Crane - The Headless Horsewoman
Isabella Crane was used to being alone. Making friends was never an option. Not with the curse hanging over the Crane family bloodline. Any person unfortunate enough to call a Crane a good friend, or a loved one, would eventually meet a very violent end in the form of decapitation. Isabella’s mother made every effort to keep her daughter from making friends, even going as far as to homeschool her. But that wasn’t enough. When she heard the news of the next-door neighbour’s child losing his head in a freak accident, she already knew what happened. Isabella’s mother then took it upon herself to raise her daughter in the wilderness in a comfy little cabin in the middle of nowhere.
When her mother eventually passed, Isabella remained at the cabin, living by herself, only travelling to town when she really needed supplies. She made efforts to distance herself from the local residents. Isabella became a familiar face, yet an enigmatic figure in the community.
Then one day, on her way back home, she came across a car accident on the side of the road. She initially planned to keep driving by, but when the driver beckoned her for help, she took sympathy for the driver and decided to help him.
That’s how she met Irving. At the time, she thought that was the first and only time she would interact with him. But after their first meeting, for reasons she never understood, he seemed rather smitten with her. Over the following weeks, they began to meet more often. He would approach her wanting to know more about her, and she would often try her hardest to rebuff him for his own good. But eventually she relented.
Before she knew it, they were in a relationship and not too long after, he had asked for her hand in marriage. Over the years, Isabella found herself happy with Irving, and sometimes outright forgetting about the family curse. They had been dating for years. Perhaps something had changed. Maybe things would be different.
Alas, fate had other plans.
When their car broke down in the middle of the road on their way back from town, that’s when Isabella first saw the specter in the distance. The dark figure of a headless horseman galloping down the road towards them. Before Isabella could warn her fiancé in time, the Horseman had already separated his head from his body.
Isabella experienced a multitude of emotions as she watched her fiancé’s head rolling on the road. Shock, numbness, sadness, guilt, regret, agony......then anger. All in a matter of seconds and over just as fast as the Horseman circled back and removed Isabella’s head from her shoulders.
For most people, that would be the end of their story. But for reasons not even Isabella could comprehend, Isabella woke up......exactly where she died. With her head still separated from her body. What happened? Why was she still alive? After spending several minutes in shock, Isabella noticed that she could still move her body. It took hours, but eventually she was able to bring her body to her head and precariously reattach it to her neck. The experience felt surreal as she felt the spectral tethers pull her body parts together and stitch them together.
Isabella’s mind was filled with questions and she wanted answers. But as she looked at her fiancé's decapitated head laying on the road still dead, there was one thing she wanted more than answers: revenge.
The next few days and weeks passed by in a blink of an eye. The police investigation. The funeral. Isabella knew the police suspected her but she didn’t care. All she cared about was the Headless Horseman and how she was going to end him once and for all. As soon as the funeral ended, Isabella Crane left her cabin and the town in search for the Headless Horseman.
She travelled across the American landscape keeping an ear to the ground for any rumours of a headless horror terrorizing a town, or a highway, or any other similar rumours. She needed no money on the road, because she never felt hungry or thirsty. Isabella didn’t want to think of the implications of what that meant. But despite the vast distance she travelled, she heard nothing. Only silence. Perhaps the horseman would and could only appear to hurt the ones she loved.
Then one day in a local diner, she heard a rumour of a headless figure roaming the east coast. Apparently close to New York. The rumour was probably baseless, but Isabella didn’t care. It was the only lead she had now. If she had to travel to the Cursed Apple to have her revenge, then that’s exactly what she was going to do.
Amala - Queen of the Yetis
Amala’s father was a renowned cryptid poacher, and because of it she had spent her whole life also hunting them alongside him. It was the only lifestyle she had ever known. So, when news spread of yeti sightings in the Himalayas, of course her father was going to try his hand at hunting the ultimate game. He even went out of his way to purchase the newest Fairfax tech: soul compression globes to make it easier to transport cryptid corpses. In return, Amala’s father was expected to return with yeti specimens for Fairfax scientists to research.
