The Greenskins
Crude, countless, and relentless — the Greenskins are the Empire's endless, grinding nightmare.
The Greenskins are the collective term across the Warhammer Fantasy world for the goblin, orc, and troll hordes that perpetually menace the Empire of Man and the lands beyond. They are not a single unified civilization but a sprawling, tribal collection of crude, violent peoples who raid, pillage, and destroy with little more strategy than sheer numbers and brute force. In the Warhammer: Vermintide games, they serve as the primary enemy faction the player confronts in nearly every chapter of both campaigns, representing the grinding, relentless threat that keeps the Empire's frontier settlements under constant siege. Their presence in Vermintide is not merely a backdrop of random encounters; the Greenskins are woven into the narrative as the immediate, physical danger that the player characters must push back while uncovering the deeper, more insidious corruption spreading through the world. They are the face of the enemy the player knows intimately — the snarling goblin with a rusty blade, the hulking orc bellowing a war-cry, the shambling troll cracking its massive fists — and their endless waves define the rhythm of the campaign.
Quick Facts
- Type
- Collective enemy faction (goblins, orcs, trolls)
- Role in vermintide
- Primary antagonist faction across both campaigns
- Affiliation
- Tribal hordes; occasionally Chaos-corrupted
- First appears
- Warhammer Fantasy setting; Vermintide 1
- Status
- Persistent, recurring threat throughout both games
Lore & Background
In the broader Warhammer Fantasy world, the Greenskins have no grand empire, no written history, no philosophy. They are born into a life of raiding and killing, raised in caves and war-camps where the strongest survive and the weak are food. Goblins scavenge and swarm, orcs bellow and crush, and trolls simply break whatever stands in their path. Their societies are held together by nothing more durable than fear and the promise of plunder, and their leaders — whether a particularly large orc chieftain or a Chaos-touched warlord — command loyalty through intimidation rather than any genuine devotion. What makes the Greenskins a persistent threat to the Empire is not any single act of war but the sheer, unending pressure of their numbers. Every road, every mine, every isolated village sits in the shadow of a potential raid. The Empire's frontier is defined as much by what the Greenskins do not reach as by what they do. In Vermintide, this pressure is felt by the player in the constant, escalating waves of enemies that flood every corridor, every courtyard, every bridge. The Greenskins are not a single boss to be slain and a war to be won; they are the weather of the world, the constant threat that makes every moment of safety feel borrowed. In Vermintide's specific narrative, the Greenskins exist alongside a far more insidious threat: the slow, creeping corruption of the Chaos Gods. While the Greenskins themselves are not inherently servants of Chaos — most are simply violent, tribal creatures — the corruption that spreads through the world in the games' story can twist even them into something worse, something driven by malice beyond their usual brutish hunger. This layering of a familiar, physical danger beneath a metaphysical horror is central to Vermintide's tone: the player is fighting not just goblins with clubs, but the symptoms of a world slowly being unmade.
Reader's Guide
Throughout both Vermintide campaigns, the Greenskins appear as the default enemy type in nearly every chapter. You will encounter goblins (small, fast, often wielding crude spears or thrown rocks), orcs (larger, heavier, using axes and clubs), and trolls (massive, slow, devastating in close range). Their behavior in combat is straightforward: they swarm, they hit hard, and they do not stop until they are dead. This reflects their canonical nature as tribal hordes with no coordination beyond basic aggression. In Vermintide 2, the narrative deepens the Greenskins' role by tying them to the broader Chaos corruption spreading through the world. While in classic Warhammer Fantasy lore, Greenskins are primarily a natural, tribal threat to the Empire, Vermintide layers them into a story where their violence is one symptom of a larger metaphysical decay. This is a narrative addition rather than a contradiction — the games use the Greenskins as the visible, physical face of a threat that is ultimately something far worse. Terms you will encounter in dialogue and item descriptions include references to specific Empire frontier locations under Greenskin siege, as well as mentions of Chaos-tainted warlords leading otherwise ordinary orc bands. If a Greenskin enemy in-game appears visually distinct — glowing eyes, unnatural coloration, or accompanied by a Chaos-touched leader — this signals the Chaos-corruption layer of the story rather than a standard tribal raid. The distinction matters narratively: the Empire has always fought Greenskins. What Vermintide's story suggests is that something is now driving them, and that is what makes this particular wave of raids different from any before it.
More in Lore & History
Elsewhere in Warhammer Vermintide
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