[Fallout Equestria] Setting discussions

[Harmony Ltd.]

So, there's been a fair bit of discussion in the last few days about Fallout Equestria's setting and a sharing of various headcanons, and people seem to be interested in said discussions not being lost into the chatter of the main PHCC chat thread.

So I'm going to first dump the last 10-11 days worth of discussion on the topic here, and then, if people want to, we'll continue it here. Seems fair ?

Anyway, here come the painful part for me : the dump.

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https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p810-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160851

Hey Hinds, you got any headcanons stationed around San Frantello? (Question also applicable to anyone else who may have come up with anything) A combination of working on the plates of the worldmap and several not insignificant changes in planning my story have moved it from somewhere around the mountains I had in your Sea of Equestria to something that actually fits with what you already have. Last I heard about that area was Caoimhe suggesting the name, but I might have missed a reference or you could have thought of something without posting it, and while I make no guarantees that I'll follow what you might give me, it could be fun to fit something else in. Just a bit more depth to the world. Also, those are mountains just to the northeast, right?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p810-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160853

WovenTales wrote:Hey Hinds, you got any headcanons stationed around San Frantello? (Question also applicable to anyone else who may have come up with anything) A combination of working on the plates of the worldmap and several not insignificant changes in planning my story have moved it from somewhere around the mountains I had in your Sea of Equestria to something that actually fits with what you already have. Last I heard about that area was Caoimhe suggesting the name, but I might have missed a reference or you could have thought of something without posting it, and while I make no guarantees that I'll follow what you might give me, it could be fun to fit something else in. Just a bit more depth to the world. Also, those are mountains just to the northeast, right?

...Someone else is actually planning on using my map?! Yay!

Um... Yes, I'd say that I have a few bits of headcanon around San Frantello. :) What sorts of information about it do you need?

Yes, those are mountains.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p810-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160866

@WovenTales:
Since you've not replied, I thought that I'd toss up a few basic bits of information. First, the city isn't covered by the SPP; its tower was built on Alcoltraz Island, and a planted balefire bomb in one of the island's subterranean spaces blew out the tower's foundations (and demolished the island, blasted the shoreline, etc.). While control and the cloud ceiling drift in from the neighboring zones, San Frantello is a hole in the network. Second, I'm not sure who's still calling it San Frantello (the Steel Rangers at least, probably, at least pre-SR), but the people living there now call it Masozium (or just "Masozi" in Pony). San Frantello was probably the most successfully hit peninsular target of the Final Assault that immediately preceded the apocalypse, though Legate Masozi's forces didn't actually arrive and land until the end of the war was well underway. They and their descendants passed the next two centuries building a new city on the ruins of the old (though mostly just on the peninsula (of San Frantello, not of Equestria)). Though times were quite hard for a while, the Miliozi were by the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows one of the two main power centers of the Alliance, and their city had not yet been replaced as its major industrial center by settlements in the recolonization. I'm still not entirely sure how things went post-SR (I'm waiting to see how PH ends, for one thing), but Masozi would be, once trade was opened (currently provisionally a bit more than a decade post-SR), the by far primary port for the transport of petroleum and petroleum products to be sold to the NCR (in this, though, it would be eventually eclipsed by the new domestically-owned tanker terminals in Manehattan, which were, among other things, quite happy to work with Canine Petroleum as well as NEROC).

You probably want to hear about it pre-SR, though. Well… really, we can talk, but your characters would probably only see it from afar, if that. The Miliozi have treaties (I'm not sure how formal) preventing them from operating in GPE groundspace, and it's not exactly easy for Wastelanders to get visas. That said, it can be done, so… if you're interested, let me know.


Oh, and here's something in my notes that's apparently from 2013-1-7:

Right… Masozi (RZ Masozium second declension neuter, I think). Well, it started out as San Frantello, a city home to one of the largest naval bases in Equestria. I seem to recall that the other post talked about its history. Masozi today…
I imagine adobe construction to be prominent, along with recycled materials from old structures. Directly recycled structures are rare, though; the Miliozi prefer building new things to living in Equestria's corpse (indeed, the old city of San Frantello, at least on the peninsula and surrounding areas, has vanished, demolished for space, scavenged for materials, cleared to deny potential enemies cover, or some combination of the three). The city has a pretty high population density, and it's heavily fortified; guardposts, AAA, and SAM batteries are scattered throughout, and there's a sturdy wall between the urban peninsula and the mainland. Masozi is also a heavily industrial city (still in 0SR the Alliance's most important industrial center, though more and more industry is being built elsewhere) run off energy from petroleum shipped in still mostly from Elusive City. Local food production consists of ocean harvesting, aquaculture, and hydroponics; however, while the Miliozi mandate that Masozi be able to produce enough food to feed itself, much of the city's actual food supply is imported from farms in the expanding Alliance heartland.
I'm not sure what sort of public transportation the city has, if any, but I'm leaning towards elevated rail.
This is all not quite settled, but hopefully it gives you some idea of what the city's like.
…That's all that I can think of at the moment. Any questions?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p810-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160908

O. Hinds wrote:

WovenTales wrote:Hey Hinds, you got any headcanons stationed around San Frantello? (Question also applicable to anyone else who may have come up with anything) A combination of working on the plates of the worldmap and several not insignificant changes in planning my story have moved it from somewhere around the mountains I had in your Sea of Equestria to something that actually fits with what you already have. Last I heard about that area was Caoimhe suggesting the name, but I might have missed a reference or you could have thought of something without posting it, and while I make no guarantees that I'll follow what you might give me, it could be fun to fit something else in. Just a bit more depth to the world. Also, those are mountains just to the northeast, right?

...Someone else is actually planning on using my map?! Yay!

Um... Yes, I'd say that I have a few bits of headcanon around San Frantello. :) What sorts of information about it do you need?

Yes, those are mountains.

I'm not really looking for anything specific; that was mainly asking if you had anything you'd like seeing included—or alternatively, not contradicted—when (if) I ever get around to writing it. I love how detailed some of your headcanons can get, and I'd rather not ruin anything you've put a lot of work into (or are otherwise attached to) if I can help it. Send me whatever you want me to read through, and I'll see what matches with how I'm imagining the setting.

And I was mostly just making sure with the mountains. The colors on the map are relatively clear when comparing them to each other, but the isolated swatches on the key don't do too much to clear up any remaining questions. Really, though, that's the first thing I've found on either map that I've had any trouble understanding.

EDIT: I see you've already started. Great! Sorry for taking so long—I was having some trouble with the wording for this, and am enough of a perfectionist to want to take the extra time to get it right.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p810-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160911

@WovenTales:
Ah, thanks.

Started? Oh, what additional information would you like? I imagine that most Wastelanders, if they think of it at all, know it as "that place without the cloud ceiling but with the army of zebras that will shoot you if you bother them". It is possible for a Wasteland trader to deal with them, though, if done properly (and it could be very profitable if the trader had scavenged or otherwise acquired something that they want).

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p810-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160913

Started posting information, started without me, something along those lines, though I could have worded it better.

