Konrad von Carstein

This page is for the crazy bloodthirsty Vampire Count. If you are looking for the page about the crazy bloodthirsty Primarch, please see Konrad Curze.

...and that's what you would call a murder machine.

"Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem."

– Joseph Stalin

"We've had vicious kings, and we've had idiot kings. But I don't know if we've ever been cursed with a vicious idiot for a king!"

– Tyrion Lannister

"FUCK LOGIC, I'M A VAMPIRE!"

Once upon a time there was a dude. He wasn't very smart...or rational...or stable (for example he bricked his mother up into a tower to die for the "crime" of giving birth to him without his consent). One day, Vlad von Carstein and Isabella von Carstein decided that this crazy muthafuckuh deserved to be given ungodly strength and near immortality via vampirism....possibly as a joke. They then doted on him, and stuck him with another adult male named Mannfred and a few other not as important vampires in a children's playroom before leaving to conquer the world starting with the Germans. Anyway, thus Konrad von Carstein was born! Having no idea what the fuck magic was, let alone any inkling of its control, Konrad relied heavily on necromancers to control his thousands upon thousands of mindless servants, and everything was great! He got to pillage, and slap children around to his heart's content, get a reputation spread near and far as well as becoming known as the "Red Fury" which he thought was pretty neat, plus he was considered Vlad's right-hand man while he was gone and was able to scare the FUCK out of the empire with such incidents as that one time he scaled a castle wall by himself, then killed everyone inside and pissed in their skulls during a siege. Then mama and papa vamp were killed by feral rampaging popes when Vlad got robbed of his magical ring of neverdieness / overpowerosity and was impaled on a twig, and a thousand+ way civil war started between all the von Carsteins for who gets to be in charge Vlad's death The chief contenders - his 'brothers' Fritz, Pieter, and Hans - all came to unholy ends; Fritz was killed while attacking Middenheim, Konrad killed Hans in a duel over who was the toughest then burned his remains, and Pieter was slain in his coffin by Helmut van Hal - a descendant of the infamous Necromancer Vanhel. As for Konrad's other 'brother' Mannfred he decided to go backpack across Nehekhara rather than face Konrad (though before he did he left an allied vampire named Jon Skellan to stoke Konrad's paranoia - smart choice really).

Rulership

As a commanding officer, Konrad was an ASSHOLE. He killed necromancers for making fun of his lack of magical talent (it's like a small dick in the Undead world) and put them on huge fucking spikes Vlad Tepes style. He'd also spend his time having towns destroyed because he didn't like how they smelled or ordering his living troops to use alley cats for crossbow practice (this is canon, by the way). After meeting Walach, the promise of glory and victory in battle made up for Konrad's lack of honor and secured the allegiance of the Blood Knights. Because he had no talent at sorcery, Konrad changed his tack on necromancers and cajoled, bribed and bullied a large number of necromancers into serving him (if they made jokes about him, he probably took it out on enemies in battle and captives).

He was paranoid of his advisors, members of his personal guard, and his brothers all the while listening to the "advice" of severed heads he kept in his basement along with flocks of birds that he fed on the rooftops with the roasted flesh of whoever displeased him. Two acts of impulsive madness that damaged his campaign included his murder of Hans von Carstein in a duel and his attempted murder of Jerek von Carstein which led to his eventual desertion of the vampire counts and assistance to the empire in the defeat of both Konrad and later Mannfred.

The undead horde they raised was so immense and the Blood Knights added so much hitting power it was able to triumph against any force sent against it, despite Konrad's insanity and his ineptitude as a general. He even attacked the Dwarfs, and when the Dwarf King challenged Konrad, he got Walach Harkon to accept the challenge as his champion, leading to the Dwarf King's death (and creating the second big grudge against vampires since Neferata). After several attempted invasions of The Empire, Konrad's advance was finally halted at the Battle of Four Armies in 2100 IC by a combined force from Altdorf, Talabheim and Marienburg (the battle is remembered mainly for the fates of the Imperial leadership, all of whom were contenders for the Imperial throne: the Count of Altdorf and the Ottilia of Talabheim had each other assassinated during the heat of battle, while Helmut, Count of Marienburg, was slain by Konrad).

However, the undeniable disadvantage of being dead did not stop Helmut from contending for the imperial throne and after the battle, he journeyed to Altdorf to ascend to the imperial throne. It was only when his extreme lethargy, pallid skin, and disgusting odor developed into full decomposition that the people of the Empire figured out he was actually a zombie under the control of Konrad! The necromancers controlling Helmut fled as soon as they were found out. Konrad chucked a massive tantrum when he learned his plan failed, which involved raiding nearby towns. Konrad's ploy to become emperor may have succeeded if the magic binding Helmut to Konrad's will had been more complex and thus able to sustain Helmut's decomposing body better, though the lack of speech and bodily functions would still be a giveaway.

Defeat

No one liked him very much at all. First, the Blood Knights left because Konrad's ineptitude denied them the victories they craved and got too annoying, so they ended the alliance. Then one day his necromancers decided to fuck him over! During some big fucking battle that would decide the fate of the world and probably lead it into 10,000 years of darkness or some bullshit, the necromancers just quit fucking playing (Konrad it turns out was still giving them grief during his bouts of insanity, so eventually they just got fed up and left him), leaving Konrad all alone without his hero slots, controlling like 10,000,000,000,000 VP's worth of skeletons. His brains blew up on the inside a little bit from the stress of having to control so many models, and he wandered into a forest going "NahNahNahNahNah," gnashing his teeth, and drooling all over himself. Apparently, while this was going on his undead army crumbled and the Empire was all, "Holy shit, I thought we were doomed! Good thing GW won't wipe the main race, let's get back to in-fighting!"

Thankfully for the Empire before Konrad could get some sense back into his head and take advantage of the Imperial in-fighting he happened to bump into some Dwarf hero named Grufbard and the Ostlander Helmard (son of the man whom Konrad killed and zombified). They found Konrad in the middle of fighting birds they took one look at his sorry ass and instantly realized that he was in the middle of some crazy-ass stupor. Konrad challenged them attempting to draw a non existent sword. The dwarf then promptly tackled Konrad and held him down while Helmard proceeded to repeatedly stab Konrad with his dead father's Runefang.

What a chump way to go!

Immediate Aftermath

After Konrad died, the surviving von Carsteins went to ground. That is until Mannfred came home and started unfucking the von Carstein line by making nice with the necromancers, traveling the world again to assemble a huge force of skeletons BEFORE attacking the Empire and giving them a chance to stop being dicks and unite, bringing the scared vamps who had fled to other bloodlines back with promises of candy and porn, and otherwise being not-Konrad. He still lost too, repeatedly, but at least he lived to fight another day which is more than can be said for his idiot brother.