Lore-ish thoughts about chocobo riding.

[Severaux_Vilauclaire]

Caveat, I am no horse enby, so folks, come in and poke me if I'm being grossly inaccurate.

1: With two legs, a chocobo can't buck like a horse can. To unseat a rider it's going to have to try other things.

2: A rider with long enough legs will probably hook them over the fold of the wing joint and over the thigh muscles, to help retain a seated position. Concept art of chocobo saddles implies so.

3: The back feathers of a chocobo may be softer and downier, and therefore able to take the pressure of a saddle and pad without having their quill structure crushed. Nevertheless sores might be more problematic on a chocobo with a badly distributed load than on a horse because feathers are more easily ripped out than smooth horse hair.

4: Because chocobos only have two legs, laming one is a Very Big Problem. I don't imagine they live too long without swift healing magic and possible splinting and other care.

5: While the game doesn't render the wearer's feet in stirrups I imagine they're a necessity. Especially in flight. I imagine flight saddles have an additional strap to keep the rider in if anything happens, like turbulent winds, etc, like military saddles do.

6: I've noticed that riders sit further forward on a chocobo than they might on a horse, but then chocobos don't have front legs, just wings. The weight of the rider is placed over where the shoulders on a horse would be, which is incidentally how bareback equestrians sit.

7: HOW DO YOU GUIDE THE DANG BIRD. Horses are guided with the pressure of the bit in the mouth. Chocobo tack does not have a bit. One imagines that most riding chocobos are actually trained to obey dressage-like cues and can be guided almost exclusively with the knees.

8: Chocobos seem to be eaters of herbage as opposed to grazers of grass, like ungulates. Without teeth, they probably seek out pebbles and stones to eat as gastroliths to help grind food in the gizzard.

Chocobos may not need as much watering as horses due to the fact that they eat high-moisture, juicy vegetables and fruits along with their customary diet of herbage.

9: Sustaining chocobos on voyage may therefore be a bit easier than sustaining horses on voyage, as long as your turnips and beets and mangel-wurzels don't spoil.

10: Bird manure is generally too "hot" to be used on crops from scratch. But well-mixed with plant matter (scraps from the chocobos' own feed bowls, stall straw) it will compost down into a rich soil amendment.

Chocobo grooms probably make a good side profit in aged compost.

11: Horses get horse shoes. Racing chocobos get spur-like foot harnesses to improve grip on race tracks.

But the bottom of a chocobo's large foot is a large surface area to protect and treat in the case of difficult terrain and you can't give chocobos horse shoes. To that end, I imagine riders in rougher terrain, like the salt loch in Gyr Abania, actually put oiled leather booties on their chocobos' feet to prevent say, hypersaline grit from building up in the wrinkles and crevices of their toes, and causing sores.

12: Salts and other essential minerals are mixed into horse feed, and salt blocks are put out for pastured livestock, to let them meet their mineral needs. I actually imagine chocobokeeps putting crushed cuttlebone in chocobo feed, to get them supplemented with extra calcium.

These are all thoughts I've had playing my gunbreaker through HW, SB, and ShB. Cross-posted to my personal Twitter.

[Brightamethyst]

Breeding must be wild considering the size differences you need for the various races. Do you suppose certain ranches focus on different breeds? Like House So-And-So is famous for their Ishgardian War Steeds while the Such-And-Such Ranch specializes in lalafell racing birds?

[Severaux_Vilauclaire]

Breeding must be wild considering the size differences you need for the various races. Do you suppose certain ranches focus on different breeds? Like House So-And-So is famous for their Ishgardian War Steeds while the Such-And-Such Ranch specializes in lalafell racing birds?

From the lore, they use medieval horse categorizations via size and gait to categorize various kinds of chocobos. For example, lalafell riders tend to prefer smol jennets from the Belah'diahn stables, and Roegadyn riders are often assigned destriers, which was the category used for warhorses 14 hands and up capable of carrying a knight in full plate. So yes, different ranches focus on different lines of chocobo.

I imagine they also breed for different abilities and temperaments. Horses are still divided into hotblood and coldblood categories —*hotblood horses are energetic, high-strung racers, and coldbloods are heavier draft animals. It's not a binary distribution either, it's more of a spectrum. The famous Irish Sport horses are a cross of Irish Draught coldbloods with Thoroughbreds, which are hotbloods, to make a warm-blooded eventing/sport horse that excels in jumping.

My character Sev is Gridanian but his mother is an Ishgardian emigrant, so she taught him everything she knew about chocobo-breeding, since that was her family trade.