O. Hinds wrote:

*snip*:
@WovenTales:
Since you've not replied, I thought that I'd toss up a few basic bits of information. First, the city isn't covered by the SPP; its tower was built on Alcoltraz Island, and a planted balefire bomb in one of the island's subterranean spaces blew out the tower's foundations (and demolished the island, blasted the shoreline, etc.). While control and the cloud ceiling drift in from the neighboring zones, San Frantello is a hole in the network. Second, I'm not sure who's still calling it San Frantello (the Steel Rangers at least, probably, at least pre-SR), but the people living there now call it Masozium (or just "Masozi" in Pony). San Frantello was probably the most successfully hit peninsular target of the Final Assault that immediately preceded the apocalypse, though Legate Masozi's forces didn't actually arrive and land until the end of the war was well underway. They and their descendants passed the next two centuries building a new city on the ruins of the old (though mostly just on the peninsula (of San Frantello, not of Equestria)). Though times were quite hard for a while, the Miliozi were by the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows one of the two main power centers of the Alliance, and their city had not yet been replaced as its major industrial center by settlements in the recolonization. I'm still not entirely sure how things went post-SR (I'm waiting to see how PH ends, for one thing), but Masozi would be, once trade was opened (currently provisionally a bit more than a decade post-SR), the by far primary port for the transport of petroleum and petroleum products to be sold to the NCR (in this, though, it would be eventually eclipsed by the new domestically-owned tanker terminals in Manehattan, which were, among other things, quite happy to work with Canine Petroleum as well as NEROC).

You probably want to hear about it pre-SR, though. Well… really, we can talk, but your characters would probably only see it from afar, if that. The Miliozi have treaties (I'm not sure how formal) preventing them from operating in GPE groundspace, and it's not exactly easy for Wastelanders to get visas. That said, it can be done, so… if you're interested, let me know.


Oh, and here's something in my notes that's apparently from 2013-1-7:

Right… Masozi (RZ Masozium second declension neuter, I think). Well, it started out as San Frantello, a city home to one of the largest naval bases in Equestria. I seem to recall that the other post talked about its history. Masozi today…
I imagine adobe construction to be prominent, along with recycled materials from old structures. Directly recycled structures are rare, though; the Miliozi prefer building new things to living in Equestria's corpse (indeed, the old city of San Frantello, at least on the peninsula and surrounding areas, has vanished, demolished for space, scavenged for materials, cleared to deny potential enemies cover, or some combination of the three). The city has a pretty high population density, and it's heavily fortified; guardposts, AAA, and SAM batteries are scattered throughout, and there's a sturdy wall between the urban peninsula and the mainland. Masozi is also a heavily industrial city (still in 0SR the Alliance's most important industrial center, though more and more industry is being built elsewhere) run off energy from petroleum shipped in still mostly from Elusive City. Local food production consists of ocean harvesting, aquaculture, and hydroponics; however, while the Miliozi mandate that Masozi be able to produce enough food to feed itself, much of the city's actual food supply is imported from farms in the expanding Alliance heartland.
I'm not sure what sort of public transportation the city has, if any, but I'm leaning towards elevated rail.
This is all not quite settled, but hopefully it gives you some idea of what the city's like.
…That's all that I can think of at the moment. Any questions?

A lot of that actually meshes amazingly well with what I had planned. Hadn't worked out the specifics yet, but I was already imagining the SPP tower was down. Still, I was thinking it would be the center for slavery in the area (not so much the destination like Fillydelphia, more management and records), slightly different from the wealth through petroleum and industry in your version of it.

How far does the GPE groundspace extend? I doubt it would be hard to put a smaller city somewhere around there. And it sounds like traders do have an advantage getting to Masozi? My characters were already going to be essentially hired onto a caravan, so that could wind up working well. Not everything needs to be a Chekhov's Gun, but I prefer if most things I mention have some later appearance.

(note : multi-posts will be compressed into a single quote, because fuck me if I'm going to be arsed to format my repeated "five posts following each others")
https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p810-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160914

In the last chapter of PH we've been able to see the old frontline, and that there's a lot of stuff still laying there on the ground.

I wonder what kind of things you could scavenge from the old battlefield, how dangerous it would be (unexploded ordinances, taint, magical radiations...), and most of all how profitable it would be.


It seems that most everything of value has had time to rust away, but I guess if you found enough vehicles & tanks husks, you could do something...

We've been able to see that even a single tank (deus) was a game changer in the wasteland, so I'd imagine having only a dozen of relatively functional T-26/T-34-like vehicles, with fuel and ammunition, could turn you into a respectable warlord as long as you don't have to deal with the Enclave...

============

Though the Steel Rangers would probably start annoying you...

============

Or heck, with the number of robot wrecks there would be on the battlefield, you could surely find a market of selling spare parts to the Remnants and the Steel Rangers alike.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p810-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160921

WovenTales wrote:A lot of that actually meshes amazingly well with what I had planned. Hadn't worked out the specifics yet, but I was already imagining the SPP tower was down. Still, I was thinking it would be the center for slavery in the area (not so much the destination like Fillydelphia, more management and records), slightly different from the wealth through petroleum and industry in your version of it.

Oh, nice! A note, though: that wealth of petroleum and industry doesn't really affect the Wasteland much until, well, it isn't the Wasteland anymore. The Wastelanders who succeed in trading with them can come away with relatively large quantities of fresh (or newly preserved) food, newly-manufactured consumer goods, medicine, or small arms, but there aren't that many traders who do that (in part due to those who've been able to do it not doing much to fight the rumors that the Miliozi, say, shoot ponies on sight). The major problem is finding things that the Miliozi/Alliance actually want; they don't take caps, and a lot of salvage that would ordinarily be very valuable in the Wasteland is worthless to them. Except for some rare or unique pieces of information or technology, they'll probably need to be paid in large quantities or high qualities of gems (Equestrian gems being something that the Alliance wants but is poor in; they've got secret trade agreements with the hellhounds, but they could still use more).

WovenTales wrote:How far does the GPE groundspace extend? I doubt it would be hard to put a smaller city somewhere around there. And it sounds like traders do have an advantage getting to Masozi? My characters were already going to be essentially hired onto a caravan, so that could wind up working well. Not everything needs to be a Chekhov's Gun, but I prefer if most things I mention have some later appearance.

It definitely extends to the borders of the active SPP cells, but unfortunately I don't know where those are. It definitely extends no farther than the old city limits of San Frantello... but I'm not sure where those are, either.

A smaller city somewhere around there... I hadn't thought of that, but it's an interesting idea. Being a "city" by Wasteland standards, perhaps it's an old suburb further up the bay? I'm not sure how the Miliozi would take that, though. I'm not entirely clear on what this city you want is meant to do.

Not so much "an advantage" as "a chance"; the Miliozi aren't even too keen on tourists from the rest of the Alliance, much less from the Equestrian Wasteland. The only people that they might let in are traders and diplomats, and they can't really deal with non-hellhound diplomats from any of the Wasteland powers due to the Alliance officially recognizing the GPE as the government of their (the GPE's) claimed territory (the hellhound thing is also technically a violation, but the GPE doesn't really know about it and would probably turn a blind eye if it did, at least until it starts trying to mindcontrol hellhounds).

