"Victims [of corprus] go mad, and the body becomes fat and distorted with unnatural growths. It is always fatal."
- The ancestral tombs. It's not enough that they're all cramped dungeons, but then you hear the ancestral spirits whisper. Then you find yourself brutally surprised by one of the various permanently grinning undead.
- The Sixth House is a very rich source of Nightmare Fuel. The creepy Sixth House lairs and items, the Body Horror minions, all of it is disturbing.
- Dagoth Ur is literally nightmare fuel. He is a Mad Dreamer who gives nightmares to people. Here's a quick example: note
- Corprus disease is And I Must Scream in a contagious form. It's similar to leprosy or cancer... but worse. Corprus twists your mind and body the longer you have it, sapping your intelligence and driving you mad. Like leprosy, it is obvious and causes almost everyone to wish that you'd go away. You will eventually become a shambling, tumorous mass as the disease takes effect; the perpetual agony will leave you Always Chaotic Evil, lashing out mindlessly at anything that comes near - and potentially spreading the disease to them. It also stops the aging process, so if you catch it and don't die of it, you'll live until somebody kills you. And you won't have the mental faculties to commit suicide any more. All you will know is the pain - and the will of Dagoth Ur. There is no known cure, and you must eventually contract it to progress through the story.
- If Dagoth Ur wants you as a minion, your case of corprus will become more benign: you will still mutate, but not into a tumorous blob of flesh. Instead, your eyes will wither and disappear, your skin will become covered with ash, your brain will atrophy and the entire upper half of your face will collapse to uncover your empty skull, and, finally, a trunk-like tentacle will grow out of the hollow to replace your brain. Eventually, the tentacle growth will branch into a writhing mass, turning you into a cthulhumanoid. Your sentience will return to you when you get the tentacle-brain, as will your well-being... but you will become a minion of Dagoth Ur forever.
- You can use soul trap on Corprus and Ash creatures, meaning Dagoth Ur's plague not only warps your body, but also turns your soul white, viable for soul trap.
- A very long-term one, but the knowledge that Morrowind is destroyed by the actions of the Nerevarine. When the rogue moon Baar Dau falls on Vivec and sets off a massive eruption at Red Mountain, every major settlement on Vvardenfell is leveled, and many mainland cities are also destroyed. The death toll is in the millions and it's all your fault, congratulations.note
- The alternative would have been to allow Dagoth Ur's consciousness to take over that of every single other living being there is, eventually coming to engulf the universe in its entirety. That's not horrifying.
- In one cave, you can find several dead bodies, skeletons and a potion ingredient: human flesh. Squick.
- The ash creatures. They are all creepy, but the fact that they all used to be human (well, Dunmer) as well just pushes it beyond creepy and full-on into horror. To get into the juicy details...
- You have the aforementioned Corprus sufferers, with Stalkers possessing rotting skin and various cysts; while the more mutated Lame Corprus are in full-on Body Horror, with the flesh around head and half of their body is swelling grotesquely to the point where it looks like their flesh is actually tearing through their skin! And their faces...
- Ash Slaves are the least mutated... by which means that their emaciated bodies have taken on an ashen pallor while their eyes have shrunken to the point where they don't look like they even have eyes. They also incessantly ramble to themselves about talking furniture that must be constantly rearranged.
- Ash Zombies are further down the valley, with the top half of their skulls completely hallowed out and leaving them without eyes, a nose, and a brain. Despite this, they're still intelligent and are without mercy.
- Ash Ghouls may now wear proper clothing, but they still bring the horror with their faces. Unlike their lesser Zombie brethren, Ash Ghouls have a wormlike proboscis growing out of where the Zombie's skull cavity is. On top of that, they're even more intelligent, to the point of sentient... if only to continue their fanatical mission for Dagoth Ur.
- And finally the Ascended Sleepers. Physically no longer human, and now just Eldritch Abominations with a quartet of hollow-looking eye sockets and tentacles growing where their faces should be. They're the most powerful and dangerous of Dagoth Ur's minions.
- The castle Tel Vos. Normally, it's not that creepy, but when you explore the depths you find that it's (almost) entirely abandoned and overrun with giant plants. The part that drives it home is how you keep finding diary entries from those who worked in the castle as everything went to hell. And the owner and his servants nonchalantly live on the upper levels like there's nothing wrong.
- Morrowind's dungeons often contain Daedric shrines, which invariably have offerings laid out in front of them. These are always valuable objects, precious stones, weapons and such. But there is a catch: the Daedra to whom the shrine belongs views those objects as its own, and evidently does not take kindly to you thieving them. One of the offerings - just one - will, if you touch it, immediately summon something very nasty behind you.
- A similar example happens in a Dunmer ancestral tomb. When exploring such tombs, at times you will come across an intact skeleton, laid to rest. Nothing unusual, these are tombs, after all. In one such tomb however, after picking some loot, one of the skeletons is awakened and attacks you. It's a little unsettling in that the skeleton is in a different room when this happens, so you'll be treated to the combat music without an enemy in sight, only to walk out of the room and find that the skeleton you just walked past has been reanimated.
- The in-game book Chance's Folly. The insane warrior's betrayal of the young thief is quite disturbing, as she is sealed for the rest of her life in a room with no way out. And to top it off? It's not fiction, either. Try dropping in to one of the ancestral tombs in Morrowind...
