The Horse Smith is someone of no clear background. His normal appearance is of a thin but athletic man, maybe in his mid-20, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a tanned skin on otherwise Caucasian or maybe Native American-influenced features. He is someone who lives and breathes horses, can understand what they want, and can communicate with them about as well as you'd ever expect a human to be able to do. If you insist on a name he calls himself 'Hess'.
He aims to bring horses 'back' to Fenspace. You might think they weren't there before, but he insists their spirit is, where ever someone treats their vehicle as a living thing, where you need a faithful companion, where you need work done with heart, not just mechanical perfection.
The Horse Smith is a master scrounger when it comes to providing for horses, and a talented orator when it comes to talking about their virtues. He will arrive somewhere and within days will have a smithy set up, repairing local vehicles, and starting to persuade people that it'd be worth having a few horses around. If they agree, he'll arrange to provide them.
What sort of horses do well in Fenspace? They do tend to be a little different to terrestrial ones.
The simplest for people to understand are his robot horses, looking remarkably like the real thing, and, with a saddle, just as good to ride. These have speed drives (capable of landing and taking off Earth), generate triple-redundant protective force fields to regenerate air and keep out radiation and meteorites, and move as if riding through the sky. They have a talent for finding 'watering holes' (places with life support), and will carry injured riders home. These drink hydrocarbons (ethanol at a pinch, though it gives them gas) and eat metals and some silicates. Unless really badly injured their wounds heal over time. Given a smithy, and the metal and silicates, he can assemble a riding or normal workhorse in about three days, two at a time, while doing normal repair work. If you want a thoroughbred it will take a week, and will take his full time, as will something like a warhorse, or maybe a pair of dray horses.
Less understandable are his space horses. For these he needs to build growth tanks, at least a months work full time, or several months in his spare time (generally he builds two at a time). Then he'll need to source enough biomass to make growth medium for the tanks. Growing a space horse to colt size, ready to decant, takes six months from finishing the tanks, and he will normally insist that at least two are made, a mare and a stallion. Space horses are purely biological but have all the abilities of the robot horses, grow up as normal horses do, and can breed, though they have an indefinite lifespan (fertility decreases as they grow beyond normal horse lifespan). They can eat normal food, but also raw hydrocarbons, and CHON in practically any form. They'll only eat meat given no other choice.
Sometimes he has been pretty desperate. He has done things he is not proud of. The pony-sized space horses, that could talk, had allegedly human-grade intellects, generate manipulative tractor fields with their front hooves, and came in strange colours. No. Never again. Not even if they use the puppy-dog eyes on him. Or cat girls.
The Horse Smith's Abilities
He is far stronger than he has any right to be (could probably lift a tonne), and has the 'heft' as if he weighed a tonne - you don't push or knock him around easily. This could be some sort of trick with a speed drive.
He wears a ring which produces a force field that'll protect him from small arms and hand-held energy weapons,. He has a second ring that'll generate a protective bubble, and a holographic illusion, of a campsite, a log hut, even a small house made from irregular stones, and keeps out the elements (vacuum, radiation) while providing light and a pleasant atmosphere (air regeneration) - obviously this can't be used on the move. Neither ring has an obvious power source or will work for anyone but him.
He has a double-ended water bottle which will recycle any water into something pure and refreshing. And a trail pouch that will make CHON and 'essential salts' from just about any source into nourishing but unpalatable trail rations. Both these have no obvious power source but they will work for others as long as they spend most of their time near his person.
He has, of course, a riding horse, a thoroughbred, a saddle, some saddle bags with tools, and the clothes he stands up in. His horse is, of course, a space horse, which rarely goes far from him. Sometimes he has a (robot) pack horse, carrying extra goods. He's armed with very keen edged blades, which he fights with and can throw with deadly accuracy; he normally has at least five about his person, and he can smith new ones. In fact, he can repair or replace any of his horse tack.
The Horse Smith's Secrets
He makes some effort to hide these.
He, can in fact be a she, but isn't happy to do this due to past trauma (which involved guns), and will only do this in safe circumstances. This change reshapes clothes, and to a lesser extent equipment. Being female doesn't remove any abilities. For psychological reasons, only the female form can fly without being on a (robot/space) horse.
He is, in fact, his horse. Or, more accurately, they are one being, sometimes in two parts. Killing one means the other may need to eat a lot to replace the lost body mass, but it's otherwise an inconvenience. The horse can generate a holographic image of a rider to give people something to shoot at, which can be tweaked to be 'injured', or slump 'unconscious'; the holo image can't go out of contact with the horse.
Though he doesn't know it, the rings, the water bottle, the food pouch, with all their elaborate waved circuitry, are extensions of his personal abilities. He doesn't believe this, as that would be 'non-human', and he still believes himself at base to be human.
Why a robot horse? The person who became Horse Smith knew they had to
get away from Earth, so up into Fenspace was the only real option.
Other people took cars, trucks, boats - you couldn't take a horse in
those, so, the horse needed to be able to survive in Fenspace, run
free. And, any rider needed to be protected, too; a rider might be necessary to protect the horse. Hence the 'star
walking' speed drive, the force field, etc. This was also a person
who'd been a smith, a farrier, and a mechanic, who saw machines and
living creatures as being part of a single whole. What the robot
horse could do then became a template for the (desperate) attempt to make a living horse (sanity and clear thought was a long way
behind by that time).
One theory is that a (female) Fen had her horse killed, on Earth, in a very unpleasant incident. Claustrophobia and fear of imprisonment was the least of it. She tried to revive her horse (which was in an ice room) using handwavium, first by transferring its spirit to an mechanical body (the robot horse worked, but didn't know her, and obviously didn't have the same character), then in a regeneration tank. The tank gave her a living but unconscious horse. Then she leaned over too far...
