[…] few remaining loose ends. I want to talk about the Undead, the Sea Nymphs/Sirens, the Unicorns (not these ones though) and maybe few other […]

Now these are unicorns that deserve a well meaning crossbow equipped expedition.
And some mages very skilled in anti-mind-tampering!

As for the idea of bringing all your races into one setting:
Who says they have to mesh well, if they don’t there’s always room for struggle, mischief and strife among them. Makes for a far more interesting setting than “humans = good / orcs = bad / others = somewhere in the middle / start fight good vs bad”.
Would be nice to see a setting in which the goblins pay humans to go get rid of “those filthy long ears over there” :)

[…] ← My Unicorns are Different […]

@ Luke Maciak:

This actually could be interesting, though I’m pretty sure a lot of these would not be compatible in the same setting. Or would at least not mesh together that well. :)

Maybe not if you want an elegant, coherent mythology like Tolkein: but if you went for something gloriously over the top, in the vein of, say, Jack Vance …

Plus your three types of goblins, for example, could be completely unrelated species, all lumped under the generic name of “goblin” by an ignorant human populace (viz. koala “bears”, which are nothing of the sort).

I think my former gaming group would just go with the “usual” solution which of course meant: explosives.

Kudos to whoever can calmly set, trim and light a fuse with a rhino bearing down on them, and still leave time to get out of the way of (a) the explosives and (b) the rhino.

And there’s always the Last Unicorn meets Jurassic Park option:

The known specimens of E. sibiricum reach up to 4.5 m (15 ft) in body length with shoulder heights over 2 m (6 ft 7 in) while E. caucasicum reaches at least 5 m (16 ft) in body length with an estimated mass of 3.6–4.5 tonnes (4–5 short tons), based on isolated molars that significantly exceed those known from the Siberian species. Both species were among the largest in the family Rhinocerotidae, comparable in size to the woolly mammoth and larger than the contemporary woolly rhinoceros.

I’m not sure how much black powder you’d need to bring down a mammoth-sized rhinoceros, but I think the GM would be justified in insisting on encumbrance penalties.

@ Sheriff Fatman:

Thanks. :)

Have you considered working these up into a full fantasy setting?

This actually could be interesting, though I’m pretty sure a lot of these would not be compatible in the same setting. Or would at least not mesh together that well. :)

It could be interesting to tell the players they’re going on a unicorn hunt, and then confront them with a ton of charging, small-brained, armour-plated rage. With a horn.

Brilliant. That said, I think my former gaming group would just go with the “usual” solution which of course meant: explosives. This was pretty much every game:

– Infiltrate den of thieves and recover priceless artifact: arrive at night, pick the lock, light a fuse, roll a barrel of gunpowder into the building, then dig out pieces of the artifact in the morning.

– Persuade a prince to join the war effort: rig castle with explosives, light fuse, watch prince change his mind.

– Defeat a dragon: find cave, wait for dragon to leave, rig explosives, wait for dragon to come back, light the fuse, count xp and reward

– Rescue the princes from the clutches of evil wizard: ok, so the princess didn’t survive but we did blow up the wizard real good.

– GM decides we can no longer buy gunpowder or explosives: don’t worry guys, wizard has been taking ranks in alchemy for just this sort of an occasion – we can make our own. :P

I think that day our GM committed sepuku and we ended up playing Star Wars D6 instead. :P That was the day we learned that thermal detonator spamming is not the smartest tactic when fighting a Jedi Master with lots of dice in force push.

I see some similarities to centaurs in Classical mythology. They’re also supreme jerks, don’t like strangers on their turf, don’t like people in general, but some of them can be very intelligent.

Meant to say — good post, again. Have you considered working these up into a full fantasy setting?

IIRC, the original stories of unicorns were distorted travellers’ tales of the rhinoceros. It could be interesting to tell the players they’re going on a unicorn hunt, and then confront them with a ton of charging, small-brained, armour-plated rage. With a horn.

Pendragon‘s unicorns retain some dark traits from traditional (pre-Disney) fairy tales: a pure maiden can try to tame a unicorn, but if she fails her Chastity roll things are going to get very unpleasant for her, in an NSFW kind of way.