Re: [Fallout Equestria] Setting discussions

[O. Hinds]

I thought the Miliozi were the one handling the Italy thing? What with their hymn being ripped from an Italian patriotic chant?

Eh, not really. The Miliozi have a few aspects of Italy (in one particular period of its history, at least), but they're more their own things. Or do you see things differently?

I'll let you handle the idea-seeds on that one?

I seem to be out at the moment, but I may of course get more.

While we're on a roll, Great Paulomino...

Do you already have ideas for it, or is it a blank slate still?

Pretty much a blank slate.

Old name was "Sao Paulomino", which would be close to "Sao Paulo". So something Portuguese / Brazilian-inspired?

Oh, no; I don't recall what the old name was, but it was based on St. Paul. As in Minnesota. Because it's kind of near Stockhast. Oh, yes, and I think I read the original name in a story and thought it was clever.


On another note, I have no idea why I didn't think of this before (assuming that I haven't just completely forgotten about it, that is): the cic talismans used by the tanks currently (as in during PH at the moment, not "currently, 30 SR") could be really valuable. Now, Somber says that he doesn't remember the conversation I remember him having with me that established them as zebra tanks retrofitted by Cognitum with reactors and fuel talismans; he says he doesn't really know or care how they work, which I find a bit baffling, but eh, we're working with headcanon here anyway.

Anyway, working under the previous assumption, that the cic talismans were something Cognitum developed because she had a lot of PR tanks (and no Equestrian tanks because... Equestria was just one of those countries not good at building tanks?) she could repair but no good way to fuel them. What she did have was time and the resources and secret knowledge of Hoofington.

Ooh. And here's a thought. Hoofington was Equestria's research and development hub, and while it hasn't been elaborated on, we know that Cognitum had some impressive manufacturing capabilities down there. Maybe she found and activated the prototype for the facilities in Stalliongrad? I'm getting off track, though.

So, if we have Cognitum develop the cic talismans herself... Though, actually, that gets me off track again: she had two hundred years. What exactly was she thinking about all that time? Was she just sitting around watching irradiated paint flake away? Probably not. Who knows what she might have developed? And even if she really didn't do much research and development, which is a possibility, we could easily have people believing that she did a lot of it. Depending on the state of Hoofington after PH, pieces of Cognitum's memory units might be very valuable.

...Anyway. The NCR might not be very interested in the cic talisman technology because it's not an energy source but an energy converter, and if they're building their infrastructure in large part from scratch anyway, they can just focus on developing tech that doesn't need the converter. The Alliance and Hell, however, would I think be rather more interested in the technology, as it's both a great potential benefit and a potential threat. Though the Alliance and Hell would still have the problem of building and powering the talismans, which as Equestrian technology would require the Equestrian gems that they're already in short supply of... hm. And if the NCR isn't biting the Alliance's petrofuel lure anyway, it's not much of a threat to the Alliance if the NCR can make its own cic. Hm...

Well, thoughts? I'm not sure just how big this is, maybe not much at all, but it has the potential to be very important.

Also, I'm rather tired and a bit brain-worn-out from the brushing session still, and hungry, so hopefully these ideas aren't the sort that only sound good when one is in a compromised state of mind. If they are, sorry about that; maybe they'll still inspire something, at least.

[Harmony Ltd.]

"cic" is a acronym, right? What does it mean, just so I have a better idea.

Ooh. And here's a thought. Hoofington was Equestria's research and development hub, and while it hasn't been elaborated on, we know that Cognitum had some impressive manufacturing capabilities down there. Maybe she found and activated the prototype for the facilities in Stalliongrad? I'm getting off track, though.

That's quite possible, and would be a good indication of just how much potential the Stalliongrad Facilities have.

So, if we have Cognitum develop the cic talismans herself... Though, actually, that gets me off track again: she had two hundred years. What exactly was she thinking about all that time? Was she just sitting around watching irradiated paint flake away? Probably not. Who knows what she might have developed? And even if she really didn't do much research and development, which is a possibility, we could easily have people believing that she did a lot of it. Depending on the state of Hoofington after PH, pieces of Cognitum's memory units might be very valuable.

High probability, yes. If Hoofington isn't a glowing hole in the ground by then, of course.

