In Warhammer Fantasy, there are undead pirates, alongside whom even those from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films seem tame. Their king is a mad vampire with a splintered personality.
Warhammer Fantasy is the oldest of the three major Warhammer universes and the home of many races that are already familiar from other high-fantasy settings: In the mountains live stubborn but also powerful dwarfs, and there are three unique elf races that are considerably meaner than those from many other fantasy worlds. Humans also exist—from the knights of Bretonnia to the Empire under the rule of Emperor Karl Franz to the eastern empire of Cathay.
But there are also pirates in the world of Warhammer Fantasy. They do what pirates do and sail the seas in search of riches. Like every faction in this universe, they come with a twist, which can already be deduced from their name: the Vampire Coast.
These pirate captains are not ordinary men, but blood-sucking vampires. And their crews are not made up of just any rogues, but hordes of zombies and other terrible undead as well as deep-sea creatures. At their side, crab-like Prometheans and leviathans also fight, as well as Necrofex Colossi—walking skeletons made from the wood of destroyed galleons, iron, and human flesh, animated only by magic.
The Old World is home to some notoriously famous pirate captains, but not every one of them is a vampire or even undead. The most famous will be introduced to you here—regardless of whether their lore belongs to the Vampire Coast. We start with a pirate woman who does not fit into this category.
Aranessa Saltspite
Strictly speaking, Aranessa is not part of the Vampire Coast: She is neither a vampire nor undead in any way. Her crew is also not. However, she is a feared pirate known as the “Queen of Tides” and is no ordinary human. At her birth, Aranessa was covered in scales and barnacles, had webbed fingers, and her legs grew together into a kind of fin from the knees down. Some are convinced she is the daughter of Manann, the sea god himself.
Her father, the chief of a tribe of Norsca (humans who live in the far north and often serve the Chaos gods), saw only unwanted mutations and threw her into the sea. She was then said to have been rescued by a school of daggerfish and brought to a cove. There, they are said to have raised three lake nymphs. From ships that ran aground near the cove, she learned about the world beyond her small, secluded homeland.
One day, however, she decided to leave the cove. Well aware that she would be hunted in the outside world due to her mutations, she amputated her “fin” with a saber. She cauterized the stumps of her legs and strapped the snouts of two sawfish to them. She now walked on them as if they were two wooden legs.
With a small rowboat, she sailed out into the open sea, where she was picked up by the crew of a galleon—the “Swordfysh.” Aboard the ship, she quickly rose through the ranks, from lookout to First Mate and finally to Captain. Under her command, the Swordfysh became a notorious hunter of Norscan raiders.
Aranessa even fought against a real vampire pirate, namely the leader of the Fleet of the Damned. You will learn who that is on the next page.
