Maatmeses is one of the original trueborn Vampires created by Queen Neferata of Lahmia.[1a]
History[]
Maatmeses was originally the very fat and very corrupt chief judge of Queen Neferata's administration in the Nehekharan city-state of Lahmia. Alongside his queen and other members of her court (including W'soran, Abhorash, Vashanesh, Ushoran and Harakhte), he would be one of the few trueborn Vampires Neferata created using her flawed variant of the Elixir of Life.[1a][1b]
After the destruction of Lahmia by King Alcadizaar the Conqueror, Maatmeses fled to the north alongside Neferata, W'soran, Ushoran and Harakhte. There they came across Nagash, reborn as a Liche Lord, in the midst of raising an Undead army of his own. It was discovered that Nagash had long been manipulating the Vampires towards his own purposes through the agency of his devoted follower W'soran, and he put them under the command of Vashanesh to defeat the armies of Nehekhara once and for all. When it became clear that Nagash didn't care about the vampire's survival or the reconstruction of Lahmia under their rule, Vashanesh let Alcadizaar escape from the Great Necromancer's clutches and kill him in combat, freeing the Vampires from Nagash's control.[1a]
Only W'soran chose to stay with Nagash -- the others scattered to the winds after bickering over where to go and who deserved to lead them. Maatmeses and Harakhte vanished out of history.[1a]
Most scholars of Vampiric lore believe Maatmeses and Harakhte was killed by Nagash, but it is also possible they journeyed elsewhere and created their own Vampiric bloodlines. The Tilean explorer Marco Polare's writings about Grand Cathay include legends of immortal eunuch wizards that drink the souls of men, and there are tales from the jungles of Ind and the Southlands about mad priests who tear out men's hearts to feed to their dark gods. Perhaps these are the children of Maatmeses and Harakhte; perhaps one day they may pay a visit to their cousins in the Old World.[1b]
This outcome is supported by another legend which speaks of how, after the first Vampires fled north from Nehekhara, one of them took a ship headed eastwards towards the lands of Grand Cathay and Nippon. Stories of this Vampire Lord's passing can be found amongst the terrifying myths and legends that still haunt the children of those realms in the Far East to this day.[4a]
Canonicity of the Mahtmasi Vampires[]
Around 2007-2008, after the publication of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition's Night's Dark Masters supplement, its co-author Steve Darlington published an additional document titled Lost Bloodlines: An Apocryphal Supplement for Night's Dark Masters. This detailed the lore and rules to play Harakhte's Jade-Blooded Vampires and Maatmeses' Mahtmasi bloodline, but it was not officially published by Fantasy Flight Games and is thus considered non-canonical.[3]
On 11 October 2021 Andy Hall, Creative Assembly's lead writer for the Total War: Warhammer series of PC games, confirmed in an interview with the Lorebeards podcast that the Jade-Blooded would be included in the new lore of Grand Cathay created for Total War: Warhammer III. He specifically confirmed that Harakhte fled to Cathay after the being freed from Nagash where he created the Jade-Blooded, but made no mention of the Mahtmasi, so the canonicity of a bloodline created by Maatmeses remains in question.[3]
Sources[]
- 1: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition: Night's Dark Masters (RPG)
- 2: Lost Bloodlines: An Apocryphal Supplement for Night’s Dark Masters by Steve Darlington.
- 3: YouTube - Loremaster_of_Sotek - Exclusive Interview w/ Andy Hall | Lorebeards Episode 9
- 4: White Dwarf 256
- 4a: pg. 60