The Endless Road is a rather unique land in the Land of Mists. It is in fact a literal endless road. The land is mostly flat grasslands. Only one forest, The Wailing Woods, exist along with the official settlement of Havenshire. Curiously, on nights where the moon is but a sickle, the Endless Road overlaps with the main roads of the Land of Mists, allowing the Dark Lady to travel down them. Most outside the Domain call this The Winding Road.
Dark Lady: Talitha van Hassen, Lady of the Endless Road
The People: The people of the Endless Road are hardy farming folk for the most part. However, they are strict in their schedules and timelines. This is due to their fear of the Headless Horsewoman who rides along the road at night, searching for a man to snap up to never be seen again. They fear the dark of night and never go out after dark unless something forces them to.
Religion: The people have just about any religion there. As people either are drawn onto the road, or have the bad luck of travelling on it when the sickle moon fades, they bring their beliefs with them. No real church exists, but all households have at least one shrine and plenty of roadside shrines can be found along the Endless Road.
Stance vs. Mamono: The people of the Endless road constantly live in fear of an entity called The Headless Horsewoman. Anything not human is subject to fear and violent action because of this great fear.
Iconic Mamono: Dullahan are the most iconic mamono of the Domain. Most people believe that there is only one who rules the Endless Road, but the truth is that there is a thriving community of them who ride the roads and hope to find potential husbands trying to travel on it.
Unique Exports: While the export of various crops is nothing truly special, the volume of which the Endless Road produces thanks to the wide open space and surprisingly fertile soil makes the Endless Road a rich place. While many fear the sickle moon, others anticipate it, hoping to be able to buy the bulk supply of goods or trade for them.
Native Mamono: Dullahan, Ghouls, Will-O-Wisp, Sprites, Dryads
Talitha van Hassen - Dark Lady of the Endless Road
Talitha did not begin life showing any of the signs that she would become that proud, confident, and powerful woman that she is now. In fact, she was a meek, soft-spoken, and mild-mannered woman who constantly lived under her father’s thumb and his bitter ambitions.
Talitha was born in the hamlet of tranquility. Her mother died in childbirth, leaving her to be raised by her father, although mostly through nurses and nannies. Eli van Hassen was a bitter man who saw himself as simply too big a personality for a place like Tranquility. He owned much of the lands in and around it, earning a fine income and living in a large estate. Still, Eli saw himself as destined for more, but with Tranquility so far out of the way of any major settlements or places of power, Eli could only languish in his anonymity and be bitter and resentful of the ‘nobodies’ he was surrounded by.
Talitha shared her father’s desire for something more, wishing to see more of the world, maybe go someplace where she could meet and mingle with others and perhaps raise herself up. She did not share her father’s bitterness, but she was raised under his tyranny and often did not speak up in the defense of anyone when her father began verbally pounding anyone he believed disrespected or crossed him.
Were this all that happened to them, both would have vanished into bitter ambiguity, but fate had different plans.
One day, a hydra attacked Tranquility, threatening to utterly destroy the hamlet and leave the people either dead or displaced. In their dire hour, they were rescued by a young man wielding a sickle simply known as The Horseman. He took the charge to the hydra with some brave souls and against all odds, managed to slay the hydra and rescue Tranquility.
The hamlet raised The Horseman as their hero, hailing him as the saviour of Tranquility. Talitha became besotted with The Horseman and he with her. The pair spent as much time as they could together. For the first time, Talitha felt warmth and love from another person instead of the cold bitterness from her father. She and The Horseman spent long hours together, talking about each other, learning about themselves, and falling deeper in love.
Eli van Hassen on the other hand, grew more hateful and bitter towards the Horseman. The townsfolk were singing his praises, making the Horseman the most popular man in the area. He was clearly courting Talitha, the heiress to Eli’s many properties and fortune. It all pointed one thing to the bitter and paranoid Eli: The Horseman intended to weasel his way into stealing everything Eli had. It wasn’t true, but Eli painted everyone in the same view he saw himself and assumed everyone was as miserable and greedy as he was.
Greedy and materialistic as he was, Eli refused to give up one copper coin but he couldn’t just kill the Horseman. He needed to turn Tranquility against him. So to deal with the ‘interloper’, Eli plotted to have the Horseman discredited, framed for an unforgivable crime, and then executed. Then Eli would be satisfied knowing that his fortune and property would still be his. For this plan to work, he turned to his daughter and ordered her to bear false witness to the crime of rape.
Talitha was horrified by what her father was ordering her to do. Not only to frame an innocent man of a crime, but one that was one of the worst crimes that someone could commit? Talitha refused to obey her father in this as it was a horrible crime. He first tried to ply her cooperation by offering her luxury, and then he threatened to take it away. Talitha feared losing all she knew, and she did fear losing her life of privilege. Still, she remembered all the love and affection she and the Horseman shared. It managed to rally Talitha’s courage and she refused her father for perhaps the first time in her life.
Eli raged, he threatened all manner of things to try and force Talitha to accept his orders. Still, Talitha found her courage and she refused to bend to her father’s will. Eventually Eli gave up and locked Talitha in her room as he searched for another to execute his cruel plan. He eventually found a commoner girl who he paid (very reluctantly) to claim the Horseman had assaulted her.
While not having the momentum he wanted, Eli’s plan worked. The people were furious that the Horseman, their hero, took advantage of one of their own. The people rallied into a mob and apprehended the Horseman and brought him to town square. They placed him on the chopping block as Eli watched smugly, excited to see the would-be thief to his property getting what he deserved.
Talitha, trapped in her room, heard what was happening. Rather than despair like her wallflower self may have done previously, Talitha found her courage and moved into action. Smashing a window out, she used bed sheets to escape the estate and ran to Tranquility.
