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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The_Warlock" data-source="post: 5616638" data-attributes="member: 21215">39. Shadows of a RacePreferably while the party is traveling in a uncivilized wilderness, lightly to heavily forested, the most aware members catch sight of a silhouette blinking in and out of the trees in the distance with a faint sounds of hooves, then silence.If investigated, the party finds no obvious trail, though a trained tracker will notice a set of jagged, cloven hoof prints all by themselves, as if something was in mid gallop, but no tracks immediately before or after it. If they look farther afield, they will find another set of similar tracks 60 or 70 feet further on. The tracks seem fresh, no more than an hour old...If the difficult dispersed tracks are followed, about 20 minutes into trailing them, a series of staccato impact will be heard from behind.Turning, the party will see a vaguely horse-like creature, blip in and out of existence, only to strike and bound off again with it's sharp and spiked hooves, screaming in a most human way from it's crocodilianly long maw which stretches back the length of it's horse-like skull, the top of which is covered in shattered ivory protrusions.The creature will not stop, and may accidentally teleport trample anyone in it's path, or narrowly miss them (as seems most appropriate).The creature will quickly leave pursuers behind, but can still be tracked as before. A similar charge through will occur after another 20 minutes of tracking. It will become apparent that there are other older tracks present, and pieces of stone near the path darkened by old blood, as the galloping sound is again heard.This time, the beast is even more distorted, with swept back shard-like ivory horns, improbable fangs, glowing eyes, and whip-like tendrils writhing from its back and flanks. A final push of following the trail leads to a secluded and overgrown dell, wild overgrowth of thorn bushes and poison ivy hindering access. Finally breaking through reveals a terrible scene, made worse by it's age. A bowl like area, recently drained of water or bog, a tiny spring trickling into the muddy pseudo-graveyard. All the figures in the terrible diorama are adipocere mummies (corpses mummified by their own adipose and fat tissues without oxygen): half a dozen mannish sized figures, some with obviously broken limbs, others pierced with terrible wounds, some impaled on the petrified remnants of a tree's branches...all near the partially netted body of Unicorn, long since dead and equally leathery and mummified, a horrible caricature of itself, only a short stump of it's horn remaining.If the unicorn's body is cremated or otherwise given some form of proper repose, there will be heard a great whinnying from the path they followed.Afterward...will the humanoid mummies animate and attack? Will the adventurers examine the cracked rock face that the trickle of water comes from to find the rest of the unicorn's horn still in tact? Or will the remainder of the grisly scene merely become a sinkhole, trying to wipe the the memory of it from the forest, happy to take any too slow to move to a mud covered death by suffocation...</blockquote>

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