A Brief Overview of Horrors

[The_Vizir]

Horrors

“...from ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, good Lord, deliver us!”

Type: Oblivion-animated incarnations of fear
Affiliated With: The Nightmare Court
Home Planet: Varying
Domain: The Shadowed Realm, aka Shadow, the Netherworld, the Realm Beyond the Closet, the Midnight World, etc.

The thing under your bed. The monster in your closet. The shadow lurking at the edge of your vision. The grey-suited man from the government agency that doesn't exist. The black beast you swore was following you. The thing outside your window, right now, watching you, vanishing when you turn your head. The creeps and the freaks and the creatures and the beasts and the things that go bump in the night. Mythologies across many worlds speak of haunting creatures that torment children and adults alike, such as oni, sack men, babau, shadow people, los cucuys, butzemenn, bogies, or jumbies.

They're all real. They are more terrifying than the tales and rumours say. And they feed off your fear.

Overview

Horrors are spawned shortly after sentient species arise on a world. Spawned from the Pit at the end of creation itself, horrors are spawned during moments of great trauma and terror among the population of a world. Most early horrors were as savage and bestial as the mortal races they preyed on, and on some worlds they never rise above the level of shadow beasts that prey on mortals in the dark.

Horrors are created from fear-touched anima that is sent into the Pit; the shear rejection and terror the once-vital substance experience when being destroyed causing it to reanimate in a mockery of a living soul and being. These shadow-spawn need yet more fear to grow and survive, to keep sharp their own terror of the great darkness at the end of everything and prevent themselves from fading into oblivion.

As both horrors and the dark realm they inhabit are shaped and influenced by the mortals who fears spawned and feed them, each world has its own unique menagerie of horrors. On some worlds horrors are bestial and animalistic, feral creatures of the night. On others, such as the world called Earth by the humans that inhabit it, they have a complex and developed electoral democracy, the Parliament of Shadows, that acts as a shadowy global government.

Every world's horrors is governed by a group of the most powerful horrors, termed the Nightmare Court. Each court is different in its membership and makeup, but some fears are so universal they spawn similar elder fears on multiple worlds. The title for these dread and ancient fears differ from world to world, on some they are the Great Terrors, on others they are the Lords of Darkness and on others they are simply the Bogeymen.

Physical Characteristics

As incarnations of fears and phobias, a horror's true form is terrifying and mind-shattering, a physical representation of fear so horrific mortal minds shrink from it. Indeed, many horrors themselves are afraid of their true form, and hide it under layers of darkness, discorporate themselves into the living shadows of the netherworld. However, existing as a void of living darkness is rather inconvenient is a physical world, so most horrors have learned how to extrude a portion of their shadow into the physical world, creating a puppet body.

These bodies are mutable, and dependent on the horror's own fear, personality, and the perspective others have of them. A horror can easily shift these puppet bodies, and invent new ones, but they often find one or two that are particularly comfortable to them – intentionally or unintentionally – and return to these forms on subconscious reflex. It is possible for horrors to shape and choose their own iconic form, but that takes considerable effort and mental training, reshaping themselves as they shape their body.

Because of a horror's origin, these forms are typically frightening, monstrous, alien or 'wrong' in some way or form, but the severity of this differs with each individual horror. There are five distinct “genres” of horrors, based on their physical forms: chimera, who appear as monstrous fusions of various animals; nightwalkers, who appear as twisted, shadowy humanoids; abominations, who appear as animated objects or constructs; revenants, who appear as undead humanoids; and bogies, who appear as warped versions of mythical, fairy-tale creatures.

Horrors don't need to sleep, in most cases, and are immune to most – but not all – diseases and poisons. It is difficult, but not impossible, to slay a horror through physical or magical assaults, due to their mutable bodies and the ability to slip into darkness. However, trapping a horror and starving them is remarkably effective, and there have been certain weapons and spells designed specifically to destroy horrors – though they are admittedly very rare. Most horrors are not the most skilled at physical assaults, preferring fights with their wits and tongues to ones of tooth and claw. There are, of course, many exceptions to this, but even the most brutish horror is likely to be thinking at least three steps ahead.

The Cycle of Anima

The reality of layered planes is well known to those who journey beyond the mortal plane. Realms such as Heaven and Hell are divided up into separate sub-realms with their own interpretation of that plane's nature.

However, what these mortal adventurers fail to realize is that their home plane is much the same. The prime material plane, or the Mortal Realm, is just one facet of the primordial realm known as Creation. Located as the centre of creation, it is its nexus, connecting to countless other planes – such as the outer planes, the elemental planes, and the far realms. However, existing as twisted mirrors orbiting the prime are two realms known as faerie and shadow.
As the intersection of reality, the Mortal Realm is home to a huge diversity of life – animals and plants, dragons and fantastic beasts, sentient constructs and living dead, and countless humanoid peoples. Compared to this faerie and shadow are pale mimicries – because that is in essence what they are.
There are dozens of realms beyond Creation, alternate planes and worlds and dimensions, worlds of spirits, realms of the elements, the underworld, the various hells and heavens of demons and angels, and alien places where old things sleep and alien minds slither and horrible thoughts linger.

All these alternate dimensions fit together like a great big machine, put together at the beginning of time - raw matter and energy is produced in the elemental realms, used to create material on other planes. Souls flow from an unknown source through the Mortal Realm and onto afterlives where they are punished or rewarded as deemed appropriate. And anima flows from the fountain of youth on Faerie, through the Mortal Realm, before being used us and destroyed in the Pit, the yawning void at the heart of Shadow.

Anima is the proper term for "life force" - it's what makes living things "go." Plants, animals, fungi, bacteria - all burn through anima as they eat, grow, breed and die. Anima doesn't stay in a body - it is used up and expelled naturally, just like a body will replace old cells with new ones.

It is important that one does not confuse anima with souls, as souls are rather different. Anima makes things go, souls let things choose how to go. When something has a soul, they have free will, and the ability to rationalize decisions based on values, morals, ethics - abstract ideals. They are granted, in effect, a clean canvas on which to paint their life's story.