Though this would pose the question of a possible Data Quarantine imposed on Cognitum Data Fragments (By who? The Knights of Harmony? The descendants of BJ's crew? Someone elese?), in order to avoid a possible corruption of the host systems (given there's literal dark & star magic involved with Cognitum, it would probably be better to er on the side of caution, if you don't want the risk of potentially corrupting a Seed AI and repeating the cycle...). Of course, this could be cause for friction between those upholding the quarantine, and those wanting to access the data anyway.

...Anyway. The NCR might not be very interested in the cic talisman technology because it's not an energy source but an energy converter, and if they're building their infrastructure in large part from scratch anyway, they can just focus on developing tech that doesn't need the converter. The Alliance and Hell, however, would I think be rather more interested in the technology, as it's both a great potential benefit and a potential threat. Though the Alliance and Hell would still have the problem of building and powering the talismans, which as Equestrian technology would require the Equestrian gems that they're already in short supply of... hm. And if the NCR isn't biting the Alliance's petrofuel lure anyway, it's not much of a threat to the Alliance if the NCR can make its own cic. Hm...

To answer that, I'll need you to elaborate a bit more on what does that cic thingamajjig does, exactly.

[Harmony Ltd.]

I thought the Miliozi were the one handling the Italy thing? What with their hymn being ripped from an Italian patriotic chant?

Eh, not really.  The Miliozi have a few aspects of Italy (in one particular period of its history, at least), but they're more their own things.  Or do you see things differently?

See things differently? No, no. I just thought you may have taken more inspiration than just that for them, is all.


Byyyyy the way.... That island is actually quite close to San Frantello. Well, maybe not exactly "close", but not far anyway at least.

Depending on what you / we end up putting there, the Miliozi may have had interactions with what's there even relatively early on. At least if they weren't content to just live between their walls and did some recon of the wasteland surrounding them.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Oh, and unrelated, but in order to populate a bit the map, it seems like on the eastern part of the peninsula there's three spots that could look like good places to put cities:

- The crossroad west of Kalcolta, sitting on the river. Theoretically, a place like this would have seen a city been built as some sort of trade hub.

- Thre crossroad north-west of Neighorleans, sitting on the river. Same as above.

- The crossroad north-west of Neighpon, for the same reasons, plus it's not far from the coast.



These may not necessarily be particularly big or relevant cities, but probably big enough to have their names on the map.

It's not urgent, I'm just pointing it out.

[O. Hinds]

"cic" is a acronym, right? What does it mean, just so I have a better idea.

Ah, I'm not sure if I ever fully worked out the Latin, just that the letters were probably right. Cic is diesel fuel (cicl is gas turbine/jet fuel). It is sometimes difficult to keep track of all the little details we've put in...

High probability, yes. If Hoofington isn't a glowing hole in the ground by then, of course.

Well, naturally, or some impregnable techno-fortress-city. Anything in between, though, would have at least some possibility for scavenging and/or espionage.

Though this would pose the question of a possible Data Quarantine imposed on Cognitum Data Fragments (By who? The Knights of Harmony? The descendants of BJ's crew? Someone elese?), in order to avoid a possible corruption of the host systems (given there's literal dark & star magic involved with Cognitum, it would probably be better to er on the side of caution, if you don't want the risk of potentially corrupting a Seed AI and repeating the cycle...).

Ooh, neat.

Of course, this could be cause for friction between those upholding the quarantine, and those wanting to access the data anyway.

Aye. Though there probably isn't much of a risk of corruption, Cognitum not striking me as the sort of person who'd take such precautions, it would be foolish to assume that there's none. Of more concern to those maintaining the quarantine might be what could be done with the actual data, should it turn out to be something powerful, but I can see why the quarantiners would want to be more polite by not insinuating that the people they're talking at at the time are the proverbial wrong hooves.

Byyyyy the way.... That island is actually quite close to San Frantello. Well, maybe not exactly "close", but not far anyway at least.

Depending on what you / we end up putting there, the Miliozi may have had interactions with what's there even relatively early on. At least if they weren't content to just live between their walls and did some recon of the wasteland surrounding them.

Hm. I'm not sure about recon of the island (insufficient data), but the early Miliozi fishing fleets at least might have interaction, yeah...

Oh, and unrelated, but in order to populate a bit the map, it seems like on the eastern part of the peninsula there's three spots that could look like good places to put cities:

- The crossroad west of Kalcolta, sitting on the river. Theoretically, a place like this would have seen a city been built as some sort of trade hub.

