Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[SilentCarto]

In my head, and I don't know why, but I always imagined Hoofington as having a massive red cloud over it, or having a red shield.

Hmm, I imagine it with a dark gray-and-green aesthetic. The core region, at least. I tend to imagine certain areas with color filters, like in Assassin's Creed. Chapel is a soothing gray-blue, Flank has a yellow filter on it, and the Collegium is that slightly purple color of fluorescent light. Miramare is red, Megamart has a greenish, mossy sort of tone (as opposed to the Core's unfriendly yellowish green), Brimstone's Fall is all slate grays and browns, and Ironmare is the same color as the core.

In FOE, Stable 2 and Ponyville are neutral gray. Both Appleoosas are in the dirty yellow/orange/brown part of the spectrum, Junction has that "living plant" green tone, and Manehattan is blue-tinted in my head. Inside Tenpony Tower is a 'rose-colored glasses' sort of pinkish gold (which, I admit, mostly reflects Tenpenny in FO3), but the Athenaeum is a cooler purple with gold highlights.
Maripony is Core Green, Fillydelphia is the red town, of course, and Canterlot is pink for obvious reasons, but the Ministries each have the appropriate color scheme. The Everfree has that bluer-green tint of growing things, but it's darker, with orange firelight in the sky for contrast. The Cathedral itself is yellow, as if sunlit.

You know, I didn't even realize I was doing this until you brought it up.

[SilentCarto]

@Carto
...wouldn't you need some magical means of filtering out the necromantic magic, then? Because Rampage appears to be filtering it genetically, removing as much of the uric acid and etc. as possible. I'm pretty sure this stuff has some form of physical presence that an earth pony-macgyvered urine filter can remove, if that's what it's really only doing.

A spark battery should do the trick, if you know what you're doing. Kinda like electroplating. There was a bottle of rainbow fluid beside it, so the radiation clearly wasn't being absorbed into a filter, but siphoned off and diverted into a different container.

Also: I didn't remember Filly radiation being red. The city just gave off a red glow, which I figured was due to all the fires of industry and polution everywhere.

Yeah, the smoke was from industry, but the red glow was from the crater.

[Ketchup]

Funny how our minds conjure these up. Most of Fo:E was greenish, Chapel is brown, Filly is red from influence from The Pitt, Megamart was dark and grey, Everfree green-blue with the same orange tones, and Maripony sage. Manehattan is grey, and Horizons Labs are sterile white unless stated otherwise. Flank was brown. Ponyville was dark and brown. Old Appleoosa is dark and brown, New is bright and brown.

[SilentCarto]

Heh, today's ShirtWoot is oddly relevant:

Okay, there's a major thing to address here that starts with them trying to figure out how to get to Medical: Rampage's mind breaking down. I may dote on Boo a lot (and she deserves it), but Rampage is still my favorite character in PH, so everything that is happening to her this chapter is extremely worrying. We have no idea just what is causing this breakdown in her personalities, there's no way to fix it, or stop it, and it seems increasingly likely that she isn't going to make it out of Hightower alive.
Yet even with all of that, I'm strangely... really calm... I think that unlike any other character, I've finally come to terms with the fact that she's going to die, though I doubt that will stop me from crying when the time finally comes.
[...]
Alright, and to my "Screw you, Snips" point number one... Was it really necessary to put a freaking soul-destroying curse on the only pony that wants to help you? Could you not just calmly and rationally explain the damned situation? Point two - Don't freaking use spells you don't understand and can't actually reverse! Luna wreck me with a milk-can...
Just... ugh... I want to punch him in the face so badly...

Huh, that gives me an idea... a soul-shredding spell, a soul-sucking sword, and an immortal who wants to die? Maybe, even if Snips can't undo the curse, he can move it to Rampage instead...

[SilentCarto]

...it's like electroplating? Care to run that by me again? I really don't get it. The rainbow liquid was referred to as flux... I thought it was being used as part of the process or something, but you say it was the stuff being filtered out?

Well, you know how electroplating works, right? You stick two electrodes in a bath of dissolved metal, and one of them attracts the metal and plates it onto itself. (Sometimes the other electrode is made of the metal to be plated, and dissolves as the process continues. Either way.)