Things without souls just "do" - while choices may be made, they are not thought about or rationalized or understood. They just happen. A being with a soul typically only has a single one over the course of their entire life, unlike the vast amounts of anima they go through. When life ends, souls pass on to their ultimate destination, be it heaven, hell, the underworld, or infinite unknown realms beyond; though it should be noted that there are numerous cases where souls simply refuse to leave even though life has ended. These are the "undead," and though they still have the ability of souled creatures to think and reason, they are no longer part of the flow of anima, so they must find another source (vampires and drinking blood, mummies and artifacts, ghosts and their tethers, zombies and ghouls and the flesh of the living, or liches and magic). Likewise, in spiritual realms, souls can animate physical bodies for themselves, creating angels, demons, jinni and numerous other supernatural beings.

The soul cycle has an impact on the anima cycle - and not just because most magic burns through ambient anima to work. Originally Faerie was designed as a filter for the Mortal Realm - slow down the flow from its raw source at the Fountain of Youth/Well of Life/whatever your mythology calls it. Basically, without Faerie, the Mortal Realm would be hit with the full output of the Well of Life's anima, and everything would come to life - rocks, rivers, mountains, oceans, moons, suns and stars. Thus a barrier was between the Mortal Realm and the Well so only that which is supposed to live actually lives (undead excepted, of course). Meanwhile, the Pit was created as a place for old anima to go once it looses its energy, falling downwards into the End of Everything to make room for fresh, new anima. Without the infinite oblivion of the pit, the Mortal Realm would become cluttered with useless old anima, and everything would slowly wither away and die.

The entire system was a finely regulated balance for life to exist in the Mortal Realm - life which could then be blessed with souls. However, Faerie and the Pit were apparently not considered when Souls were introduced, resulting in chaos. Faerie naturally conforms to and tries to mimic the Mortal Realm closely so that it functions better as a filter. When souls started entering the picture, Faerie reflexively began mimicking souls. However, as anyone who has dealt with the fey can tell you, Faerie's copies were... not quite right.

As fey don't quite have proper souls, only Faerie's anima-fuled mockeries, and while they can emulate free will accurately, they can do so within the context of their pre-formed life story – the fairy tales all fey live and die and are reborn by. This is why the fey love to play with mortals - mortals are so complex with their logic and their ethics and their rules and all that "stuff" that the fey just don't get. And their stories, oh the stories of mortals. Those wonderfully creative expressions of just what makes mortals tick - and yet all the figures in there are bound by fate, by the narrative of the story. Just like the fey. A fey who embodies emotions of heroism has no choice but to be a hero - just like the hero in a story. A fey who represents tragic love will identify with the thousands of tragic lovers in mortal fables, bound just like she is to the narrative strands that rule their destinies.

And so Faerie went from being a filter to the storybook realm, given order by the fey in their own chaotic ways.

However, Faerie's changes were minimal compared to that experienced by the Pit.

How do we know the Pit exists? In it's natural form, it is nothing. It's not even black, or dark, or cold - it's nothing. The Pit is eternal oblivion, so utterly, terribly void most mortal minds shrink from thinking about it - causing headaches to subconsciously drive thoughts away from that which is not.

And yet, it can be seen. One can stand on it's lip and gaze at it's howling oblivion. Why? Why would one need to see nothingness?

Again, it comes down to the ramification of adding souls to the anima system. Normally, anima is destroyed in the Pit without so much as a hiccup. However, when anima coexists with souls in a mortal, it carries an imprint of that soul as it sinks downwards into the Pit. It's not harmful - it's like how a worn mattress might have the imprint of the sleeper's body.

And yet these echoes of souls shaped oblivion somehow, bounded it. These soul echoes brought with them strong memories of life, and the Pit expelled those memories in its purging of anima. Shadowy, half-remembered remnants of towns appeared, and animals, and plants, a half-lit world formed around oblivion itself. It should have been destroyed, nothing should be able to survive - but mortals kept thinking, kept feeling, kept remembering. And there were more every year.

Instead of decaying back into non-existence, the twilight world grew, forming into a shadowy echo of the mortal realm formed of half-forgotten memories of decaying anima. This dark, twisted and decaying world is known by many names - the Twilit Realm, the Dark World, the Netherworld, Creation's Echo, the Darkness, Under the Bed, Beyond the Closet, the Nightmare Realm. However, let's just choose the most common name and call it Shadow here.

The last few epithets might seem odd, but they all refer to the inhabitants of Shadow. It's easy to think of those anima-spawed echoes of plants and animals as the inhabitants, but you're mostly wrong. No, the true children of Shadow, and the eternal antithesis of the fey, are the horrors - the monsters in your closet, the creatures under your bed, the freaks and the beasts and night terrors, the shadows that crawl along the wall and the face that watches you out of every mirror when you're not looking.

These terrifying beings are formed with a critical mass of soul-touched anima enter the Pit - a mass killing, perhaps, or a particularly vicious famine, or a virulent plague. Something cuts a lot of good lives short - or a few lives violently and explosively short - causing a minor deluge of the departed's anima to tumble through Shadow and to the Pit. Normally, there's not enough anima to do anything other that stutter a bit before dying. But occasionally - once or twice a month, typically, there is enough anima that enters the Pit at once instance that something else happens.

And something else is.

This anima makes a choice, defying its fate, and forces a patchwork "soul" into existence out of the fractured imprints of the anima that is giving it birth, and then this newborn being crawls its way out of the bleakest void in all of creation and into Shadow.

These new beings are "alive," they have a chance to "live" and escape the Pit for as long as they can - and some have been going at it for millenia. Thes creatures are almost like undead, except for one thing - they cannot replace their anima. Their anima is frozen, dead and dull, forced back into action by their psudo-soul - much like a demon or a jinn. However, while they don't need new sources of anima, they do need something to sustain them: fear. Their abject terror of returning to the Pit is what keep them "alive" and kicking, and they must continually replenish that fear, feeding off of frights and scares to prevent their own dread of oblivion from wearing dull - for if they no longer fear non-existence, then they will finally stop fighting against the grip of oblivion on their anima and slip into the nothingness that is their destiny.

