Your army may include Melkhior the ancient, of the Necrarch Vampires. If you include him in your army, he will be its General. Melkhior can be taken as a Lord choice, but he will use up two of your Hero choices as well. Taking Melkhior counts as taking a Lord and two Heroes. He must be fielded exactly as presented here and no extra equipment or magic items can be bought for him.

The Necrarchs are the most reclusive and incomprehensible of the undying Vampires, and none more so than Melkhior, the oldest of the Necrarchs. Melkhior lives far from human settlements and his secret tower is hidden from view in the great Forest of Shadows by powerful enchantments. In the highest chamber of this tower, the most ancient of Vampires works alone. He is decayed, irredeemably evil, and utterly insane. Melkhior experiments with the living, trying to find out how they can be made to understand the benefit of joining the Undead and how they could overcome their fear of the dead. Countless men have died in Melkhior's obsessive search, but still the answer he searches for eludes him. Pain, suffering and horror fascinate this mad being. The dungeons and torture chambers of his dark tower are filled with wretched prisoners who undergo indescribable agony to satisfy the curiosity of this insane Vampire Lord. Melkhior's fortress is a monument to suffering and terror, filled with the results of his insane experiments: Zombies that are half-dead and half-alive, severed heads which scream endlessly in the darkness, limbs that crawl in unlit passageways, and countless other horrors created by Melkhior's dark arts.

Now and then the ancient Vampire leads his Undead servants out of his stronghold to capture new victims for his experiments or to swell the Undead legions that guard him. At such times, armies of Zombies commanded by the twisted acolytes of Melkhior pour from the forest and hunt for the living to bring back to their master. Normally a Vampire's grasp of necromantic magic is limited by his Undead condition. Melkhior, on the other hand, has almost the same knowledge of the necromantic arts as the most powerful living Necromancers, for he has thousands of years of experience in these matters. He is so suffused with dark magic that he is now more part of the world of the dead than the living and is decomposed to the point where he is a skeletal, reeking horror. His eyes are two pools of darkness that mirror the purest evil in everything they see and an aura of death hangs heavily about him. In the total darkness of his hellish fortress, the ancient Vampire paints on human skins. He paints terrifying scenes of a world where there are no living, where the dead walk the land and withered, Undead trees blight the bleak landscape. Melkhior claims that he paints visions of the future, glimpses of the time that is to come. Perhaps his visions are true and the known world is doomed to the horrible existence of unlife.

Legends say that the mighty Melkhior has been betrayed and defeated by his best apprentice and is now hidden, sleeping a centuries-long slumber, recovering his energies until he will be ready to return and claim back his rightful position of Master of the Necrarchs.

Weapons: Painbringer.

Armour: None.

Mount: Melkhior rides a Winged Nightmare into battle (see Vampire Counts army book, page 48 for the monster's special rules).

Spells: He is a level 4 wizard and always uses Necromantic spells.

Bloodline Powers. Melkhior the Ancient has all the powers of the Necrarch family as well as the normal +1 to cast spells of the Necrarch bloodline.

Insane. Melkhior is a gibbering horror who lost his sanity a long time ago. He is completely immune to all psychology, like other Vampires, except that he is subject to the rules for Stupidity. See the Warhammer rulebook for details.

Painbringer. Painbringer is the black sword of Melkhior, said to be made from the magical life force of insane men. The mere touch of this blade brings insanity and hideous pain. If Melkhior hits his opponent, his enemy is immediately wracked with great pain and will suffer a -1 penalty to all his To Hit rolls for the rest of the battle (note that only one -1 penalty is applied, regardless of how many times the opponent is hit).

Grimoire Necronium. Written by Melkhior himself, this book is one of the greatest works of necromancy. In its pages are described the blasphemous rites and evil spells that allow wizards to summon and command the dead.

The Grimoire Necronium allows Melkhior to cast one of his five Necromantic spells without using any power dice. Note that you must choose which spell this is at the beginning of the game, after you rolled to determine his spells. Melkhior can cast this spell once per own magic phase (i.e. he cannot recast it using dice) and the spell is cast at a power level equal to its casting value (Invocation of Nehek is cast at power level 7, for a 2D6 strong spell). Each time you use the book roll a D6: on a roll of 1 it runs out of power and cannot be used for the remainder of the battle.

Black Cloak of Lahmia. This cloak is one of the great treasures of Lahmia, the city of the Vampires. Merely looking at the cloak can make eyes bleed and sanity vanish. No shooting attacks can be made against a character wearing the Black Cloak of Lahmia. This means that Melkhior may not be targeted by war machines or normal missile fire at all. He can be targeted normally by magic missiles (arrows from a Bow of Loren, etc) and spells (such as Fireballs).