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Pegasus Transport Logistics


kais

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I'm replacing the train system in my book with pegasi. This is going to change logistics dynamics across the island chain and I need some help brainstorming. 

I've moved the island the characters are on to the farthest away in the island chain (90 some days away from their closest neighbor, by boat, and too far for a pegasus to fly). I've established that the island pegasi are wild and very hard to breed in captivity. They keep ending up with horses, which is why the island is overrun with feral horses. HOWEVER the Duchy of Bad M, which has the one commercial port, has been trading with another island for a breed of horse that can be crossed with a pegasus to produce tame, viable, flighted offspring.

Conflict then comes with Bad M eventually breeding enough pegasi to control transport over the island, since everyone else would just have roads and carts. 

Am I overlooking something? What are the questions you need answered in this setup, knowing this information? For background, the island once housed unicorns and dragons, too, but they're thought to be long extinct. Right now it only has birds, small rodents, and an epic tone of feral horses.

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It'd be really fun if you got random throwbacks of wild horses with stubby wings, or maybe even some recessive genes from unicorns and dragons. Like some wild horses have little nobs on their heads, or scaly hides, and some have non-usable wings.

Or maybe recessive ones every once in a while breed true and they have to send a party out to capture the pegasus for breeding.

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I've got a few questions about this:

If pegasi can crossbreed with horses and produce viable offspring which are horses, that seems to indicate that pegasus genes are recessive in nature and what that means is that if you took a crossbred pair of horses with pegasi genes, would approximately 1/4 of their offspring be pegasi? And, furthermore, if you crossbred a pure pegasi with a hybrid horse, would that result in half normal horses, half pegasi?

If the island is too far away for the pegasi to fly anywhere else, how did the horses get there in the first place? Ships don't typically carry horses with them, unless they're transporting livestock, and there's not really a good reason for a livestock ship to be there, though I suppose the easy answer would just be that a ship carrying horses got wrecked on the island. And, again, if the island is too far away for the pegasi to fly elsewhere, I suppose a crude solution would be to neuter the island's horse population, though I'd imagine that the protagonists would definitely have moral qualms against doing so.

If pegasi seemingly prefer mating with horses and that produces horses, then why are there still Pegasi on the island? I suppose that if you accept the premise of my first question that could explain that the population fell into a Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium of some kind, but then that seems to provide decent enough ways to breed pegasi into existence.

Are pegasi magical in nature? I suppose I should have asked this earlier, but generally you prefer writing more realistic fantasy so I feel comfortable with the genetics questions, but how exactly do they fly? Adding wings to the side of the horse will never give it enough lift to get off the ground, especially with a rider. And, on that note, how much can they carry? If you're relying on pegasi to solve your logistic issues, they've got to be carrying a lot to make up for all the space that a transport ship or a supply barge can hold.

Are there pegasi-powered boats? Instead of sails, you just harness some pegasi like you would a coach or a cart or something and just let them fly, dragging the ship behind them. You'd need an inordinate amount of horsepower to move a boat - a quick Google indicated that the earliest steamboat had 19 horsepower, so if you want to move anything large, you'd need a flock of pegasi. And, on that note, what are a group of pegasi called?  You've got your parliament of owls, your murder of crows, your conspiracy of ravens, your thunder of dragons, naturally, but what do you call a whole group of pegasi?

The earliest form of rail transport was horses drawing carts along rails. This actually seems like normal horses would be better because they use up less energy while walking than pegasi do by flying, so what incentive is there to replace the rail system with pegasi? Unless there are only islands, but in that case, why is there even a rail system to begin with? (I guess the larger islands might have one.)

Are they used militarily at all? Aerial forces are a game-changer from literally any standpoint and any army, what with their ability to effortlessly scale siege walls, their quick deployment and re-deployment on a battlefield, scouting capabilities, communication abilities, and the ability to rain a never-ending onslaught of javelins from several hundred feet into the air. Forget about a monopoly on trade, I'd be terrified of one country having all the pegasi because that lets them field a nearly unstoppable army. (You would need some really good anti-air abilities to stop an angry army of pegasus knights charging at you.)