This reliance on fear is, incidentally, why they're called horrors.

Case Study: The Horrors of Earth

While most horrors are forced to slink around in the darkness because they fear retribution from more powerful beings, on Earth they wrap themselves in shadow by choice. Thousands of years ago, the horrors of Earth were on the verge of annihilation by other supernatural forces, such as fey, demons, genies and vampires. However, somehow they managed to turn the tide against them and drove the other species into hiding, bringing in an age of progress, science, and paranoia to mankind.

The exact details of the horrors' startling turn-around are not known. Some hypothesize they encouraged the scientific development of the iron age, allowing humans to act as their foot soldiers against other magical beings. Others believe that the horrors struck a deal with Hell to act as their agents on Earth, granting them the infernal powers needed to sear the world clean. Still others posit that the first-and-only king of the terrestrial horrors, the Bogeyman, made an alliance that brought Heaven into the war. What is known, however, is that horrors have created a veil between the magical and mundane worlds of Earth, where the supernatural rarely touches the lives of the horror's precious human livestock. The horrors have granted humans the control of their lives and destiny under the presumption that humans, with only a little nudging, would create among themselves their own world filled with fear, strife, and paranoia – and they were mostly right.

These terrestrial horrors choose a hidden life to prevent an uprising against them among humanity. By lurking in the shadows, they feel that they keep the mortal realm unaware and unassuming of the hidden world of magic that lies so close to theirs. Horrors deal in secrets, lies, and misinformation, like masterful directors they play the powers of humanity against each other – though they also know when to step back and let the actors themselves act.

When interacting with humanity, they either assume human forms and identities – agents in almost every government ensuring the relevant identification is available – or they act through myths and legends, taking on forms of creatures long-extinct or invented whole-cloth by either mortals or the horrors themselves. However, despite this shadowy interference, the Parliament of Shadows is generally willing to let most of humanity act with only minimal interference from horrors, maybe a week-long haunting once a decade to make certain that human still fears.

Terrestrial horrors interact with humanity in many other ways, however. As mentioned above, they are in governments, but also in businesses, charities, and the media – wherever a horror sees a potential for themselves to grow in knowledge, work on their plans, and generally encourage fright and paranoia in humanity. While many are content with working behind the scenes, some have taken on roles of CEOs, news anchors, and even elected officials. What drives these horrors to reach for these public positions is not well-known: maybe it's the best way to achieve their own personal goals, maybe they don't trust anyone to do the job, or maybe, like many humans, they figure that they're the best man – or monster – for the job.

The existence of the Bogeyman is a debated topic – did a being actually rule over the horrors during their earliest millenia, or was he just an idol, an invented being of reverence among the early horrors to mimic the humans and their gods, created by horrors too afraid, too maddened, too paranoid. However, it is known that current members of Earth's Nightmare Court title themselves Bogeymen in his honour, the most powerful and influential of the modern fears.

The Bogeyman himself is an object of reverence among a number of Earth's horrors, a god-like figure that transcended his own terror to exist for all eternity. However, not all horrors see him as anything more than a respectable historical or mythological figure, and to say otherwise is to paint a species of over six million members with the same brush. Some horrors are dedicated nihilists, being spawned from oblivion itself and seeing the universe as having no greater meaning. Others see the touch of unknown gods and spirits in the formation of the Pit and the flow of anima, but don't believe that such beings would care about the cosmic mistake that is the horror species. And others still are devout followers of human religions – Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, pagan and others – who find meaning and comfort in their faith.

Horrors tend to be solitary creatures when dwelling on Earth, as the more horrors there are haunting an area, the harder it is for them to obscure their presence. Horrors forced into close contact with each other typically compete for dominance, establishing a rigid hierarchy and division of roles among their community, based on personal powers, influence, their relations to members of the Parliament of Shadow, etcetera. This ensures that each horrors has enough fear to survive off of while not interfering with their fellows plans. Individual horrors may fluctuate between hated rivals and best friends, but the overall desire to keep their natures secret from humanity leads them to at least begrudgingly protect their peers.

There is a great and sprawling bureaucracy that rules the horrors in the Shadowed Realm, called the Parliament of Shadows. Its members are elected by all loyal horrors once every thirteen years, chosen by popular ballots by members of their house. Any horror over a century in age can vote, and seats are allocated on a house-by-house basis.

The parliament hold session in an ancient adamantine fortress-city that hangs from above the Pit itself. Rising from the edges of the Pit are great chains of the blackest adamantine, their links the size of giants. Attached to monumental statues of dark stone that rise up from the crumbling edges of oblivion, these dark and pitted chains head out into the shadowy nether. The number of chains seems to be constantly in flux, as any attempt to count them never ends up with the same, though nobody has ever recorded seeing a chain being added or removed. These chains form the only physical connection to the Parliament, but the number of shadow gates and portals within the fortress-city's walls are mind boggling. It is unknown who built the fortress – angels, demons, and Bogeyman are all popular choices, but horrors have claimed it as their capital for the past three thousand years.

Most horrors belong to houses loyal to the Parliament of Shadows, and swear allegiance to the Nightmare Court that rule it – the heads of the thirteen most powerful houses, ancient and powerful horrors of legend each. The shifting allegiances of these shadowy leviathans determines the current politics of, and policies of, the netherworld. While these elder horrors, given the honourific title of Bogeymen, may influence the activities of their followers and minions directly, much of the responsibility for coordination falls upon the limbs of higher-ranking Ministers of Shadow. Power and prestige in the Parliament of Shadow is made through manoeuvring its wicked politics with skill and intellect, proving one's worth to the powerful beings that rule it. As the government of the horrors, other species are not invited to participate, and indeed, even revealing one's knowledge about the Nightmare Court puts one's life in danger.

There are those horrors, however, who have decided to leave the houses of the Parliament of Shadows, for one reason or another. Maybe they have been exiled, or maybe they feel their growth is stifled under the arcane bureaucracy of the court, or maybe they lack the skill or drive to be a part of the greater society of the Shadowed Realm. These horrors are left to their own devices by the court, so long as they do not pose a threat to the rest of horrorkind. These lone horrors show a greater diversity in their forms, motivations, and goals than those who participate in the court, and have a far rockier relationship with their fellows than those who have sworn allegiance to the elder horrors.