When they arrived at the mountain range and began their ascent, it didn’t take too long for things to go wrong. Within their first week up the mountain, there were already several severe injuries and a few fatalities. Another week passed by and more people got hurt. And then another week with the problems getting worse. Despite all the struggles they faced, there was still no sign of any yetis on the mountain. But her father refused to give up. They had come too far to go back now.
Amala had already given up on spotting a yeti. They weren’t real as far as she was concerned. That’s what she initially thought, until the fifth week into their expedition.
More people had died, and at this point the remaining survivors urged Amala’s father to turn back, and she considered adding her voice to their dissent. But before her father could respond, an avalanche suddenly struck the expedition team, forcing everyone to take cover.
However, Amala ended up getting separated from the rest of the group. As she saw the torrent of snow looming over her, she thought she was going to die. But just before the snow could collide with her speck of a body, a large white mass of fur suddenly jumped in front of her and shielded Amala in its large arms against the rumbling snow.
She must have fallen asleep or unconscious, because when she woke up, Amala found herself lying on top of the snow, making her wonder if the creature that saved her was ever real. That’s when she noticed the tracks. Very large bestial footprints. If a yeti really did just save her life, did Amala really want to hunt them down? She considered hiding the yeti tracks. It was the least she could do after it saved her life. But it was too late. When her father eventually found her, he also noticed the monster tracks. Whatever hope the expedition had of returning down from the mountain was lost with her father’s revelation that the yetis were real. If it had tracks, then it could be hunted.
Another week passed by without a yeti sighting. But that didn’t matter. As long as he knew his prey was somewhere out there, he was never going to stop.
To her deep dismay, they eventually caught up to the yeti. They followed the beast’s tracks to a cave high up on the side of the mountain. The rest of the expedition either died or turned back. It was just Amala and her father. After they both scaled up the mountainside and reached the cave, her father wasted no time delving right into the darkness. What could Amala do but follow him?
Initially, she was worried about being lost in the cave system, but it didn’t take too long before they ended up in a large chamber with several rays of light shining through the cave ceiling. And within that light, Amala saw the family of yetis huddled against the cave wall; a parent embracing their litter of baby yetis. Amala couldn’t help but adore the sight.
But she couldn’t relish in that wonder for too long before her father fired his weapon.
The same yeti that had rescued Amala from the avalanche was now bleeding in front of her children, roaring in agony. And now her father was aiming his weapon at the yeti younglings.
Amala acted before she thought. She shot her father in the leg. As he fell, Amala quickly disarmed him. In that moment, her fear for her father’s life warred with her instincts to protect the defenseless yetis. The latter won out.
She pulled out the globes her father got from Fairfax and used it to absorb the yeti’s essence and compress their souls into the globe. After she had preserved the yetis in the globes, she turned to her father glaring and cursing her out. They might not have always seen eye to eye, but he was still her father. She left him behind but still left him enough supplies to keep himself alive. Amala then traversed back down the mountain range with a bag full of yeti globes still intact.
For better or for worse, Amala spent the following years looking after the family of yetis while on the run from Fairfax Industries who still wanted their “specimens”. While she had done everything she could to take care of them, there was only so much she could do. She couldn’t keep this up forever.
That’s when she stumbled upon a rumour of a certain ritual about to take place in New York. A ritual that will promise to grant any person’s wish, provided they participate in the ritual. It may just be another silly rumour, but so were the yetis. She didn’t have many options. If she had to travel to the Cursed Apple to protect these yetis, then that’s exactly what she was going to do.
Dexter and Charlie: - The Boy and the Egg
Dr Ali Wallace was a renowned government scientist whose job kept her a very busy woman. So it wasn’t uncommon for her to bring her son, Dexter, to work. Initially, the higher ups weren’t comfortable with bringing a child to a classified government facility, but Dr Wallace was the foremost expert in astral gates, so they tolerated her decisions. Perhaps it was awkward for the other scientists, at first, seeing a child roaming their workplace. But after a while, they grew accustomed to Dexter’s presence. Some even warmed up to his shy and curious mind.
