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Medieval Stasis

2017-07-16T10:23:57Z

2605:E000:7C4A:1500:C8E6:D3EC:805C:62CF: /* Notable Examples of Medieval Stasis */

'''Medieval Stasis''' describes the state of essentially all fantasy worlds that never get to [[steampunk]].

As the title implies, most fantasy worlds are stuck at a technological level roughly equivalent to Europe between 1000 and 1500, being more advanced in some fields and more primitive in others, until the universe collapses. A [[knight]]'s ancestors five thousand years ago fought against Orcs on the back of a great warhorse, wielding [[sword]] and lance, wearing plate and a greathelm, just as he does at present. At best, some groups in the universe may be more advanced than others (some peoples might be building castles and forging plate armor while others live as primitive cave men armed with flint axes and stone tipped spears), but nobody will be developing new technology, or, on the off chance one or two factions are, it will never spread much or catch on anywhere else. This also applies to social structures such as feudalism, with a max of one non-Greco-Roman democracy per setting. It will be conquered and restored from edition to edition as fanboys war behind the scenes.

While it is not, in and of itself, a bad thing, as it creates a set mood and style of play, we run into the fact that many writers are hacks, and use it to both rip-off other writers (principally, Tolkien) and to [[Advancing the Storyline|keep the world stagnant enough that they don't risk smashing something people actually like that they didn't have the skill to ''realize'' they shouldn't smash, while still maintaining the illusion of forward momentum]]. The ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' is a prime example of this, featuring both several powerful organizations out to stifle any attempt to progress the technology or socioeconomic advancement of the setting, and many lame-brained "advances" in story from edition to edition, most infamously with 4th edition's "Spellplague" and retconned twin planet where all the new 4e races were hiding.

Note that in high-magic settings, sorcery sometimes gets so common and overpowered that it basically replaces technological progress. Why would you build robots or rockets if you can just create golems or cast Teleport Without Error?

Another issue with medieval stasis is that a lot of writers, most of them in fact; probably know less about the actual middle ages than the average Crusader Kings 2 player and thus present not only a world in medieval stasis but one that's in at best, a theme-park version of the medieval period and quite often only really showing Anglo-French medievalism (and a bastardized shitfarmer version of it at that). The somewhat more historically literate might put in some anachronisms like references to ancient Greece, Egypt, and Rome or to the Aztecs (usually a ramshackle mishmash of half remembered tidbits of the Mayans, Aztecs, and Inca thrown together with no real thought) and if you're extra lucky you might get something that's an extended reference to a (largely inaccurate) medieval Islamic polity or to the Holy Roman Empire mixed in with the usual barbarian tribes but that's usually about it. Like the Democracy thing mentioned above? It was nowhere near that simple in real life. A great many of the tribal societies we have records of were actually very democratic, where the King was elected and so were the chiefs below them and they absolutely did not have absolute authority over their subjects. And of course "feudalism" is simply a catch all label for a hugely varied and complicated array of societal organization systems that can be vaguely described as an aristocratic hierarchy based around land and military service and assorted ties of loyalty and bloodline.

And even in medieval Europe you had systems that broke the norm, like the Merchant republics of Italy or the north German Free cities and of course you had lands directly ruled by the Church. Never mind that you also had rather different systems of organization elsewhere in the world like in the Islamic world, India, the Americas, and of course China's quite literal bureaucracy where civil servants hired based on their performance in examinations did most of the day to day governing of China; dynasties could come and go but the bureaucracy was eternal. Tolkien was himself of course, a medievalist with very deep knowledge of the time period even by today's standards with our rather improved access to knowledge of the time period. Warhammer was created by history nerds who very much knew what they were writing about and so populated the world of Warhammer Fantasy with references to just about every political system that predominated in the medieval and renaissance periods as well as a lot of those that predominated in antiquity. So not only does Medieval Stasis perpetuate an annoying degree of sameness in the fantasy genre, it also tends to be based on a conception of medieval times that's not only essentially completely limited to France+England with some scattered references to other stuff, but is also almost completely wrong about everything and doesn't even scratch the surface of the depth of medieval history.

