The Von Carsteins are the youngest of the great bloodlines and the most ambitious, and it is their name the counts of the dead now carry. Their founder Vlad came out of the east with Neferata's ring on his hand and did what no predator before him had dared: he married into a dying noble house of Sylvania, buried its last lord, and inherited the province. Where older vampires hunted from the shadows, Vlad ruled from a throne, and the peasantry loved their generous count long before they learned to fear him.
That is the Von Carstein way: to dress the thirst in coronet and signet, to make of predation a dynasty. They are aristocrats first and monsters second, and regard the throne of the Empire less as a prize to be seized than as an inheritance merely delayed. Vlad pressed that claim to the gates of Altdorf, and the wars of the Vampire Counts are scarred into the memory of every Imperial province.
They have never abandoned the ambition, only deferred it. In the black castles of Sylvania the line endures, certain that the living reign of man is a brief interruption in a rule that belongs, by right and by patience, to the dead.
Order of battle
The Von Carstein field the units of the Vampire Counts, a detachment from the roster:
Other Vampire Counts formations
Blood DragonWarrior-ascetics of the line of Abhorash, the mightiest blade ever to bear the vampire curse. Blood Dragons pursue martial perfection with monastic severity, believing that in the flawless stroke lies mastery over the thirst itself. They despise intrigue, honor worthy opponents, and kill them all the same.
LahmianThe oldest and subtlest of the bloodlines, descended from Neferata, first of all vampires. Lahmians rule from behind thrones rather than upon them, working through courts, temples, and whispered favors in every city of the Old World, while their queen plays a game centuries deep from her fastness at the Silver Pinnacle.
NecrarchThe withered scholars of the vampire bloodlines, heirs of the treacherous W'soran, who loved undeath itself more than any crown it could win. Hideous beyond disguise, the Necrarchs seal themselves in tower-tombs to pursue necromancy in its purest form, dreaming of a perfected world in which the last heartbeat has finally been silenced.
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