In Immortal Empires, Total War: Warhammer's vampire couple are 'staying together in undead matrimony'

(Image credit: Sega)

As we get closer to the August release of Total War: Warhammer 3's Immortal Empires DLC, Creative Assembly has been explaining how the revised mega-sized campaign of conquest will work. We've seen a new map taking in the entire Warhammer World, with revised starting positions, and in the latest blog Creative Assembly introduces a new legendary lord and some changes to old ones.

Most exciting to me, as someone who collected an army of plastic and metal undead back in the day, is a change to the Vampire Counts faction. Previously, the battle couple of Vlad Von Carstein and Isabella Von Carstein were both legendary lords. Since you can only have one lord per army, they'd always be leading separate stacks rather than fighting together. In Immortal Empires, that's changing.

As the blog post puts it, "Unlike the other Legendary Lords, this power couple will be staying together in undead matrimony, but will be playable within the same campaign. If you choose Vlad as your Legendary Lord, Isabella will be automatically unlocked as a hero and vice versa." This is an A+ change and I support it wholeheartedly.

The real big news from this latest update is about Be'lakor, the villain of Total War: Warhammer 3's Realm of Chaos campaign, who will be playable in Immortal Empires. From his home base on the Isle of Wight (damn I love Warhammer names), he'll be leading an army with "the widest selection of Chaos Daemons" and abilities including a corruption mechanic that marks human lords he defeats, "slowly corrupting their soul and eventually converting them into a Daemon Prince to reinforce the ranks of his army."

Other factions getting new start positions include the dwarf lord Grombrindal, heading to Naggaroth to fight the dark elves, necromancer Helman Ghorst, moving east, and Imperial priest Volkmar the Grim, who has set off on a crusade to the Southlands. Volkmar will have a mechanic to power up as he seals away dark tomes called Books of Nagash scattered in the area, while certain other lords will gain "individual effects" from them.

Vlad and Isabella's unruly heir Mannfred Von Carstein is mentioned as one of those lords, suggesting he'll get a new starting position nearby. It's already been announced that two Lords of Chaos, Skarbrand and Kairos Fateweaver, are moving to the Southlands as well. Seems like the messy free-for-all nicknamed Lustriabowl in Mortal Empires might be getting some competition over in the Southlands.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.