==Notable Examples of Medieval Stasis==

*'''[[Lord of the Rings]]:''' Tolkien was a naturalist who wasn't too fond of industrialization, having seen the First World War's highly industrialized warfare up close and personal, so the heroes of his stories preferred Medieval Stasis as well, barring a few anachronisms like clocks and matches. Unlike most of the writers that he inspired, Tolkien had [[Fluff|five hundred pages of background]] explaining why, namely because Middle-earth was in a state of decline due to the ravages of Morgoth and Sauron, the gradual decline of the elves and the Dunedain after the downfall of Numenor, and much of their technology was given to them by the Valar rather than inventing it themselves.
**The funny thing is, based on supplementary books and scrapped stories, Numenor came quite close to being a Steampunk world power equipped with steamships and even rockets.
* '''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]:''' Westeros is ''extra'' static, because not only has everything been fairly stable for thousands of years until the Great Fuckening of the current time frame, some ''individual families'' have had unbroken rule over their lands for a hundred odd generations (The Starks being the prime example, as they have ruled in Winterfell for over ''eight thousand years'') which is something patently absurd when you consider how much real life royal, imperial, and noble families have had to struggle to avoid patrilineal extinction in just a few centuries, with the oldest still extant aristocratic house being the Japanese house of Yamato and even then it's likely that they bent the rules of succession at least once in their 2500 year history. That said, it should be noted that part of the backstory involves the Bronze Age First Men defeating the Stone Age Children of the Forest, who were themselves conquered by the Iron Age Andal invaders everywhere but in the Iron Islands and the North (who adapted and adopted the technology of their would be conquerers), and the records of the ancient days are spotty at best, full of mythical accounts and many of the Maesters believe that said events happened over a shorter timeframe.
* '''[[Forgotten Realms]]:''' Not only have things been more-or-less exactly the same for all of recorded history, there is a powerful, international, theoretically-good-or-at-least-neutral organization actively devoted to making sure that ''no progress of any kind is ever made'': the Harpers. Whenever anyone invents something useful (guns, locomotion, etc.) and tries to market it, the Harpers confiscate it. Whenever a good-aligned king tries to unite and stabilize the warring states, the Harpers murder his ass. Faerun hasn't budged an inch since Ao glued it together. The only exception to this was the island nation of Lantan. The island was a theocratic state in service to Gond Wonderbringer, a deity whose portfolio included innovation and technology, who gifted his followers with knowledge of smokepowder which lead to functional in-setting [[firearm|firearms]]. At least until 4th edition blew it up along with everything else fun or interesting in the Forgotton Realms. As of 5th edition, the current (albeit scattered and/or vague) lore seems to imply that Lantan's destruction has been retconned like the rest of the Spellplague.
* '''[[Greyhawk]]:''' Despite the fact that the current page on this [[Old School Roleplaying|oldest-of-the-old school]] settings is little more than impotent bitching at the moment, it also has a society where nothing much ever has happened or will happen to bring about changes in the lifestyles of its inhabitants. And ''this'' is the setting with [[Murlynd| a literal god of Old West gunfighting]] and an army of [[firearm]]-toting [[gunslinger|paladins analogous to sheriffs]].