- Thre crossroad north-west of Neighorleans, sitting on the river. Same as above.

- The crossroad north-west of Neighpon, for the same reasons, plus it's not far from the coast.



These may not necessarily be particularly big or relevant cities, but probably big enough to have their names on the map.

It's not urgent, I'm just pointing it out.

Hm, agreed. No ideas for the cities at present, though, I'm afraid.

[Harmony Ltd.]

And if the NCR isn't biting the Alliance's petrofuel lure anyway, it's not much of a threat to the Alliance if the NCR can make its own cic. Hm...

Well, I think I had established that a non-negligible proportion of the energy consumed by Manehatten was coming from Alliance-made generators in A-town re-selling the power to the city's grid, and NCR-designed liquid-fueled thermal power stations running primarily with Alliance and CP oil. Plus, a number of wealthy people and organizations in the city have their own Alliance-designed generators for "emergency" use, when the power grid is down; which happens quite often in Downtown & Riverside, a bit less in Princesses' Heights (where most of the heavy industries are concentrated) and Unity Island (due to the R&D facilities there), and almost never in Tenpony (just imagine Las Vegas' strip without power: it simply wouldn't do, now, would it?).

Manehatten is dependent in large part on Alliance or Hell-supplied hydrocarbons to stay lit.


Junction City / New Canterlot are the first to get equipped by every alternative energy sources being developed by the New Canterlot Academy;
New Appleloosa relies primarily on bio-fuels (it's the NCR's breadbasket);
And Glyphmark can get by easily with hydroelectricity.

[Harmony Ltd.]

By the way, I think the Dam on the Trotson river has probably been seized by the NCR, and this may possibly be the primary source of friction between the NCR and the Northern League; as I wouldn't be surprised if the NCR decided to transfer all the energy produced back home, leaving nothing for the locals.


As for why / how the Dam was either not targeted during the Days of Fire, got spared or was rebuilt (partially or completely) since then, that is another debate.

[O. Hinds]

Manehatten is dependent in large part on Alliance or Hell-supplied hydrocarbons to stay lit.

Ah, sorry; I'd forgotten that.

As for why / how the Dam was either not targeted during the Days of Fire, got spared or was rebuilt (partially or completely) since then, that is another debate.

Hm. Yeah. That is a big lake. Even if it's shallow and even ignoring hydroelectricity or drinking water supplies from the dam, letting that much water loose on the countryside would be unlikely to be good for Equestria. Hm...

Well, we could say that the missile targeted at it missed or was a dud, but that's not especially interesting. Not getting any other ideas at the moment, though, I'm afraid.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Well, maybe the anti-missile defense around it was particularly strong, in fact because of how much damages it would have done to Manehatten and everything downstream if the Dam had been destroyed?

Though this ask the question of PR sabotage teams and planted bombs then...

Heh. Maybe for once Equestria managed a clear cut victory? Too bad it would have happened when the rest of the country was being annihilated.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Also, re: planted bombs and PR sabotage teams...

From FoE, PH and what I said myself (re "Days of Fire"), when the bombs started falling, a number of sabotage teams would have roamed Equestria (the reverse also being true in PR lands...), trying to wreak as much havoc as possible on designated targets, planting balefire demolition charges and the like.

So, it's very likely one or several of these teams would have targeted the Dam once the initial missile-bombing would have failed.

But it's still there. So what happened?

Several possibilities:

1/ Heroic last-stand of the local security forces, managing to down one or several highly trained PR infiltration forces equipped with the latest in cloaking devices and the like; while slowly succumbing to radiation poisoning.
2/ The designated PR teams never made it, for whatever reasons.
3/ Extremely unlikely, but maybe the PR team(s) would have decided to not follow-up with the mission. Why? Either someone with 100 speech was there at the time, or something else would have come up, because these teams were probably composed of the most fanatically indoctrinated people in the whole of the Pax Roamana.



By the way, in any case, it would be interesting if a number of the Dam personnel, security and engineering, actually survived as Ghouls, and spent the rest of their existence maintaining it as operational as possible and guarding it against raiders; explaining how a quarter of a millenium later it still stands.

