Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

I am curious if anyone has a headless horseman statted up that would be suitable for DF. I imagine the headless horseman would be some sort of wraith but with some powers for his jack o lantern head? Thanks

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

I was thinking about it, but you'll pretty much have to just invent whatever seems cool, because the only standard elements of the folklore are a horse and a rider who either has no head, or carries his head.

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

If you have access to GURPS Classic: Monsters, they have a version of The Headless Horseman statted in it. It shouldn't be a big deal to convert that to 4E and tweak it to fit DF.

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

You have an entry for the Headless Horseman in Gurps Horror (4th) p. 80

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

Hah! I got fixated on the source I first remembered without even thinking about the entry in the newer book *g* And it's almost word-for-word the same!
Neither one actually has a specific stat block, though. You have to take the stats from the main entry for The Ghost (and tweak 'em, if you feel the desire to).

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

Incidentally, it's worth remembering Washington Irving's source of inspiration:

https://dullahan.com/

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

I've never heard of this before. It is deliciously evocative. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

cool!! Halloween approaching!! :D

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

Ironically I first became aware of the dullahan from Japanese cartoons where cutified versions of them are fairly popular.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YLxA9SaCZJ...1600/Celty.png

https://pre00.deviantart.net/7e8a/th..._j-dayx96y.png

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

Personally, I feel the jack o'lantern head to be a bit too silly (even for DF sensibilities). You'd also need to decide the exact details of the horseman - is it a dullahan (as referenced upthread), a decapitated revenant searching for its head, a wraith, or what-have-you. Note the pumpkin bit wasn't so silly in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, where in the dark it would look close enough for the superstitious Ichabod to think it was a severed head (it's heavily implied the "headless horseman" was Ichabod's rival in a costume).

I've recently been playing through Dragon Quest XI, and could be persuaded to make dullahans like they are in that game - their faces are on their shields, which makes for an interesting effect (of course, this being DQ, the designs are a bit silly looking, but that would be easily remedied).

The first I encountered anything of the like was a short story about a girl wearing a red ribbon/scarf on her neck, which she forbid her lover from removing. After their marriage, curiosity got the better of him, he removed it while she slept... and her head fell off. So, when I next ran across them in Japanese media as Cute Monster Girls, it wasn't as much of a stretch as it probably was for others who ran into them previously (note Dullahans are often depicted as reapers, of the grim variety, which makes CMG's of them an odd choice).

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

Is the dullahan a type of faerie? A GURPS DF Faeries would be really cool...

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

Straddles the line between ghost and faerie more or less the way a banshee does.

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

Would a cleric have any power to turn it? Or would it just be an evil death aspected faerie? I imagine it would not have had a mortal soul so it might not be bound to the same rules as traditional undead.

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

It's not necessarily even all that evil. It doesn't kill the people it collects and presumably the people it collects are people that the power it serves has some post-mortem claim on. My idea is that the souls it collects are reincarnated as fairies.

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

That sounds arguably more horrifying than "just" killing someone.

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

Any indicators how many bowls of blood the Dullahan has on them for this purpose? If they use 1 hand to hold their head I would think they would just have 1 bowl/bain and after flinging it into someone's face would need to refill it, perhaps by blood spurting from the open neck wound? If it spurted fast enough to refill a bowl in a turn then it would be generally very messy unless they were able to prevent the blood-spurting when they did not need to reload their weapon.

Flinging liquid in people's faces sounds like it could be Affliction limited with Blood Agent, with alternative limited enhancements of Blindness (Sight-Based) / Choking (Smell/Taste-Based).

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

I like the idea of the head being possessed of supernatural sensory ability. The horseman can be holding it aloft, the eyes crackling with light as it unerringly scans the countryside. Maybe the eyebeams kind of shoot out visibly like powerful flashlights as it looks around.

Re: Anyone have a headless horseman statted up for DF?
 

Maybe the dullahan in a DF campaign could call out the name of one PC per encounter and each time it utters the name it could cause fear, stun or even physically harm the Pc whose name is uttered? It would be sort of creepy to have a monster that knows the PCs name and also cause harm to it when it says the name.