* '''[[Dragonlance]]:''' Apocalyptic calamities come and go, but Krynn stays at pretty much the same level of pseudo-medieval tech forever, world without end, amen. And, no the [[Gnomes|tinker gnomes]] do ''not'' count, since their stuff almost never does anything useful, gets mass-produced, or catches on outside the gnomes themselves. In fact, some material explicitly says that the reason for the stasis is '''because''' of the fucking gnomes; their absolute idiocy when it comes to producing technology has actually convinced pretty much every other culture on the planet that science is fundamentally inferior in every way to sorcery! The one culture that doesn't think they're entirely a waste of time is only interested because it pretty much hates magic... and is made of a bunch of knight-in-shining-armor types so hidebound that they haven't been able to properly fix their organisation since the first Cataclysm, and so anything like vehicles or gunpowder is certain to get dismissed on grounds of being "dishonorable". So, yeah, '''fuck''' tinker gnomes.
* '''[[Warcraft]]:''' In a cartoony match for the Dragonlance example above, Azeroth's many factions never adopt one another's technological advancements. Goblins and gnomes can invent as many steampunk robots as they want, none of their stuff will ever change the world in a concrete way. Even the aliens are mostly just sword-and-sorcery types. That said, firearms had established themselves in the comparatively recent past.
*'''[[Ravenloft]]:''' This is probably the most interesting example. The Demiplane of Dread doesn't so much "advance" as it does "absorb some place where things are a little more complicated," and most of the Domains of Dread are already tailor-made just to torture their prisoners. Thus, though individual Domains might be advanced enough for common people to have firearms and gaslights or so primitive that they aren't even ''into'' the Stone Age (King Crocodile for the win!), they will almost never learn from or assimilate one another's technology. Each Domain will be mostly frozen into the level it's at, medieval or not. Amusingly, this works both ways: technologically-advanced societies are no more likely to take up magic than lower-tech ones are to learn to use gunpowder.
*'''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battles]]:''' Bretonnia is literally in Medieval Stasis despite having one of the most technologically-advanced nations right next door. The Elves of all types give no fucks about advancing their technology, but in their defense what they have still works, they have access to giant monsters such as dragons and hydras and the Dark Elves at least have progressed from bows to rapid-fire armor-piercing crossbows. The Warriors of Chaos are again literally medieval, but in their case they're Medieval [[Vikings]]. Orcs have not been introduced to the wonders of "Dakka" yet; the Lizardmen still use wood and stone but make up for it by also using dinosaurs and advanced magic. Lastly, the Ogres are pretty much in "Stone Age Stasis" as they're not very intelligent but under Overtyrant Greasus started to discover the benefits of commerce. The only races that have had any technological developments on a grand scale are the Skaven and Dwarfs, and more so the Chaos Dwarfs. Unfortunately, most of the inventions of the Skaven end up blowing up in their face, and the Dwarfs are reluctant to share their technology with anybody other than the Empire of Man. The Chaos Dwarfs' technology is run on daemon souls and bloody sacrifices. You can see why others have not copied them.

