The Incursion of Nagash

No enemy of the living has proven as patient or as unkillable as the Great Necromancer, and the wars remembered as The Incursion of Nagash span the whole history of the Old World. From the deserts of Nehekhara to the forests of Sylvania, Nagash rose again and again, each time seeking to fold all life into a single silent kingdom of the dead.

He was a priest-king once, the first mortal to master the dark art of necromancy, and his ambition poisoned the ancient realm of Nehekhara and set the Tomb Kings upon their long, cursed road. Cast down by the very people he had wronged, he did not die so much as wait, his black will lingering in the world through the vampires he had spawned and the undead counts who ruled in his shadow. His name became a curse in a dozen tongues, spoken quietly for fear that speaking it too loud might draw his gaze.

Across the centuries his incursions came in many forms: plagues of undeath, the rise of the von Carsteins, the slow gathering of his scattered power. Each time the living broke his armies; each time he sank back into the dark to plot anew, hoarding the nine books of his forbidden lore. Kings burned his tomes and salted his tombs, yet always some fragment of his will endured to begin the work again.

The Incursion of Nagash reached its terrible culmination in the End Times, when the Undying King rose whole and triumphant to claim the dying world at last. He remains the setting's ultimate testament to a grim truth: that in a world of endless war, death itself is the most implacable conqueror of all.