Greetings and returns from myself, a long-journeyed fellow that has been away for a while, gathering material and learning more of legends and their truths in the North American region. Along the way, this traveller has gathered some interesting tales, some less connected to the esoteric and more related to those transient moments of humor. Regardless, returning to ones' own home is a remarkably comforting feeling.
As it has been some time since this poor dusty digital tome has been brushed off and updated, and the main contributer finds himself a bit mentally out-of-sorts yet, today an easy and relatively simple topic will be addressed.
Haha, a jest! Today we will broach the complicated and politically-fraught concept of the Greater and Lesser Unicorns and their differences. There are, as many may already know, several, each of increasing importance.
First, a brief history for those of you negligent of your formation-dimensional studies: following the massive conflict between the ChaO (pronounced with no discernable or reasonable method) and the Fey, the lands began to sunder in a psycho-terra reflection of the divergence of those two previously tightly-tied realms. This break was so traumatic and tortuous to the dimensional fabric in place at the time that it created a new land altogether- ours, of course. (Regardless of one's feelings on the house of the White Stag versus the Green-Crowned Maiden paired with the Slaughtered Crowdaughter in Fey, and certainly even excusing completely understandable essential existential conflicts on the concept of the Twined Serpents in ChaO religious representation in direct challenge to the new-born representative royal family's incarnated spark of the land, Azureil, one cannot deny an important fact: without these brutal and escalating conflicts, our universe would not exist. Tucked as we are between these two source lands, Fey and ChaO are what breathe life and systems into our word.)
This break was not without consequence. The proud house of the Star-Crowned Ek (a deeply carnivorous animal similar to what we know as a horse, though with longer legs and far more joints and teeth than one is generally comofortable with) was located directly on a cracking rift. This break dropped a remarkable number of noble ladies and lords into our world and, as rifts tend to do, scattered them through time. Thus was the house divided and destroyed, and thus we come to the ultimate subject of our brief perusal today: the matter of the Greater and Lesser Unicorn.
As is common with the Fey, and certainly even more so the great houses of old, differing shapes were available to those of the Star-Crowned Ek. The most commonly adopted one was what we know as the unicorn. Of course, we of scholarly pursuits are aware that the unicorn is no horse indeed but a great horned Ek. The so-called "horn" is a slowly-excreted collection of minerals gathered into the body through water and thus excreted in this way; therefore, the old idea of the horn being of starstuff is not entirely off, as that is indeed where all our minerals on the good earth have come from.
The Greater Unicorn is a beast to be feared. Pale and delicate and beautiful beyond any mortal horse, some specimens have been seen that are so moon-white that the rush of their rainbow Fey-blood can be seen through their pelts. As with polar bears, Eks have clear fur, and this gives the Greater Unicorn the odd multi-prismatic glow so commonly swooned over by little girls. Their hooves are metal and ring beautifully no matter what surface they tread over. The Greater Unicorn's mane and tail are treasured so deeply that the great Kraken tribe has been known to surface to hunt a Greater Unicorn strayed close to their shores; the hair is said to make the most perfect of musical tones, even deep in the universe-black waters of the Kraken war-courts.
Ah, but these beautiful beings are the men of that long-rendered house, the ones pulled into our world early in its life. The women are similar, but more beautiful somehow: purer white, more luminescent, possessed of beautiful spiralling horns where their male counterparts have dangerous scythe-like things. Their breath is sweet and their eyes are kind, and where a lady of the fallen house lies, rare and medicinal plants are known to spring to existance.
The women are possessed of no hooves, however. They are instead possessed of an alarming, to the human eye, oddity: a petite pair of woman's hands that act as back hooves, paired with the fine and high-arched feet of a noble lady whose feet have seen no rocks, no glass, indeed no evils to the skin at all.
