Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Guest]

Don't you mean whisper?

[Guest]

Could she actually leave, though? I recall there being something said about maybe never getting to go back when she left with the bats.

[Guest]

You know BJ told Glory this chapter the Poison joke would likely wear off eventually and then Glory said it wasn't funny anymore. Well wouldn't it be "funny" timing for it to wear off as enclave soldiers try and push her through the SPP barrier? Something about a dashite being surrounded by enclave soldiers with kill on sight orders for dashites seems like it would be right up PJ's alley.

Especially considering what Glory and BJ said.

[Aonee]

Ya know, if Physcoshy did attend the gala previously, the bat ponies- or at least Styguis- are probably holding a mock gala of their own right now. Possibly with blackjack and hookers.

[Derpmind]

You know BJ told Glory this chapter the Poison joke would likely wear off eventually and then Glory said it wasn't funny anymore. Well wouldn't it be "funny" timing for it to wear off as enclave soldiers try and push her through the SPP barrier? Something about a dashite being surrounded by enclave soldiers with kill on sight orders for dashites seems like it would be right up PJ's alley.

Especially considering what Glory and BJ said.

Well, the Pisces sisters (that's their name, right?) are still seaponies. Goliath, (the giant train-pulling pony from chapter 36,) is still a giant even though it was his mother that got touched by the killing joke. I don't think the more permanent effects of the joke will diminish away unless something is done to counteract it.

Sex Champion Extraordinaire Morning Glory.

Why does this post not have all the brohoofs?

[Vergil]

Sex Champion Extraordinaire Morning Glory.

Why does this post not have all the brohoofs?

 Sorry I was slacking, fixed.

[Technowolf]

Hey, I've been thinking:  Blackjack got splashed with Flux plenty of times in Hippocratic and all it did was singe the enamel and make the metal turn bluish.  What makes the Goddess think that IMP (which is based off Flux) will work on Blackjack?  Even if it does, how does she know that the outcome will be remotely what she expects it to be?  Will it just affect BJ's flesh, or will it interact with the cybernetics also?   Will it forcibly regenerate those pieces of her that were lost, or have they been gone too long to do so?  Are her cybernetics part of her body or not?

[FeatherDust]

I haven't caught up yet (I'm like four pages back) but I really don't get why this keeps coming up... people saying Glory is being 'out of character' to be attracted to a male.

Based on what?  What point of characterization, exactly, is being betrayed by this?  She self-identifies lesbian?  That doesn't mean she can't occasionally have an attraction.  You know that Avenue Q song, "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist"?  Everyone's a little bit bisexual.  I'm sure she's much more strongly attracted to mares than stallions, but that doesn't mean it's a betrayal of the character if she goes the other way, particularly with everything else that's going on.

Even more so because we don't have insight into Glory's inner life.  We can know when Blackjack is secretly attracted to someone because she tells us so.  We don't know when Glory sees somebody and thinks "Wow, look at that guy's rump-- no, stop it, you like mares."  And with her coming out of a culture that strongly pushes homosexuality, there's really no telling what her 'deep down inside' feelings are.

If I remember correctly, she was only theoretically gay in the first place. That is to say, I seem to recall her saying hadn't had a serious romantic relationship before she shipped out with the Volunteer Corps.

You're concerned that she's emulating BJ now, but I wonder how much was she emulating her sister back home. (And emulating someone else is not a terrible thing -- that's the main way that young mammals learn, after all.) It's not like Glory has a meter that shows her exact gayness factor. "Sexuality is as sexuality does", so to speak, and I think she's mostly just stressing out because she's discovered that her tastes don't entirely conform to the conceptual label she had mentally applied to herself. Every relationship is unique, when you get right down to it. The only statement she can honestly make is, "I'd never met a stallion that I was interested in, and I thought I never would."

...yeah, that.

[Guest]

I think word of god saying she's a lesbian overrides speculation.

[FeatherDust]

I think word of god saying she's a lesbian overrides speculation.

Lesbian is a single broad term that describes her general preferences but does not necessarily accurately describe the specific moment to moment desires. That's like saying Minnesota has a cold climate, therefore it can never be hot in summer.

