How to Kill a Unicorn

Unicorns are incredibly valuable beasts: their medicinal properties are legion, even beyond the horn's remarkable healing powers. According to Hildegard of Bingen, powdered unicorn liver can actually cure leprosy, and a belt of tanned unicorn hide can shield the wearer from pestilence and fever. But the act of capturing and killing a unicorn requires extensive preparation.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Hunting party
• Virgin maiden
• Spears

1. Study the Unicorn Tapestries, a set of 7 tapestries woven from 1495 to 1505 that depict the capture of a unicorn.
2. Thus educated, assemble a team of experienced hunters and their dogs.
3. Find a plot of land in which unicorns are known to be found. Streams are likely starting points, as unicorns often use their horn to purify the water for local animals.
4. Entice the arrival of a unicorn with a virgin maiden. Upon spotting the virgin, the unicorn will come to her and lay its head in her lap, where it will fall asleep.
5. With the unicorn safely tamed, close in for the kill. Distance weapons are ideal, including spears that are longer than the unicorn's horn.

Tips & Warnings

• The maiden must be a virgin. If not, the unicorn may impale her.