Though then the NCR probably hasn't seized control of the Dam so much as offered nicely the overly protective ghouls to help them with maintaining the Dam in exchange for deciding where to send the energy produced.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Was there ever a canon mention of how exactly Velvet Remedy managed to create male alicorns? Or was it left to the reader's imagination?

[Harmony Ltd.]

'Kay. Kind of what I remembered then.

Seemed to remember a mental note about "Alicorns: grateful to Glyphmark for their contribution to their species' salvation".

[Harmony Ltd.]

Speaking of, I still need to update my mental picture of Alicorns. Everytime I think about their race, all I can think of is regal looking princess-lookalikes.


By the way, I'm wondering how many of the First Generation alicorns would have decided to be turned male when given the chance (assuming second generations and later are born with a 50/50 sex-ratio)? Statistically, half of the alicorns would have been male before being absorbed by the Goddess. But I'm not sure all of them would have wanted to return to a male body once given the occasion to do so.

Admittedly, I don't have the best perspective on the subject to come up with an objective answer.

[O. Hinds]

Heh. Maybe for once Equestria managed a clear cut victory? Too bad it would have happened when the rest of the country was being annihilated.

Heh, yes.

re your dam survival ideas:
Interesting. If it's the "the defenders have a miraculously complete victory and decided that little things like 'the rest of the country burned down' and 'we're literally not alive anymore' stop them from keeping the place safe and running" thing, the Principality of Gibhalter would probably be very impressed.

By the way, I'm wondering how many of the First Generation alicorns would have decided to be turned male when given the chance (assuming second generations and later are born with a 50/50 sex-ratio)? Statistically, half of the alicorns would have been male before being absorbed by the Goddess. But I'm not sure all of them would have wanted to return to a male body once given the occasion to do so.

Admittedly, I don't have the best perspective on the subject to come up with an objective answer.

I'm not sure either, I'm afraid.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Yeah, I think this'll probably end up being something along the lines of "[heroic last stand] (...) wait, we're still not dead, what do we do now?" kind of deal.

Wondering about the characterization of such a group, though.

It would have needed to survive over 200 years of:
- Raiders
- Steel Rangers
- Enclave patrols
- miscellaneous scavengers
- etc...

While sitting on one of the last remnants of functional large industrial infrastructure in Equestria.

And let's not forget about Red Eye and the Goddess' time...


The way I see it, the only way they could have had to ensure people not fucking with them would be to have been as gunned up as the Boomers in New Vegas, while having a dead-er man's switch in place to blow up the whole dam in order to avoid letting it fall in the wrong hands.

But how did they manage to stay supplied in ammunitions and the like?

Well, besides the fact they probably had half a century to scavenge some industrial infrastructures before the ambient radiation level fell enough for the Stables to start opening en masse, I can imagine they could have set themselves up as the Gun Runners of post-apocalyptic Equestria;
And even possibly re-selling their surplus production of power in some way or another in order to make good caps. I can even imagine a community of smoothskins building itself close to them, using their surplus energy to build stuff and re-sell new technology to the rest of the wasteland.

All in all, it was probably a mix of:
- Being insanely rich
- Outgunning almost everyone
- Looking batshit insane enough to blow up the dam at the slightest sign of provocation
That would have kept them un-dead for all this time.




But really, this all begs the question of what happened to them during Red Eye's time, as I'm sure he would have had quite a hard-on for them...

I guess he would have kept the caps flowing in their direction in order to monopolize all their production and that of the smoothskins' industry next to them?

[O. Hinds]

Sounds cool. They'd probably also have been much more interested in energy weapons than guns, given that they had ample power to recharge with.

Regarding dealing the Steel Rangers: This might not be too much of a problem. The Steel Rangers want to preserve Equestria's technology. The dam ponies are the original Equestrian dam personnel and want to preserve the dam. I expect that the Steel Rangers would still want to take it, but I imagine that, hardened as it was, it would be a low-priority target.

I guess he would have kept the caps flowing in their direction in order to monopolize all their production and that of the smoothskins' industry next to them?

Pretty much, I imagine. Though perhaps not so much "the caps" as "the lack of invulnerable alicorns blasting you apart". Caps could come later, once power lines between the dam and Fillydelphia are rebuilt, but I'm not sure he'd consider sending caps worth it until then.
Hm. By far the shortest rail route between Fillydelphia and the dam runs through Appleoosa and Junction R-7.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Pretty much, I imagine.  Though perhaps not so much "the caps" as "the lack of invulnerable alicorns blasting you apart".

