After years of civil war, the Iron Kingdom crumbled. During the Night of Treason, a great Malediction was placed upon the kingdom. The forests became dark and hostile. Wolves and creatures even worse stalked the land. Slowly the kingdom recovered, but it was not what it once was. The knightly order was all but destroyed, and the Master Smiths had disappeared. The secrets of blacksteel were forgotten. An order of Black Priests emerged in Ulm in the last days before the civil war. They formed an Iron Cult, consolidated their position, and forbade the use of magic. Magic outside religion was announced to be sacrilegious and the few surviving Master Smiths were put to the flames. Although magery is forbidden, there are some fortune tellers and members of the Order of the Illuminated Ones who secretly ply their trade in the arcane. – Nation Description

At a glance Astral (2, rare 3), Earth (2), Blood (1, rare 2), Death (1), Fire (1), Air (1), Nature (1)
Summonable 3, 3, but cannot summon natively
Heroes give 2, 2, 2.

LA Ulm has a widespread of path access but at very low levels. Luckily, you have easy access to cheap communion slaves, so in battle, this isn't a problem; your wide path access allows you to cast any non-water spell you'd like. However, this will require forging Communion Matrices for your Black Priests. (An important use for their Astral random.)

Outside of battle, LA Ulm will struggle to move up magical paths to cast big rituals. Your vampire summons will give you 3 and 3, though you'll likely already have this on your pretender in order to cast Sanguine Heritage in the first place. Your vampires can be used to site search for better income. Since LA Ulm cannot reliably recruit blood over 1, there is a strong argument to lean into the vampire theme and summon Vampire Lords. With blood thorns and brazen vessels, you can get them up to 5, which gives access to many important spells. Once you have Blood 9 researched, you can empower a select few one further to cast Forces of Darkness.

Your heroes will give you limited access to extremely useful blood cross paths, especially fire and air. Use blood/fire to summon Arch Demons, which will break you into higher fire magic as well as give you some excellent commanders. Blood/air will allow you to summon storm demons (which are excellent).

LA Ulm's most common cross path is 2 1, which comes out of the box on every Member of the Second Tier. This allows Ulm to summon lots of horrors, and with an astral booster and blood-booster any of your Members can cast Call Lesser Horror.

When designing a pretender, be sure to consider how you can build them to cast Sanguine Heritage. While your summons aren't absolutely necessary for your success, without at least 2 (ideally, you'll want 3) and 3 you'll be locking them away from your reach for some time. In doing so you'll also lock yourself out of further access to blood and death.

• Evocation 3 11: Iron Darts
  The signature spell of Ulmish priests, firing a spread of 3 magic armor-piercing darts that deal double damage to magic beings. Now only castable by the Black Priests
• Evocation 6 11: Iron Blizzard
  Trades some range and damage for a truly astonishing 30 darts per cast. This is an powerful evocation spell which is particularly lethal to magic beings.

• Enchantment 4 1: Gift of the Moon
  Grants wolves 15 invulnerability. Makes wolf chaff somewhat more survivable against mundane weapons.

• Thaumaturgy 5 3: Tempering the Will
  Effectively a national version of the Antimagic spell against the usual MR-negates threats such as mind blasters or Charm. Unlike MA Ulm, LA Ulm's magic access makes Thuamaturgy a useful school to research, meaning this spell will often be picked up at some point on the way to spells like Soul Slay. However, 3 is also much less accessible for LA Ulm and the generic alternative, Antimagic, is much easier to cast.

• Conjuration 3 2 for 8: Sloth of Bears ( Great Bear×10+lv)
  Summons high strength blobs of hitpoints. Can work as evocation bait, as the bears have more HP than your troops and even lower MR, but otherwise unremarkable.

• Blood 0 33 for 44: Sanguine Heritage
  Summons one of several unique, immortal Vampire Counts. These are similar to Curse of Blood's Vampire Lords at Blood 7, but each Count has special abilities and their own magic paths. This spell also requires no research whatsoever to cast!
  

Note that unless specified otherwise, all vampires have Regeneration 10%, Resist Fire -5, Resist Cold 15, Resist Poison 25, Darkvision 100%, Stealthy +40, Invulnerability 25, and Immortal (1 Month), and dominion spawn Thralls

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Ludolf von Achenbach - Vampire Count	22 Kills Population 10
	Burkhard Nachtzehrer - Blood Marshal	2 Does not have fire vulnerability Pillager (20)
	Erzsebet - Blood Countess	3 Blood Searcher +2
	Mircalla - Vampire Countess	21 Seducer
	Artur Von Dirksen - Vampire Count	22
	Lothar Blumenreuter - Vivisectionist	22 Adept Researcher (8) Causes Unrest (+1 Per Month)
	Orlak - Vampire Count	31 Fear +8
	Hellenbrecht - Blood Graf	213 Fear +6