"And they will rise from their graves to march upon the world of the living. Each and every mortal that falls will swell their numbers until only a world of darkness remains. Only then will the world know of the eternal order that lies within the peace of Undeath."
- —Grimoire Necronium, Chapter XII, the Book of W'soran[2b]
W'soran, also called "W'soran the Wicked[6a] and the "Father of Vampires," is the Vampire Lord who was once a renegade Liche Priest of Nehekhara's Mortuary Cult and one of the twelve original Trueborn Vampires, as well as one of the seven that survived the fall of their original home in the city-state of Lahmia.
W'soran is the founder of the scholarly Necrarch bloodline of Vampire necromancers.
History[]
There are two mutually exclusive and contradictory versions of W'soran biography, including his exact role in the creation of the first Vampires and his relation to the Liche Lord and Great Necromancer Nagash. Both versions are presented below.
Common Story[]
Origin[]
W'soran was once a priest of the Mortuary Cult of the city-state of Khemri in ancient Nehekhara. Nagash, when still a mortal, had corrupted several of the Liche Priests and then dispersed them to the other city-states of the realm. The priests appeared to have been persecuted by the Usurper and were readily taken in by the other Nehekharan city-states. W'soran managed to insert himself into the court of the city-state of Lahmia, serving Priest-King Lahmizzar and his son Lahmizzash as advisor.[8a]
As the highest ranked of Nagash's disciples after his chief lieutenant Arkhan the Black, W'soran proceeded to corrupt Neferatem, the young princess of Lahmia.[8b] Neferatem had always been curious about the arcane, yet W'soran turned her curiosity to dark ends, counselling her that no arcane art was evil in itself, except if one used it for evil ends. As the princess and later Queen of Lahmia involved herself more and more in the dark art of necromancy with W'soran's aid and sought to recreate many of Nagash's necromantic experiments, W'soran let those members of the Mortuary Cult not under his sway in Lahmia know that Neferatem had become ensnared by Nagash's works, a calculated act of betrayal that the queen would not learn of for many years.[6a]
As the Mortuary Cult did not want to move against the queen openly, they undermined her power at court and created distrust and resentment against her among the population of Lahmia.[8c]
As Neferatem grew to distrust the priesthood more and more due to their political sabotage, W'soran counselled her to strike against them. As the Liche Priests fought back, W'soran raised the alarm, telling the Lahmian palace guards that a renegade faction within the Mortuary Cult sought to overthrow their queen.[8c] In the following purge, W'soran drove the priests of the rest of the Nehekharan Pantheon from Lahmia, securing the power of his Nagashi acolytes within the city. [8d]
Together, he and Neferatem studied the surviving works of the Great Necromancer and devised a way to improve upon his designs. Their version of the Elixir of Life ultimately conferred true immortality, by drawing the Human soul completely into the body beyond the reach of Daemons or deities, transforming the imbiber into the first Trueborn Vampires.[8d] Mannfred von Carstein would later theorise that W'soran and Nagash had communicated over the distance between them at this time of Nagash's exile, for these developments mirrored those Nagash had unleashed himself during his exile from Nehekhara to the shores of the Sour Sea.[8e]
W'soran was installed as one of the heads of the Vampires' newly-created Cult of Blood, the replacement for Lahmia's exiled Mortuary Cult, with him presiding over the male initiates while Neferatem guided the newly admitted female ones.[8f] It was also the ever-scheming W'soran that advised Neferatem to transform other high-ranking individuals of the Lahmian Court into Vampires.[8g] But in time, a rift grew between them -- while Neferatem, now calling herself Neferata, saw Nagash merely as a great man worthy of emulation, W'soran worshipped him openly as a god, caring more about Nagash the being and his plots for dominion over Nehekhara and the Known World rather than simply advancing or further exploring Nagash's arcane teachings. As a result, the queen cast W'soran aside as her adviser and raised Vashanesh as her consort and king.[8h]
War came to Lahmia when the Priest-King Alcadizaar the Conqueror of Khemri sought to end the foul stain of the Cult of Blood and the Vampires upon the Great Land. To defend the city, W'soran raised its dead. As necromancy had been a new magical art pioneered only by Nagash and his acolytes, it proved to Neferata and the other Trueborn Vampires that W'soran had conspired with the Great Necromancer from the start. [8i] Yet all the Vampires' scheming came to naught -- the combined armies of Nehekhara under the command of Alcadizaar overwhelmed the defenders of Lahmia and the survivors fled north, where they sought refuge in Nagash's great fortress of Nagashizzar.[6c]
