Animal Husbandry#
You don't break a horse. You agree with it, and then you both pretend it was your idea.
The trade of animals: taming them, teaching them, breaking them to ride and keeping them shod and healthy. Anyone can buy a tame horse. Only an animal husband can tame the rare ones nobody sells.
Ranks and quests#
The guild’s hall sets each rank’s quest. Six ranks has what every rank makes, and making something how the craft roll works.
- Level0Rank 1: Inquirer
Trash to Shoddy · ×1 worth · 1d6 craft roll
Muck out the hall's stables every day for a week and learn every animal's name.
- Level20Rank 2: Hobbyist
Crude to Inferior · ×1.25 worth · 2d6 craft roll
Teach a dog to follow and stay, and show the hall it listens to you over anyone else.
- Level40Rank 3: Apprentice
Shoddy to Acceptable · ×1.5 worth · 2+3d6 craft roll
Shoe a horse that kicks.
- Level60Rank 4: Journeyman
Poor to Fine · ×1.75 worth · 4+4d6 craft roll
Tame something wild that nobody sells, and keep it healthy for a season.
- Level80Rank 5: Master
Inferior to Flawless · ×2 worth · 5+5d6 craft roll
Break a royal horse to the saddle and ride it from one end of a province to the other.
- Level100Rank 6: Artisan
Adequate to Masterwork · ×3 worth · 6+6d6 craft roll
Calm a creature the hall would have killed, and bring it back alive.
The work#
Anyone can buy a tamed pet or mount. An animal husband can tame the ones that aren’t for sale, the rarer creatures of the wild. Magical creatures can’t be tamed: they’re too clever, or what they need isn’t anything you can give them. Wild Animals has what walks Sedia, with the DC to tame each, and Pets & Hunting Birds what the pet sellers keep.
Taming and teaching#
Tame takes a wild creature as a pet, with a focus charm to hold its attention, and calm settles one you can’t tame before it starts a fight. Lore creature tells you its weaknesses and anything else worth knowing. Teach gives a pet a command (the table below has them and their DCs), and name creature raises what it’s worth.
Mounts#
Break animal trains an animal to carry a rider, and a stubborn one takes several tries. Brush settles a mount’s temper and raises its worth, and install horseshoes fits all four shoes from your pack. Once a shoe goes, a horse loses health fast, worst of all at a gallop. Hay keeps an animal alive at three meals a day; oats and barley keep it happy at one.
Skills and tools#
- Tame
- Allows the animal husbandry expert to tame a wild creature as a pet. Requires a focus charm.
- Teach
- Allows the animal husbandry expert to teach a tamed creature a certain action. Actions available are attack, defend, stay, and follow.
- Lore Creature
- Allows the animal husbandry expert to identify a creature, its weaknesses, and other information that might be useful about the creature.
- Break Animal
- Allows the animal husbandry expert to attempt to break-in an animal for riding. This skill may not succeed the first few times and may have to be retried more often on some of the more stubborn animals.
- Brush
- Brush an animal to increase the animals value and reduce it's temper. This is especially helpful on mounts or animals that are rode.
- Name Creature
- Allows the animal husbandry expert to name its pet creature or mount, increasing its value.
- Calm
- Allows the animal husbandry expert to attempt to calm an untamable creature to a passive state to prevent unecessary battle.
- Install Horseshoes
- Requires 4 horseshoes in inventory. Installs horseshoes on all of the feet of a horse mount. Once a horseshoe goes bad on a horse, that horses health will decrease rapidly, especially during riding. Installing new horseshoes will prevent the decrease of health during the mounts movement.
- Fish
- Allows the animal husbandry expert to cast a baited fishing pole into water and reel in what bites. Requires a fishing pole and bait or a lure on its hook.Tools: fishing pole
| Tool | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Focus Charm | Focus charms help draw the attention of the animal, calming them and allowing them to become amenable to the animal husband. |
| Hay | Hay is the bare minimum necessary to sustain an animal, they should be fed 3 times a day at least to remain healthy. |
| Oats And Barley | Oats and barley is the favorite food of most animals. They need to be fed just once per day, a generous amount to remain healthy. |
| Hoof Pick | A short hooked iron pick used to clear stones, gravel and packed dirt from the underside of a hoof. |
| Hoof Knife | A short blade with a hooked tip, used by farriers to pare the sole and frog of a hoof before shoeing. |
| Nippers | Long-handled pincers with sharp meeting jaws, used to trim hoof wall or bite through nails and binding wire. |
| Alligator Clincher | A farrier’s toothed lever tool that bends the protruding nail ends over against the hoof wall to clinch a shoe. |
| Clinch Block | A small iron block held against the cut nail ends on a hoof wall while a farrier hammers them over to clinch a shoe. |
| Pritchel | A tapered iron punch a farrier drives through a hot horseshoe at the anvil to open its nail holes, then uses to carry the shoe. |
What it makes#
Commands#
What teach can give a pet, and the DC to teach it.
| Command | DC | What the pet does |
|---|---|---|
| Attack | 10 | Pet creature attacks its masters target |
| Defend | 20 | Pet creature defends the master |
| Stay | 15 | Pet creature stays in spot |
| Follow | 15 | Pet creature follows its master |
The guildmaster#
Bram Tolley breaks horses for every stable from Dupree to the Port of Doonan and raises sled dogs nobody else can handle. The racing factions hire him to gentle their coursers at the Faction Stables, and he takes the work for the use of the yard. The pixies bring him animals they can’t explain, and he has never turned one away, which is why his paddocks are fenced twice.
Find Bram Tolley at the training paddock at the Faction Stables, in Esthar. It’s the guild’s only hall: you join there, and you come back to it for every rank’s quest, inquirer to artisan.
Trades it works with#
What animal husbandry gives the other trades.
What it takes from them.
Blacksmithing
Horseshoes, and the pritchel and clinch tools to fit them.
Leatherworking
Bridles and saddles, and everything else a rider straps onto a mount.
A good pair
Leatherworking: Break the horse, then make its saddle and bridle yourself.
Who takes it up#
The classes whose work animal husbandry fits best. Any class can join any guild.
Monk
Monks would rather a fight never happened, and calm stops one before it starts.
Woodsman
A woodsman lives among animals already, and the ones they tame are the ones nobody can buy.
Hermit
A hermit alone in the wild could do worse than a companion that hunts.
Scout
Scouts ride far and fast, and a mount they broke themselves goes further.
The guild finder ranks every guild for a class.
How it shows#
None of this changes a roll. It’s how the people around you can tell what you do for a living.
- Hair from three different animals on your clothes, and none of it from one you own.
- Horses settle when you walk into a stable, and you talk to them like old friends.
What others say#
Tolley's dogs pulled my sled through a whiteout to the door of the inn. I'd have died out there. The dogs looked bored.
Never buy a horse in Esthar unless you've watched someone ride it past the ruins at night.
The thing in the second fence
Bram Tolley has something in his inner paddock the pixies brought him from the Forest of Frost, and it’s growing. He says it’s harmless. The Rift Watch says it’s the third animal out of that forest this year with eyes like the dark light over the Scar, and they want it destroyed. Bram wants the party to help him get it somewhere neither side will find it.
