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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 7139122" data-attributes="member: 6777454">There are plenty of suggestions here that might be epic mounts for a singular hero, no doubt. However, I think it is important to keep in mind the actual challenges of choosing what they could use as a mount.First, it would be an animal that can live underground in cramped quarters in effectively complete darkness. Anything that needs sunlight for heat or is most active during the day or needs a lot of room to move around just won't work. That eliminates quite a lot of the suggestions here.Second, it needs to be something that can live off some sort of food source that Dwarfs can mass produce. Without sunlight, I really have no idea how Dwarves feed themselves and I don't think I have ever seen a fantasy that has properly explored that. We always hear about Dwarven alcohol, but it is always weirdly alcohols that require a giant field out in the open under direct daylight every day for most of the year and a proper amount of rain or other waters. Where exactly is this subterranean race getting all this wheat and barley from? It is a massive flaw in the conception of the race. And other solutions-- mushrooms or something? There is just simply no way you could grow enough to feed a population center large enough to develop the sort of culture they have and certainly not the excess needed to raise armies. The only possible solution is that the Dwarves are completely dependent upon trade of the stone they quarry and the ore they mine in trade for food and would immediately starve to death if left without a surface trading partner.Now, horses require a massive amount of room to be able to graze. For each and every horse, you need an acre or two of pasture land. And that is if you are in absolute ideal conditions with perfect amount of sunlight and water and good soil-- and that is with an extraordinarily streamlined plant like grass. Granted, while grass grows better than almost anything else, it is also true that it is very difficult to digest and doesn't really produce all that much energy once digested. Grazing animals have taken to eating it because it is simply so readily available. But underground? Well, you are without all the energy produced from the sun and thus nothing will grow there. Sure, you might be able to harness geothermal energy and have some sort of adapted plant or fungal life that can grow allowing for some food production-- but it just isn't going to be able to rival the energy from the sunlight hitting half the surface of the whole planet for roughly half the day.In other words-- Dwarves in all likelihood aren't really capable of feeding themselves, much less having vast acres of fertile pastureland for any creatures to graze. While this might not eliminate all creatures, it eliminates just about every possible creature. You need to really answer "what does this thing eat and where does the food come from?"Third, the animal needs to be domesticated or at least tamed. Any animal that is both capable and generally prone to just straight up kill any random level 1 dwarf is just not going to work as a mount. Sure, maybe a dwarf with the right mystical powers or the right skill set can force their will upon such a creature, but only that one particular dwarf-- if there is going to be a trade in the creatures as mounts, they really do need to have been properly domesticated for generations and certainly would no longer have the power or aggressiveness of their wild cousins. Even after domesticating them there is a breeding program to make really big and strong ones-- they are just not going to have the viciousness of their wild cousins or else they would be more likely to turn on the dwarf. So anything that says "this is a badass deadly creature that would just overrun an army" is instantly invalidated as a potential candidate for a general dwarven mount.Fourth and final point I need to bring up-- whatever this creature is, even if you do manage to get around all three previous points somehow... is the creature actually faster than a Dwarf or have enough of an increased carrying capacity to have even made it worth the effort for the Dwarves to have spent generation upon generation breaking, breeding and domesticating the things? If it is just marginally faster, then no Dwarven society would have gone through the trouble in the first place.My final analysis is.... Dwarves should not have standard cavalry and for very, very good reasons. Their choice of home has eliminated any chance of there being any qualifying creature that they could use for such a purpose-- plus, there really isn't all that much need for one. Their physical stature also demonstrates that they have not been bred themselves to be using any sort of mount-- surely if any such mount was available, those who were better physically equipped to make use of them would have become wealthier, more powerful and had more children as a direct result causing a notable physical change in the dwarven population-- their physiques altering just as much as any beast they used as transportation as the symbiotic relationship developed over many, many generations.Now, if Dwarves are not subterranean at all... besides then having to find another explanation for their unusual physique, they would naturally both be able to and have every reason to make use of the same mounts as humans... maybe just a shorter, bulkier breed that they could better mount yet could still hold their frames. There really would be no reason they would breed a totally separate animal all together.</blockquote>

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