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Drachenfels

2021-10-31T03:01:08Z

2600:1012:B010:FFA6:3DBF:3973:3982:FB06: /* Total War: WARHAMMER */

[[Image:Drachenfels.JPG|right|thumb|400px|The single most evil being in any Warhammer universe.]]

A character and subject of books written in the ye olde days of WHFB, by [[Jack Yeovil]], more widely known as the film critic/horror buff Kim Newman. A daemonologist and necromancer said to nearly rival Nagash in terms of power, he was motivated by his cruel sadistic indulgences rather than plans of enslaving the world in undeath, and considered the chaos gods he sometimes courted as below him, cheating them many times. Imagine if you mixed the classic mustache and goatee depiction of Satan in a business suit with Dracula and threw him in the [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]] universe. Or picture an asexual Vandal Savage in the Warhammer universe. Bam, that's '''Drachenfels'''.

Thanks to End Times, Vermintide and Total War Warhammer, Drachy has gone through a renaissance in popularity, likely due to the cult popularity of the Genevieve books and nostalgia for old WHFRP.

==The Legend==

A long time ago (15,000 years to be exact) before the arrival of the [[Old Ones]] to the world, there lived a tribe of neanderthal-esque pseudohumans by a river during the ice age of the world. Drachenfels was among their number, and after becoming sick in his old age he was left out in the wilderness to die. He feigned death by exposure, and when one of his tribe came close he somehow (unknown even to himself) managed to kill the man and absorb his life energy (keep in mind this is before [[Chaos]] entered the world or Necromancy was invented).

[[Image:Castle Drachenfels.jpeg|right|thumb|200px|Casa De Drachenfels.]]
He used his newfound power to continue living. His body still rotted though, and he took to forming a new body out of the remains of his victims to continue looking human. The faces he likes the most are preserved with magic, and he wears them to go amongst the mortal races of the world in disguise.

At some point, he used magic to build a fortress named after himself in the [[Old World]]. From here, he launched attack after attack at the races of the mortal world using all the armies of Destruction, as each submitted to him as a superior being. After the collapse of the [[Warp Gates]], he traveled to the Warp and looked upon the [[Chaos Gods]]. As powerful as they were, he declared them to be his subordinates and demanded tributes of [[Daemon]] forces periodically afterward. They obliged each time, and Drach in a show of (mocking) gratitude, created some shrines to them and [[Khaine]] in his new castle though he made sure his throne "looked down" at their depictions since he still considered himself superior [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|because even a dead, rotting carcass of an archaic human was far superior to some retarded barely sentient tulpas.]]

Drachenfels has never pursued specific goals. Each time he attacks the outside world, he does so merely out of boredom or to satiate sadistic indulgences. He has no desire to prove he is the most powerful being in the world because he believes he has already proven it and enjoys the process of tormenting and breaking the free-willed over making them his unthinking slaves. He usually takes plenty of captives which he tortures or otherwise "plays with" in abominable ways before consuming their souls and using their flesh to keep himself spry. Since he tends to completely destroy anything he attacks, the only recorded incidents involving him in history are times that he was beaten, his servants were captured, or for some reason he chose to spare the conquered.

There has been some speculation (based on his speaking their language according to the 1st edition RPG and the fact he could have been in Tylos given his immortality) that Drach was the wizard who created the [[Skaven]] and doomed the city of Kavsar, but this is just an unconfirmed theory at this time. The first time he undeniably ventured forth to ravage the Old World was just after [[Sigmar]] had united the tribes that would be the [[Empire]]. Before Sigmar could celebrate the founding of his new nation, the land fell under attack from an army of [[Orcs & Goblins|greenskins]] led by Drachenfels. Drachenfels was rallying in support of his ally [[Nagash]] but was defeated and the greenskins driven back to his castle. Although Sigmar believed he had dealt true death to the vampire/necromancer/devil/whatever, Drachenfels regenerated his body from nothing after 1000 years.

The next time he appeared, he marched his forces of Daemons and [[Vampire Counts|Undead]] through [[Wood Elves (Warhammer)|Athel Loren]] and attacked a [[Bretonnia]]n province called Parravon. Once there, he defeated the guard of the city to the last, then demanded the wealth of the province in tribute. After receiving it he executed the nobility of the region, then returned to his castle with his army. Among those killed was the father of [[Genevieve Sandrine du Pointe du Lac Dieudonné]] (quite a name, eh?) who would become a vampire shortly later and travel the world.

Some time later during the Age of the Three Emperors, Drachenfels went unarmed to the Empire and announced he'd reformed and would be an ally from that point onward. He put on an elaborate PR campaign of using the wealth from Parravon to pay reparations to the victims that had escaped his castle and pled for forgiveness at the graves of those whose bodies had been recovered. After the dimwitted public accepted that he'd turned good, Drachenfels invited the entire court of the Elected Emperor Carolus II and his wife Irina, along with some Bretonnian nobility, to a feast at his castle. There, while dressed in rags and wearing a simple tin face mask, he served them an elaborate feast of wine and food laced with paralyzing poison. Once the nobles were incapacitated he had the nobles' children tortured to death within earshot of them and mocked them by slowly and nonchalantly eating food in front of them before leaving the paralyzed nobles to starve to death while a constant feast was brought out and served in front of them. [[Edgy|What the actual ''fuck'']].

Centuries later Oswald von Konigswald, the son of the Elector Count of Ostland and relative to one of the feast’s victims, decided to seek revenge. He hired the now-adult (and kung fu master) Genevieve (who had become a bar wench in Altdorf) along with a few other no-name adventurers (a dwarven warrior with a grudge, a brigand leader lured with the hope of a pardon, and an insane assassin woman) to travel with him to Castle Drachenfels and put the monster down for good. Oswald managed to deal the killing blow to Drachenfels and his death destroyed the Undead and Daemons in his service. The greenskins fled the fortress, and anything that remained was killed. The fortress itself was left intact but abandoned.

Years later, Oswald bought Castle Drachenfels and hired a great playwright to direct a production within it of Oswald's heroic defeat of Drachenfels. The most important individuals in the Empire attended, as well as the newly crowned [[Karl Franz]] and his son Luitpold II. The production was hindered by many spooky incidents, not the least of which was the eccentric behavior of the actors and the death of all of Oswald’s old battle buddies save Genevieve. As you probably already guessed, all this creepiness heralded Drachenfels returning to life during the play and slaughtering a fair number of the audience and cast.

* Spoiler: See what people didn't know was that Oswald was [[That Guy]], secretly a bitter, power-hungry pussy. After shitting himself when it was just him and Drachenfels (the others having been wounded and/or rendered unconscious), Drachenfels took one look at the whimpering weenie and decided to spare him both for the lulz and as part of a scheme. Oswald would "kill" Drachenfels (but really only destroy his physical form) while Drachenfels would sacrifice a lot of his servants to sell the act and then lay low until it was time for his revival. At that point, Oswald would stage a play about his defeat of Drach, gather all the big shots in the Empire together to see the performance, and then Drach would resurrect via a ritual involving the body parts of his former enemies and the possession of a willing mortal servant in the form of the actor playing him. [[Just As Planned| Then Oswald and a revived Drach intended to kill Karl Franz and take over the Empire together with Drach being the power behind the throne]].

Unfortunately for Drach and his patsy, Genevieve and the director of the play, her mortal lover Detlef Sierck, proved to be far harder to kill than expected [[Not As Planned|which threw a wrench in the works.]] In the end Genevieve went full vampire blood rage on Drach’s ass and wounded him enough that Detlef (now blessed and buffed up by Sigmar) was able to deal a killing blow to Drachenfels (again) before moving on to kill Oswald. Although this incident is described as having killed Drachenfels once and for all, everyone who has killed him has thought the exact same thing. It also didn’t stop him from seeking revenge on his killers even indirectly as later on one of his creations (a sentient magical body-snatching mask called the Animus) would possess some folks and seek the Vampire and her lover out in an attempt to kill them. Though it failed in its ultimate task it did manage to break up Detlef and Genevieve’s relationship for a time through its actions so it wasn’t a total loss. Regardless, after all this craziness Castle Drachenfels was finally razed to the ground on Franz's command, only for it to be found mysteriously intact again during The End Times (in fact it was a map in Vermintide).

Other than the above, the castle itself hasn't been seen by a living being in ages, as no sane creature would travel there.

==Canon?==
Because the books Drachenfels appeared in were released at the turn of the 90s and the entire setting has been retconned a million times since, Drachenfels conversations within the Warhammer Fantasy community (and on /tg/ especially) tend to garner a fair amount of [[Skub|civilized discussion]]. If these books weren't half as popular as they are, Black Library wouldn't periodically reprint them despite them being so very out of date. It's easier to summarize arguments by category.

'''Drachenfels relies on retconned information.'''
* '''Pro'''
Old Ones in current canon actually created humanity in its current state, so not only is it impossible for him to have preceded them, but there never were neanderthals. Any humans reaching that state have devolved either through Chaos or Necromantic exposure.
* '''Con'''
Many (new) Black Library books continue to reference things from the story, and his castle is still shown on maps in modern army books as well as heraldry books. In addition, the Drachenfels/Genevieve books were kept in print long after the information in them became noncanon, due to their popularity and being regarded as well written. In addition, the Old Ones did not create mankind; they are stated in the 8e Lizardmen book to have uplifted and altered preexisting races/animals (eg; how they made the Saurus). The Old Ones could have done the latter, and then moved their experimented humans batch to pre-Nehekara, as Drachenfels is essentially Warhammer Vandal Savage.

'''Drachenfels was replaced by [[Nagash]]'''
* '''Pro'''
Nagash indeed has taken the role of Drachenfels as a mortal undead tied into the backstory of the Empire who is a threat to every single faction in the game. It helps that Nagash was always credited with the invention of the widespread version of necromancy while Drachenfels wasn't.
* '''Con'''
That's like saying [[Malekith]] and [[Mannfred von Carstein|Mannfred]] are noncanon because Nagash fulfills the role of big non-Chaos baddie. Also Drachenfels was never credited with inventing Necromancy as a school of magic, just prolonging his own lifespan. Drachenfels can be considered the Vandal Savage to Nagash's General Zod.

