In Fantasy settings why don't merchants ride giant

>>43626306
I don't know about the former, but the latter is too crabby

>>43626306

crabs move sideways and spiders have an expensive diet.

In my setting the merchants ride "tower beasts" which are like a mix between an elephant, a bison, and a camel. Massive, bulky things that allow the rider and his goods to sit up very high off the ground. Many don't even need to hire guards, since the beast can defend itself and its rider quite well.

>>43626352
>spiders have an expensive diet.
Get attacked by bandits, Feed them to spider after.

>implying riding a heaving tide of regular sized crabs isn't better

I always had the idea for giant jewled mountain crabs (with very precious gems) which would sit at the heads of streams and eat animals or whatever greedy adventures would come their way. Then at the end of their life cycle they would migrate back to the ocean, so you'd have hills of jewels moving down the mountains which could make you a pretty penny but also be dangerous as fuck. Then they go deep into the ocean to breed, where'd they eventually die after laying eggs or fertilizing them. Then about a year later you'd have a swarm of tiny jeweled mountain crabs with only semi-precious and common gems head back inland to find the springs and streams of their parents to grow big and become encrusted with the more precious gems and start he cycle over.

>>43626490
Could you just catch a couple and breed them in captivity then have unlimited money?

>>43626306
The creature has to be able to move a lot of weight around
Spiders cannot do this, crabs could but not as much and they need to hang near water unless specifically land crabs

>>43626306
Because your average fantasy isn't very fantastic, and therefore has camels, donkeys and horses. And if you have camels and donkeys and horses why bother trying to ride a gigantic crustacean.

Take Vvardenfel island from Morrowind as a good example of a fantastic ecosystem. Horses and cattle can't survive the climate and the blighted ash storms there, so giant insects are used as mounts and insect/crab shell is used locally for armor, weapons and tools instead of horn and hide. Local agriculture revolves around a few odd crops and kwama eggs, which are huge insect eggs harvested from colonies of domesticated kwama. I think rats and some plants are the only 'normal' lifeforms you encounter in that game, and rats likely arrived there on ships.

>>43626545
what about a giant ant?

>>43626306
Someone's been playing too much Endless Legend...

Anyway, large insects probably aren't as good for beast of burden work as well...beasts of burden. Horses are man's go-to riding beast because it can do so much more than that. It can pull from either front or back, it can carry, and best of all it can RUN. And horses have a certain "intelligence" about them, one I don't think large insects are capable of possessing. Mind you, a fantasy setting could just DO all of this with the large insect in question, but then you just have a horse with a shell and some peenchers. Not very creative or immersive.

I don't consider large insects to even be viable for such usage in a logistical sense, that's my take on it.

>>43626306
>Merchant riding a spider
>Not having the merchant be a spider

>>43626926
>Not having the merchant be a spider
Spider riding human

>>43626760
A giant ant would suffocate.

Solve that somehow and you'll find that strength doesn't scale up along with size. Which is why all the "strongest per mass" creatures are tiny, like ants and beetles. While the largest land animal is almost guaranteed to be the strongest one in absolute terms, despite a comparatively pathetic strength per mass.

But since this is fantasy you can certainly take some aspect of reality, forcefully rip it from its context and shove it into another, and then pretend it all makes sense.

>>43626510

Nah, they need the deep ocean pressure to breed, and even if you caught the little ones they need a steady diet of adventurers to really grow the really precious stuff.

>>43627149
Couldn't you magic the pressure and use the crabs as an execution pit?

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>>43626306
Because my merchants riding their relatives into town would look strange.

>>43627187
If you can magic up pressure, why not just make gems yourself?

>>43626992
> Give them lung like structures
> Make up some ooblek like subsance to move their hydraulic joints
> Otherwise give them bigger extremities and add muscles.
>Run the campaign in an ecosystem where giant "insects" are preffered, either because of cultural or practical reasons like availability.
This won't make them realistic, but at least it becomes easier to accept than outright giant bugs.
Morrowind bug creatures utilize some of these conceps, except for the Silt Striders, but eh.

>>43627224
You can tell the difference between magic made gems and naturally made ones.

The former are actually worthless.

>>43626306
Because creatures of sufficient size to be useful as draft animals having an exoskeleton makes no sense on a planet equivalent to modern Earth, Anon.

