 Her companion wore black breeches and green jacket and boots. His cloak was black, lined with green, and he wore a sword and dagger at his waist. He sat astride a black, horse-shaped creature whose body appeared to be of metal.-Dilvish the Damned by Roger Zelazny, 1965 |
 Rod froze, hand on the pommel of his sword; then he dug his heels into Fess’s metal sides, and the great black horse sprang toward the ruckus.-The Warlock in Spite of Himself by Christopher Stasheff, 1969 |
 Meanwhile, in Aquilonia’s nighted capital, the chariot of thulandra thuu rumbles through the streets… drawn at high speed by a creature which, to a casual observer, might appear to be a large black stallion… but which a closer inspection would reveal to possess a strange, metallic sheen, as if it were carved of gleaming iron. Conan comic based on Conan the Liberator by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, 1979. |
What’s up with swords and sorcery being so hung up on black robot horses? I ran into these three just in books I read this year. Two of these sources predate D&D’s Obsidian Steed.
Well, they’re badass, y’know?
To be fair, Fess, Rod Gallowglas’ horse, looked like a horse. He really was an actual robot with a brain that popped out of his horse body and into another, or into the spaceship, or whatever.
To be even fairer, Dilvish’s horse Black was actually a shapeshifting demon (if I recall correctly). So it’s black metal things that look like horses but aren’t. (With the possible exception of that last one?)