Zacharias The Everliving
Zacharias The Everliving is a Necrarch Vampire Counts character from Warhammer Fantasy.
The Legend
At one point a thief named Zacharias attempted to breach the tower where the head of the Necrarch Bloodline Melkhior (who was possibly the first Necrarch, W'soran, inhabiting his pupil's body) was dwelling and steal a book of Nagash and, impressed that the young man had foiled his magical defenses, Melkhior made Zacharias his pupil. As the years went on, Melkhior/W'soran became more and more insane and would go on Strigoi-like rampages to drain whole cities of blood. Zacharias took advantage of these times to read the book, and when Melkhior/W'soran returned one night and caught him at the act, Zacharias fled.
Zacharias, wounded by the pursuing minions of Melkhior/W'soran, hid in a cave and fell into a restorative hibernation for ten years. When he awoke he found that a Black Dragon had begun to use the cave as a lair. He promptly killed it, drained it's blood which in the manner similar to a Blood Dragon caused him to grow in strength and be cured his Vampiric weaknesses and need to feed on blood. He then reanimated the Dragon's corpse as a mount, then gathered an army and returned to lay siege to the tower. The two battled, and from here the story splits. In one version, Melkhior only narrowly survived the confrontation and fled to plot revenge. In the other, he perished and Zacharias took over as head of the Necrarch Bloodline and organized them into an effective force preparing to attempt to conquer the Empire in a manner similar to the von Carsteins. Either way, Melkhior's treasures and book of Nagash wind up in the hands of Zacharias.
When Nagash comes back, Nagash contacts him for his service, but finds that Zacharias thinks he's his equal. For this insult, Nagash promptly sets his brain on fire in his head and instantly kills him. Guess that answers that question.
On The Tabletop
Zacharias the Everliving once had a model and stats, but has long since been removed from the game and discontinued. If you manage to get a model, you can use Zacharias as a combo spellcasting and combat Master Vampire riding an Undead Dragon. With modification, you could also field the models on foot.
Zacharias was 1015 FUCKING POINTS! That's more expensive than the current Nagash! He also took up not only a Lord slot, but three fucking hero slots too (so you'll almost always be using him in games of 3,000+ points if you are using him at all). For that amount of points you are getting the ability to cast a spell (from him) at 15+ to summon 4D6 skeletons or 4D6+4 Zombies a turn, or to heal 4 wounds on an undead model if you don't want to summon (with an extra +1 to the roll on top of any other modifiers), infinite dispel scrolls (can only use one per enemy magic phase, so if you are playing against two people he gets two scrolls a turn), he knows all the spells of necromancy (essentially making him a LV6 wizard back then) and his staff has a bound necromancy spell to it (Dark Hand of Death) meaning he could churn out 7 spells a turn on his own, he always rides his undead dragon (and with his Necrarch Vampire Lord statline isn't a slouch in combat either) and to top it off, he has a 4+ ward save. Maybe he should be priced next to Nagash after all.
Gallery
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Zacharias the Everliving, usurper to the usurper. His canonicity in the story where W'soran consumed the soul of Melkhior is unknown, but Zacharias is still canon in the army book (remember army book lore trumps Black Library lore).