But one day that all changed.
Dr Wallace had been studying astral gates for years and was finally granted permission to commence experiments to replicate an astral gate. Dr Wallace was excited to perform the long-awaited experiment, but she needed to keep her son as far away as possible for his own safety. So, she relegated one of the maintenance workers to keep an eye on her son for the remainder of the day on the opposite side of the facility. Now that she knew her son was safe she could proceed with the experiment without worrying about putting little Dexter’s life at risk. That’s what she initially thought, but children didn’t always listen to their parents.
While Dr Wallace attempted to open up a miniature astral gate in a controlled environment, Dexter had slipped away from his warden and snuck his way back to his mother’s lab.
Unfortunately, despite all their implemented safety measures, the astral gate they tried to open up was more unstable than they initially calculated. As the energy readings spiked past the acceptable threshold, Dr Wallace ordered for the project to be shut down. In that same moment, her son snuck into the labs. Dexter’s mother’s eyes grew wide with fear at the sight of her son.
Just as she was about to tell him to leave, the glass separating the personnel from the astral gate suddenly blew up as the portal began sucking in everything like a vacuum. Many scientists were drawn into the portal. And so was Dexter. Dr Wallace tried to reach for her son, but she couldn’t catch him time.
After the portal consumed the young boy, the astral gate closed. That was the last time Dexter had ever seen his mother.
He blacked out when he passed into the astral gate. When he woke up, he found himself in a strange, surreal world shrouded by dark storm clouds above. A barren landscape that seemed to be......breathing. The ground was swarmed with slithering tendrils. Some of those tendrils spiraled upwards into structures that reminded Dexter of trees.
The boy didn’t want to be here. He wanted to go home. Dexter looked everywhere, crying out for his mother. But all he found was the other scientists’ bodies being absorbed into the landscape, swarmed over by dark tendrils.
Dexter didn’t bother wondering why the land hadn’t devoured him yet. He just kept walking until he somehow ended up finding his mother. Hours became days. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Until Dexter spent a full year in this hellscape, severely hungry and thirsty, but somehow never dying.
Just as he was about to collapse and give up, he heard something in the distance. A faint, thumping noise. Almost like a heartbeat. Dexter followed the noise. He let it guide him. The heartbeats grew louder with every step. Until eventually, Dexter found himself standing before a nest of tendrils.
And placed in the center of the nest was a dark egg, pulsating with red light. Dexter approached the egg with its pulsating heartbeat ringing loudly in his ears.
The moment Dexter picked up the egg......The heartbeat suddenly stopped. Dexter was then suddenly awash with a sensation that felt like......relief. The young boy looked at the egg in his hands and instinctively understood that the egg was happy to be found.
As he cradled the egg in his hands, he peered down to see the tendril nest opening up into a portal. Dexter recognized the other end of the portal. His mother’s lab. He wasted no time jumping through.
And just like that, he was back in New York.
He foolishly thought that after he had returned, everything would return to normal. But it wouldn’t be until much later when he’d learn that while almost a year passed for him in the other world, 10 years had passed back at home. The building was abandoned and destitute. And his mother was nowhere to be found. He was now lost in a vast city all by himself.
Except he wasn’t alone.
In that moment, Dexter felt a reassuring warmth from the egg, a sensation that ran through his whole body. He didn’t know how, but he felt the egg promising him that everything was going to be okay. He still didn’t understand how the egg was able to communicate with him. All he knew was that the egg made him feel less alone in this vast world without his mother. And as far as he was concerned, that made the egg a friend. And a friend needed a name. Charlie, perhaps. Yes. Charlie sounded like a friend’s name.
Hopefully together, they’ll be able to find Dexter’s mother, wherever she may be.
