Zacharias The Everliving
"I was addicted to hacking, more for the intellectual challenge, the curiosity, the seduction of adventure; not for stealing, or causing damage or writing computer viruses."
- – Kevin Mitnick
Zacharias The Everliving is a Necrarch Vampire Counts character from Warhammer Fantasy.
The Legend[edit | edit source]
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. In the following years, and a nod to One Thousand and One Nights, every night Melkhoir threatened to kill Zacharias the next morning but Zachrias impressed Melkhoir with some new progress or insight into Necromancy, postponing his execution for one more day. During this time, 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 one of these times to read the book Melkhior/W'soran had, so of course that was when Melkhior/W'soran returned and caught him at the act. There was a magical duel but Melkhoir was boosted by the blood and too powerful for Zacharias, who fled.
Zacharias, wounded by the pursuing minions of Melkhior/W'soran, hid in a cave and fell into a restorative hibernation for around ten years. When he awoke he found that a Black Dragon had begun to use the cave as a lair. He found a bit of flesh not armored by scales on the dragon's underbelly and started drinking its blood. Since in Warhammer nothing can wake up if a vampire starts feeding on it in their sleep, over the course of a month he drained the dragon's blood while it slept. This caused him to grow in strength and be cured his Vampiric weaknesses and need to feed on blood (dragon blood confirmed as the cure for a Vampire's thirst for blood in Warhammer). He then reanimated the Dragon's corpse as a mount, gathered an army and returned to lay siege to Melkhoir's/W'soran's tower. The two battled, the fight so fierce the tower was nearly destroyed when they were done 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 (though at some point Mannfred von Carstein or Arkhan the Black got their hands on Zacharias' book of Nagash).
When Nagash came back, he contacted Zacharias for his service, but found that Zacharias considered himself his equal and refused Nagash's summons. For this insult, Nagash promptly set his brain on fire in his head and instantly killed him.
Guess that answers that question.
On The Tabletop[edit | edit source]
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. SAY THAT ONE MORE TIME AND I'LL HAVE THE HEAD OF WHOEVER IS WRITING THIS BLASPHEMY AND FEAST ON HIS SOUL!!!
During mid July 2018 GW briefly released his old model for a week (said week is the 16th to the 23rd). So get him while you can. Which you can't anymore.