Von Carstein - The Reign of Vlad

The Reign of Vlad

The history of perhaps the most infamous vampire in the Warhammer world is not known, until the point he arrived at Drakenhof Castle, the ancestral home of the Elector Count of Sylvania. Manfred Von Carstein claimed to be present during the reign of Sigmar, when the vampires that would become the Von Carsteins were ordered back into the service of Nagash, who was preparing a massive invasion of the Empire to recover his missing crown. The vampires refused, and in return, Nagash cursed all vampires- for refusing to come to his aid, all vampires would forever be driven back by the power of Sigmar. Since then, faith in Sigmar has been sufficient to drive back vampires, in a manner similar to how the Christian cross drives back vampires in our own worlds folk tales.

Sylvania had, since the beginning of Imperial record, been an inhospitable and dangerous place, with the majority of the land covered in dark and ominous forests. Its soil was poor and the land barely produced enough food to feed the people who lived there. Although it was an Imperial province, it was regarded as a barbaric place. It was already reputed as a place where the dead did not rest easily, as well as a place where evil necromancers and sorcerers persecuted in the rest of the Empire gathered to find refuge. Many of its great castles and towers were built in places where dark magic gathered in its strongest form. At the time of Vlad's arrival, the province of Sylvania was ruled over by the evil and corrupt Otto von Drak, the head of the von Drak family and the father of Vlad's future wife. He was a deranged man that would order the execution of peasants simply to prove a point, and demanded unbelievably high taxes, when he remembered to have it done in between bouts of violent madness. He had as much influence over his realm as one of the peasants he terrorised, as the petty nobles ignored his authority. He hated them all, and had no sons to succeed him; his only heir was his beautiful, cruel and malevolent daughter, Isabella. Otto refused to marry his daughter off, fearing one of his rivals might use her claim to Sylvania to usurp him. He swore on his deathbed that he would rather marry his daughter to a demon than let his hated brother Leopold inherit the throne.

In the year 1797 the Count died without a male heir. Before his death, Vlad arrived at Drakenhof, Otto's castle, and asked for Isabella's hand in marriage. Desperate to stop his rivals seizing his land on his death, Otto agreed, and Vlad and Isabella were married minutes before Otto died. Vlad thus seized the province; his first command was to have Leopold von Drak hurled from Drakenhof's battlements. Most of the other noble families objected to the thought of having an outsider rule them, but were quickly silenced, and under Vlad's iron grip the province of Sylvania prospered. The other Counts of the Empire looked on with indifference at the changes, since the von Carstein seemed a far better ruler than the old von Drak family, who were suspected of the crime of using black magic and daemon worship, and for two hundred years, Vlad ruled over Sylvania.

Sometime around this period, Isabella fell ill from wasting sickness, and Vlad became struck with grief at the thought of losing his wife (for what had started between them as a marriage of convenience swiftly blossomed into unholy love, and the pair had become confidants in each other and all but inseparable). Isabella begged Vlad to give her the Blood Kiss so they could be together for eternity. Vlad, however, was disgusted and horrified at the suggestion: he loved his wife too much to turn Isabella into a monster like himself. As Isabella's condition worsened, Vlad realised he could not endure eternity without her, and so reluctantly granted Isabella the Blood Kiss.

In the year 2010, Vlad stood atop the battlements of Drakenhof Castle, and recited from the Nine Books of Nagash. Soon a vast horde of Undead stood ready to obey Vlad's commands. He had thrown down the gauntlet to the Empire, marking the start of the Vampire Wars. Vlad promptly sacked Stirland and ravaged the Ostermark. After these victories, Vlad turned his gaze toward Middenland, and for forty years, his armies rampaged across the land. Many times during the fighting, through luck or heroism, Vlad was slain in battle: unfortunately for the Empire, Vlad wore the Von Carstein Ring, a talisman of phenomenal regenerative power that allowed him to recover from even the most mortal wounds: examples of this included the battle of Bluthof, where Von Carstein fell with five lances piercing him and the Count of Ostland's Runefang buried to the hilt in his heart, yet was seen ordering the crucifixion of prisoners three days later, or at Bogenhafen, where he returned to conquer the town, despite his decapitation by a lucky cannon shot less than an hour before. The most infamous occasion came at the Battle of Schwartzhafen in 2041, when Von Carstein was cut down by Jerek Kruger, Grand Master of the Knights of the White Wolf: however, a year later, Vlad returned to exact his revenge on Kruger, killing him at the gates of the city of Middenheim. The army of Middenland fled to the city and destroyed the drawbridges, saving themselves from Vlad's fury, but leaving a clear path for him to attack the heart of the Empire: the Reikland.

In 2051, Vlad laid siege to Altdorf, his armies swollen during the long years of fighting the Imperial armies. The siege lasted for many months, and the Imperial hope began to wane. However, Grand Theogonist Wilhelm the Third refused to surrender, and spurred the soldiers on for one more battle. The night before, Wilhelm had dispatched Felix Mann, the greatest thief of the age, to steal Vlad's fabled ring and source of his immortality (some say that Wilhelm learned of the ring from a traitor within Vlad's own camp-Mannfred). After slipping by the curiously inactive guards, Mann stole the ring, leaving Vlad vulnerable; after he stole the ring, Mann disappeared and was never seen again. When he woke the next day and found the ring gone, Vlad furiously ordered a final, full-scale assault on the walls. As the vampires swept aside all who stood against them, Wilhelm confronted the Vampire Lord atop the very walls of Altdorf. Vlad swiftly gained the upper hand, fatally wounding Wilhelm. The priest saw Sigmar's people beginning to waiver in the face of evil, and the Vampire before him howling with triumph. With a prayer to Sigmar on his lips, Wilhelm summoned his last reserve and charged Von Carstein, resolving to destroy Von Carstein by sacrificing himself. Even as Wilhelm took Vlad's blade through his chest, he seized Von Carstein and bore him over the ramparts. Both of them, man and monster were impaled on the stakes placed below the battlements, Vlad landing first, Wilhelm landing on top, driving the vampire down further. With a terrible scream, the Count died, slain for the final time.

Vlad's Undead army crumbled without his power to guide them, and the few surviving vampires fled quickly to Sylvania, fearing the Empire's reprisal. Vlad's camp was looted by the Imperials, and among the remains were found Vlad's copies of the Liber Mortis and the Nine Books of Nagash: these were taken by the Temple of Sigmar and locked away in the temple's deepest vaults. The last casualty of the Siege of Altdorf was Isabella, who, rather than carrying on through eternity without her beloved husband, impaled herself on a stake and shriveled to dust, right in front of the eyes of the Altdorf Pretender Ludwig and his bodyguards.

Ludwig wished to press on to Sylvania and exterminate the surviving vampires before they could recover, but political rivals, fearing Ludwig would use the popularity garnered from the victory to declare himself Emperor, put the Empire back into the state of near-civil war it had been in for centuries. As the Empire's attention turned away from them, the surviving progeny of Von Carstein hid in Sylvania, licking their wounds and waiting for their chance to rise again. That the Empire's leaders hadn't united and crushed the vampire threat when they had the chance would come back to haunt them...