Houses of the Horrors

Houses are a combination of mafia families, unions, political parties, and nationalities that most horrors swear allegiance to – by force or free-will depending on each individual shadow-spawn's circumstances.

Horrors are by their nature fearful creatures – fear of their demise in the Pit sustains them, fear of humanity's wrath leads to their secrecy within the mortal realm, and fear of their fellows leads them to forming alliances with those who think, act, and fear alike. Within these alliances, horrors form complex hierarchies based on age, intelligence, power, influence, connections, and a myriad of other, more arcane factors. Those of higher ranks use their powers to shape and influence those below, modifying the weaker horrors to better fit in with the ethos and ideology of the house, while they themselves are shaped by those above. The most powerful member of each house becomes its head, and they define the fears its members embody – from the lowest vermin to the greatest elder horror. Their natures seep down, corrupting the horrors beneath them both physically and mentally, while their spawn and the spawn of their closest allies become the “nobles” of the house – entitled to influence and privileges beyond what the “common” members of the house receive. Each house also controls a portion of the Realm Beyond the Closet, and shape it to best match their own nature and fears, warping the mutable land just as they warp their followers.

While naturally-spawned horrors are free to choose their own houses – though many are drawn towards the ones that fit their own initial natures – ones spawned through the deliberate acts of others always results in another horror of that house. This is explained through the nature of horror spawning: naturally, a horror forms when a mass of semi-conscious anima reacts in pure terror while being consumed by the Pit and spontaneously generates a demi-soul that draws that mass of anima back out of the Pit to continue existing. This horror then attempts to embody the fears of the dregs of anima it is composed out of – a myriad of jumbled phobias, frights and terrors that it will eventually have to sort out on its own. However, occasionally elder horrors will take the anima of a single individual who died in pure terror and infuse it with some of their own essence before tossing it into the Pit. This not only allows an elder horror to remove what might be a weaker aspect of themselves, but can also result in a young horror being created, deriving its own aspects from the cast-off elements of their elder – and thus making them part of a house by “birth,” if you will. While these occasions are rather rare from a human perspective, most heads of houses have broods that number in the dozens of children, and hundreds of grandchildren, all containing a bit of themselves inside them, and all showing slightly more loyalty towards their progenitor than the average horror.

The natures of houses are rather fluid, their power and influence waxing and waning with the mood of humanity and the fears that dominate mortal society. This interplay or horror and men is played out in the halls of the adamantine fortress than hangs over the Pit, where the Parliament of Shadows plays its wicked games of politics, determining the laws that rule the houses – and in theory all of the shadowed realm (though in practise rogue horrors and refugees from other realms rarely pay the Parliament any heed). While many houses are represented within the ranks of the Parliament of Shadows, only those who command the thirteen largest alliances are entitled to sit on the Nightmare Court. These thirteen are titled Boogeymen, after the legendary founder horror civilization, and they are the true powers in Shadow – their domains are vast, their houses are formidable and their control extends across multiple realities and worlds.

The current houses of the bogeymen are as follows:

The Carnival of Terrors
No member of the Nightmare Court has as more disparate stories told about them than the Jester. Even the Jester's true name varies with place and time, to say nothing of its motives, goals, and appearances. Some claim the Jester to be a demented clown-god with fangs for teeth, others a alien aberration with a thousand hideous legs, others still a shadow whose edges can cut flesh to ribbons. Regardless, stories of the Jester always end with more questions than answers – and quite often, one does not want to know those answers. He is the fear of the unknown and the unknowable, what lies beyond one's understanding and knowledge, and the Jester is horrible.
The Jester is said to entice children away from their parents to, typically through mysteries that they seem compelled to follow, or youthful quests that end in tragedy. His realm is said to be a great carnival that wanders the shadows, filled with creatures strange and disturbing, and filled with perverse amusements of all sorts. Though stories don't often say what the Jester needs children for, there are some who believe he transforms those poor victims into the ever-expanding roster of his freak-show, to live out the rest of their lives as damned curiosities.

• House of the Unknown and Unknowable
• Members appear to be mutants, freaks and the like – alien and “wrong”
• Some incorporate circus or carnival aspects into their natures – sideshow themed
• No “typical” powers among the Freak-show, can range from further mutating of their bodies, to causing temporary madness, to drawing on horrible knowledge from alien sources to forcing transformations onto victims.
• Iconic members: The Ringmasters, humanoid monstrosities which can warp their victims into alien forms, forcing them to join in the carnival of terror.

The Forest of Fangs
The stories say savage Cuca smiles at every animal attack – provoked or not – and laughs madly every time a mortal is killed by a fit bestial rage. She is the fear of animals and the wild, the savage and the feral. Stories may argue about her appearance: in some she is a shaggy, brown furred beast with a thousand teeth in her wailing maw, in others she is a tall, alligator-headed humanoid who slides out of the fetid swamps at night to feast, and in others she is a small, bat eared creature with glowing red eyes and long, vicious fingers that hides under bushes and in trees, waiting to ambush the unexpected. Throughout all, she is wild, vicious, and deadly, the darkest avatar of the natural world.
Also called Coca or Bola, the stories say that she stalks the wilderness at night, hunting not for food or for skill, but to drive terror into the hearts of those who encounter her – and survive. Children are warned not to go into the wilds for fear of encountering her or her minions, who may spirit them away to her domain: a great, steamy jungle locked in eternal twilight, filled with all manner of vile and horrid beast, where they will be hunted for dark sport.

• House of the Wilderness
• Members are typically bestial in appearance – feral and savage
• Most are chimerae, others typically incorporate animalistic traits into their forms – fangs, claws, mangey hair, etc.
• Most powers involve shapeshifting into more feral or bestial forms or the manipulation of plant matter – possessing vines and thorns to bind a victim, or causing trees to shift and trap their prey in an inescapable maze.
• Iconic members: The Rough Beasts, primordial creatures ripped from the darkest nightmares of humans, their gargantuan forms are each uniquely horrible and savage.

