Ride em, fish boy.

Another manip, this is a hipp (Hippocampus Catamiti), one of Ganymede's animals, basically an amphibious horse named for the mythical sea horse of Earth. Not exactly a difficult manip, just a sea lion and horse's head, the only hard part was replacing the horse's skin, eye, etc. with something more aquatic and alien looking. May need a bit more work, not quite sure. It'll be about 1/3rd page width eventually.

Later And again there are cut and paste problems I can't see on my main PC's LCD screen but show up on other displays - really getting a bit annoyed about this, I'm obviously going to have to start sending everything to the iBook for checking, or invest in a better monitor. Any recommendations? Needs to be big (22" or better), doesn't necessarily need to be wide screen.

Hopefully this is a bit better

Hipps that pass in the night

And so that there's something to do with hipps, here's an adventure outline:

Adventure Idea: The Last Round-Up
All of the hipps used around Hydropole come from a single herd. After several decades of domestication the colonists start to notice that they are no longer thriving; their endurance and speed is deteriorating, and they seem to suffer more illnesses. The natives claim that the herd is too small, and is becoming too inbred; unless new blood is introduced things will only get worst, and the herd will be headed for the last round-up. Needless to say the Nympus don’t use that exact phrase, but that’s what they mean.

Adventurers with suitable skills such as Scientist (zoologist), Doctor (veterinary surgeon), Riding, etc. should be recruited for a mission to save the herd – they’re to take the best hipps and ride North, find wild herds, capture the best animals, and bring them back to Hydropole. Just to complicate things, National Geographic happens to have a camera crew on Ganymede, and wants to film the expedition; Blasters and Ammo wants the adventurers to field-test some new weapons designed for Ganymede’s conditions; and the local Ford dealership plans to launch a rival expedition by truck to prove that hipps are no longer needed. And needless to say there are going to be problems with the tide, dangerous animals, etc. etc.

Another problem with hipps...

Something I missed earlier, because Tidal Moon is not the best written of these stories and things aren't really described as well as they might be - hipps have some sort of hard outer shell. Back to the drawing board...

Oh well...

Seal plus horse with pangolin armour: