• Affably Evil: The setting paints many vampires as being like this. Apparently turning into a vampire heightens and inflames natural passions, adding a dark, predatory edge to a person, but leaves their personality mostly unchanged. The problem is the natural passions of humanity in this world kind of tend towards the crazy anyway, so a warrior with a violent edge becomes bloodthirsty or a flirtatious person becomes a seductive assassin and so on, leading to conflict with each other and everyone else.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Vampires are bloodthirsty creatures who, above all else, desire to instill their dominance and power over mortals and will occasionally go as far as to terrorize others for their own amusement. Those who were recently turned note that they seem to have lost the instinctive aversion to gore and death, allowing them to tear opponents to bloody chunks and stand among the corpses without discomfort. However, while the playable vampires on the tabletop are undoubtedly evil, this is not actually the case in-lore; while Vampires are generally feared, some have displayed positive qualities and even noble aspirations. A rare few vampires have also been shown to be unambiguously good and some of the worst are still more than capable of feeling affectionate love and some degree of compassion. Drachenfels even makes it very clear that there's no requirement for vampires, or at least attractive female vampires, to be unethical in their feeding, since there are a plethora of men in every tavern in the Empire who have fantasies of being fed on by a vampire, although by the same token it and the other Genevieve stories are relatively old and marked by other forms of Early-Installment Weirdness in various matters.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Vampires ultimately respect only strength, and their place in the hierarchy is decided by their power. The instant a leader seems weak, their subordinates will attempt to destroy them and take their place. This is especially common among the Von Carsteins.
• Back from the Dead: Practically every unit save the Vampires, Necromancers and ghouls are deceased creatures and people brought back to undeath by necromancy to serve their dark masters. The Invocation of Nehek and Raise Dead spells even allow to bring back some recently slain warriors very easily mid-battle.
• Barred from the Afterlife: The dark magic that powers a vampire changes the nature of their very souls, tying them completely to their physical bodies. This prevents them from entering any of the normal afterlives of the setting, but makes it not only possible, but relatively easy to resurrect them so long as you can find a surviving piece of their original body and know the proper dark rites. A vampire can be resurrected to unlife centuries after their last death, but if they remain dead for too long, their soul will slowly dissipate into particles of dark magic. Once this happens, they're gone for good.
• Bat Out of Hell: The Vampire Counts make extensive use of undead batlike monsters, from bird of prey-size Fell Bats and dragon-sized Terrorgheists to the Vargheists and Varghulfs, vampires who have degenerated into bestial, batlike predators — flightless ones, in the Varghulfs' case.
• Bat People:
  • Vargheists are monstrous bat people created from von Carstein Vampires that lost out in their family's endless internal plotting. Denied blood for decades, and tainted with diluted Dark Magic, these unfortunates grow in size and sprout leathery wings from their forelimbs as their features twist into fearsome bat-like faces with mouths filled with murderous fangs. Driven mad by their thirst, Vargheists desire nothing more than to feed and will follow their creators into battle so that they can feast on the blood of the enemy.
  • Varghulfs are Vampires that have given in to the bestial side of their nature, forsaking any semblance of humanity to run with Dire Wolves and Ghoulkin. With heavily muscled bodies, winged forearms and nightmarish bat-like features, Varghulfs fight with bestial fury, ripping apart their prey with dagger-like fangs and feasting on the bloody remains.
• The Beastmaster: Vampire Counts can dominate the lesser minds of beast and use undead versions of them to aid their armies in battle, from Savage Wolves to Bat Out of Hell to even undead dragons. The Vampiric Power: Summon Creatures of the Night buffs the Invocation of Nehek spell on beasts, represented as the Vampire having an easy time calling more of these creatures to them in order to replace the fallen beasts.
• Benevolent Boss: Some Vampire Counts are, quite surprisingly, quite benevolent to their mortal servants. A lot of it is rooted in Pragmatic Villainy; you see, humans who are willing to associate with vampires are rare, can operate out in daylight and in plain sight, and (unlike lesser undead) can do so independently and for extended periods of time, making them valuable agents. The Renfield can procure supplies, kidnap victims, infiltrate towns or army camps, move or guard a coffin during the day — all things that an enslaved thrall cannot do. Using these humans as Cannon Fodder or treating them cruelly is a waste of their advantages, and worse, emboldens the living against the Midnight Aristocracy. Vlad von Carstein was an especially notable example of this in practice, as he had no patience for fools but rewarded loyal and competent servants generously, and did not punish anyone who acted wholly in duty and just made an honest mistake or was hopelessly outmatched.
• The Berserker: Some Vampires are said to be so bloodthirsty they fight relentlessly until the enemy is utterly dead. This aspect is represented by the Vampiric Power: Red Fury which allows to make additional attacks for each unsaved wounds caused.
• Blood Magic: Some of the Vampires' spells are inevitably tied to blood, one of which is the process of turning someone into a Vampire, which involves giving the future Vampire some blood from a vampiric sire.
• Character Exaggeration: On top of inheriting some traits from their individual bloodlines, becoming a vampire results in an exaggeration of one's baseline mortal personalities. Traits like minor anger issues can become berserker rage, an interest in a subject can become a dangerous obsession, ambition becomes megalomania, compassion can become a hero complex, ect. This effect explains, in-part, why vampires are usually so quick to become monstrous villains after transformation. Most vampires are very careful to select their would-be childer based in part on what traits they believe would be the most useful or agreeable to themselves or their factions. If they overlook even a seemingly-minor personality flaw, they could accidentally create a very dangerous new enemy.
• Combat Chariot:
  • The Black Coach is a carriage, carrying the remains of a Vampire, driven by a wraith and drawn by grisly Nightmares, that crushes and scythes down the enemies' ranks.
  • The Corpse Cart is a wagon drawn into battle by the restless dead. Since the 'beasts' of burden are zombies instead of horses, the Corpse Cart is significantly slower and weaker in combat than the average chariot and serves as a support unit with its abilities.
  • Coven Thrones and Mortis Engines are bone constructs held aloft by a horde of spirits, including ghostly horses that pull them into battle like chariots.
• Cool Chair: Some Vampires, especially Lahmians, consider themselves Too Important to Walk near their undead minions so they sit upon a Coven Throne. Coven Thrones are huge thrones made of bones and carried by bound spirits.
• Crapsack World:
  • Even compared to the rest of the Old World, life in Vampire-ruled Sylvania sucks. The brooding forests are filled with bloodthirsty monsters and vampire lords maintain seats of power inside haunted castles, presiding over (and preying on) a helpless populace of sullen, poor and often-mutated villagers who scratch out a living in run-down communities, herding skinny goats by day and hiding behind heavy doors laden with multiple bolts and religious fetishes by night.
  • Sylvanian houses are often built with enormous spiky metal frames built into the thatch roofs. Because this is a country that is home to rottweiler-sized bats that hunt during the day as well as at night and can strip a man clean of his flesh in moments, and dragonsized bats, that are known to prey on bears, pegasi, demigryphs and human riders on horseback. And the vampires sometimes raise these monstrosities from death to give a bit of extra muscle to their armies or get a sweet ride. If you are a chiroptophobe then Sylvania is not your worst nightmare, but your every nightmare.
  • Even the land itself is shaped into a waking nightmare by dark magic and wyrdstone corruption. The country just so happens to sit on a part of the world where the winds of Shyish criss-cross and blow fiercely. Long ago, a massive Skaven army tried to invade Sylvania after a plague killed 90% of the population, and a Well-Intentioned Extremist named Frederick Vanhels decided to fight the Skaven by raising Sylvania's dead to fight alongside the tiny living army Sylvania could still muster. Then his jealous apprentice murdered him and most of his giant skeleton army still roams the countryside, with nobody to flick the off-switch. And then the vampires moved it and it got worse.
  • Mousillon combines all the crapsack of haunted Sylvania with a count who was definitely not human, giant mutant frogs that swallow people whole, fetid plague-ridden swamps, and — worst of all — the unspeakable, mind-shattering horror of... the Bretonnian class system. Notably in WFRP, "Mousillonian Peasant" is one of the very few starting careers where you don't have to provide the GM an explanation for why your character gave up their past life and became an adventurer; nobody, and we really do mean absolutely nobody would stay in Mousillon if they had any other option.
• Dark Is Evil: The night-crawling monsters leading hordes of undead do not want to do you good, unsurprisingly.
• Death Is Cheap: Killing a vampire is possible, though it's easier said than done and most of them have magical contingencies in the event. The most powerful treat death as a trivial and temporary inconvenience in their grand schemes.
• Dem Bones: Skeleton warriors are a common sight in Vampire Counts armies, being long dead warriors corrupted by winds of magic. They are marginally better than freshly raised zombies due to their use of weapons and shields.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Exaggerated. Vampire Counts armies make no use of any missile weapons at all — no guns, no crossbows and no bows. It makes sense, as the bulk of their armies consist of incorporeal spirits, feral monsters, and shambling corpses who can barely grasp the idea of walking over to warm meat to bite chunks out of it. And the centuries-old vampire elites themselves are likely too arrogant and ossified in their thinking to ever consider picking up a new-fangled weapon invented well past their time as mortals, and besides, they are probably better off fighting up close and personal with their enemies considering they have Super-Strength and death is a trivial inconvenience for them anyway.
• Dracolich: Vampires occasionally venture east of the World's Edge Mountains into the Plain of Bones, where dying dragons come to their final rest. They then use their fell powers to resurrect one of the dragon corpses and mount it to battle. Just as powerful as in life, the Zombie Dragons replace their Breath Weapon with a Pestilential Breath which is quite weak but has a penalty to Armour Saves. Moreover, their corpses are surrounded by huge swarms of flies. As a result, enemy models in base contact with the Zombie Dragons suffer a penalty to hit.
• The Dreaded: Vampires are particularly terrifying, which is represented through several Vampiric Powers. Fear Incarnate forces nearby enemies to Reroll Fear tests and cancels the Hold Your Ground effect from Standard Bearer. Likewise a Vampire with Aura Of Dark Majesty is said to exhude a particular dreadful aura that intimidates enemy by making them realize how inferior they are, inflicting a -1 penalty to Leadership to nearby enemies.
• Elite Mook: Grave Guard are lesser wights that act as elite infantry for Vampire Counts armies. Resembling ancient and heavily armoured Skeleton Warriors, Grave Guard retain far more of their martial skill than their lesser brethren and wield enchanted blades that can slay all but the most fearsome of opponents with a single strike^note represented by the Killing Blow special rule in later editions of the Game.
• Evil Weapon: The cursed magic weapon Skabscrath is said to have an evil will that forces those who draw it to commit truly vile acts. The blade is possessed of an insatiable bloodlust that will drive its wielder into a frenzy during battle and will kill the character that carries it if they haven't killed at least one enemy model by the end of a game.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Vampires see humans as little better than servants and food, but some may grow fond of a faithful Renfield in the same way a human might come to favour a loyal pet. Humans, for their part, attack vampires on sight except in rare and extreme circumstances.
  • To the average Imperial citizen, the mortal denizens of Sylvania are debatably even lower than Bretonnian peasants: pathetic creatures who bow to the whims of morbid undead fiends and are little better than the flesh-eating ghouls that infest their haunted land (and it doesn't help that many Sylvanians turn to cannibalism by grim necessity). Sylvanians have many historical grievance against Sigmar's Empire, and see them as privileged and soft, unable to bear Sylvania's chilling winters or do without new-fangled firearms and the aid of other races.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Sylvania is a fantasy version of medieval Eastern Europe and Wallachia under Vlad the Impaler, as viewed through Gothic Horror, particularly Hammer Horror movies.
• Fearless Undead: The Vampire Counts have the particularity of being near immune to Psychology Tests, making them "Unbreakable" in the tabletop game. This is justifiable as the undead that aren't mindless puppets are also freakishly strong and overconfident. This isn't to say that they're completely immune to fear, but it takes a lot to spook them.
• Feral Vampires: Vargheists and Varghulfs are monsters who were once normal vampires, but succumbed to their bloodthirst and no longer functional as anything but indulgent beasts.
• Flight: Vampires with the Flying Horror Vampiric Power have the ability to Fly, either because they transform into bats or because they already possess bat wings.
• Game Face: Almost all vampires have some level of shapeshifting ability, allowing them to pass for human most of the time before revealing their more monstrous aspect when angry or at war to strike fear in their enemies.
• Gothic Horror: The main source of the Vampire Counts aesthetics is gothic literature and Hammer Horror films. Vlad in particular greatly resembles Christopher Lee as Dracula.
• Holy Burns Evil: Symbols of Sigmar and several other deities can be used to repel Vampires - a priest proffering a holy symbol will generate a shield out of the Winds of Magic that can resist a Vampire. A Vampire attempting to pass starts a contest of wills - should the Vampire win, he can breach the shield.
• Horror Hunger: The Vampire Counts are all consumed by a need to drink blood which they usually try their hardest to counter as they don’t want to devolve into ravening beasts. The youngest vampires have the hardest time controlling it, with those who first awakened after their transformation falling into a mindless rampage until they drain enough blood from nearby mortals to regain their senses. The blood hunger becomes less of an issue over time for vampires (sufficiently experienced and willful vampires can get by with only a handful of feedings per year), but it never fully goes away and must be carefully managed for their entire existence. Vampires who are denied their blood devolve into powerful but brutish Vargheists while vampires who fully give in to their bloodlust become the bestial Varghulfs, representing the dangers of both under and overfeeding for a vampire.
• Hypnotic Eyes: Beguile represents a Vampire whose gaze can entrance foes. It forces an enemy in a challenge to pass a Leadership test with a -3 modifier or reroll successful To Hit rolls.
• Immortal Immaturity: Many vampires succumb to this as a side-effect of their condition. They're usually credited with a "predator's laziness," making them unwilling to put in the work necessary to achieve much beyond immediate (by their standards) goals. They also have a tendency to indulge in hedonistic behaviours, a penchant for emotional instability, and an inability to forge healthy, meaningful relationships with others (though there are exceptions to all of these). Even Vlad von Carstein, one of the oldest vampires in existence, had a notorious Hair-Trigger Temper whenever things didn't go his way.
• Keystone Army: The General of any Vampire Counts army is explained to be the one bending every undead to his will and providing the magic that sustains their dead bodies, so killing him will result in the army crumbling away too. However, any other Lord or Hero unit with the Lore of Vampires can take over as the next general.
• Lightning Bruiser: Vampires are among the most fearsome Heroes and Lords units of the Undead, having high stats in every category on top of a slight healing factor. For instance, a Vampire Lord has a Weapon Skill and Initiative of 7, Strength and Toughness 5 with 3 Wounds and 5 attacks, without magic weapons or other allottable skills. The only (comparatively) ordinary Lords who could reasonably beat that are the famously powerful and duel-oriented Chaos Lords and Greater Daemons of Chaos. Moreover, several Vampiric Powers allow to characterize Vampires into leaning toward a specialty. Some Nigh-Invulnerable Vampires thanks to foul magic or exceptional constitution can be represented with Curse Of The Revenant which adds +1 Wound to their profile. One can also emphasize the Super-Speed of their Vampire by giving them Quickblood, meaning they Always Strike First. Finally, the Super-Strength of a Vampire may be highlighted through Master Strike, signifying the Vampire is so strong a well-placed blow can kill anyone and they may perform a single attack with Heroic Killing Blow
• Magic Knight: Yet another reason Vampires are so powerful is that they combine a powerful body with a natural affinity for channeling Dark Magic towards Necromantic effects. Many Vampires are studied sorcerers to a lesser or greater extent, but even the feral Strigoi are capable of forming simple Necromantic spells by sheer instinct.
• Medieval Stasis: Even though gunpowder has been a staple of warfare within the Empire for many years, Sylvania's mortal denizens still treat arquebuses, cannons and mortars as suspicious and unproven articles of war, preferring instead hand-drawn bows and crossbows and mechanical siege weapons, and Sylvania doesn't really have a large established industrial base to make any advanced weapons anyway. It is also noted by Imperial visitors that Sylvanians have a weird fashion sense, still wearing codpieces and other articles of clothing that went out of fashion in the Empire decades, if not centuries ago. Vampires themselves also use nothing more advanced than strictly medieval weapons like swords and axes.
• Naked Nutter: Ghouls have been driven insane by generations of cannibalism and necrophagia, and have lost so much of their mental faculties to that they barely understand the concept of weapons or clothing. Consequently, most go into battle wearing nothing more than loincloths.
• The Necrocracy:
  • Sylvania is currently under the unchallenged rule of the Vampire Counts. Whatever population of living peasants is now too afraid to cross the forests to get out of Sylvania and are forced to live beneath their undead lords, hoping they won’t catch their attention.
  • In Vlad's time, soldiers of the Empire were horrified to see that Sylvanian footsoldiers were marching shoulder-to-shoulder with the reanimated corpses of their own people, with a vampire general at their head. After Vlad's defeat, the vampires fled into hiding and Sylvanians were put under the rule of Stirland's bastard lines. Their rule was so ineffectual, resentful and brutal that when the vampires returned and threw the Empire out, the Sylvanians welcomed them back!
• Necromancer: Vampires have an intrinsic ability to work the Winds of Magic, and to shape Dark Magic to Necromantic effects, even if wholly untrained in the sorcerous arts. Many study their dark branch of sorcery in an academic fashion, much as High Elven Mages and Collegiate Wizards of the Empire do, though the energies the Vampires channel are far less wholesome.
• Not Always Evil: It's exceptionally rare, but it is possible to find vampires who are not only honorable, but actually moral by mortal standards. The most benevolent of which can live among mortals and seek out less-unsavory methods of sating their hunger than feeding on mortals, accepting the personal discomfort doing so brings them. These renegades are looked down upon by more orthodox vampires and may well be killed for their perceived "weakness". Mortals who learn of their nature are even less merciful than other vampires: an, admittedly understandably, very small percentage of mortals would easily accept the idea of a "good vampire". More often than not, they'll either bring down the Witch Hunters on the vampire or form a mob to burn them at the stake themselves. For a variety of reasons, these rare benign vampires have to go out of their way to avoid attracting attention if they hope to last.
• Our Banshees Are Louder: Tomb Banshees are an available unit of the Vampire Counts armies, being the restless spirits of sorceresses specifically. Otherwise they fit the trope perfectly.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Spirit Hosts are spirits of the dead attracted to the dark magic of the undead, which are then enslaved by the nearest vampire.
• Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Crypt Ghouls are former human cannibals driven away and forced to live underground to feed on buried corpses. They were then corrupted by madness and dark magic into their current bestial state. Crypt Ghouls may occasionally be given permission to drink a very desperate Vampire’s blood to turn them into Crypt Horrors, acting as shock troops.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Refined, powerful undead who see themselves as undisputedly higher lifeforms than their "cattle". They come in several distinct bloodlines, but all are unaging, magically powerful, superhumanly strong and unable to subsist on anything but the blood of the living. They have a smattering of all the classic vampire weaknesses, but suffer them to wildly varying degrees between bloodlines and individuals.
  • Individual vampires can vary heavily between one another. This is can be due to differences they had as mortals, but it can also be a result of blood mixing. When a vampire feeds off another, they absorb part of their victim's bloodline traits, making them at least partially a mixture of the bloodlines involved. They pass this on to any vampires they sire. Over the centuries, this process continued until nearly all vampires are mixed to some degree with their official bloodline being more or less whatever expresses itself most dominantly. This can result in members who are ostensibly of the same bloodline having wildly different abilities and weaknesses.
• Our Wights Are Different: Wight Kings are a close-combat oriented and cheaper alternative to Vampires, being the raised cadavers of ancient warlords who have retained their personalities but gained undead powers.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Zombies are maybe the most common troops used by a Vampire. They are exclusively of the “recently raised through necromancy” kind and are overall a really cheap but pitiful unit, their only strengths being how easy it is to replenish their ranks and just how many of them are in a given mob.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: While the game system itself means that a character is more powerful the higher their rank, this is particularly prominent in Vampire Counts armies. In many editions of the game, Vampires are some of the most powerful individual generic characters from any army with strong close combat abilities and reasonable magical talent. The core infantry units of their undead armies, however, are near mindless undead minions that mostly rely on their numbers and their ability to resurrect their casualties to swamp their enemies more than skill-at-arms.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: Technically of the Empire. Sylvania started out as an imperial province that Vlad von Carstein legally inherited from Otto von Drak. In essence, Sylvania is basically a rogue province of the Empire that is trying to take over the rest of it.
  • Also notably of Nehekhara, both with Nagash's original betrayal of broader Nehekharan society, and later Lahmia's nobility creating the Vampires and dancing the same dance Nagash and his disciples did years before.
• Savage Wolves: Dire Wolves are undead wolves acting as outflanking units for the Vampire Counts, protecting the flanks from cavalry units or hunting vulnerable ones.
• Shout-Out: The Von Carsteins are named after the title character of Carmilla, whose surname is Karnstein. The name Vlad and the title of Count are obvious references to Dracula.
• Stronger with Age: The older vampires get, the stronger they get. Vlad, in addition to being the strongest of the Von Carsteins, was also the oldest. Similarly, vampires are always weaker than the one who sired them, meaning that the more recently created vampires are invariably far inferior to the first generations.
• Super-Empowering: The Blood Kiss is a mysterious ritual that allows vampires to create another vampire. The exact details of the ritual are deliberately left ambiguous and implied to vary based on the bloodline of the sire, but the basic steps seem to involve draining the target to death, giving the would-be vampire some of the sire's cursed blood, and leaving them to rise from the dead as a new vampire several days later.
• Super-Scream: Tomb Banshees and Terrorgheists have access to terrifying shrieking abilities that either demoralize the enemy or outright kill them from the sound.
• Überwald:
  • Sylvania is probably the bleakest province of the Empire, from the poor soils to the tortured forests full of roaming abominations and a consistently bad weather. The Vampires intend to keep it that way too. It has many charming local traditions, like building iron spikes in the thatch of their roofs to stop the things in the night from attacking, and burying the dead face down so they bite the dirt rather than the living.
  • Mousillon is Bretonnia is a dreary and fetid swampland where most of the people died years ago from a plague, and the three most common professions among the people who still live there are "frog catcher", "goods smuggler" and "grave robber". Not that the dead need much help getting out of their graves in this cursed land. It's currently ruled by a fallen Grail Knight named Mallobaude, and the previous duke was completely insane and probably not human. The rest of Bretonnia has abandoned the place, building a Cordon Sanitaire on the borders to stop anyone leaving, lest the taint of Mousillon spread to the rest of fair Bretonnia.
• The Undead: An entire faction of them. While other forms of undead exist, vampires are the ones with the power, sentience, and ambition to actually seek out other undead to dominate and form entire armies with them.
• The Vamp: All Vampiresses who try to blend into human society become this. Most notable are the Lahmian vampires who created a network of courtesan spies under Neferata’s control. This aspect is represented on the tabletop by some Vampiric abilities like Beguile or the Coven Thrones whose Lahmian Vampiress occupants can enthrall a unit near them.
• Vampire Monarch: There is a reason they are called "Counts". The Vampires, especially those of the Von Carstein bloodline, mimic noblemen by living in castles and ruling their own province of Sylvania. The Vampire Wars trilogy describes the Von Carsteins' repeated invasions of the Empire in order to become a true undead monarch of humanity.
• Vampires Are Rich: Played straight by Von Carsteins and Lahmians, the two bloodlines that take on the trappings of old-fashioned aristocracy. The Blood Dragon bloodline take on warriors rather than nobility, and these metaphorical and literal Blood Knights are too busy travelling the land to find their next Worthy Opponent to enjoy their riches. Necrachs usually live far from civilization and whatever riches they possess, they cannot flaunt or enjoy; and Strigoi are Feral Vampires who tend to live in graveyards and mausoleums with ghouls, averting this trope entirely.
• Vampiric Draining: Vampires get strength from drinking blood from anyone. They all have The Hunger rule, allowing them to regain a lost Wound on a 6+ roll whenever they kill a model in close quarters.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Many von Carstein vampires have a wolf form from the day they're turned and some of them like to hunt or even fight in that form. Older Lahmians can learn a cat version (different individuals get different species, most are big cats but at least one becomes a large housecat) but they generally treat it as a minor amusement of little practical worth.
• Warrior Undead: Wights are the skeletal remains of ancient warriors, raised from their burial mounds by vampires and necromancers in order to exploit the skill in arms that still clings to them, and typically possess greater intelligence and independence than regular undead.
  • The husks of common warriors are grouped into units of grave guard, resembling skeletons clad in rusted armor and wielding ancient weapons. Horsemen, buried together with their mounts, are instead raised as black knights to serve as terrifying, armored cavalry.
  • The remains of chieftains and heroes, still clad in their ancient finery and wielding the weapons they did in life, become the much more powerful wight kings, which retain enough intelligence and combat prowess to serve as independent heroes instead of rank-and-file troops.
• Weakened by the Light: Vampires are weakened by sunlight, and cannot access their full powers under the Sun. Some Vampires are uniquely vulnerable and may be damaged or even burned to death by the Sun. As a result, many Vampire generals manipulate the weather to block out the Sun so they can access their power in full.
• We Have Reserves: Played interestingly. Vampires will happily swamp their enemies in zombie and skeleton fodder, oftentimes even reusing the same corpses many times in the same fight. They'll even treat themselves as expendable because they often employ magical means to resurrect themselves and even if these means fail, they can still eventually come back from their dust through the efforts of some foolish necromancer. They are, however, very careful with the lives of their living servants; few among the living willingly associate with the undead, and their ability to operate in plain sight (and daylight!) and further their undead patron's interests (infiltrating towns and cities, guarding and moving coffins, procuring supplies or victims, etc.) make them highly valuable. This tends to be bad news for a Vampire Vannabe working for immortality; their master can get a new vampire anywhere, but a competent human servant is irreplaceable.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: When the Black Death ravaged the Old World in 1111 IC, Sylvania was the worst place to be hit. Nine out of every ten people in Sylvania succumbed and died of the plague, and then a warpstone rain over the land drew the attention of the monstrous Skaven. With only a tiny army of living soldiers left, a priest of Morr named Frederick Vanhel made an unspeakable choice: using a necromantic spell to raise Sylvania's myriad dead, Vanhel led a colossal zombie army and crushed the Skaven invaders, driving them back into the warrens with their tails between their legs. Sylvania was saved, but this would sadly be the last victory the Sylvanian people would ever know: Vanhel was soon after murdered by a jealous apprentice and his army of zombies did not go away, the rest of the Empire was horrified by his actions, and then vampires took over the province and claimed it as their own.
• Wreathed in Flames: Hexwraiths are ethereal horsemen who reap the souls of their victims. The spiritual remains of these souls are absorbed by the Hexwraith where they for a coroner of spectral flame that, in the 8th Edition of the rules, give Hexwraiths Flaming Attacks.
• Zombie Apocalypse: A Vampire Count invasion will invariably be this. Any freshly slain in the invasion's path will be raised again and added to the Vampire Counts’ numbers, sometimes resulting in entire armies turned into zombies to then be used as cannon fodder against their former countrymen. Zombie Units have a rule allowing them to grow beyond their starting size to represent this.

The knights of Blood Keep are the most driven and martial of the vampire bloodlines. The Blood Dragons devote their undeaths to becoming the deadliest warriors in the Old World in pursuit of their order's shared goal — slaking their thirst on a dragon's blood and transcending the limitations of vampirism. They descend from Abhorash the Blade Immortal, a legendary warrior of ancient Lahmia.

• Animal Motifs: They make heavy use of dragon imagery in their heraldry and armor, in order to remind themselves of Aborash's great achievement and of their own ultimate goal.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: The Blood Dragons' mastery of martial combat comes with a degree of pride and disdain for humanity notable even among vampires. Blood Dragons view the majority of the human species as nothing more than pathetic vermin fit for little more than testing a new blade's edge, and make no attempt at hiding this attitude.
• Black Knight: They clad themselves from head to toe in intimidating armor, hold a harsh sense of honor despite being man-eating undead, and wander the world in search of powerful warriors to fight. Some are even known to park themselves on bridges or in narrow passes and challenge anyone who tries to pass.
• Challenge Seeker: Blood Dragons devote their undeaths to becoming the greatest paragons of martial skill they can, and constantly test themselves against powerful foes. They will gladly slaughter peasants or travellers to test a new blade, practice a strike or feed, but they seek mighty champions and fearsome monsters above all else in order to push themselves further and further along their path.
• Monster Knight: They're an order of vampire knights that live to fight powerful foes, and they believe that only cowards feed upon the weak — the only ones that Blood Dragons will willingly feed on are powerful warriors and monsters.
• Noble Demon: Blood Dragons hold themselves to a strict code of honor, typically refusing to fight weaker or helpless opponents and saving their blades for those who can put up a good fight for their lives, and are known to spare foes who fight honorably or with courage.
• Super-Soldier: Blood Dragons eschew the cunning, guile and sorcery of the other bloodlines in favour of sheer martial prowess. When a Blood Dragon grows strong enough, they find a dragon and slay it to drink its blood to forever quench their dark thirst, leaving behind an undead warrior with all the powers and abilities of a vampire and also with literally centuries of combat experience and the arms and armour of their unholy panoply. Blood Dragons are matched only by the very mightiest of Chaos Champions and Grail Knights in combat, often leading undead armies or joining them as fearsome Blood Dragon squadrons.
• Undying Warrior: An order of vampire knights devoted to honorable combat and transcending their hunger, they actively seek out battles across the world to test their mettle — either challenging lone warriors on the road or pitting entire armies against the nations of the world. As such, of all the vampire bloodlines, they're the only one whose members wage war not for the sake of knowledge, power, or hunger, but simply for the sake of fighting.
• Warrior Undead: Blood knights spend centuries training themselves to achieve excellence in arms. Combined with the extreme resilience granted by their undead state, this makes them some of the greatest cavalry in the world.

The Lahmians are almost exclusively female vampires who hide themselves within the upper echelons of human society, using talents for subterfuge and politics honed over centuries to stalk their prey within their own cities and halls of power. They descend from Queen Neferata herself.

• The Chessmaster: Neferata's teachings expressly forbid her spawn from seizing open power for themselves, as this tends to drive humanity to unite and bring them down. Instead, Lahmians prefer to work from the shadows, subtly manipulating human rulers and society into furthering centuries-spanning schemes. This is the cause of their conflict with the Von Carsteins, whose aspirations to forge an Empire of Undeath would ruin their carefully crafted network of shadow rulers.
• Femme Fatale: The stereotypical Lahmian is a gorgeous high-class woman who uses her beauty to seduce unsuspecting humans to advance her own schemes.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Unlike other vampires, who either hide far from civilization or make no secret of themselves, Lahmians prefer to pass themselves off as members of human society, making use of pseudonyms and convenient cultural and aristocratic affectations to walk in plain sight among their prey.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: While still mostly evil and selfish most Lahmians (exceptions do exist) are not trying to Take Over the World with armies of undead and prefer to let human civilisation carry on mostly unmolested, subtly guided by the Lahmians to serve their needs. As such they are equally as dangerous to others individually but less of a threat on a societal level. Also notable that the two known Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire characters, Genevieve Dieudonne and Ulrika Magdova Straghov, are both Lahmians.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods: The Lahmians consist almost entirely of gorgeous Femme Fatales who use their beauty to seduce human prey.

The Necrarchs steep themselves in the study of dark magic to a greater degree than any other vampires, sustaining themselves on the wind of magic as much as they do on blood and often becoming necromancers of terrifying power. This practice, however, leaves them wasted and corpselike — no Necrarch would ever pass for a living man. They descend from W'soran the Wicked, high priest of Lahmia and one of Nagash's closest acolytes.

• Bald of Evil: Necrarchs are almost universally bald.
• Evil Sorcerer: Necrarchs are consummate sorcerers and wizards to a degree beyond the vampiric norm. They obsessively amass immense stores of arcane lore, magical tomes and enchanted artifacts, and are some of the most powerful practitioners of necromancy and dark magic in the Old World.
• The Hermit: Necrarchs are deeply distrustful of each other, and their lowered thirst means they do not need to hang around human civilization like other vampires do. Consequently, they tend to spend most of their lives in deep seclusion, holing themselves up in isolated fastnesses to pursue their research away from prying eyes.
• Immortal Genius: Composed almost entirely of scholars, mages, and necromancers, and are obsessively dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge — especially that of dark magic. Indeed, they've become so skilled in the dark arts that they rarely need to feed on blood, instead sustaining themselves through the Winds of Magic alone, and regularly surround themselves with new and experimental forms of unlife.
• Looks Like Orlok: Necrarchs are the most outwardly corpselike of the vampire bloodlines, with desiccated skin stretched taut across their bones, prominent fangs, pointed ears, and hairless domed skulls.
• Mage Tower: The Necrarchs' favored dwelling places are tall, twisting towers rising out of the wilderness. This is in part for ease of access to the Wind of Heavens for peering into the future, in part for defensibility, and in part to indulge Necrarch fantasies of being gods high above the mortal scum.
• Meaningful Rename: Necrarchs tend to take Nehekaran names when they are first turned, symbolizing their leaving their mortal life behind in favor of a new existence as Nagash's heirs.
• Must Be Invited: While this particular weakness is rare among other vampires, Necrarchs find it almost impossible to enter a building that mortals made a home unless expressly invited — trying to do so otherwise will cause them great physical harm if they manage it at all.
• The Needless: Downplayed. Necrarchs still need to consume blood every now and again, but for the most part subsist upon dark magic alone and are largely free of the ties binding other vampires to their bloodthirst and human society. Many Necrarchs seek to become this in full, and put a great deal of work in researching ways to purge the last traces of their thirst from themselves.
• Pointy Ears: Necrarchs tend to develop elongated, pointed ears.
• See the Invisible: The Witchsight of the Necrarchs allows them to see spirits and the winds of magic as if they part of the physical world. In exchange, however, the physical world of the living becomes a blurred and insubstantial thing to their eyes.