'''"He declared the Chaos Gods to be his subordinates, and demanded tribute of Daemon forces periodically afterwards. They hastily obliged each time."? That's fucking stupid.'''

* '''Pro'''
Yeah, that's a pretty glaring example of being a Villain Sue. They should at least explain what he is/how he works to the fanbase.

* '''Con'''
That doesn't make it noncanon. In addition, making the Chaos Gods win simply by virtue of the fact they're Chaos Gods is part of the argument that Games Workshop tends to Mary Sue the entire Chaos faction. There's no reason there can't be an evil force stronger than them - hell, [[Malal]] was an official thing back then too. Also, the idea that Drachenfels is better than the Chaos Gods could only be true in the eyes of Drachenfels himself given his arrogance. Considering it was just after the Warp Gates collapsed and we have no knowledge as to how powerful the chaos gods were at that time, they may have ruled the warp already but that doesn't automatically mean that they were as powerful as we know them to be by the End Times. Also, the Chaos Gods are basically just daemons who are considered gods by virtue of being the most powerful of their kind, and we know from other examples that daemons are vulnerable to having their true names spoken. Given his age, it's not unreasonable that Drachenfels could have learned the gods' true names right after they first formed and then used the knowledge to compel them.

==On the Tabletop==

As Drachenfels only ever existed in one book series and one [[Warhammer Fantasy]] RPG book, he's unlikely to ever get a miniature. Due to his transformative nature however you could easily make something look like him using another mini. As for how to field him? [[Daemon]]s army. [[Vampire Counts]] army. [[Orcs & Goblins]] army. Hell, ally all three together in a 3 on 3 match. All that matters is that you put Drachenfels somewhere on the table, and after you lose you laugh about seeing the other player soon, then tell him a week later Drachenfels came back and ate the souls of his children.

==The End Times==
In the game [[The End Times: Vermintide]], Castle Drachenfels was added as an expansion. Apparently it was either not destroyed or magically reformed, and was invaded by [[Skaven]] who were both channeling its magic into portals to summon [[Daemon|Daemons]] and searching the castle for cursed magic relics. The heroes put down the [[Skaven]], although nothing of note was found within. Disturbingly, the Poisoned Feast is still set up...

[[Vermintide 2|In the second game]], the castle was taken once again. This time it was taken by a former Nurgle sorcerer lord of the Rotblood tribe, Nurgoth the Eternal, who now lead the Rotblood tribe and the remaining Skaven after the Ubersliek 5 disabled the Rotblood's leadership and fucked over Clan Fester. The stinky boy had made the Castle his base of operation, where he conducted a ritual that would allow him to acquire the power of a demon from the castle and also made him go insane courtesy of the glimpses he got at the realm of Chaos (though on the plus side looking into the warp gave him foresight of some sort). Kidnapping villagers for his ritual did not go unanswered however, for the Ubersliek 5 noticed this and give Nurgoth a beating so bad that he explodes. With Nurgoth's death, Castle Drachehfels is once again empty, but now with trails of disgusting demon buboes left over from Nurgoth's work, especially the rotten tunnel of pus and shit the shit lord himself left behind after his explosive death.

Despite the fact that Drach by this point is a thrall of Nagash as the Nameless, a portion of his consciousness still haunts the castle, whispering doubt in the minds of the heroes...

Both games of [[Vermintide]] have the castle's wall decorated mostly in [[John Blanche]] artwork, a 4th wall break if you want to take it that way (or not). For you see, the second game features a painter living in the same keep with the Ubersliek 5 named Catrinne of Aldenstein, who had drawn paintings that were references to various real life Warhammer artworks, including [[John Blanche|Blanche's]]. So either Blanche exists in the Warhammer world or various gifted artists in the setting have [[Psyker|foresight]] that allows them to witness various images of scenery out of the blue.

With the impending release of [[The End Times]], Drachenfels gets added back into the setting as a "[[Mortarch]]" of [[Nagash]], though so far he's only referred to as "The Nameless". Indeed, his whole reason for siding with Nagash is to try and recover his identity because he's forgotten who he is thanks to the whole divine hammer to the skull and earlier botched resurrection. He's described as a bodiless spirit that specializes in possessing and controlling large groups of people at a time and also a huge dick who likes to screw people over for his petty whims - one day he decides he wants banners of flayed skin, so his victims start skinning each other, the next day he makes them rip out their bones to make totems because he's bored with the skin banners.

Nagash, who knew what the Nameless was, desired to keep it a thrall clueless as to its identity as Drachenfel's power to dominate the minds of mortals so quickly and en masse is a power he envies; what's more, Drach was the only other mortal capable of rivaling him.

In fact, the petty dickery of the Nameless actually screws him and [[Vlad von Carstein]] over because it disrupts their takeover so much that it makes [[Balthasar Gelt]] come to see why <s>things are acting odd in the area they've conquered</s> the guards in the area weren't reporting in. Though Gelt joins them later due to this, so everything ended up working out fine.

At some point afterwards before the end of the world, Drachy decides that the big bonedaddy doesn't have his interests in mind and eventually just breaks off to do his own thing. He manages to control an entire village and personally possess [[Luthor Huss]], the Sigmarite Warrior-Priest extraordinaire. By this point, Drach decides to throw his lot in with the winning side (that is [[Chaos]]) and is in league with the corpse of [[Isabella von Carstein]]. However, he runs into Vlad and Vlad manages to wake up Huss and then the Witch Hunter's power of PURE SIGMARITE FAITH burns the bodiless Mortarch to oblivion. And thus was the end of Drachenfels' return. For the time at least ...

So this pretty much confirms Drachenfels as canon.

By extension, Genevieve is now full canon too. Which by extension makes this the best article ever written as we now have confirmation of [[Sigmar]] possessing someone to skull fuck a bad guy with a Warhammer.

==[[Total War: WARHAMMER]]==
Drachenfels is referenced in several random events in the game. He's active and up to his old shenanigans, but since the world is dealing with every faction getting active at once he's more of a footnote and doesn't even merit a rogue faction. His castle was added as a cosmetic feature on the map near [[Athel Loren]] (on the wrong side of the mountains, as some fans have noted) but isn't involved in any gameplay. He's unlikely to be added as an official character to the game either, since multi-race armies are not a thing and he'd be a powerful bullshit thorn in the side of the [[Night Goblins]], [[Belegar Ironhammer]], and [[Wood Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|WElfs]]. Arkhan is able to use all Tomb Kings and some Vampire Counts units though, so a Drachenfels expansion is theoretically possible. The Total Warhammer II Patch consists of the updated Heinrich Kemmler starting position, and the addition of the Bloodlines mechanic; the Liche Master arrives at Castle Drachenfels.

Drachenfels himself does get a somewhat more direct reference in [[Cylostra Direfin]]'s epilogue which mentions her receiving an envoy of The Nameless, who seeks an alliance with her against Brettonia. The fact that this reference is both more direct and more prominent than the others has prompted speculation that The Nameless may be making an appearance in the third game.

[[Category: Warhammer Fantasy]] [[Category: Vampire Counts]] [[Category:The Empire]]

Drachenfels

2021-10-31T02:46:27Z

2600:1012:B010:FFA6:3DBF:3973:3982:FB06: /* On the Tabletop */

[[Image:Drachenfels.JPG|right|thumb|400px|The single most evil being in any Warhammer universe.]]

A character and subject of books written in the ye olde days of WHFB, by [[Jack Yeovil]], more widely known as the film critic/horror buff Kim Newman. A daemonologist and necromancer said to nearly rival Nagash in terms of power, he was motivated by his cruel sadistic indulgences rather than plans of enslaving the world in undeath, and considered the chaos gods he sometimes courted as below him, cheating them many times. Imagine if you mixed the classic mustache and goatee depiction of Satan in a business suit with Dracula and threw him in the [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]] universe. Or picture an asexual Vandal Savage in the Warhammer universe. Bam, that's '''Drachenfels'''.

Thanks to End Times, Vermintide and Total War Warhammer, Drachy has gone through a renaissance in popularity, likely due to the cult popularity of the Genevieve books and nostalgia for old WHFRP.

==The Legend==

A long time ago (15,000 years to be exact) before the arrival of the [[Old Ones]] to the world, there lived a tribe of neanderthal-esque pseudohumans by a river during the ice age of the world. Drachenfels was among their number, and after becoming sick in his old age he was left out in the wilderness to die. He feigned death by exposure, and when one of his tribe came close he somehow (unknown even to himself) managed to kill the man and absorb his life energy (keep in mind this is before [[Chaos]] entered the world or Necromancy was invented).

[[Image:Castle Drachenfels.jpeg|right|thumb|200px|Casa De Drachenfels.]]
He used his newfound power to continue living. His body still rotted though, and he took to forming a new body out of the remains of his victims to continue looking human. The faces he likes the most are preserved with magic, and he wears them to go amongst the mortal races of the world in disguise.

At some point, he used magic to build a fortress named after himself in the [[Old World]]. From here, he launched attack after attack at the races of the mortal world using all the armies of Destruction, as each submitted to him as a superior being. After the collapse of the [[Warp Gates]], he traveled to the Warp and looked upon the [[Chaos Gods]]. As powerful as they were, he declared them to be his subordinates and demanded tributes of [[Daemon]] forces periodically afterward. They obliged each time, and Drach in a show of (mocking) gratitude, created some shrines to them and [[Khaine]] in his new castle though he made sure his throne "looked down" at their depictions since he still considered himself superior [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|because even a dead, rotting carcass of an archaic human was far superior to some retarded barely sentient tulpas.]]

