With my main being a necromancer (and working on a beastlord) and me being an MMO mount and housepet addict, I've been wondering lately what EQ lore has to say about what this character's daily interactions with these critters is like. Especially since I only recently found out from a book that drakota are apparently intelligent enough to speak (I've only been playing semi-casually for a few months, and there's a lot to learn about this setting ). So I guess when I'm using the shadowscale drakota my character is interacting with it as a fellow intelligent being - what about the wyverns? The sokokar is confirmed to be of animal intelligence as far as I remember, but what about wargs (Tolkein's wargs spoke, as do D&D wargs, so there's some fantasy precedent) and all those unicorns and other magical horses? Those goofy skystriders I hope to win from LoN boosters sometime? I'm doing my gryphon quests right now and those critters seem to be about as intelligent as parrots, maybe, if non-speaking ones, and from what I remember of the raptor and komodo questline text those seemed to be about as intelligent as birds or dogs. A lot of the housepets/plushies are more self-explanatory, being either animals or creatures easily confirmed to be sentient like the little gnoll and lizardman I bought from that arena guy. I remember talking moppets during that business in Nektropos castle, too. But what about, say, the ravasect? I'm not high enough in adventure levels to go messing around with them for real yet. Most of the beastlord pets are obviously just trained animals, but I'm not so sure about some of the weirder ones at high levels. Manticores do have pretty human-looking faces, although I don't...think I remember any of them saying anything during all those adventures in Timorous Deep. As I continue to get more comfortable with the game world I kinda want to roleplay or write little stories up or something, and this is the kind of setting info stuff I end up wondering about. Especially when deciding which mounts and house creatures a character will "really" have in terms of their story and not just me collecting everything to play with. I know you can always fill in the blanks yourself, but I'd rather be sure I'm not conflicting with official info first.
Most of the dragon-kin creatures should be considered sentient with near human to superior to human intelligence. Wurms are the least intelligent of the dragon kin. Wyverns, Drakes and drakota are about on par with each other and humans. Not sure about the others. All of them can communicate with dragons and most can with adventurers. Wargs are known to be very intelligent and brutish wolves. Not much is known about them beyond that. It isn't like they speak or use tools of any kind. Unicorns aren't really shown doing much of anything other than looking pretty. Wild Gryphon are predators and seem to be pack minded. Take that how you see fit. The Moppets are the souls of sentient creatures trapped in a doll's body by Rikantus Everling. Ravesect seem to have human-like intelligence but a xenophobic society that sees other sentients as a threat and potential food source. They use weapons. There seems to be some cooperation between the Ravesect and the Quellthulians. Not sure if this is mutually beneficial or if the Quellthulians are using some sort of magic to keep the Ravesect from attacking. Of all the Beastlord pets the most questionable are the Fey creatures. You can get some fairies, dragon fairies and some other similar creatures that should be considered intelligent. Manticor... don't really seem to be intelligent.
