> Some of it may certainly to be to do with the state of the
> trails/nature of the terrain. There is no point in being able to
> travel 80% of your journey by cart if you end up being unable to
> complete without abandoning the cart.
>
> But there may be more to it, although the heortlings ride horses they
> use oxen to pull ploughs - so maybe what carts they use are also
> pulled by oxen. Is it because the Ox is the "Workers" animal and the
> Horse the "Nobles" - You'd no more ask your Horse to pull your
> cart/Sleigh than you would ask weaponthane to do so?
Somehow, I have this idea that pulling "stuff" in a wagon is okay (like the harvest, or merchant goods), but for some reason (no idea what...) they don't pull people in carts. Maybe a proper horse harness is a Mastakos the Charioteer secret, and we all know how *extremely* popular he is...
Also, the terrain is a major hazard to wheeled transport - long-distance travel was done horseback or shanks-mare in Scotland until the English forced roads through in the 1700's. I imagine that clan-based heortlings just won't have the need for long-distance haulage, so an oxteam to pull the haywain is perfectly acceptable - at 2 miles an hour (or less) it still doesn't take that long to haul in the harvest from the fields, but trying to get them to pull your wagon to Boldhome is an exercise in frustration. Clans along the roads and people in the city may have proper horse-drawn wagons, but most haulage is likely to be Lunar-run (IMO).
Of course, I imagine that the Lunars don't have this problem - what is a Imperial Army without the commander in a chariot (hey, they use them all the time in Roman movies). We know that the Dara Happans have a few chariot units, but of course they like nice flat plains, rather than those horrid highlands. There might be a weekly stage from the Empire to Boldhome then on to Pavis, the River of Cradles and points south. This then leads to Praxians on the warpath chasing down the stage, which is just barely rescued in the nick of time by the cavalry from Fort Raus... (Hey, I *like* to mix genre metaphors!)
Really, everyone knows that Cities are the key to conquering territory - and the cities of Sartar do have a road network connecting them together, so the typical Lunar commander won't even *think* about venturing into the hinterlands, and so won't need to worry about his wheeled transport - until he has to go help the Tax Farmer collect revenues...
Dara Happans aren't going to do much in winter, so the stage just doesn't run in the Snowy months, or will run with "Sun Lamps" at the front of the coach to melt the snow before the horses get to it...
A few disconnected thoughts...
RR
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