So you have a body full of motes of necromantic magic. You ingest RadAway, which is designed to have a higher affinity for necromancy than your body does. So it naturally pulls the magic out of you and onto itself, which you then excrete. Now, to "refresh" the RadAway, you need to convince the magic to jump from the RadAway onto something else. You need to make that new object more attractive to necromancy than the RadAway already is. Presumably, if you knew what you were doing, you could do that by expending energy from a spark battery to cause the necromantic magic to jump onto an electrode. Finally, you need somewhere to deposit the magic when you shut off the power, a material that has a greater affinity for magic than the electrode. Maybe that's what the Flux is for. (That part of the process is more like using an electromagnet to fish iron filings out of water, I suppose.)

[Sindri]

I knew how electroplating worked, I just didn't know necromancy was... magnetic? And now flux has something to do with necromancy?
Barring Somber coming on to explane how she imagined the process I think its time I just hit the "I believe" button...

Basically, accumulated radiation isn't the particles, energy emissions, and cellular/genetic damage we're familiar with. Instead, it's the total amount of necromantic energy that your body has soaked up; small quantities reduce your capabilities and make you feel sick because the necromancy is opposed to your life force or whatever, larger quantities kill you by cancelling out whatever keeps you alive completely, and truly massive quantities just might swing you straight through corpse to undead before your soul leaves.


Radiation shielding is stuff that blocks necromantic magic. Rad-x either makes your body block the last little bit or makes you resistant to the magic itself. Radaway soaks the energy out from your body as it passes through, leaving you with a stronger life force and a bladder full of necromancy. Rampage invented a way to use Flux to soak radiation out of used radaway the same way it soaks it out of your body.

The electroplating metaphor is valid and makes things simpler if you're very familiar with chemistry, but it's just a metaphor, not the exact process used. Radiation isn't magnetic, per se, but the fact that radaway can suck it out of a person means that it can be attracted or pulled by something, whether that's a chemical, a charge, a spell, whatever. And if it can be attracted to x, why couldn't you make something even more x than the original x (though not valid for direct use because it'd kill you if you drank it or something) and suck the radiation out of the first potion so you could use it again?

[SilentCarto]

The electroplating metaphor is valid and makes things simpler if you're very familiar with chemistry, but it's just a metaphor, not the exact process used. Radiation isn't magnetic, per se, but the fact that radaway can suck it out of a person means that it can be attracted or pulled by something, whether that's a chemical, a charge, a spell, whatever. And if it can be attracted to x, why couldn't you make something even more x than the original x (though not valid for direct use because it'd kill you if you drank it or something) and suck the radiation out of the first potion so you could use it again?

Yeah, that. The fact that RadAway takes effect instantly suggests that it's actively attracting the necromantic energy, not just binding when it happens to bump into the right molecule, like our medicines do.

And there would be no particular need to make some kind of Super-RadAway that's "more x than the original x", just so long as it's "more x" than your body.

[Sindri]

And there would be no particular need to make some kind of Super-RadAway that's "more x than the original x", just so long as it's "more x" than your body.

Well, it would need to be a stronger radiation attractor than radaway is, to pull the radiation out of used radaway and leave it useful again. And it would need to be something that doesn't work in a pony's body without doing more harm than good, or you're wasting a step. Radaway needs to be more attractive to radiation than living pony, and whatever you're using to clean the radaway needs to be more attractive to radiation than radaway.

[Sindri]

Kay, so, potential lessons learned:
1. Rad-away does not neutralize necromancy, but absorbs it. Related question: could rad-away be used as a weapon vs. ghouls? Likely not, I suppose, as it might require a working circulatory system...
2. Flux absorbs, can be made to absorb, neutralizes or can be made to neutralize necromancy. If this involves contact with rad-away, rad-away is one of the only substances we've seen that is unreactive with flux. Otherwise it is being used in some different way merely proxy to rad-away, in which case flux gives off some kind of manipulatable field. Related question: could radiation sources, such as that balefire bomb, be cleaned or otherwise made innert by some variation of this process?

