horse ownership is persistent, like housing; protect your horse, purchase upgrades like armor, lest it get killed and you have to buy a new one. new DB table to support this and track location. td: you can only own one at a time or are there multiple horses with different locations?
during gameplay your horse will hang around wherever you leave it, but if you log out it'll be script destroyed
horse will be spawned back where you left it when you re-log in the area where you left it (tap standard pcloaded), unless there's been a reset
cache list and location of horses left in an area as local vars on the area; in area onenter, check if entering player left a horse here and spawn it at appropriate location if need be (doesn't already exist/not hit by area sweeper already)
an exception will be summoned paladin mounts, which will be an animal companion and thus summonable once per day (outdoors)
there will be stables in north cear, ravenswatch, and lendose (all towns?) where a horse can be 'parked.' horse will be found in stable where parked unless checked out by player or server reset
spawn location system will be hooked, whatever town you spawn in, your horse will be there if you visit/go-inside the stable there. stable onenter will check your entry point and whether you have a horse.
no horses in town; approaching the city gates will force a popup to dismount and leave horse there or check it into the local stable
horses can be killed by monsters or other players. horse ondeath will trap the event and clear the db table of the horse
horses can be stolen by other players. if you leave it out, another PC can mount it and ride off, assuming they're the right size to do so. warrant will be automatically issued for horse theft within towns
horse theft outside of town transfers ownership of horse to thief. robbed person can always pursuade or kill rival PC, and taking the horse will do likewise, transferring it back to them.
paladin mounts cannot be mounted/stolen except by the paladin
COMBAT (not fully baked): for time being, entering into combat will force dismount and horse will remain neutral to enemies. If PC dies in area with horse, horse join player faction and be subject to attack/death. will look into fight/flee pop-up on combat init, but player won't be able to fight back until they dismount. fight option will dismount, flee option will let them ride to safety if desired but hostiles will continue to attack player/horse combo until they zone or attack back (forcing dismount)