'Unicorn Horn' (HYTCH/8FNE6/B77KT)

HYTCH/8FNE6/B77KT

HYTCH/8FNE6/B77KT
Status	Selling
Demand	High
Value	500USD/400GBP per Capsule (50 mg) (Pure), 2500USD/2000GBP per Brick (500 g) (Impure)
Availability	Established Supply Chain
Identifier	Powdered Unicorn Horn
Description	Items are a powdered form of unicorn horn, available in pure form as edible capsules suitable for human consumption, and in an impure form as bricks for use as an industrial pesticide. Items act as a powerful retrocausal contraceptive, eliminating all physical effects of sexual intercourse and reproduction. The impure form of the item contains several additives that render it ineffectual on mammals and other vertebrates.
Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

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Initial Report
Author	Hugo Boyle	Date	March 03, 1930
Interest	Medium	Identifier	Powdered Unicorn Horn
During the recent Prometheus Laboratories expedition in Lapland, a herd of wild unicorns — previously believed to be extinct — was discovered. The expedition leader, Irwin Trask, recognizing the value of these beasts, directed his party to capture the creatures and had them transported back to London for study. As repayment for our assistance in financing the expedition, Prometheus Labs has gifted us three breeding pairs, along with copies of Trask's notes regarding the animals. Historically, the unicorn was believed to posses numerous occult and paranormal properties, resulting in its being hunted to near extinction by those attempting to use the animals for ritual or medicinal purposes. Modern testing has verified some of these beliefs; most notably, the horn of the unicorn, when ground into a powder and ingested, reverses the effects of sexual intercourse. More specifically, it reorders physical reality so that the consumer will have never had intercourse, restoring the body (but not the mind) to a virgin state — and incidentally curing venereal diseases and killing any living offspring. It is my recommendation that we use the breeding pairs provided to us by Prometheus Labs to establish a steady supply of unicorn horn, which can then be sold as a contraceptive, curative, and assassination tool.
File Opened Under:		HYTCH/8FNE6/B77KT
Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

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Inventory Information
HYTCH/8FNE6/B77KT
Owner	Quantity	Comments
Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.	20 tonnes	Represents current stockpiled supplies of raw horn.
Prometheus Laboratories, Inc.	2 tonnes	Supplier of the insecticide additives; Primary contractor for pesticide production.
ICSUT	~460 capsules	Used as a thaumaturgical aid by certain members of the faculty. Reagent in certain alchemical formulas.
Global Occult Coalition	~300 capsules	Believed to be for medical use.
The Foundation	5 capsules	Scientific samples kept for analysis.
Customers (Individual)	~1300 capsules	Used as a form of birth control and treatment for STIs.
Customers (Industrial)	5 tonnes	Used as an industrial and agricultural pesticide.
Other	~500 capsules	Various private individuals with diverse needs.
Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

Collected Documents

Memo 12
HYTCH/8FNE6/B77KT
Sender	Hugo Boyle	Recipient	Samuel Woodward
While I understand the necessity of meeting our customers' demands, any significant increases in our supply of the item are unfortunately unfeasible at the current time. What you must understand is that our supplies of unicorn horn are inherently limited by biology. The gestation period of a unicorn is nearly a full year, and at least 2 years of postnatal growth are required before the colts have developed mature horns suitable for harvesting. (Remember also that only the males of the species have horns, so only 50% of unicorn foals end up contributing to our supplies.) While these horns do regrow, this process requires a full year. As each unicorn can only be expected to provide 20 to 25 horns over its entire lifetime, and given the expense involved in housing and handling unicorns, current policy is to slaughter most colts after the first horn harvest, retaining only a small number of males as stud. The slaughtered colts are, of course, butchered and processed into various additional products, which provide a not-insignificant source of additional revenue. As you can see, what this means is that every two years, we can only produce a number of horns equal to half of our number of breeding mares. At an average horn weight of 18 ounces, and given our current breeding stock, this produces approximately 28 pounds of horn every two years. We are, of course, working to increase our breeding stock, but it takes five years for a mare to reach reproductive age, and breeding unicorns at this age often results in complications. Additionally, we've encountered problems with several stallions attempting to auto-cannibalise their own horns (as well as mares attempting to eat the horns of their partners), resulting in the termination of otherwise viable animals. We are investigating ways to prevent this behavior, which should greatly increase our production rates. Until such time as the supply has been stabilized, I suggest that you limit the availability of the item in an attempt to control demand.
Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