[CamoBadger]

Great googly moogly. That's a hell of a headcanon dump.

Anyways, I don't really have much headcanon for most areas except for the area I use in my story (Southernmost-East corner of Equestria; New Oatleans). Everywhere else I just roll with whatever other people think of

[Kippershy]

I might headcanon dump for Coltchester/shire and Four Ridges, but only if anyone expresses interest. Not that I need someone to be interested to feel valid, but effort.

[CamoBadger]

I would ask for a dump, but at this point I just want to know what's up with those symbols and turrets! THEY MUST DO SOMETHING HORRIBLE AND I'M IMPATIENT!

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)


https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160922

Harmony Ltd. wrote:In the last chapter of PH we've been able to see the old frontline, and that there's a lot of stuff still laying there on the ground.

I wonder what kind of things you could scavenge from the old battlefield, how dangerous it would be (unexploded ordinances, taint, magical radiations...), and most of all how profitable it would be.


It seems that most everything of value has had time to rust away, but I guess if you found enough vehicles & tanks husks, you could do something...

We've been able to see that even a single tank (deus) was a game changer in the wasteland, so I'd imagine having only a dozen of relatively functional T-26/T-34-like vehicles, with fuel and ammunition, could turn you into a respectable warlord as long as you don't have to deal with the Enclave...

Interesting idea. I think, though, that "fuel and ammunition" might be an insurmountable difficultly (or not, depending on how Equestrian tanks worked).

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Or heck, with the number of robot wrecks there would be on the battlefield, you could surely find a market of selling spare parts to the Remnants and the Steel Rangers alike.

...Maybe, but, were I a trader attempting that, I'd be a bit worried that the Remnant or Rangers would offer to either accept my generous donation or pay me in individual express-delivered bullets. Trading with Red Eye would be a much safer bet and therefore much more profitable.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160946

I had an idea for a story set after the Sunshine & Rainbows...


What's peoples headcanons regarding :

- The New Canterlot Republic
- What happened of Fillydelphia after the fall of Red Eye
- What happened to the Grand Pegasus Enclave


I don't have much ideas concerning the NCR (well, some, but they aren't really matured), so I'll say what I have in mind for the two others :


Fillydelphia :

Almost immediately after the fall of Red Eye, without a charismatic central figure to unite them, the various raiders and slavers quickly devolved into competing gangs, some of them led by people like Protégé from MN7 - Red Eye's "students" ; and others by the likes of Chainlink Shackles & Wicked Slit - the ruthless raiders & slavers kind. Mostly, Red Eye's forces fractured along the lines of those who believed in his Greater Good, and those who where just in it for the booty. It further fractured along the line of the various strong personalities in these two "camps", mostly depending on their interpretations of the Greater Good for Red Eye's students.

They fought, and fought dirty to control the wealth of Fillydelphia's industry, and this for a few years until most of them died, from the combats, hunger or disease.

Ten years after the fall of Red Eye, the New Canterlot Republic launch an operation to reclaim the city with its nascent army, supported by squads of veteran griffins and Applejack Rangers, and with a contingent of Followers of the Apocalypse.

Among this force is a number of kids who grew in Red Eye's care and who managed to escape the city with some of the scientists and other qualified peoples Red Eye employed - roughly half of them (kids & other) managed to escape, the others being enslaved by the gangs or killed by the slaves-turned-raiders/cannonfodder. They are the ones who convinced the NCR to try to reclaim the city, and most of them are in the Follower of the Apocalypse contingent.


Grand Pegasus Enclave :

Following the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows, the Enclave's society fell into chaos as roughly three different camps formed themselves :

1) "The Volunteers" : The ones who were scandalized to learn how the Enclave had been treating the surface and wished for it to correct its course and help the surface to the best of its ability (I guess its leaders would mostly come from the Volunteer Corp)
2) "The Bitters" / "Cauterizers" : The ones who were crying for the blood of the surfacers who were threatening their way of life and all they had ever fought for, and were ready to fight to the bloody end to stop Littlepip from breaking the cloud cover (probably led by the hardliners of the Enclave military leadership who most supported Operation Cauterize)
3) "The Isolationnists" : And finally those who just wished to continue to live as they did before and not care about the fate of those dirty surfacers

Soon it fell into a civil war, the Second Group launching itself into a campaign of terror against the rest of the wasteland, a campaign which would only definitively end with their complete (?) eradication fifteen years after the DoS&R, the First Group helping the surface against Second Group to the best of its abilities, and the Third Group playing the First and Second Groups against each others and staying low to be left in peace as much as possible.

Twenty years after the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows, it's pretty safe to say that the Grand Pegasus Enclave as it was known has ceased to exist. It has only left to the Wasteland most of its technology, as it was either salvaged by the Volunteers, stolen from the Bitters or traded from the Isolationnists ; and generations worth of resentment among the pegasus, murders born of revenge being relatively common between the three different groups.

Even if they have officially surrendered and faded away into the Wasteland, some claim that there still exist remnants of the Bitters, bidding their time to one day claim back Equestria.



New Canterlot Republic :

What started as Gawdwyna Grimfeather trying to organize her own turf of the Wasteland in a fairer way than what had been done before quickly gained steam as refugees flew in (what was the name of that penal facility complex again ?), in the hope of a better life at first, and quickly simply to find safety from the Bitter's War on the Wasteland.

The Bitter War made much to unite and strengthen the nascent Republic, as on one side the new citizens had a common enemy to fight against, and on the other if they didn't give their best to fight said enemy they would lose everything, even their life.

A few years into the Bitter War (which "officially" started with the destruction of Friendship City, the start of Operation Cauterize), the then disorganized rabble tasked to defend the NCR was turned into its army, all able bodied citizens being mobilized and trained by the cadres of the young NCR Army, mostly ex-Talon mercenaries and Applejack Rangers. Those who couldn't fight were mobilized to tend to the fields, build & repair the guns of those who could fight and supply them with ammunition and medical gear.

At first the NCR Army seemed hopelessly outmatched by the Bitters, their gear and training not being up to the task of fighting a force in top-shape and armed with energy weapons and warships, their casualty rate being of 5-7 to 1 in their best battles ; the tide only beginning to shift once the Volunteers started putting their resources & training at the disposition of the war effort.

Five years into the war, what the Bitters had hoped would be a swift blitzkrieg had turned into a, well, bitter war of attrition. And they were starting to lose, the few ships they had either having been destroyed of starting to fall apart from disrepair, their equipment doing as well, and their resources dwindling.

A few more years in, the final victory of the NCR had become unquestionnable, but still the Bitters continued to fight, their struggle turning into guerilla warfare as they attacked the various caravans of the Republic and generally making themselves a pain in the ass. It's around this time that they started a full-on campaign of biological warfare. It wasn't pretty.

Their activities dwindled away, and exactly fifteen years after the Start of Operation Cauterize, no attack by the Bitters had been registered since 6 month. It's as if they had simply disappeared.

The fifteenth anniversary of the start of Operation Cauterize is considered as the official end of the Bitter War, and since then that day has become a National Holiday for the Republic.

