Chapter 270: The Bigwigs, the Rat Warlords
On a not-so-high hill, apart from the unlucky guy who had died and the colleague who had just taken office and was currently catching slaves, the remaining seven rat warlords all gathered here.

They brought their own troops.

The huge crowd of ratmen almost filled the entire mountain. They came from the armies of the seven ratmen warlords.

On the top of the mountain, these rat warlords gathered together to negotiate and make noise. The meeting was not formal enough, with just seven flags standing and gathered in a small open space. There was no special aura among the seven chattering guys.

Rather than being a warlord, this scene was more like a gathering between the village chief and the militia captain.

Some militia captains were dividing up the ownership of a piece of vacant land in a crowd. It looked something like this.

But in fact, these guys are actually involved in the fight for an entire province.

A province is not small. It can accommodate thousands of villages, hundreds of towns, manors, and dozens of small cities. It can support nearly 100,000 families and a population of about two million.

This is just the number of people supported by an average province. As a grain-producing area, Lianyan Province has an even stronger carrying capacity, with 150,000 to 200,000 families, various ethnic minorities that are lingering on, and 3 to 4 million people.

With such a number and such a large number of people, their fate would most likely be changed by these seven rat-men who were like militia captains, squatting on the ground without any image, making loud noises, gesticulating to each other, getting excited, and dancing.

The ratman warlord can already be considered a big shot.

After all, among the many ratmen in the Eastern Expeditionary Force, there were nine ratman warlords, one of whom died not long ago, and now there are only eight left.

By the way, there are a few more in the underground Rat City in the Desolate Mountains. However, those few are said to be rat warlords, but they have angered Shu Zhan. The next time Shu Zhan has time and returns to the Desolate Mountains, those good-for-nothings will probably be executed by him personally.

When this war is over, or when there is no longer any creature in the desolate mountains that Shu Zhan fears, Shu Zhan will return and hang those idiots with his own hands.

So now there are only eight real rat warlords. Among these eight, one is struggling to capture slaves and accumulate troops in his hands, and the rest have all gathered here.

After some debate, the rat warlords finally came to a conclusion. They called it a union, but in reality none of these guys was particularly submissive to the other. It was impossible to unite the armies of the seven rat warlords through a single meeting, but it was not because no consensus was reached.

A promise was made.

Since no one can convince anyone else or make anyone submit, and since both are equally greedy, they will just attack together.

Seven rat warlords will launch an attack on the Lianyan Province from seven different directions.

As for who will eventually reap the most benefits from this place, it depends on various abilities.

After reaching a consensus, the seven rat warlords each slowly retreated with their troops.

Qi is also one of the seven rat warlords, and he is the most eye-catching guy in this meeting.

It's not because of his fame that he attracts attention. Qi has not done anything big enough to become famous among all the ratmen. He attracts attention for another reason: a set of bright silver armor.

Well, the inferior version of the Temple Knights armor that the Ratman Caravan obtained was just for exhibition and promotion of their own strength, and they never thought that anyone would really buy it. After all, the price was too high and not affordable.

A set of such inferior armor is enough to arm a team of ten brutal knights.

In the Skaven Empire, huge disparities are everywhere, including in industry. In sharp contrast to the extremely cheap weapons and equipment supplied to ordinary Skaven is the high prices of some higher-quality items.

many factors.

Perhaps it is because the slightly better armor and weapons always have some elements of gods and are engraved with complex patterns. Although the patterns vary in number, the ratmen priests who sell weapons and armor can all pat their chests and promise to help you.

My weapons and equipment are all made by professional craftsmen.

It's different, see, it's different.

With the operation of the rat-man industrial zone that endlessly consumes ore, forging a full body armor is not a particularly complicated matter for the rat-men. At least for the rat-men, large-scale mass production of equipment of the level of the Brutal Knight is just a matter of whether they want to, but obviously, there is no need for it.

