Equine Vampiric Virus?
Vampire-Horses? *grins*

Or you and your 6 friends get hired to protect a village in Aztlan from a local bandit/corp exec that wants to exploit them.

"We deal in lead friend"

then we're in the same business friend

I "own" two horses, with a third on the way. (Own is in quotes because they're really my wife's horses, I just shovel manure)

A mixed blood, unregistered horse can be bought for a couple hundred dollars that is minimally trained. Failed ex race horses can be bought at auction as well (thoroughbreds and/or arabs) and depending on source will have varying degrees of training (most US race horses are barely controlled freaks, British horses, particularly the ones in the longer races, are very well behaved). Registered (aka pureblood) horses start at a couple thousand. Expect to add 2-3 thousand for a well trained horse.

Arabs, in theory, have a lot of endurance but I'm of the opinion most of that has been bred out except for those horses in 2+ mile races. They are very smart and clever, with many of them able to open gate fasteners. Paso Finos are a spanish breed that have a very smooth gate but that comes at the cost of speed. The big breeds (belgians, clydesdales, etc) are pretty rare and unless you're wearing plate mail, hauling massive wagons, or plowing aren't worth the effort of feeding them. Saddlebreds are supposed to be good riders but I find them flaky and prone to reacting badly to birds, plastic bags, and sunlight reflecting in water. Standardbreds are quite common thanks to the Amish who use them as buggy horses. Quarterhorses are good sprinters, barrel racers, and cattle horses (some of them have a border collie-like herding instinct), they are also the most common breed as twice as many registered quarterhorses were born in 2008 as all the other registered breeds combined.

Smart arse horses. I knew that one I was riding was laughing at me.

Only as competitors.

I thought arabians were supposed to be fast but skitish.

hmm, i wonder . . would such an animal be considered ONE or MORE HorsePower? O.o

Hi,

I thought about the subject a bit, how about an adventure where there are two immortal elf sisters and they live in a metaplane which can be gated to by riding around a special oak on a unicorn thirteen times on midsummer. Recently this oak was bought by Horizon, uprooted and planted in Seattle as part of their urban beautification process.

The two sisters come back to a land that is no longer England.

They have a month of thrills and challenges as they come to terms with the Shadowrun universe and find a way back to their enchanted kingdom.

Think Enchanted meets Shadowrun.

Yay! Mega-moose!

Reminds me of a time someone played a half-ogre with a Dire Moose for a mount in a D&D game a few years back.

That said, I don't want Shadowrun to become like that D&D game.

I wouldn't suppose they come back at all if noone helps them, since immortal elves are 'I don't age' type immortal, not 'you blow off my head and I just reform it and laugh before I rip off yours' type. But the idea sounds like a lot of fun, especially if you want an adventure with a fae-ish vibe. The fae on whose turf this tree stood might also want to have it back; and for rules purposes, I'd suggest the tree shares it's life force with a free spirit with astral gateway power, for the metaplanar portal, that only reacts to unicorns and other weird-ish rituals.

Fae wanting revenge on Horizon might also be one of the rare opportunities to legitimatly use soem of the alternative characters as NPC, namely the Portland pixie tribe, who may counsel their brit brethren about the ways of doing stuff in this place to begin with.

Just wondering who will ride the unicorn around an oak in DT Seattle thirteen times to bring them there to begin with. Maybe chanting is enough? Or maybe the oak can spit out the fae/elf princesses at will, and the ritual is needed to bring them back. That run would have a nice ghostbusters vibe to it, actually, with the tree periodically releasing angry fae and maybe even scary, people-eating mist like the Bretagnne stuff ...

Huh, I might steal this idea, if that's okay with you.


*sigh*

It pretty much already IS D&D. Especially with Runners' Companion.

EDIT: It still feels inane. Like something is really missing.

Once upon a time in a land very, very far from here was the land of the faerie kingdoms. Every day sumptious feast would be held and every evening a ball would be held. The pride of elven king was his two twin daughters who were said to the fairest and the most beautiful in the kingdom. From time to time there would be suitors from far off lands to come and woo their hand, the challenges set before their suitors left many to ride back home to their kingdoms with their head low.

it was during the end of their 18th birthday as they were escaping the boredom of their own party and their inevitable suitors that they discovered a little known room in a little known part of the castle. There was a mirror held in the bows of a tree that had withered. The mirror did not display their counterfeit, but rather displayed a city more grand and different form any they had previously imagined.

Life was often brutal and short, and dirty. It was fascinating for princesses who were used to not a single strand out of place and not a single mote of dust in even the most remotest part of the ballroom. Here was a land that had never heard of them. The more they looked the more mesmerised they became with what they saw, until finally one of them touched the mirror.

With a whoosh and a shriek one grabbed the other and were transported to this vision they beheld. They stood in the middle of a park as people passed them by. It was cold and it started to rain.

Hmm... Maybe the tree needs to be touched with the horn of a unicorn.

I think it would be amazing on legitimately using some of the alternative character types, something like pixies and sasquatch. I think if I use the flavour text above I could also have the flipside of the adventure a group of suitors join up as a band and come to rescue the princesses, who could then be the character types in runners companion.

