What this covers: the Host of Nagash campaign in Immortal Empires — Necropolises and Necromantic Energy, the Black Pyramid’s Empowered Sigil upgrades, the nine Mortarchs you can subjugate, the Books of Nagash, and what Patch 9.0.3 changed about how the campaign opens. What changed in 9.0.3: an early Black Pyramid node that cuts Nagash’s upkeep by 40%, a higher Sigil ladder from Nagashizzar, the Black Pyramid of Nagash and standard Necropolises, and a Mortarch objective that no longer requires you to hunt each rival down across the map. Who should care: anyone starting the campaign now, and anyone who stalled on it in the weeks after Update 9.0 released on 24 September 2026.
Nagash arrived with the Lords of the End Times pack on 24 September 2026, alongside Update 9.0, and Creative Assembly has been patching the campaign ever since — Hotfix 9.0.1, Hotfix 9.0.2 on 1 October, and Patch 9.0.3 on 9 October. The systems below are the ones the pack shipped with; where 9.0.3 moved the numbers, the figures given here are the post-patch ones. If you last looked at the campaign in its first week, several values have changed. If you are still choosing a first Immortal Empires start, the Immortal Empires cheat sheet compares how the other races’ campaign mechanics work.
The campaign loop, in the order you meet it
Nagash leads the Host of Nagash, and the Black Pyramid at Khemri is both his starting settlement and his research centre. Creative Assembly describes it as “his starting settlement, and the source of much of his campaign development”.
Every settlement he takes becomes a recruitment centre for one of three undead rosters. Coastal settlements can be turned into Pirate Coves, which open Vampire Coast recruitment; inland settlements can become Burial Chambers or Mausoleums, which cover the Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts end of the roster. Units can always be raised the ordinary way with Dark Energy, so the settlement type decides which part of that combined roster is available where.
Necropolises are the load-bearing structure. Major settlements can become one, and CA describes them as the foundation of the Land of the Dead mechanic: a Necropolis gathers Necromantic Energy “from each region in its province, and from those in every province bordering it”. That energy pays for Necropolis buildings, which raise factionfaction. An in-game group or nation players can align with or fight against, with its own goals and reputation system. unit capacities and unlock the advanced military structures behind each roster’s elite units, and for Gravecall, which CA describes as “raising units instantly in the province”.
The third currency is Empowered Sigils, and they are what the Black Pyramid actually consumes. CA puts the principal source plainly: sigils are earned “principally by constructing and improving Necropolises”. Every node in the pyramid’s upgrade web costs them, and that web governs unit access and upgrades, character upgrades, and economy and campaign effects. Because the main source is Necropolises, and Necropolises depend on land, faction strength tracks territorial conquest directly. That is why 9.0.3’s Sigil changes matter as much as they do.
The Sigil ladder after 9.0.3
Patch 9.0.3 raised Sigil generation in three places at once, on the stated grounds that “players weren’t able to empower Sigils as quickly as intended, particularly in the early game”.
| Source | Before 9.0.3 | After 9.0.3 |
|---|---|---|
| Nagashizzar and the Black Pyramid of Nagash | 2/4/6/8/10 | 3/6/9/12/15 |
| Standard Necropolises | 2/2/4/4/6 | 2/3/4/5/8 |
| Legendary Lord subjugation (Mortarchs panel) | 5 Sigils | 10 Sigils |
| Legendary Hero and Nameless subjugation | 5 Sigils | 5 Sigils (unchanged) |
| Necromancy Panel Sigil unlock | 200 Necromantic Energy | 100 Necromantic Energy |
The two five-value ladders are quoted as the patch notes write them; the notes do not label which step corresponds to which building tier, only that the sequence rose. The subjugation bonus is per subjugated Legendary Lord, and CA kept the Hero and Nameless rewards at 5. The Necromancy Panel change is a cost reduction rather than a generation increase, and CA flags that it “will affect new campaigns” — an existing save keeps the old requirement, as do the reworked Mortarch objectives.
