Le Cavalier Sans Tête

Medium Undead (Augmented Humanoid)

Hit Dice: 14d12+28 (119 hp)
Initiative: +7
Speed: 40 ft. (8 squares)
Armor Class: 26 (+3 Dex, +13 natural), touch 13, flat-footed 23
Base Attack/Grapple: +7/+14
Attack: Rusted executioner’s falchion +16 melee (2d4+11/18-20 plus mooncurse)
Full Attack: Rusted executioner’s falchion +16/+11 melee (2d4+11/18-20 plus mooncurse)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Mooncurse, lantern of remembrance, dreadful charge, sever the living memory, lantern harvest
Special Qualities: Damage reduction 10/blessed silver, darkvision 60 ft., undead traits, marsh stride, regeneration 5, moonbound manifestation, impossible rider, scent of grief, turn resistance +4
Saves: Fort +4, Ref +7, Will +13
Abilities: Str 24, Dex 16, Con —, Int 12, Wis 18, Cha 22
Skills: Hide +16, Intimidate +23, Knowledge (local) +18, Listen +21, Move Silently +18, Ride +24, Sense Motive +19, Spot +21, Survival +15
Feats: Cleave, Combat Reflexes, Improved Initiative, Mounted Combat, Power Attack, Ride-By Attack
Environment: Flooded roads, drowned cemeteries, canals, and marsh outskirts of Ville des Marais
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 12
Treasure: Double standard
Alignment: Always lawful evil
Advancement: 15-20 HD (Medium)
Level Adjustment: —

Le Cavalier Sans Tête appears as a broad-shouldered rider clad in ancient blackened cavalry armor swollen with marsh rot and flood residue. Though unmistakably humanoid in size and shape, the creature’s proportions feel subtly wrong, as though the body beneath the armor has swollen and tightened from prolonged drowning. Its neck ends in a ragged stump of wet flesh and dim lunar radiance from which pale vapor constantly escapes like chilled breath on winter glass.

The Horseman carries no severed head upon its person. Instead, an iron funeral lantern hangs from chains upon the saddle of its mount. Within the lantern’s fogged panes flicker distorted human faces that weep, scream, pray, or stare silently outward. Witnesses claim the expressions belong to those who died abandoned during flood seasons, their names forgotten by the city they once served.

Its mount, Miséricorde, resembles a lean marsh warhorse stitched together from drowned cavalry remains. River moss hangs from its flanks, and stagnant water spills from its mouth whenever it exhales. The beast’s hooves make almost no sound upon stone, yet the echo of its approach carries unnaturally far through flooded streets and narrow alleys.

COMBAT

Le Cavalier Sans Tête hunts with terrifying patience and ritualistic precision. It prefers isolated roads, drowned bridges, funeral paths, and mist-covered canals where escape becomes difficult. Victims often hear distant hoofbeats for hours beforehand, slowly realizing the sound is approaching no matter which direction they flee.

The Horseman rarely speaks. When it does, witnesses describe hearing multiple overlapping voices emerging from the empty space above its shoulders, as though the dead imprisoned within the lantern attempt speech all at once.

Mooncurse (Su): Any creature struck by the Horseman’s falchion must succeed on a DC 22 Will save or become afflicted with the Curse of the Drowned Moon. Afflicted victims hear phantom hoofbeats whenever left alone and suffer vivid dreams of drowning canals and moonlit executions. Each week the victim fails a secondary DC 22 Will save, they suffer 1 point of Wisdom drain. The curse may only be removed by both remove curse and hallow. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Lantern of Remembrance (Su): As a standard action, the Horseman may open the shutters of its lantern. All creatures within 60 feet must succeed on a DC 21 Will save or become shaken for 2d6 rounds. Creatures already shaken instead become frightened for 1d4 rounds. Those who fail also experience fragmented memories belonging to drowned dead trapped within the lantern.

Dreadful Charge (Ex): Whenever Le Cavalier Sans Tête successfully charges while mounted, the target must succeed on a DC 24 Fortitude save or be knocked prone and stunned for 1 round.

Sever the Living Memory (Su): Whenever the Horseman reduces a creature to 0 hit points or lower, all witnesses within 30 feet must succeed on a DC 21 Will save or temporarily forget the victim’s face and voice for 24 hours. Family members experience this effect as profound emotional distress and hollowness.

Lantern Harvest (Su): Any humanoid slain by Le Cavalier Sans Tête has its soul immediately drawn into the iron funeral lantern hanging from the saddle unless the creature succeeds on a DC 22 Will save. Creatures whose souls are imprisoned within the lantern cannot be raised, resurrected, or contacted by speak with dead so long as their soul remains confined. While trapped, the soul experiences an endless procession of floodwater, funeral bells, distant hoofbeats, and fragmented memories belonging to countless other dead.

