I'm gonna try this, may give up halfway, but I want to try.

[WorgenHunter]

So for the few of you who know, I made the Playable Dullahans thread a couple of weeks ago. Now, I've done some digging, along with checking out the games that were suggested to me. (Thank you for those btw ) And I unfortunately couldn't find anything that really stuck out to me, so I'm gonna try my hand at unity and give dullahans some well deserved, playable justice, darn it. Any tips or ideas are greatly appreciated!

 

[Drathnoxis]

What's a dullhand?

 

[SweetShark]

There is a new coming soon with a character similar to a dullahan:

Google "Dead Cells"

 

[DoPo]

What's a dullhand?

Think "headless horseman"

OT: What type of game would it be? Some sort of RPG where your character is a dullahan, or pehaps something more like Mount and Blade where you can go around on a horse and smash people. Only you'd have your head in your hand. Or something else entirely?

To be honest, I don't really know much of the lore on dullahans aside from the head thing, so I'm not entirely sure what they are supposed to do. However, one thing that I'd think would be funny is if you could get different heads and they give you...some gameplay bonus, like different abilities or stats or whatever.

 

[WorgenHunter]

What's a dullhand?

Think "headless horseman"

OT: What type of game would it be? Some sort of RPG where your character is a dullahan, or pehaps something more like Mount and Blade where you can go around on a horse and smash people. Only you'd have your head in your hand. Or something else entirely?

To be honest, I don't really know much of the lore on dullahans aside from the head thing, so I'm not entirely sure what they are supposed to do. However, one thing that I'd think would be funny is if you could get different heads and they give you...some gameplay bonus, like different abilities or stats or whatever.

I was actually thinking about making it an Overlord type game, without the little minions of course, along with some other elements from various games. I do really like the different heads idea though, maybe I could even do some seasonal stuff if I get it up and running. As for the lore, it's basically an Irish Grim Reaper. If you ever see one, you're either whipped in the eye, soaked in blood (which marks you as his/her next victim), or if you're the one it's after it says your name and draws your spirit right out of your body. This is why I think I could make the souls you take your currency, to get new armor/weapons, or even some stuff for your horse. I'm still trying to come up with a story though, I was initially thinking of someone stealing your head, and you have to fight your way through the world to get it back. You'd still have it through a good portion of the game of course, can't make a story about a bada** mythical creature without having your power stripped away at some point, right?

Maybe make it a mod to make it more accessible instead of an entire game, at least for practice modelling and animating.

If I'm not happy with the final outcome, or something happens along the way, I'd be totally content making it a mod for Skyrim; or some other medieval based game for that matter.

 

[DoPo]

As for the lore, it's basically an Irish Grim Reaper.

I looked up some info on dullahans and they sound metal as FUCK

The Dullahan is a headless rider, usually on a black horse who carries his or her own head under one arm. Usually, the Dullahan is male, but there are some female versions. The head and the mouth is usually in a hideous grin that touches both sides of the head. Its eyes are constantly moving about and can see across the countryside even in the darkest nights. The flesh of the head is said to have the color and consistency of moldy cheese. The Dullahan uses the spine of a human corpse for a whip, and its wagon is adorned with funeral objects (e.g., candles in skulls to light the way, the spokes of the wheels are made from thigh bones, the wagon's covering made from a worm-chewed pall or dried human skin).

I'd definitely love to actually see more of that.

As for the story - I'm guessing it can really be as simple as searching for his/her real head. Find some information, go there find some information that the head is elsewhere, repeat. Classical video game story "your head is in another castle". It can be spiced up in exactly HOW the dullahan goes about that. I'd personally go in a vague Magicka direction - that game played it humorously but the premise was that the player character(s) never speak and they go in and kill a bunch of stuff when they could have simply asked or negotiated them. It's a running joke throughout the story. Something similar could work with this one, though it could be played a bit more serious (or not, if you wish) - the dullahan simply could not ask where his head is. Could be because he, you know, lacks a head, but maybe he doesn't even want to. At any rate, all the dullahan would do is kill and scare people perhaps with the goal to muster enough magical power to summon the souls of the dead and force them to show him the next location. Or something like that. Point being extreme supernatural violence.

 

[Asita]

Well here are some questions to get the creative juices flowing:

1) How "in line" with perceptions do you want this to be? You could base this entirely off of the traditional depiction of an Unseelie reaper with a rotten head and which uses a spine as a whip, or you could modernize by trading in the horse for a motorcycle and giving it less gruesome aesthetics.

2) What role will the rest of the Unseelie court have? Will they be allies to your dullahan? Enemies? What about the Seelie court?

3) How does your dullahan view its role? How does it view humans? Does the mythology around dullahans match the reality it lives with? Will humans play a role in this game at all?

4) What kind of tone do you want this game to have? Is it supposed to be dark and gothic? Black comedy? Heartfelt? A hurricane of puns as you try to get a head in life?

Also, see this video for 6 other questions you need to ask for your character. It's a long video, so I'll go ahead and invoke the first two questions of it to give you an idea of where he's going with these questions.

1) Where was he/she born?
We're talking a Dullahan here, so classically this would probably be somewhere in the British Isles. Perhaps your dullahan is an ancient Irish spirit, who watched the Celts be routed when the English invaded. Perhaps in your world the fairy courts were actually involved in the conflict and altered the outcome. Maybe s/he is a young Dullahan, who was born in modern England and whose elders often spoke of the days when people still lived in fear of the fairy courts. Maybe s/he was actually born abroad. A lone Celtic fairy living amongst the vanara, rakshasas and avatars in India. Perhaps they yearn for the land of their forefathers. Perhaps they prefer the land they know.

2) Who are their parents?
Maybe dullahans spring from the aether in accordance to need. In which case what purpose inspired the creation of your dullahan? Perhaps your dullahan was originally mortal. In this case, why is s/he now a dullahan and how do they feel about their current circumstances? Or perhaps your dullahan is the bastard child of Oberon himself (or Titania)? An open secret which perpetually suffers contemptuous snickers mocking their parents. How would someone like this develop? Would they despise their parents? Try to excel to wash away the shame of their birth? Rebel? Act like a model child? Would they have eyes on becoming a full fledged courtier or dismiss it as they themselves were dismissed? There's surprising depth to be found in the simple questions of who the parents were.

It's amazing how these questions can act a springboard for these purposes.