All things considered, as bloody as it was (seriously, it was a nightmare), the NCR wouldn't exist without the Bitter War - or at least it wouldn't have become as strong as it is now, the dominant power in the Equestrian Wastes and on its way to one day restore the glory of Equestria.


As far as how it treats the affairs of the wastes, it has been greatly influenced by the Bitter War, trying to recruit as many people as they can and trying to integrate them into the melting-pot that is the Republic. As for those who refuse to join... well, that's a question for another day...

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160948

*slowly claps*

I like the idea so far, other than that I really don't have much to add.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160949

@Harmony Ltd.:
Interesting; so your headcanon has the former Red Eye forces winning the Battle of Fillydelphia? How? IIRC, the last we saw of it was looking like a rout for the defenders.

"what was the name of that penal facility complex again"
Shattered Hoof, named after but far away from the ridge.


Myself, you've probably gathered that I've a few ideas, but I'm expecting to have them shaken up by the ending of PH and am therefore keeping them a bit uncertain at the moment. I will say that I'm, under my current thinking (thought of this morning, in fact, IIRC), expecting the NCR military to be, at least at first, built on small-unit tactics. I also have the NCR's immediate future after the first decade post-SR being defined in large part by the economic war with the Alliance.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160952

My idea, in short, was that Red Eye's forces retreated inside the city, turning the battle into a siege.

After the fall of the Cathedral and that retreat, with the new of Red Eye's demise, the infighting quickly began in the rank of the Fillydelphia slavers - quickly being in the hours following the new of the battle of the Cathedral's Battle being lost reaching them.

In the ensuing chaos, the slaves rioted, freed themselves, and proceeded to wreak havoc in the besieged Fillydelphia.

From the exterior, in the besiegers point of view, it had become clear that Red Eyes forces had become neutered as an effective fighting force, and in the light of the slave revolt, decided to stay outside the City : not really a glorious decision, but on the other hand the slaves were so frenzied they didn't make any difference as to who they took out their desire of revenge on, attacking everyone without distinction, even each others.

Then a few weeks after the start of the siege, and in the continuation of Operation Cauterize (still in full force even after the loss of I don't remember how many Raptors in the various battles), the besiegers decided to focus toward the fight against the enclave, abandoning the siege.

The besieged were a bit too busy killing each other to really take notice of that. They contented themselves by launching raids in the surrounding areas to try to get some food in their plates.

That... didn't go too well (the last months of Fillydelphia ended in cannibalism).



When the Fillydelphia Reclamation Corp reach the city ten years after the end of the Siege, the only traces of life left in the city is ghouls, tainted parasprites, and the few odd survivors who barely have any trace of equinity left in them from all the bloodshed and horrors they had to go through - you could almost take them for feral ghouls, if it weren't for the fact that they look a -little- better, and are far less friendly.


=============


A dozen miles or so out of the city limits, a little community of scavengers took life around a train station of the old commuting rail network of Pre-War Fillydelphia, with a few dozen scavengers living there in relative safety, the station being above-ground.

The Fillydelphia Reclamation Corp "requesitionned" it as its headquarter, and the scavengers as their guides in their effort to... well, scavenge the city of things valuable to the Republic.

In 30 A.S (Year Thirty After Sunshine, thirty years after the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows), it's the most important settlement in the Fillydelphia area, with around two to four thousand people working in shifts days and night to salvage from Fillydelphia anything they can, going as far as trying to slavage the blast furnaces themselves, in order to build the new Capital (and hopefully economic and manufacturing center) of the Republic.


=============


Can you give me a bit more details about the relations between the NCR and the Alliance ?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160961

Harmony Ltd. wrote:I had an idea for a story set after the Sunshine & Rainbows...


What's peoples headcanons regarding :

- The New Canterlot Republic
- What happened of Fillydelphia after the fall of Red Eye
- What happened to the Grand Pegasus Enclave

You might want to re read the ten years later afterword Harmony. As I recall Fillydelphia had already been reclaimed and part of the NCR and Equestria was mostly at peace.

Unless I am mistaken.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160964

Concerning the Republic itself, here's a thing I had in mind :


It is born from the Wasteland, has been raised by a Warlord (Gawdwyna), and forged in the fires of War.

As such, the mortar of the Republic is its Military. Universal Conscription is still the rule, and the Republic tend to approach most of its problems. with the same question : "Can it hurt me, and if yes, how do I subvert or destroy it ?".

There is a Senate, and the Republic is nominally a Parliamentary Republic / Federation of Settlements ; but the Military still get the final say in most affairs.

This doesn't stop it from being riddled with political intrigues at every level.


The Republic is in no way an Utopia. It's simply Civilization, a thing that the Wasteland had lacked for a long time.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160965

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Concerning the Republic itself, here's a thing I had in mind :


It is born from the Wasteland, has been raised by a Warlord (Gawdwyna), and forged in the fires of War.

As such, the mortar of the Republic is its Military. Universal Conscription is still the rule, and the Republic tend to approach most of its problems. with the same question : "Can it hurt me, and if yes, how do I subvert or destroy it ?".

There is a Senate, and the Republic is nominally a Parliamentary Republic / Federation of Settlements ; but the Military still get the final say in most affairs.

This doesn't stop it from being riddled with political intrigues at every level.


The Republic is in no way an Utopia. It's simply Civilization, a thing that the Wasteland had lacked for a long time.

So a state similar to Israel or Switzerland? Poses an Interesting look at it.
I'm not so sure about that. Figured it would be more democratic than that but on the other hand it seems like something that Gawdania would back. Certainly better than what was before.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160973

Well, in practice it is pretty democratic (by Wasteland standards) at the local level, but simply the higher you go in the spheres of power, the more important to the Republic as a whole the affairs you are talking about are, the more the Military will be paying close attention to the affairs in question and suggest to the Parliament what decisions to take.

There's a few currents in the military, those who want to take a more direct approach to governing the Republic, those who are content with the current situation, those who would want to hand over more control to the civilian authorities (they are few), and those who just don't give a fuck about politics (they are the majority).

You might want to re read the ten years later afterword Harmony. As I recall Fillydelphia had already been reclaimed and part of the NCR and Equestria was mostly at peace.

Unless I am mistaken.

Just did. I don't think I've seen any mention of Fillydelphia at all. And even then, not to insult Kkat's writing, but I don't believe even in ten years the city could be pacified / claimed back. At worst, take that as one of the (potentially numerous depending on what I'll come up with) break with FoE's "canon". [*]

As for a peaceful Wasteland, we're shown a city which is close to the Core of the Republic, in its most secure region,
and when Fluttershy say (paraphrase) "we haven't seen raiders in years", I understand it as "in the region". Apparently the roads farther from the Core are still rather unsafe (which the comments about Ditzy's caravan might support).

Anyway, it is said that "three years ago" (so in 7 A.S) Littlepip got rid of the last portion of the Cloud cover.

So I'd say that :

5 A.S is the year where the Bitters finally start crumbling, so much that by 7 A.S they are routed from their last bastion in the Clouds, and are forced down to the ground.
By the end of 8 A.S, between desertion and attrition, there's only a few thousands Bitters left around Equestria, fighting guerilla warfare. In the two following years most most of them die out - be it in the Republic's counter attacks or from disease / hunger.
After that, around 10 A.S (the time of the epilogue), there still a few occasional attacks against caravans by the Bitters around Equestria, but they now are merely an annoyance in the grand scheme of things. And in a few years, they will completely disappear from everyone's radars.



