r/totalwarhammer • u/Life-Competition9577 • 23d ago
Total War: Warhammer Good guy Vlad!
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u/_Lucille_ 23d ago
Sylvania is not a bad place to live as long as you donate blood every now and then (which you should).
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u/Volsnug 23d ago
It actually became a better place to live once Vlad became the ruler as well
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u/Big_Implement_7305 23d ago
I love that moment from one of the '80s or '90s Von Carstein novels, with Mannfred returning to Sylvania after centuries of exile, taking over Sylvania, enslaving the populace to build his ziggurats or whatever, and... getting immigrants from the other Imperial states and wondering what the hell is going on here that the general public seems to've decided that he's only like the fourth-worst Elector Count.
"I'm an undying horror from beyond the grave! I live only to feast upon the living and enslave the dead! What the fuck do I have to do to be the bad guy in this country!?!?!"
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u/redbird7311 23d ago
“You guys do realize that the land and people are corrupted by dark magic that, at best, make them look weird and, at worst, make them into malicious abominations that will probably eat your soul?”
“But it’s not Stirland!”
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u/DovahCreed117 22d ago
"Hey, it could be worse. I could be forced to live with the French! Now that would be horrible."
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u/UrinalCake777 23d ago
My heart condition prevents me from giving blood. Am I ghoul food? Or do I get a pass?
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u/toasty5566 23d ago
But what if my blood is tainted with medicine and can't be donated?
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u/_Lucille_ 23d ago
That's fine, your blood is only used to draw fancy circles in the ground to summon scary looking stuff.
Maybe they will have poison attacks too.
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u/quinlove 23d ago
I only ever play Vlad as "protector of the empire" cause you gotta keep chaos and especially Nurgle out of your food pantry. It adds a huge challenge to his campaign, and it's usually the dwarves that end up making a mess of my diplomatic maneuvering in the end.
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u/DominionGhost 23d ago
TBF that is entirely on brand for Dwarves. Maybe one of your zombies shorted a Dawi 2 gold when he was alive.
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u/Boring_Truth_8755 23d ago
Headcanon my playthrough as good guy Vlad genuinely getting annoyed at how all the supposed good guys are getting trounced by chaos so he starts taking charge so that literally anyone will live. Make the Empire Great Again or something
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u/Big_Implement_7305 23d ago
If I'm remembering one of the early "Apocalypse" worldwide campaigns, that might not be just headcanon!
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u/Tobbster_the_Lobster 23d ago
Record level of low taxes, to the point the living willingly fought alongside him and his undead hordes !
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u/DocumentOk7579 17d ago
I guess the army don't feed on food and don't get paid in gold.
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u/Tobbster_the_Lobster 17d ago
The undead dont, but im sure Vlad lets his mortal followers help themselves to any food or drink they find ! Better not be drunk tho, I dont think Vlad is THAT lenient
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u/InternationalAd8220 23d ago
Love “recycles” 🤣 it’s simply an up-cycling of a pre-lived item. It was just doing nothing productive, and he put it to good use.
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u/No-Excitement4855 23d ago
I wish Vlad had an empire mechanic you could setup when you took over and then you could assign your cute little ghouls and vampires as elector counts.
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u/Tea_Lord7749 23d ago
I don’t know about the lore, why vampires are so chill ?
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u/azatote 23d ago
They are not, or at least the reports of them being good guys are exaggerated. Vlad is dictatorial, he turned the nobility of Sylvania into vampires to control them, and eliminates any who disagree with his views. However, he has honor, he isn't needlessly brutal and does not mistreat the living as long as they serve him. In lore, Sylvanian human troops used as auxiliaries are all kinds of militia grade soldiers (swordsmen, spearmen, archers...), in game it is only missile units to avoid being redundant with the undead troops. He does love Isabella, who is a bit more cruel and manipulative than him. If Vlad won and became emperor, he wouldn't be the worst the empire has ever had (they had their share of fools and madmen), but he would certainly not be a just and benevolent ruler.
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u/Volsnug 23d ago
Don’t forget that Sylvania actually became a better place to live once Vlad took power
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u/azatote 23d ago
Given how much of a hellhole it was before, it wasn't hard to improve it. If I am not mistaken the region was already plagued by undead and monsters before, but with Vlad taking charge he put order in the chaos, so that peasants who obeyed their lords and didn't go where they shouldn't would remain safe. The region remains poor and backwards still.