1. It's a valid theory given the evidence provided anyway, though shouldn't be taken as fact. And while radaway would likely be a usable weapon against ghouls, the lack of circulation means it would only work right where you put it if at all, and the effect would likely be similar to ordinary radiation exposure on a living pony, and radaway is valuable... you'd probably do more damage more easily and cheaply with a bullet.


2. Flux is Discord's blood. God of Chaos. It's probably safe to assume that it's possible to use it for just about anything. Maybe you can make it into super-radaway the same way you can make it into Blanks or toys or soda or all the other things that the Flim Flams were using it to manufacture. Maybe when it touches radaway it temporarily reverses the polarity or something, causing the radaway to expel the radiation it's absorbed. Maybe it just turns urine into beneficial potions, and nobody's bothered to test this until now. Okay, that last one is my headcanon now.

[SilentCarto]

And there would be no particular need to make some kind of Super-RadAway that's "more x than the original x", just so long as it's "more x" than your body.

Well, it would need to be a stronger radiation attractor than radaway is, to pull the radiation out of used radaway and leave it useful again. And it would need to be something that doesn't work in a pony's body without doing more harm than good, or you're wasting a step. Radaway needs to be more attractive to radiation than living pony, and whatever you're using to clean the radaway needs to be more attractive to radiation than radaway.

No, that's my point. Nobody ever actually made a "RadAway Cleaner", whether it could be ingested or not. There would be no need to make something that was more attractive to radiation than RadAway if RadAway did the job.

At any rate, I'm suggesting a process that expends energy, rather than simply mixing in something that would naturally suck the radiation off of the RadAway.

2. Flux is Discord's blood. God of Chaos. It's probably safe to assume that it's possible to use it for just about anything. Maybe you can make it into super-radaway the same way you can make it into Blanks or toys or soda or all the other things that the Flim Flams were using it to manufacture. Maybe when it touches radaway it temporarily reverses the polarity or something, causing the radaway to expel the radiation it's absorbed. Maybe it just turns urine into beneficial potions, and nobody's bothered to test this until now. Okay, that last one is my headcanon now.

I think I would rather say that its random magical properties make it difficult for radiation to remain necromantic. In contact with Flux, the radiation quickly loses its "shape" and breaks down into harmless, randomized magical energy.
Which is definitely not to suggest you should spritz down radioactive craters with Taint. There are worse things than radiation.

[Sindri]

No, that's my point. Nobody ever actually made a "RadAway Cleaner", whether it could be ingested or not. There would be no need to make something that was more attractive to radiation than RadAway if RadAway did the job.

At any rate, I'm suggesting a process that expends energy, rather than simply mixing in something that would naturally suck the radiation off of the RadAway.

Except that Rampage just did make a radaway cleaner. And "thing that expends energy to become more attractive to radiation" is just as much "more attractive to radiation" as some manner of exotic chemical is, if even less practical to put inside a living body and rather difficult to package for later use.

There's few things more boring than a corpse.

Maybe Discord IS aligned against necromancy?

Chaos vs Death? I know whose side I'm on.

[Mister Nikel]

I am a little late to the party, been busy lately. Anyways chapter 47 let's go.

Very clever way to get out of such an awful situation. I am surprised at how nice Spoon is though, then again I always thought that she was a jerk because of Tiara. Have to say though this has to be the worst possible dungeon to be in, I've ever witnessed in any media. Literally everything is trying to kill you. And while this is happening you are contsnatly being drained and have to take potions every two god damn minutes. Last chapter it went slighly above Canterlot but this chapter made Canterlot seems like a nice relaxing walk trough a park compared to this god damn prison. I mean you know things are bad if even BJ of all people realizes that they should GTFO while half way trough. And then there is that super ghoul, I mean sweet Celestias mane, that thing was worse than Deus.

Oh god! NO! NO *BUY SOME APPLES*ING WAY, TRUFFLE SHUFFLE IS DEUS?

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120401015448/mlp/images/d/d6/Truffle_Shuffle_smiling_more_S2E23.png

GOOD LORD! I- I had my suspicions but GOD DAMN! I can't believe it was him. Blew my mind right there.

Oh hey It's Echo. Doesn't confirm him being the Dealer yet though. Some interesting background info.

