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At the last second, she leaps and just manages to grab her mother's paw in time as Mor'du snarls and snaps after her. Merida hurriedly tried to crawl up through the ruins and reach her mother's paw, with the gigantic bear trying to devour her. Merida fires an arrow straight at his head, but it did no damage whatsoever. Mor'du himself appears, stalking Merida from the shadows and he charges. She slowly realizes that the Prince who asked for the strength of ten men indeed had his fate changed, and that man became Mor'du. Inside, she finds a throne room very similar to her own family's and a shattered stone carving of the four brothers, one of the brothers broken from the others. Merida explores, falling after walking on an unsteady piece of rubble. Later, Merida and her mother (now turned into a bear) follow a trail of wisps to a foggy ruin, bearing the crossed axes of Mor'du's family. When Merida asks if got what he wanted, the witch confirms it, showing Merida his clans ring with the crossed axes. The Witch says that a prince once came to her and demanded the strength of ten men. When Merida runs away from home after a fight with her mother, and follows the wisps to the witch's hut, the witch takes the medallion of clan DunBroch as payment for a spell to "change her mother". Though they give the princess and the queen time to escape on horseback, Mor'du shows no fear nor vulnerability to them. Later, it is revealed that Fergus had his leg eaten, thus beginning his fierce rivalry with the demon bear. After she returns to her parents, Mor'du attacks and Fergus with his household guard rushes to defend his wife and child. From the undergrowth, it is suggested that Mor'du is watching her.
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Many wisps appear and try to lead her with them. Mor'du first appears in the film's prologue, when Merida, daughter of King Fergus and Queen Elinor, fires an arrow off into the woods and goes to get it back. Mor'du lived on for centuries, and the bear side of him overtook his humanity, making him a monstrous beast. The spell he received eventually transformed him into a bear, and he murdered his family, causing the fall of the kingdom. However, Mor'du was not always a bear he was originally a human prince, who wanted to rule the kingdom he shared with his three brothers alone, and went to a witch to gain "the strength of ten men" in order to take over the land, paying with the ring of his house, which bore the crest of his family, two crossed axes. Mor'du as a human prince before he became a bear.
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One of the Production Designers of the film, Steve Pilcher, calls Mor'du a "Demon bear" and "Moby Dick on land". His body is covered in scars, broken weapon hilts, and arrows. A legendary monster, Mor'du is an over 13-foot-tall bear with huge claws, a misaligned jaw, and long, sharp teeth.
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