Now in Glory's HEAD, I'm sure she says "lesbian" and means "all girls all the time".  The facts don't necessarily bear that out, nor should they have to; it seems to me that rather than unhealthily pushing herself to be "more like blackjack" or being mind-controlled by her new body, she's just coming to terms with the fact that she doesn't have to be defined by a single societal label.  In part this is assisted by Blackjack's loose "do whatever you want to do" approach, so in a way she is being more Blackjack-like, but that doesn't mean she's denying her own 'true' desires to do so.

In other words, if she likes girls 90% of the time, and once in a great while a male gets her interest, does that constitute being "out of character", or make her calling herself "lesbian" a lie?  Of course not.

...Y'know what? Never mind, I'm repeating stuff from the last two pages (which I'm just now reading).

[Guest]

But included in that word of god was the "she wouldn't be doing any repeat performances" bit so while she might be attracted to them it's not a strong enough attraction to act on.

[FeatherDust]

Well, the Pisces sisters (that's their name, right?) are still seaponies. Goliath, (the giant train-pulling pony from chapter 36,) is still a giant even though it was his mother that got touched by the killing joke. I don't think the more permanent effects of the joke will diminish away unless something is done to counteract it.

That's what I was gonna bring up. Killing Joke transformations appear to be permanent.

Sex Champion Extraordinaire Morning Glory.

Why does this post not have all the brohoofs?

Um... stunned by awesome. And because the vote code is stupid and annoying and kicks you back to the forum front page unless you hit back right after it takes your vote.

[Caoimhe]

In Kkat's rpg of FoE, she actually has a cure for poison joke formula!

Also I kinda wish everyone wasn't bi. I mean I can see the experimenting thing in situations in FoEniverse but c'mon.

[Derpmind]

In Kkat's rpg of FoE, she actually has a cure for poison joke formula!

Poison Joke or Killing Joke? We know Zenith makes a cure for Killing Joke, but that's 'later on' so unless the Remnant knows how to make the cure, or the group finds an alchemist (probably from the Remnant) who can formulate the cure, it might be a long wait.

Um... stunned by awesome.  And because the vote code is stupid and annoying and kicks you back to the forum front page unless you hit back right after it takes your vote.

I always open the vote page as a new tab.

[Luminous Lead]

Hey, I've been thinking:  Blackjack got splashed with Flux plenty of times in Hippocratic and all it did was singe the enamel and make the metal turn bluish.  What makes the Goddess think that IMP (which is based off Flux) will work on Blackjack?  Even if it does, how does she know that the outcome will be remotely what she expects it to be?  Will it just affect BJ's flesh, or will it interact with the cybernetics also?   Will it forcibly regenerate those pieces of her that were lost, or have they been gone too long to do so?  Are her cybernetics part of her body or not?

Hippocratic also had her wearing a biosuit to keep the taint off, so she didn't get that much (if any) flesh exposure.  Taint works on Blackjack quite well otherwise ("The Choir", anyone?).

As for Alicorn Gesthalt Apotheosis, we've been shown that the cybernetics aren't "really" a part of her, as the connection gets soft and smushy when enough pressure is exerted (see the final fight with Deus).  Also, when alicorns are created, the entire body is dissolved into the goddess biomass before a new being is made from parts of the whole.  It's why the Big G calls them all her "children", and likely why she has such a strong hold on them.  If Blackjack were to be absorbed in the same fashion she would lose all her identifying features and become like any of the other alicorns, with proper legs, eyes, horn, wings, etc.

However, I doubt that's what she has in mind.  She wants a weapon to kill Lil'Pip, and given that all the other alicorns have failed dismally at this so far, G will take a different strategy.  Surprise is G's greatest ally at the moment, so G will try to make use of Security and StableDweller's past history together (which she doesn't know that Lil'Pip has removed) to ambush her with a heavily armoured cyberpony.  The thing is, even if they actually DO meet (no record in the original story) Blackjack still freaked 'Pip out the first time they met, and having removed that first contact memory all 'Pip would think now is "AAAAHH! GIANT RED-EYE CYBERPONY! MIND CRUSH!"

[Moodyman90]

I pretty much had the same idea as Lead, but I had forgotten that Little Pip removed those memories.

I mean, its possible that Blackjack ends up taking a dip anyways, but then you get into will it happen before or after the Goddess' death, would that even change the outcome if the Goddess is alive or not, and just what would it be the outcome of the dip.

