Claiming Wild Horses

A unicorn on its own is not only a lonely soul but a vulnerable one. Safety in numbers has kept the species alive for centuries and continues to do so to this day! Growing your herd is part of the fun of Elysium and a major part of its play-ability. Luckily there are plenty of ways to expand your herd which include:

Claiming wild mares
Claiming bachelor stallions
Saving wild foals

Encountering a wild unicorn is one of the two types of random events that can occur when players submit art or literature to the group. Players can not pick a design to encounter from the pool. To learn more about how to encounter a wild unicorn, go HERE

Claiming Wild Unicorns of any sort can only be completed by your herds lead character. 

Wooing Wild Unicorns
Wild unicorns have to be convinced that joining up with you is in their best interest so sometimes claiming them isn't an easy feat. All wild unicorns in the pool come with a secret 'catch rate' that the admins can see. Similar to catch rates in Pokemon, some unicorns are really easy to convince while others may be more skeptical.

The tricky part is convincing the stubborn ones to stick around! Wild unicorns you encounter always have the option of running away (again, similar to Pokemon). If they flee from you, you'll have to use your tracking skills to find them again! Quests that allow players to do just that can be found HERE

Typically, unicorns who have rarer genes or even special magic potential will be more difficult to catch. Or perhaps something you said or did just soured them about joining you?

Making your intentions clear

When players are attempting to claim wild unicorns, its very important to make it clear what your intentions are. Players are by no means obligated to pursue a NPC design that they don't like. We know that many players have ideas in mind for what they want their herds to look like! Perhaps you're gunning to collect a herd of all mares or perhaps you want to play a herd of only Silver Bay Unicorns with ram horns. You're free to do whatever you like! 

However if players don't make it clear to mods that they would like to attempt to claim a wild NPC, it makes it difficult to process the submission. Literature submissions should have characters making a clear and obvious offer for the NPC to join their herd by directly asking them in some way.  This should also include their method for trying to convince them to stay. Do they protect them from a local threat? Perhaps they offer them food or medicine? Whatever the reason their offer to join (or not join ) the players herd should be obvious.

Illustrations can be a little more open ended but may also include literature or a simple comment in the artist comments stating that they are attempting to claim this NPC.  

Pieces that are unclear or open ended will be rolled like normal but NPC's will auto flee if their claim roll fails. As a rule of thumb, mods will ALWAYS give players 2 attempts to claim an encountered NPC (especially if the first roll is a fail). If players aren't clear on what they want and their first attempt fails, this rule will be waved and the NPC will leave.
The only exception to this rule is NPCs with VERY low catch rates (of which there are less than 5).

Utilizing comments

Players looking to gather more information on an encountered NPC can be done so through the comments! Perhaps you encounter a stallion who, for some reason, is giving you some bad vibes. You could request that your character do an investigation check to see if they sense any deception in his words or actions. Or perhaps a mare comes off flirtatious but so just happen to have uncovered a locked treasure chest! Is she really interested in your character or just trying to grab that loot!?  Comments are there to help players gather more information about a situation that may be left out of a mods initial reply. 

What can comments NOT be used for?
- Finalizing Claims
- Roleplaying interactions with NPCs
- Proceeding through side quests