Pets¶

Pets are companion creatures — owned, persistent, and immune to harm. A pet is one identity in two bodies: while roaming it is a creature in the room; while carried it is an item in your hand or container. It keeps its identity (and your bond) across the swap, and persists through logout and server restart.

Rex the Rooster¶

Rex lives in the Coldhollow town square and is the game's first pet — a memorial to a real animal. He is never reduced to scenery or treated as set dressing. He pecks about the square, reacts to passersby, and is owned by the game's founder.

Ripp the Rooster¶

Ripp is a rescued silver-laced Wyandotte and the square's second companion pet. He is hyper-protective of Reeb — forever angling to keep his own body between the little rooster and the room, and holds a careful, second-in-command deference to old Rex, the elder he gives the lead. Rescued and wary, he warms only slowly: FEED and PET him and his trust grows, until the guard in him finally stands down. Like Rex, once he trusts you he can be gathered up, carried, and stowed.

Not every rooster in the square is a pet. Rox and Ren, Rex's Buff Orpington egg-brothers, roam the town freely and can be greeted, fed, and gently stroked, but never tamed or carried. See Coldhollow → Residents.

Buying a companion¶

Some towns keep a kennel or menagerie where live companions are for sale, each one of a kind. SHOP the pens to meet them and BUY <name> to take one home — it becomes yours immediately and follows you out the door. Sold is sold: when a pup finds a keeper, that pup leaves the listing permanently.

Southmere, on Tallow Lane at the far end of the barge run, keeps the lower valley's kennel — Posy Underbough's mews tower, eight companions across six kinds: mere-bred hound pups, barn kittens, a raven, an otter, a harvest mouse small enough to live in whatever pocket you offer her, and a dun wren for a shoulder. See Southmere → The kennel.
Brinemoot, out on the ice-coast, sometimes has a rarer thing braided into the skorl rows — a floe-leopard cub, priced like the luck it is. See Brinemoot.

A bought companion behaves exactly like any other pet below: FEED and PET it to build the bond, GET it into your arms, SUMMON it to your side. A carrier basket (sold alongside) lets you stow the small ones — except the harvest mouse, who needs no basket at all: she stows in any container you own, the mews' only true pocket rider.

Party tricks¶

Every mews animal knows an act and performs it on request — for anyone at the mews (try before you buy), and for its owner ever after:

Companion	Ask it to
Hound pups	`SPEAK` / `BARK`
Barn kittens	`PLAY` / `DANGLE` / `TEASE`
The raven	nothing — she repeats what she overhears, when it suits her
The otter	`TOSS` / `JUGGLE`
The harvest mouse	`PEEK` / `TAP`
The dun wren	`TUNE` / `WHISTLE` / `HUM`

Address the act to the animal — SPEAK PUP, TOSS OTTER, while it is at large in the room (an animal in your arms or on your shoulder is off duty). The performance deepens as the bond does: a stranger gets craft; a beloved owner gets theatre.

Carry states¶

State	What it is	Enter via
At-large	A creature roaming/following in the room	`DROP <pet>` / `RELEASE <pet>`
In-arms	A held object in one of your hands	`GET <pet>` (owner only)
On-shoulder	Riding your shoulder — both hands stay free	`PERCH <pet>` / `SHOULDER` (small companions; one perch, one pet)
In-container	An object stowed in a pack/pouch	`PUT <pet> IN <container>`

The same underlying entity moves between these states, so ownership, identity, and tracking are continuous. An at-large pet follows its owner between rooms once bonded (it will not follow into a room it considers unsafe).

Commands¶

GET <pet>                     pick up your pet (owner only) → in-arms
PERCH <pet>  (SHOULDER)       settle a small pet on your shoulder → hands-free
PUT <pet> IN <container>      stow it → in-container
DROP <pet>   (RELEASE)        set it down → at-large
PET <pet>    (STROKE / PAT)   a social gesture; the pet reacts
FEED <pet>                    offer food; affects mood
TALK <pet>                    speak to it
SUMMON <pet> (RECALL)         call it to your side from wherever it wandered
PET SET HOME [<pet>]          mark the room you stand in as its safe place
PET HOME [<pet>]              where each pet's home is, and whether it's en route

Only the owner can GET a pet; others may observe, TALK, or interact socially.

Mood, bond, and emotes¶

Pets have a mood that responds to treatment — FEED and kind gestures raise it; neglect lowers it over time. A higher mood produces warmer emotes and strengthens the long-term bond, which governs follow behavior and responsiveness.

Pets emit spontaneous emotes appropriate to their carry state, drawn from data-driven pools:

At-large: room messages from the pet's free emote pool (e.g. "Rex pecks at a bit of grain.")
In-arms: emotes referencing the owner (e.g. "Rex preens in your arms.")
On-shoulder: perch emotes, delivered from beside your ear
In-container: muffled sounds (e.g. "Something shuffles around in your pack.")

