CHASM HORSEMEN DIRECTORY
Chasm Horsemen (main) | Making a Chasm Horseman | List of Known Chasm Horsemen
ABOUT CHASM HORSEMEN
CHASM HORSEMEN
singular: HORSEMAN plural: HORSEMEN
SPECIES TYPE: eldritch, unknowably powerful
LIFESPAN: infinite, regenerating
REGION OF ORIGIN: chasm depths
THE SPECIES
Chasm Horsemen are extremely varied creatures, each one having a conceptual theme that they take their name from - "War", "Death", and other beings from human lore being obvious ones, but also pretty much anything else one could think of and encounter in excess - "Wealth", "Flock, "Lies", etc.
Occasionally, a Chasm Horseman will have multiple themes - changing from one into another as the Horseman escalates in power. Even rarer still, a non-Horseman species may become a host for a Horseman, effectively being a living Chasm portal that the Horseman can use. The host may take on physical changes, becoming warped and strange due to the Chasm radiation embedded in them.
APPEARANCE
Chasm Horsemen have extremely varied appearances, shaping themselves around their theme and changing over time as their power grows and wanes. They often appear covered in elements of their theme, or made of them.
While they can vary in extreme ways due to this, Horsemen do have some thematic similarities. Most are built out of an excess of flesh, bone, or similar - taking from the warped walls of the deep Chasm. They are also large to enormous in size, growing larger the more powerful they are.
Chasm Horsemen are eldritch, massive, fleshy and skeletal creatures covered in thematic elements. They breach out of the Chasm when a massive amount of their theme shows up in one place, and grow in power the more they find, often influencing the world to force things to happen the way they want.
It is rumored that a Chasm Horseman may look different to everyone who views it, but this is difficult to confirm.
Some hypothetical examples:
- "Wealth" could be made of or cloaked in coins and precious gems, bleed gold, and have a terraforming midas touch. All around the horseman Wealth may slowly become fixated on monetary gain.
- "Flock" could be made of birds and constantly be in motion, or be a single bird, but never the same bird - or both, the single bird could be a head with a cloud of bird pieces that can't really be focused on. Windstorms or maybe just a general entropy follow it.
- "Lies" might be covered in teeth, stretched into uncanny saccharine grins. A normal human figure could stand at the face of a gangly, bulging monster. Something huge and just ever-so-noticeably wrong trying to be right. It may turn the ground to sugar, fragile and sweet, as it walks.
POWERS
Horsemen tend to warp reality when out of the Chasm, altering perception of nearby beings and changing the environment. The way they do this usually matches their theme, but the severity and effects often fall into certain categories. These categories only apply to how they alter the worlds
outside of the Chasm, and were assigned by the Chasm Investigations teams.
Inside the Chasm, Horsemen are still powerful and most should be avoided due to their ferocity, but they cannot warp the world around them. The only reason the Horsemen can alter reality outside of the Chasm is because their Chasm Radiation is so much higher than the area around them.
The Chasm Investigations-assigned power types are as follows:
Terraformer
This type of Horseman causes a lot of collateral damage. Its presence alone immediately corrupts the area around it, changing it to match the Horseman, which in turn strengthens the Horseman further. Perception-altering abilities typically render locals hostile or afraid in some way. The end goal of this Horseman's powers is to get as much power, wealth, followers, strength, territory, or something similar as quickly as possible.
Dirge
Dirges are often the least hostile, in and out of the Chasm. Their abilities allow them to escape notice or leave an area unharmed most commonly. Stealth and speed is common in their skillset, though there are some that are perfectly-visible terraformers who simply terraform in the locals' best interest rather than to any benefit of their own. Perception-altering abilities are much stronger for Dirges than their terrafoming abilities, and can be used to sway favor, throw glamours, hide in plain sight, speak telepathically, be left alone, and the like. Dirges usually show up, do what they need to do, and move on. Unless they're doing something openly malicious, even the most elite chasm investigation squad does little about them.
World-Eater
World-Eaters are a hybrid of Dirge and Terraformer types, taken to an extreme. They have an ability to find hidden liminal entries to locations, and break in, tearing apart the fabric of reality as they move. The sheer destructive nature of their abilities causes most enemies to surrender quickly. If not, however, they have the ability to use high-end perception-altering ability to break wills and form armies that worship them. Their main weakness: they can easily tear the ground beneath their feet apart if they don't pay attention.