- Another freaky in-game book is the innocently titled Surfeit of Thieves. In it, a pair of thieves, a male named Indyk and a female named Heriah, find a secluded castle. Told by others it is full of riches, but occupied by monks, they plan to break in. With Indyk apparently distracting the guard, Heriah breaks in elsewhere. She gets caught by one of the occupants of the castle, who asks her if she is "Lady Tressed". Going along with the deception, she allows the monk who caught her to lead her back to a feast, where her partner is sitting at a table, albeit hooded to disguise himself. At the table, she notices, during the introductions from the monks, that all their names are backwards, due to an enchantment set to run out after the hourglass at the center of the table does. At some point, she hears her partner be referred to as "Esruoc Tsrif", shortly before trying to leave. However, the monks stop her from leaving, just as the enchantment runs out. If you don't understand why this story is freaky, look at the names the monks gave the thieves, and remember that the enchantment makes stated names backwards from the true names...
- Yet another incredibly chill-inducing book that can be found is the simply-titled Trap, which tells the tale of a starving beggar who, out of desperation, steals a pouch of gold belonging to a hooded figure in a tavern one night. What follows is a terror-filled chase through the night as the figure, having seen the gold being stolen, stalks after the beggar, soon joined by several more accomplices. In a blind panic, the beggar runs into a house to hide, not realizing that the house is occupied until the voice of an old man calls out from the dark. Initially assuring the man he's not there to harm him, the beggar's mood shifts to horror as the terrifyingly gaunt face of the man comes out of the shadows, sunken, pale, his fingers talons as they reach for him, the beggar unable to resist as the ancient vampire casts a sleep spell on him, seeing the forms of the other figures gathering around him, their fangs glinting in the light of the moon. The beggar, made into a cattle for the Berne vampires to feed upon to sate their bloodlust, ends the tale on a chilling note as he says that there is something worse than being hungry: being food.
- The Sixth House bases are generally pretty dark and creepy; first take the ash creatures previously mentioned, then add things like those giant voodoo doll looking things, bells that are capable of producing near-BrownNotes, and at least one of them features bizarre furniture arrangements that brings to mind Poltergeist.
- The Bloodmoon variant of Draugr. Unlike the kind met in Skyrim, they stare at you from the dark with glowing eyes until they break out in a dash and lunge at you with incredible speed. Can be especially startling if you're aware of the Skyrim type beforehand and expect these to be the same.
- The hulking Grahl enemies found in the same dungeons have the opposite effect but can be equally dreadful. When you first run into one you usually only see a pair of glowing red eyes and a giant, vague silhouette as it slowly walks closer to you.
- Netches. Though there are many odd enemies in Morrowind you can count on most of them being humanoid and ground-bound. Then you find a pack of these slow, physics defying, impossible eldritch abominations. If you're brave enough to approach and hit one it will instantly flail around with sudden and unnerving speed, battering you with its foreign tendrils... All the while more of these cosmic horrors approach and begin to surround you.
- At the start of the final quest in the Bloodmoon expansion, there will be a nasty Jump Scare when you wake up and see multiple werewolves surrounding your bed as you are taken to the lair of Hircine.
- One quest involves a local man having you escort a Khajiit slave named Rabinna to his associate, seemingly as a payment. If you can convince Rabinna to talk to you, she reveals that she is not the payment - the bags of illicit moon sugar that she has been forced to swallow are. She is painfully aware that she will likely be killed and gutted upon arrival, which is precisely what happens if you deliver her to her destination. Fortunately, she points you towards a Twin Lamps sympathizer who can help her escape to freedom. But even as he thanks you for freeing her, he bitterly notes that using slaves as disposable drug mules is not an uncommon tactic in Morrowind's underworld.
- Fort Firemoth, added in the Siege at Firemoth plugin. It's an Imperial fort that has been overrun by an undead horde, leaving you facing skeletons in numbers unlike anywhere else in the game. While individually weak, their sheer quantity and tendency to hide around corners makes them deceptively dangerous, especially to unprepared players.
- If you enter the fort through the main door, you're treated to a Jump Scare as you come face-to-face with the skeleton of an Imperial soldier pinned to the wall with numerous swords. In other parts of the fort, you find further traces of the former inhabitants, most notably in an apparent Last Stand in the upper chamber.
- Then there's the dungeon, a cramped space filled with a good 30 hostile rats that will swarm you in almost pitch-black darkness.
- Fighting all the way through the horde has you facing off against the lich that summoned it in the first place, who happens to be one of the toughest enemies in the game. But if you pay attention to the questgiver who first points you to Firemoth, you'll learn that the lich and his horde essentially just marched out of the ocean one day and took over the fort without warning. The thought that there was an undead army traversing around the ocean floor completely undetected is deeply chilling, and makes you wonder just what else might be down there...
- Thorough exploration reveals a survivor of the initial attack, who is holed up in the mines beneath the fort and surviving off the mushrooms growing there. Bad enough that he had to watch his comrades be slaughtered by the undead and wound up trapped in a cave surrounded by them, but it's stated that the fort was overrun years before the game takes place. It's a miracle that he's still alive and sane after being in that situation for so long.
- Part of the main questline in Bloodmoon involves a series of rituals to restore nature's balance on Solstheim. The ritual involving the wind has the player delve into a draugr-infested tomb to release the wind from a bag. As soon as the bag is opened, the howling wind blows out all the torches in the tomb, plunging it into darkness.
