W'soran/Melkhior
The founder and usurper of the Necrarch Bloodline of the Vampire Counts. Both were huge fucking nerds with a penchant for playing army men as adults. Note that there are two different versions of the end of the story of W'soran/Melkhior. It's more up to personal interpretation which is canon, although the former story is supported by the legend of Ushoran leading to it being taken as slightly more canon.
The Legend
W'soran
Originally the High Priest of Lahmia during the days when the Tomb Kings had skin. W'soran was born to an ancient yet respectable bloodline from Mahrak (a place known for the founding of Nehekharan religion). Despite his heritage, he secretly adored Nagash's brilliance, even go as far as regretted that he was born too late to serve Nagash during the war. It was also mentioned that he was driven out of his homeland by his rival high priests, which is probably the reasons why he favors Nagash's dark arts more than Nehekharan religion.
He was invited by Lamashizzar to join his little cabal where they tried to attain immortality by studying Nagash's books and interrogating his servant Arkhan the Black for further knowledge. Like other members, he grew tired of Lamashizzar's incompetence and switched sides when Neferata showed her superior mastery of the dark arts over her brother. In fact, W'soran was the first to kneel before Neferata.
After Neferata became a vampire, W'soran was the first to be invited by Neffy to drink her new vampire elixir. Upon his transformation, he looked much older and to the point of looking more like a zombie than a human, but was satisfied with the result.
The founding of the cult of blood as well as the construction of its temple were W'soran's idea to harvest more blood and minions without drawing attention. However, like the other cabal members he did not approve of Neferata's sudden decision to raise the future king of Khemri herself. At that moment, W'soran considered Neffy a lost cause, driven batty by killing Khalida. He believed they (the vampries) should master the dark arts and use it to conquer and build a new empire over Nehekhara, rather than ruling a trading ground behind the mortals.
Still, he was able to persuade Neferata to give him the permission to study the book. He seized the opportunity to do what he had always wanted to do...seal himself up in the Great Library of Lahmia to read...and summon Nagash! Years passed, he used up a lot of slaves in his rituals but failed to summon the great necromancer's spirit. Then one day Ushoran barged into his place and offered assistance in exchange to unite against Neferata's rule. Under W'soran's instruction, Ushoran obtained Thutep's skull (because being Nagash's twin still allows him to form spiritual link to his evil brother despite being a decayed skull) after he secretly hired a bunch of tomb raiders to dug up Thutep's remain at Khetep's pyramid.
With the proper material acquired, all that's left is proper timing. Just so happens the book he has contained crucial information about Morrslieb's sighting, and they were all predicted by Nagash in life. With the green moon's power and Thutep's rotten skull, W'soran found Nagash! But to his surprise, Nagash was in fact alive/unlive, building an army capable of destroying Nehekhara and was living just north of Lahmia across the sour sea.
Unfortunately for W'soran, Neferata caught him right at this time, staked him in the heart and stuffed him in a barrel. Before being immobilized however, W'soran told Neferata that Nagash would come and destroy all and when that time comes, every vampire will bow to him like a maggot, even threaten Neffy that he would curse Lahmia to be destroyed and never rebuilt till the end of times.
W'soran was stuck in the barrel for 22 years until Alcadizaar laid siege to the city. He was freed by Ushoran under Neferata's order just so he could provide battle support for the Lahmian army. The entire times, W'soran stayed inside a tower with clear view of the battlefield. He use the books knowledge to summon a fuckload of zombies to fight their enemies. The zombies came from the catatomb, mostly belonging to poor or homeless people Neferata had torture and killed for food or info to find Alcadizzar. Although the Nehekharans do not fear the dead as they used to when fighting Nagash, the zombies served as a good distraction that blocked the enemy troops from moving forward. His part in the battle ended after a good catapult shot disrupted his ritual and thus instantly unbind all the zombies he had raised.
