Nagash
Nagash is the First Necromancer and arguably the most evil character to ever curse the Warhammer Fantasy world. Ever. He is also fucking badass and will go in hand-to-hand combat with the likes of Sigmar, and has plans to kick Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaanesh, and Nurgle out of the Warp and become Chaos itself.
Nagash is also the name of a town in Northern Ethiopia, Africa.
Background
Nagash started as a Hierophant consecrated to the gods of Nehekhara while his brother was the priest-king of Khemri. This was because, in Nehekhara, the firstborn sons of the nobles were given to the temples as priests and the second sons became the kings. Pissed off about this, he decided he wouldn't accept his fate and started investigations on how to increase his magical power. Initially his reasons also included that he thought his brother Thutep was a weak king and Nagash could make Khemri great again (plus he REALLY had the hots for Thutep's wife, and the whole celibacy thing really sucked). Unfortunately for the Khemrians, he got his hands on some Dark Elf sorcerers who'd been taken prisoner (note that this is actually not long after the High and Dark Elves split off from each other, back before Malekith forbade males from learning magic). From them he learned about the winds of magic and also figured out how to increase his own life expectancy and dabbled in magic much more evil than he (MAY) have initially intended. Regardless, when Nagash was done with the sorcerers he brutally killed them and consumed their souls (you know that when someone can out-evil and out-betray Dark Elves, they're cold mothafuckas).
After a fair amount of time and many experiments (which involved madd human sacrifices) which generally consisted of evil magic-y things, Nagash created an elixir which allowed him to stay alive through death (although the body degenerated, becoming essentially a lich without a Phylactery) and penned nine different Necronimicon/Book of Vile Darkness books which contain all of his work (which nobody to date has ever managed to attain the same degree of working knowledge of). The books explain the details and use of Necromancy, a new form of magic that Nagash had distilled from the Light and Death magic Lores along with the rituals of the Tomb Kings. Necromancy, although useable by the forces of Chaos, also repels it; in a way the Undead are artificial Daemons made of equal amount magic and material which flips the middle finger at the laws of physics (as much as Chaos has laws of physics anyway) of both. Nagash gained knowledge of all of the Winds, including those that did not blow through Nehekhara, and became one of the only mortals to gain a grasp of understanding about the Chaos Gods without his mind breaking. Far from it in fact, he saw them as a goal; to become Chaos and rule over the material plane consisting only of the mindless Undead. Nagash then killed his brother and sorta mummified his wife alive to make into his sex-slave skeleton at a later date.
Nagash contracted the services of the Skaven, and assembled the largest pyramid in Nehekhara (a big feat) made entirely out of black Warpstone. From this, he was able to channel the energies of Necromancy and raise a massive Undead army which he used to launch a war on the entire rest of Nehekhara. For the first time the bitter city states banded into one unified army, and beat back Nagash's undead armies. Nagash fled into the desert, the Saharan style one with no water anywhere. Without any of his elixer, he was doomed to perish in the wastes. He did too, then got right back up and walked home. That's right, Nagash said "fuck this" to dying (once again, another being who makes the Emprah look like a failure. It's sort of a theme in Fantasy though.
When Nagash returned, he found that the folks in Lahmia had been up to mischief. The Queen of Lahmia had been reading his nine books and had made a new form of the Elixer, which required only one drinking and left the user with flesh and a human visage (at the cost of needing blood to survive). She had shared them with her court, creating ten other Head Vampires who in turn had created Bloodlines by turning others. Among them was W'soran, a priest who worshiped Nagash like a god (and probably tried to hump his leg when Nagash came before them), the warrior Abhorash, the diplomat Ushoran, and POSSIBLY (by which one Bloodline claims it's true, and everyone else thinks it's bullshit) the Queen's husband Vashanesh along with the othersix, who we know nothing about). Nagash went back to his pyramid and made the Vampires his lieutenants against the living (other than W'soran who, upon being separated from Nagash's leg, took his followers into Nagash's library and poured over his assembled knowledge).
