Editing Soulblight Gravelords (section)

===Age of Myth===
After the arrival of Nagash in the Mortal Realms and his tenuous alliance with Sigmar, Nagash's first aim was the conquering of the Realm of Shysish for his own. At this time many other Gods of Death existed that actively challenged Nagash for dominance with some even actively looking to bring death to all other gods and the living (an idea Nagash himself would take interest in later on). Nagash's supreme skill in summoning the Legions of the Dead proved invaluable as underworld after underworld fell to his control. Eventually almost all the other Death Gods that could challenge him were either killed, imprisoned, or fled into hiding (in the case of Morrda), leaving Nagash the supreme ruler of the realm.

During these conquests, Nagash begrudgingly conceded that he could not marshal all his forces at once nor be on every battlefront simultaneously, and his vizier Arkan the Black just wasn't enough. He needed generals, spies, and confidants that still had what Nagash loathed in other beings: free will. Thus, he started actively courting Necromancers, Wight Kings and generals among the living to lead his armies. At this time as well he decided to revive the long-destroyed race of vampires, having remembered their use in the world-that-was. Retrieving the lost soul fragments of Neferata, Mannfred and Ushoran, he brought them back into existence to serve him once again as Mortarches.

Eventually Ushoran displeased Nagash and was imprisoned for his troubles (to see how that story ended up check out the [[Flesh-Eater Courts]]), but Neferata and Mannfred would go on to sire the first Vampires of the Mortal Realms who would serve Nagash's (and their) wills, with Neferata founding her personal kingdom of Neferatia and Mannfredd in Carstinia (though he would go on to despise the place). These initial Vampires served directly under the the newly established Legions of Blood and Legions of Night, but as the Soulblight Vampire empires spread throughout the realms and new vampires were sired, subcultures and new dynasties began to form. All vampires, being very independent by nature, eventually led to branch-off bloodlines forming and going off on their own to establish their own bloodlines and empires. These took many different forms, from kingdoms of the living and dead, to alliances with Wight Kings and Deathrattle kingdoms, or simply as roaming marauders who preyed on the living and dead alike. Nagash and the Mortarchs for the most part paid them little mind unless they conflicted with their own agendas, with these branch-offs eventually becoming the first soulblight dynasties (one of the most prominent being the Vyrkos).

Unfortunately for Nagash, internal rivalries between dynasties and individual Soulblight Vampires began to form, the biggest being the renewed conflicts between Neferata and Mannfred for dominance and Nagash's favour. The two Mortarchs often utilizing the new Dynasties as proxies in their squabbles. Though both had to be more wary, as new generations of Soulblight began to take sights on the two founding vampires and potential ways to claim their positions as Nagash's elite. All vampires in one way or another also looked secretly for ways to free themselves permanently from Nagash's dominion (Mannfred especially), as on some level all the Soulblight realized that their very existence as free-minded individuals was something Nagash ultimately wished to purge from reality, and dreaded the day he decided he no longer needed them.