Spoilers: Nehekhara, the End Times, and a short Age of Sigmar note. No campaign ending.
Who he is in Total War
Nagash leads the Undead Legions in Immortal Empires as the lord of the Host of Nagash. Creative Assembly presents him as the Supreme Lord of Undeath, an apex caster and melee lord whose campaign begins at the Black Pyramid. Coastal captures become Pirate Coves and inland captures can become Burial Chambers or Mausoleums, and the army draws on Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings and Vampire Coast troops.
That campaign is a game sandbox. Winning or losing it is a player’s war, not a chapter of the fiction. The Mortarchs he can subjugate, the Books he can carry, and the Pyramid he develops belong to Immortal Empires. The sections after this one turn to the published background Creative Assembly and Black Library use for the same name.
Origins in Nehekhara
Creative Assembly’s biography calls him the firstborn son of King Khetep of Khemri and the leader of the High Priesthood of the Nehekharan Mortuary Cult. He is said to have discovered necromancy, a branch of dark magic new to Nehekhara, and to have created the Elixir of Life. He took the throne, warred with the other kings, and was defeated and driven into exile.
Black Library’s Nagash the Sorcerer places that rise in Nehekhara about two millennia before the time of Sigmar, in the desert south of the Old World. The jacket frames a quest for power that will damn the land. Nagash the Unbroken then finds him in the mountains after the priest kings’ victory, rebuilding with skaven allies and discovering warpstone at Cripple Peak. The fortress raised there is Nagashizzar.
Exile, warpstone and the ritual
The public biography and the second novel agree on the shape of the middle years: defeat, exile, warpstone, and a new stronghold under Cripple Peak. The skaven covet that warpstone. Creative Assembly’s account has them plot against the necromancer, forge a warpstone fellblade, and press it on the imprisoned Nehekharan king Alcadizzar. Nagash Immortal’s jacket later sets a skaven assault on Nagashizzar, an uneasy alliance, and a final attack on Nehekhara, with Alcadizzar named as the warrior in his path.
Those sources establish the confrontation. They are the Warhammer Fantasy background for the character. They are not a description of an Immortal Empires campaign, and the novel jacket does not give the result of the meeting.
The ritual and its aftermath
Creative Assembly’s Meet Nagash post continues past the jacket. Nagash unleashes a ritual that ends life in Nehekhara and raises its people in undeath. Alcadizzar enters the ritual chamber and strikes him down. The spirit remains, and over the centuries it is drawn back to the Black Pyramid at Khemri. That sequence is the published character history used to introduce the pack. The novel page for Nagash Immortal stops before telling how the confrontation ends.
Allies, Mortarchs and rivals
In the Nehekharan story the skaven are both allies and plotters: the Unbroken jacket gives him skaven allies at Cripple Peak, and the Immortal jacket turns a skaven assault into an uneasy alliance. Creative Assembly uses the same warpstone feud. In the game, the lieutenants are the Mortarchs. Arkhan the Black, Neferata, Luthor Harkon, Vlad von Carstein and Mannfred von Carstein can be subjugated as legendary lords. Dieter Helsnicht and Walach Harkon are Mortarch heroes. Update 9.0 describes Krell as a unique agent after the preview had listed him among those heroes.
Settra the Imperishable is a different relationship. Update 9.0’s item notes call him Nagash’s greatest nemesis and add two items to him. The older biography names Alcadizzar as the king in the ritual chamber. The Unbroken reading note mentions the secret origins of the vampire counts alongside the skaven alliance at Cripple Peak.
The End Times
The End Times are a later fictional war, not the default history of every Immortal Empires campaign. Creative Assembly’s introduction says Nagash has risen again while the forces of Chaos threaten a world he claims, and that he pursues godhood. Josh Reynolds’s The Return of Nagash, the first End Times novel, follows Mannfred von Carstein and Arkhan the Black as they plot that resurrection in Sylvania. The jacket leaves the ritual’s result unstated. The game lets a player pursue Mortarchs and the Pyramid without replaying that novel.