The House of Bloodied Horns
The horned hag Babaroga hides in rafters and on rooftops, waiting for a chance to rain her indiscriminate wrath down upon anything that manages to offend her fickle senses. While her exact description varies from location to location, she is typically described as a wizened, elderly crone with long, spidery limbs and horns rising from her wild mane of hair. The embodiment of the fear of anger and wrath, the stories say she has a scowl full of fangs and eyes that are continually bloodshot and red. Her voice cracks and her body trembles with barely contained anger when she's not screaming murderous rage at those who have attracted her ire. The only thing that causes Grandmother Horn's anger to pause is the chance to cause a similar outburst in another being – a single word here, a misplaced item there can cause the chaos and rage that cause her screaming to be replaced by her horrible cackling laughter.
The stories of Babaroga tell of her crawling up walls and along roofs like a giant, humanoid spider. She is said to be able to fish up children from her lofty perch, and take them away to her mountainous lair, where she pits her catches against each other for her own twisted amusement. Those who win, of course, form the main course of her feast come the night.

• House of Wrath
• All members bear a vicious set of horns rising from their heads – larger than the horns of other horrors.
• Most members have scars or ever-bleeding wounds from previous conflicts, or incorporate weapons into their natural forms (a mace for a hand, or serrated knives instead of claws)
• Most powers revolve around the manipulation of weapons – transforming part of their body into an instruments of slaughter, or warping shadow to form blades of darkness. Others draw upon extreme emotion to either fuel their own powers or to sow chaos and madness among prey. Yet others display supernatural resiliency, tapping into wrath so single-minded and determined that nothing can slow or slay them.
• Iconic members: The Horned Hunters, towering humanoids who hide their faces behind hideous horned helms, draped in tattered, blood-stained fur cloaks, and wielding a variety of vicious, impossible medieval weaponry with deadly accuracy.

The Hungering Cold
Grandmother Gryla is the incarnation of the fear of both starvation and the cold – the depths of the winter months where food runs scarce and the northern winds are pounding at the door, threatening to drain away the last of the life-giving heat. For many, the winter months are the hardest months, the time when mild sicknesses might mean death, and the spoiling of even a small amount of food might mean starvation for a family. Hungry Gryla herself appears as a massive ogress, her bulk caused by her insatiable hunger.
The stories say that old Gryla cannot leave the confines of her cold mountain home, bound as she is to the ice and famine of winter, so during the bountiful summer months, she sends her mischievous offspring, the Yule Lads, out to collect her favourite dish – children. Those children the impish Yule Lads catch are dragged back to Gryla's icebound realm in the shadow, where she cooks them into a variety of grotesque and horrifying dishes to feed herself and her spawn. It is said that Gryla wishes to trap the mortal world within an age of endless dark and cold, where she will no longer have to rely on her minions to bring her food from the mortal world, but will be able to gorge herself on all that creation has to offer.

• House of Cold and Hunger
• Members typically blue or white in colouration, have frost-bitten flesh
• Most are either horribly obese or frighteningly thin or have additional mouths on their body somewhere
• Most individual powers involve the cold somehow: draining the heat of life from victims, causing the air to plunge to freezing temperature, chilling blood in veins with a bite, etc. Those who don't have frost-related powers have powers involving consumption or hunger.
• Iconic Members: The Yule Lads, the eldest spawn of Gryla, mischievous blue-skinned elvish creatures that hunt down children in the dark of winter and drag them to their mother for a horrific yuletide feast.

The Island of Plagues
Headless Pugot represents the fear of plague and disease, and even his appearance is decayed and dying. Though known to be a shapeshifter, any form he assumes is always missing its head, instead possessing an eternally bleeding stump that leaks dark blood onto his mud- and feces- covered body. His favoured form is that of a great ape with dark fur, which the stories say he uses to lurk in trees, silently watching the spreading of his filth and disease. Pugot takes pride in concocting new diseases and pestilences to afflict on mortals, and some stories blame a number of plagues, both mundane and magical, on the work of the vile ape.
Unlike many of his fellows among the nightmare court, Pugot isn't all that interested in stealing away children, preferring instead to inflict his plagues on them and return the unknowing victims to their homes, where they can spread their sickness and suffering. It is said he tests his sinister concoctions on small villages, contaminating livestock, water, and the young, and patiently awaits the results, his shadowy form crawling around the houses at night, silently analyzing and judging the progress and effectiveness of the plagues. He stores his creations within his humid swampy realm within Shadow, the brackish waters and rotting trees playing home to diseases that could lay low entire civilizations should he choose to unleash them.

• House of Disease
• All members appear sickly and diseased, either choosing to infect themselves with their favoured plagues or being unwilling victims. Colouration likewise is typically sickly and pallid greens, yellows, and browns.
• Some members choose to remove their heads or let their limbs atrophy in solidarity with their headless Boogeyman
• Most powers involve the spreading of diseases, afflicting victims with horrible coughs, seeping sours, or horrible bodily spasms. Others twist shadows into the forms of plague-bearers – horrible crawling vermin that will swarm their prey.
• Iconic members: Worms that walk, horrors composed of thousands of shadowy vermin that take the form of humanoids, spreading disease with every pass of their wriggling hands.

The Lost Bayou
Lagahoo is perhaps the least well known of the Nightmare Court, reflecting the mystery and fear that surrounds his own domain – magic. Knowledge of Lagahoo is limited to a few magical cultures, and those who study the Shadow and its inhabitants. Lagahoo is said to be a shapeshifter, his appearance shifting through a great number of forms, from a snarling dog to a vampiric centaur to the furious waves of the ocean itself. However, tomes describe his true form as a headless man bound to a coffin by arcane chains whose size and shape continually shift. Three candles rest on top of his coffin, their flames flickering when he speaks, and flaring to great gouts of fire when he unleashes his considerable arcane might.
Lagahoo is said to be amenable to sharing his arcane knowledge with others in trade for either humanoid blood, or a future favour, the details of which are never covered in any book of lore. However, the details of those who try to cheat Lagahoo are, as the stories say their families are slain, their blood drained, and their undying corpses left to haunt the erstwhile swindler for the rest of their days. Lagahoo is said to dwell on a tropical island upon the stormy seas of Shadow. This isle is said to be filled with countless magical treasures, but also countless hexes and traps, and the souls of those who thought they could outsmart the Coffin Mage.

