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[Creature Lore] Unicorns


Eranikus
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An ooc note: Prior to beginning work on this creature, I was not aware there was pre-existing unicorn lore. However, the lore that's been pulled up for me as reference is one paragraph, so this serves as a further development of that lore to give the creatures more flavor. Thank you to CritsyBear for being the first to point that out on this thread, along with a link to the old piece of lore where they're mentioned in passing.

 

Original piece can be found here: https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/161000-✓-the-fae-realm/

 

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"She did not look anything like a horned horse, as (they) are often pictured, being smaller and cloven-hoofed, and possessing that oldest, wildest grace that horses have never had, that deer have only in a shy, thin imitation and goats in dancing mockery. Her neck was long and slender, making her head seem smaller than it was, and the mane that fell almost to the middle of her back was as soft as dandelion fluff and as fine as cirrus. She had pointed ears and thin legs, with feathers of white hair at the ankles; and the long horn above her eyes shone and shivered with its own seashell light even in the deepest midnight."

-Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

 

Overview

 

It came into being with all the other creatures of the world. An elegant, lithe beast, with the softest coat imaginable, and a long flowing mane that formed waves in the wind. It initially was the Aspect's chosen servant, the one meant to guard their balance with grace and wisdom. The purest white of virgin snow blessed its coat, its eyes vibrant red as it was blessed with the touch of the Horned God. It was this touch that was its downfall, the unprotected creature and its kin an easy target for predators seeking a quick and easy meal.

 

So it was that Grandmother Spider stepped in, seeing the pure nature of the creature as something worth protecting. With her touch, she blessed them all with a single horn in the middle of their forehead, a twisting bit of thorn with a core that teemed with the magic of the world around them. To their white coats, she added flecks of brown and green, granting them the natural camouflage to hide in the dense forests they called home. Thus the unicorn was born.

 

With the blessings of the Aspects, it was able to pass to and fro between this world and their realm, using fairy rings as the gateway. Even still, it has managed to remain hidden from sight of the commonfolk, avoiding their gaze and their hunting as it wanders the world, a symbol of perfect balance.

 

Appearance

 

Unicorns appear similar to horses at a glance. Closer inspection reveals their bodies are built to be much thinner and more flexible than the average horse, allowing them to more easily navigate lush undergrowth at higher speeds. Much like cats, their spines can rotate and twist more easily than other animals, granting them a much longer stride when running at full speed. Their long legs make for a large gait, though as thin as they are mistakes while sprinting can have extremely costly side effects. The bones are thin and lightweight, easily broken with enough force; given they can reach speeds comparable to the pronghorn antelope at sixty miles per hour, collision with trees can and will shatter their bones.

 

The creatures are far-sighted, able to make out objects far away more easily than objects close to their face. This is to allow them to better plan corrections in their path, as well as detect predators from further away. Their ears swivel one hundred eighty degrees as well, giving them full range of hearing. Their sense of smell, however, is comparable to a human's, and they have little to no sense of taste. While this makes them the least finicky eaters in the world, it puts them at great risk for consuming poisonous plants by accident.

 

The fur of their coats is quite short, cropped almost to the skin much like a deer, until you get close to the fetlocks. There, the fur blossoms out into thick tufts of hair, fluttering down to the ground. Their hooves are cloven, and their manes and tails are like thin strands of silk: delicate and smooth.

 

The horns themselves are a pristinely-formed spiral thorn, flecked with metallic bits that sparkle when the light hits them just right. There are multiple blood vessels throughout the horn, and removal of it almost always results in the death of the creature. The horn produces a special toxin that is released when it sinks into something, much like the fangs of a venomous snake. This only happens when taken directly into the bloodstream; skin contact has no effect with its base form.

 

The toxin has a withering effect when taken into the body, causing muscle to lose tensile strength and grow weak and feeble. The toxin eats away at calcium, causing a sort of paralysis that prevents movement as it causes bones to become brittle and immobile. This effect is spread throughout the body as the toxin travels through the bloodstream, the victim losing the ability to move. An antidote can be created with a specific array of herbs, and the damage dealt can be repaired with care, rest, and plenty of milk.

 

Habitat and Behavior

 

Unicorns have a tendency to dwell in areas where there are plenty of hiding places for them; forests, jungles, occasionally caves. They prefer places with lots of undergrowth and few nearby settlements. They are quite hardy, adaptable animals, capable of living most anywhere so long as they have a proper food and water source.

 

Because they have had little exposure to descendant races, they are quite skittish around them. They prefer to stay away, but will seek out fairy rings. Exposure to the rings seems to heal their wounds and calm them down.

