ThePandacorn

Tertiary carnivore—got it!

Leave phantom alone

Sludge secondary




The pandacorn is normally a solitary, peaceful animal. It has soft eyes encircled with black fur, a long, bushy tail, and curved claws on its large paws (used for little more than the tearing of bamboo). It is not a working species, most prone to fits of slumber, and strange, rumbling songs. Pandacorns especially enjoy singing after waking from hibernation – some genetic instinct that has little to do with survival and more towards the dulled magic that runs through their veins. They share a common ancestor with the legendary unicorn (hence the long, glittering horn which protrudes from the center of their forehead), but unlike that elusive creature, the pandacorn can be a social animal if approached with respect and caution. Many a dragon has, in ages past, befriended one of the beasts.

But, just as there is in unicorns, there also lies a darkness in pandacorns. A being of such innocent magic is easily tainted. While unicorns may become corrupted – one touch of cruelty and it spreads like poison, destroying the unicorn from the inside – pandacorns can turn. It is a rare thing, as it takes true travesty to force a pandacorn into such a state, but it is possible.

There is a story of one such pandacorn, a male who lived in a grand bamboo forest of eastern winds. He was old, and therefore wise for his kind, having existed for longer than most. Due to his age, this particular pandacorn needed to hibernate longer, and more deeply. Years often passed him by as he snored beneath the unchanging sun and its sky. But one day, a troupe of local settlers stumbled upon his forest in their search for a new home. They were migrants, and came from a sick, fell land. They did not find the pandacorn (as a sleeping pandacorn is almost impossible to locate unless you already know where it is), but they found his clearing, and what seemed to them a perfect place to begin anew. Undoubtedly these dragons had no idea such a delicate and magnificent creature was anywhere nearby – but by the time the poor pandacorn woke, the damage was done. The dragons dammed the river, and chased the predators of the forest away, and even began to hew at some of the hills around them, to level the land. They cleared much of his forest to make room for their village, and, in doing so, destroyed his home.

At first, the pandacorn attempted to drive them out with his song; his only natural defense. During the night, he crooned low, warbling calls full of warning, trying his best to scare the settlers off, as the change crept upon him. Even in distress, a pandacorn is not a violent creature by nature. But it was in vain.

When pandacorns become separated from their home – whether it is overrun or destroyed, or they are made to retreat elsewhere out of fear or necessity, whatever forces them away – a shift happens within them. A pandacorn’s connection with its land is special, it is an earthly connection that binds them to their own magic. Without that tether, a pandacorn will turn, and become an antithesis. Dark, violent, and oftentimes mad, a turned pandacorn is devastating to anything in its path.

This particular pandacorn, once fully turned, went to an extreme. He turned his sights to the very forest he’d once called home, an obsession blossoming in his rotten mind: that of tearing it down, razing the land until it was utterly inhospitable and either killing or driving every last settler away. His soul was filled with the need to do so. Where he walked, the grass beneath his claws turned black and refused to grow. Earthworms around him writhed up from their tunnels in the soil to shrivel before him. The magic that had once lain dormant within him awoke to aid him, leeching the life out of everything he touched.

But the dragons were strong, and a pandacorn’s mind is not clever, even when turned. So he stalks at the edge of the very camp that doomed him, capturing dragons in his claws whenever they wander too far. He inspires fear and panic, as the warden and baghest that prowls before their borders… waiting for the day his terrible purpose might become achieved.

Written by slipfast