Hollyphant

Imagine a miniature elephant, a mere two feet from trunk to tail, coated in gleaming golden fur, with two shining white wings and eyes that swirl with every color of the rainbow. Some sages insist hollyphants must be spirits or manifestations, since nature would never produce anything so absurd. Hollyphants find that theory truly insulting and may teach a loudmouthed proponent a lesson.

A hollyphant senses evil within 20 yards automatically. It goes out of its way to avoid fighting good or even neutral beings, but it harasses and hampers evil ones unless its errand is too urgent. Against evil beyond its strength it tries to alert mightier allies, or to stall and mislead the foe.

Its small tusks gore for only 1d3 each, so it relies on magic. It may trumpet three times a day, picking an effect each time. One option duplicates a horn of blasting. Another mimics drums of deafening, filling a cone 70 feet long that widens to 30 feet. The third sprays a fan of sun-sparkles 20 feet wide and 50 feet long; these bright flecks of positive energy sear undead, fiends and other supernaturally evil creatures for 8d6+8, or half if they save vs. breath weapon. At will, one at a time, it can use bless, light and teleport without error, plus cure serious wounds and protection from evil twice daily each, and once a day it can call down flame strike and use heal, raise dead and banishment, all as a 16th-level caster.

Its enchanted tusks make it immune to poison and disease, its glimmering coat acts as a globe of invulnerability, and weapons below +1 cannot touch it. It may try to open a gate (50% success); 70% of the time another hollyphant answers, otherwise a deva suited to the location arrives (astral on the Outer Planes, monadic on the Inner Planes, movanic on the Prime Material).

Hollyphants serve the good powers throughout the Upper Planes as couriers, messengers, advisers to favored mortals and aides to greater servants. Adventurers on a good power's business often meet one, since they love keeping watch over mortals who serve their patrons, and many cross the Astral or Ethereal on errands to the Prime. Usually solitary, they sometimes gather in families of up to three on their home planes, on any good plane but especially the good-aligned Outer Planes. When guiding mortals they coach heroes to overcome evil by their own efforts rather than solving the problem for them. They adore pranks and jokes, reasoning that anything shaped like a hollyphant should not take itself too seriously, but jokes about their origins are never funny.

Clearly beings beyond nature, hollyphants need neither food nor sleep, though they do both to put companions at ease, favoring nuts, berries and tender shoots. A tusk, once removed and powdered, can transform wine or water into an elixir of health, and hollyphants take a very dim view of anyone hunting them for it.