Just throwing out guesses:
 1. Blackjack somehow survives what's to come without being changed.
2. Blackjack ends up taking a taint bath and mutates.
3. Blackjack ends up taking a taint bath and starts regrowing limbs and organs (kinda like how Little Pip regrows her lost leg.)
4. Blackjack ends up becoming an alicorn. To which either A. She becomes a purple alicorn. B. She becomes an alicorn version of herself for some reason.

These are just guesses. Chances are Somber will surprise me. I'll keep which one I want to happen to myself and just wait and see what happens.

[O. Hinds]

So this is where that link in the hub page leads... Hello!

Clothing alteration spell... now everypony new I meet during FoE RP's will think I took the idea for my OC's favorite spell from PH ;p


This was a great chapter. No heart-racing combat or past-delving, but I was glad to see the structure of "fight-talk-memory, in varying order" broken down just for a friendly mingling chapter. It catches us up on what's been going on around the Hoof will all the factions and individual characters the crew has met. Made for a very nice change of pace, plus it reminded me of just how massive this adventure has become. So many characters, so many factions, all of which Blackjack and company have had a hoof in for better or for worse.
Clearly something massive is about to happen if we needed to be refreshed on nearly every character we've met so far, and many of them were noticing zebras showing up nearby.

As for those zebras, they were described as not really doing anything other than attacking people when they get too close, which reminds me of the robotic Brood just told to keep that area. Their weapons (assault carbines and AM rifles) remind me specifically of the Harbingers, so to me it seems like either Cognitum has spawned these Brood (being the Goddess of Technology and all, it doesn't sound too far from her capabilities) to try and trick BJ into thinking the zebras are the big threat (this could explain why they are popping up on the opposite side of the normal Remnant areas, or that the Remnants and the Harbringers are allies in their quest to bring down BJ (hence the weaponry), and the Legate just hasn't learned what Cognitum is yet.
Either way, things are going to go downhill quickly.

Too quickly, perhaps? Based on how many chapters are in each Volume, it's looking like the story might stretch into 5 Volumes, since I don't see how the Enclave, Remnant, and Harbingers can be brought down within ~7 chapters. Well, it's doable given the length of each chapter, but still.


Also, everypony working on this story is amazing!! Thank you so much for putting so much detail into such a grand adventure. It's very inspiring!

Welcome to the forum!

Glory sighs and then walked up to Psychoshy.  Her face was set in an expression of certainty.  Psychoshy looks in annoyed uncertainty as she draws back.  "I have something vital to ask you."

"What?" Psychoshy asked as she looked from me and back to Glory.

"I need a vital piece of data corroborated,"  Glory went on.  "And you're the only pony who can do it."

"Ooookay.... so... what?"  Psychoshy asked as she looked from me to the stern faced Glory.  "What is it?  You're freaking me out."

"I need to know..." Glory asked as she leaned in, then glanced at Stygius.  "Is he a champion in bed?"

"W...why so you want to know?  I thought you weren't interested in guys!" Psychoshy asked.

"Tell me."

"You are so..."

"Tell me!"  Glory pressed, leaning in towards Psychoshy, her eyes staring.

Psychoshy looked from Glory to me to Stygius and gave a leery grin, "Er... yes."

Glory closed her eyes and nodded her head once.  Then she turned to me.  "Blackjack.  I have a vital question only you can answer."

"Just ask me," I said with a smile.

"Who is better in bed?  Stygius, or me?"  Glory asked as she stared into my eyes.

I frowned, considered.  "Well, if I really had to say... it depends on h-OW!"  I shouted as P-21 kicked my shin.  I blinked and looked at him, then at Glory.  "Um... yeah.  Sure."

Glory smiled and turned, trotting away.  "So it's official.  I am a sex champion!  Boooyah!"  She shouted as she flexed.  "Eat that Dusk!  Me.  Little miss nerd is a sex champ extraordinare!"

We all stared at her, no one saying a word as she strutted off.

*   *   *
In an unknown location, Dusk let out a sneeze...

:D
I don't get the sneeze bit, though.

I haven't finished the chapter yet, but this stuff is just really funny to me:

Work in progress Missed Opportunities:

Also :D.

Um... stunned by awesome. And because the vote code is stupid and annoying and kicks you back to the forum front page unless you hit back right after it takes your vote.

Click the plus button in whatever manner your browser uses for opening links in new tabs; that ought to work.

[Moodyman90]

The sneeze thing is a Japanese thing. It's kinda like the saying "My ears are burning." it suppose to happen when somebody is talking about you.

