The Master
The Exiled Tyrant of the Fellholds
Overview
Once a ruler of shadow and deceit, The Master was the sovereign of a vampiric kingdom that stretched across the Fellholds. His dominion was not built upon brute conquest, but on manipulation, treachery, and whispered bargains, where lords and warbands were little more than pieces in his endless game. He reveled in turning his enemies against one another, ensuring that no one force could challenge him without first tearing itself apart.
Among his most enigmatic rivals was Baron Edgar von Schattenmeer, his southern neighbhour. The two shared a peculiar bond—at times close friends, at others bitter adversaries. They dined in each other's halls, exchanged riddles and veiled threats, all the while waiting for the moment when one would plunge the dagger into the other’s back. What passed between them remains unknown, but when The Master's kingdom burned, Edgar did not come to his aid.
The Fall of the Fellholds
When the Dawnbringer Crusades descended upon the Fellholds, they did not come as pawns to be moved upon The Master’s board. They came as a storm of holy vengeance, their war priests and warriors carrying the fury of Sigmar. His carefully laid schemes unraveled beneath the relentless march of their crusade. The great banners of the Golden God flew over the broken gates of his domain, his once-proud court reduced to ashes and bloodstains on shattered stone.
The final siege of the Ashen Cairn lasted for weeks, and The Master fought like a cornered beast. When the final breach was made, and the Dawnbringers surged through his ruined halls, he abandoned his throne in shame and madness, escaping into the night as his kingdom was torn apart behind him. It was not just a retreat—it was the shattering of his very mind.
The Descent into the Fellholds
Lost and broken, The Master fled into the dark heart of the Fellholds, where tangled forests and barrow-mounds swallowed him whole. Stripped of his kingdom, he became little more than a beast, lurking in the shadows, preying on what he could find—wild animals, lost children, wandering pilgrims. The once-great lord of the night had become a lurking terror in the woods, a hungry wretch barely clinging to existence.
As years passed, he changed. The grandeur of his past life warped into delusion, his fractured mind clinging to the memory of his lost court. He still saw himself as a noble king, even as he wallowed in the filth of his ruined exile. It was during this time that he crafted his first new courtier— Lickspittle Esquire, a grotesque and malformed servant who acted as his jester and herald, luring travelers into the dark with false cries for help.
One night, as his hunts grew ever more desperate, he was ambushed by a band of hunters, men who had grown wise to the disappearances in the wood. They drove him from his hunting grounds, forcing him to flee deeper than ever before. It was then that he stumbled upon the Hollowvaults, a labyrinth of ancient tombs hidden beneath the Fellholds.
The Hollowvaults and the Birth of a New Terror
In the darkness of the Hollowvaults, The Master found more than just shelter—he found a throne of the dead. Here, beneath the earth, he encountered The Shrike of Black Hollow, a Terrorgheist of monstrous proportions, surrounded by a colony of Night Shriekers and countless flocks of carrion bats. But The Master was no mere scavenger—he was still a king, even in ruin. With a force of will borne from desperation and madness, he bent The Shrike and its brood to his service, marking the Hollowvaults as his new domain.
With his Terrorgheist soaring through the skies and his winged minions blotting out the stars, The Master began to strike fear into the hearts of those who lived near the forest’s edge. His legend grew anew—not as the fallen tyrant of the Fellholds, but as the Umbrahex, a faceless nightmare that mimicked the voices of loved ones to lure its prey, a shadow-dwelling terror that fed not just on blood and flesh, but on fear itself.
The Return of the Hunter
As his raids grew more frequent and savage, The Master once more drew the attention of Sigmar’s hunters. This time, they came not as an army, but as a relentless force of witch hunters and monster slayers, a new breed of foe who sought to end him before he could rise again. He could feel the noose tightening around his undead neck once again. His brood of bats and his pitifull servant were not enough to secure his return to power—he needed warriors, champions, knights to enact his will.