Servant of Nagash[]
When Neferata learned the full extent of W'soran's manipulations in service to his true master Nagash, she was furious, even more so when Nagash passed her over to offer his distant relative Vashanesh a position as leader of his Undead forces.[6c] Nagash had made this decision because he had soon realised that the other Vampires would never follow his chosen acolyte W'soran and none of the survivors would obey Neferata.[8j] When Nagash's control over the Vampires was later broken, only W'soran stayed behind. [8k] W'soran remained in Nagashizzar whilst Nagash cursed and ranted at the fickleness of Vampires. [6d]
W'soran was one of the lieutenants of Nagash who marched in the Great Necromancer's final war against Nehekhara, leading the Undead's assault against Khemri and King Alcadizaar. W'soran's Undead armies won great victories against the weakened remnants of the living Nehekharans, causing Nagash to reward him by allowing him to study the Nine Books of Nagash themselves. Within those foul tomes, W'soran discovered much about the spirit world.[8l]
In -1150 IC, W'soran led a cabal of Nagashi priests, along with one of the precious Nine Books of Nagash, out of Nagashizzar after their master had fallen the year before to Alcadizaar, who wielded the Fellblade against the Liche Lord. At the same time, with Nagash's defeat, the Skaven overtook Cripple Peak.[4a] W'soran sought to realise his master's dream of a mortal world closed off from the Realm of Chaos forever, a world created through the transformation of every mortal into one of the Undead, a dark new world of bones where nothing lived that could challenge the domination of the Great Necromancer. [6e]
There was one flaw with this dream of an empire of corpses -- the lack of a source of blood for the Vampires who would inherit it when all the mortals were Undead. Thus, W'soran searched for ways to relieve himself of the Red Thirst. Powerful necromantic magic made him less dependent on feeding from mortals than other Vampires, so he could go for months or years without blood. There was a price, however, to such independence. W'soran's reliance on pure Dark Magic, rather than the inherent life energies in mortal blood to give him succor and power, caused his visage to grow hideous and corpse-like, losing the illusion of eternal youth that most Vampires sought to maintain at all cost.[6e]
As he had learned at his master's side, W'soran chose to grant the Blood Kiss and his arcane discoveries on to apprentices, starting in -1122 IC.[3c][4a] The first among these members of what would later be called the Necrarch bloodline of Vampires was Melkhior,[3b] while another was Nourgul.[6e] W'soran returned to the ruins of the city of Lahmia, knowing it to be a cursed place neither the risen Tomb Kings nor the remaining Vampires would willingly return to.[8m]
By -223 IC,[3c] [4a] W'soran had deepened his knowledge of the spirit world to such an extent that the study of necromancy became an end in itself to him. As a result of his growing preoccupation with the study of the arcane, W'soran was slain by his apprentice Melkhior, who drained him of every last drop of blood and then ate the entire body of his master over the course of three days, making sure that he had absorbed the Trueborn Vampire Lord's entire essence.[8m]
Legacy[]
Among W'soran's surviving works is the Grimoire Necronium, which not only acts as a tome of collected necromantic spells, but also of doom-laden prophecies concerning a future mortal world that lies in ruins and only the dead walk under sunless skies, where the few surviving mortals exist as pitiful slaves to serve their immortal Vampiric rulers.[1a]
W'soran was also the first Vampire to foretell the coming of the Age of a Thousand Thrones.[7a]
The necromantic spell Father W'soran's Architect, with which a necromancer can raise a tower in which to pursue his studies, is named after the first Necrarch. [6f]
Time of Legends[]
The account of W'soran's life in the Time of Legends novels is drastically different from the above account and outright contradicted by much lore published after the novels, particularly Warhammer Armies: Tomb Kings (8th Edition) and The End Times Vol I: Nagash (8th Edition).
Origin[]
"All this time, the Undying King has been rebuilding his strength in secret, far from the eyes of men. He has taken a great mountain and made it his fortress. I have seen its towers wreathed in the smoke of countless forges, where his servants make ready for the day of Nehekhara's demise! And that day swiftly approaches! Already, Nagash is clad in the panoply of war, and he holds a dark and terrible crown in his hand! The days of mankind are numbered..."