I think the saying is "Sneeze once and somebody is talking about you, twice it's something bad and three times it's a cold."

I could be way off though.

[Derpmind]

I remember Littlepip finding some research in the Catedral about alicornification. (If FoE's chapters were named I could look it up, but as is it's too late for me to got searching around that big a haystack. This is just from my memory and is probably inaccurate) If I remember correctly, (which I might not,) IMP can be used to make alicorns without the needing the goddess. (And without them being connected to the goddess? Not sure about that part. We know the goddess needs unicorns but IMP should work on anypony.) I think there were stages: Stage two was what Littlepip ended up with, increased healing in radiation and decreased aging. Stage three was always brief and had the feeling of phantom wings and horns for whatever the pony lacked, and had some compulsion to get mutated to stage four ASAP. Stage four was straight-up alicorn, but if it was one of the goddess's three archetypes or an altered version of the transformed pony I don't remember, if it was even mentioned. Point is, if I remember some of this stuff correctly then logically BJ could end up with rad healing b/c of her connection with Lacunae, or even get turned into an alicorn. Unlikely as it is that Somber would do that. (And yes, it would be painful.) Failing all of the above, IMP wasn't designed to work the way the goddess uses it, and should be able to still work as it was originally intended.

[O. Hinds]

Also :D.

I'm really glad you liked it

Well, given that I don't recall ever not liking one of your skits, tis wasn't exactly a longshot. :)

[hawkeye92]

I don't have the time to write a thorough review of the last two chapters but I'll attempt to summarize.

I liked them overall although the pace was fairly slow. I did enjoy Queen Blackjack and the various plots to try and usurp her though. Gala was also pulled off nicely with a lot of previous characters showing up and updates from the wasteland which is nice.

The end with Blackjack coming under the control of the goddess and setting out to kill Littlepip signifies something I've personally been waiting for is just around the corner and I'm thoroughly looking forwards to how it plays out.

[Meleagridis]

There is some small clarification on the last chapter that I would desperately like to know:
Windclop gets shifty when BJ brings up Boing. Is that just because it's an uncomfortable topic, or is there something (specifically, is there something about Boing) that he's hiding? I fully realise I'm probably looking at this a little too intensely, but his shiftiness reaches its peak right after he makes a vague description of Boing's condition.

It's been a while since I remembered to put up the running thoughts (I wouldn't call it commentary) on a chapter. Then again, it's been a while since I've been able to catch up before the week was out...

straight from the notepad without any frame of reference:

After reading:

Spoiler:

The only explanation I can think of is she's so confident in her plans she doesn't believe BJ's friends finding the pipbuck will effect it. In which case I would have to say she's completely discounted the dealer.

OH YEAH THAT GUY. He and Boo have the most low-down on BJ's condition. Unless Boo smartens up fast, he's gonna have to get over his thing about talking to people. If I remember right, he didn’t say a thing to Scotch for some reason. But I'm pretty sure he figured something out from BJ's freak-out earlier. That information is all the crew needs!

I still don't really get the concept of discrete sexual orientations.  People are so very varied.

Because humans love our discrete categories. It's easier to lump people into two or three separate categories than it is to acknowledge the myriad differences in every person's romantic and sexual attractions. Hell, I'm of the mindset that pretty much everyone is bisexual to some degree, although it's debatable if a 90/10 or 95/5 split really counts as bisexuality.

Since Sindri's gone ghost, I'll just step in on his behalf. You're forgetting that some people don't do people. It’s even less simple than this explanation of how not simple it is.
Disclaimer: I have no idea if Sindri would step in or not.

:D.

I vote mutated smiley for next PH fan art.

[FeatherDust]

I remember Littlepip finding some research in the Catedral about alicornification. (If FoE's chapters were named I could look it up)

Chapter 43.

If I remember correctly, (which I might not,) IMP can be used to make alicorns without the needing the goddess. (And without them being connected to the goddess? Not sure about that part.

Redeye never got it to work. That's why he was about to use himself and Pip to create his "God". Glue's notes said trying to go to Stage Five, full metamorphosis, always went to hell. That's why they were trying to create stable Stage Threes (like Pip); full transformation did something bad. Redeye theorized that a guiding mind like the Goddess was a required part of the process.

It seems like Twilight's potion didn't work, and Trixie may well have been killed or worse even if she hadn't got Goddess'ed.