After Lahmia's fall, W'soran and his followers escaped and travel straight to Nagashizzar where they pledge themselves to Nagash after offered him his books. Nagash took in him and his followers and trained them until he was pretty much a level 4 wizard. For the 32 years (-1168 IC) of his time at Nagshizzar, he formed a bitter rivalry with Arkhan the Black, whom was raised back to serve his master. Arkhan proved to be quite an obstacle to W'soran becoming Nagash's number 1 (all just so he could obtain his knowledge, of course) due to being W'soran's equal in sorcery and having superior battlefield experience, still proving to be Nagash's most useful servant by far. W'soran tried to kill Arkhan many times with his minions, but failed to do so and was unable to while being watched by Nagash's baleful gaze.
Around this time, Ushoran had made to Nagashizzar and was bought before Nagash after he was captured by the undead sentinels. Cunningly, W'soran presented Ushoran to Nagash as a useful servant (or a monster, according to Arkhan) which led him to hunt down and enslave all his former cabal members.
He managed to track down Ankhat, who was the easiest to located and is now multiclassing as some sort of wizard pirate captain. Using his Terrogheist, W'soran located Ankhat's boat on the sea. Unfortunatly for W'soran, Ankhat already knew what the nerdy vampire wants for him and denied him even before W'soran bought up the topic. W'soran cannot forced Ankhat into servitude either due to his capabilties in using magic and fighting, which could ended both of them in a bloody stalemate. Still, Ankhat managed to convinced W'soran away by giving out the other members' whereabout... which W'soran will have to put the search on halt, for there are Nehekharans that needs to be conquored.
In order to control the massive undead army he had created, Nagash etched the sigil of binding into W'soran's face as well as his other 7 followers, making sure he could inflicting suffering on them while tasting their agony (because lore of darkness is all about feeding on negative emotions and feelings, further evidence on the dark elves and necromancers being edgelord wizard). Because of the additional vampires W'soran had bought, he was able to control a much larger army, a fact that irritated Arkhan since he doesn't trust nor liked W'soran, but he still needs his cooperation if he wanted the invasion to succeed. Nagash also granting W'soran his permission to use his book on the battlefield.
When the undead legion invaded, it first landed on Lahmia and took over its ruin, killing all the bandits and thugs hanging out there and making its first encampment at the former Lahmian palace in order to plan for further strategies. W'soran had to stay there for days, only to furiously found out Arkhan had abandoned him and head straight west to where Khemri located, thought the bastard lich was trying to steal his glory for taking Alcadizzar's head. After W'soran's army crossed the golden plain and raze its crops with blackness, Arkhan's army was already in a battle position against a coalition army of Lybaras and Rasetra. Arkhan blame W'soran for misinformed everyone and Nagash that the great cities are divided and were unable to muster a proper defence against them. W'soran rebuttled by saying it is but a fraction of the forces they had defeated back in the seige of Lahmia. As a result, Arkhan ended up making W'soran to clean up his messes since he already had prior knowledge on defeating them. W'soran was apparently surprised by the Nehekharan army's soldiers wielding new rune weaponry that were effective in killing the undeads and its new addition of wizard that can dispel magic. It was by sheer size and the udnead's tireless natural that W'soran won the battle. Still, the casualty inflicted on them would wiped out an average army and W'soran began to notice how long and painful this campaign is going to be with Arkhan being his bane while dealing with Nehekharan's new military technology.
Because of the nuisance Lybaras and Rasetra had posed, W'soran had to divide his army and sent his 4 vampires to seige their city (leaving only 3 by W'soran's side), prevents them from marching behind their army. Arkhan was also aware of W'soran's treachery that he make sure to stay away from him as far as possible.
A week after Arkhan razed Mahrak, the undead legion began trespassing the Valley of Kings, a gigantic linear valley path that leads straight towards Quatar then Khemri. Unfortunatly for them, Alcadizzar has prepared a strong defense along the valley path: Archers with fire arrows, catapult that sling flaming boulders, a tall wall made of granite and heavily armored soldiers from Ka-sabar that throws sandblocks and fire pots.