The Strigoi are bestial, degraded beings, and their hulking forms, batlike faces and taloned extremities prevent them from appearing as anything other than the inhuman predators they are. As a consequence, Strigoi usually lurk within ancient necropolises and haunted wildernesses, preying on wildlife and travelers and ruling over bands of primitive ghouls. They descend from Ushoran, Neferata's hated younger brother.

• Bat People: Strigoi are the most physically bestial of the vampires, and tend to resemble monstrous humanoid bats through traits such as prominent fangs, elongated ears or vestigial wings.
• Doomed Hometown: More like doomed home kingdom! The Strigoi vampires used to rule the Strygos empire from the city of Mourkain in the Badlands. After years of Neferata scheming to destroy it, the City fell to a greenskin Waaagh.
• Feral Vampires: The Strigoi are the most mentally and physically degenerate of the vampires, living as little more than feral predators and bearing precious few traces of humanity in their hunched, twisted forms. Downplayed with the Strigoi leaders, as they remain intelligent enough to lead troops into battle.
• Feral Villain: Strigoi are as intelligent as the other vampire bloodlines, but most choose to embrace their inner beasts and live like savage predators in the wilderness.
• Fighting for a Homeland: While most Strigoi hide in cemeteries and forgotten tombs, some amongst them try to carve out their own kingdoms to recreate the glories of Ancient Mourkain.
  • One that has met with some success is Gnashag, the Black Prince, who has controlled a town in the Border Princes for many centuries, protecting it from outside threats, be it hostile neighbors, Greenskins or Ogres.
  • Vorag Bloodytooth led an army of madmen, ghouls and undead into the Badlands to reclaim Mourkain, beginning construction of a small stronghold within the Plain of Bones on the way. Although he eventually fell in battle against goblins, Vorag remains an inspiration to other Strigoi for his attempt.
• Monster Lord: Strigoi often rule over tribes of equally degenerate ghouls, earning them their moniker of Ghoul Kings.
• Naked Nutter: Having been pushed to the very fringes of society by misfortune and the excesses of more successful vampires, the Strigoi bloodline has gradually degenerated into insanity: some exist in a state of animalistic rage, others embrace delusions of their former courtly life even while living in graveyards or caves. As such, most of them wear next to nothing — and it's noted that some are so deluded that they may actually believe their ragged loincloths to be the finest robes.
• The Resenter: Strigoi typically hold massive grudges against their Lahmian and Von Carstein counterparts, due to the fact that the latter two enjoy unlives of luxury and comfort while the Strigoi are forced to scrounge in graveyards and ruins.
• Riches to Rags: Basically the life history of the Strigoi Bloodline is this trope. The most ancient of Strigoi hailed from Mourkhain in Strigos where they were the top of the kingdom’s power structure with riches and luxuary. When the kingdom was destroyed and the city sacked, the Strigoi were forced to flee and were hunted relentlessly by other vampires, which eventually drove them to hide in cemeteries and sustain themselves on corpses, which also drove many of them insane. Ultimately this experience left the Strigoi to become little else than scavengers.
• Revenge: Strigoi deeply resent the other vampire bloodlines for tearing down their kingdom and then driving them into their present state, and many Strigoi dream of making themselves into a power again and exacting revenge upon the rest of vampirekind.

The von Carsteins are power-hungry tyrants and consummate aristocrats, brooding in dark castles and commanding legions of undead thralls. They view themselves as the rightful nobility of the night, cultivating themselves into noble or scholarly personas to present themselves with the dignity they feel due to their status, and openly rule over the nightmare lands of Sylvania. They descend from Vlad von Carstein, formerly Vashanesh of Nehekara and Neferata's first husband.

• Animal Motifs: Aside from bats, the von Carsteins are commonly associated with wolves, commonly assuming lupine forms. This serves both to highlight their dual aristocratic and feral natures.
• Classical Movie Vampire: The von Carsteins have traditionally exhibited all the classic movie vampire traits, and most of the older model range is heavily inspired by the classic movie vampire look. More recent incarnations have given them a harsher, more militaristic aesthetic, with heavy fluted armor and bat designs highly prominent. According to the designers, however, this is because the newer models are meant to represent the von Carsteins on the battlefield, where it's generally a bad idea to dress in formal evening wear. In more relaxed settings they're still depicted with the traditional capes, jackets and aristocratic airs, and they're typically found living in dark, gothic castles in a haunted Überwald.
• Continuity Snarl: For a long time, the only source for most of the von Carstein backstory was the Night's Dark Masters supplement for the RPG. When novels started being written about those events, they largely ignored that source entirely, using only the broad outlines found in the army books and otherwise going in completely different directions. The biggest change is that Vashanesh, previously the main focus of the story, was removed entirely. The Vampire Wars trilogy splits the difference by having Vlad tell the Vashanesh version, but he admits that the other elder vampires will say he never existed; the Liber Necris lore book, presented as Mannfred's in-universe reconstruction of those events, follows on from that. The End Times treat all versions as canon in Broad Strokes, just to make it even more confusing.
• Enemy Civil War: More so than any other vampires, the von Carsteins are in a near-constant state of internecine war, power struggles and backstabbing among each other as they jockey for power and prestige.
• Haunted Castle: The von Carsteins of Sylvania typically reside in the residences of former nobles, chiefly Big Fancy Castles with lots of spires and steep roofs, the most notorious of which is Castle Drakenhof, home to the heads of the Von Carstein family. Besides the vampires, these castles are home to all kinds of undead and many tomes and artifacts of ancient lore that attract adventurers despite the obvious danger.
• Non-Indicative Name: One of the largest groups of vampires in the Old World is the von Carstein family, but there is no known place in either the Empire or Kislev named Carstein for them to be "von". Whether this place has been deliberately destroyed or lost to the mists of time, or the name is merely a self-aggrandizing affectation of the von Carstein patriarch's, is up in the air. Either way, none of the von Carsteins are talking.
• Shout-Out: The von Carsteins are named after the title character of Carmilla, whose surname is Karnstein. The name Vlad, the title of Count and their homeland of Sylvania are instead references to Dracula. Isabella, Konrad, and Mannfred are named after principal characters from The Castle of Otranto, possibly the earliest Gothic Horror novel.
• Take Over the World: The ultimate goal of the Von Carstein bloodline is to conquer the Empire and bring it under their dominion, either as a means of saving it from Chaos or because they they believe the world was made to grovel at their feet. This puts them into conflict with the Lahmians, whose carefully constructed web of influence across the Empire would be disrupted if the Von Carsteins succeeded.

Vlad von Carstein, Count of Sylvania

Vlad came to rule Sylvania several centuries before the setting of the game, and invaded the Empire in what would be known as the First Vampire War. Killed several times but always returning, his battle ended at the walls of Altdorf where a thief managed to steal the ring allowing Vlad to resurrect after his deaths and he was finally slain for good.