It could have been worse, if she'd been too self-centaured. [grin]
Edit: Added reasoning explaining robot horse and its abilities.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind
He aims to bring horses 'back' to Fenspace. You might think they weren't there before, but he insists their spirit is, where ever someone treats their vehicle as a living thing, where you need a faithful companion, where you need work done with heart, not just mechanical perfection.
The Horse Smith is a master scrounger when it comes to providing for horses, and a talented orator when it comes to talking about their virtues. He will arrive somewhere and within days will have a smithy set up, repairing local vehicles, and starting to persuade people that it'd be worth having a few horses around. If they agree, he'll arrange to provide them.
What sort of horses do well in Fenspace? They do tend to be a little different to terrestrial ones.
The simplest for people to understand are his robot horses, looking remarkably like the real thing, and, with a saddle, just as good to ride. These have speed drives (capable of landing and taking off Earth), generate triple-redundant protective force fields to regenerate air and keep out radiation and meteorites, and move as if riding through the sky. They have a talent for finding 'watering holes' (places with life support), and will carry injured riders home. These drink hydrocarbons (ethanol at a pinch, though it gives them gas) and eat metals and some silicates. Unless really badly injured their wounds heal over time. Given a smithy, and the metal and silicates, he can assemble a riding or normal workhorse in about three days, two at a time, while doing normal repair work. If you want a thoroughbred it will take a week, and will take his full time, as will something like a warhorse, or maybe a pair of dray horses.
Less understandable are his space horses. For these he needs to build growth tanks, at least a months work full time, or several months in his spare time (generally he builds two at a time). Then he'll need to source enough biomass to make growth medium for the tanks. Growing a space horse to colt size, ready to decant, takes six months from finishing the tanks, and he will normally insist that at least two are made, a mare and a stallion. Space horses are purely biological but have all the abilities of the robot horses, grow up as normal horses do, and can breed, though they have an indefinite lifespan (fertility decreases as they grow beyond normal horse lifespan). They can eat normal food, but also raw hydrocarbons, and CHON in practically any form. They'll only eat meat given no other choice.
Sometimes he has been pretty desperate. He has done things he is not proud of. The pony-sized space horses, that could talk, had allegedly human-grade intellects, generate manipulative tractor fields with their front hooves, and came in strange colours. No. Never again. Not even if they use the puppy-dog eyes on him. Or cat girls.
The Horse Smith's Abilities
He is far stronger than he has any right to be (could probably lift a tonne), and has the 'heft' as if he weighed a tonne - you don't push or knock him around easily. This could be some sort of trick with a speed drive.
He wears a ring which produces a force field that'll protect him from small arms and hand-held energy weapons,. He has a second ring that'll generate a protective bubble, and a holographic illusion, of a campsite, a log hut, even a small house made from irregular stones, and keeps out the elements (vacuum, radiation) while providing light and a pleasant atmosphere (air regeneration) - obviously this can't be used on the move. Neither ring has an obvious power source or will work for anyone but him.
He has a double-ended water bottle which will recycle any water into something pure and refreshing. And a trail pouch that will make CHON and 'essential salts' from just about any source into nourishing but unpalatable trail rations. Both these have no obvious power source but they will work for others as long as they spend most of their time near his person.
He has, of course, a riding horse, a thoroughbred, a saddle, some saddle bags with tools, and the clothes he stands up in. His horse is, of course, a space horse, which rarely goes far from him. Sometimes he has a (robot) pack horse, carrying extra goods. He's armed with very keen edged blades, which he fights with and can throw with deadly accuracy; he normally has at least five about his person, and he can smith new ones. In fact, he can repair or replace any of his horse tack.
The Horse Smith's Secrets
He makes some effort to hide these.
He, can in fact be a she, but isn't happy to do this due to past trauma (which involved guns), and will only do this in safe circumstances. This change reshapes clothes, and to a lesser extent equipment. Being female doesn't remove any abilities. For psychological reasons, only the female form can fly without being on a (robot/space) horse.
He is, in fact, his horse. Or, more accurately, they are one being, sometimes in two parts. Killing one means the other may need to eat a lot to replace the lost body mass, but it's otherwise an inconvenience. The horse can generate a holographic image of a rider to give people something to shoot at, which can be tweaked to be 'injured', or slump 'unconscious'; the holo image can't go out of contact with the horse.
Though he doesn't know it, the rings, the water bottle, the food pouch, with all their elaborate waved circuitry, are extensions of his personal abilities. He doesn't believe this, as that would be 'non-human', and he still believes himself at base to be human.
Why a robot horse? The person who became Horse Smith knew they had to
get away from Earth, so up into Fenspace was the only real option.
Other people took cars, trucks, boats - you couldn't take a horse in
those, so, the horse needed to be able to survive in Fenspace, run
free. And, any rider needed to be protected, too; a rider might be necessary to protect the horse. Hence the 'star
walking' speed drive, the force field, etc. This was also a person
who'd been a smith, a farrier, and a mechanic, who saw machines and
living creatures as being part of a single whole. What the robot
horse could do then became a template for the (desperate) attempt to make a living horse (sanity and clear thought was a long way
behind by that time).
One theory is that a (female) Fen had her horse killed, on Earth, in a very unpleasant incident. Claustrophobia and fear of imprisonment was the least of it. She tried to revive her horse (which was in an ice room) using handwavium, first by transferring its spirit to an mechanical body (the robot horse worked, but didn't know her, and obviously didn't have the same character), then in a regeneration tank. The tank gave her a living but unconscious horse. Then she leaned over too far...
It could have been worse, if she'd been too self-centaured. [grin]
Edit: Added reasoning explaining robot horse and its abilities.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind