| “ | I am Drachenfels. I bid you welcome to my house. Come in health, go safely and leave behind some of the happiness you bring...
|
„ |
| ~ Drachenfels |
Constant Drachenfels, also called The Great Enchanter and later renamed The Nameless during the End Times, is a rather obscure villain from the lore of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. He iis a powerful wizard who mastered both necromancy and daemonic Chaos magic.
He first appeared as the titular main antagonist of the novel Drachenfels by Kim Newman. He later returns during The End Times storyline in a noncorporeal form and renamed himself as The Nameless, b[ecoming a high ranking minion of Nagash.
Description and personality[]
Constant Drachenfels, the Great Enchanter, is around 2 meters tall and a physically imposing man , if, of course, he actually is a man. His face is hidden behind a mask, his hands covered by soft gloves and his body draped with fine robes. No one has seen his true face and lived long enough, or remained sane long enough , to tell of it.
Drachenfels is a creature of living legend. He has lived, so rumour has it, since forever. Certainly, for as long as anyone can remember, and for as long as histories have been written and folk tales told, there has been Drachenfels in his Castle. He is a dark figure who stalks the dark corners of the Old World's history emerging into the light and committing some gratuitous, bohemian atrocity, almost as a reminder to the people of the Empire and Bretonnia that he exists and should be feared.
By any human standards, Drachenfels is evil given physical form. His actions have never been kind, just or noble, although they have a quality that some might consider chaotic purity. For example, his plots have a certain directness about them. When he allegedly 'repented for his sins' before the court of Emperor Carolus, a less trusting man than the Emperor would have seen through his new-found goodness, or at least have had the sense to listen to those who did have such doubts. Drachenfels 'repented' only so that he could strike down his unwary, trusting enemies. But beyond such whimsies, he has killed, crippled and driven men insane, plotted and destroyed kingdoms in a calculating fashion and in the heat of terrible rages.
Behind all his evil actions, Drachenfels has only his own dark motives which some men claim have little to do with 'evil'. He is the ultimate pragmatist, it is said: any act can be contemplated and carried out if it serves his survival. Eternal existence is his ultimate purpose, beyond any moral consideration. 'Good' and 'Evil', such men say, are late concepts to human affairs, and Drachenfels dates from a time before such niceties had meaning. But it is what Drachenfels does when his existence is not at stake which marks him out, and his indulgence in atrocity and sadism marks him out as unquestionably one of the most evil Warhammer characters.
As The Nameless, Drachenfels is a dark, shadowy spectre with no physical body and no memories of his previous life, but he has the ability to possess the body of others, such as the battle priest Luthor Huss.
Biography[]
According to Drachenfels' own recollections, 15,000 years ago he was the member of a primitive human tribe "in the time of the rivers of ice, before the toad men (likely the Old Ones who created the Lizardmen) came from the stars". Old and sick, he was abandoned and left to die by his fellow "squat and brutish tribesmen who would now seem to have more kinship with the apes of Araby than true men".
Murdering a passing tribesman, Drachenfels somehow managed to figure how to take the life out of his victim and extend his own life. He would wear a body, amalgamated from the corpses of his former tribesmen, until it was rotten and worn out. Then he would select a new body, repeating the whole process again and again. By repeating this process several times he survived for thousands of years and managed to develop his magical abilities to the highest levels.
Drachenfels had a collection of masks to hide his face and paid a certain amount of respect to the gods of Chaos. However he never pledged his allegiance to any of them, considering himself somewhat superior to them, seeing them as amateurs.
He estabilished his own keep, called Castle Drachenfels, an all but impregnable fortress high in the Grey Mountains near Bretonnia, at an unknown date. He maintained numerous hidden spies and infiltrated agents in several cities, palaces and courts of the Old World.
Little is known of his atrocities. On the whole he seems to have kept a low profile, leaving his home on occasion to extract tribute, release plagues, unleash daemons and sack villages. He imprisoned the souls of many of his victims, keeping and torturing them at his pleasure.
Battle with Sigmar[]
Drachenfels commanded a veritable army composed of Orcs, Goblins and Daemons, but would suffer his first and greatest defeat at the hands of Sigmar, a barbarian warlord who had gathered several human tribes and founded the Empire.
Drachenfels' army was routed and he was slain by Sigmar himself. However somehow he managed to survive and after a thousand years managed to fully restore himself.
Fake redemption and the poison feast[]
He gathered a new army composed of undead and daemons and marched upon the Bretonnian city of Parravon. After extracting a suitable tribute he had the local ruling noble family executed together with their chief ministers and officials.
Some decades later Drachenfels ostensibly repented his crimes, and publicly renounced evil. Paying large reparations to his living victims, and abasing himself at the graves of many others, he managed to gain the trust of Emperor Carolus and invited the whole imperial court for a feast at Castle Drachenfels. In the infamous Poison Feast, Drachenfels poisoned his guests, paralysing them. Helpless, they saw their children, which they had brought with them, tortured and murdered. Afterwards they starved to death with a prepared feast before their eyes.
Defeated by Genevieve and Oswald[]
Years later, a group of adventurers, led by Oswald von Konigswald and the good vampire Genevieve Dieudonné, infiltrated Castle Drachenfels and Oswald managed to fight and kill the Great Enchanter. Drachenfels' death caused a magical backlash which killed or revealed most of his hidden minions. The castle's garrison was later exterminated by an army sent by Emperor Luitpold, while the castle itself was left all but undamaged at Oswald's request.
Twenty or so years later, Oswald bought the abandoned castle and hired the theatrical impresario Detlef Sierck to write and direct a theatre play based upon Oswald and Genevieve's battle against the Great Enchanter, to be performed in Castle Drachenfels itself. Emperor Karl Franz and all the Elector Counts of the Empire were the invited audience of the play's premier. Drachenfels re-appeared during the play, returned from all but certain death, intent on taking over the Empire. However, aided by Sigmar himself, Genevieve and Detlef managed to defeat and kill him for good.
The End Times[]
During the End Times the newly resurrected Nagash recruited many powerful undead lords and necromancers to his side to serve as his Mortarchs. One of these was referred to simply as The Nameless, the mysterious spirit of a recently defeated great enchanter from the Grey Mountains. The Nameless had no body of its own and no memory of its former life. Nagash secured its services by promising to tell it its name and restore its memory.
The Nameless traveled with the also newly resurrected Vlad von Carstein to the Auric Bastion, a huge wall to the north of the Empire designed to keep out the forces of Archaon. Vlad and the Nameless take a section of the wall to defend, quickly making it one of the strongest points on the Bastion. However the Nameless, frustrated with Vlad's refusal to tell it its name, spends its time invading the minds of the Imperial soldiery, forcing them to engage in increasingly vile tortures on each other and themselves. One day it'd have them flay their compatriots skins to make banners, the next the Nameless would change its mind, have the banners torn down and rebuilt using the soldier's bones. When the Bastion eventually collapsed the Nameless disappeared.
Eventually the Nameless returned, now possessing the body of Sigmarite priest Luthor Huss and allied to the Chaos god Nurgle. He marched alongside a huge daemonic army led by the possessed and mad Isabella von Carstein. Together they stage an invasion of Sylvannia. In battle the willpower of the Nameless was so strong as to steal control of Manfred von Carstein's zombie hordes, adding them to the daemonic legions, leading to Manfred's defeat.
Manfred and a few other vampire survivors (including the Mortarchs Vlad von Carstein and Luthor Harkon) fled to a nearby inn called the Dead and Buried where they were besieged by the sea of zombies and daemons. During the battle Vlad fought the Nameless in Huss' body. Knowing he could no defeat the Nameless he instead taunted Huss himself, questioning his strength and his faith, until Huss fought for control of his body eventually reclaiming it in a burst of fiery faith. Drachenfels the Nameless was consumed in the fire and banished to the realm of Chaos.
Quotes[]
| “ | "Drachenfels. The Great Enchanter. A devil in human form, who cheated Death for centuries unknown; a man with appetites so base they lay beyond satiation; a necromancer, torturer of the dead, dismemberer of spirits; a vileness made flesh; a wizard, a scholar, a monster. Untold are the reaches of his barbarities, uncounted the number of his treacheries, beyond belief the depravities of his practices. Was ever such a vileness born of mortal flesh?" | „ |
| ~ Lives of the Depraved, book by Konrad Steinoff, about Drachenfels |
| “ | Who are you to defy Constant Drachenfels, the Great Enchanter, the Eternal Champion of Evil, the Darkness Who Would Not Be Defied? | „ |
| ~ Drachenfels to Oswald and Genevieve |
