Well, my reply got eateded twice, so I'll just address the important parts:
1) I don't mean how your Factotum knows about your mount, I mean what book these things are in, because I see no book with a list of buyable mounts other then horse and riding dog in PHB, and they seem to be something useful. This is not a "you can't have that!" phrased as a question, it is: "Hey what's that?"
Ah, sorry, thought you meant something else.
Desmoderu Hunting Bats are found in Monster Manual 2, and note that they were specifically addressed by the 3.5 update of that book (they now have Blindsense, not Blindsight, for example). MMII also has the Warbeast template, which can be applied to any domesticated creature (which Hunting Bats specifically are) with a DC 20 Handle Animal Check (which the Factotum can easily make using his Cunning Knowledge ability). The nice thing about this template is that it gives you a set price to purchase such a mount (based on HD), which is a big reason to use it, as the Hunting Bat entry never actually gives a price.
Note also that Eberron has some rules for purchasing mounts... depending on how much money I have, I may or may not apply the Magebreed template, which doubles the cost of the mount but makes it a bit better.
Really, though, I just wanted to have some sort of mount that seemed thematically appropriate, as I didn't think a big heavy warhorse sounded right.
2) Yes, feats which provide greater benefits then 90% of other feats to every character regardless of class don't show Factotums to be sweet. I don't like that you are willing to abuse anything you can even think of, and yet refuse to admit that you have a level of min-max and optimization that most people don't use in their normal games. If a Factotum can't keep up without Item Familiar, then he sucks. Sorry. Everyone else manages to be just fine without Item Familiar. Stop complaining that if you don't have access to every single obscure bit of cheese you can think of that we are being biased.
It's not that he can't keep up without Item Familiar. It's that I specifically wanted a concept of a character that didn't have to depend much on found gear. And at this point, you've complained about Item Familiars (which were in the initial rules given), Font of Inspiration (the only Factotum only feat), and Craft Wonderous Items (because other classes can't do it, it's too powerful, whatever, despite it actually being an example of a feat that classes with spell like abilities could take). It starts looking like you're just going to whine unless I build something using really weak feats... the only one you haven't complained about is Exotic Weapon Proficiency, a feat that a lot of people consider to be sub par (since you could get around that with the Skillfull enchantment anyway).
3) Crafting: Every character in the game has access to crafting, parties are done where groups have WBL, and where groups have double WBL, but no parties, and no fair comparisons are done where one player has twice the wealth of anyone else.
See?
4) So now to call you on some more bullshit that you will inevitably complain that if you don't have we are cheating you of what every DM allows: You have a gnome weapon that was crafted by a dwarven fey human.
Holy crap, you just went after EWP: Quickrazor. You've now whined about every feat I took. That's hilarious. Seriously, that part above where I said the only one you hadn't gone after was EWP? That was before I got here.
Please explain how that makes any sense to anyone. Just drop the Dwarvencraft, it doesn't even matter because no one is going to target your Item Familiar anyway, and that way you aren't bullshitting us with an item that was crafted by both dwarves and fey.
Dwarvencraft is simply an amount of quality... it does not require being made by dwarves, and simply represents one step up from Masterwork (though Dwarves created the techniques. In fact, my Factotum made it himself. Likewise, Feycraft simply requires working with the fey when you make it, and again, the Factotum did it himself. And "Gnome Quickrazor" just means the weapon was invented and/or popularized by gnomes. The whole weapon was done with the aid of magic telling him how to do it (Magecraft). In other words, to avoid the names and just use the descriptions, the weapon is a very well crafted weapon that's especially lightweight, based on a design originally created by one culture but using smithing techniques of two other cultures to improve the quality. Now, does a random person finding one of these things make much sense? Maybe not. But does a character whose specific abilities make him great at using all kinds of skills combining skills from various areas to make this weapon make sense? I think so.
Does that make sense to you? Or is the idea of combining the smithing and crafting ideas of various cultures completely nonsensical?
Meanwhile, if it doesn't matter, then you shouldn't care right? I did it mostly to make sure that Adamantine wouldn't ignore the hardness of the weapon if it was attacked (which would happen, since the hardness went below 20 for feycraft), though I'm planning on using Augment Object on it once every 10 days anyway to double the hardness. After all, the major drawback of Item Familiars is that losing it really sucks, so making sure it's as hard as possible to destroy is a good thing.
JaronK