BJ woke up. And she just drank some Jarate. What a way to wake up! Oh and her auto repair can't restore limbs. Darn.

More miscellaneous character development. Including Xanthe, since she shot BJ she is now a permanent party member. Now we got a backup tech specialist. Always useful. I hope this doesn't mean that the Batpony is going to die though. I like him.

The Smooze was once again pretty terrifying. Still can't believe you made the smooze terrifying, what the *BUY SOME APPLES*?

Oh great, just great. Lacunae set off a balefire missile. Things just keep getting better and better don't they?

Magical tumors that give access to the unity? Sure why not. We've seen Flux do weirder *buy some apples* than that anyways.

Brilliant chapter. Loved the reveals and the action. This one is probably one of your better ones, which doesn't say much since all your chapters are godly. As for the delay, take a year for all I care. I'd still be back waiting for more. Hope you'll get your home problems fixed soon. I would help, but living in Russia limits what I can do regarding that.

Special thanks to folks who help him edit this cluster*buy some apples*, keep up the good work.

[Cptadder]

Quick note, Blackjack already had multiple taint exposures thanks to Folly and it seems that the stuff in the bullets is close enough to the alicorn potion to cause similar changes. Blackjack was going through similar changes to what Littlepip experienced except she got cleaned much later after the first exposure meaning her exposure had plenty of time to go to work on her system before the active stuff was cleaned out after she died.

Her joining Unity (Kinda) was what I loved best about this chapter mostly because it gives so many possibilities of future Goddess interactions right up until the bomb.

[Kattlarv]

*Tackles through nearby, conveniently placed brick wall*
Haven't read it yet, nor any comments, have been furiously mastu- playing heroes of might and magic 3 and writing fics with the intensity of a thousand gecko eyeballlicks.
Just dropped by to randomly toss something that came to my mind: (birthday was above average actually, my gecko got a hand-knitted scarf from a RPG community member) What if some types of raiders are changelings victims? Drained off all love, leaving an empty husk (metaphorically speaking) of a pony unable to feel or comprehend love. (diet version of khorn berserkers (khorn flakes, contains 20 % of your daily intake of blood, hate and skulls) or a dalek?) Would technically fit with my third group/hive of changelings in my RPG if I change "death" to "drain" :P
*Jumps out the hole I just created, breaking a window as I pass through it*


Edit: Oh, and since I forgot 3 times before: We spoke of... whatever they are called a while ago, and I made one for the FoE RPG referring to Trigun, those that know of it.

Spoiler:

[MrMagma]

Birthday? Happy (possibly belated) birthday!
The changeling/raider theory seems plausible, but it all depends on whether the changelings managed to return to Equestria, and if they even survived the war. It's up in the air really, as I'm fairly sure no-one's even mentioned them in any FoE fic so far. If any have, feel free to correct me, somebody.

[SilentCarto]

Except that Rampage just did make a radaway cleaner. And "thing that expends energy to become more attractive to radiation" is just as much "more attractive to radiation" as some manner of exotic chemical is, if even less practical to put inside a living body and rather difficult to package for later use.

Uh... what? So you're saying a reloading bench is equivalent to a fresh magazine of ammo, except it will jam your gun and you can't carry it with you? I really don't understand what point you're trying to make here.

[RoboRed]

Edit: Oh, and since I forgot 3 times before: We spoke of... whatever they are called a while ago, and I made one for the FoE RPG referring to Trigun, those that know of it.

Spoiler:

F'kin win.

[SilentCarto]

Unless you are suggesting that the way Rampage is removing the dissolved rads from within the rad-away is by simply spritzing it with Taint, I'm not sure I follow your argument.
My point is that if flux can be used in some way as a superior rad cleanser to rad-away, it just can't be used within a person's body, maybe that same process could be used to clean up inanimate balefire sources, especially if flux is at all consumed in the process.

