Gnishak Verminlord

The saga of the Verminlord and the Breaker has become a staple in every alehouse and bard’s college across Teleria. The truth of the story is thus all the more obscure, and buried in one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Free City of Arnoc. In the Age of Treachery the rate of Skinwalker awakenings exploded, and the resulting turmoil nearly ended the history of Kaerok before it began. The period suffers from a lack of hard historical evidence and first-hand accounts, as is so often the case in times of great crisis – few had time to record the ravages unfolding around them, and fewer still possessed the will to honestly and accurately describe the gruesome truths. In the case of Gnishak, it is indisputable that a noble prince became a monstrous menace. But the house of his provenance, his lineage or surviving relations, his siblings, his issue, all go historically unrecorded. This is highly unusual for a nobleman of Kaerok. Even in periods of great upheaval, they were and are careful to preserve such information, for it is the source of much of their legitimacy and thus their power. This suggests that the relevant information was purged deliberately, perhaps to protect the dignity of those related to the fallen Skinwalker-prince. This omission allowed the Verminlord to become iconic, a stand-in for every corrupt and petty overlord who lacked empathy for lesser beings, making the story all the more popular as it spread. In the tale, Gnishak casually kills a rat underfoot and is cursed by its vengeful spirit. Many hearers wished similar vengeance upon one lord or another. Some felt as if they were the ‘rats’ in the story themselves, or their friends, or relatives, all feeling crushed under a noble boot. After his transformation, Gnishak disappeared into the sewers and quietly grew his festering power in the depths for thirteen long years. Out of sight and out of mind as more overt Skinwalkers wrought havoc above, Gnishak cultivated mastery over the swarms of rats he would have once disdained. Another tale of a deadly ‘Rat-man,’ the wandering killer Sniktraak – who also attracted and exploited a swarm of rats – is often conflated with the Verminlord narrative. But where Sniktraak was an impoverished peasant who killed rats to make ends meet, Gnishak was a petty princeling who killed casually while dreaming of greatness. Correspondingly, where Sniktraak’s horde was a crawling, chaotic manifestation of their master’s torment and madness, the legendary swarm of the Verminlord was an army of soldiers wielded by a mad monarch. Gnishak coveted the vast demesne and legions of followers he always felt he deserved, and he carefully directed his growing rat army to gnaw out a vast and impenetrable lair for him, enlarging and augmenting swathes of the sewers of Arnoc into his personal castle. He even dressed his bloated, hairy form in the fine clothing he had taken with him after his flight, and had new and hideous adornments made for him to match his delusional new title of lordship. Then, when the time was right and all of Arnoc was gathering in dense crowds to celebrate the holy lights of the Yuletide festival, Gnishak unleashed a long-plotted act of terror against the surface-world. Boiling up from the grates and dripping hosepipes, pouring from every opening of building after building as each was overrun in turn, the rat-tide he unleashed was hideous to behold, all the more so for the vile pestilence that coursed in their diseased veins. Each one was laden with grotesque pustules that spread a pox the likes of which no healer on the face of Teleria had ever witnessed. Had Gnishak found a way to manipulate the forces of plague and pestilence, or had the virus simply developed within his swarm on its own? No one knows for sure, though it was said that the plague had a fell tenacity and almost living will as it wracked its victims. Most folk believe the Verminlord’s Plague originated with the Verminlord himself, and that he poured into it all his malice and spite and his urge to debase all that was upright and wholesome. No remedy, whether poultice or potion or purifying magic, could do more than slow a victim’s doom and prolong the agony. There could be only one solution: the eradication of the swarm and its terrible source alike. As brave citizens battled the rats with torches, spears, and bullwhips, one spotted the Rat-King himself returning to his subterranean lair after a brief sortie. This man, a professional rat-catcher in many tellings of the tale, presented this evidence to Arnoc’s council of burghers, who were aghast to learn that Gnishak had been lurking below their feet all along. This set the stage for the rise of Georgid the Breaker.