Put together, the patch roughly doubles the value of an early Necropolis network and halves the energy you need before the Necromancy Panel can start paying out. In a campaign whose whole progression is gated on Sigils, that is a large shift in how fast the pyramid opens.
Mortarchs: the five-region rule is gone
The Mortarchs are Nagash’s lieutenants, and CA splits them into groups: five Legendary Lords — Arkhan the Black, Neferata, Luthor Harkon, Vlad von Carstein and Mannfred von Carstein — three Legendary Heroes (Dieter Helsnicht, Walach Harkon and Krell), and one Follower, The Nameless, “who grants any Lord he is assigned to the ability to possess enemy units before a battle”.
Subjugating a Legendary Lord is the campaign’s biggest single jump in power, because CA states it “grants you immediate ownership over their empires and forces”. That is also why the original objective design drew complaints, and 9.0.3 states the problem in CA’s own words: “Mortarch subjugation objectives felt too restrictive and pushed players toward specific regions of the map.”
The patch replaced the mechanism rather than tuning it:
- The “own a maximum of 5 regions” requirement for Mortarch Lords is gone. Nagash must now control more than three times as many regions as the Mortarch.
- The same change was applied to the Vampire Count confederation panel.
- Most location-specific objectives — CA names owning The Awakening and building the Blood Keep — were removed and replaced with thematic objectives completable from any location.
- Legendary Hero objectives were made easier, “allowing earlier subjugation”.
- All of it applies to new campaigns only, “ensuring existing campaign progress isn’t disrupted”.
The practical effect is that subjugation now scales with how powerful Nagash has become rather than with where he has marched, and the Mortarchs who outgrew the old five-region cap stop being locked out. CA adds that catching a Mortarch in the field “will speed up the process if they become too strong”, so the change removes the requirement without removing the incentive to fight them.
Arkhan the Black got a related fix in the same patch. His victory conditions “Hold the following settlement: Black Tower of Arkhan” and “Construct landmark: Black Tower of Arkhan” were replaced with one condition that accepts control “either by direct ownership or through allies”, explicitly “to avoid having to go to war with Nagash to complete the objectives”.
Economy: where 9.0.3 softened the opening
CA’s framing for the economy pass is that Nagash’s economy “still isn’t hitting the right balance between challenge and enjoyment”. The patch eases early pressure in two ways.
First, upkeep. An early Black Pyramid node now carries -40% upkeep for Nagash, and the early Tomb Kings, Vampire Coast and Vampire Counts sections of the pyramid each add -10% upkeep — but only for units led by a matching lord type, or by Nagash himself. That qualifier is the point of the change: the roster-spanning discount lands only if you are matching lords to their rosters.
Second, post-battle income now scales with campaign difficulty.
| Campaign difficulty | Post-battle income change in 9.0.3 |
|---|---|
| Legendary / Very Hard | No change |
| Hard | +5% |
| Normal | +10% |
| Easy | +20% |
CA’s stated aim is to increase “battle income on lower campaign difficulties”, so the ladder runs counter to the usual shape of difficulty scaling: the easier the campaign, the larger the increase.
Necropolises, devastation and local recruitment
The rest of the 9.0.3 campaign pass is about making developed territory worth holding. CA names the specific problem: “players weren’t feeling the need to build recruitment buildings anymore once they had started to unlock a few Grave Call options”. The fix bundles local and global benefits onto the buildings themselves:
- Garrisons improved for standard Necropolises, Nagashizzar, the Black Pyramid of Nagash and all Necropolis defence buildings.
- The Necropolis Garrison chain gained combat bonuses for units under siegesiege. A timed, large-scale attack on a settlement — attackers try to destroy it, defenders try to hold it. while the province is devastated.
- Military building chains now give significant local recruitment cost reductions while a province is devastated, so rebuilding locally competes with Gravecall.