- —W'soran, true servant of the Great Necromancer Nagash[10b]
W'soran was a priest of the Mortuary Cult born in the Nehekharan city-state of Mahrak.[9a][12a] As a child, he had no friends and no desire for any form of company as an adult.[12e] W'soran never served Nagash in life, having been born too late to join the Great Necromancer when he ruled over Khemri.[9d]
Yet, W'soran's extensive knowledge of the magical arts and arcane lore assured him a place in King Lamashizzar of Lahmia's secret cabal to study the works of Nagash.[9a] W'soran was smuggled out of the besieged city of Mahrak by the Lahmian warrior Ushoran to aid the cabal's explorations.[12e]
When Queen Neferata of Lahmia usurped control over the cabal in -1599 IC, he submitted without question.[9b] After the transformation into a Trueborn Vampire through the use of Neferata's flawed variant of Nagash's Elixir of Life, W'soran began to study ways to summon the spirits of the dead back to the mortal plane from the spirit world, allegedly only for the sake of the knowledge to be gained.[9c]
Yet in secret, W'soran actually used his mastery of necromancy to assist him in his dark quest to resurrect his idol Nagash, whom he deemed the only being in existence to be his equal. To this end, W'soran conspired with Ushoran to gain one of the bones of King Thutep of Khemri, Nagash's younger brother. He also chafed against the restrictions Neferata had placed on his studies as well as the use of Undead servants.[9d]
In -1300 IC, Ushoran was successful in securing Thutep's skull for W'soran. Yet the ritual ultimately failed to resurrect Nagash, much to the frustration of W'soran.[10a] After several centuries of studying, during Geheimnisnacht in -1222 IC, W'soran worked his ritual again and witnessed Nagash creating his Crown of Sorcery atop the spires of the Great Necromancer's fortress at Nagashizzar. It was then that the Vampire's machinations were discovered. While Neferata and Ankhat believed W'soran to be trying to call back her brother Lamashizzar, W'soran revealed to them his true intentions. For having acted against her interests, Neferata staked W'soran and magically imprisoned his form in a jar.[10b]
When the united Human armies of Nehekhara finally moved against Lahmia to bring an end to the horrors of the Vampires' Cult of Blood, Neferata was persuaded by Ushoran to free W'soran from his imprisonment and give him leave to call upon the power of his necromancy.[10c] Once freed, W'soran defiled the wardings of the tombs of the past Priest Kings of Lahmia, raising them as mindless Undead to aid in the protection of the city.[10d]
When the tide of battle turned against Lahmia and W'soran's tower was destroyed by a catapult shot, the Vampire Lord abandoned the city to go north and join his master Nagash, bringing with him several artefacts that had been plundered from the Great Necromancer's palace at Khemri by the Lahmians centuries earlier during his first fall from power.[10e]
Servant of Nagash[]
"In this place, I will build my own Lahmia, my own Nagashizzar. A city of the new dawn and corpse winds, wherein I shall build the chains that will drag down this fallen world and make of it something perfect. I will show both Neferata and Nagash for the frauds they are and were, mewling things demanding titles that not their right. I spit on queens and grind kings beneath my heel."