The Nehekharans once again united, but this time shit was too much for them. The leader of the Nehekharan forces, the current king of Khemri named Alcadizzar, was spirited away by the VERY frightened Skaven (united for the first time in THEIR history over the whole thing) into Nagash's pyramid itself and given a sword made of pure Warpstone which was SO deadly, Alcadizzar only had a short amount of time to use it before he himself died just from touching it. So our "hero" was teleported straight to the big bad's throne room and given his one weakness to use before the big bad can react. The only thing the Skaven DIDN'T do was actually physically do it. It was basically the ultimate sacrifice; killing Nagash cost Alcadizzar literally everything. His kingdom (the largest empire in the world) was killed to a man during the final battle in which his family died which ended his line forever, his sanity was shattered, and the weapon he needed to use to kill Nagash was so potent it was guaranteed to kill the wielder as well.
Before Nagash died however, he managed to cast a spell which killed EVERYTHING in Nehekhara (making it a land with no water anywhere, no vegetation, no animals, nothing; just skeletons). But he failed to account for the the magical protections that had been placed on every Nehekharan royal (and most nobles) ever, so instead of Undead slaves everyone who ever lived in Nehekhara woke back up at once with the peasantry being mostly mindless Undead while the royals fought over who in the twenty or more generations of the family got to sit on the throne they all had at one point...Tomb Kings everybody! During the final battle between Nagash and Alcadizzar, the humans had broken the ranks of the Undead and the Vampires had begun blaming each other. After a night of dueling and namecalling they made a run for it (other than W'soran's followers, most of whom refused to leave Nagash's burning library. For W'soran's part, he hauled as many books as he could away and made off into the night).
Nagash's nine books were lost, popping up in various times and places. Alcadizzar's body, bearing the Crown of Sorcery made by Nagash (which was actually a modified Phylactery) washed up on shore in the Old World along the Mediterranean equivalent, which gave rise to the Necromantic kingdom of Mourkain.
His story doesn't end here however; he came back after a couple of centuries (the Skaven had vaporized his remains so it took a lot of time for him to remake himself). After wiping out the Skaven who'd taken over his fortress, Nagash raised an army and attacked the newborn Empire. During the final battle he fought in a duel with Sigmar himelf and nearly defeated him. Sigmar, realizing what was at stake went on a Humanity Fuck Yeah! rampage and finally crushed Nagash's skull with his hammer. The spirit of Nagash fled the battlefield and went back to his fortress were he recovered, having learned that the world now has powers capable to match him. Even Sigmar at the height of his power only just managed to defeat Nagash, and even then only by wearing Nagash's own crown to protect him from Nagash's magic. A crown that had pretty much sent Sigmar insane the last time he wore it.
During the downtime, Nagash recruited a "young" Vampire named Mannfred von Carstein to serve him, and he worked with Nagash's servant Arkhan the Black to resurrect their master. Now the time has come...FOR GAMES WORKSHOP TO UNLEASH THEIR LATEST CASH COW IN THE NAME OF NAGASH!
Why Nagash is so evil
While most evil characters on the game have done their share of bad deeds Nagash has an special place amongst them, the following lists illustrates how sick this fuck is:
- Entombed his own brother alive and stole his wife.
- Turned said wife into an agony-ridden walking corpse and kept her that way for centuries. The process he used to accomplish this involved tricking her into drinking the blood of her murdered son; who was also Nagash's nephew.
- Usurped Nehekhara's throne; then his reign was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, and he nearly destroyed the kingdom's economy to build his Black Pyramid.
- Captured the spirits of his enemies and kept them in eternal torment.
- Started a war which destroyed many of the Nehekharan cities and killed even more of the population.
- Broke the covenant between the Nehekharan gods and their people, not only removing the divine powers of the Nehekharans but ensuring that after death they wouldn't be able to go to their gods and would have to stay in a nether dimension forever. Especially jarring if you remember that he used to be the High Priest of their religion.
