindspark is the ultimate fusion of ratmen cunning and brute mechanical force.
Preferred Gear
Ability Progression
Spark Overload
Gnawstone Plating
Blight Cannon
Repair Drones
Doomsphere
Ironclaw Protocol
Shadow-Master Skrit
Shadow Gutter-RunnerSkrit is a shadow clad in black rags, carrying twin daggers that drip with green weeping-blade venom. The premier assassin clan, operating from darkened crawlspaces and wall cavities to eliminate human magistrates and rival warlords.
Preferred Gear
Ability Progression
Focused Shadow Strike
Vanguard Conditioning
Clan Sneak-Fang Standard
Empowered Smoke Pellets
Executioner's Weeping Venom
Keystone Resilience
Volt-Eater
Electro-SaboteurVolt-Eater wears rubberized insulating coils, discharging crackling arcs of electric fire from a lightning-rod staff. Technomancers who tap geothermal generators and surface power lines to harvest raw electromagnetic potential.
Preferred Gear
Ability Progression
Focused Static BurstVanguard ConditioningClan Spark-Spire Standard
Empowered Power Drain
Executioner's Spark LanceKeystone Resilience
Plague-Lord Snarl
Miasmic Flail ChampionSnarl is covered in festering boils and necrotic sores, immune to pain and surrounded by a choking cloud of flies. Cultists of biological warfare who cultivate deadly pathogens and toxic bile in the stagnant sewers beneath human cities.
Preferred Gear
Ability Progression
Focused Censer SwingVanguard ConditioningClan Rot-Bile Standard
Empowered Bubo Burst
Executioner's Miasma CloudKeystone Resilience
Commander Skulk
Silent HalberdierSkulk is completely hairless and white-skinned with crimson eyes, executing orders without a single vocal sound. A disciplined caste of albino ratmen bred to protect the inner sanctum of the Arch-Seers with unwavering loyalty.
Preferred Gear
Ability Progression
Focused Silent LockstepVanguard ConditioningThe Pale Guard of the Sump Standard
Empowered Wall of Bone
Executioner's Halberd ImpaleKeystone Resilience
Chief Excavator Drill-Bit
Pneumatic Bore MarauderDrill-Bit operates a twin-handed pneumatic bore drill capable of chewing through solid granite or steel breastplates. Hard-rock excavators who use heavy steam drills to bore tunnels through granite to breach enemy underground cellars.
Preferred Gear
Ability Progression
Focused Pneumatic DrillVanguard ConditioningClan Stone-Gnawers StandardEmpowered Burrow DashExecutioner's Cave-InKeystone Resilience
Gore-Grip the Abomination
Mutated Chem-BehemothVermin-Bane is a towering 10-foot Rat Ogre mutated with chem-injected muscles, surgical iron claws, and grafted war-plates. Commands packs of feral broods while smashing enemy battle lines in brutal melee.
Preferred Gear
Ability Progression
Focused Unleash the BroodVanguard ConditioningOutcast Mange-Breeders StandardEmpowered Feed the PackExecutioner's Scourge WhipKeystone ResilienceHero Progression
Heroes are the heart of your warband. They grow stronger every battle, learn signature abilities, equip legendary loot, and can even be taken under your direct command.
Earn XP & Level Up
Choose Your Path
Equip Legendary Gear
Outfit heroes across 8 equipment slots with gear from your faction blacksmith and the neutral Troll-Vault — plus tomes for permanent stat boosts.
Take Direct Control
Army Roster
21 units across ground, air, sea, and trade. Master every warrior to dominate the battlefield.
⚔️Ground Forces(10)
50
60
85
25
13030
28080
40
2408050
1807030
1706030
15050
13040🦅Flying Units(3)
1605015
2809040
2307030⚓Naval Fleet(5)
200100
250100
100
400200200
300150150
200100💰Trade Units(2)
10050
15010050✨Summoned(1)
Conjured by spells rather than trained — they fight for a limited time, then fade away.
👑The King(1)
Regicide only. Your monarch stands in your base from the first second of the match, cannot be trained, replaced or rebuilt, and carries no weapon. Kill the enemy King and the match is over — lose yours and so are you.
Buildings
Key structures for the Ratmen faction. Build your economy, train your army, and fortify your defenses.
⚙️Command & Production(11)
400200100
500200200
700300300
200100
200120
25010050
200100
25010080
25010080
25010080
1808040💰Economy(9)
8040
1005030
150
2008040
15060
25015050
2008060
350150100
7525🛡️Defense(6)
1505050
1757575
600300300
300150150
20050125
250100100⚓Naval & Oil(5)
300200
20010050
250150
200150
200100🌀Waygates(1)
150100🗿Wonder(1)
200020001500Hero Gear
Equip your heroes with gear forged at the Ratmen blacksmith and consecrated at its altar. Faction-exclusive pieces are found nowhere else, while the shared arsenal is stocked at other factions' shops too.
Faction-Exclusive(6)
+3 attack damage, +15% attack speed. Nearby allies attack 12% faster.
1150
+2 attack damage. Nearby allies gain +2 attack damage.
650
+3 attack damage, +15% attack speed. Melee heroes only.
350
+2 armor, +10% attack speed.
330
+2 armor, +0.3 movement speed.
325
+0.3 movement speed, +0.4 HP regeneration per second.
195Shared Arsenal(40)
+2 armor, +10% crit, 5% lifesteal, +1 mana regeneration.
1200
+5 armor, reflects 3 melee damage, +1 HP regeneration per second.
1200
+6 armor, +2 HP regeneration per second, 5% lifesteal.
1200
+6 attack damage, +10% critical strike chance. Melee heroes only.
700
+5 attack damage, +15% attack speed. Ranged heroes only.
700
+25 spell power, +1 mana regeneration per second. Caster heroes only.
700
+5 armor, +1 HP regeneration per second.
700
+4 attack damage, +2 armor.
680
+10% critical strike chance, 5% lifesteal.
650
+3 armor. Reflects 2 damage to melee attackers.
650
Sound the horn: nearby allies gain +3 damage for 10 seconds. 30s cooldown.
450
Nearby allies regenerate +0.75 HP per second.
450
+0.25 mana regen. Nearby allied casters gain +0.5 mana regeneration per second.
400
+15 spell power, +0.5 mana regeneration per second.
375
+3 armor, +0.5 HP regeneration per second.
360
+15% attack speed. Ranged heroes only.
350
+1 armor. Nearby allies reflect 2 damage to melee attackers.
350
+2 armor, +0.3 movement speed.
350
+1 HP regeneration per second, +1 armor.
340
+0.75 mana regeneration per second.
325
+0.7 movement speed, +0.5 HP regeneration per second.
320
+2 armor. Reflects 1 damage to melee attackers.
300
+0.8 movement speed.
300
Permanently increases the hero's attack damage by 2.
250
Permanently increases the hero's armor by 1 and attack speed by 5%.
250
Permanently increases the hero's maximum mana by 15 and mana regeneration.
250
+0.35 movement speed, +1 armor.
215
Permanently adds 3 backpack slots, up to 30.
200
+3 attack damage. Melee heroes only.
200
+3 attack damage. Ranged heroes only.
200
+10 spell power. Caster heroes only.
200
+1 armor, +0.5 HP regeneration per second.
200
+2 attack damage.
200
+2 armor.
175
+0.55 movement speed.
175
+0.4 movement speed.
100
+0.25 mana regeneration per second.
100
+1 armor.
75
+0.5 HP regeneration per second.
75
+1 armor.
75
