Re: Re: Volume 1???
tensen said:
The burrowing mounts are sort of difficult.
I can dig that.
In real life people have tried a number of animals as mounts. Below I present a partial list, featuring those animals I can recall.
•Bears
•Bison
•Camels (Bactrians and Dromedaries)
•Cattle (including oxen)
•Dogs
•Donkeys
•Elephants (Asian and African Savannah. I don't know about the African Forest Elephant)
•Hippopotami
•Horses
•Llamas
•Mules
•Ostriches
•Ponies
•Rhinos
•Swine
•Wolves
•Zebras
Beasts of burden (this category includes draft animals) have included the above plus:
•Cassowaries
•Humans
•Monkeys (various species)
•Rheas
Of the above camels, cattle, dogs, donkeys, elephants, horses, mules, humans and llamas, have been used regularly, and in parts of the world continue to be used to this day.
BTW, there was a species of elephant like animal living in the Tunisia area up to around the 3rd century AD, when it went extinct. Technically speaking, while it looked a lot like an elephant, it wasn't even in the same genus. (Same family, but not the same genus.) It is thought that Hannibal used this animal in his invasion of Italy during the Second Punic War, and it was this animal that the Romans used in their games prior to the 3rd century. (The Romans weren't very big on the environment.)
So when your gnome paladin calls for his special mount, he might get a cassowary (gots a nasty kick, them cassowaries do
).
Late note: The zebra (plains and Grevy's) has long been considered a mean, unreliable animal, hard to tame and near impossible to domesticate. Recently a fellow has started using the new horse handling technigues pioneered by that "Horse Whisperer" fellow (who's name I can't remember right now) and apparently having some success training plains zebras as riding animals and beasts of burden. Given that the Russians domesticated the Arctic Fox in a few generations of breeding, we may see domestic zebra fairly soon. That would change life in equatorial Africa in very profound ways.