[*] : to be quite honest, even after the Sunshine and Rainbows AND the Gardens of Equestria, I still don't see the Wasteland as being even "mostly pacified" in ten years. There's just too much shit around for even half of it to be sorted out in that timespan.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160977

I have to agree with the last statement, all Gardens did was remove taint, magical radiation, and make it so that crops could grow properly, IIRC. It's still the wasteland, like it or lump it, beasties and all.

As for breaking canon, one can avoid that if they piece part and examine the exact statements in the story. If it doesn't contradict that, you're good to go, because even though an author means this or that, it may not be what they said.

Heil, technicalities!

PS: I don't know if I'm being helpful. :Shy:

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160981

You know, my official statement about canon, not just in Fallout Equestria but also pretty much any franchise is the following :

I don't give a fuck


I just try to respect what I consider to be the spirit of the thing and its major plot points. As long as it respects the core themes of the work, it's okay in my book.

And if I ask Hinds questions about the Alliance, it's to know how they could influence my own ideas for a story if I ever chose to include them.

At worst, consider that it's an "alternate future" with the point of divergence set around the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows and just roll with it.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160982

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160983

Harmony Ltd. wrote:You know, my official statement about canon is the following :

I don't give a fuck


I just try to respect what I consider to be the spirit of the thing and its major plot points. And if I ask Hinds question about the alliance is to know how they could influence my own ideas for a story if I ever chose to include them.

At worst, consider that it's an "alternate future" with the point of divergence set around the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows and just roll with it.

I'm all for ignoring the epilogue of FO:E, it was like the epilogue of Harry Potter, why must authors think they have to tie up most of the plot lines, and generally make the epilogue seem stupid/boring?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160985

Ironmonger wrote:I have to agree with the last statement, all Gardens did was remove taint, magical radiation, and make it so that crops could grow properly, IIRC. It's still the wasteland, like it or lump it, beasties and all.

The worst thing is that, with settlements growing even more food, the raiders have even more incentives to attack / racket the population centers ; and the most ambitious of them would have an even easier time setting themselves up as Warlords / Feudal Lords.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160986

*mad giggling*

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160987

Harmony Ltd. wrote:and the most ambitious of them would have an even easier time setting themselves up as Warlords / Feudal Lords.

hey, at least it's SOME form of civilization, not the best perhaps, but probably (a little) better than no government at all

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160989

The worst thing is that with a much larger food supply, the herbivore population could skyrocket, leading to carnivores having themselves a much larger food supply and having their own population skyrocket.


It some ways, Equestria post-Gardens could be even more hostile than before. :Crazy:


=============

stringtheory wrote:

Harmony Ltd. wrote:and the most ambitious of them would have an even easier time setting themselves up as Warlords / Feudal Lords.

hey, at least it's SOME form of civilization, not the best perhaps, but probably (a little) better than no government at all

You could argue that Feudal Europe was better in some ways than the Barbarian Era,

but it was still a pretty shitty era to live in.


I'm not quite sure warlords would be an improvement to the lifestyle of most of the Wasteland's settlements. In fact, I'm quite convinced they would come worse of it.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160991

So we've (I was thinking along the same lines...sorta.) established that populations of both prey (ponies/other cuddlies) and predators (hellhounds/dogs/beasties), but the part I find the most fun is that the lack of some previous environmental hazards would allow for some sort of industry to be set up, and since it's a high-tech setting, it could end up like a smaller-scale WW1 or something.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160992

It just escaped me that due to the Gardens, Fillydelphia may not even have ghouls in 10 A.S, or if that if there is they would be really weakened. Total pushovers.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160993

The Zebrica still has quite a bit of radiation, and possibly taint (known unknown), so perhaps a lot of them got word of that from the NCR and started migrating.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160994

Ironmonger wrote:So we've (I was thinking along the same lines...sorta.) established that populations of both prey (ponies/other cuddlies) and predators (hellhounds/dogs/beasties), but the part I find the most fun is that the lack of some previous environmental hazards would allow for some sort of industry to be set up, and since it's a high-tech setting, it could end up like a smaller-scale WW1 or something.

Well, one of my major plot idea was that the characters would be on a mission for the NCR to establish diplomatic relations with independent powers on the (expanding) frontiers of the Republic, with one of their goals to assess the potential threat they might pose to the Republic, and if possible to try to rally them.

The Zebrica still has quite a bit of radiation, and possibly taint (known unknown), so perhaps a lot of them got word of that from the NCR and started migrating.

I suppose a part of the ghould population didn't want to have to eternally rely on Aqua Cura being supplied to them in order to survive. Possible plot point...

Concerning Taint, Taint is Flux and was produced by the Flim-Flam brothers / Project Chimera, so unless they sold Discord Juice to the Zebras or Equestria dropped Flux Bombs on the zebras I have difficulties envisioning how the stuff would have ended there.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160995

Harmony Ltd. wrote:
Concerning Taint, Taint is Flux and was produced by the Flim-Flam brothers / Project Chimera, so unless they sold Discord Juice to the Zebras or Equestria dropped Flux Bombs on the zebras I have difficulties envisioning how the stuff would have ended there.

True, but it could have ended up there by someone in the present timeline, for whatever reason. However, explaining that in the story would probably be far too out of the way and may not be worth the trouble.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p840-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160996

Especially considering I don't intend to deal with Zebrica.

[Kippershy]

I would ask for a dump, but at this point I just want to know what's up with those symbols and turrets! THEY MUST DO SOMETHING HORRIBLE AND I'M IMPATIENT!

Hahaha. Oh, you want to know do you? I'll be really mean and do this: first spoiler is to hold another spoiler tag containing a spoiler of low level and inside will be another of medium-low.

Spoiler:

[CamoBadger]

I would ask for a dump, but at this point I just want to know what's up with those symbols and turrets! THEY MUST DO SOMETHING HORRIBLE AND I'M IMPATIENT!

Hahaha. Oh, you want to know do you? I'll be really mean and do this: first spoiler is to hold another spoiler tag containing a spoiler of low level and inside will be another of medium-low.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p870-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160997

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Especially considering I don't intend to deal with Zebrica. Spike

And here we have another one of those moments where my brain latches onto an idea and rides it into oblivion.

Thanks, brain.

"Fuck you, Iron." :Chicken:

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p870-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160998

@Harmony Ltd.:
From the SR+two weeks epilogue:

Kkat wrote:Fierce battles continue throughout the ruins of Fillydelphia, most notably between Talon mercenaries and the emerging Red Eye remnants’ warlords. Unless your checklist of things you need t’ do by the end of the day includes violence an’ bloody dismemberment, I strongly advise you t’ avoid Fillydelphia for the foreseeable future. If you are amongst those civilians still trapped inside the ruins, seek out the nearest Talon not engaged in active hostilities. If at all possible, the griffin will do her or his best t’ get you out of the warzone.