I'll ask more question as they come to me, and if you want, I'd be happy to further discuss any of this. I wouldn't recommend using my favorite internet haunt right now (Worldbuilding Stack Exchange), but if you wind up with some very specific questions that you want answers for, then go ahead and do it. (Or poke around for the pegasus-related question.)

EDIT: So I've done so poking around on Worldbuilding and the general consensus seems to be that 1) Pegasi are impossible without magic and 2) this isn't true if the atmosphere is really dense. But if you want to have realistic flying pegasi by increasing the atmospheric density, that also will lead to a whole other slew of things, (like people being able to fly using wings a la Icarus, for instance) so I'm not sure I'd recommend it.

Edited by aeromancer
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3 hours ago, Mandamon said:

got random throwbacks of wild horses with stubby wings, or maybe even some recessive genes from unicorns and dragons. Like some wild horses have little nobs on their heads, or scaly hides, and some have non-usable wings.

YES! I did this a bit already but I think I'd really like to play it up. 

3 hours ago, Mandamon said:

Or maybe recessive ones every once in a while breed true and they have to send a party out to capture the pegasus for breeding.

Oh this would be so much fun!

2 hours ago, aeromancer said:

pegasus genes are recessive in nature

YES I was doing some Mendelian genetics in my head. But I think I want the key here to be magical content. You get enough of that in the gene mix, you get pegasus. Otherwise just a horse (maybe with some wing nubs though). I think I want it to be not just recessive but tied to other recessive traits so that the chance of breeding true is much lower... one out of fifty or so. I need them to be rare enough that pegasus transport isn't viable because there aren't enough.

2 hours ago, aeromancer said:

how did the horses get there in the first place?

This part I'm hoping to leave as the island mystery for book two. Right now worldbuilding lore has this island as the refuge for magical creatures (it being so remote) and then humans finally colonized and killed most of them off (except pegasi because they're wily).

2 hours ago, aeromancer said:

If pegasi seemingly prefer mating with horses and that produces horses, then why are there still Pegasi on the island?

Every so often you still get a pegasus? I'm not sure they prefer breeding with horses. I think I may make them incredibly long lived so they don't tend to breed with each other, but humans keep capturing them and trying to breed them with horses to get a pegasus that can be tamed. Like the ill-fated zebra/horse hybrid that got the worst of both instead of the best of both

2 hours ago, aeromancer said:

Are pegasi magical in nature?

YES. Magic is a big thing in this, in that it existed before and now there are just scattered remnants and no one really knows how to work it or what to do with it.

2 hours ago, aeromancer said:

And, on that note, what are a group of pegasi called? 

We clearly need a poll for this

Military I'll have to think about. This part of the worldbuilding isn't as developed as I'd like. I think I want them all relatively at peace due to an ancient pact but not sure.

These are AWESOME questions everyone and now I need to go integrate. Thank you!

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You wouldn't need a huge amount of pegasi to make an economic difference. If a merchant or messenger or army has access to even only one, then he'd be able to move valuable goods/information in record time, rendering him/her/it/they/them (too many pronouns) incredibly wealthy.

Also, isn't a ninety day journey like from Spain to the USA? Just off the top of my head. How big is the archipelago? Are there other land bodies then this string of islands? What if there are different breeds of pegasi exist, and the islands climate is too inhospitable for the other breeds. Does that make sense? Or perhaps they're impractical - too weak or what-have-you.

Lastly. If pegasi are too wily to be killed out, then HOW ON EARTH ARE DRAGON'S EXTINCT?

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8 minutes ago, kais said:

YES I was doing some Mendelian genetics in my head. But I think I want the key here to be magical content. You get enough of that in the gene mix, you get pegasus. Otherwise just a horse (maybe with some wing nubs though). I think I want it to be not just recessive but tied to other recessive traits so that the chance of breeding true is much lower... one out of fifty or so. I need them to be rare enough that pegasus transport isn't viable because there aren't enough.

Easy enough. Let's say there are three groups of genes that you need to have all of them to become a pegasus and all the pegasus traits in them are recessive. That's a 1/(4^3) chance, or 1/64, and that's when both parents are crossbreeds. If you had a normal flock of horses and there was a 50/50 split in the gene pool for all these genes, then the odds of any one horse out of this flock being a pegasus is also 1/64, though if you decided to have it something like a 70/30 split, than the odds of any one horse is 1/721.