• The Ace: Vlad was considered to be the best monarch the Von Carsteins had and for a good reason; he was an exceptionally skilled warrior with an educated understanding of magic which he could use proficiently, a great strategist with a sharp mind, a proficient speaker who could be very persuasive, and his authority and leadership were unmatched in comparison to other vampires. Naturally, most of the Von Carsteins came to respect and look up to Vlad as the model vampire to serve and die for.
• Affably Evil: Underneath Vlad's unlimited ambition, infinite ruthlessness and other vampire-related evilness is a decent person, which he occasionally lets show. Although ruthless to any dissenters and enemies, Vlad is polite and courteous to whoever gains his respect and would even grant them benefits if they prove their worth. He's also capable of great affection, as demonstrated with his relationship with Isabella. He was less cruel towards his peasants than the former Count of Sylvania, von Drakhoff, who would have peasants's heads put on stakes for lulz. Vlad even went one-on-one with a bandit king terrorizing the province. Plus, honestly, trying to take over the empire is actually a pretty common pastime for Elector Counts so that's hardly a point against him.
  • Also, considering that he kicked out the Priests of Morr, who are required to pass on in that part of the world, he's allowing of his subjects to stick around after being killed, instead of risking being consumed by the gods of Chaos.
  • In the short story The Ninth Book, it is inferred that Vlad actually wants to enslave the Empire, to prevent them turning to Chaos. If they served him, they would be unable to serve Chaos in life or death.
• Back from the Dead: Vlad is brought back by Nagash during the End Times to serve as one of his Mortachs, Nagash needing competent souls to lead his armies.
• Badass Cape: Vlad's model sports an impressive bearskin cape flowing in the wind and seemingly laden with tortured souls.
• Battle Aura: His Aura of Dark Majesty gives his enemies a decrease in Leadership if they are near him.
• Berserk Button: Thwarting his plans in lore. In the game rules, killing Isabella will cause him to go berserk and become more dangerous in melee.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: While later models moved away from it, his early look greatly resembled Christopher Lee as Dracula.
• Cultured Badass: Vlad is genteel and well-traveled. When he took rulership of Sylvania, he was eager to learn the cultures of the Empire from his wife.
• Determinator: Vlad is one of the most determined and resilient vampires of the setting, having spent several years formulating his plans to dominate the Empire and pulling no stops when it came to whatever battles he participated in. This is what made him one of the most dangerous adversaries the Empire had to deal with as Vlad's commitment to his goals was so strong not even putting him down would deter them and his determination ensured that he would have won had it not been for a last-minute sabotage on Mannfred's part.
• Enemy Mine: Against the threat of Chaos, Vlad becomes the most enthusiastic ally of the Empire among the Mortachs. He contacts Kurt Helborg and proposes an alliance between the two which eventually comes to pass when Altdorf is assieged, Vlad coming to assist the Empire.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: For all his evil, Vlad genuinely loved Isabella and didn't initially make her a vampire until she was dying of an illness he couldn't cure. The lore has continually reinforced this as well, noting they got along well. His love for her was great enough that when brought back in the "End Times", he fought to free her.
• Evil Mentor: Vlad eventually becomes one to Balthazar Gelt, who is so desperate to quell the threat of Chaos that they resort to learning Necromancy from Vlad.
• Foil: To Nagash. Like him, Vlad is an undead lord from Nehekhara who had the goal of killing everyone in the world to turn them into undead to starve the Chaos Gods of their power and overthrow them, and he was the biggest and baddest undead enemy that the mortal races had ever faced at that point. However, Nagash was doing for grandiose and purely self-interested reasons, while Vlad genuinely thought he was doing the world a favour. Also, Vlad's deeply loving Unholy Matrimony with Isabella and his respect for human subjects that demonstrated loyalty and respect for him was genuine and humanizing; but Nagash? The moment you failed him or he could no longer justify a use for you, he would betray and discard you without second thought.
• Founder of the Kingdom: Vlad is the founder of the Von Carstein bloodline and the first vampiric ruler of Sylvania.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: In-universe. Downplayed as Vlad and the Vampires are clearly dangerous, but the question initially was just how dangerous they are. Vlad went from a strangely-accented foreign nobleman of indeterminate origin to a conquering Vampire Lord. Vlad also did this to Vampires as a whole in regards to how the Empire views them. Vampires went from being seen as just another kind of undead monster that occasionally caused people to go missing from isolated villages and towns, to ruthless conquerors of nations with armies of undead at their beck and call.
• Game Face: Supernatural Horror grants him the Terror rule.
• Hypnotic Eyes: Beguile enables Vlad to force a possible close-quarter penalty to his opponent, representing his hypnotic power.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Vlad only became interested in his new bride when she resisted his vampiric charms and openly defied her. He ended up falling deeply in love with her for real,
• Joker Immunity: Justified in-universe, as his Carstein Ring gave him the ability to come back from injuries that would prove fatal even to a Vampire. Losing this ring swiftly removed this immunity from death.
• Killed Off for Real: When his ring that allowed him to return from the dead was stolen and destroyed, the Empire managed to kill him for good… until he was resurrected for the End Times.
• Life Drain: Vlad's enchanted sword, Blood Drinker absorbs the Life Energy of those it cuts. In the 8th Edition rules, Blood Drinker boosts Vlad's Strength characteristic, and increases the effectiveness of his Healing Factor.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Old lore from the RPG said that he was Neferata's husband Vashanesh, or at least a descendant of his bloodline. The Time of Legends and Blood of Nagash novels showed those original events, and no such character existed (his backstory is rolled into Alcadizaar in a way that suggests making them separate characters in earlier lore was an in-universe cruel joke on Vlad's part). It's heavily hinted that the future Vlad is actually Ankhat (Neferata's seneschal and her court's token sane member). The End Times novels confirm that he's from Nehekhara, but leave the details vague enough that it could be either option (neither name is used).
• Nasty Party: Vlad revealed his true nature to the world at a Geheimnisnacht ball in 2010 IC. He invited all the nobles of his realm to Castle Drakenhof, then had the human nobles massacred by the vampiric ones.
• Near-Villain Victory: Even without the Carstein Ring to accelerate his immortality, Vlad was still able to decimate most of the Empire's forces in his final battle against them and would have won, had it not been for a moment of distraction that allowed his primary adversary to perform a Heroic Sacrifice by taking him down to a stake, which impaled Vlad and killed him until Nagash brought him back for the End Times.
• Omnicidal Maniac: His ultimate goal is to convert the world's populace to vampirism and the undead, which would effectively mean killing everyone. Strangely, Vlad thinks he's doing the world a service that, by converting everyone into undead, the Chaos Gods would have no emotions to feed on and further their influence and dominance. So essentially, Vlad is saving everyone... by killing them. That said, he personally doesn't seem to have a problem with having human followers so long as they remain loyal and useful to him.
• Posthumous Character: Vlad has been slain centuries before the actual date the game is set, yet he remains playable.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Upon taking control of Sylvania, Vlad gained a reputation as a harsh but fair ruler, in contrast to the arbitrary and tyrannical Otto von Drak. This, combined with the relative isolation of Sylvania from the Imperial heartland, allowed him to build up his power in secret, gradually replacing Sylvania's nobility with loyal undead underlings.
• Ring of Power: The Carstein Ring, his most notable possession, enables Vlad to resurrect from anything as long as he’s got the ring in his hand. Whenever he is slain, he comes back on a 2+ roll.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In the hypothetical event that Isabella is fielded alongside him and is killed, then Vlad will gain the Hatred and Frenzy rules to represent his wrath.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: His human glamour is described like the trope almost word for word, being “tall and darkly handsome”.
• Unholy Matrimony: Genuinely loved his wife, Isabella, and only made her into a vampire when it was the only way to keep her from dying of a plague that swept through Sylvania.
• Villainous Legacy: As the founder and first ruler of the Von Carstein monarchy and for being one of the very few to nearly defeat and annihilate the Empire and complete his ambitions, Vlad is the premier role model for any vampires under his allegiance to look upon and even centuries after his death, his reputation manages to far exceed those of Konrad and Mannfred, both of whom struggle to come even remotely close to Vlad's success and fame.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: How "well-intentioned" he was is debatable, but his motivation for trying to take over the Empire was to put an end to its infighting and prevent it from being corrupted or destroyed by Chaos.

Isabella von Carstein, Countess of Sylvania

• Blood Countess: She's a powerful vampire and her Iconic Item on the tabletop is the Blood Chalice of Bathory, an enchanted cup that flows eternally with the blood of her victims, which Isabella can use to heal herself, her husband and her bodyguards. Unlike her decidedly ghoulish husband, Isabella has also always been presented as looking eternally young and beautiful.
• Daddy's Little Villain: Seemed to genuinely care for her father's well-being and had no problem with his evil habits.
• Driven to Suicide: After Vlad was killed, Isabella became so stricken with grief that she flung herself from a gate tower of Altdorf down to the stakes below, before crumbling to dust.
• A Glass of Chianti: Isabella holding the Blood Chalice of Bathori (which, by the way, is enchanted to always be full of blood) evokes the imagery and also makes her and any Vampire in the unit sensibly more resilient.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Isabella's model wears a blend of black armor and fine party dress.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Originally, Isabella was just wedded off to Vlad's nobleman identity to support the political ambitions of her father; much to Vlad's and Isabella's surprise, this quickly ended up becoming genuine affection for each other.
• Tomboy Princess: Isabella was said to be more interested in men’s games like hunting and falconry instead of needlework like a proper daughter of a count would. However, her appearance was that of a classical noblewoman.
• Unholy Matrimony: Willingly became a vampire to be a worthy wife for Vlad, and when he was destroyed for good, she went into a suicidal fury.

