Ushoran

Ushoran was a prince of the Soulblight marked apart by the one hunger his kind find shameful: he wished to be loved. He wore glamours of majesty and ruled mortals as a beloved king, and for a time his court was the envy of the night. What offense finally earned Nagash's displeasure is argued by scholars and unknowable in truth, but the Great Necromancer's curse was crafted with a jeweler's cruelty. Ushoran's beauty was peeled away to reveal something vast and terrible, while his mind was locked forever in the throne room of his own vanity: a monster condemned to see only the king. Nagash sealed the result inside the Shroudcage: less a prison for a body than a quarantine for a dream.

The quarantine failed slowly. Ushoran's cursed blood had already seeded the abhorrant lines, and down the centuries his dream leaked out into the realms, kindling ghoul courts like candles lit from a single fire. When the Shroudcage at last shattered, the Summerking strode into a world half-prepared to receive him, and Nagash, ever an economist of madness, suffered him the title Mortarch of Delusion. Now Ushoran progresses across the realms with his migrating Summercourt, and wherever he passes the grand courts flock to him in genuine rapture, for he promises what no other power of Death has ever offered: an endless summer, a harvest without want, and a kingdom in which every subject is noble.

The tragedy of Ushoran is that the curse left a seam. There are moments (a reflection caught in dark water, a silence at the feast) when the Summerking sees truly: the ruin, the hunger, his loyal subjects and what they are gathered around. Those who have survived such moments describe a grief too large for the world, then a rage that levels everything within reach, then the dream closing gently over him like water. The minstrels resume, the banners stream, and the fairest king in all the realms smiles upon his shining court once more.