23 minutes ago, kais said:

Like the ill-fated zebra/horse hybrid that got the worst of both instead of the best of both

Zorses! But actually, there's the potential for the opposite too - you have the Liger which is half-tiger, half-lion, and considerably bigger than most. It's a monstrous nine-foot cat that's basically unequaled for potential and the largest feline alive. Just make sure it's the correct halves, because the other way is the Tigon, which is also pretty neat, but nowhere near the size of a liger.

As far as names for a group of pegasi, my vote is for 'constellation', which might be a bit too on the nose, considering that there's actually a constellation called pegasus, but I think it might work.

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58 minutes ago, aeromancer said:

Zorses! But actually, there's the potential for the opposite too - you have the Liger which is half-tiger, half-lion, and considerably bigger than most. It's a monstrous nine-foot cat that's basically unequaled for potential and the largest feline alive. Just make sure it's the correct halves, because the other way is the Tigon, which is also pretty neat, but nowhere near the size of a liger.

Lol. Now I'm imagining a "true" Pegasus is this majestic Clydesdale-sized monster with 30-foot wings, but you only get a couple in the generation. The rest are donkeys with nubby wings and delusions of grandeur.

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6 hours ago, Turin Turambar said:

f a merchant or messenger or army has access to even only one, then he'd be able to move valuable goods/information in record time, rendering him/her/it/they/them (too many pronouns) incredibly wealthy.

This is good, because I want just Bad M to have them, because I want that monarchy to have a big power advantage over the rest of the island

6 hours ago, Turin Turambar said:

Are there other land bodies then this string of islands?

I'm....not super sure. I hadn't planned on really getting into planet-level stuff, but my agent did say the island felt 'small' so maybe I should?

6 hours ago, Turin Turambar said:

If pegasi are too wily to be killed out, then HOW ON EARTH ARE DRAGON'S EXTINCT?

YES HOW INDEED HMMMM (this is kind of the main knife twist at the end of the book)

6 hours ago, aeromancer said:

my vote is for 'constellation'

This is 100% perfect for the tone of this book. Sold.

5 hours ago, Mandamon said:

Pegasus is this majestic Clydesdale-sized monster with 30-foot wings

I actually have them at 2x a Clydesdale! GIGANTIC FLYING HORSES OF TERROR

 

I've made it to chapter 7 with edits, and have added about 2K words. Ughhhh so much more to go. But this is actually really fun, adding silliness into the book.

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Quick questions:

Hypothetically, how valuable would this make Bad M's pegs? If you could steel one could you make your own peg sub breed? Would this make it nessicary for every peg he didn't want to breed to be sterilized to prevent the breed from getting out if one was captured?

And if they are a tame sub breed, would there be any difference anatomically? Or even just from environment ie wild vs captive Orca's dorsal fin.

Also, how about rest/refueling stations midway across bodies of water? Like an aircraft carrier but for Pegasus.

I know little to nothing about pegasus, but how about a 'Flight' of Pegasus as a collective name. 

Anyhoo, that's my un-informed thoughts :-)

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*Cracks knuckles*

If there's one thing I love, it's equine-based worldbuilding. I'm breaking this down into two sections.

Biology:

14 hours ago, kais said:

I actually have them at 2x a Clydesdale! GIGANTIC FLYING HORSES OF TERROR

So we've got 36 hands high drafties. That's 12 feet at the withers. That's definitely an equine beefcake with hooves the size of your chest. 

This knocks out two of my concerns my sister and I came up with yesterday when we were brainstorming this, which were carrying capacity and carrying location.

Carrying Capacity:

First concern was that how were they going to be strong enough to carry large amounts of weight. An average horse should carry no more than 20% of their body weight generally, and, from a biological standpoint, pegasi would most likely weigh less than an average horse of the same size because they would most likely have a lattice skeleton and air sacs. Not to mention, would probably need a more Akhal Teke or Thoroughbred build, something lightweight but with powerful hindquarters to take off with. Keep in mind, the pegasus might not be as beefy as a Clydesdale, so it can also be light enough to balance out the weight feathers are going to bring to flight. 