• The house of Magic
• All members bear a small coffin chained to them in some manner. This coffin allows them to tap into the arcane power controlled by their master, making them the only house able to cast traditional magic spells.
• Many take on the forms of creatures associated with magic – warlocks, witches, black cats, owls, toads, and the like. Black, green, and purple colouration dominate.
• In addition to their arcane talents, horrors of this house often have natural powers that tie into magic and superstitions, from luck-shaping to corrupting fluids into potions to laying curses on their unfortunate victims.
• Iconic members: The Spell-stiched, reborn revenant horrors held together with powerful magical bindings who are able to carve dark and wicked spells out from their very flesh

The Night Lantern
Jack O'Lantern is said to have been one of the greatest thieves in the mortal world – so great, the stories say he made a deal for his soul with Asmodeus, and proceeded to steal back the contract, and his own soul from the archfiend's lair. However, despite his great deeds in life, death eventually caught up to him, and in a twist of cruel irony, the freewheeling rogue found his spirit trapped in a dark realm between life and death, with no good god willing to save sinful Jack's soul, and no evil power willing to risk Asmodeus' ire and claim it. How long he was trapped in that great nothingness, the stories never say, but eventually proud Jack broke down and cried out for someone, anything, to come and claim him. In that moment of hopelessness and self-defeat, a hole in his prison appeared, and the Pit claimed Jack.
That is but one variation on the story of Jack O'Lantern, and there are dozens more, the nature of Jack and his tricks on the various evil entities changing each and every telling. Still, poor Jack is still plagued by the dark, to the point where he cut off his own head and replaced it with a flaming pumpkin lantern to drive away the night. Now, mad Jack seeks to terrify others and bring them to despair or desperation through his mastery of shadows and darkness, to prove that he wasn't alone in breaking under the ominous silence and blackness of unending night. His lair is a great, abandoned farmyard, filled with jack o'lanterns casting all manner of twisted and flickering shadows among the rotting fences and barren trees. Children who get lost in the dark are said to find themselves under the grinning moon of dark Jack's lair, where he plays his twisted games with them, the gaze of a thousand carved punkins the only witness.

• The house of the Dark
• Most members of this house take their cue from jack o'lanterns, with features such as jaggedly-carved grins, glowing eyes, or replacing their entire head with a glowing ghoulish gourd.
• Colouration is typically orange and black, with eerie glowing greens and yellows not uncommon. Most have a portion of their body – typically their face – that shines in the darkness.
• Powers typically involve the manipulation of shadows, crafting them into horrible illusions, or summoning darkness on even the clearest and brightest day.
• Many are masters of creating illusionary noises and possessing shadows – though these are powers possessed by all horrors.
• Iconic Members: Watchers in the Dark, horrors of a thousand glowing eyes and no body that dwell in the darkness, watching and waiting in the hidden places to drag mortals into the shadowed realm

The Obsidian Desert
Most stories of Abu Rigl Masluka's origins claim he was a mortal man who died in a horrible fire. In his final moments, the man, whose name has been lost to history, cried out in fear to any force that might save him from the pain... and the Pit answered. Reformed as a spawn of the pit, Abu Rigl Maslukha's rage at his situation lead for him cultivating the fears that lead to fear throughout the mulitverse – the fears of fire and of burning. Despite his new existence, his legs never healed, and no matter the form he takes, he still appears with charred and shrivelled stumps for lower limbs, floating silently despite the drifting trail of ashes he leaves behind. His form appears blackened and scarred, with a dim glow emanating through cracks in his skin and the holes of his eyes and mouth – still burning these millenia later.
In stories, the Burned-legged Man is said to appear at the scene of house fires or other infernos, wandering through the blaze and seeking out children who did not heed warnings flee the scene. Those he finds are said be drawn by the nightmare's dark flames to his burning realm in Shadow: a great desert of black sand and volcanic class, with a dark sun beating balefully down on the blasted landscape and the twisted ruins of dark civilizations lost to time.

• The house of Fire
• Most members of this house involve flame patterns in their natural forms somehow – patterns on scales or fur, embroidery or logos on clothing, or their entire form being consumed in flame.
• Colouration is either bright, flame-hued, or dark, invoking the charred remains of an inferno. Numerous members of this house are abominations taking on the form of furnaces, ovens, and fireplaces.
• Iconic powers of this house involve the control of fire, shaping it into terrifying shapes or encouraging its spread. However, some members of this house instead have powers that deal with heat, dehydration, volcanoes or deserts.
• Iconic members: The Wicker Men, living giants constructed of wood and living flame that hunger for the sacrifices of mankind – willing or unwilling, it does not matter to them.

The Screaming Asylum
Appearing as a travelling healer and medicine man, the kindly face of Bonhomme Sept-heurs hides a dark secret: he is another member of the Nightmare Court. Though his intentions seem pure at first, his medications cause undue suffering, and his procedures cause cries of agony to echo through towns at night. Bonhomme Sept-heurs is the fear of pain, and he makes certain to inflict as much of it as he can in his wanderings in the mortal realm. Physical pain is his speciality, but emotional pain is also a sweet nectar to him, and he delights in causing distress and concern among those he appears to be helping. He perpetuates pain by making people reluctant to seek out help for their own problems, and can make even the bravest of men loose their will to fight on.
The Good Doctor, as he is sometimes known, is a feature in a number of stories told to children, and why so many of them fear seeing the local doctor or healer. And for payment of his services, Bonhome Sept-heurs would take the children of the town, snatching up those who gave him trouble or did not follow his instructions and hiding them in the massive pockets of his jacket. From there, he would transport them to his dilapidated sanitarium in the realm of shadow, and let all his mad minions play with them.

