Vlad promptly sacked Stirland and ravaged the Ostermark. He had thrown down the gauntlet to the Empire, marking the start of the Vampire Wars. Soon a vast horde of Undead stood ready to obey Vlad's commands. In the year 2010, Vlad stood atop the battlements of Drakenhof Castle, and recited from the Nine Books of Nagash. As Isabella's condition worsened, Vlad realised he could not endure eternity without her, and so reluctantly granted Isabella the Blood Kiss. Vlad, however, was disgusted and horrified at the suggestion: he loved his wife too much to turn Isabella into a monster like himself. Isabella begged Vlad to give her the Blood Kiss so they could be together for eternity. Sometime around this period, Isabella fell ill from wasting sickness, and Vlad became struck with grief at the thought of losing his wife (for what had started between them as a marriage of convenience swiftly blossomed into unholy love, and the pair had become confidants in each other and all but inseparable). The other Counts of the Empire looked on with indifference at the changes, since the von Carstein seemed a far better ruler than the old von Drak family, who were suspected of the crime of using black magic and daemon worship, and for two hundred years, Vlad ruled over Sylvania. Most of the other noble families objected to the thought of having an outsider rule them, but were quickly silenced, and under Vlad's iron grip the province of Sylvania prospered. Vlad thus seized the province his first command was to have Leopold von Drak hurled from Drakenhof's battlements. Desperate to stop his rivals seizing his land on his death, Otto agreed, and Vlad and Isabella were married minutes before Otto died. Before his death, Vlad arrived at Drakenhof, Otto's castle, and asked for Isabella's hand in marriage. In the year 1797 the Count died without a male heir. He swore on his deathbed that he would rather marry his daughter to a demon than let his hated brother Leopold inherit the throne. Otto refused to marry his daughter off, fearing one of his rivals might use her claim to Sylvania to usurp him. He hated them all, and had no sons to succeed him his only heir was his beautiful, cruel and malevolent daughter, Isabella.

He had as much influence over his realm as one of the peasants he terrorised, as the petty nobles ignored his authority. He was a deranged man that would order the execution of peasants simply to prove a point, and demanded unbelievably high taxes, when he remembered to have it done in between bouts of violent madness. At the time of Vlad's arrival, the province of Sylvania was ruled over by the evil and corrupt Otto von Drak, the head of the von Drak family and the father of Vlad's future wife. Many of its great castles and towers were built in places where dark magic gathered in its strongest form. It was already reputed as a place where the dead did not rest easily, as well as a place where evil necromancers and sorcerers persecuted in the rest of the Empire gathered to find refuge. Although it was an Imperial province, it was regarded as a barbaric place. Its soil was poor and the land barely produced enough food to feed the people who lived there. Sylvania had, since the beginning of Imperial record, been an inhospitable and dangerous place, with the majority of the land covered in dark and ominous forests. Since then, faith in Sigmar has been sufficient to drive back vampires, in a manner similar to how the Christian cross drives back vampires in our own worlds folk tales. The vampires refused, and in return, Nagash cursed all vampires- for refusing to come to his aid, all vampires would forever be driven back by the power of Sigmar. Manfred Von Carstein claimed to be present during the reign of Sigmar, when the vampires that would become the Von Carsteins were ordered back into the service of Nagash, whom was preparing a massive invasion of the Empire to recovery his missing crown. The history of perhaps the most infamous vampire in the Warhammer world is not known, until the point he arrived at Drakenhof Castle, the ancestral home of the Elector Count of Sylvania.

Konrad von carstein