List of Scifi/fantasy riding and/or domesticated creatures

[F5]

Dinosaurs. Lost-world books/shows/movies love to have folks riding dinosaurs.

While I can't think of any specific examples, seafolk (tritons and whatnot) are often shown riding on giant seahorses, or dolphins.

Already mentioned, but the sky-bison from Avatar is one of the coolest mounts in recent memory (if, in your mind, as in mine, bizarre=cool). Others in this series have ridden large flightless birds, giant lizards of various types, and rhino-wolf-hybrid-thingies.

The Drow have thier riding lizards and, what were the Underdark cattle called? Rothe? Something like that.

Giant Eagles. Lotsa' folks ride giant eagles, but you can cite Gandalf if you need a concrete reference.

The Herculiods! They used to ride on the lightning-shooting dragon and the big rocky rhino/bug dude that shot exploding pellets from his horn. That counts, right? Right?

And I'll second the mention of the Landstriders from Dark Crystal. Very cool fantastic mounts.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Intelligent, talking, green and yellow striped tigers (He-Man)
Purple panthers (He-Man)

 

[DMH]

Already mentioned, but the sky-bison from Avatar is one of the coolest mounts in recent memory (if, in your mind, as in mine, bizarre=cool).

The Herculiods! They used to ride on the lightning-shooting dragon and the big rocky rhino/bug dude that shot exploding pellets from his horn. That counts, right? Right?

Appa is an air bison. Zokk is the dragon and Tundro is the rhino like critter.

Duergar use striders (giant spiders) which can move across walls and ceilings.
Lovecraft has human derived creatures used as mounts in The Mound (they were 20' tall/long).
Dowhar use space swine; they have wings.
Gamma World produced the hopper (rabbit), pinto (horse shaped cactus) and podog (might have mental mutations).
Ogres are an uncommon mount. There is a pdf on humanoids by Valent Games that has a PrC named Ogre-Rider (though it works for any giant).
Dolphins and whales are common for ocean settings.

 

[tecnowraith]

Hey all, thanks for the replies, this is helping a lot.

 

[tecnowraith]

ok so far these are the most common and popular i have seen and have been mentioned here:
Dinosaurs
Dragons
Felines
Griffon
Hippogriff
Horse/Unicorn/Pegasus
Lizard/Reptilian
Mech-beasts
Spiders
Wolves/Worgs


If I can find some other interesting creatures that will make cool mounts, that would be helpful.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Weis's Death Gate Cycle has some interesting mounts

Giant Flying Squirrels- ridden in Elven Star the 2nd book of the series
Tarrantas- giant spiders have been covered but these spun webs to cross gaps

Destiny's Forge by Niven has interesting ones

Rapsar- a variety of domesticated engineered creatures most vaguely reptilian and at least partially amphibious
Tuskvor- enormous creatures, roughly the size of the largest sauropods or slightly larger that can carry entire prides on howdahs their back.

 

[Thanee]

And don't forget the coolest of the critters... the Gagglezoomer (from SnarfQuest)!!

Bye
Thanee

 

[sniffles]

Others mounts:

The Dark Crystal: Landstriders, kind of like a horse with 15-20 foot long legs.
Vampire Hunter D: Not so much a creature, but D rode a mechanical horse.
Avatar: The Last Airbender: Aang rides... well... a six legged something or other. Kind of a cross with a platapus and a bison.

The landstriders' legs weren't that long. They were played by people in suits, so even assuming that the puppets of Kira and Jen were intended to be perceived as human-size creatures, the landstriders only had 6-foot-long legs. They weren't very horse-like, either. I can't really think of a real-world animal to equate them with.

And Appa (from Avatar) is a flying bison. Oh my inner geek is showing...

Avatar also had a character riding an animal like a giant ferret, but it had no eyes and maneuvered by an extremely accute sense of smell. I don't recall that they gave it a name, though.

We've got a player in a D&D game who rides an axebeak. It's a large bird from one of the Sword & Sorcery Creature Compendiums, I think. Similar to the chocobo from Final Fantasy.

Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories had some people who rode on non-intelligent humanoids. But at the moment I can't remember what they were called.

The Twk-men in the Dying Earth setting ride on dragonflies, but the Twk-men are tiny, sort of like fairies. I'm sure there are plenty of stories or games with giant insect mounts, though.

In RuneQuest people rode all sorts of animals: gazelles, impalas, bison, boar, zebra, sable antelope... And we had a magic saddle once that just floated along by itself, without any animal to wear it.

I think Warhammer used to have riding rams for the dwarves. And I've seen some riding bears depicted.

I think someone already mentioned the red elk from Princess Mononoke.

 

[David Howery]

some post-apocalyptic novel I read many years ago had a horde of Mongol-ish types riding war bulls... that'd be cool....

 

[Meloncov]

It was called a Boga. It was made into a miniature for the SW CMG in the first giant set.

Mr. Beef

I'm pretty sure that Boga was the name of the individual creature, not the species. The novelization just calls them riding lizards.