- Indirectly corrupted some of the nobility of Nehekhara, who became the first vampires.
- Turned a whole tribe of his followers into ghouls because they annoyed him several times by asking him to give them a promised reward.
- Used his loyal vassals as tools in a terrible incantation to make himself a magic set of armour and then, for the only time in any of his fluff, he does something nice for someone besides himself (he compliments them for exceeding his expectations). After complimenting them he devoured their souls.
- Started a new war against Nehekhara which cost thousands more lives.
- Used a horrible plague spell to annihilate the entire Nehekharan civilization after losing the war against them.
- Raised the Nehekharan dead, turning them into millions of undead minions with the idea of annihilating all life in the world.
- Almost destroyed the Empire and nearly crippled Sigmar in a duel by using a poisoned blade.
- Cursed the Vampires with a vulnerability to Sigmar's power after the assholes were too self-absorbed during the war with the Empire to help Nagash out.
- Corrupted the dragon's graveyard and created the zombie dragons
While some of the deeds on this list may have been done by your Skaven or Chaos Lord there is a basic difference between them and Nagash, the former usually do this either to advance their entire race, clan, tribe or to appease and/or promote their gods. Nagash on the other hand didn't care about anyone, despised the gods and had no empathy for his people. He fucked up his own nation and a large section of the world for his own personal gain and, so far as the fluff goes, he has never cared or done anything for anyone other than himself, with his ultimate plan being quite literally to turn everything into undead with no will under his command (So he's basically the Darkseid of the Warhammer Fantasy Universe, and seems to be inspired by the Pharaoh Nefren-Ka from the Cthulhu Mythos) To be fair, he honestly believes this to be the best thing for the warhammer world. And he might be right. Chaos has a hard time corrupting the undead, and Nagash has already managed to steal one of Khorne's favoured champions (Krell). Black Library seems to share the idea, since a banner promoting the book "The Return of Nagash" names him as "The Greatest Villain in the Warhammer World".
In the Game (Old Times)
Nagash was actually a special character back when it was just "Warhammer Armies: Undead" and all the dead boys were united in one armybook. Despite being described as "a pale shadow of his former self" he was an unholy rapetrain - a statline with the lowest stats being 6's (init and attacks) and everything else being a 7. Add in a completely unmodifiable 4+ save against everything (including any and all spell effects), a sword that gives him +1 str and lets him use any wounds he causes to heal himself and being one of the most powerful mages in the game making him pretty much unstoppable. (Unless you threw a High Mage at him with Drain Magic and Banishment which resulted in epic lulz.)
Even if Games Workshop was willing to advance their storyline, Nagash getting off his bony arse and doing shit would be a game ender (see below). Nothing short of the direct intervention of gods would stop him and even then, the world would be a graveyard (Nah, there are some who can beat him: Sigmar [who's done it once before], Kroak [though now he's much weaker as a ghost-Slann] and other First Spawning Slann would simply think Nagash out of existence if they were still alive, arguably Morathi and Malekith, Aenarion, Teclis [is described as being if not his equal in magic, then close behind],and possibly Archaon the Everchosen).
To keep that from happening, Games Workshop chose to give him what might very well be the single most derptastic model to ever blight a tabletop with its presence, an unholy abomination of fail so ridiculous that it makes the Tyranid Biovore look like a towering monument of awe and might in comparison. Even the beardiest of cheesemongers thought twice before fielding it, knowing all too well that they would pay for it not only in army points, but in dignity and self-respect.
The End Times
GUESS WHO'S BACK!!!!!!!
Nagash is back, with fuckawesome (and fuckexpensive) model and another storyline chapter that involves everyone this time.