Drachenfels has never pursued specific goals. Each time he attacks the outside world, he does so merely out of boredom or to satiate sadistic indulgences. He has no desire to prove he is the most powerful being in the world because he believes he has already proven it and enjoys the process of tormenting and breaking the free-willed over making them his unthinking slaves. He usually takes plenty of captives which he tortures or otherwise "plays with" in abominable ways before consuming their souls and using their flesh to keep himself spry. Since he tends to completely destroy anything he attacks, the only recorded incidents involving him in history are times that he was beaten, his servants were captured, or for some reason he chose to spare the conquered.

There has been some speculation (based on his speaking their language according to the 1st edition RPG and the fact he could have been in Tylos given his immortality) that Drach was the wizard who created the [[Skaven]] and doomed the city of Kavsar, but this is just an unconfirmed theory at this time. The first time he undeniably ventured forth to ravage the Old World was just after [[Sigmar]] had united the tribes that would be the [[Empire]]. Before Sigmar could celebrate the founding of his new nation, the land fell under attack from an army of [[Orcs & Goblins|greenskins]] led by Drachenfels. Drachenfels was rallying in support of his ally [[Nagash]] but was defeated and the greenskins driven back to his castle. Although Sigmar believed he had dealt true death to the vampire/necromancer/devil/whatever, Drachenfels regenerated his body from nothing after 1000 years.

The next time he appeared, he marched his forces of Daemons and [[Vampire Counts|Undead]] through [[Wood Elves (Warhammer)|Athel Loren]] and attacked a [[Bretonnia]]n province called Parravon. Once there, he defeated the guard of the city to the last, then demanded the wealth of the province in tribute. After receiving it he executed the nobility of the region, then returned to his castle with his army. Among those killed was the father of [[Genevieve Sandrine du Pointe du Lac Dieudonné]] (quite a name, eh?) who would become a vampire shortly later and travel the world.

Some time later during the Age of the Three Emperors, Drachenfels went unarmed to the Empire and announced he'd reformed and would be an ally from that point onward. He put on an elaborate PR campaign of using the wealth from Parravon to pay reparations to the victims that had escaped his castle and pled for forgiveness at the graves of those whose bodies had been recovered. After the dimwitted public accepted that he'd turned good, Drachenfels invited the entire court of the Elected Emperor Carolus II and his wife Irina, along with some Bretonnian nobility, to a feast at his castle. There, while dressed in rags and wearing a simple tin face mask, he served them an elaborate feast of wine and food laced with paralyzing poison. Once the nobles were incapacitated he had the nobles' children tortured to death within earshot of them and mocked them by slowly and nonchalantly eating food in front of them before leaving the paralyzed nobles to starve to death while a constant feast was brought out and served in front of them. [[Edgy|What the actual ''fuck'']].

Centuries later Oswald von Konigswald, the son of the Elector Count of Ostland and relative to one of the feast’s victims, decided to seek revenge. He hired the now-adult (and kung fu master) Genevieve (who had become a bar wench in Altdorf) along with a few other no-name adventurers (a dwarven warrior with a grudge, a brigand leader lured with the hope of a pardon, and an insane assassin woman) to travel with him to Castle Drachenfels and put the monster down for good. Oswald managed to deal the killing blow to Drachenfels and his death destroyed the Undead and Daemons in his service. The greenskins fled the fortress, and anything that remained was killed. The fortress itself was left intact but abandoned.

Years later, Oswald bought Castle Drachenfels and hired a great playwright to direct a production within it of Oswald's heroic defeat of Drachenfels. The most important individuals in the Empire attended, as well as the newly crowned [[Karl Franz]] and his son Luitpold II. The production was hindered by many spooky incidents, not the least of which was the eccentric behavior of the actors and the death of all of Oswald’s old battle buddies save Genevieve. As you probably already guessed, all this creepiness heralded Drachenfels returning to life during the play and slaughtering a fair number of the audience and cast.

* Spoiler: See what people didn't know was that Oswald was [[That Guy]], secretly a bitter, power-hungry pussy. After shitting himself when it was just him and Drachenfels (the others having been wounded and/or rendered unconscious), Drachenfels took one look at the whimpering weenie and decided to spare him both for the lulz and as part of a scheme. Oswald would "kill" Drachenfels (but really only destroy his physical form) while Drachenfels would sacrifice a lot of his servants to sell the act and then lay low until it was time for his revival. At that point, Oswald would stage a play about his defeat of Drach, gather all the big shots in the Empire together to see the performance, and then Drach would resurrect via a ritual involving the body parts of his former enemies and the possession of a willing mortal servant in the form of the actor playing him. [[Just As Planned| Then Oswald and a revived Drach intended to kill Karl Franz and take over the Empire together with Drach being the power behind the throne]].

Unfortunately for Drach and his patsy, Genevieve and the director of the play, her mortal lover Detlef Sierck, proved to be far harder to kill than expected [[Not As Planned|which threw a wrench in the works.]] In the end Genevieve went full vampire blood rage on Drach’s ass and wounded him enough that Detlef (now blessed and buffed up by Sigmar) was able to deal a killing blow to Drachenfels (again) before moving on to kill Oswald. Although this incident is described as having killed Drachenfels once and for all, everyone who has killed him has thought the exact same thing. It also didn’t stop him from seeking revenge on his killers even indirectly as later on one of his creations (a sentient magical body-snatching mask called the Animus) would possess some folks and seek the Vampire and her lover out in an attempt to kill them. Though it failed in its ultimate task it did manage to break up Detlef and Genevieve’s relationship for a time through its actions so it wasn’t a total loss. Regardless, after all this craziness Castle Drachenfels was finally razed to the ground on Franz's command, only for it to be found mysteriously intact again during The End Times (in fact it was a map in Vermintide).

Other than the above, the castle itself hasn't been seen by a living being in ages, as no sane creature would travel there.

==Canon?==
Because the books Drachenfels appeared in were released at the turn of the 90s and the entire setting has been retconned a million times since, Drachenfels conversations within the Warhammer Fantasy community (and on /tg/ especially) tend to garner a fair amount of [[Skub|civilized discussion]]. If these books weren't half as popular as they are, Black Library wouldn't periodically reprint them despite them being so very out of date. It's easier to summarize arguments by category.

'''Drachenfels relies on retconned information.'''
* '''Pro'''
Old Ones in current canon actually created humanity in its current state, so not only is it impossible for him to have preceded them, but there never were neanderthals. Any humans reaching that state have devolved either through Chaos or Necromantic exposure.
* '''Con'''
Many (new) Black Library books continue to reference things from the story, and his castle is still shown on maps in modern army books as well as heraldry books. In addition, the Drachenfels/Genevieve books were kept in print long after the information in them became noncanon, due to their popularity and being regarded as well written. In addition, the Old Ones did not create mankind; they are stated in the 8e Lizardmen book to have uplifted and altered preexisting races/animals (eg; how they made the Saurus). The Old Ones could have done the latter, and then moved their experimented humans batch to pre-Nehekara, as Drachenfels is essentially Warhammer Vandal Savage.

'''Drachenfels was replaced by [[Nagash]]'''
* '''Pro'''
Nagash indeed has taken the role of Drachenfels as a mortal undead tied into the backstory of the Empire who is a threat to every single faction in the game. It helps that Nagash was always credited with the invention of the widespread version of necromancy while Drachenfels wasn't.
* '''Con'''
That's like saying [[Malekith]] and [[Mannfred von Carstein|Mannfred]] are noncanon because Nagash fulfills the role of big non-Chaos baddie. Also Drachenfels was never credited with inventing Necromancy as a school of magic, just prolonging his own lifespan. Drachenfels can be considered the Vandal Savage to Nagash's General Zod.

'''"He declared the Chaos Gods to be his subordinates, and demanded tribute of Daemon forces periodically afterwards. They hastily obliged each time."? That's fucking stupid.'''

* '''Pro'''
Yeah, that's a pretty glaring example of being a Villain Sue. They should at least explain what he is/how he works to the fanbase.

* '''Con'''
That doesn't make it noncanon. In addition, making the Chaos Gods win simply by virtue of the fact they're Chaos Gods is part of the argument that Games Workshop tends to Mary Sue the entire Chaos faction. There's no reason there can't be an evil force stronger than them - hell, [[Malal]] was an official thing back then too. Also, the idea that Drachenfels is better than the Chaos Gods could only be true in the eyes of Drachenfels himself given his arrogance. Considering it was just after the Warp Gates collapsed and we have no knowledge as to how powerful the chaos gods were at that time, they may have ruled the warp already but that doesn't automatically mean that they were as powerful as we know them to be by the End Times. Also, the Chaos Gods are basically just daemons who are considered gods by virtue of being the most powerful of their kind, and we know from other examples that daemons are vulnerable to having their true names spoken. Given his age, it's not unreasonable that Drachenfels could have learned the gods' true names right after they first formed and then used the knowledge to compel them.

==On the Tabletop==

As Drachenfels only ever existed in one book series and one [[Warhammer Fantasy]] RPG book, he's unlikely to ever get a miniature. Due to his transformative nature however you could easily make something look like him using another mini. As for how to field him? [[Daemon]]s army. [[Vampire Counts]] army. [[Orcs & Goblins]] army. Hell, ally all three together in a 3 on 3 match. All that matters is that you put Drachenfels somewhere on the table, and after you lose you laugh about seeing the other player soon, then tell him a week later Drachenfels came back and ate the souls of his children.

==The End Times==
In the game [[The End Times: Vermintide]], Castle Drachenfels was added as an expansion. Apparently it was either not destroyed or magically reformed, and was invaded by [[Skaven]] who were both channeling its magic into portals to summon [[Daemon|Daemons]] and searching the castle for cursed magic relics. The heroes put down the [[Skaven]], although nothing of note was found within. Disturbingly, the Poisoned Feast is still set up...