Let's go with the average Clydesdale, which can weigh anywhere from 1,800-2,200 lbs, and use the average of 2,000lbs. If a pegasus is twice the size, it probably would weight somewhere in the ballpark of 3,000-4,000lbs. So that means the average transport pegasus can carry roughly 600-800 lbs per trip, not including harnesses. 

Carrying Location:

The second concern was where the items of transportation would go. This is still a slight concern, slightly mellowed by the sheer size of these beefcake equines. Normally, a pack horse or mule would carry the goods on something called panniers. They're essentially cloth chests that sit on either side of a horse's back, across a pack saddle. 

Pack saddle below, in foldable spoiler case for space:

Spoiler

Amazon.com : Weaver Double Rigged Sawbuck Pack Saddle : Sports ...

Panniers:

Spoiler

Pro Canvas Pack Panniers - Standard & Oversize

The problem with normal panniers/pack saddles is the wings. Pegasi are going to need space for their wing joints and enough space for the wings to - whoosh! - beat. Thanks to the sheer size of your pegasi, you could potentially have the goods stored lower on their barrel (belly), or, potentially, tied underneath their belly as long as they have enough room with which to run. I'm concerned about passengers, see Space for Riders.

Wings:

Okay, obviously the pegasi are going to have to have a boost from magic to fly. Doubtful they're flying on itty bitty wings. If you've got a pegasus that is 12 ft at the withers...a horse with good confirmation is a little less than 3 heads at the withers and about 4 heads long...so your pegasus is probably 16 feet nose to tail...When drawing pegasi, I generally like the 1.5 ratio for wings...so, in my head, we're looking at 24 feet long per wing, or a total wingspan of 48 feet. Ear to floor, your pegasus is probably around 14-15 ft tall. 

Does this matter? No, but it does help visualization. And help you realize how wide your runway is going to be.  

Space for Riders:

We still run into the "space for a rider" problem. If the wing joints are right behind the withers:

Spoiler

Withers - Wikipedia

Then a rider would awkwardly be perched with his legs over a moving wing joint, or continually bashed by beating wings if his legs stick under the feathers. Horses aren't flat enough on the back to comfortably ride them laying down like a Skybax. 

Spoiler

2017 Possum set 3x $2 4x $1 protected from toning in 2x2 holders+1c in

However, horses are herd animals, and birds can flock in V formations. If you've got one lead mare or stallion at the front with a rider, then the rest of the constellation (I rather like this one) would likely follow off of instincts. That would also increase the amount of goods you are able to transport when not every pegasus needs a rider.

I'd likely just never bring up how a person rides a pegasus. People (besides me) tend to just assume pegasi are rideable. 

Calorie Intake:

Horses, draft horses included, eat about 1.5-3% of their body weight daily, with at least 1.5% of their body weight in forage (hay/grass). Budweiser Clydesdales eat roughly 40 lbs of hay and 12+lbs of high calorie grain daily. That's minimum 45lbs a day for a 3,000lb pegasus, to as much as 120lbs for a 4,000 lb pegasus. That doesn't include the fact that flying burns a butt load of calories, so they're probably eating even more. They're literally eating a hale bale a day with grain on the side. 

I'd have your pegasi on a diet of timothy or oat hay with a good heap of alfalfa hay, and a mix of grains like oats, corn, and barely. I'd also suggest a cup or two of vegetable oil for fats. Beef pulp first soaked in water is also a good idea for fiber. I'm basing this off of a racehorse diet, since they burn calories like mad and need a high energy diet.

A draft horse can drink somewhere around 25 gallons of water a day, so your pegasi are probably going to drink over 50 gallons of water daily. Hope you've got good water access.

Breeding:

I'm concerned about breeding 36hh pegasi to normal horses, even drafts. It isn't impossible, but it would pose serious health risks, whether the dam be a pegasus or a horse. I cringe at the thought of a horse attempting to squeeze a huge half-pegasus foal through their pelvis, and artificial insemination might be necessary to breed a pegasus mare. Honestly, I think you've managed to make it difficult enough to own a pegasus to negate breeding horses. See my notes below in Worldbuilding. 