• 0% Approval Rating: In stark contrast to Vlad who was generally praised for his leadership, for being able to maintain his armies, relationships and even almost secure victory against the Empire, Konrad is utterly detested and disregarded by his own troops for his unstable behavior and for mistreating his subordinates.
• Asshole Victim: One of the reasons for Konrad's defeat and death was that many of his own forces got sick of his bullying and inept leadership. Firstly, the Blood Knights left because they weren't given any noteworthy fights as they were promised. In Konrad's final battle against an alliance between The Empire and the Dwarfs, the necromancers which Konrad had previously bullied and bribed into joining suddenly deserted him, causing Konrad's undead forces to become dead again or disintegrated, impelling Konrad himself to have a mental breakdown and run off into a nearby forest, where he soon met his end at the hands of Helmut of Marienburg.
• Ax-Crazy: Ordering his own mother bricked up in her room and left to starve to death for the "crime" of giving birth to him without his prior permission is just one example of his nuttiness. Half of the time on the tabletop, Konrad will have the Frenzy rule, which he can gain even after having lost a fight.
• Bad Boss: Because of his magical ineptitude, Konrad was forced to recruit human necromancers to help him in building up his undead army. Unfortunately, Konrad was demanding and disrespectful of his troops and even had some of the necromancers killed if he ever heard them mocking his lack of magical abilities. Eventually, this ultimately proved to be his undoing when his necromancers suddenly left him behind after losing the Battle of Grim Moor and getting fed up of Konrad's behavior.
• Berserk Button: Being an insane psychopath he had many, and they could change easily, but a consistent one was mocking his abilities in any capacity (or lack thereof, such as his magic skills).
• The Berserker: Konrad is the Vampire Counts' most headfirst and aggressive fighters, and his demeanor and personality adds to his battle-hungry nature.
• Big Bad: Konrad serves as the greatest threat to the Empire during Dominion, the second book of the Vampire Wars trilogy.
• Big Bad Wannabe: In spite of the above, and despite the fact that he was a bona fide dangerous and world-threatening monster, Konrad had none of the abilities and potential that made Vlad so successful prior to him. In the very end, Konrad died having achieved very little compared to his predecessor and his successor.
• Blood Knight: To the point that he would lick his blades clean and drink the blood from fallen enemies in battle. He even recruited a literal knightly order of these with the promise of great battles.
• The Brute: When Vlad was still alive, Konrad was this for him, acting as a feral attack dog towards Vlad's enemies.
• Bully Brutality: Konrad's insane mindset rendered him to be very rash and panicky over his followers' thoughts on him. The moment he hears some sort of criticism about him, Konrad wastes no time in killing the one who insults him, especially if it's something to do with his lack of magical skills.
• The Caligula: When he took over after Vlad's death, as he had nowhere near Vlad's restraint.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: He and Vlad share far more differences than similarities during their reign as Count in Dominion and Inheritance respectively. Where Vlad's schemes in his villainy revolved around long-term strategies and planning in his war against the Empire in addition to being a revered ruler, Konrad was gung-ho about setting off for violence and bloodshed whilst being an absolutely atrocious leader.
• Didn't Think This Through: Konrad executed some of the necromancers in his service before the Battle of Grim Moor, thinking they planned to betray him. Unfortunately this caused the surviving necromancers to leave his service, leaving him no way to raise fresh troops against an enemy army that outnumbered him two to one, thanks to his own incompetence with necromancy.
• Dual Wielding: The blood-mad Konrad hacks at his enemies a pair of blades, a regular sword and the Sword of Waldenhof, a magic weapon that causes multiple wounds with every hit.
• Dumb Muscle: Downplayed. Konrad is normally seen as someone who is straightforward about his attacks and not employing some sort of strategic plan. However, he was able to demonstrate some sort of tactical thinking in one battle that did claim him a victory, so his madness isn't really debilitating.
• Evil Versus Evil: His competition with his brothers can be summed up as this. Unfortunately, Konrad was worse than any of them, barring Mannfred, and won the Von Carstein throne.
• Fatal Flaw: His madness and complete disregard for his army, both of which ultimately end with his troops betraying him in the very end, ultimately leading to Konrad being killed by his enemies.
• For the Evulz: Really, there's nothing pragmatic or anything serving a long-term goal about Konrad's actions. Although drinking blood is vital to a vampire's survival, Konrad butchers towns and settlements just to sate his own sadistic desires, not much else.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: It really doesn't take all that much to set him off.
• Hate Sink: He is the highly incompetent and most infamously mad member of the bloodline. Nothing more than a bully, countless people die thanks to Konrad's Stupid Evil, including his own men, and when he is slain during a post-battle tantrum, nobody mourns for him.
• The Hedonist: Compared to Vlad and Mannfred who were more ambitious and thought of more grander plans beyond Sylvania, Konrad was content with simply killing and enjoying his vampiric desire. The most he musters in ambition is invading the Empire and the Dwarf Realms and even then, it's to further cash in on more bloodshed and depraved enjoyment.
• High Collar of Doom: Combined with Spikes of Villainy on his model.
• Insane Equals Violent: Konrad is the most insane of the Von Carstein dynasty and he is easily the most violent and bloodthirsty member of it, completely lacking any of the redeeming qualities Vlad possessed. So much so that Mannfred avoided fighting against him, which worked in his favor. His reputation was what earned him the moniker of Konrad the Butcher and Konrad the Bloody.
• Interim Villain: With Vlad dead and Mannfred having fled elsewhere partly to sate his own sadistic desires and partly to deepen his magical potency, Konrad serves as the main Von Carstein threat to The Empire. Only when Konrad dies does Mannfred make a reappearance shortly after and since then, he's been mostly forgotten in comparison to his more successful father and older brother.
• It Amused Me: It's implied Vlad turned him into a vampire solely because Vlad found Konrad's insanity amusing.
• Jerkass: Konrad has none of the charm Vlad possesses nor can he make a convincing facade like Mannfred. Towards his troops, he's a loudmouthed, mentally venomous and temperamental asshole who has some of his followers killed simply for questioning his lack of magical affinity.
• Karmic Death: His death was bought upon by his own necromancers who abandoned him in his time of need. Prior to this, Konrad killed a plentiful number of necromancers on his side simply because he percieved them as having mocked his inability to use magic.
• Kick the Dog: Or in his case, "use alley cats for crossbow practice".
• Leeroy Jenkins: Actually downplayed. While Konrad would opt to go plunder and butcher the first thing he sees, he does have a modicum of rational thinking to plan a strategy, mostly as a means to be as sadistic as possible.
• Magically Inept Fighter: Remarkably for a Vampire, Konrad managed to attain a certain level of infamy despite being an inept necromancer. Only his skills at warfare and the human necromancers he had on his side allowed him to be an actual military threat to the Empire and reminding him in any way of his lack of magical talent was one of his Berserk Buttons.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: On the receiving end of it, and for the better, considering how Konrad treated his followers and associates like dirt.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: There's a reason he's gained the titles of Konrad the Beast, Konrad the Butcher and Konrad the Bloody.
• Napoleon Delusion: By the end of his unlife, he believed he was the reincarnation of Vashanesh, and damn well expected everyone around him to believe it too.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: The main reason Konrad was killed is mainly due to his treatment and lack of respect for his own troops. Inevitably, when he was starting to lose the Battle of Grim Moor, his necromancers ditched him in the battlefield and walked away, causing Konrad's undead troops to be disintegrated. What happens next is Konrad throwing a hissy fit and running off into the forest before being found and executed.
• The Paranoiac: Konrad spends his time convinced that his followers are plotting against him. Since he's a Vampire Count, a lot of the time he isn't wrong.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Konrad lives for this trope. If he's not bullying and killing his own followers for slighting him, Konrad is most likely off to a nearby settlement, ready to butcher the populace for the hell of it.
• Red Is Violent: Konrad is clad in red armor and he is... you already know.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The absolutely mad, temperamental and thuggish red to Mannfred's more reserved, falsely polite and calculating blue. This even extends to their sociopathy with Konrad being low-functioning compared to Mannfred's higher functioning spectrum.
• Sadist: Konrad is among the biggest example in the franchise, with his excessive amount of bloodlust and his general penchant for torturing and butchering rivaling those of Sigvald and Nagash.
• Sanity Has Advantages: Konrad’s violent sociopathy proved to be little more than a massive hindrance to his cause at the end of it all, with the shitty treatment of his own men and rampant bloodlust alienating him from his peers, if it didn’t end up gaining him more enemies. By the end of his life, Konrad was a complete wreck and ended up being hunted down like a dog and beheaded as he scrambled through the woods, his fraying sanity finally giving away to the revelation of losing everything he had and irrevocably degenerating into an incoherent, feral beast.
• Sanity Slippage: Konrad was never really sane to begin with, got worse when Vlad turned him into a vampire and this mentality damaged the Von Carstein's reputation the moment he became the second count. This reached its conclusion by the Battle of Grim Moor when the sudden betrayal of his necromancers and the disintegration of his undead troops proved too much for Konrad's mind to handle; he fled the battle, only to be found killed anyway.
• Sibling Murder: Soon after Vlad died, Konrad entered competition against four of his "brothers", Fritz, Pieter, Hans and Mannfred, over who would take over the Von Carstein leadership. Konrad won the battle, though he only got to personally kill Hans over the position, whereas the others (excluding Mannfred) died for varying reasons. Later on Konrad would try to kill another "brother", Jerek, just to make sure he is the final member of the Von Carstein family still alive.
• The Sociopath: An extremely low-functioning example; Konrad had terrible impulse control, was driven mainly by bloodlust and was ultimately far too insane and sadistic even by the standards of his own kind. He also had a very severe need of stimulation, as evidenced by his bloodlust and had a sense of self-grandiose going alongside him.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: Initially, Konrad was loyal to Vlad. After the latter's death, Konrad has nothing for outright disappointment and hate for him, even telling himself to never repeat Vlad's mistakes. All the more ironic given that Konrad makes far more mistakes than Vlad ever did and further underscored by the fact that Vlad's greatest mistake is Konrad himself.
• Stupid Evil: His violent nature proved self-destructive and drove his allies away at the worst possible moments.
• Sucksessor: While Konrad was a fearsome fighter and a credible threat to the Empire for years, he was never able to match up to the success and popularity his father had before. And where Vlad was a well-revered Count for his valor, good leadership, and planning, and for coming close to achieving his goals, Konrad was hated for his abusive leadership and lack of ambition in favor of needless bloodshed. While Vlad died in battle inspiring a legacy and reputation, Konrad died unceremoniously and largely forgotten in the future.
• Third-Person Person: In the later stages of his career Konrad started to refer himself in third person due to his ever-growing insanity and egotism.
• Too Dumb to Live: Maybe if Konrad wasn't so condescending and maniacal to begin with, he may have won his final battle against the Empire and Dwarfs. Unfortunately, this thought never occurred to him and it costs Konrad his life. Even worse, his legacy falls flat compared to Vlad and Mannfred, leaving his monstrous reputation as the only trait he is remembered for.
• Viler New Villain: While Vlad von Carstein was bloodthirsty, ruthless and was able to almost defeat the Empire, he still had plenty of redeeming qualities, was an adequate and effective ruler who was praised by his servants and outside of being a vampire, he was a reasonably decent individual, in addition to having what could have been noble intentions despite his malice. In stark contrast, Konrad had no redeeming qualities, was a terrible ruler who had massive difficulties with his own servants and only lived for plundering and killing foes and defenseless victims alike. Both were also killed because of betrayal, but while Vlad was betrayed out of spite and power, Konrad was betrayed because of his bullying and lack of concern for his troops.
• Villainous Breakdown: At the end of the Battle of Grim Moor, Konrad was beginning to lose against the allied Empire and Dwarfs, the necromancers that were maintaining his undead army became disgruntled with Konrad's repeated ineptitude of leadership and ditched him then and there, causing Konrad's undead army to wither away. He reacted with panic, and soon enough, his rational thinking blew up, screaming and roaring mindlessly as he fled into the forest, soon to be killed by Helmut.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Konrad embodied the tendency of Vlad's latter-era spawn to jockey for power among themselves, respecting only brute strength and power. This leads him to have most of his brothers killed, hampering the war against the Empire.
• Would Hit a Girl: Konrad once held a celebration of his victories against his enemies. To satiate himself for the occasion, he bought along one hundred and eleven women to his feast hall so that he could suck off their blood for a grand banquet. Some of them died in the process.
• Would Hurt a Child: One of the girls in the aforementioned banquet was noted to be "barely a child".
• You Killed My Father:
  • He killed Count Helmar of Marienburg at the Battle of Four Armies. Helmar's son Helmut later avenged his father at the Battle of Grim Moor by defeating and beheading Konrad, destroying him for good.
  • In the Von Carstein novel trilogy, Konrad also killed the father of the dwarf protagonist Kallad Stormwarden.

