Editing Count Noctilus (section)

==The Dreadfleet==
Pretty much immediately, Count Noctilus began creating a coalition of ne'er-do-wells and some of the more evil pirate lords to help dominate the seas: the Dreadfleet. Along with vampirates recruited and created, noctilus counted a colorful cast of zany characters among his lieutenants. The first of these was pretty tame, a ghostly shipmaster and crew Noctilus dominated almost immediately after forming the Bloody Reaver, but there were more wacky ones. His second non-vampire recruit was the chaos dwarf [[Tordrek Hackheart]], notable because, questionably, he was a standard dawi who turned to chaos, not a big-hat assyrian chaos dwarf. He’s got a massive metal kraken that may or may not be alive. Next was a filthy rat. A dead filthy rat. At some point, an orb leviathan’s corpse washed up in the graveyard. Essentially a massive angler fish mashed with a whale, the creatures were fairly rare and incredibly powerful. Noctilus, presumably overjoyed, combined his love of monsters and necromancy(this is a pretty consistent through line for the character. In Dreadfleet, Noctilus can dominate randomly appearing sea monsters and control them for a turn. In Total Warhammer, he buffs large units for his army) and elected to resurrect the beast to aid his fledgling fleet. To his surprise, the newly resurrected beast began firing green lighting at the reaver almost immediately as it was brought to unlife, the unnatural projectiles piercing right through the ancient stonework of the flagship. As it would turn out, the orb leviathan wasn’t alone. Shortly before it died, it had come across a clan Skurvy fleet commanded by one warlord Skretch. Naturally, it devoured Skretch and the rest of his ramshackle navy, and quickly so as to prevent the skaven flotillas from using their warp lighting batteries to full devastating effect. However, in its haste to eat the skaven, it failed to kill all the rats that now found themselves within its stinking guts, Skretch included. The skaven, natural subscribers to the policy of ‘due unto others as you would have others do unto you’, returned the favor of being consumed by eating out the beast from the inside, dooming both beast and stowaways to an ocean death, and a one way ticket to the Galleon’s graveyard. After being resurrected, some base cunning remained within Skretch, who hastily rang his flagship’s still-intact warpstone bell, saving himself and his crew from unholy dominion. Noctilus, impressed, recruited the skaven warlord, now Skretch Half-dead, and his crew to the dreadfleet, along with their warp lighting-bedecked leviathan.

With his hearty crew, Noctilus would raid with impunity striking even at the heart of piracy in the old world, Sartosa, without suffering so much as a single ship lost. This action, however, would draw the ire of Jaego Roth, a sartosan captain who’s family Noctilus’ crew unceremoniously killed. He would go on to assemble the Grand Alliance, and so the events of the Dreadfleet board game would commence. At this point, Noctilus would recruit a final member of the dreadfleet, a Tomb King who sought revenge against the grave robbing Roth. In the novella, Noctilus meets his end. Roth and his mates make it into the Graveyard thanks to his father’s moondial, and after a series of close calls, a grand climax occurs at the Maelstrom's center. The dwarf makes a mid-battle slayer oath after jobbing the whole book, Saltspite gets a mechanical tail, and Tordrek drowns in kraken blood/oil, but none of that concerns Noctilus. For his part, Noctilus duels the elf, Prince Yrellian, first-born of Phoenix King Finubar. Seeking a quick end to the fight, Noctilus baits the Prince by exposing his shoulder, which works [[just as planned]]. Noctilus Grabs the Elf’s overextended arm and sucks the life out of him via spooky magic, before slapping his corpse into the Maelstrom. Unfortunately for the count, the flashy maneuver had placed a large rent in his armor where the elf’s blade had landed. Nearby, Captain Roth had managed to fight off a trio of scythe wielding wraiths(with the help of the ghost of Yrellian's brother), and Noctilus began to move in for the kill. Roth, noticing the vampire's sundered armor, fired off a shot with with his handy triple gun, which tore through the Vampire's chest. The shot managed to blow a hole into Noctilus' chest and expose the vampire’s still heart, but Noctilus continued his approach unfazed, cackling all the while being healed rapidly by the powers of the Maelstorm. Seizing the brief opportunity, the dying Roth was able fire a stake from his inspector gadget steam hand(one he had been whittling for most of the book), which pierced right through the Count's newly exposed heart and pinned Noctilus against a nearby mast. Roth then, in his dying moments, took up a cursed sword that was perpetually on fire and proceeded to cut off Noctilus’ head, sticking the blade down the Count’s gaping neck for good measure. Roth would die moments later, but Noctilus was no more…

===Total War: WARHAMMER===
Or was he? In Total War, Warhammer 2, Noctilus is back! Is the book not canon? Is it an alternate timeline? Did Noctilus and arnessa escape from the Golden Magus’ bottle ships and return to (un)life? Was there a severe lack of interesting named characters for the Vampire Coast and CA just kinda decided to throw together any obscure character who slightly fits the theme (probably)? Who knows! Who cares! You decide! All that matters is that Noctilus is playable and he kicks ass. Battles wise He’s a lore of vamps caster who can be mounted on a moving artillery piece that thrives equally in melee and is thus ridiculously reliable and competent in single player, and on the campaign side he buffs your monsters and makes Necrofex doomstacks even better, while also having an impregnable capital. He’s a little facerolly but a lot of fun regardless. His Quest item is Roth’s moondial, the text of which leads to more lore questions than answers. It also makes him very fast on the campaign map, which is nice. It is not worth noting(but it will be noted anyway) that in the art and novella, he uses a basket hilt sword, and in Total Warhammer he uses a halberd. CA seems to be obsessed with the halberd weapon on the same level with [[C.S. Goto]] to [[Multilaser]], giving it anti-large bonus and charge defences, two traits that weren't presented on the table top. [[Prince Imrik|Imrik]] is also seen wielding halberd on foot instead of his favorite star lance. The connection between them is that both of them had no model nor tabletop rules). It hardly matters however, because he’ll undoubtedly be using the necrofex triple submachine cannon for the majority of a campaign anyway.