 

 

Worldbuilding:

Cost:

This is why I don't think it will be necessary to add the conundrum of horse breeding (as fun as half-breeds can be): 

To own a pegasus, you need to be able to house, feed, and train it. For housing, you're going to need a hella large barn. If you take my idea of needing a fleet of pegasi to get a V formation to create a transportation fleet, you are going to need an airplane hangar. You're going to need space for the pegasi to take off, training facilities, housing for employees, feed storage, a tack room, etc. Might want a roofed round pen for training?

Then there's feed. A single acre of land can produce approximately 100 bales of hay. If you have a fleet of, say, seven pegasi (one lead mare, three transporting pegasi), that's seven bales of hay a day, or 210 bales of hay in a thirty day month. All that hay has to be stored in a water-tight place during months where hay isn't harvested. You've got risk of mold, fire, and droughts. I didn't even calculate out the grains, which is considerably more expensive than hay. 

Equines also need bedding, horseshoes, tack, grooming equipment, training equipment, treats, and more. Owning an average sized horse can cost upwards of $7,000 a year. Owning one pegasus? That's going to be killer on your pocket book. What are going to be the veterinarian costs? 

Then there's cost of breeding. If pegasi are hard to breed in captivity, it means that once you have a pregnant mare, you're going to want to protect your investment. That means specialized veterinarians, that means grooms hired to watch the mare 24/7, that means special supplements and larger housing. 

What about the cost for a pegasus? If you have to train them from a young age to make them manageable (see below in Training), then you're not going to be able to go out into the wild and break a pegasus whose hooves can kill you in one blow. So you're going to have to go to someone who already breeds them, and shill out the money. 

Not to mention, hiring specialists...sure, you can hire anyone to scoop up pegasi poop the size of melons, but what about your trainer, your vet, your farrier, your rider, your tack maker, and more? Plus the costs for actually running a company with the ability to generate transportation business across multiple islands...

Owning a regular horse is like owning a $75,000 two seat Cessna and comparing it to a $379,100,000 Boeing 747. Only the extremely wealthy (like kingdoms) are going to be able to afford to use pegasi as transportation. 

At least you could probably recoup some of the money selling poop for fertilizer as well as horsehair and feathers for various projects.

Training:

You've got a equine that can stand 12ft at the withers, weighs several hundred pounds more than my Toyota Corolla, and can fly. Can't exactly put them to pasture when they might decide "screw this" and fly off. So I vote giant barns. A normal draft horse needs a 12ftx16ft stall, so you're going to need something considerably larger, since your pegasi have wings. 

Keep in mind too that horses are incredibly strong. My aunt had a 2,000lb 18hh Brabant who would get bored and literally pick up and move his metal fencing. His teeth would leave massive dents in steel tubes. Double that? And you've got pegasi that can probably crunch a man in half from sheer jaw strength. A kick would be absolutely deadly. Those stall doors better be reinforced.

Training and housing a stallion would be a nightmare. Stallions tend to be @$$holes by nature, so I would assume very few companies would want to have a massive one. Breeding costs to a stallion would be major money, though. Can you imagine trying to castrate a pegasus??? I mean, jeez, a Clydesdale stallion probably has balls the size of grapefruits. A pegasus stallion would probably have the nuts the size of watermelons. Can you imagine the fountain of blood if you don't clamp them fast enough??? You'd definitely have to get the colts castrated as soon as safely possible.

Due to this all of this, training is going to be hell if done the wrong way. And, of course, there are going to be idiots who try to bully a 36hh pegasus. So you've got the nutcases who are going to beat their pegasus into submission (mind games might be terrifyingly accurate. Horses and birds are social creatures. What happens if you lock one away from its peers?), and you've got those who are going to use the natural horsemanship route. I'd definitely think about how both bird and horse behaviors are going to affect pegasus behavior. You'd have to start when the pegasus is a foal. Do they clip the wings to make sure yearlings don't run off?

This has a lot of potential for quiet worldbuilding. Pegasi who shake, sweat, and foam at the sight of their owner, covered in scars. Pegasi who lash back. Pegasi who follow their owners around like giant puppies bedecked in ribbons. 

Hmmm...dyeing feathers might be a fun pasttime for some owners. Or to show different nationalities or shipping companies. 

Feathers/Hair:

Birds molt. Do pegasi? What about their shed feathers?

Just saying, with giant feathers, maybe it is a fashion statement to have pegasus feather fans, skirts, capes, hair accessories, collars, even blinds.