[[Vermintide 2|In the second game]], the castle was taken once again. This time it was taken by a former Nurgle sorcerer lord of the Rotblood tribe, Nurgoth the Eternal, who now lead the Rotblood tribe and the remaining Skaven after the Ubersliek 5 disabled the Rotblood's leadership and fucked over Clan Fester. The stinky boy had made the Castle his base of operation, where he conducted a ritual that would allow him to acquire the power of a demon from the castle and also made him go insane courtesy of the glimpses he got at the realm of Chaos (though on the plus side looking into the warp gave him foresight of some sort). Kidnapping villagers for his ritual did not go unanswered however, for the Ubersliek 5 noticed this and give Nurgoth a beating so bad that he explodes. With Nurgoth's death, Castle Drachehfels is once again empty, but now with trails of disgusting demon buboes left over from Nurgoth's work, especially the rotten tunnel of pus and shit the shit lord himself left behind after his explosive death.

Despite the fact that Drach by this point is a thrall of Nagash as the Nameless, a portion of his consciousness still haunts the castle, whispering doubt in the minds of the heroes...

Both games of [[Vermintide]] have the castle's wall decorated mostly in [[John Blanche]] artwork, a 4th wall break if you want to take it that way (or not). For you see, the second game features a painter living in the same keep with the Ubersliek 5 named Catrinne of Aldenstein, who had drawn paintings that were references to various real life Warhammer artworks, including [[John Blanche|Blanche's]]. So either Blanche exists in the Warhammer world or various gifted artists in the setting have [[Psyker|foresight]] that allows them to witness various images of scenery out of the blue.

With the impending release of [[The End Times]], Drachenfels gets added back into the setting as a "[[Mortarch]]" of [[Nagash]], though so far he's only referred to as "The Nameless". Indeed, his whole reason for siding with Nagash is to try and recover his identity because he's forgotten who he is thanks to the whole divine hammer to the skull and earlier botched resurrection. He's described as a bodiless spirit that specializes in possessing and controlling large groups of people at a time and also a huge dick who likes to screw people over for his petty whims - one day he decides he wants banners of flayed skin, so his victims start skinning each other, the next day he makes them rip out their bones to make totems because he's bored with the skin banners.

Nagash, who knew what the Nameless was, desired to keep it a thrall clueless as to its identity as Drachenfel's power to dominate the minds of mortals so quickly and en masse is a power he envies; what's more, Drach was the only other mortal capable of rivaling him.

In fact, the petty dickery of the Nameless actually screws him and [[Vlad von Carstein]] over because it disrupts their takeover so much that it makes [[Balthasar Gelt]] come to see why <s>things are acting odd in the area they've conquered</s> the guards in the area weren't reporting in. Though Gelt joins them later due to this, so everything ended up working out fine.

At some point afterwards before the end of the world, Drachy decides that the big bonedaddy doesn't have his interests in mind and eventually just breaks off to do his own thing. He manages to control an entire village and personally possess [[Luthor Huss]], the Sigmarite Warrior-Priest extraordinaire. By this point, Drach decides to throw his lot in with the winning side (that is [[Chaos]]) and is in league with the corpse of [[Isabella von Carstein]]. However, he runs into Vlad and Vlad manages to wake up Huss and then the Witch Hunter's power of PURE SIGMARITE FAITH burns the bodiless Mortarch to oblivion. And thus was the end of Drachenfels' return. For the time at least ...

So this pretty much confirms Drachenfels as canon.

By extension, Genevieve is now full canon too. Which by extension makes this the best article ever written as we now have confirmation of [[Sigmar]] possessing someone to skull fuck a bad guy with a Warhammer.

==[[Total War: WARHAMMER]]==
Drachenfels is referenced in several random events in the game. He's active and up to his old shenanigans, but since the world is dealing with every faction getting active at once he's more of a footnote and doesn't even merit a rogue faction. His castle was added as a cosmetic feature on the map near [[Athel Loren]] (on the wrong side of the mountains, as some fans have noted) but isn't involved in any gameplay. He's unlikely to be added as an official character to the game either, since multi-race armies are not a thing and he'd be a powerful bullshit thorn in the side of the [[Night Goblins]], [[Belegar Ironhammer]], and [[Wood Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|WElfs]]). Arkhan is able to use all Tomb Kings and some Vampire Counts units though, so a Drachenfels expansion is theoretically possible. The Total Warhammer II Patch consists of the updated Heinrich Kemmler starting position, and the addition of the Bloodlines mechanic; the Liche Master arrives at Castle Drachenfels.

Drachenfels himself does get a somewhat more direct reference in [[Cylostra Direfin]]'s epilogue which mentions her receiving an envoy of The Nameless, who seeks an alliance with her against Brettonia. The fact that this reference is both more direct and more prominent than the others has prompted speculation that The Nameless may be making an appearance in the third game.

[[Category: Warhammer Fantasy]] [[Category: Vampire Counts]] [[Category:The Empire]]

Vampire Counts

2021-10-30T01:39:23Z

2600:1012:B010:FFA6:3DBF:3973:3982:FB06: /* Vampire Bloodlines */

[[Image:WHFBVampire.jpg|right|thumb|400px|Let us go out this evening for pleasure... The night is still young!]]
{{Topquote|Death is the one predator we can't escape. But vampires have found the loophole so many of us crave. I think that's the allure of vampirism.|Sherrilyn Kenyon}}
{{Topquote|A great deal of struggle and sorrow in the world comes from misguided feelings of pride of ownership and possessiveness.|Bryant H McGill}}
{{Topquote|He roused from a joyous dream of feasting, of drinking blood and sucking warm marrow from the bone. His sons and daughters swarmed like ants upon the surface of the Earth, ripe in their terror, delectable in their anguish. He swept them into his mouth and their insides ran in black streams between his lips and matted his beard. This sweet dream rapidly slipped away as he stretched and assessed his surroundings. He shambled forth from the great cavern in the mountain that had been his home for so long.|Laird Barron}}

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTKRDZ_8Qek I reject my humanity!].

The '''Vampire Counts''' are the [[Tomb Kings|non-Egyptian]] Undead of [[Warhammer Fantasy]]. Due to them being..."heavily inspired" by the boom of [[Vampire: The Masquerade]] in the early '90s, the 1994 release of the 4th edition <strike>bit off</strike> borrowed the use of Vampiric "families" leading back to a sole "ancestor". The idea was <strike>sucked up by</strike> popular among the Warhammer community and as a result Vampires split from the mummies in 5e 1999 with the first Vampire Counts Army Book.

The Vampire Counts are your classic, blood-sucking Slavic fiends and total fucking badasses who almost took over the entire fucking Old World (Warhammer Europe) multiple times before the armies of [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|mankind]] and their [[Dwarfs (Warhammer Fantasy)|Dwarfish]] allies got their shit together. Ruthless, intelligent, strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Ogres and evil as hell (except for a few questionably neutral characters), most of the Vampire Counts in the Warhammer universe long to plunge the entire world into a holocaust of darkness and despair, ensuring that the entire land is wholly under their thumb and the foolish mortals know their place as slaves and food. Others pursue dark knowledge for its own sake, like a Lich with a good (but not great) moisturizer; some want to control the entire planet in the shadows like a far more efficient Illuminati, or simply want to tear down the motherfuckers who have it better than themselves. Regardless of motives or behavior, all Vampires suffer from a strong sense of pride and possession; servants and allies are belongings, either as tools or luxury items/pets, and a sense of camaraderie with any other being is extremely rare. But on the plus side all Vampires are free from the cycle of death (as with the right ritual ANY Vampire can be resurrected and there's plenty of downtrodden mortals clamoring to become a powerful Vampire's favorite servant) and [[Chaos]] (which can provide them blessings if served willingly but cannot actually interact with their soul; but given the aforementioned pride and entitlement, few Vampires would revere even a Chaos God as their superior and pledge any loyalty to it).

Basically, it's an entire army of Gothic Horror Vampire lords, seeking to kill and conquer nations not just to appease their own massive egos and pride, but to ensure their all-encompassing need to feed. The classic intelligent monsters and consummate overlords of evil, WHFB's Vampire Counts are pretty much the best of what Vampires can be, and sure as fuck a welcome departure from [[Twilight|this shit]].

==History==
[[Image:Nagash.jpg|left|thumb|300px|Three thousand years later, still a pain in the ass. ([[Mark Gibbons|MG]])]]
A long-as-hell time ago, even by Warhammer Fantasy standards since most human history is in the living memory of Dwarfs and Elves but this story begins alongside THEIR prehistory, there was a powerful Priest of Khemri named [[Nagash]], who was such a thorough badass that he became not only the first Necromancer in Warhammer Fantasy's universe (well, excluding [[Drachenfels]]), but literally created the first undead. He learned his Dark Arts from a trio of Dark Elven Sorceresses, who taught him how to manipulate the energies of [[Chaos]] using dark rituals involving heresy and human sacrifice. He killed them in a magical duel, poisoning one, ripping another to shreds, and crushing the third before consuming their souls; many on [[/tg/]] would say this is ''the'' way to deal with an [[Elf]].

After this, there was no stopping the guy - he communed with Daemons and the spirits of the dead, seized the kingdom for himself from his brother, and used his Necromantic magic to greatly extend his own lifespan. During his tenure as King of Khemri, Nagash decided it would be an awesome idea to run the kingdom as a real-life version of [[Dwarf Fortress]], [[Grimdark|and all that it implies]]. He soon had the idea for the creation of a massive megaproject: a necropolis made of pure [[Warpstone]] AKA evil magic meth plutonium that came to be known as the Black Pyramid, so named for the black Warpstone that made it up. Suffice to say, his blatant evil scared the shit out of the other kingdoms around Khemri, and -undoubtedly jealous of his epic pyramid- they attempted to kill him. Hell, Nagash was so damn terrifying that the Skaven all united against him, which is probably the only time in history the paranoid little freaks have ever been completely united for any cause at all. Despite having an army of the dead and loyal followers like [[Arkhan the Black]], Nagash was finally deposed, though he fled and would eventually emerge once more as the first Lich, continuing to, as many threats in the Warhammer universe have, be a constant thorn in the side of the armies of man forever until the [[End Times|end of fucking time]]...[[Age of Sigmar|and beyond]].