(raspy voice): "So, let's get this straight: You're teling us that if we don't give you all of our production, for free, you'll send an army of invulnerable super-soldiers to take us out. Right?"
(civilized voice): "Well, it is a bit more complex than that, and you would get compensated in several ways, but that's the core of the idea, yes. But! Be sure that you would earn Red Eye's eternal gratitude in accepting this deal."
(raspy voice): "Let me rephrase that: are you telling the ghouls who have spent the last two centuries rigging the biggest dam in Equestria to blow if anything were to happen to them -a dam, I might add, holding enough radioactive water to completely wipe out Manehatten far more surely than the Stripes could have hoped for- that if we don't cede to your offer of directing all of our extremely valuable production to you, for free, you'll do us the grace of not attacking us?"
(civilized voice): "Come on, now, do not be voluntarily obtuse. It would be for the greater good! You'd participate in rebuilding Equestria! Build a new world, burying the old Wasteland once and for all!"
(raspy voice): "You want our gear, you pay for it. You try anything funny, and there won't be anything left for you to take from our cold dead hands. This has always been the deal, and will always be. Now, go back and tell your Master that he better stop menacing us if he doesn't want to have to pay a premium in his future deals with us."





At least that's how I imagine it would have went, in abridged version. They've spent the better part of the last quarter of a millenium dealing with people who want their shit and have at some point be menaced by pretty much every power in the Wasteland (including the Enclave, I'm sure). And their policy of "dead man switch activated salted radioactive earth" gives them the confidence necessary to send anyone go screw themselves.


Interestingly enough, I wonder now how they'd have fared during the Bitter War...


Actually, they may have been "integrated" into the NCR then...

[Harmony Ltd.]

Also, integrated into the NCR or not, their existence gives a satisfying explanation as to how the NCR might have managed to rebuild so quickly in 30 years, while Fillydelphia has been thrashed to the ground: they offered a core of industrial capacity that could have been used to bootstrap the NCR's industrial revolution.

Of course, only in a limited way, as the ghouls are very much aware of the power they hold, and are making damn sure to extract every last caps, and later NCR Bits, from each and every deal; AND the NCR is cash-strapped as it is with its constant military build-up, to fight the Bitter War then, and to deter any Alliance attack and project its influence on the Equestria Peninsula now.

For the ghouls, these caps are also what allow them to supplement their own dakka with quite a bit of hired muscles. And are also what allow them to buy the loyalty of the smoothskin community working for them.

[O. Hinds]

re dam negotiations:
...Good point. :D

Interestingly enough, I wonder now how they'd have fared during the Bitter War...

Oh. Hm, good point. And it's present to a lesser extent for the Enclave as you mentioned above (though I'm not sure the GPE would have cared about the dam, and I'm curious to know why you think otherwise). Threatening to blow the dam and destroy the areas downstream doesn't work against people who don't care about or actively want that.

Also, I think that I may have been missing something: are you saying that there'd have been a lot of industry around the dam? Why? It can provide power and (irradiated, if the lake is... and, actually, given that the lake will be filling up with everything its tributaries carry in...) water, sure, and would therefore be a good place to put industry, but I'm not sure why it would have just developed under Wasteland conditions.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Re Enclave: Well, the Enclave has a chronic problem of everything-falling-apart-itis, so I could imagine some higher-ups using some back-channels to order things be made from them, in the "everyone is stabbing everyone else in the back" kind of way that the Enclave has / had. Some kind of ace-in-the-hole. And given the political climate in the Enclave pre-Cauterize, I'm not sure they'd have risked the kind of operation it would take to have a hope of seizing the Dam for themselves - especially when the whole thing uniting the Enclave is the idea of not having to deal with the surface. And what I said above may be a reason as to why they would have left the place relatively alone. Maybe?



As for the how of why there's industry around the dam:
They've had a headstart of several decades, starting to scavenge industrial equipment that were still relatively intact after the days of fire, in the surrounding area (those that weren't directly targeted by the bombs), to try and repair the Dam in the immediate aftermath of the attacks (they achieved a clear cut victory, but it doesn't mean they didn't take any losses). This gave them a core of manufacturing abilities, which later on, as the wastes started to get populated, they could expand upon by trading things they had the ability to manufacture for scavenged materials, with some profits made. Profit they could use to pay scavengers to find them more stuff they could use to expand their own manufacturing abilities (be it in term of quality or quantity).

