Psi-Wars Mounts

We had a recent discussion on the Discord about cuisine and culture, even getting down into how different circumstances result in different butchery methods (ie, why I can't get the same cuts of beef in the Netherlands that I can in the US).  Someone joked that an "article on Ranathim butchery incoming" which is almost certainly a reference to the fact that I sometimes post very interesting, but perhaps not entirely useful, things to Psi-Wars.

Well, here's another thing nobody asked for: Mounts for Psi-Wars!

As I work on the Frontier Marshal, people are obviously going to want details on what their space cowboys ride. The clear answer is "Repulsor-cycles, or a freaking repulsor-truck.  C'mon." We still have cowboys in the real world and most don't ride horses anymore.  They ride in SUVs.  I suspect Psi-Wars "cowboys" would, realistically, be much the same.

That said, we can't escape the mystique horses still hold for us, and we expect space cowboys to ride horses. After all, we see some sort of space horse in space opera all the time, even in Star Wars. And it makes sense, after a fashion. The creation of trucks and SUVs requires considerable industrial infrastructure that might not yet be in place on a world, but a horse can "live off the land," provided the land has the right climate and resources available.  Frontier Marshals regularly deal with the uncivilized wilds of the far rim, so might have to make do without any vehicles, and thus might have to endure with a mount of some kind.

Alright, well, that seems like sufficient justification. How to handle them?  Well, in practice, I see them working like robots: simple characters that have perhaps 1 minor disadvantage (Easily abstracted away into a -1 HAM clause once per session, if the mount is being difficult), and a quirk (to distinguish your mount from others).  Simple enough.  What sort of mounts should we have? Well!

 

The Horse

I've debated how much "real-world" animals to bring into Psi-Wars, but by this point we've established that humans probably came from Earth thousands of years ago, just that Earth itself has been lost in the distant past and the fog of an inconvenient part of hyperspace. Thus, it's entirely plausible that humanity brought some of its animals with them, including horses. It's also plausible that humanity would have engineered their horses based on their needs, so what we get from humanity looks like a horse... but isn't.  Not quite.

I came up with two varieties: the Maradonian Steed and the Westerly Mustang.

The Maradonian Steed is based on the Noble Horse from GURPS Fantasy.  The theory here is not that Space Knights ride around on horses, bu that aristocrats might enjoy horse riding as a hobby, and reeves might use a Steed to get around more backwater worlds. This is "the best" horse from a more modern perspective: it's as fast as the fastest horses in the world, smart, an amazing mount, and graceful.  But it's slightly finickier than real-world horses, making them expensive to keep, which suits an aristocrat with an expensive hobby just fine.

The Westerly Mustang is based on the Wonder Horse from GURPS Bio-Tech.  They've been engineered to be tougher, bigger, and far, far sturdier.  I doubt the average PC will care about reduced consumption, universal digestion and poison resistance, but it makes the rational behind them a lot clearer (and it's possible it'll come up at some point).

 

Both of the horses also drew heavily on the Stallion, from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Allies.  I shaped them around a +5 or +6 speed in a chase scene: quite quick when compared to being on foot, but not that great against vehicles.

The Alien Horse

Half the fun of space opera mounts are the idea of alien mounts: strange monsters that our heroes, or their rivals, can ride. The easiest way to handle it would be just a different colored horse, but we can have a little more fun than that.

The Lithian Katra is an alien riding tiger. The point of the Ranathim is to mimic the bare-chested and/or scantily clad stories of Conan or Barsoom, and nothing quite says that to me like a battle cat.  I've wanted the "Lithian clade" to have a focus on psychic beasts, to suggest that the entire Ranathim biosphere might have been naturally psychic, and the best power for a mount seemed to be telepathy.  This posed some problems (why would a pouncer want to coordinate? Being "one with their beast" isn't really a Ranathim thing, etc), but I think I came up with some good basic solutions.  Of course, this is to create a creature that can "sense your fear," and instill terror, and vanish from  your mind's eye mare than it is to create a deep bond between rider and beast, but I've left that as an interesting possibility. The Katra was an upscaled tiger from DF Allies, mixed with a horse, and then given a slathering of telepathy.

Finally, the Skritchee is one I've had in mind for awhile. I've pictured Moros, the plague world, as an infested place for a long time, and nothing quite says infested like giant riding fleas.  Obviously, they should be jumping everywhere, but it turns out that flight makes a little more sense cost-wise than 4+ levels of Super Jump, and if we start adding wings for maneuvering, cap the ceiling and add a "skipping from a surface" limitation, it looks a lot like very long jumps.  Another problem I ran into is we'd expect a glorified insect to be, er, dumb, so I had to create some way that you could "train it," and I went with a biological solution. I'm also positive that this idea came from some artwork somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can find it anywhere.  I'll also admit that while I put a lot of work into this one, it's not one I expect anyone to actually take, though it does add a lot of flavor to certain worlds.  The Skritchee was ultimately scratch-built, though I borrowed some suggestions from GURPS Space and some of my own research into nasty ol' bugs.

Of course, there will be other alien mounts, especially in the Sylvan Spiral, but I didn't want to get too deep into this particular rabbit hole. We can always revisit the idea later.

The Robot Horse

What would space opera be without a robot horse? Well, it would probably make more sense.  After all, as noted above, you can have a repulsor-cycle for less than the price of a robot horse, and it'll be faster and require less care.  So why would you take a robot horse? Probably because you're a player that thinks it's cool.  I guarantee someone will want a robot horse. 

 

Surprisingly, I was far from the first person to work out a robot horse in GURPS: there's one in GURPS Robots, the Paladin, which I borrowed for the creation of the Startrodder Paladin-Model robot horse. Given that this is a dumb idea, I operated like it was a dumb idea, and that normal people don't buy there, but it sort of makes sense for people already used to horses, and it might be something a whacky Wyrmwerk's scientist would cook up, and it might be an heirloom from a more ancient time when robots were just being created.  Stat-wise, it's basically a super-horse, with armor, a top speed that matches the Steed, more intelligence than any other horse, and the ability to mount a gun and do some truly crazy things.  Altogether, this put it on par with the Katra for "elite mount that costs you extra to have as a character."