Racial Modifiers +3 Survival in forests, +4 Stealth
Class Skills, Magical Beast: Acrobatics, Climb, Fly, Perception, Stealth, Swim.
Languages Common, Sylvan
SQ magical strike, wild empathy +18
Gear:
Barding (Lamellar leather)
Race traits:
Light and Dark, Reach
Evolution Points:
Wing Buffet
SPECIAL ABILITIES Magic Circle against Evil (Su)
This ability continually duplicates the effect of the spell. The unicorn cannot suppress this ability.
Magical Strike (Ex)
A unicorn’s gore attack is treated as a magic good weapon for the purposes of damage reduction.
Wild Empathy (Su)
This works like the druid’s wild empathy class feature, except the unicorn has a +6 racial bonus on the check. Unicorns with druid levels add this racial modifier to their wild empathy checks.
Light and Dark (Su)
Once per day as an immediate action, a member of this race can treat positive and negative energies as if it were an undead creature, taking damage from positive energy and healing damage from negative energy. This ability lasts for 1 minute once activated.
Background:
Mar survived when many hadn’t, but he was different now. A quintessential unicorn before the Cabal attacked, he was something new now- something dark.
When he dreamed at night, he still saw the advancing line of shadow taking over their forest, the same forest he and his mate had guarded together for decades. They’d faced some terrible foes, sure, but nothing that they hadn’t been able to beat back. This time though, things were different.
They’d held their line against the undead horde as long as they could, and knocked back scores of zombies, skeletons, and the like, but eventually they were forced to run. Hiding in the mysterious shadows that seemed to follow them, the undead gave chase, unnaturally fast. Abandoning their forest, the unicorns shed tears as they ran, too afraid to look back as they passed familiar landmarks for what they knew would be the last time. They outpaced other forest-dwellers as they ran, ashamed that they couldn’t help, but too terrified to stop. Screams from behind them as they sprinted just in front of the line broke their hearts, but confirmed, sadly, that they’d made the right choice.
They’d ran for days quickly becoming exhausted but carrying on the way that only one staring down death can. They’d tried to teleport, both themselves and others, but somehow their magic was impeded. The third day, nearing the edge of the forest, Mar’s mate stumbled and tripped. The small progress they’d made outpacing the darkness started to disappear, as Mar looked back and saw the coming shadow. He urged his mate up, crying out in sadness when he realized that they’d broken a leg. The shadows bearing down on them, he fruitlessly tried to help, to no avail.
The shadows overtook them as the undead advanced to their position. He stayed as long as he could, re-engaging in a battle to defend his now-helpless mate. As he was cut and bruised by the monsters and watched his partner lay there dying, he cried out, and felt a powerful mix of emotions: anger, fear, sorrow, and loss. Mingling his own nature with the magic of the shadows, Mar felt suddenly both less and more. Great shadowy wings grew from cuts on his back, and ferocious teeth sprouted in his mouth. Vicious claws sprouted on the inside of his front legs. Empowered and engaged, Mar fought the horde for minutes, flying into a complete and utter mindless rage as his mate died. Then, just before he himself would be overwhelmed, he fled the battle in the sky.
Using his newfound speed he kept himself out of harm’s way, until he calmed down, and came to terms with his own changes. Somehow the shadows had corrupted him, and he was something else now: powerful, and sad.
Many years would pass, and Mar would come to understand what he’d become as time wore on. Ultimately, he gathered with a holdout of other creatures in a strange coalition. Throwing himself into work for the group, he pulled himself out of his sadness, and embraced what he had become. Maybe he was living on borrowed time, maybe not. Either way, Mar has come to understand the shadowy energies suffusing him, and is determined to using them for the best cause he can: survival of the living, and defeat of the dead.