With time, a community built itself around them, loyal to the hand that feeds and protects them, and the thing started to sustain itself.

Of course, progress has been slow under the conditions of the wasteland, and if you look at what they can build with the eyes of a pre-apocalyptic society, you'll find up that their capabilities are actually almost laughable: their highest achievement are energy weapons that would be considered cheap knockoffs by Wartime Equestria, and the rate at which they can produce stuff is barely above "craftman" level, with minimal automation or process-optimization. But if you place it in the context of a Wasteland where the pinnacle of industrial capabilities is Red Eye's Fillydelphia; this places them as something quite formidable when Fillydelphia ends up crumbling like a house of card: one of the rare places in the Wasteland able to make new things, things that aren't just old things duct-tapped to each other.

Still, by the time it becomes relevant, the NCR can trade them food for their smoothskins, raw materials for their industry & the protection of the NCR Army against the Bitters, plus some amount of caps, in exchange for war making material; and later on industrial equipment to start rebuilding.

Still not enough for the NCR to really go into overdrive, full-on industrialization, but at least this might help explain how Elusive hasn't succeeded in completely getting them hook and sinker by promising them to "help them rebuild" Equestria.

[O. Hinds]

Re Enclave: Well, the Enclave has a chronic problem of everything-falling-apart-itis, so I could imagine some higher-ups using some back-channels to order things be made from them, in the "everyone is stabbing everyone else in the back" kind of way that the Enclave has / had. Some kind of ace-in-the-hole. And given the political climate in the Enclave pre-Cauterize, I'm not sure they'd have risked the kind of operation it would take to have a hope of seizing the Dam for themselves - especially when the whole thing uniting the Enclave is the idea of not having to deal with the surface. And what I said above may be a reason as to why they would have left the place relatively alone. Maybe?

Huh.  I'm not sure if I'm understanding you properly.  You mean some officer in charge of the area over the dam having a habit of "discovering old supply caches" as an explanation for both the GPE leaving the dam alone (though, again, I don't know why they'd be interested in the dam in the first place) and for the development of industry around the dam?  Ah, though I see that you tackle the latter next.

re the manufacturing:
Ah, so you mean light manufacturing.  Yeah, that's fine.  I was thinking you meant full heavy industry like Masozi or Red Eye's Fillydelphia.

Still not enough for the NCR to really go into overdrive, full-on industrialization, but at least this might help explain how Elusive hasn't succeeded in completely getting them hook and sinker by promising them to "help them rebuild" Equestria.

Given that Wastelanders aren't know for their trusting natures, I doubt even he'd be able to see them on that.  Definitely not, I'm thinking, if news of what happened in Hoofington gets spread widely.  "Yeah, you're not the first computer to offer to 'help use rebuild'..."  He could, of course, just let loose the Miliozi, but while that would mean almost certain dominance of the Alliance over the Equestrian Peninsula (possibly barring Hoofington), it would also mean dominance of the Miliozi in Alliance internal politics.  And a gigantic death toll, since even the Miliozi would have difficulty holding the Peninsula unless it lost many of its current inhabitants (and while the Miliozi are neither bigoted (except regarding military prowess) or cruel... well, if you ask them, they'll say that no one is really a noncombatant).

But yes, this and salvage/scavenging operations in Fillydelphia would further help explain it.

[Harmony Ltd.]

The Enclave thing:

Well, let's just say that in two centuries, a lot of things can happen, and I wouldn't be surprised if at some point some people from the Enclave had asked the Dam Ghouls for some specific mail-order thingy, in order to get it past the radar of the Enclave's administration;
Or if at some other point, some people from the Enclave had tried to profit from the Dam as a boon to their own career, before being called back into order by their own superior before he had time to do too much damage.

You know, that kind of byzantine things one is starting to expect from the Enclave.



Note: sorry for the poor grammar and syntax, as it's past three in the morning right now.

[O. Hinds]

Ah. I'm still not sure why they'd want to attack it, though. It doesn't really have much offensive capability.

No problem.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Attack not to destroy it, but to seize some of the goodies in it.

You know, the thing that is a really double-plus-ungood idea.



