A Clump Of Stumps

The prehensile magic which lets Pinkie control her mane and AJ her tail is common to the ponies of Equestria.  It also lets ponies missing limbs attach anything roughly limb-shaped to a stump and control it.

A villain in Manehattan had her forelimbs removed on purpose just to get bigger, stronger metal legs, before being brought to heel by the city police.  She was a mobster, so she couldn't afford to go under general anesthesia and risk being slain by her enemies.  She had a bunch of local anesthetics to deaden the pain, and got to watch the entire procedure.

Maud wears the cloak to hide the fact that her super-strong rear legs are actually grey felt-covered sacks of sand. She lost the originals saving Pinkie from a rockslide.

Contrast this to the other sapient races of Equestria.  Ponies have massive strength and sturdiness, their destiny is revealed by their cutie marks, and ponies have the ability to use any old thing as a prosthetic.  Meanwhile, a griffon who maimed a foal had her talons "trimmed" down a knuckle.

Of course, some griffons seek out this privilege.

You know how birds are totally reckless and suicidal, flying right in front of your car at the last moment?

Imagine sapient creatures with the same carefree attitude toward their own parts.

The coolest teen griffons have a gang that you can only get into if you've been trimmed, with a minimum of one front talon gone at the outermost joint, with a maximum of nine gone at the knuckle. They must have one untouched talon.  To get in, meet those requirements. Doesn't matter how much or little else is missing, as long as those are met.  At least one finger gone, but not all of them.

Their criminal trade is the underground meat market, but most of them are not hardcore criminals.  They're there to show off.

If someone loses their last talon, they get kicked out?  Yep, they're out. It's a game, like shuffleboard or curling, where you can go too far.  It was originally about devotion to the criminal enterprise, with a one talon minimum, but over time it evolved as dumbasses got their arms off and still expected to be useful members of the gang.

Nowadays the clipping court (as it's known in slang) is wary of sentencing griffons to talon-only trims. They don't want to encourage the gang life. But that just makes it more of a game and a goal: what else can you lose and still make it into the gang?

The trimming clinic is a bunch of smiling medical ponies who are quite professional about their jobs. No sadism, no mess, just cold bureaucracy and warm smiles.

There's probably a lucrative black market for limbs to be grafted onto trimmed griffons. Since they're registered criminals, they might get caught with the new limbs.  Punishment for being re-limbed is simple: cut it off farther up, so it can't be grafted as easily.

The trimming clinic's young intern, who hopes to get her cutie mark in amputating, gets to do her first trim.