During the Age of Myth, the first abhorrant roamed the Mortal Realms as a powerful vampire. He was a favoured servant of Nagash, the god of death, and at that time he was fair and strong. His court of knights and nobles rode resplendent as glorious children of the night. He was known by many names in many lands; Sumeros Summerking, the Blood Rose Prince and Ushoran the Handsome to name but a few.
Though the truth of his descent into delusion has been lost to the march of time, it is believed by many that the king fell out of favour with Nagash and was cursed with a hideous transformation. Malformed and filled with anger against his former master for the curse, the king became a monster like no other that prowled the Nightlands of Shyish. Such was the devastation spread by the king’s fury that scores of Nagash’s kingdoms were destroyed, their lords slain, their peoples torn apart and their cities reduced to naught but ruins and broken corpses.
Angered by the king's excesses, Nagash imprisoned his wayward servant in a prison called the Shroudcage. A towering edifice of broken promises, its walls reflected every lie the king had ever told back upon him, reducing him to a raving wreck, as twisted in mind as he was in body. So the king might have stayed for all eternity, had not the God-King Sigmar intervened. In the first years of the Age of Chaos, Sigmar invaded the Realm of Death, incensed by Nagash's perceived betrayal at the Allpoints. During Sigmar's rampage through the Great Necromancer's domain, his armies unwittingly brought down the great bastion that held the Shroudcage, and from its ruin scuttled forth the thing that would become known as the Carrion King.
Loosed into the shadows, the Carrion King began to build his court once more. In lost and depraved mortal cannibals, known as mordants, the Carrion King found a willing source of servants. With his blood he created sycophants to sing his praises from the foot of his dark throne, and these in turn went on to create their own courts.
So it is that each Flesh-eater Court is a reflection of that first court, their Abhorrant Ghoul Kings trying to recreate in madness the memories passed on to them through blood. Many of those beasts closest to the Carrion King still live within the ruins of his ancient kingdom deep within Shyish. In them, the blood of the king is strong, and their collective delusion feeds off and permeates the land.
The further from these ruinous cities and empires the courts stray, the thinner the Carrion King’s blood becomes, though the madness remains undiminished. Doubtless long after the king’s tale has been forgotten, fragments of his story will live on in the Flesh-eater Courts, a dark pantomime played out endlessly across the ages of the Mortal Realms.
As to the fate of the Carrion King, nothing is known save that Nagash still seeks him across the Mortal Realms.
Sources[]
- Death Battletome: Flesh-eater Courts (1st Edition), pp. 8-9