• The house of Pain
• Most members of this house experiment on themselves, and have numerous stitches across their bodies, replacing the “less interesting” parts of themselves.
• Many members take on the aspects of medicine – doctors, nurses, lab rats, medical equipment, or even the patients “just for a change of pace.”
• Powers of this house typically involve the manipulation of their victim's body of sense of pain. They can be supernaturally-skilled surgeons and healers – but the trade off is most certainly not worth it.
• Iconic members: The Surgeons, horrifically-modified humanoids dressed in surgeon gowns, with gleaming surgical blades and bone saws for hands.

The Technocracy
There is a domain in the realm of shadow without a boogieman tied to it – and sprawling, empty city of glass and concrete filled with many wonderous technologies. If it was not for the odd tower sporting a shape that would be impossible in the mortal realm, it might actually be easy to forget entirely that one was in Shadow. Indeed, the comfort provided by the technological wonders of this Metropolis are enough to make one abandon one's struggle against the darkness and accept the convenience of the freely-offered technology, giving up their paranoia and eventually becoming just another listless mortal shell, another of Big Brother's drones.
Big Brother is the fear of technology, and has become increasingly proactive as the scientific knowledge of the mortal world advances. It lures victims in through offers of the latest and greatest device, increasing their dependence on machines and preying on its victims rampant consumerism. Finally, when a victim has fallen far enough, Big Brother will offer them a trip to visit its city of the future, dragging the poor soul into Shadow, dropping them onto the barren sidewalks of both its domain and its body – the Nameless City. Big Brother sees everything that goes on within its city-body, and controls the ever-shifting streets and towers, locking its prey within its confines, while its staticky electronic eye stares out from the billboards, monitors, and screens along the city street, reminding its victims that they cannot escape Big Brother's gaze.

• The house of Technology
• Most members are at least partially artificial in nature – if they are not abominations, they will typically involve unnatural fusions of man or beast and machine to create something fundamentally disturbing.
• Many include subtile references to their Bogeyman, Big Brother, in their forms somehow, to contribute to the idea that “Big Brother is always watching” and “You cannot escape the party.”
• Powers most typically involve the manipulation of electronics or electricity – controlling cables and wires, forcing people to enter twisted virtual realities based on television or video games, or simply the manipulation of thunder and lightning, mad scientist style.
• Iconic members: The Commissars, jittering android-like horrors covered head to toe in uniform, face obscured by gas masks, who know everything about their victim's digital lives.

The Twilight Swamp
The stories say that the Man in Black has a darker brother, a bitter old creature who despises happiness and joy. The avatar of the fear of loss, the Sack Man is one of the most powerful, and well known, of the bogeymen. He appears as an elderly humanoid man, dressed in rags and tatters, with a large sack slung upon his back. Though descriptions of his exact features vary from nation to nation – in some he is lean and spry with a wild head of white hair, in others he is rotund and hunched, leaning heavily on a cane – the tales always warn that he is far stronger and far more intelligent than his old form would suggest.
These stories may call him Bubak or Mumus or Ong Ki or Boribaba, but all warn children away from old men who wander the streets and roads after supper time. They say the Sack Man is always searching to steal away those things that bring people the most joy – for a painter, it may be their greatest work, for a singer, it might be their voice, and for a parent, it is typically their child. He shoves whatever precious things he can find into his magical sack, and then takes them away to his lair within the Shadow, a twilight swamp crossed with countless bridges and roads. There, he sits and weaves the souls of those he has caught into his bag, ever making it larger. The stories are never clear on why he continually expands his bags, but there are whispers that his ultimate goal is to commit the ultimate heist: steal the world itself away from the gods.

• The house of Loss
• Most members have a tired, bedraggled look – hunched over, clothing threadbare and worn, missing patches of fur, hair or feather.
• All members of this house carry a bag or pouch on or with them – with chimerae it may be a natural part of their body – that they will fill with their victims' most tressured possessions.
• Powers typically involve either stealing or forgetfulness – somehow draining away their victim's lifetime achievements and memories. Some are just supernaturally skilled thieves and burglars, others have more fantastic powers.
• Iconic members: The Lost Boys, horrors that appear as emancipated, ragged, blank-faced children who have lost everything, relying on the misplaced trust of mortals to steal away their valued possessions into oblivion.

The Twisted Manor
Sharp of dress and smooth of tongue, the Man in Black is generally considered to be the bogeyman least hostile to the interests of mortals. Incarnated from the fear of the truth, he is the whisper in the head of every liar, the shadow behind every suspicious eye, and the hand that gives the final push to send paranoids over the edge of madness. His typical appearance is that of a tall, middle-aged well-to-do human or humanoid dressed in a black jacket and cape, with a wide-brimmed hat – typically a top hat – hiding his face in murky shadow. Many liars and thieves have caught fleeting glimpses of him out of the corner of their eyes when the feel safe, letting them know that there is someone else who knows of their deeds.
Also known as Bau-Bau or L'uemo Nero, stories of the Man in Black are used to warn children who would lie or steal from their elders. A knock on the door late at night is a sign of his presence, and children who are spirited away by the Man in Black are said to be taken to his sprawling manor in the depths of shadow, where they are locked away within its twisted halls for a month and a day, before being returned physically unharmed.

• The house of Truth and Lies
• The most humane of the houses, easily blend in among humans in their natural forms. Even chimerae appear as tame or domesticated creatures.
• Most members of this house are grey and black in colouration and rather plain in appearance – easy to overlook and forget.
• Powers typically involve illusions that warp a victim's perception of reality, or supernatural understanding of a victim's darkest secrets and lies. Others are more figurative in their interpretation, summoning chains of lies to bind their victims, or creating black flames that consume their target until their hearts are clear.
• Iconic members: The Gray Men, bureaucrats who infiltrate human societies and spread lies and conspiracies, tearing down a society from within.