Isabella Crane was used to being alone. Making friends was never an option. Not with the curse hanging over the Crane family bloodline. Any person unfortunate enough to call a Crane a good friend, or a loved one, would eventually meet a very violent end in the form of decapitation. Isabella’s mother made every effort to keep her daughter from making friends, even going as far as to homeschool her. But that wasn’t enough. When she heard the news of the next-door neighbour’s child losing his head in a freak accident, she already knew what happened. Isabella’s mother then took it upon herself to raise her daughter in the wilderness in a comfy little cabin in the middle of nowhere.
When her mother eventually passed, Isabella remained at the cabin, living by herself, only travelling to town when she really needed supplies. She made efforts to distance herself from the local residents. Isabella became a familiar face, yet an enigmatic figure in the community.
Then one day, on her way back home, she came across a car accident on the side of the road. She initially planned to keep driving by, but when the driver beckoned her for help, she took sympathy for the driver and decided to help him.
That’s how she met Irving. At the time, she thought that was the first and only time she would interact with him. But after their first meeting, for reasons she never understood, he seemed rather smitten with her. Over the following weeks, they began to meet more often. He would approach her wanting to know more about her, and she would often try her hardest to rebuff him for his own good. But eventually she relented.
Before she knew it, they were in a relationship and not too long after, he had asked for her hand in marriage. Over the years, Isabella found herself happy with Irving, and sometimes outright forgetting about the family curse. They had been dating for years. Perhaps something had changed. Maybe things would be different.
Alas, fate had other plans.
When their car broke down in the middle of the road on their way back from town, that’s when Isabella first saw the specter in the distance. The dark figure of a headless horseman galloping down the road towards them. Before Isabella could warn her fiancé in time, the Horseman had already separated his head from his body.
Isabella experienced a multitude of emotions as she watched her fiancé’s head rolling on the road. Shock, numbness, sadness, guilt, regret, agony......then anger. All in a matter of seconds and over just as fast as the Horseman circled back and removed Isabella’s head from her shoulders.
For most people, that would be the end of their story. But for reasons not even Isabella could comprehend, Isabella woke up......exactly where she died. With her head still separated from her body. What happened? Why was she still alive? After spending several minutes in shock, Isabella noticed that she could still move her body. It took hours, but eventually she was able to bring her body to her head and precariously reattach it to her neck. The experience felt surreal as she felt the spectral tethers pull her body parts together and stitch them together.
Isabella’s mind was filled with questions and she wanted answers. But as she looked at her fiancé's decapitated head laying on the road still dead, there was one thing she wanted more than answers: revenge.
The next few days and weeks passed by in a blink of an eye. The police investigation. The funeral. Isabella knew the police suspected her but she didn’t care. All she cared about was the Headless Horseman and how she was going to end him once and for all. As soon as the funeral ended, Isabella Crane left her cabin and the town in search for the Headless Horseman.
She travelled across the American landscape keeping an ear to the ground for any rumours of a headless horror terrorizing a town, or a highway, or any other similar rumours. She needed no money on the road, because she never felt hungry or thirsty. Isabella didn’t want to think of the implications of what that meant. But despite the vast distance she travelled, she heard nothing. Only silence. Perhaps the horseman would and could only appear to hurt the ones she loved.
Then one day in a local diner, she heard a rumour of a headless figure roaming the east coast. Apparently close to New York. The rumour was probably baseless, but Isabella didn’t care. It was the only lead she had now. If she had to travel to the Cursed Apple to have her revenge, then that’s exactly what she was going to do.
Amala - Queen of the Yetis
Amala’s father was a renowned cryptid poacher, and because of it she had spent her whole life also hunting them alongside him. It was the only lifestyle she had ever known. So, when news spread of yeti sightings in the Himalayas, of course her father was going to try his hand at hunting the ultimate game. He even went out of his way to purchase the newest Fairfax tech: soul compression globes to make it easier to transport cryptid corpses. In return, Amala’s father was expected to return with yeti specimens for Fairfax scientists to research.
