Egrimm van Horstmann

Egrimm van Horstmann arrived at the Colleges of Magic as the finest apprentice the Order of Light had ever examined, and everything he did afterward confirmed the judgment: the youngest wizard ever admitted to its inner circle, the youngest ever named Grand Master, a scholar of banishment whose rites drove out daemons no other master dared face. Every word of it was theatre. Van Horstmann had belonged to Tzeentch since before he first set foot in Altdorf, and his entire glittering career was a single patient spell of misdirection cast upon the Empire itself.

From the Grand Master's seat he hollowed the order out — twisting rites by a syllable here and a candle there, leading select acolytes gently astray, feeding the Changer of the Ways the secrets of the very college founded to oppose him. When at last his design ripened, van Horstmann descended to the vaults where the order's founders had chained Baudros, a two-headed dragon of Chaos held for lifetimes beneath the Pyramid of Light. He unbound the wards he was sworn to keep, broke the beast to his will, and burned his way out of Altdorf on its back in full view of the order he had ruled.

He rides Baudros still, a High Sorcerer of Tzeentch in the far north, and it is said the Changer prizes him above champions who have conquered whole kingdoms — for kingdoms are common coin, but a lie sustained flawlessly for a lifetime inside the temple of one's enemy is art. The Order of Light struck his name from its rolls and sealed the records of his tenure, which has achieved exactly what secrecy always achieves: every acolyte in Altdorf knows the story, and every Grand Master since has been watched.