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Memo 34
HYTCH/8FNE6/B77KT
Sender	Mildred Morel	Recipient	Hugo Boyle
The selective breeding program is finally starting to provide substantial returns. Among the most recent experimental group (59B), 70% of colts had achieved maximum horn growth by 9 months, and 90% of colts had achieved maximum horn growth by 1 year. Further reductions in horn development rate will provide only marginal increases in production rate, as the gestation period remains at 11 months. Future efforts should focus on increasing average horn size and encouraging mutations that result in multiple horn growths. Given the high rate of horn production now achievable via group 59B unicorns, I am once again recommending that breeding stallions have their horn growing tissue chemically cauterised to prevent parental infanticide. While this will eliminate the possibility of repeated horn harvesting from stallions, these additional harvests will no longer represent a significant portion of our yearly horn production, making such losses acceptable. Chemical cauterisation of the horn is expected to reduce the cost of housing per each animal, and will likely extend the lifespan of our breeding stock (as many stallions injure themselves attempting to damage the currently used restraint systems).
Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

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Incident Report 19
HYTCH/8FNE6/B77KT
Author	Hugo Boyle	Date	October 5, 1963
A recent sabotage attempt by individuals believed to be affiliated with the Serpent's Hand has left a large number of the animals dead or injured. Following the transition to using the 59B unicorns for breeding stock, housing procedures were overhauled to utilize chemical cauterisation of the horns of breeding stallions, reduce the reliance on mechanical restraints, and increase the amount of free space available to each animal. These changes were done in an attempt to improve the health of breeding animals in order to maximize their individual usefulness. As part of these efforts, it was necessary to contract additional handlers to work with the animals. These contracts were managed by my predecessor, the former supervisor of the project, Samuel Woodward. Unknown to Woodward, several of these new handlers were infiltrators working on behalf of the Serpent's Hand, and were seeking to put an end to our activities involving the unicorns. On the night of October 1, they attempted to release the animals from their pens, only to meet their demise after the creatures panicked and attacked them. Several of the animals were unfortunately terminated during subsequent efforts to recontain them, and a number of security staff suffered serious but non-fatal injuries. Somewhat alarmingly, upon seeing the deaths of their fellows, many of the animals seemed to become even more aggressive, going so far as to cause injury to themselves in attempts to attack the security staff. At this time, I am conducting a review of all employees and contractors involved in the project, and intend to institute a number of modifications to our handling procedures that should reduce our reliance on contracted handlers.
Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

