Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Vinylshadow]

Gotta love Apple

If only it came with a regular two button mouse instead of that thing it has now...

[O. Hinds]

I don't particularly care for Apple mice either.

[Silver136]

I'd recommend opening it on an Apple computer.  If it's something malicious, chances are it won't work, and if it does, you've only bricked an Apple.

   This post has just made you my favorite person on this forum at the moment...

[Vinylshadow]

Bonus points if you open it on a computer in an Apple store

[Meleagridis]

Might have found a typo.
"“Well... it’s going to be brutal.  We’re completely surrounded.  We’re going to need more fighters.  Lots more,” Storm Chaser, glowering at the map."
Is there supposed to be a 'said' somewhere in there?

[O. Hinds]

Welcome back, Meleagridis!
And yes, thank you. Though in the future, please include the chapter number of the spotted error.

[Icy Shake]

So, the Tokomare scene and its ludicrous power output got me thinking. The Gardens of Equestria only needed the Elements to power it: the Crusader Maneframe was what was meant to calculate and cast the spell. I wonder if the Tokomare, or a similar but scaled-down apparatus, could be used to power the spell, given the proper adjustments to the setup and perhaps some programming adjustments. And the Afterward never (I think) said that the Elements were used to cast Gardens, just that they had taken new forms for their new bearers, and that Gardens had been cast . . .

[Scienza]

Maybe the Elements have a larger part in the actual spell than just as a power source. A large part of their canon depiction has been as a sort of convenient cure-all for evil, like making NMM less tsundere. Perhaps all that Gardens does is just amplify that effect (thus the massive power draw) so that it affects everything.

[Meleagridis]

Welcome back, Meleagridis!
And yes, thank you.  Though in the future, please include the chapter number of the spotted error.

Oops, sorry. And thanks.

Chapter Fifty Three Running Thoughts:

I missed a lot of these.
Don't suppose there's a compilation somewhere?

[Icy Shake]

Welcome back, Meleagridis!
And yes, thank you.  Though in the future, please include the chapter number of the spotted error.

Oops, sorry. And thanks.

Chapter Fifty Three Running Thoughts:

I missed a lot of these.
Don't suppose there's a compilation somewhere?

There's not one yet. I was considering at some point migrating them to Fimfiction or TVTropes, maybe after the story's over. Probably go with Caoimhe's suggestion of calling it "Project Horizons: The Unauthorized Cliff's Notes," because hey, it's a good title, and it's not like I could think of a better one. (About the last time I made one, it was of the form "X and Y in Z." Before that came "X-ing the Y in Z: A in B.") Right now, I get to be the sketchtastic someone linking to Dropbox. But hey, it's not a PM, right? If you go this way, I hope you enjoy reading .txt files. Though I guess the old Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V could do the job.

Or you can find the Cloudsville the posts here.
46
47
48.1 (Running Thoughts)
48.2 (Running Thoughts Cont'd, Overall)
49.1 (Running)
49.2 (Overall)
50
51
52

I'm afraid I got more verbose, or more aggressive in quoting passages from the story, so I've been maxing out post lengths, hence the splits.  
Hinds found that out the hard way trying to quote me once.

If you're interested, I also made a guest post over at One Man's Pony Ramblings about Somber's collected works to that point.

[SilentCarto]

   This post has just made you my favorite person on this forum at the moment...

I'm Commander Shepard, and--

Maybe the Elements have a larger part in the actual spell than just as a power source. A large part of their canon depiction has been as a sort of convenient cure-all for evil, like making NMM less tsundere. Perhaps all that Gardens does is just amplify that effect (thus the massive power draw) so that it affects everything.

I agree. The Elements have always been depicted as a restorative force, and I think that natural tendancy forms the basis for the cleansing spell. To put it in chemical terms, using the Tokomare's magic for Gardens would be like trying to make a detergent based on mercury. It might technically clean your clothes, but the results are probably worse in the long run than the original problem.

[Meleagridis]

If you're interested, I also made a guest post over at One Man's Pony Ramblings about Somber's collected works to that point.

Interested I am. You mentioned two inanimate objects that are interesting characters. I know one must be the sword, but I'm curious what the other one is. Is it Folly?

[Icy Shake]

Maybe the Elements have a larger part in the actual spell than just as a power source. A large part of their canon depiction has been as a sort of convenient cure-all for evil, like making NMM less tsundere. Perhaps all that Gardens does is just amplify that effect (thus the massive power draw) so that it affects everything.