Then there is the hair you can cut off the mane and tail. Horsehair fabric, horsehair pottery, horsehair paintbrushes, horsehair fishing line, horsehair violin strings, horsehair wigs (why not, might be a fashion statement), horsehair jewelry...

Plumes of horsehair or feathers on military helmets...

You could go nuts with this. 

Military: 

I mean, the sheer cost of owning a pegasus will keep you from having a massive equine airforce. You could definitely go hog wild with this, or negate it completely by saying pegasi are too flighty by nature and can't be trained to withstand the stress of war without bailing. 

Overall:

I had a lot of fun writing this up. I think it's possible to replace railroads with pegasi, but I also think it is going to take a lot of work. Hopefully I helped instead of overwhelmed.

Edited by Snakenaps
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This thread is fascinating, and I think everything has been covered in great detail, so I don't have a whole lot to add. 

@Snakenaps brought up some great points about feeding them. Could there be some magic very high calorie plant on the island that sustains them? Some annoying magic grass  that grows to fast, so if it doesn't get cut or eaten it will be twenty feet tall in a week? 

And in regards to training or actually getting them to stay and not fly away: What if they were to bond with their rider? Can some people can telepathically communicate with them? Or maybe there is some residual magic some people have that lets them control or at least commune with them? 

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44 minutes ago, Snakenaps said:

Overall:

I had a lot of fun writing this up. I think it's possible to replace railroads with pegasi, but I also think it is going to take a lot of work. Hopefully I helped instead of overwhelmed.

I have nothing to add as I know zippo about horses, but this was incredibly fun to read.

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25 minutes ago, shatteredsmooth said:

Could there be some magic very high calorie plant on the island that sustains them? Some annoying magic grass  that grows to fast, so if it doesn't get cut or eaten it will be twenty feet tall in a week? 

I've been thinking about this, and it doesn't even need to be magical. Bamboo is a type of grass that grows extremely quick, so mother nature has already proven that some high calorie, fast growing grass could exist without magic needing to make it possible. 

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43 minutes ago, Snakenaps said:

I've been thinking about this, and it doesn't even need to be magical. Bamboo is a type of grass that grows extremely quick, so mother nature has already proven that some high calorie, fast growing grass could exist without magic needing to make it possible. 

Bamboo doesn't work, though. It's explosive growth is only because it grows during a single 60 day period during the year, so the poor pegasi are out of luck the other 305/306 days of the year, not to mention that it take three years to even start growing at all once planted. Relative to other plants, it's actually a pretty slow grower.

I wouldn't get hung up on this. Enough laws are being violated  as it is by the pegasi flying - there's no way for their wings to generate enough thrust, among other things - so the audience shouldn't blink twice if the pegasi eat the same as normal horses do, but even still, that's a lot of food. That said...

Imagine if you had the island covered in trees which produce airborne seeds that drift on the wind and would periodically release clouds of the seeds into the air, which the pegasi then flew after in great flock to eat. Seems like kind of interesting food for pegasi to eat. Something based off the cottonwood, maybe?

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23 hours ago, kais said:

Like the ill-fated zebra/horse hybrid that got the worst of both instead of the best of both

On 8/6/2020 at 11:20 AM, aeromancer said:

We’re getting this short story, right? 

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2 hours ago, Snakenaps said:

Horses, draft horses included, eat about 1.5-3% of their body weight daily, with at least 1.5% of their body weight in forage (hay/grass). Budweiser Clydesdales eat roughly 40 lbs of hay and 12+lbs of high calorie grain daily. That's minimum 45lbs a day for a 3,000lb pegasus, to as much as 120lbs for a 4,000 lb pegasus. That doesn't include the fact that flying burns a butt load of calories, so they're probably eating even more. They're literally eating a hale bale a day with grain on the side. 

 

I actually tried to calculate the calorie intake for dragons once. 

 

2 hours ago, Snakenaps said:

A draft horse can drink somewhere around 25 gallons of water a day, so your pegasi are probably going to drink over 50 gallons of water daily. Hope you've got good water access.

More. You're thinking in 1 dimention. I'd say 200 gallons, but I'm not sure the mass works out right.