 

Magical Properties

 

The true gift granted to the unicorn is its adaptability, far more precious than its horn or its speed. Through exposure to the elements, they are able to change their bodies to withstand far more harsh environments than they normally could. For example, if a unicorn settled in a scorching desert, their ears would expand within a week or so to help them stay cool. Likewise, a unicorn settling in a tundra would have much smaller ears, and might grow a longer coat to help maintain body heat. Minor adjustments like this occur in a week or so, and if the creature relocates it can change again.

 

Larger changes, however, cannot be reversed. Changes that alter bone structure, size, or resistance to the elements have to be made much faster to ensure survival, and the body never recovers from the changes. This usually occurs in times of disaster, such as flash floods or volcanic eruptions. Unicorns that settle near volcanoes tend to have much higher resistance to heat, and can sometimes even begin to produce excessive heat themselves to balance it out.

 

This ability can be manipulated through magic to sometimes devastating effects. Due to their sensitivity to outside influences, unicorns will actually try to adapt if harmful magic is thrown at them. Likewise, if helpful magic is thrown at them, their bodies will try to replicate it for later use. This does not happen immediately, and can take two to three exposures to the magic before they begin to react.

 

So why would a mage want to do this in the first place? Due to the nature of the creatures, their evolution can be beneficial to magi in need of practice or an increase in versatility. These effects are relatively small but can mean the difference between a small range of damage and a large range of damage. In addition to this, the manipulation by magic to the creatures affects the toxin released by their horns, a phenomena that does not occur when they change to defend against natural influences.

 

While most voidal magics do little against unicorns, evocation has quite profound and interesting effects on the beasts. When struck often enough with elemental evocation the creatures have a tendency to morph to better absorb the effects of the element thrown at them. While damaging to the creature, this can be quite useful for teaching new students, as their target would no longer be destroyed or damaged by their spells. This also changes the toxin in the unicorn's horn to better fit the magic they've been altered by.

 

  • Fire evocation: the unicorn becomes more heat-resistant and begins to produce its own fire source to combat the magic used on them. Their horns begin to glow like heated metal, and the toxin produced by it causes symptoms quite similar to flametongue root overdoses instead of the withering effect.

  • Earth evocation: the unicorn's bones grow thicker and harder to break, and the hide hardens to prevent damage to the muscles. Their horns grow craggy and rough, and the toxin causes a victim to grow sluggish and slow instead of withering away.

  • Water evocation: the changes to a unicorn's body only occur when ice is used. It causes them to grow thicker fur, and can often results in them beginning to grow ice crystals along their body. Their horn gets a frosty coating, and their toxin acts more like frostvine.

  • Electrical evocation: the unicorn's body starts to deteriorate into a more incorporeal form, the softness of their mane lost as they build their own static charge. They become jumpy and more energetic, but they also tire quickly and have to rest far more often. Toxin becomes paralytic, like a powerful jolt of electricity. Paralysis lasts only a few seconds (oocly five minutes), but long enough for the creature to escape.

  • Arcanism: the unicorn's body deteriorates from the inside out into a being made almost entirely of mana. They can then alter back and forth between their mana form and their natural form as needed to absorb further blows, but they cannot heal from wounds. The toxin becomes a less potent withering, more akin to a void mage withering with a single connection.

 

A note on voidal connections: These are all examples and are up for interpretation. So long as the basic idea that the creature is modified to embody the magic it was assaulted with as a means of defense, it is acceptible.

 

Deity magics rarely affect the creatures, although there are some that cause some changes to how the creature behaves. Due to their creation, they are natural and can be communed with by druids, and are not harmed by holy magics from clerics and paladins, so they cannot turn into holy unicorns by being harmed by it outright.

 

  • If healed often enough with clerical or paladin magics, the unicorns will begin to adapt to the presence of their holy gifts. Shown the kindness and healing of the magic, their toxin becomes a boon, no longer withering but healing instead. This healing can only ever match the skills of a cleric or paladin at tier 2 of their healing magics and can never exceed that power.

  • A druid's gifts can be used to manipulate the properties of the toxin their horns produce to create a very mild sedative in extremely small doses. This is because the horn itself is not organic, and behaves more like a plant's thorn than a beast's horn. The inverse is also applicable, extending the paralysis. This also applies to modified toxin, as the horn is still a plant.

 

Dark magics can be particularly damaging to the beasts given their natural innocence. They lack a concept of what is right and wrong, much as many animals do, and seek survival. In this case, their blessing is their curse, for it is in the magics that this world calls black that their true potential can be manipulated and damaged.

 

  • Iconoclast magic prevents the creatures from evolving at all, making them extremely susceptible to attack after. If used on a creature that has already evolved, it robs them of their resistance to the magic without changing their altered forms.

