To catch a unicorn © deviantArt user Abend.
[It’s Flashback Summer! This page isn’t the first iteration of the Creature Codex. From 2010-2013, I released six PDFs under the Creature Codex name, roughly one per six months, with a handful of monsters in them for sale. Reviews were good, sales were not. So since they haven’t sold any units for literally years, I’ve closed up shop and will be posting revised versions of these monsters here. Some of them will have the original art from the PDFs, some won’t.
First up, this creature was originally the “twilight unicorn”. Considering that this PDF was released literally the month My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic came out, these days “twilight + unicorn” means something a bit different.]
Dread Unicorn
CR 4 LE Magical Beast
This powerful equine creature seems to absorb the light around it and its eyes gleam a sinister red. A single horn about two feet long grows from the center of its forehead.
A grim reflection of the magnificent guardians of the forest, dread unicorns instead seek corruption and the spread of their cruel philosophy of suffering. Unlike their exclusive, snobbish kin, dread unicorns will consort with any and all creatures, although they prefer the company of the undead, evil outsiders and the servants of evil gods. Dread unicorns are the size of horses, although they tend to reflect sturdy, muscle-bound breeds.
Dread unicorns are omnivorous, consuming plant matter and flesh in roughly equal proportion. Due to their love of inflicting pain, however, they often kill far more than they eat, littering their forests with rotting flesh and throwing ecosystems out of equilibrium. A forest inhabited by a dread unicorn will soon become twisted and overgrown, with many of the native animals having fled or been slain. For this reason, even evil druids tend to oppose the workings of dread unicorns.
Native to all manner of forests, dread unicorns prefer to establish themselves in lands that are already tainted by a history of evil. Former battlefields, temples to dark gods and woods used as hiding places for escaped criminals and madmen are soothing to the dread unicorns. Most dread unicorns are solitary or live in a mated pair—for all their wickedness, dread unicorns mate for life and form strong bonds with their partners. Unintelligent undead are strangely attracted to the aura of negative energy exuded by a dread unicorn, and a dread unicorn might be followed by a small army of skeletons and zombies. Dread unicorns are smart enough to take advantage of this phenomenon, using their mindless minions as cannon fodder to soften up travelers before striking. Due to their great wisdom, aspiring tyrants and despots often seek dread unicorns for advice on their schemes; the prices asked by the unicorns for this service no doubt draw these aspirants further into evil’s service.