• A God Am I: Unlike Vlad's ambition to become The Emperor, Mannfred aspires to be a deity, seeing Vlad's goals as too petty.
• Animal Motif: Mannfred is often associated with vampire bats. Like them, Mannfred is cunning and stealthy and the style of his armor resembles bat wings. There's also the obvious.
• The Archmage: The most magically gifted of the Von Carsteins and likely one of the most powerful vampire sorcerers in the world. In game, he is a Loremaster in both the Lores of Death and Vampires and has the ability to reroll some dice for determining the strengths of the Winds of Magic thanks to Master of the Black Arts.
• Back from the Dead: Was killed long ago but later resurrected when a necromancer's blood was spilled on his body.
• Bald of Evil: After coming back from the dead. The Return of Nagash novel reveals that he shaved his head as a symbol of putting aside his vanity.
• Byronic Hero: Inverted, as he is a Byronic Villain instead.
  "Mannfred was guileful and cunning, but not especially subtle. He strode across the landscape like a warrior-king, and expected his opponents to fall at his feet in awe of his majesty and political acumen. He was, in short, a barbarian. Vlad had been much the same – a man out of time. The difference between them lay in the fact that Vlad had had an almost childlike delight in learning the ways of the Imperial court, and navigating the choppy political waters of the Empire. Vlad had been subtle: patient and unswerving. Mannfred was not patient. He never had been. He was a creature of passions and selfish demands, and he only understood those things in others. Patience, to Mannfred, was simply fear. Dedication was foolishness. Subtlety was hesitancy."
• Canon Conflict: Many of the characterization of Mannfred on the page are in stark contrast with how he is portrayed in Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts, which characterize Mannfred as "a subtle, devious and treacherous individual", content to study and practice his newly acquired Necromantic writings until he felt sure of his power, and then wait an entire decade to let the Empire forget about the Sylvanian threat. He was characterized as:
  "Almost as masterful as Vlad at concealing his true nature. As he sought allies beyond Sylvania's borders, frequently Mannfred would travel in the guide of an Imperial lord. He was always courteous and lordly to those he met in his travels, as befits a noble from such a powerful family."
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Mannfred betrayed his father by stealing the ring that allowed Vlad to survive his battles countless times, all because Mannfred wanted to to take over the throne from him. Additionally, when he was confronted by the individual who was sent to do the deed, he lopped his hands off instead of presenting him an award.
• Creepy Crows: Announced his return to the Old World during the Vampire Wars through multiple ravens cawing "Mannfred is coming!"
• Cool Sword: His Sword Of Unholy Power. Unsaved wounds caused by it are converted into Power dice.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Suffered one, as he was hacked apart by a Runefang after losing the battle of Hel Fenn. As seen in the Virgin Sacrifice entry below, it didn't stick for long.
• Depraved Bisexual: Mannfred tends to select those he feeds from for their beauty regardless of gender.
• Dirty Coward: Mannfred would sooner or later abandon the battle the moment his defeat becomes inevitable.
• Dual Wielding: In addition to his sword, Mannfred wields a huge billhook that counts as a normal weapon.
• Evil Sorcerer: Comes with being a vampire in this setting, but while Konrad ruled Sylvania, Mannfred traveled the world to learn more about magic.
• Faux Affably Evil: Mannfred can turn on the charm and courtesy when he needs to, such as when dealing with rival vampires, but it is a mask with a lot of arrogance and viciousness underneath.
• Hate Sink: While he's a powerful fighter and a skilled tactician and sorcerer in combat, Mannfred has a bigger reputation for being a treacherous and slimy backstabber with no loyalty to anyone other than himself. Unlike Vlad and even Konrad, he's a pathetic coward who will gladly desert a losing battle and is prone to acting like a petulant brat whenever things aren't going his way. He's just as detestable as Konrad, only in a different way.
• Immigrant Patriotism: Of a sort. Neither he nor the Von Carstein bloodline are native to Sylvania, but as seen on his character folder quote, Mannfred fully considers Sylvania his land, to the point where he eventually secedes from the Empire and seals Sylvania off with a wall of bone.
• Manipulative Bastard: He maintains leadership of the Von Carstein vampires by playing off their desires and flaws, or even pitting dangerous rivals against each other before they turn their sights on him.
  • He assumed leadership of the Von Carsteins by stoking Konrad's madness and inserting his agents into Drakenhof, then letting Konrad's paranoia and bloodlust do the rest.
• Multi-Slot Character: Mannfred, in the editions where he's a playable character, can be fielded as either Mannfred the Acolyte (a Hero-level character that represents him when Vlad was still alive) or Count Mannfred (a Lord-level character representing him in the present as the Count of Sylvania). Only one version of Mannfred can be included in an army.
• Self-Made Orphan: In the sense that Vlad made him a vampire, see The Starscream for more details.
• The Sociopath: Mannfred is a higher-functioning example, in direct contrast to Konrad's more lower-functioning case. He is very good at being approachable and commendable towards others when it's just an act for Mannfred. He also thrives on betraying his allies and has backstabbed his allies countless times, his father most of all. And at the end of the day, the only individual Mannfred shows concern for is ultimately himself. Although while he does make long-term planning which highlights his egotism, he does share Konrad's hedonism and compulsion of killing for the hell of it.
• Superior Successor: Played With; Compared to Vlad, Mannfred lacks his father's valor and list of achievements, to the extent that he dishonorably flees from any battle if he shows signs of losing. However, he is much more mentally sound and competent than Konrad ever was, having been able to use his manipulations to keep himself ahead of his goals and make sure he perseveres long enough to outlast the Empire. While prone to needlessly sadistic habits, Mannfred can restrain them and prioritize a greater goal while Konrad was defined by his obsession with bloody hedonism and killing others for his own sake.
• The Starscream: It's been insinuated more than once that he was involved in the mysterious "disappearance" of Vlad von Carstein's magical ring, he arranged for the loss of the ring and did so to engineer Vlad's downfall so he could take over, with an additional aftereffect being Isabella's suicide. He becomes one to Nagash too, until Nagash becomes a Physical God and Mannfred realizes he cannot challenge him in any way anymore.
• Took a Level in Badass: Mannfred was once weak by vampiric standards, which still allowed him to massacre groups of mortals with ease. Come The End Times, following his resurrection post-Hel Fenn, Mannfred is easily one of the physically strongest vampires in the world.
• Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil: This is Mannfred's most favored activity. He has betrayed and deceived nearly everyone he has come to work with, either in search for more power or to save his own skin.
• The Vamp: A gender-inverted version, figuratively and literally.
• Virgin Sacrifice: How Mannfred was brought back after his defeat at Hel Fenn. In an interesting twist the necromancer had kidnapped a virgin woman as the sacrifice. But when Gotrek and Felix came to the rescue, the necromancer was cut in half during the battle and his spilled blood seeped onto Mannfred's remains and revived him, from which he deduced that the man was also a virgin. Mannfred lampshades this with some amusement.

• Action Girl: In the novels after fleeing the destruction of Lahmia and before she took the Silver Pinnacle.
• Alpha Bitch: Has shades of this in recent lore. In the End Times: Nagash book, her character description heavily implies she has any women in her keep that are prettier than her killed.
• Ancient Conspiracy: She and her sisters have — often literally — stood behind many of the mortal world's most powerful rulers, pulling their strings to watch them dance.
• Arch-Enemy: To High Queen Khalida of the Tomb Kings.
• Badass Bookworm: Neferata did master complex magic and is able to co-ordinate her underground network.
• Bloody Murder: In older editions she has a spell where she cuts open her palms and her blood spurts onto an enemy, both poisoning and burning her target.
• Cain and Abel: A little more distant, but the effect is there. Khalida is her cousin, as well as her victim (though technically it was her god that killed her to prevent Neferata from turning her into a vampire). The event spawned their status of being each other's nemesis.
• The Chessmaster: In the novel Neferata, she arranges the logistics for Ushoran while serving him, and later manipulates the Orcs and the Empire into waging war on him.
• Crazy Cat Lady: Played with. In older lore Neferata bred cats and even had one as a battle familiar. She also fit the stereotype as she is very old (though thousands of years rather than simply elderly. Though she is not crazy, just evil and manipulative. In newer lore her 'cat' is a first-generation vampire named Naaima who just happens to like that shape.
• Combo Platter Powers: In the novels. It's implied that Neferata is capable of the powers that all of the Bloodlines have in addition to the usual ones.
• Cultured Badass: Throughout her life Neferata traveled the world, encountered many cultures and rose to a position of power within each one before eventually moving on. Immortality does provide opportunities.
• Does Not Like Men: In her eyes, every major man in her life has let her down and she's not completely wrong. This means she despises men and this is why there are few male Lahmian vampires.
• Doomed Hometown: Neferata was born and raised in the city of Lahmia, which was destroyed by Alcadizzar's army once the secret of her vampirism got out.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Neferata despises the forces of Chaos; she's never allied with them, only fought them, and has never dabbled in Chaos magic.
• Even the Girls Want Her: In-universe due to her beauty and vampiric charm.
• Expy: Neferata was likely inspired by Akasha, who was an Egyptian queen that became the original vampire and the first of her kind, although Neferata is native to a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Ancient Egypt at any rate.
• The First Cut Is the Deepest: Implied that Alcadizzar was this for her. In the novels this is expanded and leads to the conclusion of Neferata accepting and embracing her feelings for Arkhan.
• Genius Bruiser: She's crafty, resourceful and a good negotiator, but she's also from the first generation of vampires (especially since she is the first vampire), and vampires get stronger the older they get. She's very old by now.
• God-Emperor: How she sees herself, and wants to become the head of a cult that worships her.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: When she became a vampire and sole ruler of Lahmia she found a new use for her servants and subjects. In addition, she developed a god complex.
• Horror Hunger: Due to being a vampire, Neferata has to feed off of blood to survive. Unlike some vampires in fiction, she's not limited to human blood as the novels show her feeding off Beastmen, Orcs and Elves as well. Despite being able to charm a victim into letting her feed, she rarely has compunctions about unwilling victims.
• Information Broker: Though she keeps the information for her own gain and rarely, if ever, shares it with anyone outside her Sisterhood.
• Kissing Cousins: It's implied she had... unwholesome feelings for her cousin, Khalida.
• Lesbian Vampire: Bisexual vampire, technically, but she generally surrounds herself with and turns attractive women so she fits the aesthetic.
• Lightning Bruiser: Quick and agile enough to make elves look slow, and physically one of the strongest vampires in the setting.
• Manipulative Bastard: Neferata is a master manipulator with few compunctions for betraying and using even her own "sisters," and her web of intrigue stretches across much of the Old World.
• Meaningful Name: Her name means "she who is beautiful in death" in Nehekaran.
• Monster Progenitor: The creator of vampirism in the setting and its first vampire.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Depending on the story in question, she may or may not have briefly served Nagash after Lahmia fell, may have been married to a vampire Vashanesh, he might not have existed at all (The End Times implies it's somehow both), and her duel with Khalida may or may not have exposed her vampirism and led to Lahmia's fall.
• Odd Friendship: With the Dwarf thane Razek, though it didn't last.
• Orcus on His Throne: She spends millenia wallowing in hedonism within the Silver Pinnacle, rarely taking action against anyone else until near Nagash's return.
• Out of Focus: She used to be a Lord that could be used in older editions, but since 6th edition she stays in the background.
• Pet the Dog: Compared to how some Vampires treat their subordinates, Neferata dotes on her Lahmians. They live in comfort, are allowed to ask questions of her and infighting between them is forbidden unless they violate Neferata's rules. She also rewarded one of her human spies who nearly died standing up to a group of vampires to protect her by making them a servant for one of her vampire handmaidens.
• Sibling Rivalry: With her brother Lamashizzar. Her relationship with Ushoran has shades of this.
• Shadow Dictator: Neferata prefers to manipulate nations from behind the scenes through her Sisterhood.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Very silky, but she is far more dangerous than she is beautiful.
• The Spymaster: Neferata is the single most well-informed person in the world, as her thralls and vampiric followers having infiltrated every court in the world.
• Start of Darkness: Finding one of Nagash's books and wanting to study it for benign reasons at first. It's fairly clear that it snowballed.
• The Vamp: The setting's first and best, figurative and literal example. Seduction is one of her most frequently used weapons, and the lore states that she enjoys causing noble heroes to fall from grace.
• Vampire Monarch: The former Queen of Lahmia and current ruler of the Silver Pinnacle. She also aims to rebuild Lahmia and rule over the city again.
• Wife Husbandry: Performed this on Alcadizzar when she raised him, though it didn't work out for her. Her follower Ankhat actually spelled out for her why it wouldn't work early on, only to be ignored; she raised him to be the perfect king, and a perfect king tends not to approve of undead monsters murdering citizens in the shadows.

Genevieve first appears as a major character in Drachenfels, returns as a minor character in Beasts in Velvet, and is the main protagonist of Genevieve Undead. She also stars in two of the short stories in Silver Nails; Red Thirst, and The Ibby the Fish Factor.

• Action Girl: But of course, given the setting where she's in. On another note, she's one of the most famous and formidable examples of this in the Warhammer world, mainly due to her vampire physiology and the amount of skills and experience she's had throughout her life.
• Broad Strokes: She is a canon part of the world but several elements of her books do not make sense with later editions of the game, particularly her being quite open about her vampiric nature within the Empire without being hunted for it.
• Classical Anti-Hero: While unquestionably a hero and one who is even recognized positively by Karl Franz, Genevieve's nature as a vampire also means that she feels as if most of The Empire wouldn't be as willing to tolerate her, and that's not getting into how she tries to deal with her cursed dietary needs.
• Expy: Genevieve Dieudonné holds the unusual distinction of being one specific, easy-to-identify character (same name, physical description, behaviors/emotions and roughly equivalent backgrounds) who appears in two unrelated franchises- the Warhammer universe of Games Workshop and the Anno Dracula universe of books written by Kim Newman, who also created her as as character when he was writing for Games Workshop. While they do not technically have the same background (Genevieve in Warhammer did not fight Jack the Ripper in Victorian London), they are essentially the same person incarnated into different settings.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Moreso than Abhorash, Genevieve is arguably the most heroic vampire in the setting, having devoted her life to aiding others in times of need and allying with a group of mercenaries ordered by The Empire to defeat and banish an Ancient Evil known as Drachenfels.
• Happily Married: She eventually ends up marrying Detlef Sierck, a playwright residing in The Empire.
• Older Than They Look: She's thousands of years old, and she was converted into a vampire when she was only 16 years old. She looks no older than on her last day as a mortal.
• The Vamp: A more heroic example, as Genevieve has used her looks on a number of occupations that she took on during her travelling days, such as being a spy and a convent-dweller.

