Irlascen
THAT'S NOT A NORMAL FUCKING HORSE.Everyone knows of the horse, of course, and everyone knows how it neighs. Everyone knows it's a horse, of course. Why would it be one of the fey? The irlascen is a horse, of which there is truly and utterly no doubt. It is a horse, its coat shiny and sleek, its mane flowing in the wind. Unless, of course, you're someone with more discerning tastes. Then you might see that an irlascen is not just a horse. If it was even ever a horse at all.
In truth, an irlascen is a horse-like being that lives life in multiple stages. An irlascen may appear to be an ordinary horse, an undead steed of bone and rot, or something far more like a plant than anything capable of movement should ever actually be. They are walking beings of confusion, and they tend to revel in this as they trot through their triple lives.
It isn't wise to identify an irlascen to their face, not least because it's pretty rude to point at someone and call them out for being a particularly species (perhaps try it on a stranger one of these days; the response should be illuminating).
Most irlascen stay relatively unnoticed by choice, preferring to prance around as pretty horses (or terrorise mortals as 'undead' horrors), and keep their true intelligence to themselves.
Exposing them is just as likely to make you look like a fool (if they decline to reveal themselves) as it is to result in serious bodily harm (if they're annoyed by the accusation).
Basic Information
Anatomy
They're fey creatures, I think. One can't expect normalcy.Judging the anatomy of a creature that entirely changes said anatomy multiple times throughout its lifespan is somewhat of a challenge, even for the most experienced biologists. Irlascen also aren't the sorts to submit themselves to thorough study, nor do their deaths usually leave anything of a body to study - partly because they tend to be destructive, partly because death is generally impermanent for them.
What is know, then, is moreso learnt from study or from the occasional allowance from the creatures themselves. Irlascen live a trio of lives within the same body, their soul clinging to the same bones as they die and are reborn anew.
Their first life is the least recognisable, and the only life in which it is theoretically possible to stop the monster that may one day form. A newborn irlascen is an ordinary foal, a mongrel horse of no specific breed, with little to separate them from other horses.
Though their magnificent intelligence grows and manifests during this time, as do some of their earliest abilities including speech, they are spurred forth by the innate desire to hide what they are.
Irlascen foals blend into normal herds upon the Material Plane, either enjoying lives of luxury with hapless farmers or roaming the wilderness freely with their freeborn kin. Unless attacked, they live relatively peaceful lives and use the opportunity to slowly learn of the world.
An irlascen in its second life is a being to fear. Cold fury drips through them, and even the most horse girl of all horse girls trembles in the face of it. In this state of half-death, for they are not truly dead, an irlascen manifests an aura of terror that penetrates even the strongest paladin's defences.
They also, just as a treat, can call upon new wellsprings of magic. The more clever irlascens use that magic to practice necromancy to enhance the illusion of their undeath, and to kill their enemies (or other victims, they're not picky) with their own fear.
Either upon an irlascen's second death, if anything should manage to kill them in their skeleton shroud, or upon their decision to visit the First World, they transform for a third and final time. This time, the world seems to embrace them: plantlife curls around white bone, turning death once more into life. The dread that haunted them becomes something they can choose to deactivate, allowing them to replace it instead with an aura of pure chaos.
Additional Information
Domestication
Hahahahaha! You'd have to be a god to make the attempt.
Genetic Ancestor(s)
Scientific Name
Equus horidus
Origin/Ancestry
Pure spite, probably
Lifespan
Immortal
Conservation Status
A problem
Geographic Distribution
There tell many stories about entire herds disappearing overnight. The most alarming tales are those where their riders vanish too, never to be seen again. I always thought it was a tragedy. Maybe it was, still, but maybe the tragedy was the horse itself. Irlascens must live lonely existences to steal away their friends...
A fantastic species, magnificent, brutal, brilliant and with such a unique life cycle. Once again of course, NEVER trust the Fae. Not even once in my life. However that said, I do adore them. Such a uniquely wonderous three act like structure to their existence to. To experience a sampling of true mortality, then a taste of death, before finally the arrival to a being of nature itself, arguably something that is meant, within the chaos of what they are, to be something of the cycle. Of mortality and eternity, life and death, the truest essence of nature's wild and unpredictable cycle. I love that, most certainly tucking this one into my collection too :)