As a full-round action, the Horseman may force one trapped soul to manifest briefly within the lantern glass. This functions as fear upon a single creature within 30 feet (DC 22 Will negates). Victims who fail the save glimpse imprisoned dead screaming behind the lantern panes, often recognizing friends, relatives, or forgotten citizens of Ville des Marais among them.

The lantern may contain a maximum number of trapped souls equal to twice the Horseman’s Hit Dice. Whenever the lantern reaches maximum capacity, its light becomes visible through heavy fog and flood rain at distances of up to one mile, accompanied by faint funeral music and distant crying audible only to creatures currently grieving a lost loved one.

If the lantern is shattered upon consecrated ground during the conjunction of Le Père Lune full and la Mère Lune dark, all imprisoned souls are immediately released to the afterlife. The destruction unleashes a catastrophic scream of accumulated grief, however, forcing all creatures within 300 feet to succeed on a DC 24 Will save or become permanently shaken until receiving greater restoration or meaningful emotional reconciliation determined by the DM.

Marsh Stride (Su): Le Cavalier Sans Tête and its mount ignore difficult terrain caused by mud, reeds, shallow water, swamp vegetation, and flood debris. The pair may ride across still water as though under the effects of water walk.

Regeneration (Su): Blessed silver weapons deal normal damage to the Horseman. If destroyed, its body collapses into black floodwater and funeral moss before reforming during the next conjunction of Le Père Lune full and la Mère Lune dark unless the lantern is shattered upon consecrated ground.

Moonbound Manifestation (Su): Le Cavalier Sans Tête may only physically manifest during nights when Le Père Lune is full while la Mère Lune is absent from the sky. Outside this period the creature exists as a distant spiritual presence incapable of direct violence.

Impossible Rider (Su): Mundane means cannot forcibly dismount the Horseman. If separated from Miséricorde, both instantly reform adjacent to one another at the beginning of the Horseman’s next turn.

LORE

Among the oldest districts of Ville des Marais, Le Cavalier Sans Tête is not spoken of as a mere monster. It is discussed more like weather - dreadful, inevitable, and woven into the city’s emotional architecture. Elder marsh families still nail black lilies above their doors whenever Le Père Lune rises full against the empty heavens of la Mère Lune, hoping the rider passes them by.

According to the oldest funerary records, the Horseman first appeared after one of the city’s great flood famines centuries ago. Entire neighborhoods drowned beneath uncontrolled canal surges while civic authorities argued endlessly over blame and responsibility. Bodies floated unclaimed through the Rivière Tumultueuse for days. Funeral rites failed. Names vanished from ledgers. Grief remained unresolved.

Something answered that failure.

Whether the Horseman was once a real executioner, cavalry officer, or drowned citizen no longer matters. Centuries of sorrow and civic shame have transformed it into something larger than an individual identity. It has become the city’s memory of abandonment given shape and purpose beneath the moonlight.

Many secretly believe the creature targets those who violate the sacred communal obligations of Ville des Marais - corrupt officials, grave robbers, murderers who deny burial rites, and opportunists who profit from flood catastrophes. Unfortunately, like floodwater itself, the Horseman’s justice does not always stop where intended.

Kelwyn’s Notes

One of the most dangerous lies civilization tells itself is that remembrance is optional. People imagine funerary rites, mourning songs, ancestor records, and memorial lanterns to be sentimental decorations draped upon society after the important work has already been completed. Ville des Marais understands better. Here, memory is structural. It is mortar. It is floodwall. It is the fragile architecture preventing grief from escaping into the streets with teeth.

Le Cavalier Sans Tête is what occurs when that architecture fails catastrophically enough for the city itself to remember the wound. Observe carefully that the creature does not merely kill. Countless undead kill. Countless horrors butcher indiscriminately. No - the Horseman punishes abandonment. It is grief weaponized by neglect until it no longer seeks comfort, but enforcement.

The lantern possesses no proper name because the city refuses to grant it one. That distinction matters enormously. In Ville des Marais, names are acknowledgements of belonging. They imply relationship, familiarity, and place within the emotional architecture of civilization. The people will speak of the Horseman with fearful reverence, certainly, but the lantern itself remains deliberately unnamed - a thing too dreadful to comfortably incorporate into communal language.

Most horrifying of all is the implication hidden beneath its function: the souls trapped within are not consumed. They remain aware. They remember. One can scarcely imagine a more distinctly Ville des Marais form of damnation than becoming part of an eternal procession of grief endlessly carried through floodwater beneath the watching moons.