Let me tell you the sad tale of Andrufus Skybandit, the dear gryph-hound companion of Lord-Castellant Marcoth Direforge. The Lord-Catellant was on campaign, slaying the twisted beasts of Ghur’s Yulestag Mountains, and had left Andrufus back at the stormkeep to guard a particularly delicious aetheric plum pudding that had been prepared by his Knight-Confectioner to celebrate the coming victory.

Direforge returned to find the pudding gone, and aetheric plum residue coating Andrufus’ beak. In a moment of sheer rage that would have made a wrathmonger say “steady on old chap”, the Lord-Castellant raised his grandhammer and brought it down mightily upon his companion’s skull, killing him stone dead. With the gryph-hound’s dying yelp still ringing in his ears, Direforge suddenly caught sight of a blood-slick claw protruding from beneath some nearby drapery. Pulling the drapery aside he discovered, to his horror, the body of a dead flesh-hound of Khorne.

With mounting dread, Direforge examined the two bodies more closely. Around Andrufus’ beak he discovered not plum pudding residue after all, but the blood of the daemon. Andrufus had clearly fought the beast. Returning to the flesh-hound, Direforge now saw that its blood-slick claws were, in fact, slick with… plum pudding. His dear, loyal gryph-hound had been protecting the plum pudding from daemonic incursion.

Overcome with remorse, the Lord-Castellant buried Andrufus with great ceremony. But no matter how many times he suffers the torment of the reforging process, Direforge’s greatest torment will forever be that last, dying yelp of his devoted friend - a memory that remains as present and real to him as on the fateful day he first heard it. The Lord-Castellant never smiled again.

Oh yeah, and it’s day 5 of the Realm of Plastic advent calendar, so here’s a gryph-hound name generator…