==Notable Settings ''Without'' Medieval Stasis==

*'''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battles]]:''' The Empire and the Dwarfs are actually about the level of most European countries around 1500, at the start of the early modern period and the Renaissance. They're also advancing, albeit slowly, but the problem is that they are under constant Chaos invasions and Chaos Gods themselves are not above screwing with the world, which puts something of a crimp on pure research. Imagine what Nurgle would do to the guy who discovered penicillin in this world. The fact that relations between the engineers and the Cult of Sigmar are not the best in the world does not help things at all. The other notable technology users are the Skaven, but the Skaven technology only effects their weapons (god help the world if they ever figure out sanitation considering what it did to our own population) and it's almost all magitech based on weaponizing [[Warpstone|solidified Chaos.]] Undead straddle the line between the two, with the vampires not being afraid to use technology; the problem is most of their undead minions lack the physical and mental acumen to use it while the vampires physical, mental and magical abilities make technology practically redundant to them at a personal level. The [[Tomb Kings]] had technology at the steampunk level, though this isn't represented in the game, but they are more concerned about rebuilding their realm, which has fallen into disrepair due to hundreds of years of civil war and no maintenance, rather than advancing their society. They do have something like robots in the form of their magically animated undead constructs.
*'''[[Iron Kingdoms]]:''' The Iron Kingdoms setting is one of the best examples of steampunk fantasy. They're developed to the extent of the Victorian era (the mid-to-late 1800s), with a slow-but-growing industrial revolution and the discovery and development of electricity and chemistry. At the same time, it remains a recognizably fantasy setting in many ways, with wizard orders, barbarian tribes, and dangerous monster threats on the frontier demanding plucky-adventurer solutions.
*'''[[Eberron]]:''' Eberron is weird and expressly focused on subverting the usual D&D cliches, so the technology is a strange mixture of all eras with a side order of JRPG-style magitech. It's one of the few settings that avoids both medieval stasis and outright steampunk, since magic is so common that it has effectively displaced technology. And because there is no continuity and every game starts at exactly the same point in time as every other game, [[Advancing the Storyline| there's no real status quo to worry about upsetting]].
*'''[[Dark Sun]]:''' A weird example. Depending on edition, the past of Athas may have included anything from a standard fantasy setting to a bio-mechanical halfling empire. But, either way, the Brown Age is a barbaric decline of these past glories, with little metal and no feasible way of shaping more leaving the world in an oddly-civilized neigh-Stone Age. Still, there is an undercurrent of rebuilding and reforming throughout the more-heroic-minded books on the setting, helped by the same eventual anti-continuity Eberron had, so the idea that things ''could'' progress or get better isn't ''impossible''.
*'''[[Ironclaw]]:''' The once-fantasy world is undergoing a pseudo-Renaissance shift away from magic and feudalism to machinery and Italian-style guild-republics. PCs are actually explicitly part of the burgeoning new middle class. Not bad for a furry RPG, huh?
*'''[[Mystara]]:''' Depending on where you are, there might be airships, magic-powered technological conveniences, and drill-tanks to explore the hollow earth full of dinosaurs. Either way, things are a little less generic here in proto-Eberron.
*'''[[Pathfinder]]:''' [[Golarion]] features relatively advanced technologies such as flintlock and matchlock firearms, the printing press, galleons (crewed by pirates reminiscent of the Golden Age of piracy in the Caribbean), and, in certain sourcebooks, [[Spelljammer|steampunk/magi-tech spaceships]]. Not to mention the number of people whose clothes and equipment are explicitly based on 18th-century fashions (see, among others, Andoran, Taldor, and Alkenstar). Also, there's that one random corner of the world where aliens are trying to peacefully settle and/or invade, only to realize they picked the *one* corner of the world where pleas of "We come in peace!" are met with [[Barbarian|warcries and the judicious application of battleaxes to various vital areas]]. A recent sourcebook includes *lots* of super-high-tech stuff and different class archetypes that make use of it. On the socio-political front, the Chelaxian breakaways Andoran and Galt have started to push for a less aristocratic government.
**And '''[[Starfinder]]''' reveals that at least at some point various sci-fi technologies will be developed.
*'''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]''': It was true in the past, but by the time of the original series the Fire Nation has become an industrial power, complete with colonial ambitions towards the rest of the world. In fact, the main character's previous incarnation as Avatar actually ''stopped'' the Fire Nation from breaking medieval stasis ''because'' he foresaw that doing so would mean allowing them to subjugate all the other peoples. At the end of the show, the protagonist makes peace between all three surviving factions, and the sequel reveals that doing so helped the world advance to a roughly 20s/30s era of technology, complete with automobiles, moving pictures, professional sports, politically radical revolutionaries, and cronyist democracy.
*'''[[Dragonmech]]''': Dragonmech's setting used to be in Medieval Stasis, then chunks of the moon started to rain down on them along with Alien Moon Dragons riding the rocks down for a full-on invasion, people first hide underground but then a dwarf kick starts the creation of Pacific Rim sized steampunk robots to fight the Dragons and the whole world is now in a full on steam-powered Industrial Revolution without the gunpowder.

[[Category:History]]

Drachenfels

2017-07-16T03:38:13Z

2605:E000:7C4A:1500:C8E6:D3EC:805C:62CF: /* The End Times */

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

A character and subject of book written in the ye olde days of WHFB, by [[Jack Yeovil]], more widely known as the film critic/horror buff Kim Newman. Imagine if you mixed the classic mustache and goatee twirling depiction of Satan in a business suit with Dracula, and threw him in the [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]] universe. That's Drachenfels.

==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 humans by a river during the ice age of the world. Drachenfels was counted among their number, and after becoming sick while in 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 absorbed his life energy (keep in mind this is before [[Chaos]] entered the world, and thus there's no deus ex machina you can use through them here).