That doesn't sound much like a siege to me (and with Celestia One being used against the city, I'm not sure how they'd be able to keep up a siege). I suppose that perhaps an argument could be made, though, for this becoming or being a siege; might I hear yours?

"In 30 A.S (Year Thirty After Sunshine, thirty years after the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows), it's the most important settlement in the Fillydelphia area, with around two to four thousand people working in shifts days and night to salvage from Fillydelphia anything they can, going as far as trying to slavage the blast furnaces themselves, in order to build the new Capital (and hopefully economic and manufacturing center) of the Republic."
Two interesting differences from my headcanon here. First, my current rough timeline (

Spoiler:
formation of the Pax Roamana 0PR
defeat of the Diamond Dog empire by the Northern Zebras 50PR
meteor and fall of the Northern Zebras 80PR
pony colonization of the Equestrian Peninsula 180PR 0E
Discord arrives, Celestia and Luna descend 580PR 400E->0G
Nightmare Moon rises and is defeated 780PR 200G->0C
FiM begins 1780PR 1000C->0D
the war begins 1795PR 15D
Littlehorn 1804PR 21D->0L
the war ends 1815PR 11L
FoE 2015PR 211L->0SR
the NCR allows the EA to begin operating, within limits, in NCR territory 2026PR 11SR

) just uses "SR" rather than "A.S.". Secondly, probably due to my headcanon having it retaken much earlier, I've got Fillydelphia as the NCR's industrial hub (and one of its three primary cities (maybe four, with Hoofington, but we'll see how PH ends) along with New Canterlot (including Junction Town) and the rebuilding Manehattan. I've even got the old Marelard being pulled out of its magical museum preservation, converted to run on alcohol from Stalliongrad, and set to pull an expressing running between Manehattan and Fillydelphia through New Canterlot (at the moment I'm thinking that the alcohol-burning steam locomotive service started before the Alliance got the NCR thoroughly hooked on oil and then continued as a fully domestic transport system).

"Can you give me a bit more details about the relations between the NCR and the Alliance ?"
(By the way, why do you sometimes put a space between the end of the last word and the end-of-sentence punctuation?)
I conceptualize it as economic warfare. The Alliance has a developed, albeit small by pre-apocalypse standards, and expanding industrial sector, active R&D (with Profectum itself as a member state), and a supply of petroleum and petroleum products that could sate the NCR's thirst for energy (which is actually even mentioned in the original story). The Alliance is also for the most part ranging from willing to eager to establish trade relations; it could be of tremendous help to the NCR in rebuilding the peninsula and caring for its people. The catch: everything that the Alliance offers comes with strings attached. Companies such as NETC and, most prominently, NEROC are headquartered in Elusive City and owned by the Elusive Company (though they may officially later move their headquarters to Manehattan; I'm not sure). A peninsular, primarily pony nation becoming dependent on foreign fossil fuels has some [i]significant[i] precedent. Every consumer or industrial good purchased from the Alliance is something that's not being made domestically.
To summarize: The Alliance, particularly the Elusive Company, wants to own as much of the NCR as possible, but, unless they use military means (which some in the Alliance are advocating), they're restricted to what the NCR lets them do. The NCR wants to remain as independent as possible, but the Alliance can supply them with useful and necessary resources. Between these two, a balance is struck.

"As such, the mortar of the Republic is its Military. Universal Conscription is still the rule, and the Republic tend to approach most of its problems. with the same question : "Can it hurt me, and if yes, how do I subvert or destroy it ?"."
Interesting idea. What do you think of my above hypothesis that the NCR military is based on small unit tactics?

"to be quite honest, even after the Sunshine and Rainbows AND the Gardens of Equestria, I still don't see the Wasteland as being even "mostly pacified" in ten years. There's just too much shit around for even half of it to be sorted out in that timespan."
Well, if the Remnant is still around and the NCR either lets the Alliance at them or isn't recognized as sovereign soon enough after the fall of the GPE, I imagine that the Miliozi would make some effort to clear them out (how much I'm not sure; it could be a cakewalk, or it could be a USSR-fighting-Afghanistan stalemate). Before that, though, the Miliozi will be racing to claim as much territory around Masozi as possible once the GPE loses Alliance recognition.

"The worst thing is that, with settlements growing even more food, the raiders have even more incentives to attack / racket the population centers ; and the most ambitious of them would have an even easier time setting themselves up as Warlords / Feudal Lords."
In my headcanon, one of the Fillydelphia children (who was just barely young enough to be considered eligible for such when the raider band she was born into was hit) rallied a group of Red Eye remnants and lead them south through the Moojave to found the town of Thornbush just past the old southern border of Equestria. The idea's not terribly complete at the moment, though. Just a semi-related thing.

Re warlords, though: You're forgetting something very important, I think: as long as the Twilight Society is amenable, a warlord's reign could end with nothing more than a sunny day.

Ironmonger wrote:So we've (I was thinking along the same lines...sorta.) established that populations of both prey (ponies/other cuddlies) and predators (hellhounds/dogs/beasties), but the part I find the most fun is that the lack of some previous environmental hazards would allow for some sort of industry to be set up, and since it's a high-tech setting, it could end up like a smaller-scale WW1 or something.

My headcanon, since people seem to be interested at the moment, has pretty much all of the hellhounds who don't decide to play nice with the NCR and settle in Ponyville and the like be offered a new homeland by the Alliance. The result was the independent nation of Hell, a country on the southeastern coast of the Marediterranean and the future home of Canine Petroleum (and, as a result, the future home of many smug hellhounds in nice suits who are thoroughly enjoying being NEROC's only competitor, and the preferred one, for supplying the NCR with oil).

Ironmonger wrote:The Zebrica still has quite a bit of radiation, and possibly taint (known unknown), so perhaps a lot of them got word of that from the NCR and started migrating

.


Kkat quote spoilered for length:

Kkat wrote:@Cantthinkofaname1029

I can give you what is hinted at or outright stated in the story:

The land of the zebras was home to horrific monsters (to the scale that the Everfree Forest was the most homelike place in Equestria) even before the changes wrought in the wake of the war. The monsters there now are... fierce.

Entire lands (peninsulas and small islands) were completely lost in the cataclysm, crumbling back into boiling oceans as the ponies turned the full power of the sun against the zebras.

Zebras could not cast spells, but were mistresses of alchemy and enchantments. 

Zebras also had a level of functional technology that (in most fields) actually surpassed that of Equestria, particularly when it came to enchantment-enhanced or alchemically-enhanced technology. (The ponies had Steel Rangers with rocket launchers... the zebras had megaspell-carrying ICBMs powered by alchemical superfuels.) Many of the advances promoted by the Ministry of Wartime Technology were in response to superior zebra technology (such as the anti-machine rifle which was in response to zebra sentinel robots).

On that note, as well as monsters, zebra lands are riddled with hostile robots. Yay. 

The zebra lands were rich in coal and there had been a thriving industry of coal mining with much of the resources being exported to Equestria in the years before the war. Now, the land is reach in very creepy mines and still-burning underground coal fires.