It would interesting from a literary perspective on seeing the two sisters go in opposite directions, one who becomes enamoured by the physicality of the location and the other to lose her haughtiness and regain a sense of propriety.

The other side, and really the original side was the idea of being 10 again and just having a fun adventure with horses and elven princesses.

Ideas are meant to be stolen.

Cool! That'd work. So maybe a mage resting under the oak (planted in the uni district) had his focus containing part of a unicorn horn drop onto the tree's roots and started it all.


Oh yeah. A Sasquatch bard, twi pixie twin brothers - one sorcerer, one fighter - and a wise but backstabby and generally amoral Naga mercenary tactican mage. I like that! Finally a way to use these character types without being disruptive.


Indeed ... maybe they're seperated, being chased by some meanies, and while one ends up with the PCs (assuming a normal party), the other might end up with other forces, maybe a dryad living in rural Snohomish, or maybe at one of the less pretty places that twists her, depending on what the party is like ... lots of possibilities there.


In case you really want too get silly ... German canon has the Querx metavariant, a dwarf type with no skull hair save for beards and blue skin. According to German canon, they live in Saxony's wilder areas, in reclusive little villages.

Poorly trained arabs are skittish because they are clever. See, after they hit 1yro most horses automatically classify new things as "danger" because in the wild that's the statistically safe bet.

Arabs are smart enough to recognize differences in objects of similar types eg a paper bag vs a plastic bag. So they need more training. That makes them great survivors and sentries since they can learn so much.

My wife's first horse was an Arab mare she trained for reigning (western dressage), barrel racing, conformation, native dress and buggy pulling and it won at regional and state amateur contests. Normally no one tries to get a horse to do all that but she was a kid full of Black Stallion novels and no one had the heart to tell her horses weren't that smart in real life.

That mare was quite exceptional as none of the other horses lived up to her standard. Unfortunately she died about 2 years ago at the age of 30, which is also unusually old. If it wasn't for the cancer I wouldn't have been surprised for her to hit 40.

German canon has the Querx metavariant, a dwarf type with no skull hair save for beards and blue skin. According to German canon, they live in Saxony's wilder areas, in reclusive little villages.
Smurfes are no SR4 canon !
Neither English,American nor German

HougH!
Medicineman

Do they have a trangendered blonde who was changed into her current state by an evil mage?

source or it did not happen!
with book title, page and other such info please *snickers*

Yes, but since SR3 stats were used for the rhine horse, this isn't only about SR4 here.


Deutschland in den Schatten 2, pp. 122f. They live in the Erzgebirge, chiefly.

Reminds me of my first gelding. Poor guy. Fat and sassy little Arab, and no one would call him skittish-especially not when one Halloween I dressed him up like a bunch of grapes by taping purple balloons all over him (with one green one on top of his head). They kept popping the entire night.

Did y'all play Shinobi 3? Because in that game you get to be a ninja who in one level performs a one-man horseback charge against a modern military base. It works because your horse can jump 50 feet into the air and you can throw kunai.

Certainly. And their village elders wear red, as opposed to plebeians, who wear white. Also, everyone savee the transgendered walk around toopless, regardless of weather.

No, seriosuly, those little details were propably cut in the editing process, but I know for a fact that before fanpro went belly-up such NPC were planned for a published adventure.

Sounds like someone got a little loopy at an office party and put the plans on paper.

You know how in cowboy movies people always use their horses as cover? How effective would a horse belly be for cover nowadays with modern rifles and such?

God that was such an awesome cartoon... Hrm... need to see if I can make a Zacharia Fox or a Gooseman. As for Doc... Well any hacker is him, or maybe a TM would better describe him. Then Neko not sure what you would do to make her, some sort of mage I'm sure.

Was it effective then? Think about it, if the horse gets shot it's leaving (if not dead).

So how that would with a riding skill? This has actually came up in my group before and I treated it roughly like a vehicle test with it's own skill (I presumed riding a horse was different than riding a super-sized Thunderbird which would still be different than piloting an LATV.

Riding is very different from anything else you'll ever "pilot." Not even riding a bike is the same.

Of course, some principles apply ("don't fall off") but going about them is different.

And then there's riding dragons, but that's almost the same as riding a horse with one major difference: the horse is in control and you're just along for the ride.

You just gave me the mental image of Anne McAffery kicking Dunklezhan in the nuts.

I aim to please~

I believe the pilot of "Firefly" addressed that issue pretty well.

You could get your horse some dermal armor implants though.(and MBW III and a monowhip tail and OH!OH! I know, how about for a little irony, put retractable hand spurs ON the horse.)

Well, given that a horse's body provides something like 24" of meaty cover, yeah, it'd work for anything but the biggest sniper rifles. Very few rifles are able to punch completely through the torso. Necks and legs are less protection but it would still soak up some abuse.

Of course, it only really works if you consider the horse fully expendable. My wife would be aghast at the idea but IMO getting another horse is cheaper than even a minor bullet wound.

If my husband thought that replacing my horse was cheaper than fixing up a bullet wound (major, minor, whatever), then... then... well, he'd be free a bullet wound but have some extra damage, you know what I mean? He'd probably wish he'd just taken the bullet.

heh, i figure thats standard operating parameters at fanpro's main office, or maybe its all european translations? that french book had some weird stuff in it as well...