His primary goal is to bring order to the world; with the dawn of the End Times we see the High Elves and Dark Elves getting railed by massive chaos incursions while the Wood Elves sit in their forest laughing about how everyone is gonna be speared on Slaanesh's dick but them. The Beastmen who are massing disagree with this assessment however. Of course the Empire is currently taking it from behind by nearly every faction in the game (mainly the Warriors of Chaos lead by Archaon who is determined not to end up looking like a little shit this time) at the moment, with Kislev having been almost entirely wiped out (assuming this "End Times" is a wash like the last one they'll have rebuilt their green wood castles in a week, but still). Bretonnia was in flames as civil war tore through the country, but has mostly united now, even if 50% of the population died. The Orcs & Goblins have been decimated by the attacks of Eltharion the Grim against their race as WAAAGH!s that lasted since the dawn of time were obliterated with fire magic, leaving no spores to repopulate. The remainder of their race (barring individuals and their bands such as Skarsnik, Warlod of the Eight Peaks and Grimghor Ironhide) are heading straight for eastern Ulthuan into a trap that could possibly work and wipe out most of the greenskins. The Skaven backstabbing and plotting against the world hasn't changed of course, and are currently conquering the majority of the southern human nations with numbers that even vampires think is excessive. Lizardmen are under assault from Daemons, and Mazdamundi declares that the great plan has failed and that a great exodus must begin. Dwarfs have barricaded themselves in their holds, or else gone about trying to retake and rebuild the Eight Peaks thanks to being shunned by both the Empire and Tyrion when help was offered in their missions against the Undead (of course, thanks to the fact that Dwarfs will rather destroy their own race than let grudges go, it's unlikely that the Dwarfs will be around long after reunification and the chance to avenge themselves at each other with impunity). Of course since this is Games Whiteshop, we aren't going to hear about what's going on in the rest of the world with the browns and Asians. But we can assume they're in civil war or being clusterfucked by Chaos too.
During all of this, Nagash has risen again. He held up his hands for quiet, then told the assembled peoples of the world this; "Guys, I got a plan. Everyone just take off your skin and meat, and line up over there. Trust me guys, this'll work for sure." As one can imagine, that isn't going over so well. The first to get crushed was Settra the Imperishable, who united the Tomb Kings (and punished those who refused to kiss the ring and get in line by ordering their unliving skull by used as artillery ammunition) against just such a threat. The idea that anyone rule over SETTRA THE FUCKYOU was too much for the old man, but it turned out badly and his army (plus one of his gods) were destroyed/eaten by Nagash. Likewise, Archaon stopped his march into the Empire and instead followed a route that would lead him to the massive Undead fuckhead that DARED to take HIS rightful place as big-bad of the setting.
Following similar logic, Queen Neferata has gathered a massive army pulled from the Undead across the world, as well as the living armies whose leaders have been under her thumb since birth. But she has not yet decided who she'll follow; on one hand, serving Nagash would be beneficial as he's seeking to become the Chaos God of Undeath (replacing all four of the other Chaos Gods and BECOMING Chaos Undivided) which would make her ruler of all beneath him. On the other hand..."serving" isn't something she does, to the point that one of her earliest decisions after leaving his service originally involved pooling all the forces available to her to go fuck up one of her closest allies and his entire kingdom because he implied that he was better at ruling than her. If she DOES choose to serve however (as in, if the player who shells out $79 for her model fields her as a model in the Undead Legion army) she becomes known as the Mortarch of Blood and takes place in Nagash's trinity of servants.
But Nagash has planned for his return well. His first servant and first in the Trinity (if it's not a duality anyway), Arkhan the Black, becomes known as the Mortarch of Sacrament. Arkhan leads Nagash's main army against the forces of the world. Meanwhile Vlad von Carstein, Mortarch of Blood, leads a detachment of Nagash's forces against Archaon's Chaos army to ensure that the Nordic fuckup that got boo-ed offstage in Storm of Chaos doesn't interfere with Nagash's big moment in the spotlight. He even tore Settra apart, though didn't kill him, and forced Settra to watch the destruction of Khemri. Nagash then went on to bitch-slap the Tomb Kings into submission, destroying the few that resisted and finally has his FUCKHEUG undead army to conquer the world, which he will use to ruin the day of Chaos' forces.
Nagash is the hero the Warhammer World needs but not the one that they want.
