Maven Herd
The Maven Herd produces boutique solidigraphic horses, the "finest solidigraphic horses in all the Alliance." Unlike most solidigraphic horses, which provide an unsatisfactory riding experience for a knowledgeable rider, the Maven Herd solidigraphs breathe, move, and respond to their riders like natural horses. The maven of the Maven Herd is a human equestrian with a passion for horseflesh and programming. Each horse is hand-designed and unique, with unique personalities constructed in a similar fashion as a D-per. Their licensure is extremely expensive due to the complexity and expense of creating them. Starbase Alpha has a license for several of the individual solidigraphic horses but is one of only three starbases with such a license.[1]
The Maven Herd horses are activated using a 'key' in the form of color-coded wristbands, which tighten to conform to the rider's skin. Once this is done, riders can summon multiple horses with, "Maven Herd, arrive!" or single horses by name. The solidigraphic horses remain static until mounted, at which point they activate and begin to act like flesh-and-blood horses with distinct personalities.[1]
The Starbase Alpha Maven Herd rental facility is in Park Dome, Splendor Station, adjacent to a cedar forest and plains suitable for riding. Its office is a small building in a sleek wood-and-glass style and with no signage save the emblem of Maven Herd, a silver horseshoe bisected by a thinned spiral flame. It is large enough only for the single luxurious office in it, and adjoined by the paddock, a curious flat-topped paved area, as if built of a Pad-like material. Employees wear silver tunics as livery. One of the employees at Starbase Alpha is a female Asanii with a bearing suiting the exclusivity of the clientele.[1]
Specific Horses and Where They're Licensed
Starbase Alpha
Starbase Alpha has the following known solidigraph horses:
- Nebula: almost seventeen hands of cobalt blue and deepest purple, and the gaseous patterns on its flanks were actually moving, revealing pinprick stars of dim red and silver. What he’d taken for soft feathering at its fetlocks were actually streams of cloudy vapor. Rented to Jahir.[1]
- Jackson Pollock: two hands shorter than Jahir’s and far more compact in build… but just as beautifully proportioned, and an equally unnatural coloration. A black with a noticeably green sheen, particularly near the extremities, and across its buttocks a white blanket spattered with unlikely splotches of emerald, red, blue, yellow, black… colors that ran in streaks down its hindquarters as if the paint hadn’t dried in time. Rented by Lisinthir.[1]