I said that, rather than Flux turning urine into potions, I think it would more likely be used in the process by harnessing its destructive properties to "denature" radiation. After all, the radiation has to retain its "identity" as necromantic magic to be harmful. If you randomize it into no particular spell, it should fall apart and become harmless. By the same token, I think Flux would tend to break down the RadAway itself if you mixed it in straight. But you need somewhere to dump the rads that you just pulled out of the RadAway, and a jar of Flux might make a convenient sink. This wouldn't be useful as a general cleanup technique, though, because then you have to deal with the taint you just used to neutralize the radiation, and that's worse than the radiation was.

That's all. I didn't suggest that anyone drink Flux in any form. It's just theoretical arcane physics.

[Ametros]

*Tackles through nearby, conveniently placed brick wall*
Haven't read it yet, nor any comments, have been furiously mastu- playing heroes of might and magic 3 and writing fics with the intensity of a thousand gecko eyeballlicks.
Just dropped by to randomly toss something that came to my mind: (birthday was above average actually, my gecko got a hand-knitted scarf from a RPG community member) What if some types of raiders are changelings victims? Drained off all love, leaving an empty husk (metaphorically speaking) of a pony unable to feel or comprehend love. (diet version of khorn berserkers (khorn flakes, contains 20 % of your daily intake of blood, hate and skulls) or a dalek?) Would technically fit with my third group/hive of changelings in my RPG if I change "death" to "drain" :P
*Jumps out the hole I just created, breaking a window as I pass through it*


Edit: Oh, and since I forgot 3 times before: We spoke of... whatever they are called a while ago, and I made one for the FoE RPG referring to Trigun, those that know of it.

Spoiler:

I love your posts, Kattlarv. They always make me laugh. You also seem to have quite a good taste in games there, I've noticed. :D

[SilentCarto]

So, there's no way to apply your headcanon to a means of cleaning an area of rads? Just out of curiosity.

Well, I suppose you could just dump a binding agent like RadAway on it. That would at least sequester the rads, for what it's worth. Cleaning up rads probably isn't that difficult if you have a proper industrial base. We know that a small community can purify enough soil for subsistence farming with scavenged supplies, after all.

[Cptadder]

...we do? When/where was that?

The Nobles (The Society?) whatever they were called are one of a rare few groups of farmers in the wasteland.

[Sindri]

...we do? When/where was that?

The Nobles (The Society?) whatever they were called are one of a rare few groups of farmers in the wasteland.

I didn't think they purified anything; my impression was that they took one of the few plots of radiation-free arable land, and defend it well.

[Sindri]

...we do? When/where was that?

The Nobles (The Society?) whatever they were called are one of a rare few groups of farmers in the wasteland.

I didn't think they purified anything; my impression was that they took one of the few plots of radiation-free arable land, and defend it well.

That was my impression as well. That, some water talismans, and possibly enslaved some sunshine-casting unicorns like those in Littlepip's stable to grow it all.
Or... heck, is it possible they could have just commandeered a stable or two that already had farmland inside it?

Well, so far we know basically nothing about them. When Blackjack goes to Elysium these things will be answered.

...
I just had a mental image of Blackjack attempting formalwear, and it's hilarious.

[RandomBlank]

And there would be no particular need to make some kind of Super-RadAway that's "more x than the original x", just so long as it's "more x" than your body.

Well, it would need to be a stronger radiation attractor than radaway is, to pull the radiation out of used radaway and leave it useful again.

I guess it's more like "Depending on your radiation level, between 85% and 99% of RadAway passes through the body unchanged, uselessly, and is discarded with urine."
This is actually how a lot of drugs work, and how great most of poison-neutralizing drugs work. The actual dose is 500 times greater than active dose because only minor part of the drug actually enters affected areas or encounters the particles of poison and performs its function. The rest leaves the bloodstream through urine unchanged.

So, you can't circulate and recycle RadAway endlessly. You filter away and discard a little each time. More if the body was heavily irradiated, less if it was "clean".

The flux doesn't then have to neutralize or absorb radiation, all it has to do is pass non-irradiated RadAway through.

as for RadAway vs ghouls... reminds me a friend playing a cleric in AD&D. Three charges of Cure Critical Wounds unloaded into a vampire made the vampire stop and reconsider peaceful options...

[Guest]

...we do? When/where was that?

The Nobles (The Society?) whatever they were called are one of a rare few groups of farmers in the wasteland.