  • Necrotic tethers react powerfully with the magic of their horns, and the unicorns are quite susceptible to its power. After being drained the second time, they will begin to develop a much stronger font of life force to cope with the initial drain. A third tethering causes them to form tethers of their own, acting as a conduit for the magic and allowing the necromancer to drain multiple plants around them for a short distance (mechanically a three block radius around the unicorn) instead of draining the unicorn to start with. These tethers cause great pain to the creature on top of the sensations of draining, and their coats begin to appear blighted as a result of the corruption. A druid's blight healing, if the creature can be saved, is able to cleanse the blight and return the creature to its original appearance, but the change is temporary and will return the next time it is tethered.

 

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  • Shade magic seems to have quite lethal effects on them. Due to the amount of mana contained inside them, turning it into amber effectively kills them, leaving behind only an empty husk. The amber can then be harvested from inside them and used later, though it does dissolve within a year (ICly one week).

 

A note on magical evolution: If a unicorn is altered, it gains both the strengths and the weaknesses of having that magic. A necrotic unicorn becomes extremely susceptible to holy magic.

 

You cannot drink unicorn blood to become immortal. These are not Harry Potter unicorns.

A unicorn can only change once over the course of their lifetime. Once it is changed, it cannot revert back by any means.

Touching a unicorn's horn will not provide you with a wish. But feel free to believe what you want in-character.

Unicorns do not produce any form of aphrodisiac whatsoever.

 

Thank you to Fiter for information on how shade magic works and Phil for information on iconoclast.

Images gathered from google, I do not have any sort of ownership over them.

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cite ur artwork

 

can i drink unicorn blood to become immortal?

 

can their hooves be grinded down for medicine? or their horn?

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1 hour ago, Veist said:

cite ur artwork

 

can i drink unicorn blood to become immortal?

 

can their hooves be grinded down for medicine? or their horn?

 

Thank you, forgot about the citing. No, you cannot drink their blood to become immortal. Only the toxin secreted from their horn can be used as a medicine. Their hooves are just normal hooves.

 

1 hour ago, _Jandy_ said:

Will this be only available by ET like how a phoenix is?

 

To make sure nobody can just randomly say "Oh, I have a unicorn that's got blah blah blah and this and that and the other thing" without actually having found one in RP and taken the steps to get it, I think it does need to be regulated. However, I don't feel that it is fair to leave its availability solely up to ET discretion considering that while it is a rare creature, it isn't an endangered species. They are capable of breeding.

 

That being said, I also don't think its something that should be left up to a single player given the exclusivity of some things like magics, such as ferals in a lot of cases and for a long time shapeshifting and soul trees were for druids. I don't want this to be a creature that never gets used, but I also don't want it to be a circle jerk sort of creature where you need to know the right people to get access to it.

 

What I'd like to happen is to have a certain number built out in the world for people to find like a sort of treasure hunt, just hide them in different places. It'd add some flavor to the world and give people a reason to go out and explore.

57 minutes ago, Sir K Andruske said:

Mages. Do. Not. Wither. 

 

I was under the impression they did, as that is how it was explained to me when I was learning evocation. Is it just a different wording or do they now have no physical drawbacks for learning magic?

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I like the well written lore.

 

 

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**** it +1

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2 hours ago, Eranikus said:

 

I was under the impression they did, as that is how it was explained to me when I was learning evocation. Is it just a different wording or do they now have no physical drawbacks for learning magic?

 

 

Nah he's full of it. Mages do suffer weakness from using voidal magic. They aren't frail stickmen by any means but utilizing the arcane still prevents them from being able to build significant muscle mass.

 

Also can I rub a unicorn's horn to get a wish? Can I wish for infinite wishes? :,J

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Okay two things. Only one is an actual discrepancy, the other is a suggestion.

 

9 hours ago, Eranikus said:

Overview

One: The idea that the aspects created all of nature is a matter of IC opinion, not OOC fact. In fact I'm pretty sure it's been said they explicitly didn't. But the overview is not presented as an IC preface, but an OOC statement about their origins.

 

 

Okay two: Despite that, unicorns are something they did create. That part's right. There's lore already for unicorns ( but it's so brief that this is welcome! )

 

Quote

The Unicorns

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In the plains of the Twilight Realm, the Unicorns ride. Resembling a horse from the mortal realm, yet far more intelligent, the Unicorns have a language of their own with a subtle sophistication that no outsider can learn. Whoever manages to rub the horn of the Unicorn is supposedly blessed with tremendous luck by the Aspects, prompting (foolish) Satyroi, Impfolk and Featherfolk to travel across the entire Fae Realm to seek out these four-legged oracles.

 

The only thing this states is that they come from the aspects' realm directly, that they have a special horse language, and that they don't like their horns being rubbed. You should make mention of this stuff, since it was around first!

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ok so two things

 

in the evocations section you didn't mention air evocation, rude (also seeing as they have frail bones and are light getting slammed into a tree might be something they'll need to protect themselves from!)

 

also a clarification that their nono place doesn't produce this thing would be appreciated

 

otherwise, great lore

 

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