 

2 hours ago, Snakenaps said:

Keep in mind too that horses are incredibly strong. My aunt had a 2,000lb 18hh Brabant who would get bored and literally pick up and move his metal fencing. His teeth would leave massive dents in steel tubes. Double that? And you've got pegasi that can probably crunch a man in half from sheer jaw strength. A kick would be absolutely deadly. Those stall doors better be reinforced.

Would castle walls work (8 ft of solid stone)? If not, you now have heavy siege weapons.

2 hours ago, Snakenaps said:

Training and housing a stallion would be a nightmare. Stallions tend to be @$$holes by nature, so I would assume very few companies would want to have a massive one. Breeding costs to a stallion would be major money, though. Can you imagine trying to castrate a pegasus??? I mean, jeez, a Clydesdale stallion probably has balls the size of grapefruits. A pegasus stallion would probably have the nuts the size of watermelons. Can you imagine the fountain of blood if you don't clamp them fast enough??? You'd definitely have to get the colts castrated as soon as safely possible.

Isn't the exact opposite of what everyone wants? I suppose this would open up space for companies to "buy" the pregnant mares, handle the birth, then "sell" it back. And then probably give a huge fee for the colt. Is that the right word?

 

2 hours ago, Snakenaps said:

I mean, the sheer cost of owning a pegasus will keep you from having a massive equine airforce. You could definitely go hog wild with this, or negate it completely by saying pegasi are too flighty by nature and can't be trained to withstand the stress of war without bailing. 

 

Given the amount that you said that they would have to beat the pegasi into submission, I don't know if that's a problem.

At this point, this is where I start tearing out my hair at the implausability and cry into my pillow for a few days. This can be SO COOL though. Good Luck!

 

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2 hours ago, aeromancer said:

Imagine if you had the island covered in trees which produce airborne seeds that drift on the wind and would periodically release clouds of the seeds into the air, which the pegasi then flew after in great flock to eat. Seems like kind of interesting food for pegasi to eat. Something based off the cottonwood, maybe?

OMG I love this! Right now I've got them as a grazing pest (hence several of the monarchies just trying to straight up poison them out of existence) but this has serious book two potential. The imagery alone is just beautiful.

Also 'constellation of pegasi' is now written in as canon. Thank you @aeromancer! Brain trust engaged!

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3 hours ago, aeromancer said:

It's explosive growth is only because it grows during a single 60 day period during the year,

You know, I literally didn't know this. I only knew bamboo was a grass, it grows fast, pandas eat it, and people make mats out of it. That's the extent of my bamboo knowledge. 

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28 minutes ago, kais said:

Right now I've got them as a grazing pest (hence several of the monarchies just trying to straight up poison them out of existence)

This reminds me of the pegicorns in Disney's Onward eating out of trash cans and generally acting like racoons. 

I want to see some old lady wacking a grazing pegasus on the leg with a broom going "Get off my lawn!" While the pegasus. Does. Not. Care. 

Edit: "And then Katie felt inspired to draw..."

15968430808024438839588124044599.thumb.jpg.49d6692038d759723f1b0e9b4e41e4d2.jpg

"...but with her terrible luck, the photo would only post sideways."

Edited by Snakenaps
aRt
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Honestly, I'm not sure I have anything to add at this point - you folks seem to have this discussion quite well in hand. So instead of contributing anything actually intelligent, I just want to point out that there are some absolutely AMAZING phrases being thrown around in this thread...

On 8/6/2020 at 3:13 PM, Mandamon said:

The rest are donkeys with nubby wings and delusions of grandeur.

 

On 8/7/2020 at 11:23 AM, Snakenaps said:

an equine beefcake with hooves the size of your chest

 

On 8/7/2020 at 11:23 AM, Snakenaps said:

A pegasus stallion would probably have the nuts the size of watermelons.

 

On 8/7/2020 at 4:19 PM, Snakenaps said:

"And then Katie felt inspired to draw..."

This looks great!

On 8/7/2020 at 11:23 AM, Snakenaps said:

I'd likely just never bring up how a person rides a pegasus. People (besides me) tend to just assume pegasi are rideable. 

I don't know, depending on how you play it there might be some pretty great slapstick potential in this. I could totally see J assuming they're rideable, and then refusing to back down even after realizing that he is hilariously wrong.

Edited by Silk
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