After the fall of Nagash, the Black Pyramid went undisturbed for years, since nobody wanted anything to do with a giant monolith that was related to an insane necromancer who pretty much came within striking distance of ruling all the desert kingdoms. Eventually a spoiled princess from one of the neighboring kingdoms named [[Neferata]] who had been put in charge of interrogating Nagash's sidekick Arkhan channeled her inner Tomb Raider, breaking in and making off with some of Nagash's magic books, which were later called the Nine Books of Nagash (guess how many there were). Delving into the corrupt lore she found within the tome, Neferata discovered a recipe for the Elixir of Life, a blood-draught that would extend one's lifespan. Doing her own research on it and "refining" it alongside the now-infatuated Arkhan, she eventually created a new version of the Elixir -called the Elixir of Damnation using venom from the scorpion tails of Sphinxes- and then downed it. It almost killed her (permanently) until with Arkhan she managed to overcome the sickness and became an unliving nigh-demigod.

Later she shared it with many of her court (after killing her douchebag brother and taking the throne) which created the very first Vampires, most of whom would found their own Bloodlines by turning mortals which then inherited their strengths, weaknesses, and predilections (how generations after the first are turned isn't known, although it involves drinking the blood of their "parent" and something else since without that something else they either just become a feral brute with a short lifespan or get a pleasurable high; volume of Vampire blood drunk may be the difference). Unfortunately we don't know for certain how many or what the names of most of the other Vampire originals are since each time a complete list was given it mostly consisted of a different number of entirely different names. We know the captain of the guard [[Abhorash]] was turned and that he founded the [[Blood Dragon|Blood Dragons]], her high priest [[W'soran]] who would found the [[Necrarch|Necrarchs]] was turned and began to worship Nagash as a god, her younger brother [[Ushoran]] who was a diplomancing seducer was turned and would create the [[Strigoi]], her husband [[Vlad von Carstein|Vashanesh]] (although another version names him Ankhat and states he was her attendant) was turned with him founding the [[Von Carstein|Von Carsteins]], and Neferata herself created the [[Lahmian|Lahmians]]. She had a [[Cathay|Cathayan AKA not-Chinese]] Vampire who she sent on the Warhammer Silk Road to give her control of the east, and in most versions had a female attendant turned for some classic Vampire bisexual fun.

The additional Vampires in the first batch are possibly: [[Maatmeses]], [[Naamia]], [[Prince Xian Ha Feng]], [[Harakhte]], [[Zhuras]].
Maatmeses and Harakhte have their own Bloodlines, the [[Maatmasi]] and [[Jade-Blooded]] respectively which were created for the [[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]] supplement [[Night's Dark Masters]], but did not make it into the book and instead were released later individually; whether or not this is canon is debatable since the founders are canon to [[Black Library]]. Another unnamed seven were created after the first, and two vials were sent with Prince Xian Ha Feng to Cathay <strike>to give players a blank check to make OC Bloodlines</strike> for unknown reasons.

Naturally, this massive population boom in immortal superpowerful bloodsuckers led to problems. The seeming eternal youthfulness of Neferata and her ilk were hard enough to ignore, but the rampant feeding of their followers quickly became too much to turn a blind eye to. When confronted Neferata herself tried to forcefully convert her cousin, [[Khalida]], and failed. Suffice to say, the other armies of the desert kingdoms of Nehekhara eventually fell upon the vampires of Lahmia like sacks of thunder, and they wound up scattering, regrouping only when they met up with the now-undead Nagash in his new undead warpstone Dwarf Fortress megaproject of Nagashizzar. The Vampires quickly became generals of Nagash's armies, and, with the overpowering forces they added to Nagash's cause, turned on the combined armies of Nehekhara in vengeance, poisoning the land itself, transforming it into a realm of eternal death and began to systematically usher in what would have led to a global zombie apocalypse if not for the intervention of [[Skaven]]-brand dickery. With Nagash out of the picture -albeit temporarily- the Vampires swiftly turned to in-fighting and scattered to the far corners of the world.

But not being one to let death keep him down for long, Nagash came back, weakened, but still 1,000 years more pissed off than last time. Losing was ''not'' fun to Nagash, and so he went skele-balls deep into Reclaim Fortress Mode to retake Nagashizzar in a single night. But all of his cool artifacts, their craftundeadship being of the highest quality, had been stolen while he has napping. Marshaling another huge undead army to repossess everything that had been pilfered, he sent out word to his Vampire peeps that he was going to fuck up the [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|Empire]] next. This advance was short-lived - as [[Sigmar]] showed up, and, when Nagash called for their aid, the Vampires were too arrogant to actually help out, and Sigmar smashed him down in short order. In retaliation for this double-dickery, Nagash laid out a curse on the Vampires for this offense: for their refusal to come to his aid, they would forever be weak against the power of Sigmar, being vulnerable to sunlight and all sorts of bizarre shit that came in the undead mind of that autistic manchild. The Undead advance fell apart quicker than [[Boatmurdered]], and the bulk of the Vampires retreated to the lands of Sylvania, where the various Vampires would continue to follow their own agendas, not unlike [[Orks|several]] [[Dark Eldar|unrelated]] [[Chaos Space Marines|groups]] in the [[Warhammer 40,000]] universe.

There they continued to menace the armies of man with periodic invasions of undead, death, and horror for over 2,500 years. With potentially eternal life to bide their time, all they had to do was quit fucking each other over and amass their forces to wait for a [[Nagash#The End Times|supreme leader]] to unite the [[Undead_Legion|armies of undeath]] under one banner once more. I mean, [[Warhammer:_Age_of_Sigmar|what could possibly go wrong?]]

==Here be Sparkles==
[[Image:VampFB.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Fuck yes.]]
One important thing about WHFB vampires is that being turned into one does not automatically turn you evil. It does crank all your personality traits to eleven, almost to a caricature level, so for example a [[Abhorash|noble warrior]] turns into a combat maniac with a stick so deep in his ass it could be seen when he smiles, a [[Konrad von Carstein|petty bully with insecurity issues]] becomes a sadistic psychopath murder machine who does whack shit like having his own mother executed for giving birth to him without his permission, and a [[Neferata|slick politician]] turns into Machiavelian schemer who wraps entire nations in her web of multi-layered intrigues. Similarly a [[Genevieve Sandrine du Pointe du Lac Dieudonné|good person]] given the blood kiss may as well turn into unbearably saintly do-gooder going beyond reason to fight the Thirst and help innocent people. Of course vampirism does not grant immunity to character development, and feeding on humans, having magical powers, superhuman strength, speed and immortality eventually change ''most'' to the worst, pretty much the same way normal people go mad with power. Still, if one just wants to live peacefully with human society, nothing stops him, providing they have the self discipline to resist the rampant thirst or substitute human blood with animal blood, which can do the job even if it is not as invigorating, or at least get human blood through a second hand market, such as mortuaries. Well, there are also Witch Hunters and angry mobs with torches and pitchforks, so it could take a bit of finesse to hide your vampirism. There are hundreds of vampires living peacefully in the Empire and pretty much all other human nations (except Norskans and Kurgan) - and in some places they even built their own secret societies with a thriving blood market. These vampires are not actually the part of the Vampire Count factions, and some of the bloodlines view them as traitors to vampire cause, adding one more reason for them to lay low. According to the WHFRP supplement Night's Dark Masters, becoming a vampire also makes a person more prone to violence, [[/b/|since it essentially makes you immune to being traumatized by blood, gore and death.]]

Even when it comes to the "evil" vampires, most of them have much more humanity left in them than your average Chaos Lord, and are capable of acts of true selflessness and compassion, especially if it concerns their loved ones or faithful subjects. Neferata herself originally did all that fucked up shit she did out of love for her motherland, as did Ushoran, and Vlad von Karstein even sacrificed himself to save his wife. This does not, however, change the fact that they see humans as pets at best and would not mind slaughtering thousands of them to further their own goals. Still, even Mannfred, who's most undoubtedly the most irredeemably evil vampire ever, is nowhere close to the kinds of evil Nagash did while he was still human.

== Vampire Bloodlines ==
* '''[[Von Carstein]]:''' The Von Carsteins are your old-school Vampires of the Dracula-inspired "I VANT TO SUCK YOUR BLOOD!" "ZEEE CHIIILLLDREEN OF THE NIIGHTTT VAT SVEET MUZIC DEY MAKE" variety, and their members are more or less parodies of nobility. Since their roots are very recent as opposed to the other major bloodlines which all began at the beginning of the vampire race, they're sort of the nouveau riche of the vampires. Because they aren't as picky about giving out blood kisses they tend to have more vampires and because policing lots of vampires is a mess they are the go-to bloodline for transforming vampires into mindless death machines like varghulfs and vargheists (usually as a form of punishment). [[Vlad von Carstein]], the head of the family, was the one who first tainted the human aristocracy of [[Old World|Sylvania]] with undeath leading them to become the badass European Vampires they'd eventually become. Vlad took a wife (willingly) named [[Isabella von Carstein]] and set out on the first vampire offensive to conquer the [[Empire]]. The Von Carsteins are kind of unusual in that they realized that keeping the living populace safe meant easier meals. This didn't mean they eased up on being badass, however - instead, Vlad, and [[Konrad von Carstein|two]] [[Mannfred von Carstein|of]] his "sons" violently and/or politically brought a lot of the rebellious nobles in line and actually managed to unify much of Sylvania's vampire nobility for a while during their reigns. When Vlad himself was killed by Wilhelm the Third, his wife Isabella killed herself because she didn't want to be without him, most of their vampiric get squabbled until Konrad, who is in many respects analogous to a WHFB version of [[Kharn]] [[Skub|(but completely and utterly stupid in a number of ways)]], took power and quickly caused the advance to grind to a screeching halt. Konrad eventually got killed (ridiculously), and Mannfred arose, and managed to come back after two major defeats and continue trying to claim the Empire- before changing his mind and resurrecting Nagash, becoming one of his Mortarchs. Von Carsteins use all Vampire Count models in their army, making them the default faction.