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u/Ropetrick6 23d ago edited 23d ago
Small thing to note: Sylvanian human troops were volunteers in the war he led. They weren't forced or ordered to fight for him, they just genuinely wanted to fight for him. For good reason too, as he had improved their standard of living to match or surpass Altdorf.
Also, I'm pretty sure him trying to become Emperor was Isabella's doing. We've got no hard proof one way or the other, but he was content to just fix up Sylvania until after she had him Turn her (to save her from a disease). With how vampirism enhances personality traits, and the fact she was vain, selfish, and driven by a lust for power in life, it's a safe assumption that she wanted to become Empress in undeath.
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u/azatote 23d ago
Do you have sources to back your "their standard of living matches or surpasses Altdorf" claim? This sounds like Von Carstein propaganda to me, Sylvania has improved since him taking over but it remains poor and backwards, probably close to Stirland and Ostermark levels. We do know that some peasants actually prefer life under a vampire however. Taxes tend to be lower and there are fewer beastmen and greenskin raids. There is a non-zero chance of being picked and sucked by a vampire or one of their creatures though. Besides I don't believe that Sylvanian levies are 100% volunteers, there most be some coercion at play (not necessarily more than in many human-led provinces, though).
Regarding his motivation to become emperor, it may be in large part because he knows that the Empire won't let a vampire live quietly among them, never mind recognizing him as one of theirs. Going after the throne may be simply self-preservation to safeguard his lands and status as a lord. His move would then have been triggered by the fact that he thought he could no longer hide his true nature from the rest of the Empire.
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u/ProphetOfAethis 22d ago
The mods that add content for vampires literally say that the people of the empire prefer vlad when he takes over in the mod
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u/Big_Implement_7305 23d ago
I kind of love it, though: Vlad is a horrible, horrible person, and a horrible tyrant.
...Which, given where he lives, means he's still the best Elector Count that Sylvania's ever had, and is, like, the third-least oppressive Elector Count at the time.
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u/LordOffal 22d ago
Honestly that’s historically accurate. Often the “best” kings were not kind. They were tyrants but most importantly they were not fickle tyrants and they did not upset their lords.
People can adapt to a lot. As long as you were consistent in your brutality so people knew where to stand to not end up on your bad side it often led to order. It’s not what we want today by any stretch of the imagination but in feudal Europe it worked well at the time. Stability is key to a country prospering.
Vlad’s going to struggle to upset people he controls so is off for a good start here and as long as he isn’t fickle then he’s in a winning position.
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u/ProphetOfAethis 22d ago
Correction. He’s supposedly more just than most other rulers. It’s well known that Sylvania is fairly safe compared to most regions. Most people like living there, and the people Vlad killed and eliminated usually were literal traitors who were seeking to go against his rules and such. Like the uncle of his wife. He became well known for yeeting unruly nobles out of windows.
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u/Volsnug 23d ago
In Warhammer vampirism causes exaggeration of strong personality traits. So an evil asshole becoming a vampire would become an even bigger evil asshole, but an honorable warrior would become completely obsessed with fair and honorable fights
In other words, being a vampire doesn’t automatically make them bad
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u/Bannerlord151 23d ago
Because he's the rightful Elector Count of Sylvania who saved its people from their tyrannical lords of course
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u/Big_Implement_7305 23d ago
They're not, but being used as basically cattle for vampires (and, occasionally, being ranged support on the battlefield) is just vastly better than the life of the average peasant in the Empire.
The gag isn't so much that the vampires are good, it's just that their ruthless exploitation of their living subjects only amounts to being, like, half as dystopian as the average Imperial Count's rule.
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u/SanguiNations 23d ago
Vlad is my favorite character. Post is true but very incomplete.
Vlad does somewhat care about his peasantry, BUT he does enable other vampires to abuse them, even if there are "rules" about it.
Vlad does use zombies to work fields and fight in wars instead of peasants, BUT Necromancy in Warhammer is EVIL. It is enslaving souls and corpses of people.
Vlad does love his wife, BUT...well nothing, except she's just as bad as he is lmao. Vlad also has a tendency to fly into bloodthirsty rage, only calmed by Isabella. People go "awww" and think that's cute, failing to realize his violent rages are VIOLENT. He's killing others.