- —W'soran.[12f]
In Nagashizzar, W'soran and the other dark lords in service to Nagash conspired against each other, with the rivalry between the Great Necromancer's primary lieutenant, the Liche Arkhan the Black, and W'soran being particularly intense. At the same time, W'soran's once great admiration for Nagash dimmed, as the Vampire Lord saw the Liche Lord as too preoccupied with his grudges and his desire for vengeance against his enemies rather than pursuing the greater dream of a world transformed through the use of necromancy.[12c]
In -1168 IC, W'soran convinced Nagash that the other Firstborn Vampires of Lahmia might be powerful servants. Ushoran had been captured hiding in the mines of Nagashizzar and brought to heel.[12d] W'soran found Ankhat sailing the Sea of Claws in -1166 IC after he hunted him across Grand Cathay and Ind, but his offer to join with Nagash was rejected. W'soran agreed to let Ankhat be in exchange for the locations of Abhorash and Neferata.[12e]
As the only original Vampire Lord serving Nagash, W'soran was commanded to lead the armies of the Great Necromancer together with Arkhan the Black. The pair mistrusted one another and conspired to send their rival for Nagash's favour into a situation where they would fall.[10f] They were defeated at the Gates of Dawn in -1162 IC, the entry way into western Nehekhara at the city-state of Quatar. W'soran attempted to take King Alcadizaar of Khemri captive, yet was defeated and forced to retreat back to Nagashizzar, blaming Arkhan for the defeat.[10g]
In -1154 IC, W'soran and Ushoran finally located Neferata in the Sahra Desert. She rejected their offers and any service to Nagash, and fled instead.[11a] Two years later, W'Soran discovered Abhorash in Bel Aliad. In exchange for leaving the city untouched, Abhorash promised to deliver to Nagash Neferata.[12f] Yet once Abhorash had Neferata captured, he refused to hand her over to W'soran. Ushoran barely managed to save W'soran from Abhorash's wrath.[12g]
After Nagash's destruction at the hands of Alcadizaar, W'soran renounced his fealty to Nagash, believing that he was unworthy of worship as a god if he could be struck down by a mere mortal. Seeking to claim the fortress at Nagashizzar for himself, W'soran and his own Vampire disciples prepared for a war against the Skaven who also sought to claim the fortress and its enormous amounts of warpstone.[12i]
In the end, W'soran was driven from Nagashizzar by the relentless infighting among Nagash's remaining servants, and was cast out to Araby and hunted by the armies of the reanimated Undead Tomb Kings. Driven into the Marshes of Madness, he was again saved by Ushoran.[12j]
W'soran retreated to Araby, where he arrived in Lashiek. The ruling Dowager Concubine had asked him to resurrect her son, which he did by teaching her the basics of necromancy. He found himself soon attacked by Neferata, who blamed him for having aided Nagash in killing Nehekhara.[12l]
After a narrow escape, W’soran set on gathering secrets from the cults of various deities. He defeated the silent stranglers of the Black Oasis of Araby, the corsair-witches of the pirate island of Sartosa and reached the temple of Myrmidia in Magritta in -1017 IC. The Estalians referred to him as "Nourgul the Wamphyro". Upon breaching the temple and its fierce Myrmidon defenders, W'soran found himself again facing Abhorash, who defended the temple from his fellow Vampire Lord in order to pay a debt.[12m]
Strygos[]
"I will break his black soul on the charnel rack of the Corpse Geometries and smash down the sour light of that foul crown for all time. I will take every secret, every forgotten thought from Nagash's creation and make it mine -- as they always should have been! I was his student! I was his heir -- not that fool Arkhan and certainly not Ushoran! And I will not have that which is mine to claim taken from me by an inferior mind."
- —W'soran[12k]
In -950 IC, W'soran was drawn northwards to the land of Strygos, where he was recruited to serve in its capital city of Mourkain by the kingdom's ruler Ushoran and his ally Abhorash.[12n] Serving Ushoran as an advisor and high priest of the debased form of the ancient Mortuary Cult of Nehekhara that prevailed at Strygos, W'soran became responsible for maintaining the Undead armies of Strygos.[12h]
In the tunnels beneath Mourkain, W'soran cultivated Ghouls in order to prevent Skaven from building an under-city while conducting experiments that led to the creation of the first Crypt Horrors.[11b] In his experiments, W'soran imprisoned Vampires that had displeased Ushoran in stone sarcophagi with veins of warpstone, to study the warping effects it had on Vampires under the right circumstances.[12b] At the same time, his own get of Vampires began a silent war against Neferata and her Vampire Thralls of the Lahmian Sisterhood.[12d]
In -327 IC, W'soran aided Ushoran in a ritual intended to break the Crown of Sorcery to his will, after receiving one of the Nine Books of Nagash from Nagashizzar's vaults.[12e] Yet the ritual failed, for it only removed the protections that Kadon's sorceries and Alcadizaar's soul had lain over it, allowing the fragment of Nagash's soul within the artefact to act with much more impunity.[11c]