[Enkidoh]

Much of the lore for chocobos in FFXIV has actually had it's origins in past FF games (dating back to it's very first appearence in FFII) and has been refined throughout the series ever since - the names for different breeds for different races for instance was originally from FFXI.

Considering that the chocobo was very loosely based on the 'horseclaws' from the classic Studio Ghibli anime Nauusica, which in turn was based on the extinct prehistoric bird diatrayma (with elements of modern chickens and ostriches/emus thrown in for good measure), it's perhaps best not to overthink the details of how chocobos can be ridden as mounts and just accept that they are - this is fantasy after all and a willing suspension of disbelief is needed.

[Severaux_Vilauclaire]

Much of the lore for chocobos in FFXIV has actually had it's origins in past FF games (dating back to it's very first appearence in FFII) and has been refined throughout the series ever since - the names for different breeds for different races for instance was originally from FFXI.

Considering that the chocobo was very loosely based on the 'horseclaws' from the classic Studio Ghibli anime Nauusica, which in turn was based on the extinct prehistoric bird diatrayma (with elements of modern chickens and ostriches/emus thrown in for good measure), it's perhaps best not to overthink the details of how chocobos can be ridden as mounts and just accept that they are - this is fantasy after all and a willing suspension of disbelief is needed.

Oh, of course — but I like to imagine how it's done. I'm an inveterate world-builder in my freelance writing work and it just sort of happens while I'm riding my chocobo from point A to point B for game purposes.

[GenBroadaxe]

Really dig the thought put into this! It would be cool if there were different "stables" of chocobo in game given the vast size differences between races, even if only cosmetic. Big old draft chocobos, miniature chocobos, fast and light racing ones, a lot of neat lore stuff one could come up with. I think the closest thing we get to actual breed lore is the black flying chocobo (although I think the story bit of that was chopped once flying in the ARR areas became a thing) and the fact that I think (could be misremembering) House Fortemps provided breeding stock for the stables in Gridania.

[Enkidoh]

Oh, of course — but I like to imagine how it's done. I'm an inveterate world-builder in my freelance writing work and it just sort of happens while I'm riding my chocobo from point A to point B for game purposes.

Oh you're right, and I too love world-building with my various story and comic ideas I always have floating around in my head, so I definetely share your enthusiasm for the 'shower-thoughts' about this (I'm really sorry if I came across as too dismissive!).

It is just that I think a lot of the missing aspects of the chocobo's lore have never been touched on because there has been no narrative or gameplay requirement to do so. And as fantasy by it's very definition "makes the impossible probable", dealing with such niceties as the chocobo species' deeper anatomy probably is something you won't see SE themselves touch on too much unless the main story or gameplay requires it.

However, having said that, it is possible to still fill in some of the blanks at least by looking outside FFXIV itself and through the chocobo's history in previous FF games (and titles since):

1: With two legs, a chocobo can't buck like a horse can. To unseat a rider it's going to have to try other things.

Considering rental chocobos do 'dismount' you after the ten minute time limit expires, I think it's much easier than it appears. Of course actual mount chocobos do not do this, so it could probably just be not so much the chocobo throwing you off it when time is up, and more just the game showing you "doing the right thing" and dismounting once the time is up - but your malmage may vary on that one.

4: Because chocobos only have two legs, laming one is a Very Big Problem. I don't imagine they live too long without swift healing magic and possible splinting and other care.

Funny you should mention that because until recently laming was actually a debuff you could be affected by while riding any mount if you happened to be attacked by an enemy that was aggressive (specifically in version 1.0 - ARR instead replaced it with 'Heavy', presumedly because of the addition of different non-chocobo mounts compared to 1.0, but it had the same affect, in that the mount's speed was greatly reduced to that of a crawl. It was not permenant though and wore off after a while, suggesting chocobos have some degree of tolerance to such injuries. Considering throughout the series chocobos are capable of even wielding magic (*cough* red chocobos *cough cough*), and that FFXIV is no exception, including healing magic, that means it is possible that they could heal such injuries themselves magically.

I do imagine bone breakage would be an unfortunate tendency for chocobos given they are birds who possess hollow bones after all, but it's something that to my knowledge at least hasn't yet been depicted in the game (although it's stated that the illegal poachers in the Chocobo Forest in Dravania use beartraps to capture the birds, something the legitimate hunters in Tailfeather find abhorrent due to the injuries it causes chocobos, so laming probably is a result of that).