• Badass Bookworm: Zacharias is one of the most powerful necromancers still active in the Warhammer setting. On the tabletop, he had the spellcasting powers of a level 4 Wizard, all six powers of the Necrach bloodline, and he knew all six Necromancy spells, whilst at the same time having far greater combat skill, speed, strength, toughness and attacks than any human wizard.
• Dragon Rider: He rides a Zombie Dragon whom he killed and reanimated himself.
• Looks Like Orlok: Like all vampires of the Necrach bloodline, he's an emaciated, corpse-like figure, with desiccated skin stretched taut over moldering bones, spindly taloned fingers, and exaggeratedly long fangs.
• Klingon Promotion: How he took over Melkhior's position. However, a lot of the fluff implies that Melkhior is still alive and seeks revenge. Other fluff suggests that he actually lost and Melkhior stole his body, and furthermore that "Melkhior" was actually W'Soran in Melkhior's body all along.
• Perpetual-Motion Monster: Zacharias holds the distinction of being the second ever vampire to drink a dragon dry of blood, and consequently free himself to unlive eternally without ever having to feed again. Unlike Abhorash, who killed his dragon in single battle, Zacharias found a dragon asleep and leeched its blood away over a long span.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Melkhior threatened him with this, but each day Zacharias made himself useful by doing well in his studies.

• The Ace: He was one of the greatest swordsmen and warriors to ever live, if not the greatest, and never met a foe he couldn't best. He was also one of the only vampires to overcome his blood thirst.
• Blood Knight: On top of being a literal one in every sense of the word, his lineage also founded an order of these, the Blood Dragons.
• The Captain: Abhorash was the captain of queen Neferata’s personal bodyguard in Lahmia before the city was sacked by the other kings of Nehekhara in their campaign against Nagash.
• Cool Versus Awesome: How he overcame his blood thirst. He fought a dragon, killed it and drank its blood, as dragon's blood cures the blood thirst of vampirism.
• Dark Is Not Evil: He refused to drink blood and only lost control of his blood thirst because he was starving. He spent years traveling and attempted to avoid feeding off the innocent.
• The Dragonslayer: He tracked down and defeated a huge red dragon in single combat which lasted a whole night. Then he drank it dry and flung it off a mountaintop.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Downplayed; next to other vampires, Abhorash is a downright saint since he consciously avoids drinking on the weak and the innocent and teaches his followers to only feed on the strong. On the other hand, his victims can also include noble champions of Order that aren't necessarily evil themselves, but fit the prescribed Blood Dragon diet because of their prowess in combat.
• I Hate You, Vampire Dad: He hates Neferata for turning him into a vampire and that it drove him to kill innocent people. When he got the chance he ditched her.
• King in the Mountain: Following his defeat of the dragon and throwing off the blood thirst, Abhorash went into meditation in the dragon's cave. The rest of the Blood Dragons continually seek to improve themselves so that he will deign to personally teach them his combat arts.
• The Magnificent: To his descendants and disciples he is often known as Abhorash the Great, Abhorash the Wanderer, Abhorash the Master.
• Monster Knight: He's the progenitor of the Blood Dragons, an order of vampire knights that live to fight, and they believe that only cowards feed upon the weak — the only ones that Blood Dragons will willingly feed on are powerful warriors and monsters.
• Perpetual-Motion Monster: What he became after drinking the dragon's blood — he can now operate indefinitely without ever needing to feed again, and continue to live and move and act eternally without requiring any sustenance of any sort.
• Red Baron: He has a number of titles he's sometimes referred to in lieu of his name, such as the Dragon Slayer, the Scourge of the Greenskins, the Blade Immortal and the Lord of Blood.
• Token Good Teammate: He was turned into a vampire against his will by Neferata and when he got the chance he abandoned her and the other vampires.

• Cool Sword: Wields the Crimson Blade, a sword that allows him to either hamstring or behead an opponent on a 1d6 roll.
• The Corruptor: He brought the Curse of Undeath to the Sigmarite Knights of the Blood Dragon Order, turning the strongest of them into Vampires.
• Klingon Promotion: He slew the Grand Master of the Blood Dragon knights and took his place.
• Knight in Shining Armor: He is a dark reflection of this trope, insisting on mimicking every aspect of knightly chivalry.
• One-Man Army: He challenged and overcame the entire Order of the Blood Dragon, slaying every one of its knights in a single night.
• Unstoppable Rage: He is able to inspire this in his Undead followers with the Blood Dragon Standard, which allows any Undead model within 12" to feel *Hatred*.

• Anti-Magic: Yes, the Slann magic drove him completely insane, but it also resulted in him having an inherent resistance to magic from then on.
• Ax-Crazy: On account of the backlash of the Lizardmen anti-Chaos sorcerer glyphs in the temple he attempted to raid, he is unable to ever be mentally stable again.
• Driven to Madness: By the backlash of the glyphs he attacked with dark magic, which left him unable to ever be mentally stable again.
• Ghost Pirate: A vampire pirate with a crew of Norse zombies.
• Ninja Zombie Pirate Robot: He's a vampiric pirate leading an army of Viking zombies.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Morathi, when he joined forces with her to raid a Lizardmen temple city in Lustria. He got too greedy for Morathi's liking, so she sealed him in a vault as a target for the Lizardmen's wrath; given Morathi's MO, it's possible this was her plan all along.

• A Day in the Limelight: He stars in his own novel.
• Back from the Dead: He was unwittingly revived by a cabal of witches five hundred years after his death.
• Blood Knight: Even in life, he revelled in duels, challenging any opponent, high or lowborn, to try and wound him.
• Cool Horse: He rides the skeletal remains of El Morzillo, the horse he rode in life.
• Cool Sword: He wields the Blade of Leaping Gold, a great falchion that allows three extra attacks.
• Fallen Hero: In life, he was an honourable hero, whose death was mourned by the people of Bretonnia. In Undeath, he is now among that kingdom's fiercest enemies.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: One of his titles is very similar to that of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a famous Castilian Knight known as El Cid.
• Red Baron: The Bretonnians call him the Scourge of Aquitaine, while in Araby, he is El Syf.

• Cool Crown: Wore the Crown of Sorcery, the former crown of Nagash. Somehow, he almost managed to control the soul fragment kept within with sheer Heroic Willpower. Almost.
• Fatal Flaw: His pride convinced him to try and conquer the rest of the Old World. During his campaigns, an Orc Waaagh demolished his kingdom, forcing him to make a hasty retreat.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He became one when he ruled Mourkain; to stop a repeat of what happened in Lahmia, Ushoran commanded his fellow vampires to only feed on the blood of slaves, criminals and prisoners of war, so the citizenry wouldn't feel threatened by their undead masters.
• The Spymaster: He was Neferata's in Lahmia.
• Tragic Villain: Ushoran used to be a reasonable ruler, but when his city was destroyed by Orcs his forces were scattered and hunted down by humans and vampires alike. Even before that he was driven to madness by the Crown of Nagash, and his main advisers were actively undermining his empire.
• Uncertain Doom: No one is sure if Ushoran survived the fall of Mourkain or not.
• The Un-Favourite: To his sister, Neferata and the court in Lahmia.

• Beard of Evil: Though the tremendous, matted beard might also be said to be a Wizard Beard of Evil.
• Covered in Scars: Seemingly not as an indication of toughness, but self-inflicted during his long madness.
• Deal with the Devil: He made a pact with the Chaos Gods that he would spread destruction in their name if they gave him back his wits and magical skills.
• Desecrating the Dead: Kemmler seems to enjoy desecrating tombs and corpses as he does so more than once in the lore, such as merging a group of human zombies into a spider-like creature.
• Klingon Promotion: How he gained control of his former master's coven.
• Magic Knight: Kemmler is surprisingly adept at swordplay for a wizard, and his Chaos Tomb Blade's ability to turn his kills into fresh Skeleton Warriors or Grave Guard means that getting him into combat can be a surprisingly useful ploy.
• Named After Someone Famous: Or infamous, in this case — his name is a play on the name of one of the most infamous members of the Nazi party, Heinrich Himmler.
• Necromancer: Kemmler has earned his title of Lichemaster by becoming one of the most adept necromancers in the world, being a Level 4 Wizard and a Loremaster in the Lore of the Vampires.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: He's used this to escape enemies or get information.
• Ominous Opera Cape: His Cloak of Mist and Shadows is not badass by any mean but sinister looking and quite useful. By manipulating the surrounding mist and wind, he can either Fly or become Ethereal.
• Robe and Wizard Hat: He wears what's essentially an evil version of the classic wizard getup — his heavy robes are dark and appear to be made from human skin, and the hat has a snake skeleton wound around it and some kind of animal skull at the top.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: His hat is topped by a small skull and wrapped in what appears to be a snake skeleton.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Worked his way up this, killing people, then liches, then vampires.
• Unwitting Pawn: Kemmler is one to Nagash, who subtly guided his actions to resurrect Krell and made him join with other undead forces.
• Wizard Classic: He hits (a dark version of) every note of this trope, including being one of the few Warhammer wizards to play the Wizard Beard and Robe and Wizard Hat straight (with a few embellishments). Appearance-wise he's an old man with a long grey beard, long robes robes, and a wizard hat with a snake skeleton wound around it. In art where he's depicted outside of combat he's usually seen in some stuffy lair somewhere researching evil magic — in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Realms of Sorcery, for instance, he's depicted in a crypt-like lair, hunched over a Tome of Eldritch Lore while casting a spell with his free hand.

A mighty Champion of the Chaos God Khorne in the days before Sigmar, who fell during the battle of Karak Kadrin at the hands of the Dwarf hero Grimbul Ironhelm. Buried within a barrow, he was revived by Nagash himself some 1500 years later and became one of his most prized wight generals; when Nagash fell against Sigmar at the Battle of the River Reik, only Krell and his "Doomed Legion" of wights survived, hacking their way to freedom and butchering their way tirelessly across the land in an epic slaughter constantly retold to this day. Only at the Battle of Glacier Lake was Sigmar able to finally capture Krell and seal him away within a magical tomb, where he lay until he was once again resurrected by the necromancer Heinrich Kemmler.

• Anti-Magic: Krell's crimson armour, the Armour of the Barrows, nullifies the magic effects of a weapon that has wounded him.
• Black Knight: He used to serve Khorne exclusively in life, but in undeath serves Nagash and Kemmler.
• Brains and Brawn: Krell is the brawn to Kemmler's brain.
• Dragon with an Agenda: He is implied to be this, with his first loyalty still to Nagash rather than to his erstwhile master Kemmler.
• Genius Bruiser: He's a very keen strategist who nonetheless can go toe-to-toe with the best of them in melee.
• Made of Iron: Only the strong can become Champions of Chaos. Becoming undead made the already tough Krell harder to destroy.
• Undying Loyalty: Zigzaged. Krell was in life a Champion of Chaos, but in undeath he's now one of Nagash's most loyal minions.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: Krell's Black Axe is a vile weapon that leaves shards of metal in the wound, which slowly worm their way towards their victim's heart.