In -326 IC, W'soran fled to Vorag Bloodytooth and his stronghold in the Dark Lands. He aided Vorag's siege of Crookback Mountain in order to gain a base with which to challenge the power of Mourkain and Ushoran, seeking power in order to tame and devour the fragment of Nagash inside the Crown of Sorcery.[12b] Before he left, W'soran slaughtered his acolytes in Mourkain, so that Ushoran would not have any necromancers to draw upon.[12h]
W'soran created bone-crafted and flesh-woven war machines for his new ally, fashioned after the magical Ushabti constructs of Nehekhara, using Greenskins and Skaven as raw material.[12d]
As Vorag Bloodytooth descended further and further into madness and the agents of the Lahmian Sisterhood spread their intrigues to isolate him, W'soran offered to help Bloodytooth build an empire.[12g] Arriving among the tribes of the Draesca, whom W'soran controlled by creating a lesser facsimile of Nagash's own crown, the Helm of Draesca, he drove the Lahmians away from them.[12i] He recruited students from Araby to Norsca to be tutored in the Dark Art of necromancy, building a small realm in the Worlds Edge Mountains intent on bringing war against Neferata's Silver Pinnacle, Vorag Bloodytooth's realm in the Dark Lands and Mourkain itself.[12j]
In -285 IC, W'soran's domain was destroyed by a Greenskin Waaagh! that had been incited by Neferata at the Battle of Black Water. The necromancer left it behind to die.[12j]
Returning to Crookback Mountain, W'soran prepared to leave for Mourkain when an assassination attempt in his own sanctum shook him from his complacency.[12k] He spent months trying to extract the truth about who had sent the assassin to kill him by eating the assassin's flesh, until Abhorash led an army through the passes of the Worlds Edge Mountains, assaulting Vorag Bloodytooth's realm. With this, W'soran decided that the time to face Ushoran had come.[12l] He left Crookback Mountain behind, which suffered under renewed Skaven attacks and worsening slave revolts among its Orc population.[12n]
W'soran arrived mounted on a great Zombie Dragon in Mourkain in -260 IC, destroying the defenders with an Undead army of his own creations. Upon the central pyramid, he faced Abhorash, who felled his Undead Dragon, but allowed him to continue to the inner sanctum, asking him to face the being Ushoran had become. When W'soran reached Ushoran, the former Lord of Masks pleaded for destruction, being unable to contain the spirit of Nagash within the Crown of Sorcery any longer. Before W'soran could react, the fragment of Nagash's soul within the crown asserted itself over Ushoran and the two clashed in a magical duel.[12o]
In the end, W'soran was forced to flee back to Crookback Mountain, unable to stand against the true master of Mourkain and Strygos. There, an alliance of Skaven and the Lahmian Sisterhood sought to end his life in -262 IC, working in league with his treacherous disciple Melkhior. W'soran defeated the attempt on his life and buried their forces under an avalanche, before fleeing.[12p]
In -223 IC, in his new lair established in the Worlds Edge Mountains, W'soran contemplated his own studies of the Dark Art, before he was found by Melkhior. His former apprentice warned him that Ushoran was moving against him and that he had come to warn his old master. W'soran doubted his treacherous apprentice's loyalty and was soon proven right, as Melkhior had worked with the Lahmians to destroy him and Melkhior succeeded in incapacitating his old master.[12a] As his apprentice drained his blood to claim his power and knowledge, W'soran's memories faded, yet he had one final ploy. His body collapsing, W'soran suddenly bit Melkhior's throat, in so doing transferring his own spirit into his apprentice even as his physical body finally died and crumbled into dust.[12q]
It is not known how much of the original psyches of Melkhior or W'soran remained in the new combined Vampire Lord that emerged from their union, but the process might have contributed to Melkhior's well-known insanity.
Canon Conflict[]
In Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts (6th Edition), W'soran perished during the fall of Lahmia to the mortal forces of Nehekhara, unwilling to leave his library to the flames.[2a]
In the Time of Legends novels, W'soran led an attack against the city of Magritta in -1017 IC, being called "Nourgul" by the population.[12l] Another Vampire named Nourgul did the same in the War of Blood thousands of years later in 1750 IC.[2a] It is unknown how both are related, or if they even do.
Sources[]
- 1: Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts (5th Edition)
- 1a: pg. 8
- 2: Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts (6th Edition)
- 3: Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts (7th Edition)
- 4: Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts (8th Edition)
- 5: White Dwarf #235 (UK Edition)
- 5a: pg. 23
- 6: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition: Night's Dark Masters (RPG)
- 7: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition: The Thousand Thrones (RPG)
- 7a: pg. 4
- 8: Liber Necris (Background Book)
- 9: Time of Legends: Nagash the Unbroken (Novel) by Mike Lee
- 10: Time of Legends: Nagash Immortal (Novel) by Mike Lee
- 11: Time of Legends: Neferata (Novel) by Josh Raynolds
- 12: Time of Legends: Master of Death (Novel) by Josh Reynolds