I agree. The Elements have always been depicted as a restorative force, and I think that natural tendancy forms the basis for the cleansing spell. To put it in chemical terms, using the Tokomare's magic for Gardens would be like trying to make a detergent based on mercury. It might technically clean your clothes, but the results are probably worse in the long run than the original problem.

Oh, I could certainly believe that, but I don't think it's necessarily the case. What the dangers are, beyond the high but transitory Enervation that can be handled by having the people nearby protected by moonstone, hasn't been spelled out. An alternative barrier could be that the energy can't be extracted in a usable form—but I think that would have been caught at some point in their years of testing. More likely, it could be the case energy extracted from the Tokomare can only be used to power mundane loads, and maybe spells based on starmetal's characteristic frequency, or at most its harmonics.

If you're interested, I also made a guest post over at One Man's Pony Ramblings about Somber's collected works to that point.

Interested I am. You mentioned two inanimate objects that are interesting characters. I know one must be the sword, but I'm curious what the other one is. Is it Folly?

I was thinking Octavia, post-balefire. Folly is a fine choice as well, but out of the firearms I'd probably think Duty and Sacrifice first.

[Meleagridis]

Octavia didn't come straight to my mind, soul jars (ESPECIALLY in PH) being a bit more nebulous than an inanimate object or not an inanimate object.

Which brings back a question I had: Was the starmetal sword just a starmetal sword? I don't remember anything about a soul being bound to it (other than the ones it slurped up) but it sure had every quality of a soul jar. Right from influencing the wielder to a crazy personality that took hold of the narrative whenever Blackjack took hold of the weapon. The tuning fork shows that starmetal can have at least some influence on decision-making processes. This was basically the same thing happening to BJ when she held the sword?

[DaWarWolf]

Hey, does anyone remember how many times Peppermint was mentioned before 69. If I understand it Twist wasn't the last one with the Talisman. Rampage did not wake up were Twist was given the Talisman by shujaa right? Someone I talked to dosen't remember a pepermint at all and is under the impression that Twist was the last to have Talisman.

[Guest]

Twist's skeleton is discovered by BJ at some point. I wanna say it was in the tunnels somewhere, but I have no idea. I'm sure that it was alone though.

[Scienza]

Wasn't Twist at Miramare?

[Technowolf]

Hey, does anyone remember how many times Peppermint was mentioned before 69. If I understand it Twist wasn't the last one with the Talisman. Rampage did not wake up were Twist was given the Talisman by shujaa right? Someone I talked to dosen't remember a pepermint at all and is under the impression that Twist was the last to have Talisman.

She's first mentioned during the Tenpony Tower/Twilight Society arc when Twist assumes control of Rampage and is referenced at least once later in Shujaa's last memory before her sacrifice.

[Evilgidgit]

Blackjack found Twist's body at Miramare, so we can assume after Shujaa died and gave Twist the phoenix talisman, Twist made it back to Mirmare where she died from radiation or suicide or something. Then Peppermint was there too and gained the talisman, becoming Rampage.

[SilentCarto]

Hey, does anyone remember how many times Peppermint was mentioned before 69. If I understand it Twist wasn't the last one with the Talisman. Rampage did not wake up were Twist was given the Talisman by shujaa right? Someone I talked to dosen't remember a pepermint at all and is under the impression that Twist was the last to have Talisman.

Twist was the last we knew to have the talisman, but since her skeleton was in the tank at Miramare, we knew Rampage couldn't be Twist.

Blackjack found Twist's body at Miramare, so we can assume after Shujaa died and gave Twist the phoenix talisman, Twist made it back to Mirmare where she died from radiation or suicide or something. Then Peppermint was there too and gained the talisman, becoming Rampage.

Shujaa sacrificed herself some time before the Last Day. There were two photos in the tank that were taken after Shujaa's loss:

One of her in the hospital, looking hurt, but Vanity, Echo, and Applesnack are with her.  Three out of eight friends; her eyes show far more pain than joy.

She wasn’t smiling in the last picture.  Oh, her lips were curled at the edges, but there was no mirth in her eyes as she stood alone on a tank, sergeant stripes on her uniform.  She had the eyes of a ghoul: flat and lifeless and eager to die.

[DaWarWolf]

Thanks, I just knew someone would remember. I'll go relay the info.

[FeatherDust]

Hey, does anyone remember how many times Peppermint was mentioned before 69.