[StoneSlinger88]

Deus has twin cannons on his turret.

[O. Hinds]

There is some small clarification on the last chapter that I would desperately like to know:
Windclop gets shifty when BJ brings up Boing. Is that just because it's an uncomfortable topic, or is there something (specifically, is there something about Boing) that he's hiding? I fully realise I'm probably looking at this a little too intensely, but his shiftiness reaches its peak right after he makes a vague description of Boing's condition.

Now you've gotten me curious about that, too.

I vote mutated smiley for next PH fan art.

Hah!

[Somber]

Random thinking here... I think there's some scientifically minded folks here and I really don't know where else to put this.

I want to move Europa to Venus to speed up the latter's rotation, restarting its magnetic field.  Just bear with me a second.  What was bugging me was 'how' without waving my hand and grandly pronouncing they do.  So here is my thought.  Humans make a ship and go out towards Jupiter.  Likely, the ship is unmanned since humans would go crazy at this stage.  The ship finds a nice 1000m or so asteroid, attaches a thruster, and uses the asteroid's alumium oxide as fuel to push it towards Jupiter.  This becomes our Tug Boat.

Now, once it's in orbit of jupiter, there's the question of where you get the power to move anything since there's no free lunch in space and the energy has to come from somewhere.  So I'm thinking that the magnetic field of Jupiter could be used to power an ion engine.  This is probably the softest part of the idea, but I know the magnetic field of Jupiter is crazy strong so maybe it's a maybe.  The Tug Boat doesn't go straight for Europa though.  It goes to one of the many moons in high orbit and uses the gravity of the asteroid to tug one of jupiter's 2 km moons towards another 2 km moon and make a 4 km moon.  Then tug it towards another moon and make it a 6 km moon. 

Once you have a nice ball of mass,  the Tug Boat starts orbiting it with a highly eliptical orbit using the Ion Drive to tug it towards one of the middling 20-40 km moons like Sinope or Pasiphae.  Repeat the process of establishing an elipical orbit to tug the larger moon in the direction you want it to go.  Eventually you move in system to Himalia, and finally to Europa itself.  Europa is the smallest and lightest of the big 4, so you use the tug boat and all the mass that it's got moving, to orbit and tug the moon out of Jupiter's orbit and towards venus.

It would be sort of like a juggler juggling jugglers juggling jugglers. 

When the moon reaches Venus, to park it, the tug boat, once again using reaction mass, slams its load into Europa to slow it down and park it in a fast, near orbit of Venus.  The idea is for the moon to accelerate Venus' rotation.  To assist in this, any moons not needed to slow Europa or are not needed for metal resources, are placed on orbits to accelerate them and slam into venus with all the velocity we can muster.  Scientists get to study Europa's oceans.  Venus has a supply of water in orbit to assist with terraforming Venus.

So, thoughts, or am I simply mad?

[Harmony Ltd.]

With the tugboat method it would probably take at least a few thousand years to nudge Europa enough to get it into a transit orbit toward the inner system. Most probably, at a guess and realistically (if you want to be realistic, there's no harm in doing soft sci-fi, eally) the whole procedure would probably take something around a million years, or more.


Depending on how soft your sci-fi setting is... like, let's say they have warp drives => build an array of warp generators around Europa, and without moving the planetoid itself, move the space it occupies to the inner system. Or if people use wormholes and are able to generate one big enough, have the planetoid be "gobbled" by one end of a wormhole and shat on the other side in orbit of venus.

Etc...


How hard do you want that stuff to be ?

[Somber]

rather hard.  harder rather than soft.  I might be able to justify 100 years for the whole move.

[Harmony Ltd.]

100 years is a really short timespan if you want it to be hard.

[repressing dumb grin]

I mean, IIRC, the voyager probes still needed a few years to go from Earth to Jupiter. I don't even know how many orders of magnitude above that of the voyager probes Europa's mass is, but I'll hazard a guess and say that it's a shitload of zeroes there. Humm...

If I may ask, what's the motivation, from a narrative standpoint (not in-universe) to move Europe to be Venus' moon ? Depending on the answer, maybe it's possible to take a narrative shortcut that doesn't completely break the laws of physics or require to accomplish feats worthy of gods.

[Exodus Hero]

rather hard.  harder rather than soft.  I might be able to justify 100 years for the whole move.

 Hope you like math my friend.

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