I didn't think they purified anything; my impression was that they took one of the few plots of radiation-free arable land, and defend it well.

That was my impression as well. That, some water talismans, and possibly enslaved some sunshine-casting unicorns like those in Littlepip's stable to grow it all.
Or... heck, is it possible they could have just commandeered a stable or two that already had farmland inside it?

Well, so far we know basically nothing about them. When Blackjack goes to Elysium these things will be answered.

...
I just had a mental image of Blackjack attempting formalwear, and it's hilarious.

Bow. Ties. Are. Cool.

Still need to work on my review, but I've finally gotten the chapter read. Didn't have internet at the place I was at, turned out, which was a bit annoying though understandable and I ought to have foreseen the complication. For now, I'll note that I loved it, that I totally support Somber's decision to put the project on hiatus until her living situation is resolved satisfactorily, and that I need to think of a third thing for lists BEFORE I start them. Um... that it's really awkward when you're in the middle of a shouting match between two people you love, and you can totally see how to get them both to reconcile but they're not calm enough to listen and you don't feel like it's your place to say anything since you might not have all the facts and haven't been asked for your opinion. So, there. Anyone have advice for what to do in that situation, or was I more or less right in staying silent and just treating both participants really nicely afterwards? (For the record, it was a pretty damn bad one... both sides said things that they will eventually regret, though neither is like to admit to doing so)

[Meleagridis]

Birthday? Happy (possibly belated) birthday!
The changeling/raider theory seems plausible, but it all depends on whether the changelings managed to return to Equestria, and if they even survived the war. It's up in the air really, as I'm fairly sure no-one's even mentioned them in any FoE fic so far. If any have, feel free to correct me, somebody.

I said I'd do that.
A month or two ago... I've been busy. Check with Sindri. He was planning one too.

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Cool-Aid Man style wall-breaking Kat!

Spoiler:

[Sindri]

Birthday? Happy (possibly belated) birthday!
The changeling/raider theory seems plausible, but it all depends on whether the changelings managed to return to Equestria, and if they even survived the war. It's up in the air really, as I'm fairly sure no-one's even mentioned them in any FoE fic so far. If any have, feel free to correct me, somebody.

I said I'd do that.
A month or two ago... I've been busy. Check with Sindri. He was planning one too.

Yes... I have significant (though not by Somber's standards) quantities written on the subject. However the process of shifting this material from deranged ramblings to a narrative I'm willing to post for the public is long, and possibly futile. And I always have so very much to do...

[SilentCarto]

...we do? When/where was that?

Okay, sorry, I misremembered. When discussing where food for Tenpony came from, Homage said, "And with how irradiated all the water is, it’s hard for a pony family to purify enough for a tiny garden. For a restaurant like this, fresh crops are out of the question."

But she was talking about purifying water, not soil. My bad.

[SilentCarto]

I just had a mental image of Blackjack attempting formalwear, and it's hilarious.

Formal Where?:

You didn't think that was just a funny interlude, did you?

I guess it's more like "Depending on your radiation level, between 85% and 99% of RadAway passes through the body unchanged, uselessly, and is discarded with urine."
This is actually how a lot of drugs work, and how great most of poison-neutralizing drugs work. The actual dose is 500 times greater than active dose because only minor part of the drug actually enters affected areas or encounters the particles of poison and performs its function. The rest leaves the bloodstream through urine unchanged.

That would be true if RadAway were a simple chemical, but the fact that it decreases your rads instantly indicates it's actively drawing the radiation, not having to filter through your digestive and circulatory systems to the irradiated location.

[Kippershy]

My view on the radaway issue:


Somber wasn't trying to cause a massive overhaul on what the radiation is or how radaway works - he was just adding a care free moment into the story with a joke to give it some light heartedness and explain how BJ didn't die of rads.

Radiation is magic in the world of ponies.
Radaway is magic in the world of ponies.
the radaway potion is a liquid spell to remove the magic into the particles of the liquid and you can filter the "clean" spell liquid away from the "dirty/used" liquid.


Yes that doesn't make for such an interesting tale like you guys are trying to work out; but why does it need to be complex when we can just say; 'it's magic'?

[Sponsored content]