Here’s some true fun facts about decapitation:
The guillotine was invented in 18th century France as a humane alternative to other, more gruesome forms of capital punishment like the breaking wheel. The driving philosophy behind its creation was surprisingly progressive: that capital punishment was primarily meant to end life, and that inflicting unnecessary pain in the process was morally wrong.
There’s a lot (and I mean a lot) of stories from this time period about recently-decapitated heads blinking or mouthing, as if trying to speak. Scholars at the time would further investigate the duration of continued consciousness by asking criminals to blink in a specific sequence after decapitation, or pumping blood into the heads to see if they would come back to life and speak. More recently, videos of beheadings confirm these stories, showing each blink or muscle spasm in gruesome, high-definition video footage.
And on the other side of the equation, many examples exist of “beating heart cadavers”: non-decomposing corpses who continue to digest, urinate, blush, sweat, and even have babies following brain death. Not to mention Mike, the chicken who lived for 18 months following decapitation, capable of walking, eating, and emitting gurgly clucks.
Nowadays we know to identify “death” as a cascade of smaller events, wherein individual organs and tissues fail in sequence. The question of which of these deaths truly ends a person’s life is hotly debated (and wildly uncomfortable), but it does give me some ideas.
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Mike in his prime, absolutely beside himself
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If you amputate a person’s arm, that arm has no identity of their own; it’s simply dispossessed. If you “amputate” a person’s head, which part of that body is them?
Was “Mike” the same chicken he was before losing his head, or is “Mike” the head that was left behind? If so, who is the body walking around and eating? Are they two separate beings? Has Mike been split in two? What parts of Mike are where?
Where is the soul in all this?
Let’s focus on capital punishment for a second.
If you split a person in two, can you punish individual parts of their soul? Can you kill the brain, ripe with sin and ambition, but save the innocent body? Can you divide the purple soul from the animal and mineral? Can you excise sin from the soul, and let the rest wander around freely?
What does the body think when the head is removed?
Ichabod
An ichabod is created following a merciful beheading (what the Pristine Clergy calls a “decree of forgiveness”). Quickly, the head is buried, and the body is anointed in rosewater to prevent infection. A cleric then seals the carotid arteries of the neck stump with wax and begins a 24 hour vigil wherein they nurse the body back to health and ward off psychopomps. Eventually, the body sits up from its bed.
The process absolves the accused of their crimes, albeit at a terrible cost. Without eyes, ears, or a brain, the ichabod jerks back and forth on little more than instinct, obeying the three earthly souls which escaped persecution in the eyes of the law. It has little ambition beyond the most basic functions of eating and drinking. Imagine a high-functioning, self-conscious sleepwalker; this is the Ichabod.
An ichabod retains much of its memory and can comprehend language. (To an ichabod, all meaningful noise sounds distant, as if shouted from the bottom of a deep hole. They can’t hear sounds that are less than obvious.) They can also produce “language” through their neck holes, although it is only a sputtering gurgle. For a princely sum, an ichabod can be fitted with an array of brass horns, allowing it to speak in mournful honks, which is a lot less upsetting than it sounds.
Typically, the ichabod is tasked with performing menial labor in the service of their victims. After serving its sentence, it is turned free.
An ichabod roams where their animal soul guides them, through the wilderness with little more than a blade and liquid rations, which they squeeze down their necks with great difficutly. They can be reasoned or traded with, and are sometimes quite friendly; the animal soul longs for company every so often.
Ichabod
HD 2 Armor as leather Quarterstaff 1d6
Move 8 Int 8 Morale 2
Sometimes, the ichabod's head will refuse to decompose, breathlessly mouthing curses into the hateful earth. Wizard heads are sealed in molten silver to prevent their spells from escaping. Being an ichabod means knowing that somewhere on earth your evil twin is buried under the floorboards gibbering blasphemies.
If an ichabod comes into contact with its head, it “dies”, and the head reassumes direct control. This is what creates a dullahan.
Dullahan
HD 8 Armor as plate Sword 1d8/1d8/1d8
Move 12 Int 14 Morale 8
Special Soul Link
The link between a dullahan's head and body is tenuous at best, characterized by a constant struggle for control between the heavenly and earthly souls. The dullahan loses control of its body beyond a range proportional to the strength of their willpower: a serial killer can maintain control within a 20' radius, an ancient sorcerer-king can do so over many miles (1 hex). The dullahan can only truly be killed if its body is removed from this area; otherwise, it regenerates quickly over 1d4 hours and continues its pursuit.
Dullahans hold their heads where they can survey the landscape. They often ride horses and are frequently megalomaniacs.
If they are a wizard-head (sealed in molten silver, see above), they will employ avian familiars to act as their eyes and cast their spells. Some of them carve their silvered craniums into artful filigree, or a mask of the face underneath. Some just really dig the aesthetic of being a silver cube.
