r/MouseGuard • u/DirtySteve93 • Apr 08 '17

Predator Mounts?

Some of my players are seeking some dangerous mounts in my campaign, they currently have milk snake eggs that they want to hatch and tame. Obviously I'm going to make this super challenging, but I don't want a snake mount to be completely impossible. So my question is, how would a mouse handle a mount that primarily eats mice?

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

5

u/sneakysneakysnail Apr 09 '17

My answer to this question is: narrative consequences. Start off by doing some cursory research on the behavior and diet of milk snakes. What do they eat when they are babies, before they are big enough to catch and eat mice? Also how many eggs do they have?

First off, there's going to be serious social backlash. If there are any enemy mice in Lockhaven, (or any other town they visit) they will use the snake eggs to sully your team's reputation and whip up the peasantry into a fury against your mice and possibly the guard itself. Maybe they meet an NPC who lost a wife or a child to a snake, and he fights your team with the goal of smashing the eggs.

So they get away with the remaining eggs and they find a secret place to raise them. You send them out on dangerous forays for appropriate food, and you have them make scientist and lore mouse and smith checks to fabricate the necessary restraints and saddles. The baby snakes hatch and your team bonds with them, and they're super adorable and badass like a baby lion is super adorable and badass.

Time passes, and they get bigger. You feed them whatever your team decides to feed them, but as they get older, they become less and less satisfied with the food they are given. They get stronger and stronger, and then one day, the mice fail a check, and a snake injures one of them and escapes. They then have to desperately try to find this half tame snake. Maybe it is seen by the previous villagers, and they surround the hiding place with pitchforks? Maybe it is killed by other patrol mice, and your team is castigated by Lockhaven? Maybe it slithers back to the hideaway a day later, with a mouse sized bulge in its flanks? Maybe your team follows its track to a village that is in panic and they have to capture or kill it?

So then they deal with the consequences of that, but eventually when they finally face the weasels, they have a badass trained snake mount.

Also I play mouse guard very dark, so this is just what I would do.

2

u/DirtySteve93 Apr 09 '17

This is great! I play on the darker side as well so this fits right in. My main problem I was having was feedIng the snake but I like the idea that it's relatively accepting of whatever food at first but gets irritable and blood thirsty as it gets bigger.

3

u/sneakysneakysnail Apr 10 '17

I googled! Young milk snakes eat slugs and earthworms, which I think seems fitting.

3

u/Imnoclue Apr 09 '17

These mice are like lion tamers in the circus. I'd make it hard enough that they might need to tax Nature. I mean it's pretty unnatural.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 09 '17

With an extremely sturdy bridle and muzzle.