ECOLOGY

Environment any cold
Organization solitary, pair, or cavalry (3-12)
Treasure standard

Cold riders are terrifying armored majesties, clad in cloaks of frost with a pair of large crystal-blue antlers cresting their almost skeletal heads. Their icy armor and weapons are as much a part of them as their frozen flesh. Cold riders delight in perversion, slaughter, and the corruption of other fey. They prefer undead or cold-resistant steeds, but even when they have no access to such, their phantom steed spell-like ability ensures they never go long without a mount. Cold riders are 7 feet tall, though their antlers easily add another 2 feet to their height. They weigh 300 pounds.

Cold riders were once princes of the forest, honored knights of the Willow Kings, or otherwise powerful fey in the service of an Eternal Monarch. Brought before the Witch Queen, these noble gallants watched in horror as she plunged her cruel icicle-nails into their chests and tore out their steaming hearts before their eyes. In the gaping gore of their chest wounds, the Witch Queen packed the month-old rotting hearts of slaughtered stags, and then breathed life anew into the tortured fey with an icy kiss. A cage of frozen armor wrapped about them and they rose as wintry antlered abominations. Their songs were stolen and their love of green and beauty replaced with cold hate and undying love for the Witch Queen. The riders are her knights gallant and her favored minions in her war on the sun, the green, and all things that recoil from her freezing fingers. They delight in perversion, slaughter and the corruption of other fey. It is their solemn duty to bring fresh souls and candidates for transformation into cold riders back to their queen’s court, and they relish this charge.

The majority of the cold riders roam the tundra, though they are dispatched south during bouts of cold weather and the deep winter months to spread her malfeasance among the other courts of fey. They steal the souls of men for their queen and are always found in cold environs and prefer snow-laden forests, plains of frost, and frozen mountaintops.

Cold Riders are terrifying armored majesties, clad in sable cloaks of frost, a pair of almost ridiculously large crystal-blue antlers cresting their dread helms of ice and steel. They stand anywhere from 7 to 9 feet tall and their antlers easily add another 2 feet. They weigh anywhere from 200 to 300 pounds. Their icy armor is as much a part of them as their rotting stags’ hearts and though the ice-steel garb appears unwieldy, scuffing and scraping as they move, it does not hinder them in the least. Their eyes and the frosty vapors rising from their powerful frames are their most fearsome features. The paired mini-whirlwinds of effervescent frost swirling in their visors can chill the hearts of most stalwarts with a frigid glance, and the vapor-fog floating from them often takes the shape of their former fair features, screaming in silent agony and twisting into malformed wisps in the rising wind.