Celestial Steeds are on the loose, and our friends at EpicToon.com want you capture one for free by joining their Celestial Steed Contest.

The contest is open to their World of Warcraft customers until the end of the month, with four lucky winners receiving the prize. We’ve also compiled some trivia on the Celestial Steed so you’ll know why this prized horsey is all the rage in Azeroth:

Scaling Mount Speed. The Celestial Steed automatically upgrades its speed as the player advances in Riding skill.

“For example, the Celestial Steed will run at normal ground speed if the character knows Apprentice Riding, and epic ground speed with Journeyman Riding. The mount will be able to fly at normal flight speed with Expert Riding, and at epic flight speed with Artisan Riding. In addition, if the character has a 310%-speed flying mount in his or her collection, the Celestial Steed will also fly at 310% speed,” explained Blizzard.

Account-wide Mount. All present and future characters on your account will be given their own Celestial Steed. So if your account has 20 alts and you plan to create several more Worgen or Goblin toons when Cataclysm hits, all of them will get a copy of the mount.

Cosmic Visuals. The Celestial Steed has the same animations as Hippogryph flying mounts, but looks like the cosmic cousin of Arthas’ mount Invincible with its constellation ligaments. Its body also emits dust sparks that follows behind once you start galloping. While AFKing in Dalaran, you’ll also notice the same sparks appearing beneath its hooves and that only its armor forms a shadow–an ethereal quality from being borne in the Twisting Nether.

Echo Sounds. The Celestial Steed has a special horse neigh and this can be heard when you jump and land. Its wings also produce a flapping echo during flight.

Helps you get another exotic mount. The Celestial Steed counts toward the uber-hard achievement Mountain o’ Mounts, which rewards a player who collects 100 mounts with the equally awesome-looking Blue Dragonhawk Mount.

Charmed enough? Well, join the Celestial Steed contest and go rein in those adorable ponies!

The zhevra mount, both adored and reviled due to its semblance to a fanciful unicorn, is galloping to retirement after Blizzard Poster Bashiok announced a new prize mount for the World of Warcraft’s recruit-a-friend program. There’s no shoot-to-kill order though so current owners can keep their zhevras as a souvenir.

Madagascar no longer exports these horned beauties

In place of the zhevra, Blizzard is giving away the more scrap metal X-53 Touring Rocket. It’s a technical upgrade since it can now seat two toons (for traveling together) and scales to the highest mount skill of the owner, which means up to 310% flying speed if you have a 310% speed mount. The scaling flight speed of X-53 can quicken your travel time across Outland and Northrend as well as in revamped Azeroth when the upcoming Cataclysm expansion allows flight in the old world.

Strap on your seat belts, this one's a wild shark

Speculative trivia: We think the X-53 Touring Rocket mount was named after a modified F/A-18 Hornet (now designated as X-53) used for flight technology research under Boeing and Air Force. Spew out this trivia gem in guild chat whenever a friend trashes your X-53, and we promise a renewed respect for your hunk-o’-metal mount.

Aside from the reward change to X-53 mounts, the recruit-a-friend program in WoW remains the same. It still gives veterans and their recruits linking privileges that help them level up and adventure together. Both veteran and recruit can summon each other to each other’s location–beat that warlocks!–and awards triple experience up to level 60. Of course the bonus xp won’t register if you’re just one-shotting gray mobs at the starting levels.

X-53 will be available anytime soon, so if you want to get your hands on it, hijack a friend to become the next WoW addict. And don’t forget to install seat belts.