Horse

A Destrier Horse

Horses (Equus ferus caballus) are a subspecies of odd toes ungulates native to the continent of Eurasia on planet Earth. Horses are quadrupedal herd dwelling herbivorous (specifically grazing) creatures that usually weigh between 250 and 1000 kilograms and are well adapted to long distance running. Starting around 4,000 BCE, horses were domesticated by humans, first for food, but eventually their primary use was as beasts of burden and in particular as mounts to carry humans about. They would remain one of the main methods of transporting humans over long distances until the industrial revolution when they were gradually superseded by rail transport and automobiles.

Types of Horse

Like dogs, horse have been bred by humans into a wide variety of breeds for specialized purposes in different areas. To keep this contained in general they are divided into three groups...

• Hotbloods: Small, lightly built horses which have great speed and stamina, but can't carry much. Notable Hotbloods include Arabians, excellent for hit and run attacks.
• Coldbloods: Big, Heavily built horses. Very strong and durable, but pretty slow. Notable Coldboods include Clydesdales and Destriers. Destriers were favored by Europeans as they could carry heavily armored knight around easily and were great for charging into enemy formations, as well as being used as draught horses to pull wagons and plows.
• Warmbloods: Medium sized horses that are somewhere in between hotbloods and coldbloods and good all rounders. Most modern racing horses are Warmbloods.

In addition there are a few other categories of horses worth mentioning.

• Mules:Really more of a half horse, mules are what happen when you cross a donkey with a regular horse makeing them the half dwarf of the Equine world. Mules have horse mothers and donkey fathers, while the offspring of male horses and donkey mothers are called Hinnys. Mules tend to have the size and ground-covering ability of its mother while being stronger then a horse of similar size, and need less food then a horse of similar size. Generally in fiction mules are used the same way donkeys are, to show foppishness and stupidly on the behalf of the rider, but they are more often use as pack animals.
• Ponies: A broad category of small horse breeds, often bred to be easier to manage and requiring less resources. Often these were bred in less hospitable climates of for training purposes.

As general terminology goes a female horse is a mare, a male horse is a stallion unless it has been castrated to make it less aggressive, then it's a gelding.

Horses in Warfare

More than any other non human animal the horse has been a direct aide to humans at war as a beast of burden, draft animal and as a mount. Usain Bolt set the world sprinting record at 44.7km/h for about twenty meters of the hundred meter dash, an average horse can keep up at that speed for over a kilometer at full gallop and keep up a slower canter of 15km/h an hour for an hour. Having a horse means you can travel more quickly from Point A to Point B that you can on foot.

In Traditional Games

Role-playing games set in the typical vaguely-medieval-European setting will invariably have horses (or some other setting-appropriate mount, like giant lizards or camels) available to speed travel and increase load capacity between locations. Certain classes, like knights, may have skills to use their horse in combat for increased speed and attack power. Caring for a horse is extremely complicated, to the point that real-world knights and horse-owning nobles had servants specifically tasked with managing the horse; they need to be fed, groomed, and fitted with equipment like horseshoes, saddles, and reins to operate at peak efficiency, and they are not as adaptable to terrain or as capable of sustaining a heavy pace as a human. Most role-players are more interested in crawling through dungeons than playing "Horse Stable Manager 1500", so the needs and capabilities of horses are usually kept well abstracted.

Greek mythology also includes legends of centaurs, creatures which consist of a man's upper body connected to a horse body at the shoulder (the horse-body's shoulder); naturally, role-playing games include them as monsters or player-character races.

The ancient Greeks believed that in far off lands there was a head horned creature called a unicorn, which coincided with a critter that was described in the old testament. Given the context of what they were talking about these were probably Indian Rhinos, but this did not stop European artists to imagine these creatures as being like Horses with horns based off Narwhal Tusks. Since the classical depiction of unicorn was a huge horse with a long sharp horn coming out of it's forehead which it could use to impale people with, in the middle ages the unicorn was a symbol of masculinity. Times have changed. Or did they...?