When they arrived at the mountain range and began their ascent, it didn’t take too long for things to go wrong. Within their first week up the mountain, there were already several severe injuries and a few fatalities. Another week passed by and more people got hurt. And then another week with the problems getting worse. Despite all the struggles they faced, there was still no sign of any yetis on the mountain. But her father refused to give up. They had come too far to go back now.
Amala had already given up on spotting a yeti. They weren’t real as far as she was concerned. That’s what she initially thought, until the fifth week into their expedition.
More people had died, and at this point the remaining survivors urged Amala’s father to turn back, and she considered adding her voice to their dissent. But before her father could respond, an avalanche suddenly struck the expedition team, forcing everyone to take cover.
However, Amala ended up getting separated from the rest of the group. As she saw the torrent of snow looming over her, she thought she was going to die. But just before the snow could collide with her speck of a body, a large white mass of fur suddenly jumped in front of her and shielded Amala in its large arms against the rumbling snow.
She must have fallen asleep or unconscious, because when she woke up, Amala found herself lying on top of the snow, making her wonder if the creature that saved her was ever real. That’s when she noticed the tracks. Very large bestial footprints. If a yeti really did just save her life, did Amala really want to hunt them down? She considered hiding the yeti tracks. It was the least she could do after it saved her life. But it was too late. When her father eventually found her, he also noticed the monster tracks. Whatever hope the expedition had of returning down from the mountain was lost with her father’s revelation that the yetis were real. If it had tracks, then it could be hunted.
Another week passed by without a yeti sighting. But that didn’t matter. As long as he knew his prey was somewhere out there, he was never going to stop.
To her deep dismay, they eventually caught up to the yeti. They followed the beast’s tracks to a cave high up on the side of the mountain. The rest of the expedition either died or turned back. It was just Amala and her father. After they both scaled up the mountainside and reached the cave, her father wasted no time delving right into the darkness. What could Amala do but follow him?
Initially, she was worried about being lost in the cave system, but it didn’t take too long before they ended up in a large chamber with several rays of light shining through the cave ceiling. And within that light, Amala saw the family of yetis huddled against the cave wall; a parent embracing their litter of baby yetis. Amala couldn’t help but adore the sight.
But she couldn’t relish in that wonder for too long before her father fired his weapon.
The same yeti that had rescued Amala from the avalanche was now bleeding in front of her children, roaring in agony. And now her father was aiming his weapon at the yeti younglings.
Amala acted before she thought. She shot her father in the leg. As he fell, Amala quickly disarmed him. In that moment, her fear for her father’s life warred with her instincts to protect the defenseless yetis. The latter won out.
She pulled out the globes her father got from Fairfax and used it to absorb the yeti’s essence and compress their souls into the globe. After she had preserved the yetis in the globes, she turned to her father glaring and cursing her out. They might not have always seen eye to eye, but he was still her father. She left him behind but still left him enough supplies to keep himself alive. Amala then traversed back down the mountain range with a bag full of yeti globes still intact.
For better or for worse, Amala spent the following years looking after the family of yetis while on the run from Fairfax Industries who still wanted their “specimens”. While she had done everything she could to take care of them, there was only so much she could do. She couldn’t keep this up forever.
That’s when she stumbled upon a rumour of a certain ritual about to take place in New York. A ritual that will promise to grant any person’s wish, provided they participate in the ritual. It may just be another silly rumour, but so were the yetis. She didn’t have many options. If she had to travel to the Cursed Apple to protect these yetis, then that’s exactly what she was going to do.
Dexter and Charlie: - The Boy and the Egg
Dr Ali Wallace was a renowned government scientist whose job kept her a very busy woman. So it wasn’t uncommon for her to bring her son, Dexter, to work. Initially, the higher ups weren’t comfortable with bringing a child to a classified government facility, but Dr Wallace was the foremost expert in astral gates, so they tolerated her decisions. Perhaps it was awkward for the other scientists, at first, seeing a child roaming their workplace. But after a while, they grew accustomed to Dexter’s presence. Some even warmed up to his shy and curious mind.