A few times.  She got a mention in Ch. 34 when Twist suddenly became aware in Rampage's body.  In Ch. 50, Shujaa and Twist have a brief talk about what is now clearly Twist's daughter. She doesn't get named in that scene, but Shujaa jokes about her being a "pet" and "feral beast", so it sounds like Peppermint had some Rampagely qualities even back then.  The actual name shows up again in Ch. 53 when BJ is doing memory magic on Rampage.

Maybe somebody can help with this -- at that point in 53, Blackjack pulled a memory orb that related to Peppermint, but did we ever actually see the contents of that orb?  I don't think we did, but I don't know what happened to it either.

Rampage did not wake up were Twist was given the Talisman by shujaa right?

The first memory Rampage has is waking up in a radioactive blast crater at Miramare "with half a tank lodged in [her] skull".  We don't know if that's where Twist gave her the Phoenix.  I think Twist's body was right there nearby, though.

It seems likely that Peppermint was active for a long time after Twist's death, but eventually got tired of immortality and went back to the site of her mother's death and her own immortalization (if that's a word) to intentionally drop a tank on her head in such a way that her brain couldn't regenerate.  If she couldn't actually die, at least Peppermint could try for oblivion.  When the scavenger ghouls freed her, her brain did regenerate, but she had suffered complete memory loss.

The memory loss effect doesn't normally happen when Rampage's brain is destroyed, such as by a gunshot or even total disintegration.  But possibly the talisman has a limited ability to hang on to subtle features like neural structure when the body isn't there to reinforce it.  Without an internal map to start from, it rebuilt a blank brain -- a perfectly healthy brain that has all the structures DNA says it needs, like cognitive lobes and cortexes and such, but no acquired structures.  No learning, no memories, no personality.  Just the basic requirements.

[JadedPony]

Random topic change: Didn't Hasbro kinda steal the names from the crusaders who live with the capmonger? Aria Blaze, Adagio Dazzle, Sonata Dusk: the three sirens who will be in the new movie...  


Other random topic change: 
You know who I feel bad for? The person who Blackjack's star metal sword fell on when it fell out of the sky. You know it found some pony. Freaking star metal always finds a way. 

I can just picture it now, some poor Harbinger is walking along talking to his friend Grindwheel when the sword falls out of the sky and cuts him in half. His front legs keep walking because his death is so swift his brain doesn't know about it and the two halves walk in different directions before a slurping, sucking sound marks the moment when the two halves of the body fall apart from each other. The two halves twist a little as they fall and he is left looking at his own ass as he dies. His last thought: "Oh, so that's why my cutie mark was a lemon. "

[Icy Shake]

Octavia didn't come straight to my mind, soul jars (ESPECIALLY in PH) being a bit more nebulous than an inanimate object or not an inanimate object.

That's certainly true, but out of all the soul jars in, I think, both FoE and PH she's probably the least active, neither moving nor communicating at a near-verbal level.

Random topic change: Didn't Hasbro kinda steal the names from the crusaders who live with the capmonger? Aria Blaze, Adagio Dazzle, Sonata Dusk: the three sirens who will be in the new movie...  

If we'd been looking at Allegro, Adagio, and Sonata, especially with a Medley somewhere, then I'd be more struck by the coincidence. As it is, less so. More along the lines of there being a "Pip" in "Luna Eclipsed" or the way pre-ep misspelling/pronunciation of "King Sombra."

[Somber]

Well... I finally kicked my nuts and got to page 22.  Hopefully have 70 done this weekend.

Sorry for the long wait.

[Harmony Ltd.]

70 pages? This gon' be a long chapter


More seriously, though, good luck with that.

[WavemasterRyx]

Well... I finally kicked my nuts and got to page 22.  Hopefully have 70 done this weekend.

Sorry for the long wait.

*hugs very gently* I'm glad you were able to get past the part that was causing you trouble, sir, and I hope you'll feel up to finishing it, too.  If you aren't able to finish it this weekend though, try not to hold it against yourself too much, because at least you're making progress.

[Silver136]

70 pages? This gon' be a long chapter


More seriously, though, good luck with that.

think he meant chapter 70...

[Evilgidgit]

70 pages? This gon' be a long chapter


More seriously, though, good luck with that.

think he meant chapter 70...

I think Harmony was being sarcastic.

[Vinylshadow]

Would probably take a 70-page chapter to wrap everything up...

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