Creating a Cavalry

Styx and Sunrise have talked long and hard about how to go about training a ponygirl warrior contingent able to fight against the humans with success and able to capture new ponies to increase the herd. Naked is Sunrises' new uniform for the most part. She only wears harness for training the other ponies and she will only wear the bit for training with Styx, or in combat, when quick responsiveness to nonverbal commands is critical, and leaves the rider free to focus on other matters.

The use of each ponygirl depends on the degree to which they can be trusted. The humans have brought in only weapons that are short range or intended for hand to hand combat. This could change, but for now, it means that the goblins and their ponygirls have a fighting chance with medieval style weaponry. The trusted ponygirls, like sunrise are equipped with sword or mace for the strong hand and either a small shield or a secondary weapon for the off hand. This frees the goblin rider to become a mounted archer for longer ranged attacks. Sunrise, formerly a fan of ancient weaponry, is even able to show the goblins how to improve upon the weapons they currently use and how to produce new weapons, like crossbows, to gain a longer range weapon, if slower to reload.

In any case, they get right to work on training, to get a good start before Sunrises' expanding belly sidelines her for a few weeks. Of the nine women captured, seven are deemed suitable for ponygirl training and two are kept as brood mothers. Styx has selected seven men that he considers both physically and mentally capable of fighting from a war horse and treating his ponygirl with respect. The rumors circulated through other species about goblin abuse of slaves is often true, but Sunrise was extra fortunate to be captured by someone like Styx, who recognized the gains to be achieved through the knowledge freely given by a happy ponygirl. Abusing slaves is like plotting against the very hormones that achieved the capture to begin with and working to create ponygirls and other slaves who want to rebel.

Initial training is more of the same training that brought them into captivity. Added to training in basic commands, the ponygirls and their riders had to learn how to function as a unit, including both commands for maneuver and commands for a fight. Again, Sunrise proved her worth. Both as a modern officer and as a student of historic warfare, she was well suited to the tasks required.

This goblin tribe had not had mounts in a long time, and were just hoping for a few elves to lighten their work load when the came upon the humans instead. Now they realize that they're in for a fight, but also recognize the tremendous boost to their tribal status that can be achieved by gaining many human slaves. With the use of the ponygirls, they can travel much farther and faster. They can and already are making plans to move the entire tribe out of the human's area. They can then come back as mounted cavalry whenever they wish to raid, vanishing like morning mist before there can be any retaliation.