Even if these sturdy black heavy armors were really produced on a large scale, not so many ratmen would be qualified to wear them. After all, ordinary ratmen warriors made up the vast majority of the ratmen army, and these guys had a more standard name.

cannon fodder.

Who would give cannon fodder heavy armor? There is no shortage of it.

The industrial level of the Rat People is actually gradually becoming out of touch with what they actually use.

For example, the pitch-black heavy armor is still a rare sight in the ratmen army. In fact, for the big claw priests in charge of the industrial zones, they can get as much as they want.

You know, before the grand battle on the vast grassland, the rats had already been able to tinker with a terrifying blast furnace that was as tall as the mountains.

The huge blast furnace standing in the barren mountains, the roads cast in the sea, and Rope Seven's bathtub battleship fleet are all good proof of this point.

It’s just that the Skaven’s technology tree is too distorted, and it still carries with it the inertia of a long time.

Despite the world's most advanced metal smelting and increasingly huge industrial output, there is no other industry in the Ratman Empire to match it.

Apart from war, the rat people did not study anything else.

Although there are many Big Claw priests who tinker with the ritual objects of the gods, even if all the ratmen priests have one of these things, how much metal production capacity can be consumed?
Countless slave rats, countless blast furnaces, and big-clawed priests with red eyes formed a terrifying hell with never-ending scorching flames, swallowing countless ores and spitting out boiling molten iron.

There are very limited channels in the Ratman Empire to consume these metals. Apart from weapons, war machines, armor, and ritual vessels for gods, there is nothing else.

The gods' ritual vessels should not be included in the list, as the consumption is still not enough. It's just that there is really no channel to use these metals in the Ratman Empire. This is why there are so many forging workshops independent of the industrial zones in the Ratman Empire.

Logically speaking, for a war-crazed civilization, everything that can be used to forge weapons should be controlled to ensure that everything is used in the war. But the rats are different. The rats simply can't use up all the technology. Their deformed technology tree lacks branches and twigs.

At the same time, there is the inertia that has always existed. Countless slave rats cannot be considered normal members of the Rat Empire. Industrial development will not benefit them. Those free rat people who have just emerged cannot be completely considered complete rat people. It depends on whether they can offer sacrifices and support the war.

These guys make up 99% of the ratman population, but they are not treated as human beings. The development of science and industry will not benefit them at all, and they are all thrown into the war. This is why many bigwigs in the Ratman Empire are already thinking about replacing the leather armor with more sophisticated chain mail. However, looking at the entire Ratman Kingdom, there are still many slave rats using wooden and bone tools, and many ratman caravans are using carts with wooden bearings.

This is why forging workshops are popular in almost every ratman city. In terms of technology and production capacity, these forging workshops cannot compare with the ratman industrial zones at all. However, the things produced in the ratman industrial zones will not benefit ordinary people at all.

A serious disconnect, an extremely serious disconnect.

The rat-men forging workshops barely maintained the lower limit of the rat-men civilization by picking up broken spears and shattered armor from the battlefield, preventing the rat-men from falling to the point where they had to rely on their sharp teeth to gnaw and their thick claws to dig when cutting down trees or mining.

However, among all the expensive weapons and armors, there is one thing that is an exception. It is not valuable because of the tax imposed by God due to the exquisite patterns engraved on the surface of the armor. The bright silver armor worn by the temple guards is a real good thing. The extremely high forging difficulty and complicated process make those bright silver armors expensive enough simply by their material itself.

Even the inferior products that were bought out are still so eye-catching.

The flag was not a loss.

At this moment, he was riding on a ferocious giant rat and carrying a fur flag on his back, which was particularly bright silver. He had the feeling of a real big shot.

Among the seven rat warlords who met, Qi's strength was not the best. He did not catch up with the first batch of slave capture. He was one step late, so his gains from running around in the mountains and forests were greatly reduced.

It is also because of his extremely generous attitude towards his ratmen warriors.

He was an ambitious guy, and at the beginning, he did not offer extremely high commissions like other rat warlords, but wanted to compete with the rat war.

