# Introduction *The Stable, Mounts, Barding, and Mounted Combat for Exodus NDS. Source: https://exodusnds.com/sourcebooks/the-stable/introduction* A sword does what its owner wants. A horse has to be asked. > **A mount is a second character the rider is responsible for.** It gets tired, hungry, lame, and frightened. It can be killed under its rider, stolen at an inn, or sold to pay a debt. It can also carry a wounded friend out of a fight at a speed nobody on foot can match. This book is written so that all of that is quick to rule on. ## What You Should Expect **One stat line for every mount.** Scale, Speed, Wounds, Resistance, Defense, and Carry. A donkey and a wyvern are read the same way. **Speed that matters.** A horse moves two range bands with one maneuver. Chapter 3 says what that does to a chase and a day's travel. **A mounted combat procedure.** Chapter 4 covers the charge, the lance, shooting from the saddle, what the mount does, who gets hit, and what happens when the mount goes down. **Air and water.** Chapter 5 gives flying and swimming mounts three elevations or three depths, and says what happens to a rider who leaves the saddle in either. **Training and keeping.** Chapter 6 covers breaking, schooling for war, the bond, feed, stabling, and healing. **Barding.** Chapter 7 puts armour on the animal by the same rules *The Armourer* uses for the rider, with a fit for each body plan and a multiplier for each size. **Tack, howdahs, and chariots.** Chapter 8. **Seventy-one mounts.** Horses and their kin, beasts of burden and war, fabled beasts of the land, mounts of the air, mounts of the water, and the mounts of one world, Dort, as an example of regional breeds. ## Using This Book in Your Universe **The names are generic.** A Universe names its own breeds. Chapter 14 shows how one world does it. **A Universe's own rules come first.** Where a Universe prints its own riding skill, mount profiles, or mounted combat rules, use them, and use this book for what they leave out. **The skill is Riding.** A Universe with no Riding skill uses Operate, as the core rules do. Calming and caring for an animal is Survival. **Not every world has every animal.** The air and water chapters are for worlds that want them. ## What You Need The **Exodus NDS core rules**.