Mounts & Long-Distance Travel¶

"The city's a short walk corner to corner. The next city is a different animal - a day on the road, maybe more, with weather and worse for company. Take a good beast under you and the road gets shorter. Take none and pack a bandage." - Oakes, stablemaster at the Ghelmyon gate

Getting around inside a town is one thing - that's covered in Getting Around. This article is the wider world: the roads between the five towns, what travels them, and the mounts that make the trip faster and safer.

There are five towns and only five - Ghelmyon, Millhaven, Darkhollow, Thornwood and Greenweald - and roads link them through real, walkable country: farms, inns, river crossings, lumber camps, roadside shrines, and the occasional bandit hideout.

At a glance¶


Travel between towns	Walk to a city gate, then `walk to <place in another town>`
The journey	A real road with terrain, weather, waypoints and encounters
Roads are populated	Inns, farms, camps and shrines you can stop at, trade and rest
By water	Hire a river boat between riverside towns - slower, but you can fish
Caravans	Merchant convoys run set routes; you can hire on as an escort
Mounts	Bought at any town's stables; faster roads, combat cover, extra carry
Mount upkeep	Feed it daily - a hungry mount is a neglected mount
Mount commands	`/mount`, `/mount list`, `/mount buy <species>`, `/mount <name>`, `/dismount`

Travelling between towns¶

You don't pick a destination from a menu and blink there. To leave town, walk to the city gate, then walk to <a location you know in another town>. The engine routes you out onto the road between the two cities and walks you down it, segment by segment.

A road is not empty space. Each stretch has terrain (plains, forest, hill, mountain, river crossing), weather that can slow you, and waypoints - real places you pass through. A progress indicator shows how far you've come, and your followers comment as you go. The first time you walk a given road you get a proper description of it; after that, it's familiar ground.

Open /map world before you set out - it shows all five cities and the roads between them, which is the view you want for planning a journey (see Getting Around ▸ The map views).

What's on the road¶

The roads are dotted with places worth stopping:

Inns and waystations - the Crossroads Inn, the Miner's Rest and their like. A bed, a hot meal, road gossip on a chalkboard, and a safe place to wait out bad weather.
Farms and production sites - wheat farms, mills, quarries, lumber and charcoal camps. Most will sell you food or supplies, and many hide a ledger or a manifest worth reading if you're the curious sort.
Shrines and cairns - roadside shrines to rest and pray at; a ranger's cairn even keeps a stocked supply box on an honour system.
Bandit camps and abandoned places - not every marker on the road is friendly. Some are hideouts; some are camps that someone left in a hurry. Approach with that in mind.

What you'll meet¶

Travel is where the wilds bite. As you cross each stretch there's a chance of a road encounter - sometimes just flavour (a merchant, a beggar, a change in the weather), sometimes a fight: bandits, wolves, and worse the deeper and rougher the country. The danger level of a road and the terrain of a tile both push that chance up - forest, swamp and mountain are riskier than open plains.

The first stretch of any journey is gentled deliberately, so a fresh traveller isn't ambushed before they've left the gate behind. The danger climbs as you get further out. Don't take that early calm as a promise.

Storms and snow slow you down. A wounded party on a long road is a bad idea - patch up before you leave (see Wounds & Healing), and carry food, a bandage or two, and a torch.

Mounts¶

A mount is the single biggest change you can make to how the road treats you. You don't need one - every road can be walked - but once you're making the inter-town run regularly, a good beast pays for itself.

What a mount does¶

A mount changes three things:

Speed - a mount carries you faster over the roads, cutting the time a journey takes. A swift mount makes a meaningful dent in a multi-day trip; a plodding pack animal less so.
Cover in a fight - if trouble finds you on the road, a mount soaks a share of the damage that would have landed on you. A battle-trained mount eats a large slice; a humble one, a little. But a mount can be hurt, and if it's beaten down to nothing it's KO'd and you're thrown from the saddle - back on your own two feet, and on foot until it recovers.
Carry weight - most mounts let you haul more than your own back could manage, which matters if you're moving trade goods or a heavy kit.

Different beasts lean different ways. A warhorse is fast and fierce but expensive to keep; a draft horse is slow and tireless and carries a mountain of cargo; a mule is cheap, stubborn, sure-footed and won't spook when blades come out. Browse what's on offer before you commit.

Buying a mount¶

Mounts are bought at a town's stables. Every town has one - in Ghelmyon it's by the west gate, where Oakes the stablemaster keeps the yard; the other four towns each have their own stables and stablemaster. You have to be standing in the stables with the stablemaster present to deal.

Command	What it does
`/mount list`	Show the mounts for sale at the stables you're standing in
`/mount buy <species>`	Buy a mount (e.g. `/mount buy riding_horse`)
`/mount`	List the mounts you own and which one is active
`/mount <name>`	Mount up on one you own (by name or kind)
`/dismount`	Step down

Prices climb with the quality of the beast - a cheap pack animal is pocket change next to a trained warhorse or a rare steed. If your purse is light, see Money & Economy and Banks & Coin for how to fund the purchase.

Paladins start mounted. A paladin walks out of character creation with a warhorse already saddled and waiting - check /mount to meet them.

Keeping a mount¶

A mount is a living thing, not a tool you pocket. It needs feeding, every day, and feed costs coin - modest for a humble beast, steep for a fine one. A mount that hasn't been fed is flagged as hungry, and a hungry, neglected animal is no help to anyone. Factor the daily upkeep into whether you can really afford the beast you fancy: a rare steed with an empty belly is worse value than a well-fed mule.

You can give a mount a name, and you can sell one back if you no longer want the expense - though you won't get full price for a used animal.

By river - boats¶

Where two towns sit on the same water, you can hire a boat instead of walking. River travel is its own thing: you pay a fare for the passage, it takes its own count of phases, and it has its own hazards. The upside is the water itself - you can fish as you travel, so a slow drift downriver isn't wasted time. If you'd rather not risk the roads and the route exists, the river is the calmer way to go.

Caravans - travelling with company¶

Merchants don't make the inter-town run alone if they can help it. Caravans run regular routes between the towns, hauling each region's goods to where they're worth more - grain, ore, timber, herbs. A caravan is safer than a lone traveller, and there's work in it: a caravan-master will pay a fair purse to hire you on as an escort for the leg, the reward scaling with how dangerous the road is.

If you're short on coin and headed that way anyway, escorting a caravan turns a journey you were going to make into a paid one - see Making a Living for the wider picture on earning on the move.

Quick reference - planning a trip¶

You want to...	Do this
See the whole region	`/map world`
Leave town	`walk to` the gate, then `walk to <place in another town>`
Know the road's reputation	Read the chalkboards and signposts at road inns
Go faster + safer	Buy a mount at the stables; `/mount buy <species>`
Mount up / step down	`/mount <name>` / `/dismount`
Keep your mount useful	Feed it daily - watch for the "hungry" flag
Travel calm water instead	Hire a river boat between riverside towns
Get paid to travel	Hire on as a caravan escort
Survive the road	Heal up first, carry food, a bandage, and a torch

Tips¶

Buy the mount you can keep, not the one you covet. Upkeep is daily and real; a fed mule beats a starving steed.
Patch up before you leave. The road is no place to discover a wound is worse than you thought.
Read the road signs. Inn chalkboards and signposts give travel times and warn about bandits and washed-out stretches before you walk into them.
Stop at the inns. They're safe rest, restock and gossip - and a warm place to wait out a storm that would otherwise slow you.
A mount in a fight is a shield, not a weapon. It absorbs blows for you, but it can fall. Don't ride a tired or hurt beast into trouble you could walk around.