It suits this narrator to state the following fact bluntly: the ladies who had fallen into our world are all dead. They have all either been murdered by the hands of men or died giving birth. The Greater Unicorn is, then, a finite race consisting of men only. They are too proud and terrible to attempt to interbreed with women of any other race or even house. Someday when the last Fey Ek-skinned lord is felled, our world will no longer hear their ringing hooves. It is the opinion, again, of the narrative that this is only to be celebrated.
The Greater Unicorn, driven to fury by the death of its ladyfolk, is madness in a perfect and beautiful package. The Ek is a great predator even in its supremely cruel homeland of Fey; the Ek-shaped lords are no exception. Such was their devastation at the death of their ladies that they met in a great Tribunal on some dawn-early age of mankind. (It is speculated by some that Stonehenge has something to do with this, which is patently riculous, as those same folks suggest aliens were simultaneously responsible.) The tribunal vowed to destroy and rend that which had been stolen from them: children and maidens, mothers and matrons. Any Greater Unicorns that opposed this grim vow were brutally slaughtered that night.
To see a Greater Unicorn these days is to know death is upon your step. The Krakens hunt them not simply for their matchless materials but also due to the catastrophic damage they can inflict. Only the most bloodthirsty of monsters will inspire these deep-dwelling warriors, of course.
Some have speculated that the Greater Unicorns have moved into the blend of humanity by taking the forms of humans and operating as serial killers of peculiarly prolific natures. Some others protest that the hatred of the Greater Unicorn against man is so deep that the idea of blending in to humanity would disgust them too deeply. Regardless of the truth of that speculation, it is known that they still walk amongst us with quadruple-layered fangs unfolded, their venomous fangs aimed specifically at those most societies hold most vulnerable, most dear.
Their hatred for humanity is paramount. The only hunger the Greater Unicorn experiences greater than his longing for that long-lost home in Fey is the hunger for the intense suffering of humanity. They will accept the suffering of the immediately available as a mild slake to their yawning hunger, that much they have made clear.
Of the Lesser Unicorn not much is known, to be frank. They are known to spend most of their time in the lands of their ruined house, though shaped as ladies and lords of Fey, not as the dangerous Ek we have now discussed at some length. In fact, it has filtered through by some circles that the Lesser Unicorns are of the stern mind that it is this semi-permanent occupied shape of the Ek that has driven their old cousins, nephews, uncles, brothers, fathers, and sons to such depravity and madness.
The Lesser Unicorn is often found in the shape of a Fey man or woman with star-black hair and curious, pure black eyes. They are known to have many smaller golden or silver horns that spiral this way and that before joining in a complicated tapering knotted spike; these knots form into a natural rapier after a long enough life. As with their relatives, this horn is not horn at all, though their "horns" are instead pure metals. These spires of gold, bronze, silver, iron, and other substances are exquisitely beautiful, especially when found on their children, all of whom are uniquely predisposed to being quite handsome and darling indeed, with soft sable curls and mild, sun-warmed complexions.
They are a gregarious house despite their elusive nature, often enjoying great feasts, hunts, and other loud activities- but only in the thick tangles of their jungle habitat. It is absolutely unheard-of to see a lord or lady of the Star-Crowned Ek outside of house lands. The jungle itself is said to have a uniquely intimate relationship with its resident house, having been rumored to attack wanderers and even unwelcome guests. Given
All is not frivolity and light with this segment of the house, though. Their blood stems from the same source as that of the Greater Unicorn, after all. Their collectve revilement of the Greater Unicorns is strong enough that it has repelled all social connections and in effect kept them from falling under the same dark umbrella of murderers and the depraved. This revilement is strong indeed. Rumor has it that this very house had recently experienced the birth of a young lord that strongly resembled his lost ancestors. Possessed of a pale head of hair and fair skin, the young lord was skinned in his foal-Ek form, soft metal hooves left connected. The story goes that his pelt has been hoisted to christen the jungle clearing the house calls its main hall, and that his un-tended spirit causes the pelt to drip iridescent blood even now, months after its small owner's death.
Lesser or Greater, the individuals that fall under the moden umbrella of "unicorn" are a uniquely merciless breed.
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