Dullahans in folklore and gaming
The dullahan is a headless horseman who rides a black stallion (sometimes headless too). After sunset on certain holidays, it roams the countryside. It carries its own rotten head under one arm, and the head itself can see great distances even on darkest nights. In the other hand it cracks a whip made from a human spine. (In terms of game rules, the dullahan's steed(s) may be a nightmare (or headless nightmare, a purely cosmetic feature). According to Pathfinder Bestiary, the dullahan may summon, replace or dismiss its steed at will.)
The dullahan is an exceedingly private being and anyone who watches its passing will be punished: it will throw a bucket of blood in their face or strike them blind in one eye. (According to Pathfinder Bestiary, they enjoy sowing terror in their wake.)
Like the banshee, the dullahan serves as a kind of psychopomp. As members of the unseelie court, they actively reap their victims rather than foretell their death. The dullahan does this by calling out its target's name, which draws out their soul and leaves a lifeless body behind. (According to Pathfinder Bestiary, they preferentially target the wicked or their descendants but will not hesitate to claim the innocent.)
There is almost no defense against the dullahan. Every gate and door will autonomously unlock, unbar and open in the presence of the dullahan. Unlike other fairies, the dullahan is not particularly vulnerable to iron. However, the dullahan fears even the smallest amount of gold and flee from merely being presented a gold pin.
Some dullahans drive a black coach driven by six black horses. The horses travel so fast that the friction of their hooves sets the hedges on the roadside afire in their wake. (Pathfinder Bestiary names this a "Coach of the Silent" and claims the souls of the dullahan's victims languish in the seats forever.)
Although Pathfinder Bestiary stats dullahans as undead, The Daily Bestiary attempts to rationalize this by introducing "Gan ceanns" as the fey counterpart of the undead dullahan. Since I adopted the cosmology from The Complete Guide to Fey, dullahan in my setting may have always been fey or reincarnated from human souls (as a metaphysical opposite to undead). According to Pathfinder Bestiary, the souls of cruel and malicious soldiers and militiamen are chosen for this purpose.
According to Tome of Beasts, the rider and steed are actually a single creature. Dullahans are nominally part of the Unseelie Court, and are known to serve powerful fey nobles as heralds, bards, ambassadors and bounty hunters.
Other headless horsemen in folklore
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow features a variation on the dullahan. The headless horseman is the ghost of a Hessian trooper who lost his head to a cannonball. It rides to the scene of battle at night in a perpetual quest for its head, which it then carries under one arm. It is supposedly unable to step foot on hallowed ground or cross running water, instead vanishing in a flash of fire and brimstone should it try. Adaptations of the story commonly depict the headless horseman carrying a jack-o'-lantern as a substitute for its severed head.The YouTube video "The Messed Up Origins of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Jon Solo features other accounts of headless horsemen, some of which depict them as positive rather than negative entities. This could explain how dullahans might behave as part of the Seelie Court (although I stress that neither Seelie nor Unseelie correspond to good or evil in the original folklore despite fantasy gaming's annoying imposing of alignment on everything).
Connection to valkyries?
In the anime Durarara!!, one character speculates that dullahans transform into valkyries and vice versa. In my cosmology, valkyries are typed as celestials (though I suppose they could be fey). According to In the Company of Valkyries, valkyries are ascended from the willing souls of valiant warriors who died in battle and those who aided the valkyries in quests.I had a bit of trouble trying to imagine how the cosmology could allow a dullahan to transform into a valkyrie (which would change its type and thus its essential nature... or something, since the rules are annoyingly inflexible in this regard). One idea that occurred to me was that every dullahan, or at least some dullahans, had a valkyrie imprisoned inside their head and it could be awakened by a war. Or something along those lines. D&D's arbitrary type mechanic makes this sort of thing way more difficult to adjudicate than it need be.
Research links
- http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/ACalend/Dullahan.html
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6cgoHT-lBQ
- https://numinusresfeber.wordpress.com/tag/valkyrie/
- http://www.timelessmyths.com/celtic/faeries.html
- https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/dullahan/
- http://dailybestiary.blogspot.com/2012/01/dullahan.html
- https://www.5esrd.com/gamemastering/monsters-foes/monsters-by-type/fey/dullahan-3pp/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headless_Mule
- https://kiriramdeo.wordpress.com/2016/10/01/mermaid-siren-harpy-or-banshee-part-2-of-2/
- https://laurasimonsdaughter.tumblr.com/post/654337363905069056/down-the-rabbit-dullahan-hole-i-have-seen-the
- https://dorisvsutherland.com/2020/06/23/more-on-the-dullahan-in-irish-folklore/
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