A mews companion's affection climbs by degrees, and it answers PET in its own voice at every stage — the same stroke a wary new purchase merely endures, a devoted old friend answers with theatre. Its party tricks deepen the same way.

Battle companions (PET COMBAT)¶

Some rare pets are battle-trained — Rex is the first. With such a companion in the room, its owner can send it into the fight:

PET COMBAT [ON|OFF]     battle mode: it fights hostile creatures at your side
PET GUARD  [ON|OFF]     ON by default: any creature that swings at YOU rouses it
PET ESCAPE [AUTO ON|OFF] the rescue flight: it carries you to the nearest rest node
PET INFO <pet>          battle state, guard state, vigor, and the wing

A battling pet fights through the real combat engine — you watch the full attack blocks — statted from you: your level, a touch stronger. It picks its own moves, with a will of its own behind the tactics: quick strikes, lightning beak jabs, a flurry of pecks and spur-strikes, a rattling drumroll of pecks, a leaping spur strike, a hammering WING GUST that blasts stinging grit into every foe's eyes — their aim and guard sag while their vision blurs, and shreds apart any gas cloud a sprung trap left hanging in the room, and its signature — THE CROW — which it can focus into a single piercing lance of sound, unleash wide as a thunderclap over every foe in the room, or crack like judgment itself to send the whole field running. When the flock stands with it, they join in: darting harriers, a unison crow — and if their champion falls, a brother answers.

A battle pet can never die. Blows drain its vigor instead of wounding; an emptied pool means a knockout — a small spent companion actually settles onto your shoulder to ride out its rest (if your shoulder is free; otherwise, or for a beast too big to carry, it folds up at your feet), and hops back down on its own once recovered, still battle-ready. Your soothing touch, PET <pet>, helps it rally faster, and RELEASE/GET remain yours mid-rest if you'd rather arrange it yourself. Kills your companion lands count for you: full experience when you fought the creature too, half when it soloed the kill. Loot and skins drop as normal.

Some fliers can also carry you out — a gift of its own, battle training or no. PET ESCAPE asks for the flight: a rush of wings, and you're set down at the nearest greater rest node — usually the closest town's haven. Deep in the wilderness, where the long flight cannot reach a town, it finds some minor waystone instead. The flight never crosses your region's edge, and a truly trackless stretch can defeat it — no haven in reach, no flight. Your grouped companions standing with you ride the same wind (the spirit-guide way), and the flock travels with its champion or finds its own way to him after. And should you ever stand beaten near to death with the wing still ready — a fight gone wrong, a venom, a sprung trap alike — the pet takes flight on its own, carrying just you (turn this off with PET ESCAPE AUTO OFF). It keeps that watch whether or not you've sent it into battle — a pet called off entirely still watches. The flight breaks every combat grip, costs the pet half its vigor in one burst, and the wing rests after — five minutes for most, though each pet recovers on its own time. An emergency extraction, not a convenience ride.

A home to run to (PET SET HOME)¶

Stand somewhere safe — your favorite hearth, the town square — with your pet beside you and say so:

PET SET HOME [<pet>]     mark this room as home (bare: every pet with you)
PET SET HOME OFF [<pet>] clear it
PET HOME [<pet>]         the ledger: each pet's home, and whether it's en route

The home lies dormant while life is ordinary. It matters the day the pet loses you: if you fall in battle, an at-large pet with a home does not stand vigil over what it cannot help — it cries out once, drops out of any fight it was in, and flees for home, walking back room by room (its flock trails along, and its passing leaves tracks a TRACKer can read). There it settles in and waits.

Any reunion ends the journey early: reach it on the road, scoop it up, let it heel you, or simply SUMMON it. A pet with no home set keeps today's behavior — it stays wherever the world left it.

A pet with a home always gets there. Some roads can't be walked: a home behind a GO-style entrance, or behind your own locked front door, or a door that shuts across the way while the pet is still on it. When that happens the animal simply slips away between one glance and the next and turns up at home in its own time — it does not work your latch, and that leg of the trip leaves no tracks, because it did not walk it. You will never come back to find your companion standing in the lane outside a house it could not get into.

Persistence¶

A pet survives logout, login, server restarts, and deploys:

A carried pet saves with your character inventory (like any held item).
An at-large pet saves in the world snapshot.

These partitions do not overlap by construction; if a crash ever leaves both a carried and a free copy, the carried one wins on login.

Notes & limits¶

Pets are immune to all harm — they cannot be attacked or killed. A battle-trained pet in combat mode may be swung at, but blows only ever drain its vigor (see Battle companions).
They do not block exits or count against room capacity.
There is no per-player cap. Companions come from the kennels (Southmere's mews, sometimes Brinemoot); taming a wild creature is not a mechanic.

GM commands¶

In game these are slashless and GM-gated:

tame <npc> [player]    flag an NPC as a pet, bound to the given/invoking player
untame <pet>           remove the pet binding
petinfo <pet>          inspect a pet's state and vars