Shadow Unicorn

A shadow unicorn is a smeared, darkened echo of a true unicorn. Its dappled coat runs from charcoal to pale steel, while the long, silky mane and tail are always jet black. Red eyes smolder with malice, and the black horn, 2 to 3 feet long, is sometimes ringed in crimson fire. The cloven hooves, the color of burned earth, are kept honed to make every kick hurt more. Stallions wear a tangled black beard. Besides their own tongue they speak the language of nightmares and those of several outer-planar races.

This clever beast picks whatever tactic will cause the most dread and agony. It can hide magically in shadow and move without a sound; doing both, it can be found only with detect invisible or similar magic. Even in the open its stealth gives foes -6 on surprise. When it wants terror instead, it lets its hooves drum like thunder. Anyone hearing that gallop, or its shrieking whinny, must save vs. spell (at -2 for the whinny) or be affected as by the wizard spell fear, and each failure has a 5% chance of turning the victim's hair white for good. It fights with two forehooves (1d8 each) and its horn (1d12, +2 to hit). Three times daily the horn can burst into red flame for 8 rounds, adding 2d4 to each horn hit. With 20 feet or more of clear ground it can charge for 3d12, forgoing its hoof attacks that round. Three times a day, while wrapped in shadow, it can blink as the wizard spell, a favorite way to thunder up behind a fleeing traveler and then rear up blazing in front of him. Poison, charm, hold and death magic do not affect it, and it saves as a 9th-level wizard.

Wandering fortune-tellers say the breed began when a nightmare visited the dreams of a vain unicorn, Ashmane, promising him lordship over a grateful forest. He followed her into the mists, and twin foals were born. Tales differ on his fate: slain by his offspring, ruling a dead wood that must worship him, or roaming mad with remorse. Today the creatures haunt the wilds of two neighboring domains, one mist-shrouded and one militaristic. They never cooperate except at spring mating. Gestation lasts fourteen months and always yields twins, and about 5% of the time one twin is a true unicorn. Its mother cannot tell until near adolescence, when its coat grows too pale and its horn will not ignite; most such foals flee and become their kin's enemies. A shadow unicorn claims land by cutting a glyph of gloom with its horn. Cut into a living tree with a burning horn, it also holds light within 100 yards to twilight at best. A light spell lifts this briefly, and continual light makes a lasting bright spot until the unicorn finds and ruins it. The tree dies within a year and a new glyph must be made, so over a life of up to 1,000 years a single unicorn kills a great many trees. Whether it slays or spares intruders seems random. The fortune-tellers claim that hailing it aloud as a great lord, bowing to the woods and hanging trinkets on marked trees usually wins passage, and they sing special songs of homage while crossing such forests. Its lair, at the center of its range, is a bower of vines and branches over moss littered with jewelry.

Its forest grows hushed and gloomy as small creatures cower, then slowly withers. Much wildlife flees, and over half of what stays never breeds. It is an omnivore that relishes treants and other thinking plants; the realm's evil treants hate it and seldom share a forest with one, and any truce rarely holds. A powdered horn lets an alchemist make 2d6 doses of oil of fiery burning.