But one day that all changed.
Dr Wallace had been studying astral gates for years and was finally granted permission to commence experiments to replicate an astral gate. Dr Wallace was excited to perform the long-awaited experiment, but she needed to keep her son as far away as possible for his own safety. So, she relegated one of the maintenance workers to keep an eye on her son for the remainder of the day on the opposite side of the facility. Now that she knew her son was safe she could proceed with the experiment without worrying about putting little Dexter’s life at risk. That’s what she initially thought, but children didn’t always listen to their parents.
While Dr Wallace attempted to open up a miniature astral gate in a controlled environment, Dexter had slipped away from his warden and snuck his way back to his mother’s lab.
Unfortunately, despite all their implemented safety measures, the astral gate they tried to open up was more unstable than they initially calculated. As the energy readings spiked past the acceptable threshold, Dr Wallace ordered for the project to be shut down. In that same moment, her son snuck into the labs. Dexter’s mother’s eyes grew wide with fear at the sight of her son.
Just as she was about to tell him to leave, the glass separating the personnel from the astral gate suddenly blew up as the portal began sucking in everything like a vacuum. Many scientists were drawn into the portal. And so was Dexter. Dr Wallace tried to reach for her son, but she couldn’t catch him time.
After the portal consumed the young boy, the astral gate closed. That was the last time Dexter had ever seen his mother.
He blacked out when he passed into the astral gate. When he woke up, he found himself in a strange, surreal world shrouded by dark storm clouds above. A barren landscape that seemed to be......breathing. The ground was swarmed with slithering tendrils. Some of those tendrils spiraled upwards into structures that reminded Dexter of trees.
The boy didn’t want to be here. He wanted to go home. Dexter looked everywhere, crying out for his mother. But all he found was the other scientists’ bodies being absorbed into the landscape, swarmed over by dark tendrils.
Dexter didn’t bother wondering why the land hadn’t devoured him yet. He just kept walking until he somehow ended up finding his mother. Hours became days. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Until Dexter spent a full year in this hellscape, severely hungry and thirsty, but somehow never dying.
Just as he was about to collapse and give up, he heard something in the distance. A faint, thumping noise. Almost like a heartbeat. Dexter followed the noise. He let it guide him. The heartbeats grew louder with every step. Until eventually, Dexter found himself standing before a nest of tendrils.
And placed in the center of the nest was a dark egg, pulsating with red light. Dexter approached the egg with its pulsating heartbeat ringing loudly in his ears.
The moment Dexter picked up the egg......The heartbeat suddenly stopped. Dexter was then suddenly awash with a sensation that felt like......relief. The young boy looked at the egg in his hands and instinctively understood that the egg was happy to be found.
As he cradled the egg in his hands, he peered down to see the tendril nest opening up into a portal. Dexter recognized the other end of the portal. His mother’s lab. He wasted no time jumping through.
And just like that, he was back in New York.
He foolishly thought that after he had returned, everything would return to normal. But it wouldn’t be until much later when he’d learn that while almost a year passed for him in the other world, 10 years had passed back at home. The building was abandoned and destitute. And his mother was nowhere to be found. He was now lost in a vast city all by himself.
Except he wasn’t alone.
In that moment, Dexter felt a reassuring warmth from the egg, a sensation that ran through his whole body. He didn’t know how, but he felt the egg promising him that everything was going to be okay. He still didn’t understand how the egg was able to communicate with him. All he knew was that the egg made him feel less alone in this vast world without his mother. And as far as he was concerned, that made the egg a friend. And a friend needed a name. Charlie, perhaps. Yes. Charlie sounded like a friend’s name.
Hopefully together, they’ll be able to find Dexter’s mother, wherever she may be.