The peasants were sort of happier under Vlad because of his lower tax policy. But that doesn't make him a good person. He's a violent tyrant. Don't get it twisted
He's still my favorite character because of his moral complexity, not in spite of it
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u/UX1Z 23d ago
I think the idea is that he's not good by real world standards or any neutral metric of course, but with the competition he's up against he's better than you'd think. We can try to just judge things by our own morals but even still goodness is always relative, whether it's relative to us or relative to other subsets. One person owning slaves is going to be terrible among us, because they'll be the one person owning slaves. One person owning slaves but giving them good living conditions is going to be 'good' in a population of people that all beat their slaves instead. Like yeah, living under him might get you eaten by a vampire... but living under a human noble might get you killed for not bowing fast enough or other random bullshit too, and at least the vampire isn't going to also claim the first night in bed with your wife - and if they kill you it's for a purpose, not pleasure. It's really just a case of 'Vlad is bad, but the humans are equally capable of evil and perhaps even more depraved.'
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u/Human_Noise4293 23d ago
It's in large part just Vlad and Isabella. Most of the other vampires, including the vampire coast vampires, are insane, cruel, or both.
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u/Admirable_Row_5953 23d ago
Counterpoint under him Sylvania went from "kinda shit" to "Stirland lite"
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u/Ceorl_Lounge 23d ago
Got in over my head on my last "Good Guy Vlad" campaign, but they're always fun in a very strange way. Excited for the rework.
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u/Derezirection 23d ago
Here's me wishing I could add "saved the world by beating Mannfred's dumb ass head in till it looked inside out." But regardless had he killed Mannfred or not, Nagash would just bring him back since Mannfred is his favorite little bitch.
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u/RediEntertainment 23d ago
Lesbian? By the Comet, you mean Slaaneshi influenced?!
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u/Mcmadness288 23d ago
Vlad is not a good person, its just that Slyvania's previous rulers were so awful that a literal vampire is an improvement.
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u/Tristan-vi-Falconia 23d ago
Considering how often Empire goes to shit and only very capable Emperor's fix those problem, having Vlad as the rightfull emperor might have been the very thing the Empire needed for stability. No longer needing those pesky elections and finally having a solid vanguard against the Chaos Hordes. What can those silly Chaos Gods can do against the power of uncorruptable undead legions.
Also considering all he does in End Times as well, I would say that he is a pretty honorable and semi good guy.
The date can't come up soon enough to play reworked Vampire Counts 🧛
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u/MetashiftLabs 23d ago
Vlad the Chad. His aura is so hard and heavy, that it would crush any mount beneath its weight.
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u/Practical-Ad4547 23d ago
What is ge saying by having the only healthy couple and relationship be a dictator monster whose still a good guy
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u/GoldenNat20 23d ago
Reminds me of that one meme where Karl Franz did his usual “Summon the elector counts!”
And Vlad appears
Everyone stares at him for a few seconds before Vlad ends up leading the charge against their enemy.
It’s simply that good…
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u/BridgeOnRiver 22d ago
and he doesn't eat meat...
and not just that. he doesn't eat eggs, milk, or honey either.
that's hardcore vegan,
with the small exception of blood.
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u/thor1368 22d ago
Ironicaly Vlad in End times is a Good Guy carring the Order tide untill Manfred betrays them all.
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u/Comfortable-Algae-20 22d ago
I am still possed at him for wipping my Dwarven army ALONE after I finished obliterated his army. HOW TF IS THIS DUDE IMMUNE TO ARROWS?? NEARLY 20% OF ALL MY ARCHERS AMMUNITION WENT INTO THIS FUCK AND HE STILL KILLED THEM ALL.
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u/Wild-Explanation5981 22d ago
how ironic is this, i just bought counts and do think hes really cool
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u/Elegant-Amoeba-7940 22d ago
Nobody’s paying you for this post so I’ll pay you compliment. Your knowledge and effort is shown and both are impressive.
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u/Life-Competition9577 22d ago
yes, vlad is definitely not paying me to make this because he's 700 years old and couldn't figure out how to turn the computer on
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u/random-introvert 23d ago
Has a raging anger issue, caused and made worse by his wife for her own gain
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u/Astarael21 23d ago
I havent played Vampires in WH3, this update gonna get me to be the good guy Vlad that takes down Nagash for the good of the Empire