Dullahan Monster Trait for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

If you're here without knowing what Eureka is somehow, this work is for this game
https://anim-ttrpg.itch.io/eureka-urban-investigative-fantasy-ttrpg-haunted-hous...

It's very very good. Go pick it up.

This monster trait takes eclectic inspiration from many stories of headless riders and headless people, primarily throughout the British Isles, the Rhineland in Germany, the United States, and most predominantly Ireland. So why dullahan? It's a specifically Irish word. To tell the truth, I still think about renaming everything here to “Headless Rider”, but at least for now, I won't. Most stories of headless horsemen or headless anything stories are ghost stories, and the monster I wanted to write is strictly not a ghost in that sense. The dullahan of folklore is not a ghost, it's an “unseelie fey” or spirit. It's something much more inexplicable, like what I’ve written. So for now, I’m sticking with “dullahan” as it seems the most appropriately descriptive word. I did however want to bind my favourite ideas of headless horsemen and fold them into this trait where I can, and for that I have taken artistic liberty in the name of entertainment. The largest of these liberties is that the dullahan appears as the likeness of an actual dead person. In the ghost stories of headless riders that inspired parts of this monster, and really in any half decent ghost story at all in my opinion, knowledge of the dead is incredibly important. Incorporating these stories meant involving the idea of legend and perception of the dead into the dullahan, and so this monster wears a “likeness” of a dead person without being their actual ghost. An existence that shows starkly what remains when someone dies, and the troubles of understanding the life they lost. This is an overtly analogous “eureka-ism” that does change the character of the monster, but I feel makes them more interesting for the game. As such this should not be taken as a strict representation of historical folklore.