* '''[[Lahmian]]:''' The Lahmians, named for the monster that drinks the blood of Children, are an almost entirely-female (although there ARE males) vampire clan, who descended from [[Queen Neferata]], the woman who started the vampires off in the first place. They are the spy bloodline, keeping humans as happy pets and living in comfortable heated estates instead of crumbling castles. They don't tend to be directly involved in big events, primarily spending their time controlling every government in the world through spies and politics and focusing on maintaining the status quo of happy, stupid, pretty humans. Having pissed off just about every other Vampire clan due to their involvement with this nonsense, Neferata's openly-vampiric followers currently occupy the once-dwarven lands of the World's Edge Mountains (Erryone is getting [[Book of Grudges|grudged!]]). Lahmian groups tend to rely more on psychological effects like Beguile as well as spellcasting, and any non-vampires in the army are ghosts that can be dismissed or skeletons that can be buried or told to lay still until given orders and be told to sit in the crypt to be passed off as inanimate ancestors when Witch Hunters come to investigate them.

* '''[[Blood Dragon]]:''' Formed by [[Abhorash]], the [[Fist of the North Star|fuckingest]] of Vampire Warriors, the Blood Dragons are the martial vampires, and fucking awesome. Honorable to a fault, though still mostly evil-as-hell, they will never refuse a challenge and excel at absolutely curb-stomping anything put against them in combat. Consummate warriors, they live to fight, and they believe that only cowards feed upon the weak - the only ones that Blood Dragons will willingly feed on are powerful warriors and monsters (from both Destruction and the Order alignments of the game). As such, they are capable of resisting the thirst better than the other clans, and, due to their badassery, are arguably one of the two favorite factions of Vampires for /tg/ in the setting.

* '''[[Necrarch]]:''' Following distantly in the footsteps of Nagash, the Necrarchs are Necromancer vampires and loremasters. Whereas other Vampires focus on sorcery, martial pride, or a mix of the two, the Necrarchs focus entirely on Necromancy and thus have vast armies of the undead at their disposal. A common joke is that they'd be studious gits and/or faggots.... If they didn't [[/tg/ gets shit done|GET SHIT DONE]]. They give even less shit about the thirst than the Blood Dragons, often being too consumed in their researches and experiments to remember about it, and as a result they look like withered corpses most of the time, and for most of them this becomes the permanent state, so even if they do start feeding properly they would not revert to human-like looks.

* '''[[Strigoi]]:''' The Strigoi are horrid-looking mutant Vampires, closer to Ghouls than traditional Vampire-kind. They not only drink their prey's blood - they go all the fuck out and devour their prey's flesh as well. They eat anything alive or un-alive, including other vampires and each other. Hated and feared even by their own kind, they are easily the kings of [[Rip and Tear|ripping and tearing]] and have more Ghouls at their disposal than any other bloodline. Do not let the fact that they are freakish abominations convince you that they are not FUCKING BADASS. They tend to rampage wherever the fuck they want, and as a result they step on the toes of the other bloodlines a fair amount. A common tactic for the bloodline finding them inconvenient is to send them to another bloodline to be dealt with, killing a bird and annoying another with one stone.

*'''Miscellaneous:''' There are other, smaller bloodlines. All of them are recent and not strong enough to warrant much attention. Among them are a group of vampire [[pirate]]s (believed to be a descendant of the Blood Dragons), vampire [[Warriors of Chaos|Norsemen]], and [[Games Workshop|bloodsucking Brits living in Albion]]. There are also two more major bloodlines that live in Ind and [[Cathay]]. The Cathayan vampires are the closest we get to "good guys" among the undead (barring exceptions like [[Genevieve Sandrine du Pointe du Lac Dieudonné|Genevieve]]), being on generally good terms with the Dragon Emperor as long as they stay out of his way. Many of them are nobles and heroes, though they take great pains to conceal their undead nature. The Indan Vampires are worshiped as one of the many gods of that strange land, and are said to resemble wampyres.

==On the Tabletop==
''See [[Warhammer/Tactics/Vampire Counts|Tactics/Vampire Counts]]''

Originally vampires were but just a cog in the greater Undead army. But come sixth edition Undead had been schismed into two armies, with the Vampire Counts getting the lion's share while those [[Tomb Kings|fucking mummies]] made off with what scant few ranged options Undead ever had. But we all know who got the last laugh in [[The End Times|the end]].

==See Also==
* [[Abhorash]], the most badass Vampire in all of Warhammer.
* [[Vlad von Carstein]], also known as Chad von Carstein.
* [[Isabella von Carstein]], Vlad's beloved.
* [[Konrad von Carstein]], bucking the Warhammer trend of Too Dumb To Live in favor of Too Insane To Live.
* [[Mannfred von Carstein]], also known as Mannchild. Directly responsible for the last chance of saving the world failing.
* [[Ushoran]], the unluckiest of the bunch.
* [[W'soran/Melkhior]], nerd.
* [[Neferata]], the mommy of all Vampires.
* [[Soulblight Gravelords]], their spiritual successors in [[Age of Sigmar]].

==External Links==
[http://www.vampirecounts.net/index.php| Carpe Noctem, the main Vampire Counts army forum]
{{Vampire Count Troops}}
{{Playable Factions in Warhammer Fantasy Battle}}

[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]]
[[Category:Vampire Counts]]

Vampire Counts

2021-10-30T01:37:11Z

2600:1012:B010:FFA6:3DBF:3973:3982:FB06: /* Vampire Bloodlines */

[[Image:WHFBVampire.jpg|right|thumb|400px|Let us go out this evening for pleasure... The night is still young!]]
{{Topquote|Death is the one predator we can't escape. But vampires have found the loophole so many of us crave. I think that's the allure of vampirism.|Sherrilyn Kenyon}}
{{Topquote|A great deal of struggle and sorrow in the world comes from misguided feelings of pride of ownership and possessiveness.|Bryant H McGill}}
{{Topquote|He roused from a joyous dream of feasting, of drinking blood and sucking warm marrow from the bone. His sons and daughters swarmed like ants upon the surface of the Earth, ripe in their terror, delectable in their anguish. He swept them into his mouth and their insides ran in black streams between his lips and matted his beard. This sweet dream rapidly slipped away as he stretched and assessed his surroundings. He shambled forth from the great cavern in the mountain that had been his home for so long.|Laird Barron}}

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTKRDZ_8Qek I reject my humanity!].

The '''Vampire Counts''' are the [[Tomb Kings|non-Egyptian]] Undead of [[Warhammer Fantasy]]. Due to them being..."heavily inspired" by the boom of [[Vampire: The Masquerade]] in the early '90s, the 1994 release of the 4th edition <strike>bit off</strike> borrowed the use of Vampiric "families" leading back to a sole "ancestor". The idea was <strike>sucked up by</strike> popular among the Warhammer community and as a result Vampires split from the mummies in 5e 1999 with the first Vampire Counts Army Book.

The Vampire Counts are your classic, blood-sucking Slavic fiends and total fucking badasses who almost took over the entire fucking Old World (Warhammer Europe) multiple times before the armies of [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|mankind]] and their [[Dwarfs (Warhammer Fantasy)|Dwarfish]] allies got their shit together. Ruthless, intelligent, strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Ogres and evil as hell (except for a few questionably neutral characters), most of the Vampire Counts in the Warhammer universe long to plunge the entire world into a holocaust of darkness and despair, ensuring that the entire land is wholly under their thumb and the foolish mortals know their place as slaves and food. Others pursue dark knowledge for its own sake, like a Lich with a good (but not great) moisturizer; some want to control the entire planet in the shadows like a far more efficient Illuminati, or simply want to tear down the motherfuckers who have it better than themselves. Regardless of motives or behavior, all Vampires suffer from a strong sense of pride and possession; servants and allies are belongings, either as tools or luxury items/pets, and a sense of camaraderie with any other being is extremely rare. But on the plus side all Vampires are free from the cycle of death (as with the right ritual ANY Vampire can be resurrected and there's plenty of downtrodden mortals clamoring to become a powerful Vampire's favorite servant) and [[Chaos]] (which can provide them blessings if served willingly but cannot actually interact with their soul; but given the aforementioned pride and entitlement, few Vampires would revere even a Chaos God as their superior and pledge any loyalty to it).

Basically, it's an entire army of Gothic Horror Vampire lords, seeking to kill and conquer nations not just to appease their own massive egos and pride, but to ensure their all-encompassing need to feed. The classic intelligent monsters and consummate overlords of evil, WHFB's Vampire Counts are pretty much the best of what Vampires can be, and sure as fuck a welcome departure from [[Twilight|this shit]].

==History==
[[Image:Nagash.jpg|left|thumb|300px|Three thousand years later, still a pain in the ass. ([[Mark Gibbons|MG]])]]
A long-as-hell time ago, even by Warhammer Fantasy standards since most human history is in the living memory of Dwarfs and Elves but this story begins alongside THEIR prehistory, there was a powerful Priest of Khemri named [[Nagash]], who was such a thorough badass that he became not only the first Necromancer in Warhammer Fantasy's universe (well, excluding [[Drachenfels]]), but literally created the first undead. He learned his Dark Arts from a trio of Dark Elven Sorceresses, who taught him how to manipulate the energies of [[Chaos]] using dark rituals involving heresy and human sacrifice. He killed them in a magical duel, poisoning one, ripping another to shreds, and crushing the third before consuming their souls; many on [[/tg/]] would say this is ''the'' way to deal with an [[Elf]].

