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So I'd like to write a high fantasy series and wanted larger versions of normal animals for people to ride instead of horses. Giant birds and wyverns would be for the air and large tigers, cheetahs, lions, lizards, wolves, etc. Would this be a good idea?

Also thought I'd have smaller versions as well like house cat sized tigers. I'd explain this with years of genetic alteration by wizards and sorceresses. Please give me some opinions.

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  • $\begingroup$ Sure! Remember racing snail from "Neverending story"? $\endgroup$ – Alexander Sep 29 '17 at 22:45
  • $\begingroup$ Sounds fantastic. $\endgroup$ – A. C. A. C. Sep 29 '17 at 22:50
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    $\begingroup$ Besides the fact that dozens of games have already done this, and that selective breeding and of course magical genetic engineering can achieve virtually anything given enough time. Could you refine the scope of your question? $\endgroup$ – anon Sep 29 '17 at 22:54
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    $\begingroup$ Well, as anon said, could you better define your question? Just "is this a good idea" has many unknowns surrounding it. It might be a good idea if this is a book with animal husbandry as a major plot point. Alternatively, if describing all the different kinds of mounts distract you from writing the main story, it might not be a good idea. $\endgroup$ – Rithaniel Sep 30 '17 at 1:51
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    $\begingroup$ Welcome to the site, Ninja Brian. Please note that the Worldbuilding SE encourages well-defined and well-constrained questions that have a clear means to determine a "best" answer to your problem. The question you're asking here is a "What's your opinion?" question, which has no definitive answer due to it being primarily opinion-based. If you could edit your question to make it less opinion-oriented, the community would appreciate it. Otherwise, this is likely to be put on hold until such an edit is made. Feel free to take the tour to get a better understanding of the site. $\endgroup$ – Frostfyre Sep 30 '17 at 4:16
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Lots of worlds already have giant animals to ride. I cannot think of any where people use smaller than normal animals to ride. But this would offer a lot of story telling perspectives. For one it would be easier to feed your mount and take it inside if it were the size of a cat, because it was a cat. You would need to make these mounts supernaturally strong, which can be from the wizard breeding project. Riders would need a good sense of balance, or possibly one mount for each foot. Several mounts distributed about the body would be more secure and less weight for the mounts, although you might need to travel recumbent.

This gets even trickier with flying mounts. Underconfident flying riders might have their (I mentioned they were strong) mounts carry them hanging below, perhaps by the hair or their collar. This sounds like the sort of thing witches would do.

I like very much the idea of the faerie lord coming across the water at speed, holding one foot behind him with his hand. He stands on the back of a fish which is just bigger than his bare foot.

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