The Tavern

Description: an orc warrior, wielding a polearm (minimum halberd) and carrying javelins, riding a war elephant--simply a regular elephant wearing armoured plates, thus more AC.

Mechanics: same as spriggan rider to determine whether rider or mount dies first: if the orc dies, the elephant has a 50% chance of going into a frenzy; if the elephant dies, the orc is stunned/distracted for at least one turn from the fall, and is perhaps thrown multiple squares in a random direction.

Background: the player meets a lot of orcs, so a different, genuinely dangerous opponent should be welcome. Javelins ensure it's not just a melee threat. The 'rider' mechanic is cool but at present only used once in the game, for spriggan riders. The player has the tactical possibility of frenzying the elephant to take out a group of orcs, but with risk and also no guarantee. They should be very dangerous to approach to engage in melee: is it possible to be polearmed, trampled, and then polearmed again in one turn? Even without this I think they'd be formidable.

Appearance: Orc:2 (occasional), Vaults, vaults

Other notes: possible expansion to knights or warlords riding dire elephants; needs a cooler name

Mahout is the term for an elephant handler/rider. Orc Mahout would work fine I think.

I like it.

Only tangentially related: anyone remembers when ogres started with an ankus?

Sure. But until now I had no idea they have something to do with elephants...

Everything eventually comes back to elephants

Should be a formicid riding the elephant

why?

Because it's an elephANT?

More seriously, I'm assuming the elephant going into a frenzy means it turns neutral? That would be an interesting if marginal motivation for fighting these in large crowds.

There are actually a lot of other interesting possibilities with mounts, though:

• Horses: Do little damage but greatly increase rider's movement speed. If their rider dies they turn neutral and flee for the nearest staircase old Ely style.
• Jackals: A way to beef up D:1 monsters just a bit, maybe even make them still a threat on D:2.
• Hell beast: Speed boost but also does damage in its own right.
• Dragons: What's a great way to occasionally beef up end-game uniques? Have them ride in on a golden/shadow/storm dragon.

Instead of wearing dragon armor, Margery could be made to ride a dragon that is guaranteed to drop a (enchanted a la Xtahua/Snorg/Bai Suzhen) hide upon kill.

Rather than just fire/acid, I'd prefer if she could have ice/shadow/storm so that she and her merry men have more varied damage types and are appreciably more dangerous than the vanilla hell knight band.

There's no reason to stop at Orcs, either. Elven archers could ride wolves in the elven halls.

There are a lot of monsters with essentially unique mechanics. Would be nice if some of them could be spread around more.