After this, there was no stopping the guy - he communed with Daemons and the spirits of the dead, seized the kingdom for himself from his brother, and used his Necromantic magic to greatly extend his own lifespan. During his tenure as King of Khemri, Nagash decided it would be an awesome idea to run the kingdom as a real-life version of [[Dwarf Fortress]], [[Grimdark|and all that it implies]]. He soon had the idea for the creation of a massive megaproject: a necropolis made of pure [[Warpstone]] AKA evil magic meth plutonium that came to be known as the Black Pyramid, so named for the black Warpstone that made it up. Suffice to say, his blatant evil scared the shit out of the other kingdoms around Khemri, and -undoubtedly jealous of his epic pyramid- they attempted to kill him. Hell, Nagash was so damn terrifying that the Skaven all united against him, which is probably the only time in history the paranoid little freaks have ever been completely united for any cause at all. Despite having an army of the dead and loyal followers like [[Arkhan the Black]], Nagash was finally deposed, though he fled and would eventually emerge once more as the first Lich, continuing to, as many threats in the Warhammer universe have, be a constant thorn in the side of the armies of man forever until the [[End Times|end of fucking time]]...[[Age of Sigmar|and beyond]].

After the fall of Nagash, the Black Pyramid went undisturbed for years, since nobody wanted anything to do with a giant monolith that was related to an insane necromancer who pretty much came within striking distance of ruling all the desert kingdoms. Eventually a spoiled princess from one of the neighboring kingdoms named [[Neferata]] who had been put in charge of interrogating Nagash's sidekick Arkhan channeled her inner Tomb Raider, breaking in and making off with some of Nagash's magic books, which were later called the Nine Books of Nagash (guess how many there were). Delving into the corrupt lore she found within the tome, Neferata discovered a recipe for the Elixir of Life, a blood-draught that would extend one's lifespan. Doing her own research on it and "refining" it alongside the now-infatuated Arkhan, she eventually created a new version of the Elixir -called the Elixir of Damnation using venom from the scorpion tails of Sphinxes- and then downed it. It almost killed her (permanently) until with Arkhan she managed to overcome the sickness and became an unliving nigh-demigod.

Later she shared it with many of her court (after killing her douchebag brother and taking the throne) which created the very first Vampires, most of whom would found their own Bloodlines by turning mortals which then inherited their strengths, weaknesses, and predilections (how generations after the first are turned isn't known, although it involves drinking the blood of their "parent" and something else since without that something else they either just become a feral brute with a short lifespan or get a pleasurable high; volume of Vampire blood drunk may be the difference). Unfortunately we don't know for certain how many or what the names of most of the other Vampire originals are since each time a complete list was given it mostly consisted of a different number of entirely different names. We know the captain of the guard [[Abhorash]] was turned and that he founded the [[Blood Dragon|Blood Dragons]], her high priest [[W'soran]] who would found the [[Necrarch|Necrarchs]] was turned and began to worship Nagash as a god, her younger brother [[Ushoran]] who was a diplomancing seducer was turned and would create the [[Strigoi]], her husband [[Vlad von Carstein|Vashanesh]] (although another version names him Ankhat and states he was her attendant) was turned with him founding the [[Von Carstein|Von Carsteins]], and Neferata herself created the [[Lahmian|Lahmians]]. She had a [[Cathay|Cathayan AKA not-Chinese]] Vampire who she sent on the Warhammer Silk Road to give her control of the east, and in most versions had a female attendant turned for some classic Vampire bisexual fun.

The additional Vampires in the first batch are possibly: [[Maatmeses]], [[Naamia]], [[Prince Xian Ha Feng]], [[Harakhte]], [[Zhuras]].
Maatmeses and Harakhte have their own Bloodlines, the [[Maatmasi]] and [[Jade-Blooded]] respectively which were created for the [[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]] supplement [[Night's Dark Masters]], but did not make it into the book and instead were released later individually; whether or not this is canon is debatable since the founders are canon to [[Black Library]]. Another unnamed seven were created after the first, and two vials were sent with Prince Xian Ha Feng to Cathay <strike>to give players a blank check to make OC Bloodlines</strike> for unknown reasons.

Naturally, this massive population boom in immortal superpowerful bloodsuckers led to problems. The seeming eternal youthfulness of Neferata and her ilk were hard enough to ignore, but the rampant feeding of their followers quickly became too much to turn a blind eye to. When confronted Neferata herself tried to forcefully convert her cousin, [[Khalida]], and failed. Suffice to say, the other armies of the desert kingdoms of Nehekhara eventually fell upon the vampires of Lahmia like sacks of thunder, and they wound up scattering, regrouping only when they met up with the now-undead Nagash in his new undead warpstone Dwarf Fortress megaproject of Nagashizzar. The Vampires quickly became generals of Nagash's armies, and, with the overpowering forces they added to Nagash's cause, turned on the combined armies of Nehekhara in vengeance, poisoning the land itself, transforming it into a realm of eternal death and began to systematically usher in what would have led to a global zombie apocalypse if not for the intervention of [[Skaven]]-brand dickery. With Nagash out of the picture -albeit temporarily- the Vampires swiftly turned to in-fighting and scattered to the far corners of the world.

But not being one to let death keep him down for long, Nagash came back, weakened, but still 1,000 years more pissed off than last time. Losing was ''not'' fun to Nagash, and so he went skele-balls deep into Reclaim Fortress Mode to retake Nagashizzar in a single night. But all of his cool artifacts, their craftundeadship being of the highest quality, had been stolen while he has napping. Marshaling another huge undead army to repossess everything that had been pilfered, he sent out word to his Vampire peeps that he was going to fuck up the [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|Empire]] next. This advance was short-lived - as [[Sigmar]] showed up, and, when Nagash called for their aid, the Vampires were too arrogant to actually help out, and Sigmar smashed him down in short order. In retaliation for this double-dickery, Nagash laid out a curse on the Vampires for this offense: for their refusal to come to his aid, they would forever be weak against the power of Sigmar, being vulnerable to sunlight and all sorts of bizarre shit that came in the undead mind of that autistic manchild. The Undead advance fell apart quicker than [[Boatmurdered]], and the bulk of the Vampires retreated to the lands of Sylvania, where the various Vampires would continue to follow their own agendas, not unlike [[Orks|several]] [[Dark Eldar|unrelated]] [[Chaos Space Marines|groups]] in the [[Warhammer 40,000]] universe.

There they continued to menace the armies of man with periodic invasions of undead, death, and horror for over 2,500 years. With potentially eternal life to bide their time, all they had to do was quit fucking each other over and amass their forces to wait for a [[Nagash#The End Times|supreme leader]] to unite the [[Undead_Legion|armies of undeath]] under one banner once more. I mean, [[Warhammer:_Age_of_Sigmar|what could possibly go wrong?]]

==Here be Sparkles==
[[Image:VampFB.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Fuck yes.]]
One important thing about WHFB vampires is that being turned into one does not automatically turn you evil. It does crank all your personality traits to eleven, almost to a caricature level, so for example a [[Abhorash|noble warrior]] turns into a combat maniac with a stick so deep in his ass it could be seen when he smiles, a [[Konrad von Carstein|petty bully with insecurity issues]] becomes a sadistic psychopath murder machine who does whack shit like having his own mother executed for giving birth to him without his permission, and a [[Neferata|slick politician]] turns into Machiavelian schemer who wraps entire nations in her web of multi-layered intrigues. Similarly a [[Genevieve Sandrine du Pointe du Lac Dieudonné|good person]] given the blood kiss may as well turn into unbearably saintly do-gooder going beyond reason to fight the Thirst and help innocent people. Of course vampirism does not grant immunity to character development, and feeding on humans, having magical powers, superhuman strength, speed and immortality eventually change ''most'' to the worst, pretty much the same way normal people go mad with power. Still, if one just wants to live peacefully with human society, nothing stops him, providing they have the self discipline to resist the rampant thirst or substitute human blood with animal blood, which can do the job even if it is not as invigorating, or at least get human blood through a second hand market, such as mortuaries. Well, there are also Witch Hunters and angry mobs with torches and pitchforks, so it could take a bit of finesse to hide your vampirism. There are hundreds of vampires living peacefully in the Empire and pretty much all other human nations (except Norskans and Kurgan) - and in some places they even built their own secret societies with a thriving blood market. These vampires are not actually the part of the Vampire Count factions, and some of the bloodlines view them as traitors to vampire cause, adding one more reason for them to lay low. According to the WHFRP supplement Night's Dark Masters, becoming a vampire also makes a person more prone to violence, [[/b/|since it essentially makes you immune to being traumatized by blood, gore and death.]]

Even when it comes to the "evil" vampires, most of them have much more humanity left in them than your average Chaos Lord, and are capable of acts of true selflessness and compassion, especially if it concerns their loved ones or faithful subjects. Neferata herself originally did all that fucked up shit she did out of love for her motherland, as did Ushoran, and Vlad von Karstein even sacrificed himself to save his wife. This does not, however, change the fact that they see humans as pets at best and would not mind slaughtering thousands of them to further their own goals. Still, even Mannfred, who's most undoubtedly the most irredeemably evil vampire ever, is nowhere close to the kinds of evil Nagash did while he was still human.