Essentially; as a creature scales in size, its weight increases faster than its strength. It becomes less and less efficient. This is why ants can lift 10 times their body weight, where as larger creatures can't.

Exoskeletons are heavy as balls. A creature with one large enough to haul a cart or a rider would be ludicrously inefficient, and the strain of consuming/burning so many calories would mean it would overheat easily.

In short; don't try to bring logic into fantasy or everything is terrible.

>>43626306

>merchants

Simple. Shellfish of any size is not kosher.
Look, someone had to make this joke.

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>>43626306
I had a character that was kind of what you're talking about. It was a goblin summoner who's eidolon was essentially a giant crab that he rode around on. I also played the character like pic related.

>>43626438
Spiders only eat life pray

>>43628977
Actually, clams, crabs and most other water dwelling things are kosher because they qualify as "fish".

The only exception are hippos. Hippos are kosher only if you kill them the koscher way. Which is quite a challenge.

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>>43626306
In Endless Legend there's a faction called the Roving clans. Their gimmicks are TRADE, MONEY, BANNING FUCKERS FROM THE MARKET, AND HOLY SHIT BEETLE CAVALRY.

They also have mobile cities on the backs of giant beetles. They're pretty neat.

>>43629525
>life pray
You tried

>>43629525
no, they eat love pray

>>43631338
I would love to see a parody cover of that book with the title Eat Live Prey and the woman's hand coveted in tiny spiders instead of sprinkles.

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>>43631207
>>43631338

>>43626352
>crabs move sideways
And lobsters walk straight. So never take on for your mate.

Fuck I'm old. Anyone who gets the reference is also old, also my hero.

>>43631845
smothers brothers?

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>>43631989
I love you.

Even if you had giant arthropods in your world, I don't think there's any practical method to train and control them barring magic.

>>43626306
>my beasts of burden are different for the sake of being different :^)
Fuck off

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>>43626306
Why does your group not ride on a giant possum?

>>43626352
>spiders have an expensive diet

Large animals are almost always herbivores. I'd imagine a species of riding spider would have evolved to feed on cellulose by using it's fangs to inject tree limbs, or logs, with digestive fluids and suck the resultant organic slurry out. Domesticated ones could be fed saw dust or other ground up plant matter, by having it placed in metal containers with holes in the top the spiders fangs fit into.

>>43626306
in the book series, they use giant crab things in place of mules/oxen to pull wagons, but they walk forwards, not sideways

>>43634674
I like this idea anon.
Giant herbivorous spiders which are fed plant matter and produce silk.

Spider tipping is also a thing.

>>43634674
>>43635447

Did you guys know that when sufficiently large spiders move, you can hear the hydraulics going?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNHK565cVe8&1m30s

>ask a friend what kind of animal would be cool for a BoB
>he says toads
how do i call him an idiot without being a dick?

>>43635473
Is that was the hissing/squishing noise is when she wanders around? Damn...

People use giant crabs to pull their wagons in the Stormlight Archive series from Brandon Sanderson if I'm not mistaken. Good series, too.

>>43635592

Yup. Now imagine that from a spider large enough to carry merchandise.

>>43626306
because all they know is hate. too hard to tame

Woow ny post got deleted ok

Point remains y'all niggas need to stop bringing up science so much as a way to rain on the fantasy parade

>>43635605
I'd imagine it'd be the equivalent of someone riding around selling their wares out the back of a noisy old pickup.

Or new. Any vehicle really. Park em and they don't make much noise when they're not running. Same probably applies to giant spiders.

>>43635665
>Grandpa, what's that noise outside? It sounds gross...
>Oh, the merchant caravan must be here

They ride stiltstriders instead

>>43627260
Anon, a magically "created/summoned" gem might be obvious, but unless its entirely for the purpose of story telling consistency, being able to artificially create a pressured enthronement would allow for the creation of real gems via magic.

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>>43626306

>>43635509
>not have a titanic toad as a base for your city
>city is on a series of hydraulics that create energy each time the toad hops

what about a giant slug mount?

>>43627224

The crabs grow the gems themselves, it's the pressure they breed in.

In my setting, there are no mammals aside from humans, tree dwellers and rodents. Everything else is arthropods. Why?

Because I want a setting where the heavy cavalry is armoured dudes riding mantis shrimps. Where the horse analogue is more dangerous than the rider, because it can punch through any opponents they may have.