horror mark on pretender

[Breschau]

SalsaDoom said:
Well, I seem to attract horror marks personally. I never actually -see- my fellas get horror marked, they just one day magically get one. This has happened to many of my pretenders over the years, and I've yet to see how it actually happens.

No one is getting close to them, they never go into battle without a pretty huge army to absorb spells and damage... I don't use any magic items that would get you horror marked... So I've no real knowledge of how my pretenders get the damn things in the first place. Unless there is some way of giving someone a horror mark from another province outside of battle (like seeking arrow, but with a horror mark). Beats me ;P Part of the reason I hate that damn thing so much.

Maybe due to a magic item s/he was using? There's a few magic items that have a "small chance" of giving the wearer a horror mark, but not all of them mention it (explicitely or otherwise) in the in-game item description. I unwittingly got half my battery of researchers horror marked because I didn't realise lightless lanterns did that now (for lanterns it's mentioned in the manual, but doesn't even hint at it in the in-game text).

Though fwiw, I did have one non-pretender commander do nicely against horrors. A decked out golem SC (built mainly for fighting mass armies, oddly enough) who tore his way through three individual Hunter of Heroes, and one regular horror that summoned two more during the battle. I'm not sure if he lucked out against that insta-kill attack the Hunters get, or if being inanimate made it ineffective against him.

But yeah, for an effect as nasty, and most importantly permanent as that, it should maybe be a little trickier to research or cast.. or at least disappear on death.