Creating a Game (Part 13) - Dullahan

Dullahan is another name for headless horseman. It is an Irish spirit often considered one of the unseelie fey, as well as being malicious and fierce. This might work well as the source of power behind the mysterious corporation. It will probably also work well as the name of the corporation.

Given scarecrows are a generally associated with British folklore, the idea might be to have a group of seelie fey who bring the scarecrows to life, while the Dullahan Corporation is driven by the Unseelie.

However, a bit of research indicates that scarecrows have actually been in use since the time of the ancient Egyptians. This begs the question of whether we push the shadowy backstory of the Scarecrows back further, all the way to Egypt, or whether the first scarecrows to be animated were in fields in the British Islands.

Do we really need this much shadow history in the game, especially if it isn't going to directly influence play?

In this setting, maybe the Arabian folk tales of djinn relate to the same types of creatures that are remembered as faeries in European folklore. 

It's possible to tie in all the world's mythology, but as I said earlier, trying to tie everything together too neatly just starts getting trite and feels off. I'm going to leave this game focused on Celtic mythlore. I don't need the recipe to draw in flavours from the whole world.

I'd rather leave Dullahan as a mystery, dropping a few hints here and there, especially with characters who've been around for centuries remembering things that groups associated with the company might have been responsible for. Was Dullahan connected to the global trade imperialism of the British East India Company? Were they associated with the rum distillery who's liquour was connected to the 1808 Rum Rebellion? Which side of the troubles in Northern Ireand were they sponsoring (or were they behind both sides)?

The scarecrows don't know all of this, and it's more likely that at the start of play they might not know any of this. Anything they do learn will probably come from unreliable narrators within the story, and nothing about the shadowy adversary will be certain. If I do end up expanding the game, and if I do end up writing a specific sourcebook about Dullahan and it's operations in the world, it will be written as an in-game artifact compiled by a conspiracy theorist. Lots of hints and ideas for play, but nothing definitive for players to argue with the GM about.

This blog post about Pentex by Neal Litherland, give some ideas for Pentex that would be just as useful when dealing with any mysterious corporate antagonist, like Dullahan.