The zebras did not have Stable-Tec or Stables. This is one area of technology where the zebras were significantly worse off. They did have Vaults (such as the one under Four Stars), but while these didn't have the thrill of Stable-Tec social experiments, they more than made up for it with inferior design. Oh, and most of them were built into parts of the previously-mentioned coal mines.

Before the war, the zebras had a tribal social structure unified under a ruling Caesar. Warriors from all zebra tribes comprised the Caesar's military, the Legion.

Martial arts training was common, and most martial art styles were originally developed by the zebras. "Fallen Caesar Style" and "Doombunny Style" to name a couple.

Zebras also had a thriving "pharmaceutical" industry. The zebras did not have the same mindset towards drugs, even dangerous and addictive ones, that most ponies did. In fact, there were groups within the Legion who specialized in fighting under the influence of drugs and alchemical enhancements. (The before-mentioned "Doombunny Style" was a modern martial art developed to take advantage of new combat drugs.)

Finally, over the course of the past two thousand years, the homeland of the zebras suffered multiple meteoric impacts, including the one multi-meteor cataclysm glimpsed in Littlepip's dream. From this, the zebras developed a religion based around fear of the stars. This was not the only religion to exist in the zebra's homeland, but it was the one held by most of the Caesars, including the one who rose to power at the cusp of the war.

In addition to the religious impact, the meteor strikes often had an environmental impact that went beyond the obvious and mundane. Like in Fallout, there are aliens in the universe of Fallout: Equestria. However, the aliens I employ are less "Mars Attacks" and more "The Colour Out of Space".

I don't agree with everything in that, but it's influenced my headcanon. I have the old lands of the Pax Roamana being more or less stripped of the old civilization. There are certainly irradiated and such areas, but a lot of it just looks, unless you examine it closely, as if there wasn't much civilization there in the first place. Remember, while the Zebra strategic megaspell arsenal consisted of a limited number of missiles, the vast majority of which were armed with balefire warheads, the Equestrian counterpart used cast megaspells with a wide variety of effects.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Well, one of my major plot idea was that the characters would be on a mission for the NCR to establish diplomatic relations with independent powers on the (expanding) frontiers of the Republic, with one of their goals to assess the potential threat they might pose to the Republic, and if possible to try to rally them.

You might want to talk to Meleagridis, too; their Moojave ideas strike me as interesting, and they might be useful to you.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p870-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#160999

@ Ironmonger : Lol.


Anyway, one of the theme I want to convey in my story somehow, is optimism.

I mean, yeah, things are still shitty and it's still the Wasteland,

but just in a portion of the lifespan of a single pony things have become considerably better for most, and for the first time in centuries there is Hope for the future.

That basically, that the most important thing Littlepip did was to Bring the Light and inspire people to walk the path.

Something like that.


I've become quite fond of the idea of telling the story of a Post-Apocalyptic setting as it is rebuilding itself.




@ Hinds : give me a few minutes to get back at you and answer your questions.


=============


Fillydelphia :

Well, the Gardens may have cleaned the Taint and Radiation, but the problem is that Filly' doesn't need that to be particularly inhospitable : the toxic smog (when the industry is functioning) and the mutated parasprites are the first two arguments which come to my mind of reasons why you wouldn't want to live in Fillydelphia. That's why I set up the scavengers' settlement out of the city's limit and have them move the industrial equipment to another city entirely (most probably New Canterlot), among with the fact that the whole city is crumbling and quite honestly unsafe.


Siege :

Well, make it "two months" instead of "two weeks" then. As for the notion of "siege" itself... well, maybe more Stalingrad / Berlin than anything else, but I think that with the menace of the Enclave the "besiegers" would have been pushed to withdraw their forces from the city. I dunno.

One way or the other, I think that the city wouldn't have been claimed back right away.



Punctuation :

In French we leave a space before : ; ? !
And I can't shake the habit.



Small Unit Tactics :

It would make sense for it to have started as such. And given most of the threats they have to face in the Wasteland are of a relatively small scale, it would be called for for most cases.

However, at least during the first five years of the Bitter War, the NCR Army faced an organized army with more "traditional" formations, which forced them to adapt their own formations in consequence.

I don't know enough about tactics to be able to say exactly how it would have looked, and it most likely would have depended on the nature of the battles being fought, but at least from an organizational standpoint the units would look something like this :

5 soldiers => 1 fire team [3 soldiers, 1 "corporal"/radio/second-in-command, 1 "sergeant" / unit leader] (5 people)
1 formation => 3 fire teams + 1 "master sergeant"/radio + 1 "sub-lieutenant" (17 people)
1 platoon => 3 three formations + 1 HQ unit [equivalent to 1 Fire Team] + 1 "lieutenant"/radio + 1 "captain" (58 people)
1 detachment => 5 platoons + 1 HQ unit [equivalent to 1 Fire Team] + 1 "master captain" + 1 "colonel" (297 people)
1 regiment => 4 detachments + 1 HQ unit [equivalent to 1 Formation] + 1 "Lieutenant-Colonel" + 1 "1-star General" (1207 people)

After that, well, it becomes murky...

But the idea is to be flexible. Which mean that even that "chart" above is subject to a number of variations, or could even be totally different in practice : the idea being that the NCR try to be as comfortable with urban combat / combat in confined spaces as with ranged battles.

One thing is certain, is that the NCR is mostly foot soldiers. There isn't quite the logistic yet to start having Motorized Infantry, or, god forbid, Armored Cavalry.

Though they have "discovered" artillery and they like it. At least against the random warlord encampments - pegasi are harder to shell given they, you know, fly.



Twilight Society :

Well, they have the capability, but even then, if they don't know about the warlord's existence, how are they supposed to target him / her / whatever ?

After all, the Wasteland is vast, and communication isn't that easy. Rumors come and go, but you don't unleash Celestia One because you've heard a rumor that this or that settlement did bad things. If anything, this would only serve to make the NCR quite irate against the Twilight Society.

So unless the Twilight Society has the capability to send agents here and there to collect intelligence from every corners of the Wasteland, I don't see them playing Wasteland Police. And if they did, I think the NCR would sooner or later come into direct conflict with them about that.

If anything, I think the NCR wouldn't allow the Twilight Society to use Celestia One as it wish, and would soon turn it into their own "Megaspell Deterrent".

Also, if there's Clouds Celestia One is useless. And someone who isn't either the Twilight Society or the NCR control that, so I think if they started using it too much you'd end up seeing a permanent cloud layer above Manehatten.


=============


Re small unit tactics :

What you could imagine would be that the "Fire Team" is the fundamental brick of the NCR military, built as such that every settlement, even the smallest ones, could contribute in some way to "manning" the army.

That, at the smallest level, every fire team is before everything else specialist at, like you said, small unit tactics, and that it's only when those teams are integrated into a larger whole that they start being trained in larger operations.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p870-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161011

@Harmony Ltd:
re Fillydelphia:
Hm… those could be some good points, but I'm still leaning towards my previous ideas. Sure, the city has some problems, but I think that it would be more efficient to fix those than to relocate elsewhere; it's still the best industrial center the NCR has.

"In French we leave a space before : ; ? !
And I can't shake the habit."
Ah, thank you.