On The Tabletop
He's a special Lord level Monster with a crazy statline (EVERYTHING 7 save Initiative and Attacks, which are both 6 and Leadership 10) and crazier rules. Not to mention his magic items of eternal FUCK YOU, which make Malekith and Archaon's shit look like Core gear.
In short he's a Level 5 Wizard with access to the Lores of Death, Light (he's Nehekharan, remember?), Vampires, Nehekara, and a new Lore called "Undeath". He carries his nine (Yes, HE GOT BACK ALL OF THEM, so most likely Arhkan loses his or got a copy) Books of Nagash which lets him carry NINE spells, one being "Ryze, the Grave Call" and the rest generated from any combination of the mentioned Lores, as he pleases.
But wait, there's more. Re-rolls any Miscast and can store any time in the Magic Phase up to four Power Dice for later, surpassing the six-dice-per spell... or to empower attacks adding the Heroic Killing Blow to his already powerful sword (+1 Strength and Multiple Wounds (D3))And... being a Monster also has the 'Stomp Attack'(aganist Infantry, War beasts and Swarms only). This guy is a rape machine in close combat to all. Thought that was bad it gets worse, Any Undead within 12" suffer two wound's less because of Unstable, plus any other rule that stacks (for example, Battle Standard Bearer). And the cherry on this hell cake: each time he casts a summoning spell of Undeath the points summoned and the range are TRIPLED (e.g. Ryze, The Grave call who ALWAYS have: With difficulty 9+, anyone else can summon 50 points of troops within 12" or 100 at 14+. At best(16+) 150 points worth of Monstruous Infantry at the same range. Nagash summons 150, 300 and 450) respectively at 36". Remember that a Crypt Horror costs 38 p. per boy? Do the freaking math.) Queue Rage QUIT!!
At this point he could be the single most overpowered thing in the entire game. In defence he "merely" has a 4+ Armour and 4+ Ward; nice but somewhat disappointing (However it should be pointed out with each successful spell cast he can restore 1 wound). All this for 1000 points, meaning you cannot field him in games under at least 2000 points (As the new army he comes with allows for a 50% point placement in Lords/Characters).
Recent tests aganist several special characters in challenges has proven a terrible thought: no one of them, not even ARCHAON could best him. The only one close was Hellebron, but even she fell.
Sweet merciful fuck. Talk about bringing a Tomahawk Missile to a knife fight.
There is a couple ways to kill him though. The empire has a magic item that allows a character to swap stats with a model in base contact, and like all undead, cannons are the bane of his existence (you've got a 50/50 shot of getting through that ward save and causing D6 wounds), so team up with that dwarf buddy of yours and you can watch Nagash get blown to pieces. One would at first glance think that Tamurkhan's ability to take control of an enemy that kills him would be the perfect trolling option. But Tamurkhan's villain override only works on Infantry or Monstrous Infantry while Nagash is of the Monster category, and in addition it only works on things that kill him in Close Combat meaning that a player controlling Naggy would simply blast it with magic anyway. There are a few things that can stand up against Nagash in CC, the best being Thogrim and a High Elf Unit/Charakter with Banner of the World Dragon, both have a 2++ against Nagash attacks. Another way is building your Anti-Nagash-Demonslayer with Grudge/Might/Speed, wich can possyibly (~40%) kill Nagash in CC and that is quite the epic death even for a Slayer. Also don't get your Hopes up for Cannons becaus you need approximately 7 shots without rerols (1 doesn't hit, 1 missfire, 1 doesn't wound, 2 bouncing off his safe) and he can heal himself with Vampire Magic.
Gallery
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1000 points, and costs 100 Naggaroth dollars, now 99 percent derp free! It would be 100% if not for the derpy skull face on the staff or the buck-teeth on the ghosts.
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Just when you thought you had convinced the Dwarfs not to bring 6 cannons, they get justification for it.
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Unfortunately for the people who like Settra, Nagash does win this fight in the fluff.