The Wailing Moor
Dread Oude Rode Ogen, the Black Dog, embodies perhaps one of the most primal of all fears – the fear of death. Many cultures tell stories of a great black beast, often canine in appearance, appearing out of the darkness of night or the storm, and serving as an omen of death. In other tales, the omen is a dark-skinned giant of a man, with a feral look and fiery red eyes burning with ominous hate. Either way, Oude Rode Ogen brings warnings of others final demise with his dark grin and shimmering glare, though he never reveals any details to the unfortunate souls he visits, leaving them to spend the rest of their days in worry and paranoia over the timing and natures of their deaths.
The Black Dog is one of the few members of the Nightmare Court who doesn't specialize in terrorizing the young, as his favoured targets are those healthy in body and mind, who are generally content with their lives. The most appetizing targets for Oude Rode Ogen are the ones who ultimately bring about their own demise through trying to ward off death after the sight of him – the ironic demises of those who would have otherwise seen long and productive lives. In stories, he takes those souls to the dark and misty moors he calls his lair within the Shadow, and curses them into existence as grimms, his favoured servants.

• The house of Death
• Most members of this house incorporate skulls and bones into their appearance, black and bone-white are the dominant colours.
• Many choose to take their forms from traditional omens of death – ravens, reapers, banshies, or black cats.
• Powers are typically evocative of necromancy: raising the dead, summoning of spirits, weakening the mortal body, showing visions of death, and the like.
• Iconic members: Grims, great black dogs that are omens of death, heralding the arrival of dark forces into their victim's life.

Other, lesser houses:

• The Apocalypse Edge – fears of the end of the world
• The Broken Shore – fears of storms
• The Chalk House – fears of unpredictability and chaos
• The Counting House – fears of disasters
• The Destination – fears of destiny and fate
• The Dreaming Dance – fears of dreams and sleep
• The Empty Cathedral – fears of religion and fundamentalism
• The Everywhere Eye – fears of madness
• The House's Game – fears of chance and luck
• The Hungry Gem – fears of obsession
• The Innermost Sanctum – fears of self-loathing and depression
• The Lake of Tears – fears of grief and sorrow
• The Last Court – fears of judgment and justice
• The Shadowed Sea – fears of water and the sea
• The Swarming Vale – fears of insects and vermin
• The Vastness – fears of nothing, outer space
• The Whittled Stage – fears of loosing control and being manipulated

Powers

Most horrors are sentience and a soul inhabiting a shadow, and as such they have learned to use this psudo-existance to their advantage in frightening their prey. While many horrors have their own unique abilities that they discovered through their own manipulation of the darkness they inhabit, there are some skills which have been found to be common among almost every horror.

The most notable one is consuming fear. A horror is able to absorb the psychic imprint mortal fear leaves on the universe, and incorporate that fear into itself. It is much like eating, in that the fear absorbed is used to keep a horror alive and alert, their desire to stay alive and resist the Pit's hungry call restored. A tired, injured, or nearly-dead horror can use this fear to restore corporeality to themselves and repair any damage their puppet or shadow bodies may have experienced. Excess fear contained within a horror can be 'burned off' through the use of powers – poetically called 'phobias' by some – much like other supernatural beings burning off parts of their essence to fuel spells and abilities.

Shadow stepping, or flickering, is a popular and common ability among horrors. A horror can immediately release their hold on their puppet body, causing it to vanish almost instantly. They can then extrude a new one from their shadow, or any other shadow they're inhabiting. This has the effect of a local, short-ranged teleportation, shifting physical bodies from one point to another. More experienced horrors can even shift their bodies through anima layers, sending themselves down into Realm Beyond the Closet, or from the netherworld back into the Mortal Realm.

A horror can also shift their puppet body's appearance with relative ease. The easiest ability is to shift their body to become more 'terrifying,' splitting their mouths too wide, clawing out their eyes and leaving horrible, bloodied sockets, or even ripping open their chests and showing the twisted organs within. While shocking, these relatively minor alterations are only the most basic aspect of shapeshiting a horror can reach. More experienced horrors can take on alternate forms, including those of animals, mythological creatures, or even sentient beings – indeed, a sign of 'adulthood' among horrors on many worlds is being able to sustain the form of a dominant sentient species of that world.

Incidentally, this has lead to many horrors taking on unique monstrous personas while haunting an area. Many a seemingly-unique creature of fable and legend is actually just a horror in a unique shape of their own design.

As living beings of shadow, horrors can also twist shadows, possessing them and warping them into disturbing shapes, or animating them in terrifying ways. More experienced horrors can deepen shadows, or cast a gloom over even bright areas.

Many horrors also learn a rudimentary form of telekinesis, able to manipulate objects that their shadows touch. This ability can cause vibrations in the air mimicking sound, from white noise to a crack of thunder, as well as conjure wind or move objects in a ghostly manor.

Of course, these powers are only touching the surface of a horror's potential. There are those who can conjure blizzards or steal the faces of victims, those who can transform into ravenous swarms or mold the flesh of terrified mortals. Some can even cast magical spells. The variety of 'phobias' exhibited by horrors, and the way these dark powers are used, is almost as diverse as their appearances.

With these powers must come weaknesses, and horrors have many. The most notable weakness a horror has is to bright light. While a horror will not be repelled or injured by light, many loose their abilities and are forced to internalize their bodies into their puppet shells.

Hope as well is antithetical to fear, and thus powerful expressions of hope and belief can potentially repel a horror and drive them away. This has the interesting result of horrors appearing to be weak against things just because people believe they are – it's not the salt or the light or the singing that is repelling or injuring the horror, it is the belief that the salt, light, or singing will repel or injure the horror that is. However, most horrors are smart enough to chip away at belief and convince people to have doubts in their chosen charms. Doubt, ironically enough, gives horrors hope at personal victory.

One definite, documented weakness for horrors is unrefined salt. A horror cannot cross a line of salt, and rock salt sprinkled on a horror's physical body will lock them in that form and prevent them from flickering until they get rid of the salt. While salt is not toxic to horrors, and a number of horrors enjoy eating salty things, applied in the proper way, it functions as an excellent horror deterrent.

Another deterrent against horrors are dream catchers. Horrors cannot enter a room warded with a dream catcher without invitation, and holding one forth acts as a natural repellent against a horror. A horror who tries to enter into a room with a dream catcher ultimately ends up caught in its web-like netting for days, until it can dislodge itself. However, over time some dream catchers are known to loose their potency, making it easier for horrors to resist their effects.