[[Image:Castle Drachenfels.jpeg|right|thumb|200px|Casa De Drachenfels.]]
He used his newfound power to continue living. His body still rotted however, 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 established 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. Despite being of near power to himself, he declared them to be his subordinates, and demanded tribute of [[Daemon]] forces periodically afterwards. They hastily obliged each time.

Rather than having a direct goal (like taking over the world, destroying the Empire, consuming the Warp, and so on) Drachenfels has never sought specific ends. Each time he attacks the outside world, he does so merely out of boredom. He usually takes plenty of captives back, 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 or for some reason chose to spare the conquered.

The first time, [[Sigmar]] had only just united the tribes that would be the [[Empire]] when the land fell under attack from an army of [[Orcs & Goblins|greenskins]] lead by Drachenfels. Drachenfels 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 in history, he marched his forces of Daemons and [[Vampire Counts|Undead]] through [[Wood Elves (Warhammer)|Athel Loren]] and attacked a [[Bretonnia|Bretonnian]] 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.
Only a few decades later, Drachenfels went unarmed to the Empire and announced he'd reformed his evil ways, and would be an ally from that point onwards. 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 pleaded for forgiveness at the graves of those whose bodies had been recovered. After the dimwitted public accepted that he'd turned good, he invited the entire court of the Emperor to a feast at his castle. He served them wine laced with paralyzing poison, then laid an elaborate feast out in front of them. 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 some of the food in front of them before leaving the paralyzed nobles to starve to death with the feast sitting nearby.

One of the children who survived grew to be Oswald von Konigswald, who became an Elector Count. He hired the now adult (and king fu master) Genevieve, who had become a bar wench in Altdorf, along with a few other no-name adventurers to travel with him to Castle Drachenfels and put the monster down for good. Oswald managed to deal the killing blow to him 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 and transferred to the ownership of Oswald.

* Spoiler: What people didn't know was that Oswald was [[That Guy]]; he was secretly a bitter, power hungry pussy. After shitting himself when it was him and Drachenfels, Drachenfels decided to make a deal with him and keep him alive for lulz. Oswald gets to be the hero who killed Drachenfels and overthrows Karl Franz, while Drachenfels gets to return and fuck a whole new group of people over. He let Oswald kill him, killed lots of his servants and laid low until possessing the actor playing him at the play about his "defeat". Things go south for Drachenfels when Genevieve and Deltef (the latter buffed by the power of Sigmar) kill him (it's implied to be for good), along with the asshole Oswald.

Years later, Oswald hired a great playwright to direct a production within the castle 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. As would be expected, Drachenfels returned to life during the play and slaughtered a fair number of the audience and cast. Genevieve and the director of the play, Detlef Sierck, were blessed by Sigmar and dealt a killing blow to Drachenfels (again). Although this is described as having killed him once and for all, everyone who has killed him has thought the exact same thing. Regardless, his fortress was finally razed to the ground on Franz's command.
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 is 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 periodly reprint them despite them being SO 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 and in it's current state. Thus 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 non-canon 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. The Old Ones could have done the latter, and then moved their experimented humans batch to pre-Nehekara. Thus, Drachenfels would have been 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 non-canon because Nagash fulfills the role of big non-Chaos baddie. Drachenfels can be considered the Vandal Savage to Nagash's Darkseid.

* '''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 non-canon. 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. Also, the idea that Drachenfels is better than the Chaos Gods could only be true in the eyes of Drachenfels himself, as he is arrogant. Considering it was just after the Warp Gates collapsing, it could be possible due to the fact that 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 time of the "End times".

==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? Daemons 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 soul 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 reformed, and was invaded by Skaven who were channeling its magic into portals to summon Daemons, and were searching the castle for cursed magic relics. The heroes put down the Skaven, although nothing else of note was found within. Disturbingly, the Poisoned Feast is still set up...

With the impending release of [[The End Times]], the 2014 big apocalyptic event for [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]], it looks like GW have finally convinced Newman to release a likely updated, rewritten version of Drachenfels, who is getting re-added 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. 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 deciding 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. In fact, this petty dickery 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 gets to personally possess Luthor Huss, Witch Hunter 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.

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