== Vampire Bloodlines ==
* '''[[Von Carstein]]:''' The Von Carsteins are your old-school Vampires of the Dracula-inspired "I VANT TO SUCK YOUR BLOOD!" "ZEEE CHIIILLLDREEN OF THE NIIGHTTT VAT SVEET MUZIC DEY MAKE" variety, and their members are more or less parodies of nobility. Since their roots are very recent as opposed to the other major bloodlines which all began at the beginning of the vampire race, they're sort of the nouveau riche of the vampires. Because they aren't as picky about giving out blood kisses they tend to have more vampires and because policing lots of vampires is a mess they are the go-to bloodline for transforming vampires into mindless death machines like varghulfs and vargheists (usually as a form of punishment). [[Vlad von Carstein]], the head of the family, was the one who first tainted the human aristocracy of [[Old World|Sylvania]] with undeath leading them to become the badass European Vampires they'd eventually become. Vlad took a wife (willingly) named [[Isabella von Carstein]] and set out on the first vampire offensive to conquer the [[Empire]]. The Von Carsteins are kind of unusual in that they realized that keeping the living populace safe meant easier meals. This didn't mean they eased up on being badass, however - instead, Vlad, and [[Konrad von Carstein|two]] [[Mannfred von Carstein|of]] his "sons" violently and/or politically brought a lot of the rebellious nobles in line and actually managed to unify much of Sylvania's vampire nobility for a while during their reigns. When Vlad himself was killed by Wilhelm the Third, his wife Isabella killed herself because she didn't want to be without him, most of their vampiric get squabbled until Konrad, who is in many respects analogous to a WHFB version of [[Kharn]] [[Skub|(but completely and utterly stupid in a number of ways)]], took power and quickly caused the advance to grind to a screeching halt. Konrad eventually got killed (ridiculously), and Mannfred arose, and managed to come back after two major defeats and continue trying to claim the Empire- before changing his mind and resurrecting Nagash, becoming one of his Mortarchs. Von Carsteins use all Vampire Count models in their army, making them the default faction.

* '''[[Lahmian]]:''' The Lahmians, named for the monster that drinks the blood of Children, are an almost entirely-female (although there ARE males) vampire clan, who descended from [[Queen Neferata]], the woman who started the vampires off in the first place. They are the spy bloodline, keeping humans as happy pets and living in comfortable heated estates instead of crumbling castles. They don't tend to be directly involved in big events, primarily spending their time controlling every government in the world through spies and politics and focusing on maintaining the status quo of happy, stupid, pretty humans. Having pissed off just about every other Vampire clan due to their involvement with this nonsense, Neferata's openly-vampiric followers currently occupy the once-dwarven lands of the World's Edge Mountains (Erryone is getting [[Book of Grudges|grudged!]]). Lahmian groups tend to rely more on psychological effects like Beguile as well as spellcasting, and any non-vampires in the army are ghosts that can be dismissed or skeletons that can be buried or told to lay still until given orders and be told to sit in the crypt to be passed off as inanimate ancestors when Witch Hunters come to investigate them.

* '''[[Blood Dragon]]:''' Formed by [[Abhorash]], the [[Fist of the North Star|fuckingest]] of Vampire Warriors, the Blood Dragons are the martial vampires, and fucking awesome. Honorable to a fault, though still mostly evil-as-hell, they will never refuse a challenge and excel at absolutely curb-stomping anything put against them in combat. Consummate warriors, they live to fight, and they believe that only cowards feed upon the weak - the only ones that Blood Dragons will willingly feed on are powerful warriors and monsters (from both Destruction and the Order alignments of the game). As such, they are capable of resisting the thirst better than the other clans, and, due to their badassery, are arguably one of the two favorite factions of Vampires for /tg/ in the setting.

* '''[[Necrarch]]:''' Following distantly in the footsteps of Nagash, the Necrarchs are Necromancer vampires and loremasters. Whereas other Vampires focus on sorcery, martial pride, or a mix of the two, the Necrarchs focus entirely on Necromancy and thus have vast armies of the undead at their disposal. A common joke is that they'd be studious gits and/or faggots.... If they didn't [[/tg/ gets shit done|GET SHIT DONE]]. They give even less shit about the thirst than the Blood Dragons, often being too consumed in their researches and experiments to remember about it, and as a result they look like withered corpses most of the time, and for most of them this becomes the permanent state, so even if they do start feeding properly they would not revert to human-like looks.

* '''[[Strigoi]]:''' The Strigoi are horrid-looking mutant Vampires, closer to Ghouls than traditional Vampire-kind. They not only drink their prey's blood - they go all the fuck out and devour their prey's flesh as well. They eat anything alive or un-alive, including other vampires and each other. Hated and feared even by their own kind, they are easily the kings of [[Rip and Tear|ripping and tearing]] and have more Ghouls at their disposal than any other bloodline. Do not let the fact that they are freakish abominations convince you that they are not FUCKING BADASS. They tend to rampage wherever the fuck they want, and as a result they step on the toes of the other bloodlines a fair amount. A common tactic is for the bloodline finding them inconvenient is to send them to another bloodline to be dealt with, killing a bird and annoying another with one stone.

*'''Miscellaneous:''' There are other, smaller bloodlines. All of them are recent and not strong enough to warrant much attention. Among them are a group of vampire [[pirate]]s (believed to be a descendant of the Blood Dragons), vampire [[Warriors of Chaos|Norsemen]], and [[Games Workshop|bloodsucking Brits living in Albion]]. There are also two more major bloodlines that live in Ind and [[Cathay]]. The Cathayan vampires are the closest we get to "good guys" among the undead (barring exceptions like [[Genevieve Sandrine du Pointe du Lac Dieudonné|Genevieve]]), being on generally good terms with the Dragon Emperor as long as they stay out of his way. Many of them are nobles and heroes, though they take great pains to conceal their undead nature. The Indan Vampires are worshiped as one of the many gods of that strange land, and are said to resemble wampyres.

==On the Tabletop==
''See [[Warhammer/Tactics/Vampire Counts|Tactics/Vampire Counts]]''

Originally vampires were but just a cog in the greater Undead army. But come sixth edition Undead had been schismed into two armies, with the Vampire Counts getting the lion's share while those [[Tomb Kings|fucking mummies]] made off with what scant few ranged options Undead ever had. But we all know who got the last laugh in [[The End Times|the end]].

==See Also==
* [[Abhorash]], the most badass Vampire in all of Warhammer.
* [[Vlad von Carstein]], also known as Chad von Carstein.
* [[Isabella von Carstein]], Vlad's beloved.
* [[Konrad von Carstein]], bucking the Warhammer trend of Too Dumb To Live in favor of Too Insane To Live.
* [[Mannfred von Carstein]], also known as Mannchild. Directly responsible for the last chance of saving the world failing.
* [[Ushoran]], the unluckiest of the bunch.
* [[W'soran/Melkhior]], nerd.
* [[Neferata]], the mommy of all Vampires.
* [[Soulblight Gravelords]], their spiritual successors in [[Age of Sigmar]].

==External Links==
[http://www.vampirecounts.net/index.php| Carpe Noctem, the main Vampire Counts army forum]
{{Vampire Count Troops}}
{{Playable Factions in Warhammer Fantasy Battle}}

[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]]
[[Category:Vampire Counts]]

Hellsing

2021-10-30T01:04:29Z

2600:1012:B010:FFA6:3DBF:3973:3982:FB06:

{{Grimdark}}
'''Hellsing''' is a manga (with OVA adaptation) and anime series that /tg/ likes to point to in order to discuss how [[vampire]]s can be fucking awesome. The basic plot, which goes in wildly different directions between the "Pure" (manga/OAV) and "Geneon" (TV) continuities, revolves around the Hellsing Organization; a secret British special forces unit dedicated to defending Great Britain from supernatural threats, mostly monsters. They are served in this cause by Alucard - a super-powered ubervampire who enjoys the chance to pit his strength against anything and everything that gets in his way.

Ostensibly, the main character is Seras Victoria, the last member of a British police squad wiped out by a priest-turned-vampire in the village of Cheddar; when the vampire took her hostage, Alucard killed him by shooting through Seras and then turned her into a vampire. In reality, the star of the show is Alucard; quite blatantly revealed to be Dracula who was made to swear an oath of allegiance to Van Helsing after being beaten, and then scientifically upgraded into something far more monstrous than any vampire.

==Differences between Pure and Geneon==
The Pure canon is... well, frankly, it's kind of schizophrenic, switching wildly and unpredictably between darkly epic action-horror and goofy slapstick comedy. The fight scenes are epic and awesome, but the interactions between characters often devolve into gags and goofball humor, complete with standard cutesy chibification scenes. However, it concludes with an epic finale story involving London being blitzed by an army of [[Nazi]] survivors and Neo-Nazis turned vampires, led by superpowerful monstrous captains, only it was all an epic ploy to get Alucard weak enough that they could finally kill him off. They failed, but damn if they didn't come close.

The Geneon canon, due to having been aired and ended before Millenium (the aforementioned Nazi vampires) was introduced in the comic, is a slower, more sedate and serious affair. The storyline, revolving around a mysterious group that is creating artificial vampires through occult science and implanted "FREAK" microchips, isn't bad, but isn't as epic as Pure's battle against Millenium, something made worse by the fact Geneon was going bankrupt at the time and so the animation can get rather cheesy. However, the characters are treated more seriously, their interactions are deeper, the Hellsing organization seems less like a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites, and it's generally not as schitzo as the Pure canon.

==Relevance to /tg/==
For the most part, Hellsing gets a pass on /tg/ because, as said above, Alucard is one of the most kickass examples of vampires being badass, especially in the wake of [[Twilight|atrocities against vampires that deserve no name]]. However, it's not entirely irrelevant for pure /tg/ reasons.

For starters, there is an official Hellsing RPG using the [[Big Eyes, Small Mouth]] RPG system, created as part of the many "tie-in books" published by the [[Guardians of Order]] - however, due to the time when it was released, this is based on the Geneon canon rather than the Pure canon.

Additionally, Hellsing could easily serve as inspiration for a [[World of Darkness]] game. The Pure canon is harder to place, but perhaps best fits into a [[Vampire: The Masquerade]] game played under the "vampire superheroes!" mindset. Geneon canon, though, could easily work as [[Vampire: The Requiem]]/[[Hunter: The Vigil]] crossover, with the Hellsing organization as a cancerous compact using "tamed" vampires - or perhaps better yet as a [[Deviant: The Renegades]] game, as both Hellsing's Alucard and Anderson from the Iscariot Organization (a band of psychotic fundamentalist Catholic monster hunters run by the Catholic church) make great examples of Loyalist Deviants.

[[Category:Approved Media]][[Category:Television]][[Category:Weeaboo]]