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External Report 5
HYTCH/8FNE6/B77KT
Organisation	Prometheus Laboratories, Inc.	Acquired	June 4, 1973
Method of Acquisition	Document was shared with this company as part of a project proposal.
Document
GRANT REQUEST FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNICORN-DERIVED INSECTICIDES TO REPLACE DDT PROBLEM Last year, the United States banned the use of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), one of the most effective commercial insecticides in common use. This ban comes amid a wave of international restrictions on DDT, which are expected to continue to grow over the next decade. As a result, there is now a niche available for new potent industrial pesticides, equivalent in strength and efficacy to DDT, but without its many ecological and environmental hazards. We believe that such an insecticide could be produced from the processed horn of unicorns. SOLUTION The horn of the unicorn (Equus castus), when powdered and ingested, acts as a unique retrocausal contraceptive, eliminating all physical side-effects and results of sexual reproduction. When consumed by an organism with extant offspring, that organism's contributions to the genomes of its offspring are removed, which in most species results in the immediate death of those offspring. This effect has been most studied in mammals, particularly humans, but initial experimental trials suggest that it is just as effective in other species, including insects with external fertilization. As a pesticide, unicorn horn has the potential to be one of the most effective insecticides in history, due to the eusocial nature of many insect species. Ingestion by a colony queen would result in the extermination of most or all of the colony. The destructive potential among non-eusocial insects is lower, but still greater than in mammals, due to the extremely high reproductive rates of most insect species. BUSINESS CASE This product would be marketed as an industrial pesticide, for use in rapidly exterminating large infestations of insects. Individual consumer use would likely be limited, due to the low demand for such potent insecticides among individuals, although termite infestations present a possible residential use case. Agricultural use would likely also be limited, as the indiscriminate nature of the pesticide would pose a significant threat to pollinators and other beneficial insects. USE OF FUNDING Most of the funding for this project would be directed towards researching neutralizing additives (see KNOWN ISSUES for details). However, once a suitable additive is discovered, it should be relatively cheap to design a manufacturing process that converts raw unicorn horn into a usable insecticide. As such, the overall R&D budget for this project is estimated to be no more than 250,000 USD. KNOWN ISSUES The largest obstacle to using unicorn horns as an insecticide is the non-discriminating nature of the contraceptive effect. If deployed unaltered, there is a significant risk of wide-spread ecological collapse caused by powdered horn accumulating in runoff. Some kind of additive would need to be developed that neutralizes the effects of the powder in non-pest species, which will require a greater understanding of the mechanism of action behind the contraceptive effect.
Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

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Memo 47
HYTCH/8FNE6/B77KT
Sender	Mildred Morel	Recipient	David Barlow
While I agree that the PL proposal is intriguing, pesticide production on the scale they are suggesting would require us to increase our own horn production by an order of magnitude or more. Obviously, this could be done by increasing our breeding stock, but I am hopefully understandably wary of the massive increase in capital and labor that would be required to support such a large herd. That's why I've authorized a series of in-house genetic experiments to try and increase the amount of horn produced by each unicorn. Anthony believes that we can use PL's TAG process to induce controlled mutations in adult specimens that will lead to further horn growth, which should hopefully allow us to increase our production capacity without further expanding our operations.
Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

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Memo 51
HYTCH/8FNE6/B77KT
Sender	Anthony Morel	Recipient	Mildred Morel
The TAG process finally bore fruit with experimental group 75F, resulting in a set of specimens with horn growing tissue covering 80% of their skeleton. The creatures are barely recognizable as unicorns anymore, but the horns they produce are still functional. Each animal now produces almost 40 kilograms of horn every 6 months, which will actually let us downsize our breeding operations while still increasing production to the necessary rates. I recommend that we stop maintaining a supply of stud stallions, and instead rely on artificial insemination of the breeding mares. This will allow us to harvest horn from all of the stallions. Due to the tendency of the 75F animals to impale themselves on their own horns (one animal even managing to castrate itself, something which I would not have thought possible), I recommend that they be kept in chemically induced comas from shortly after birth until their death, which will allow their horns to (re)grow and be harvested without interference every 6 months. Because we won't be slaughtering the extra colts anymore, we will no longer need to maintain a large breeding pool of mares, and so most of them can be slaughtered and butchered for their non-horn byproducts. The remaining breeding mares should be kept isolated from one another and physically restrained, as otherwise they will attempt to injure themselves and one another. If necessary, chemical sedatives can be used to keep pregnant mares physically relaxed while remaining alert. Although this is expected to result in a slight increase in the rate of miscarried foals, this is considered acceptable. I estimate that through this method, we can maintain production rates of nearly 4 tonnes of horn a year, easily enough to meet the demand requirements for pesticides and personal use, all at a significantly reduced cost.
Marshall, Carter and Dark, Ltd.

‡ Licensing / Citation

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"'Unicorn Horn' (HYTCH/8FNE6/B77KT)" by GreenWolf, from the SCP Wiki. Source: https://scpwiki.com/unicorn-horn. Licensed under CC-BY-SA.

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