Basically, I'm just saying the Enclave is full of shitheads who want to advance their own careers, with only the vaguest of bearings with reality, who need to be kept in check by the rest of the system, lest they'd commit some really bad decisions *points at Operation Cauterize*.


More generally, I think we need to stop thinking about the GPE as a monolithic entity, which it never was, and integrate into our views just how labyrinthine / byzantine it was.

[O. Hinds]

Ahhh, so you mean a covert, "These only look new because we washed them really well" operation, not one of the big propaganda strikes.

More generally, I think we need to stop thinking about the GPE as a monolithic entity, which it never was, and integrate into our views just how labyrinthine / byzantine it was.

Hm, yes, it's sounding like that.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Unrelated to anything, but when you think about the implications, it's interesting to note that in Equestria they also have astrology, AND the same twelve constellations we know in Western, Occidental culture: Taurus, Gemini, Pisces, ...

*puts on tinfoil hat*

I mean, you could almost imagine that Equestria is in the Milky Way, and close enough to Earth as to have the same night sky.

Or maybe it -is- an Earth, in an alternate universe? Though this'd beg the question of the coincidence of having the same constellations when the laws of physic seems to be quite different...

Not even talking about the coincidence of using the western names / concept of these constellations, when on our own Earth, different human cultures with the same night sky see different constellations, and give them different names...


(yet another brick to the conspiracy theory that there may have been some form of interaction between our own Earth and Equestria in the ancient past that would have let some kind of deep cultural mark.)

[O. Hinds]

Hm. Interesting, yes. I think that it's far too different to just be an alternate universe, though.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Notes about the Perceptitron:

- Does not seem to be affected by range (The Moon) or physical obstacles (The Core)
- Is the signal affected by lightspeed-induced lag?

Possible indications on the nature of magic? Possible derived uses as long-range communication device?

[Harmony Ltd.]

Note for later in meta-time:

If General Stormchaser survives Project Horizon, how likely would it be that she'd be the one leading the Volunteer Expedition during the Battle of Manehatten? (*)



(*): Battle of Manehatten (quick recap): Bitters attack Manehatten in force with almost all the ships at their disposal, but the Volunteers shows up soon enough with all the ships they have to turn the tide of battle against them, destroying (with the help of Lion & Mouse) almost the Bitter ships engaged in the battle and routing the Bitter Forces; though victory is at the price of all the Volunteer ships engaged in the battle, except for two Raptors, and a casualty rate of over 70% for the Volunteers, three quarter of the survivors being wounded, often severely.
This Battle and the sacrifice of the Volunteers is basically how the Pegasus managed to turn back centuries of hatred on the part of surface against them to simply a mild resentment.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Elaboration on the Battle of Manehatten and why it is important:

Before it, the Bitters' warmachine was the most imposing one in wasteland (1), and the NCR's perspective was pretty bleak, not having the firepower or even the numbers to fight them. (2) Had things continued that way, the Bitters could have wiped the surface out of sheer firepower, showing up in force above every settlement and wiping them off the map one after another, relatively unimpeded.

The reason why the Battle of Manehatten left such a mark of heroism on the Volunteers, is that they managed to not only break the momentum of the Bitters' attacks, but they also dealt a number of decisive strategic blows to them:

First, by destroying so many of the ships in the Bitters' fleet that from this point onward, the Bitters would never risk more than one of their ship in any individual battle. Secondly, by inflicting such a huge morale blow to the Bitters that from there on out they would avoid direct confrontation as much as possible, and disperse their forces in order to avoid a repeat of the battle; which allowed the NCR to fight the next battles on a more equal footing. Third, but not least, by offering such a clear cut and major victory to the surface, at a time in the War where hope was scarce (3), that the whole of the war effort was revitalized, and people allowed themselves to really believe in victory for the first time. Which, in turn, led more and more people to join the NCR in the war effort and fight, instead of just fleeing and hoping it wouldn't be their turn next.

Basically, without this victory, the Book of Littlepip's may have a had a much more tragic ending. (4)



(1): outside of the Alliance, of course, but at this point they aren't yet relevant to the rest of the Equestrian Wasteland.
(2): of course, the NCR had Lion & Mouse, but you can't plan to fight and win a war with just two people, however formidable they might be.
(3): historical parallel: the Battle of Britain for the Allies during WW2.
(4): "And this, fillies and gentlecolts, is the story of how I was the catalyst for the Second End of the World."

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