Talitha managed to get to Tranquility as the execution was about to begin. She charged through the mob, screaming at the top of her lungs that the Horseman was innocent, that her father had him framed. It managed to make many people stop to hear her, but Eli also heard and realized his plan was about to collapse. He barked for the executioner to kill the Horseman and do it fast.
The people who heard Talitha cried to stop the execution, but the executioner was firmly in Eli’s camp and swiftly tried to swing the axe and remove the Horseman’s head. Talitha found speed she never knew she had and managed to leap and push the Horseman out of the way. Sadly, Talitha came head on at the horseman and jumped, leaving her in the Horseman’s place. The executioner could not abort his swing and the axe came down, beheading Talitha in one swipe.
Screams erupted from the crowd, but none so loud as Eli and the Horseman. As Talitha’s head hit the floorboards, the last sight she saw as a human was a thick wall of fog began sweeping over Tranquility.
In the Mists…
Talitha woke up finding herself in the arms of the Horseman who was weeping, hugging her tightly. Blinking, Talitha saw they were in the middle of an empty road and not in Tranquility. Blinking again, she also noticed that her body was starting to sit up and a pink mist was rising from her neck. Talitha would have perhaps screamed from the sight, realizing her disembodied head was in her lover’s arms, but her body trembled and shook as a fierce and unashamed desire came over her. Before she knew it, her body lunged for her lover, intending to cement their romantic bond.
After Talitha recovered, very satisfied and relieved she was with her lover turned husband, managed to get her head on straight. With her husband, they walked the strange road with open plains around it. It wasn’t long before they found the Van Hassen estate, although Talitha did not recognize the servants and some of the buildings were not in the same places as they were before.
The servants welcomed Talitha and the Horseman as the lord and lady of the house, as if they always were the owners of the property. Unsure of what else to do, they accepted the position and wondered what they had gotten themselves into.
Not long after, during a night of a sickle moon, Talitha felt an incredible urge to go on a ride through the moonlight. Finding a fine stallion in the stable, Talitha dressed in her finest riding clothes and mouthed the horse. Leaving the estate, she placed her head in a bag and still rode down the road. Her mana spilling into the air, Talitha rode as the scenery changed as she continued to ride all through the night. In her wake, unfortunate victims of the true dangers of the Land of Mists found themselves reviving, specifically, ones who lost their heads to various bandits or beasts. Dullahans rose, their heads hovering and following Talitha’s wake, carried by her mana and making for a terrifying show for settlements that lived nearby.
Upon returning home, Talitha found a small cloud of disembodied heads following her. Behind them, regardless of where they were, the dullahan who owned those heads passed through the mist and into the Endless Road. Talitha quickly brought them back to the estate, unsure of what else to do with them, but she quickly found positions in the staff and workers for the estate and expanding the farmlands she and the Horseman were seeking to work with. The staff were fine to not spill the secret, as all the men were snapped up by the wild dullahans and any female staff quickly found themselves changed with the ambient dullahan mana flooding the manor that night.
Current Sketch: Talitha, with time, truly came into her own and became the true lady of her estate and the Dark Lady of the Endless Road. She is able to organize, govern, and lead. She has learned humility in being happy with what she has. Still, she has a little ambition and hopes to make the Endless Road a mega-provider of produce and crops with all the open space available there.
Every sickle moon, Talitha rides along the roads as the Endless Road becomes the Winding Road which runs through the Land of Mists. It’s a compulsion, but it’s not one she minds. She loves the freedom of riding through the lands at night. She manages to pass through one Domain every trip, animating any beheaded female corpses, turning them into dullahan. Their heads follow the flow of mana Talitha creates and the bond with their bodies allows the dullahans to pass through the mist into the Endless Roads regardless of where they were.
Talitha does feel a little guilty about frightening people so badly when she rides. It’s part of why she works so hard to ensure while her people do fear the Headless Horsewoman, they don’t fear anything else. They always have food, shelter, fair taxes, and fair justice.
It’s not entirely Talitha’s fault that her people are terrified of the Horsewoman. The many dullahan who work in Talitha’s properties often take turns riding on a horse in a similar outfit to Talitha’s. They do this to hunt for husbands of their own at night, scooping them up when they can find them on the open road and carry them back home to seduce and marry. Talitha permits it, reluctantly, since she knows how awful loneliness can be, but impresses them to not trespass in towns less the people’s fear gets out of control. This has led the people to believe running streams prevents the Headless Horsewoman from getting any closer. As such, all settlements have dug deep streams or moats of running water around their boundaries.
Appearance: In terms of her looks, Talitha hasn’t changed in her appearance. She had a fit figure from all of her riding, has long blonde hair reaching her shoulders (the rest was chopped off in her beheading), and an average figure she hopes will mature when she gets pregnant for the first time. Her skin is perhaps a bit pale, but has the vibrancy of life still. Her small physical flaws have vanished and a loving glow surrounds her now that she can be married to her husband. The trauma of being beheaded left its mark as a lock of hair from her temple turned shock white. A sign of her being a dullahan is that she always wears a beautiful choker or a fashionable scarf to help keep her head attached. It’s a fashion trend among the rich of the Endless Road, helping all of the resident dullahan hide their telling feature.
Dark Gift: Talitha’s Dark Gift is in her mana itself. As she rides and lets it flow, it holds the ability to reanimate dead into undead, provided their heads are not attached to their bodies. It is a minor gift to some, but for the circle of friends and family it gifts her, the freedom and love she experiences every day, she does not need much more than that as a Dark Gift. What she does not know is that in a way, she has the most freedom out of any of the Dark Ladies. She is able to ride through any other Domain when the sickle moon rises, although she can’t leave the road during these times.
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