Another point that needs to be mentioned though is they do seem to be particularly prone to disease - just prior to the Calamity chocobo use in Eorzea was curtailed greatly due to a disease called Chocobo Blight that reached pandemic levels throughout Eorzea, resulting in Ishgard basically quarantining it's birds and refusing to release any to the citystates other than the ones they already posessed. Eventually the quarantine worked and the Blight diminished enough that Ishgard once again released chocobos to the other citystates, and thus to adventurers (this was the lore reason why in 1.0 you originally couldn't ride a chocobo, and why even to this day an adventurer cannot just ride on legally, they have to show justification (read: ability) before they're authorized to ride them.

7: HOW DO YOU GUIDE THE DANG BIRD. Horses are guided with the pressure of the bit in the mouth. Chocobo tack does not have a bit. One imagines that most riding chocobos are actually trained to obey dressage-like cues and can be guided almost exclusively with the knees.

Basically, you don't. Chocobos are considered actually 'semi-intelligent', and so are considered strong-willed. This is why in the Chocobo Races (based directly on Chocobo Racing in FFVII) you can't actually directly control the chocobo but merely guide it and hope it follows your commands, the more likely it is to do this determined by stats.

Of course as a mount this is quietly ignored for the sake of gameplay, but given we're also riding the likes of Midgardsormr who is fully sentinent and free-willed, I think it's more of a case of 'the chocobo has such a strong bond with you they know to instinctively go where you want them to.' Or, putting it another way, you could simply say it's another aspect of the Echo.

8: Chocobos seem to be eaters of herbage as opposed to grazers of grass, like ungulates. Without teeth, they probably seek out pebbles and stones to eat as gastroliths to help grind food in the gizzard.

They do, throughout the series their preferred fodder are vegetables, specifically leafy 'greens', especially their signature food, gysahl greens (which vary in depiction from a raddish like plant in FFVII to more like the cabbages seen here in FFXIV - the name itself was a town in FFIII). Having said that, the infamous Fat Chocobo in his various incarnations is notorious for pretty much eating anything and everything (some games he even functions as an item inventory - I'll leave it up to your imagination as to where and how exactly he stores and recovers those items!). The use of stones to grind up their food in their stomachs is highly likely, but has never been depicted or stated in any FF game from my understanding at least.

9: Sustaining chocobos on voyage may therefore be a bit easier than sustaining horses on voyage, as long as your turnips and beets and mangel-wurzels don't spoil.

Considering in FFXIV at least chocobos were natively only found in Eorzea and not across the world, and given Aldernard is not exactly a very large continent (Ilsabard is far larger), I think that wouldn't have been too much of a problem - especially post Calamity manned aetheryte camps and hamlets are fairly common along most major roads that can provide fodder and water for chocobos and (in the case of chocobo carriage services), fresh birds for long distance travels. But certainly taking a few bags of greens and a barrel of water would probably be enough for most chocobo caravans.

10: Bird manure is generally too "hot" to be used on crops from scratch. But well-mixed with plant matter (scraps from the chocobos' own feed bowls, stall straw) it will compost down into a rich soil amendment.

Actually, an early quest in Gridania has you gathering up chocobo dung at the stables at Treespeak in the North Shroud that the chocobokeeps use as fertilizer for the gysahl greens crops, but from what I remember they didn't mix it with other scraps or extract say phosphorous from it, but simply used it on the crops as is. Of course, this may just be simplification for the sake of gameplay.

Another very disturbing use for chocobo dung is that it is apparently the 'secret ingredient' imps use to make 'Old Pumpkin Cookies' in the Halloween events which they gave to unsuspecting adventurers, so take from that what you will.

[Iscah]

Considering rental chocobos do 'dismount' you after the ten minute time limit expires, I think it's much easier than it appears. Of course actual mount chocobos do not do this, so it could probably just be not so much the chocobo throwing you off it when time is up, and more just the game showing you "doing the right thing" and dismounting once the time is up - but your malmage may vary on that one.

Magicked rental saddles. Stay on for more than your allotted time and they'll encourage you to dismount by becoming unbearably hot or electrified or something. Possibly both.

(Only affects you and not the bird, of course.)

[MoofiaBossVal]

Given that Griffons exist in this world, I'm surprised that Griffons aren't the predominant mount in Eorzea. They're far, far strong than Chocobos so they can carry heavier burdens and are less fragile, and they have four legs so getting a leg broken isn't a total death sentence. And Griffons can fly. Maybe Chocobos can be bred faster and in larger numbers so they are cheaper, but you'd think that the Griffon breeding industry would be way bigger.

[Brightamethyst]

They're probably harder enough to tame that it's not worth it. Same reason people don't ride lions into battle IRL. It's possible to train and a lion as a mount, but not worth the effort given how easy horses are by comparison. Not like a warhorse is a slouch in a fight. Ala Mhigo does have gryphon mounted soldiers, but they're specialty troops rather than the rank and file.