W'soran wasn't even called to help until they began the assault on the second wall, which it was even taller than the first one that their ladder cannot be reached and its walls are too thick to be blast open by spells and catapult. W'soran was persuade by Arkhan into sending his vampires to kill everyone within the walls (Note: the death of just one vampire could killed off several thousand undead soldiers that was bind to them). It was a great risk but they succeed nonetheless with W'soran casting a fog spell to conceal his vampires to sneak into the wall. The second wall finally falls after 5 days.
The final wall was even thicker, taller, leaving only a gate made of basalt. There, Arkhan leaving the rest to W'soran and his goon. W'soran and his 3 followers then began channeling their energy together and bought forth a dark cloud of tomb scarabs. The scarabs were then sent to the defenders ontop of the wall while 6 bone giants battered down the gate.
Unfortunately for W'soran, his rituals were disrupted when a newly reinforced archers arrived on the wall and starts to shoot flaming arrows rain upon them and shot one of his followers. Worst comes when Alcadizzar arrived just in time on his chariot with many horseman charging with him.
W'soran managed to blast Alcadizzar and his queen off the chariot, but due to the sheer plot armor of the king, he not only survived but also slained all three of W'soran's followers (one of them was shot in the eye by his queen). Abandoned by Arkhan, W'soran raged quit from the battlefield by using his tomb scarabs magic. He was never seen again at this point, not even in Nagashizzar for sure since Nagash was busy raging his ass off on their failure for 7 days and 7 night and he definitely NOT going anywhere near there.
In his novel, the Master of Death, it was revealed he had came back to Nagash's side after Alcadizzar was captured and the Nehekharan decimated by the plague. There, W'soran taunted Alcadizzar that his queen will never fired another shot at his eye (W'soran's eye never recovered from the war and had remained empty) and even go as far as to push the immobilized Alcadizzar to the ground. Being Nagash's important component for his ritual, Alcadizzar is important enough for the daddy lich to being protected of Alcadizzar, even go as far as to mock W'soran that Alcadizzar's blood worth thousands more than his Vampire kinds'.
Also, while observing Alcadizzar's mistreatment, W'soran's view on Nagash being a god has changed. Nagash may not be a god, a man, nor an invisible master, but he is certainly a very evil being, yet his behaviors and actions is deemed somewhat like an exceedingly petty and spiteful human (gloat over Alcadizzar, temper tantrum, hating anything) to W'soran. Regardless, W'soran was certainly having a wet dream about how the ritual which will gave birth to a whole new generations of undead in Nehekhara, which they will all serve Nagash and kill every living being in the world for him. Did I mentioned that W'soran thought it is a beautiful thing? What. the. fuck.
Here, the story of W'soran and Melkhior splits. The W'soran version follows.
After Nagash was killed W'soran turned more nerds into Vampires and crossed the impassible mountains to join Ushoran, who had been kind of a bro to him. He aided Ushorsn in building up the power of Strigos, and helped Ushoran claim the Crown of Nagash. An afterthought came that Nagash wouldn't have been to pleased about that and that maybe the Crown of Sorcery was better left in the hands of an actual sorcerer (himself). This inspired W'soran to began to experiment with imbuing one's own essence into physical objects, skirting along the magical theory of elf Soulstones but instead creating the process of Lich phylacteries. He eventually created a helmet of his own and placed part of his soul within it, then gave it to a tribe of humans called the Dresca and watched them tear themselves apart through his subtle mental influence. He made a pact with the leader of a human tribe named Vorag Bloodytooth, who in exchange for helping make him powerful built W'soran a fantastic and secret laboratory fortress. Here W'soran conducted many EEEEEEEVIL experiments and perfected the Lore of Vampires. During the fall of Strygos, W'soran and his followers ambushed the Strigoi while they were fighting greenskins. Eventually, W'soran faced Ushoran alone and lost due to the influence of Nagash through the Crown. His forces were crushed by the Strigoi, and he himself fled through the burning city causing as much damage as he could to slow down the pissed off Strigoi, Strygos, his own traitorous followers, and Orc pursuers. During his retreat he found a large vein of Warpstone and consumed it, using the boost in magic to collapse a mountain which killed many of those chasing him and cut off the rest.
