Warhammer Armies: Beasts of Chaos (2003), p72 — Morghur, Master of Skulls

Born almost three centuries ago, the creature known as Morghur was far from a human child. With tooth and horn, he ripped his mother apart in his gory entrance to the world, while her features mutated horribly. Her distraught husband reached forwards to strangle the twisted abomination, yet as his hands touched the foul creature, his body also was wracked with hideous mutation.

Days later, when a group of travelling players arrived at the small community on the outskirts of the dark Forest of Arden, they found it in absolute chaos. Recorded in the tragic Bretonnian poem 'Requiem', it is said that men crawled around in the mud like animals, their hands turned to hooves and limbs twisted and rearranged. The livestock walked around on hind legs, speaking in unfathomable tongues as they devoured each other.

In the following decades, a shadow touched the Forest of Arden. At its rotting heart, the trees contorted and twisted. It is said that their cries of anguish can be heard on the wind, and their skeletal-like limbs scratch and lash out at any who intrude into their mournful world. Parents scare their misbehaving young with tales of a mad creature that shambles tirelessly through the trees at night, turning harmless animals into rabid killers and torturing the trees, forcing them against their will to invade the lands of men and steal naughty children from their beds. Little do they know how true the tales are.

Having crawled into the forest as a misshapen and deadly babe, Morghur lives deep within a cave, hidden in one of the darkest groves. The dank, stone walls of his cave flow like water in his presence, constantly reforming to mirror the dark visions that plague him. At all times, Morghur's mind is filled with images of destruction, fire and desolation. Burning hatred simmers within his heart, and he is consumed with the desire to make his waking-dreams become reality - to rip down civilisation in all its forms, to shatter order wherever it is found and to change the world constantly and randomly. As he walks the forest, everything in his presence is irrevocably changed. Grass turns black and grows in strange patterns beneath his hooves, streams begin to flow backwards and animals mutate horribly.

Beastmen revere Morghur, believing that his spirit walked the world before the birth of their race; the incarnation of disorder and chaotica. They set out from thousands of miles away to stand in his presence, drawn to him by urges they do not question; a tainted pilgrimage that often destroys them. Only the strongest-willed survive such an encounter, though their minds are usually shattered and plagued by visions ever after. The bodies of most are wracked by fatal change. Those few that do live on with minds intact return to their warherds where they are regarded with awe and respect, and invariably rise to become powerful Wargors anbd Beastlords.

The Shamans claim that if the physical body of Morghur is cut down, his spirit is reborn elsewhere. Indeed, creatures of similar description have been recorded all across the known world, and darkness and taint has always followed in his wake. The Elves know this being as Cyanathair, the Corrupter, and amongst the Dwarfs he is the Gor-Dum. Legends of the Empire claim that in ages long past this being made the Drakwald Forest the dark and twisted place it is today, where Morghur was known as the Shadow-Gave. Nevertheless, the only one to perhaps understand the true horror and revulsion that is Morghur, is Ariel of the Wood Elves. It is she alone who trule perceives the black and expansive essence of Morghur, too powerful a spirit to be contained in a single physical form. A silent, unseen war rages in the dark forests between the Wood Elves and the Beastmen, as Ariel seeks a way to destroy Morghur forever, while with every passing year ever more Beastmen are drawn to his distorted realm.