Who returns him in the published biography
Meet Nagash names the people behind the return: Arkhan the Black and Mannfred von Carstein bring him back to unlife. The same post says he would see the world’s inhabitants slain and raised into his service. Treat that as the End Times premise attached to the character, and keep a player’s campaign result out of it.
The Mortal Realms
Black Library’s 2025 collection The Rise of Nagash says he bestrides the Mortal Realms, and it calls Mike Lee’s novels the story of the World-that-Was. That is an Age of Sigmar frame around an Old World trilogy. It is a label on the omnibus, not a retelling of the Nehekharan books, and it is separate from the Immortal Empires campaign.
Rulers of the Dead collects Nagash: The Undying King by Josh Reynolds and Neferata: Mortarch of Blood by David Annandale. The English omnibus spells Neferata’s city Nuhlamia. Nagash: The Undying King, sold on its own, is Tamra of the Rictus clans in Shyish, asking where Nagash is while the Plague God’s minions advance. Mortarch of Night, book 9 of The Realmgate Wars, sends Tarsus Bull-Heart to treat with him and spells the vampire guide Manfred. Those three are Mortal Realms fiction. They do not continue the Black Pyramid campaign.
Sigmar and Ghal Maraz in the character biography
Creative Assembly’s biography, still inside the Meet Nagash post, says the spirit is reborn in the age of Sigmar and finds the crown in Sigmar’s hands. Nagash raises another army of the dead, faces Sigmar, and is slain again by Ghal Maraz. That passage is Age of Sigmar material in the character introduction. The End Times return, plotted in The Return of Nagash, is a separate episode from this one.
Novels, in publication order
Publication order and in-universe order stay apart. Mike Lee’s Nagash the Sorcerer, Nagash the Unbroken, and Nagash Immortal are the Nehekharan trilogy, volumes 1 to 3. Josh Reynolds’s The Return of Nagash is book 1 of The End Times. On this page it is also the fourth step in a Nagash reading sequence, after the three Lee novels. The 2025 ebook The Rise of Nagash reprints those three novels and the short story Picking the Bones, so the collection is last in that publication list and has no separate place in the story.
Two further Old World books name him without joining that trilogy. Master of Death calls W’soran a former pupil of Nagash. The Lord of the End Times is book 5 of The End Times: Archaon prepares his war host to sack Middenheim, and the listening page names Nagash among the last hopes. The Bone Cage is the unnumbered short story before The Return of Nagash. Rulers of the Dead, Nagash: The Undying King, and Mortarch of Night are Mortal Realms books. They are linked from the Mortal Realms section and are not steps in the Nehekharan order.
Return to the campaign
The play page covers ownership, the Black Pyramid, Gravecall, the Mortarchs and the Books as they work in Immortal Empires. Use it for the faction, the roster and the content pack. Use this page for the Nehekharan background, the End Times novel, and the short Mortal Realms note on the 2025 collection.
Nagash: gameplay and availability · More character stories
Sources
- Nagash the Sorcerer (eBook) — blacklibrary.com
- Nagash the Unbroken (eBook) — blacklibrary.com
- Nagash Immortal (eBook) — blacklibrary.com
- The Return of Nagash (eBook) — blacklibrary.com
- The Rise of Nagash (eBook) — blacklibrary.com
- Master of Death — Black Library — blacklibrary.com
- The Lord of the End Times — Black Library — blacklibrary.com
- Rulers of the Dead — Black Library — blacklibrary.com
- Nagash: The Undying King — Black Library — blacklibrary.com
- Mortarch of Night — Black Library — blacklibrary.com
- Lords of the End Times: Meet Nagash — community.creative-assembly.com
- Total War: Warhammer III Update 9.0 — community.creative-assembly.com
- Total War: Warhammer III Patch 9.0.4 — community.creative-assembly.com
- Nagash – Lords of the End Times on Steam — store.steampowered.com