[Aleph]

Horrors attack people with horror marks. Not just on the strategic level, but also on the tactical battle map. Therefore, unless your bodyguards also have horror marks, (and not just any horror marks but horror marks in excess of your pretender) they will be ignored by the horror on the way to its marked target. As horrors also inflict horror marks on those they attack, there is a very tight vicious circle here.

Horror marking is, in the long term, the among worst things that can happen to your god (the other being decay, in that currently afflictions caused by old age cannot be reversed by any means, even if you have blood magic and reverse the aging). On the other hand, it's a spell that doesn't actually do anything to its target immediately - you can still use your pretender to win the battle in which they were horror marked. I'm glad it exists as an option in the game, even if it is horribly ugly - there SHOULD be something nasty and lasting you can do to even the toughest enemy pretenders, especially immortal pretenders (who, although they will keep coming back as long as they are getting killed in their dominion, will keep incurring higher and higher marks through astral claw attacks such that they'll be assaulted constantly).