- Those same military chains grant -1% factionwide upkeep for their associated unit types while the province is devastated.
- Corruption building chains now provide army movement bonuses in devastated provinces, spreading to adjacent provinces at the highest tier.
The through-line is that devastation — normally a cost of war — pays Nagash back, provided the province has the buildings to convert it.
Books of Nagash after the 9.0 rework
The Books of Nagash were reworked for every faction in Update 9.0, not just for Nagash. They had been captured once and stored at faction level, “permanently attached to the first faction that claimed them”. They are now held by characters or stored in settlements, and so can change hands:
- Books are carried by the Lords of the armies that hold them, and “directly empower the carrier”.
- They can be traded between your own armies — CA suggests stacking them on a single character.
- Other factions can steal them from a defeated carrier.
- Any faction that defeats a Book’s owner can send the Book to its capital, “denying access to your enemies”, or dispose of it, “temporarily removing it from the map until it reappears later”.
For Nagash the payoff is spell access: recovered Books grant him extra spells from the Lores of Light, Vampires, Death and Nehekhara on top of his own Lore of Undeath. For every other faction the change is a denial tool aimed at the factions that depend on the Books. Because Books now travel with the Lord carrying them, and subjugating a Legendary Lord Mortarch hands over his empire and forces, a Book sitting in the army of a Mortarch you are about to absorb is a Book that comes with him.
What 9.0.1 through 9.0.3 fixed in the campaign
The hotfix history reads as a list of campaign-breaking edges that have now been smoothed.
Hotfix 9.0.1 removed the possibility that “the Black Pyramid End Game scenario” would “trigger while you are playing as Nagash” — the Nagash Rises endgame could previously fire against Nagash himself. It also fixed a softlock during the scripted tutorial on the Necromancy tabs while playing in Italian.
Hotfix 9.0.2, on 1 October, was heavier on the campaign. It fixed Nagash’s faction losing Mystic Sigils “when using the ‘Glory of Nagash’ traversal node or a sea lane”, fixed the Black Pyramid panel staying unlocked when Nagash did not control the Black Pyramid region, fixed Isabella not receiving the Legendary Hero effects from the Black Pyramid, and fixed the Withered Vines and Salt Crater buildings not applying their Lord and Hero recruitment rank effects. It also increased the survivability of Nagash’s Mortarchs during the Nagash Endgame and fixed Mortarchs subjugated before the Endgame not being counted in it — with the caveat that the counting fix “will only affect pre-Endgame saves”.
Patch 9.0.3 then cleared the campaign-side bugs still live at that point: Nagash having no access to Unusual Locations or to some Ancillaries; a Mortarch’s starting Hero using Emil Valgeir’s model after subjugation; a player running a Mortarch faction being suddenly confederated by Nagash; and the Bone Giant being unavailable to Nagash owners who did not also own the Tomb Kings DLC — 9.0.3 makes it available to “all owners of the Nagash DLC, regardless of whether you own the Tomb Kings DLC”. In multiplayer, the Changeling can no longer move the Black Pyramid to another settlement “if it’s owned by another player as Nagash”, and Vampiric Corruption now correctly reduces the cost of the Ritual of Undeath.
What is still open
One item CA flagged in the 9.0.1 notes deserves a caveat. The Gotrek and Felix quest battle was listed as “not ending correctly after routing all enemies”, in a case that “usually occurs after an especially swift victory”. Patch 9.0.3’s opening summary says the battle “now resolves correctly”, and 9.0.3’s own bug-fix lists itemise the fix: “Fixed an issue where the Quest battle to acquire Gotrek and Felix would not end when all objectives were completed.”
Everything else on the campaign’s critical path — subjugation, Sigils, Books, the Endgame — has been patched at least once. CA also states that “the team are already looking into further fixes and changes for the next release”, so this is not a frozen state for the Host of Nagash.