The Vampire Wars

There is a special dread reserved for a war you cannot win by killing. When the von Carstein vampires marched out of Sylvania, the Empire learned it the hard way: every soldier struck down on the field rose again before dawn to fight for the enemy who had slain him. The Vampire Wars were not a single campaign but a long, generational nightmare, three deathless counts in succession bleeding the greatest nation of men white. That the Empire endured at all is a wonder. That it very nearly did not is the reason Sylvania is still a name spoken with a shudder, and why the cult of Sigmar burns its dead to ash to this very day.

The Curse of Sylvania

Sylvania was always a grim place — a gallows-haunted province of black forests, crumbling manors, and villages that barred their doors at dusk. Its misery has a single root, and that root runs back to Nagash, the first necromancer of ancient Nehekhara, whose invention of the dark art of raising the dead poisoned the whole world's relationship with death. The secrets he unleashed spread far from the desert where they were born, and certain mortals who drank of a cursed elixir became the first vampires: immortal, beautiful, terrible, and forever hungry. In gloomy Sylvania such creatures found the perfect kingdom, and the Vampire Counts made it their own.

Vlad and the Long Deception

The first and in many ways the greatest of them was Vlad von Carstein. He did not announce himself with fire and slaughter. Instead he arrived as a nobleman, married the dying heiress Isabella, and quietly made himself Count of Sylvania, ruling for years before the Empire understood what manner of thing sat upon that throne. Vlad possessed a ring that returned him to unlife however he was slain, and a patience to match his immortality; he was in no hurry at all, for time is the one weapon the deathless will always wield against the living. When at last he cast off the pretence and declared war, the Empire of Man was in one of its periods of bitter division — leaderless, quarrelsome, and utterly unready for an enemy who grew stronger with every battle.

The Siege of the Living

Vlad's campaigns were a masterclass in remorseless attrition. His armies of skeletons and zombies needed no supply, no rest, and no encouragement; wailing spirits and grave-cold knights formed their killing edge, and every fallen Imperial soldier became a fresh recruit clawing up from the mud. Province after province was overrun, until Vlad brought his host to the walls of Altdorf itself and laid siege to the Empire's heart. There the story turned on a single desperate act. So long as Vlad wore his enchanted ring no wound could keep him dead; he had been slain and had risen again more than once already, each impossible return breaking the defenders' hearts anew. But during the final assault upon the capital the ring was stolen from him by a daring foe, and the count who could not truly die was cast down from the high walls at last, finally and permanently slain. The Empire had won a reprieve — but it had bought it with a generation of the dead, and the von Carstein line was not yet ended.

Konrad the Blood Count

Where Vlad had been subtle, his successor was a butcher. Konrad von Carstein seized the bloodline's power and waged war with none of his predecessor's patience or cunning — only a raving, murderous appetite that earned him the name the Blood Count. He terrorised the eastern provinces, slaughtering without strategy or restraint, until his cruelty and his madness cost him even the loyalty of his own undead lieutenants. The great families of the eastern provinces rallied what strength remained to them, and in the end Konrad was run down and destroyed, betrayed and abandoned by his own creatures upon the field of battle, his savage reign remembered as a bloody interlude between two far more dangerous minds. He proved that a vampire's rage alone could burn the Empire; it took a colder intellect to nearly conquer it.

Mannfred the Schemer

That intellect was Mannfred von Carstein, the most cunning of all the counts and the most dangerous. Where Vlad had deceived and Konrad had raged, Mannfred planned. He had spent long years in study, delving into the darkest necromantic lore — knowledge forbidden to any student of the Colleges of Magic, for the raising of the dead draws upon the corrupt dark magic that no sane wizard will touch. Mannfred bided his time, let his enemies believe the vampire threat broken, and then struck at the Empire when it was least prepared, marching a vast host toward Altdorf once more. He was defeated at last at the Battle of Hel Fenn, where the massed armies of the living finally cornered and destroyed him, his body sinking into the black marsh. But a von Carstein is seldom gone for good.

The Shadow That Never Lifts

The Vampire Wars scarred the Empire more deeply than many an invasion of Chaos, precisely because the enemy wore a human face and struck from within the Empire's own borders. Every graveyard became a garrison for the foe; every buried soldier a potential traitor. The wars taught the men of the Empire to burn their dead and salt their tombs, to raise their graveyards upon hallowed ground, and to regard the very art of necromancy as the ultimate blasphemy against Sigmar and Morr alike. Yet the deepest lesson of Sylvania is that its counts are only ever delayed. Mannfred in particular would rise again, and in the world's final reckoning he would play a part more terrible than any siege — a role laid out in our account of the End Times. Until then, the living of the Old World kept their old wisdom close: bury the dead deep, and never trust a nobleman who does not cast a shadow.