He used his magic to hastily construct a mountain keep that could only be reached by a long mountain pass filled with traps and monsters, then awaited his enemies. The Lahmians and Strigoi made it to the pass, but most were slain between battling each other and falling into traps laid by the mad scientist Vampire. Melkhior, clever and knowledgeable about his master's preference for traps, reached the keep and pretended to warn his former master about the coming threat, and convinced him they would make a final stand inside W'soran's own vault. W'soran found himself fighting the enemy Vampires alone, and after slaying them to the last Melkhior attacked his master from behind. Melkhior taunted him as W'soran lay dying, and W'soran seemingly fought his own dying breath to make out a few last words to his traitorous pupil. As Melkhior leaned in closer with a grin to hear what the old Vampire had to say, W'soran seized him and growled with a wicked smile that he had discovered the secret of true immortality. W'soran bit his student in the neck, and his soul entered the body of Melkhior and consumed the younger Vampire's soul and knowledge. When the Lahmian reinforcements finally arrived at the keep, they found the corpse of W'soran and the (un)living student claiming to have done the deed. He told them he wanted to join them, and would give them all the secrets of W'soran provided he had time to translate the many tomes and decipher the experiments and tablets within the vault. He fed them a steady stream of lesser magics and artifacts before returning to his wayward students, gathering them into enclaves dedicated to advancing different areas of necromantic and alchemical study. Each knows little of the other enclaves, and none know all but himself. He himself is the master of the large and isolated Necrarch Bloodline, and over time and wearing different guises has ingratiated himself one way or the other with all of the Vampire Bloodlines.
While each different Bloodline may claim to control an army, claim to control a nation, or claim to be invincible it is W'soran and the Necrarchs who's combined strength is represented by the application of Undead monsters, unbelievably powerful and previously unknown magic, and subtle manipulation to the combined might of the others.
Melkhior
The above story represents the basic interpretation of the story. The following is the original version of the fluff and is less detailed.
In this one, after the fall of Nagash the Necrarchs built their power and spread throughout the world without the parts involving Ushoran and the Strigoi. W'soran, being more trusting in this interpretation, took loyal students with him as they traveled in secret administrating to the Necrarch enclaves. At one point, Melkhior began to read the books of Nagash while W'soran meditated or conducted intensive research. During one of these meditations, Melkhior slew the body of his master, trapping the soul of W'soran in the spirit world where he gathers armies of Ethereal undead to prey upon the living and eventually his former student.
Melkhior built a magically hidden tower in the Great Forest which is found within the Empire, and studied magic alone.
Zacharias The Everliving
The following story goes along with the latter story where Melkhior defeats W'soran, but for the sake of unified canon (as in the current canon both W'soran aiding Ushoran built his empire and this story appear to both be true) one can assume that a different version of is happens in the former story as well.
At one point a thief named Zacharias attempted to breach the tower where Melkhior was dwelling and steal a book of Nagash and, impressed that the young man had foiled his magical defenses, Melkhior made Zacharias his pupil. As the years went on, Melkhior became more and more insane and would go on Strigoi-like rampages to drain whole cities of blood. Zacharias took advantage of these times to read the book. Of course, one of these times Melkhior returned and caught him at the act so a fight broke out with Melkhoir winning and Zacharias fled.
Wounded by the pursuing minions of Melkhior, he hid in a cave and fell into a restorative hibernation for ten years. When he awoke he found that a Black Dragon had begun to use the cave as a lair. He promptly drained the dragon's blood over a very long time until it died (since nothing can wake up if a vampire feeds on it while it's sleeping) which caused him to grow in strength and cured his Vampiric weaknesses and need to feed on blood. He promptly reanimated the Dragon's corpse as a mount, then gathered an army and returned to lay siege to the tower. The two battled, and from here the story splits once again.
In one version of the story, Melkhior only narrowly survived the confrontation and fled to plot revenge. In the other, he perished and Zacharias took over as head of the Necrarch Bloodline and organized them into an effective force preparing to attempt to conquer the Empire in a manner similar to the von Carsteins. Either way, Melkhior's treasures and book of Nagash wind up in the hands of Zacharias.
The End Times
When Nagash came back, Nagash contacted him for his service, but found that Zacharias thought he was his equal. For this insult, Nagash promptly set his brain on fire in his head and instantly killed him. Unfortunately, this and a complete lack of any mention of W'soran or Melkhior in End Times suggests he really was killed by Zacharias, although no mention of the other Necrarchs were made either. Unfortunately, End Times left out quite a few things and the lore answers that Josh Reynolds provided were rendered non-canon by usual Games Workshop douchebaggery so either the Necrarchs were all wiped out alongside Zacharias, completely offscreen or just joined Nagash/went into hiding equally offscreen, and either way were 100% destroyed with the old setting when Age of Sigmar came to be.
Necrarchs
Like the other spellcasters of the game (Empire Mages, Tzeentchian Warriors of Chaos, Saphery Mages, and the like the Necrarchs are more likely to be found in the company of other Bloodlines than in an army of their own. Should have need to however, Necrarchs are very adaptable.
Any option you want to take can be handwaved as another Bloodline recruited to their service, although particularly "Necrarch" options include Zombies and Skeletons for Core raised in bulk as needed (failed test subjects in mass graves is another good explanation), Corpse Carts (as gatherers of new specimens) and Hexwraiths/Spirit Hosts (vengeful test subjects, experiments in soul-binding, or the minions of W'soran in the story where his soul is doomed to wander) as Special, Black Coaches (as a protective form of Chariot for the studious Necrarchs to direct battle from) and Mortis Engines (an arcane object created by Necrarchs powering their creations) for Rare. For Lords and Heroes, no named character is fitting (apart from possibly Mannfred the Acolyte. After all, he has studied everywhere, probably including under a Necrarch tutor at some point) unless one wants to use the stats of one of the Mannfreds to use as a Necrarch model. Necromancers are a possible option as an assistant, but really any options should be spellcasting Vampires and Master Vampires. Use of any other Lores other than Lore of Vampires is within theme if you choose to use them.
On the Tabletop
W'soran/Melkhior once had models and stats, but have long since been removed from the game and discontinued. If you can obtain the models, one can use W'soran or Melkhior (depending on which version of the fluff you consider canon) as a Master Vampire spellcaster in the Lore of Vampires riding an Abyssal Terror.
Necrarchs used to be one of the more popular Bloodlines until von Carsteins became the only Bloodline of any importance in the game in 7e, and as a result have a fair number of on foot and mounted models. All are out of production, so eBay is your only source.
As for how they used to be in their old rules, Melkhoir knocks in at 660 pts , he causes terror (with -1 to enemy leadership, but the modifier doesn't affect undead or daemons naturally), he is immune to all psychology, he is a lvl 4 wizard that gets one more spell than usual, has stupidity, has an abyssal terror and most importantly he can recast a spell on a 3+ (you still have to cast it as normal after passing the recast roll), though he cannot cast the same spell twice on the same unit. Melkhoir also has three very special items that are awesome, he's got a magical sword that gives the models he hits -1 to their to hit rolls (he doesn't need to wound and the effects are not cumulative), he has a book he wrote that allows him to automatically cast a spell (it doesn't even use up any of your magic power either), and the spell that he casts can be recast as normal, but after using it, roll a die, on a 1-2 it can't be used again for the rest of the battle, and he has a black cloak that makes it impossible to shoot him. Literally, he cannot be shot at or hurt by shooting ever, not even by warmachines (he takes no damage if he gets hit) and not even by magical missiles (again he takes no damage) which is awesome combined with the sword so he doesn't get hit in combat, and combined with the book so he can keep shooting out spells. Statwise he's a Necrarch Vampire Lord, so also good in combat.
Gallery
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The body of Melkhior, either inhabited by the soul of W'soran or as the traitorous pupil himself. Mounted on the "ever popular" only version of the Abyssal Terror that looks good.
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An old Necrarch model.
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A set of older Necrarch models.
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Yet more Necrarch models.
