Mounts¶

A mount is a pet you can sit on. Everything true of a pet is true of a horse: you buy it once, it is yours by name, it follows you from room to room, and it is still standing where you left it after a restart. What a mount adds is a saddle, and a shorter road.

The yard at Coldhollow's gate¶

Out through the Sagging Town Gate and south along the inside of the wall is Bel Harrow's stable yard: twelve stalls under a sagging lean-to, four of them occupied, a water trough that is more ice than trough, and a hostler who has spent thirty years within kicking range of something heavier than she is.

Bel sells sound stock and says so plainly. SHOP the yard to see the stalls, BUY <name> to take one home.

Mount	Price	On the road
a shaggy moor pony	600 silver	quick
a long-legged grey courser	2,200 silver	quicker

She keeps the tack and feed a rider actually needs on the shelf besides — a sack of oats, a currycomb, a riding blanket, and will give you her opinion for free:

ASK BEL ABOUT HORSES     which one you want (short version: the pony)
ASK BEL ABOUT PONY       ASK BEL ABOUT GREY
ASK BEL ABOUT RIDING     getting on, getting off, and what a horse refuses
ASK BEL ABOUT STABLE     leaving one with her
ASK BEL ABOUT ROAD       where she'd take an animal, and where she wouldn't

Riding¶

MOUNT <animal>      get up
DISMOUNT            get down

A mounted rider moves as one with the animal: it does not pad along at your heels while you are sitting on it. You always begin a session on your own two feet — log in and the horse is standing exactly where you left it, waiting to be mounted again.

What a horse buys you: the road, not the step¶

Walking one room at a time has always been free — no recovery, no stamina, no encumbrance for the walking itself, so a horse cannot make a typed step faster; there is nothing there to shorten.

What a mount shortens is TRAVEL, the auto-walker that carries you across the map while you watch it go by. That is the game's one real road-cost, and a horse cuts it: the moor pony noticeably, the grey courser more. The longer the haul, the more the animal is worth.

Ice is still ice. Picking your way over glaze slows a rider exactly as much as it slows a walker. The trail's own counterplay is not for sale.

What a horse refuses¶

A horse will not climb, will not swim, and will not come indoors.

Each refusal names its own cure — DISMOUNT, and each applies everywhere in the world that has a cliff, a channel or a doorway. This is the interesting half of owning one: a mount that could go anywhere would flatten the map, and one that stops at the water's edge makes you choose between the fast road and the short one.

Nor can a horse be picked up, stowed, perched on a shoulder, or dropped in a carrier basket. Every carrying path in the game refuses her, and none of them had to be taught to.

Stabling¶

STABLE          leave your animal in the hostler's care
STABLE OUT      collect her again

A stabled mount stops following and waits. She is a real creature in a real stall, which means she is in that yard when you come back for her — not in whichever town you happen to be standing in. There is no rent, no capacity, and no way for her to be in two places or neither.

Commands¶

Command	Does
`MOUNT <animal>`	Get up on your mount
`DISMOUNT`	Get down
`STABLE`	Leave your mount in the hostler's care, where it stands
`STABLE OUT`	Collect a mount from the yard you stabled it in
`BUY <name>`	Buy a horse from a hostler's yard

Everything a pet answers to, a mount answers to as well — FEED, PET, SUMMON and the rest. See Pets → Commands.

Notes & limits¶

No saddlebags. A horse carries you, not your kit; carrying capacity is unchanged.
No mounted combat. Riding grants no bonus and no penalty in a fight, and there are no charge or trample moves.
No breeding, training, barding, or summoning a mount to your side. You go to the yard.
Like every companion, a mount cannot be harmed or killed.