Rat War does not take a cut of the spoils of the rat warriors. When you are under his command, whatever you rob is yours.

You can even accumulate merits and receive rewards from him.

It’s not because Shu Zhan looked down on the spoils obtained from this war, but because Datou had been eaten by Shu Zhan somewhere else.

When they were on the vast grassland, Shu Zhan occupied the city and directly took a cut from the blood pool and slave trade. This was a big profit that no one could escape. Shu Zhan simply looked down on the meager earnings of the rat warriors, because he would have to take a cut of them anyway.

Although the arrival of the Rat Lord later directly deprived Rat War of the right to do so, but in the later period, the logistics of the Eastern Expeditionary Force was directly undertaken by the Underground Rat City in the Desolate Mountains. The existence of the merit system was tacitly acknowledged and was also undertaken by the Underground Rat City and the Rat Parliament.

However, the things confiscated through the merit system have become a new source of blood mushrooms for the Rat War. Many ratmen like those bits and pieces that can demonstrate courage. In addition, there are also mineral veins in the captured areas. These are all sources of blood mushrooms for the Rat War. With the entry of temple guards, even land can exist as a commodity.

As long as the war goes on and as long as they are not defeated, the Rat Warriors will never be short of blood mushrooms and will naturally not covet the small fortunes in the hands of the Rat Warriors.

But this is the confidence that belongs only to the Rat War. In order to keep the Rat War going, the Rat Parliament is willing to provide logistics for the Eastern Expeditionary Force. In order to purchase the spoils from the Rat War, the Rat Lords are willing to offer high prices and wave the blood mushrooms in their hands. Even the temple guards are willing to come and purchase the land of the Golden Province when the war situation has not yet completely stabilized, and take over this land that is not yet stable.

This is the confidence that is unique to Rat War.

Sorry, other rat warlords, just don’t think like that.

Even though these rat warlords set out all the way from the Golden Province and pushed their control area little by little to the outskirts of Lianyan Province, which is already a large area, the temple guards have never come to find them.

As for those rat lords, as rat warlords, they certainly have the qualifications to negotiate with the rat lords, and the rat lords can also provide them with extremely cheap weapons, but this is not because they have enough weight.

Being qualified and having weight are two completely different things.

The reason why we can give you cheap weapons is that the weapons provided to ordinary ratmen warriors are so cheap. If you get higher-level weapons, as long as you reach the level of black armor, you will not lose anything.

Why did these rat warlords have to go through the mountains and fields to capture slaves in the beginning? Why else could it be that the guys behind these rat caravans made too much money.

These immature guys can't make the rat lords give in even a little bit.

There is also the Ratman Council. The Ratman Council is more direct because the Ratman Council has always been connected to the Rat War.

Under such circumstances, learning rat warfare is not a wise decision at all. The rat warlords must rely on the army in their hands to slowly accumulate strength.

Qi knew this, but he still gritted his teeth and reduced the proportion of resources he plundered from the army to the lowest level.

One tenth, it does not mean that one tenth belongs to those poor rat warriors, but that one tenth was taken away by the flag.

This is truly a merciful ratio, and this decision is not like that of a rat man at all.

Taking too little is too greedy.

This made the process of Qi accumulating strength particularly long. While the armies of other rat warlords were often as large as 100,000 or 200,000 men, the rat army under Qi had only a pitiful 40,000 men.

But doing so was not without gain. The more things that belonged to him brought higher morale. Combined with the words that the flag would emphasize loudly from time to time, the army under his command also gave birth to something rare among the ratmen.

loyalty.

Among all the Skaven warlords, the troops under the Bannerman are extremely rare and useful, even in the evaluation standards of the Rat War.

Maybe this guy is not too greedy, but too greedy.

The flag behind him fluttered in the wind, and the armor on his body shone brightly.

He seems to be an arrogant guy who wants to fight a rat war.

(End of this chapter)