"However, at least during the first five years of the Bitter War, the NCR Army faced an organized army with more "traditional" formations, which forced them to adapt their own formations in consequence."
Ah, so they were already built up enough to use force matching instead of asymmetrical warfare?

"Well, they have the capability, but even then, if they don't know about the warlord's existence, how are they supposed to target him / her / whatever ?

After all, the Wasteland is vast, and communication isn't that easy. Rumors come and go, but you don't unleash Celestia One because you've heard a rumor that this or that settlement did bad things. If anything, this would only serve to make the NCR quite irate against the Twilight Society.

So unless the Twilight Society has the capability to send agents here and there to collect intelligence from every corners of the Wasteland, I don't see them playing Wasteland Police. And if they did, I think the NCR would sooner or later come into direct conflict with them about that.

If anything, I think the NCR wouldn't allow the Twilight Society to use Celestia One as it wish, and would soon turn it into their own "Megaspell Deterrent".

Also, if there's Clouds Celestia One is useless. And someone who isn't either the Twilight Society or the NCR control that, so I think if they started using it too much you'd end up seeing a permanent cloud layer above Manehatten."
Aye, but that someone also has the full surveillance capabilities of the SPP.

"Re small unit tactics :

What you could imagine would be that the "Fire Team" is the fundamental brick of the NCR military, built as such that every settlement, even the smallest ones, could contribute in some way to "manning" the army.

That, at the smallest level, every fire team is before everything else specialist at, like you said, small unit tactics, and that it's only when those teams are integrated into a larger whole that they start being trained in larger operations."
That's sort of what I was thinking of, I think (it's a friend of mine who's really enthusiastic about SMT).

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p870-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161045

O. Hinds wrote:

WovenTales wrote:A lot of that actually meshes amazingly well with what I had planned. Hadn't worked out the specifics yet, but I was already imagining the SPP tower was down. Still, I was thinking it would be the center for slavery in the area (not so much the destination like Fillydelphia, more management and records), slightly different from the wealth through petroleum and industry in your version of it.

Oh, nice! A note, though: that wealth of petroleum and industry doesn't really affect the Wasteland much until, well, it isn't the Wasteland anymore. The Wastelanders who succeed in trading with them can come away with relatively large quantities of fresh (or newly preserved) food, newly-manufactured consumer goods, medicine, or small arms, but there aren't that many traders who do that (in part due to those who've been able to do it not doing much to fight the rumors that the Miliozi, say, shoot ponies on sight). The major problem is finding things that the Miliozi/Alliance actually want; they don't take caps, and a lot of salvage that would ordinarily be very valuable in the Wasteland is worthless to them. Except for some rare or unique pieces of information or technology, they'll probably need to be paid in large quantities or high qualities of gems (Equestrian gems being something that the Alliance wants but is poor in; they've got secret trade agreements with the hellhounds, but they could still use more).

I can work with that. Sounds like it's not going to be a regular part of their route, but would definitely be quite profitable on those occasions they have good enough stock to make the trip. And with as important as Masozi is (even if they do little externally when we see them), making it stand out from every other town they go through is nice. Sounds like it could give some good backstory as well, both on why the caravan actually trusts those trigger-happy zebras not to shoot them in the back, and how they got visas through the land controlled by those even more trigger-happy pegasi. I imagine there's going to be quite the politics going on to get through the GPE groundspace even before they reach the city.

WovenTales wrote:How far does the GPE groundspace extend? I doubt it would be hard to put a smaller city somewhere around there. And it sounds like traders do have an advantage getting to Masozi? My characters were already going to be essentially hired onto a caravan, so that could wind up working well. Not everything needs to be a Chekhov's Gun, but I prefer if most things I mention have some later appearance.

It definitely extends to the borders of the active SPP cells, but unfortunately I don't know where those are. It definitely extends no farther than the old city limits of San Frantello... but I'm not sure where those are, either.

Well, looking at your map, the difference in distance between Manehattan and the Appleoosa tower is roughly half that from Tenpony to Alcoltraz; I'd guess that there's another tower in or near the coastal mountains somewhere, likely between the latitudes of the energy plant and the Appleoosa tower. Assuming some slight overlap in intended coverage, the loss of the San Frantello tower probably opened the skies around Masozi for somewhere around the length of the bay, perhaps slightly farther toward the "a" in "Plant". Depending on where you place that halfway tower, though, up to about half of the non-desert land to the northwest could still be covered.

The nice thing about that spread is that Fillydelphia is almost exactly the right distance from Appleoosa and San Frantello to also have a tower (while I don't think anything's said that there's one there, it would make sense), and Canterlot's not much of a stretch either—Stable 24 is almost exactly just as far away from the Appleoosa tower as Tenpony. I haven't looked at optimal placements or anything, but it seems like most of the cities you have are actually spaced roughly as far from each other as the SPP seems to want, with extras covering the gaps.

Actually, give me a minute or thirty. I wanted to finish my response first (got interrupted by college), but I'm going to take a look at how the coverage could work out.

Don't have quite as much of an idea for the spread of San Frantello, though.

A smaller city somewhere around there... I hadn't thought of that, but it's an interesting idea. Being a "city" by Wasteland standards, perhaps it's an old suburb further up the bay? I'm not sure how the Miliozi would take that, though. I'm not entirely clear on what this city you want is meant to do.

Yeah, definitely using the Wasteland scale of city size. The one I'm planning would would probably be somewhere outside the GPE-controlled area—I doubt they'd be particularly likely to set up a slave trade on the scale I'm imagining for my story (which is what the city is for; I'd rather not have the headquarters be in the middle of nowhere). Still, I'd be a bit surprised if there wasn't a ground-based or -tethered pegasus settlement somewhere around the bay. Might be even more militarized than normal, depending on how active the groundspace is, but there'd probably be something.

Not so much "an advantage" as "a chance"; the Miliozi aren't even too keen on tourists from the rest of the Alliance, much less from the Equestrian Wasteland. The only people that they might let in are traders and diplomats, and they can't really deal with non-hellhound diplomats from any of the Wasteland powers due to the Alliance officially recognizing the GPE as the government of their (the GPE's) claimed territory (the hellhound thing is also technically a violation, but the GPE doesn't really know about it and would probably turn a blind eye if it did, at least until it starts trying to mindcontrol hellhounds).

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p870-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161056

This slightly relates to a question I have. How well will those zebra-pegasus treaties, formal or not, be followed after Littlepip takes the SPP? I'm guessing that the groundspace—as one of the few places the GPE knows will not disappear underneath them—is going to get quite a number of new immigrants, and with enough of a push (especially if tensions are already raw over the hellhounds or something else) might attack, or at the least lay siege to, Masozi, but it sounds like it's something you would have thought about. Or is that one of the things waiting

on PH to finish?


All right, here's what I got. Most of it's just rough, going for what works rather than what works best, but it could still be close enough. I wound up using a roughly 90km radius—any more and the San Frantello-Fillydelphia-Appleoosa-Manehattan arc was too crowded, any less and the large island wouldn't be reliably covered—but there are several intermediate towers (including the one north of Masozi, leaving more ground uncovered after the fall of Alcoltraz) that probably would have been lower-powered; even more if some thought was actually put into optimal placement and mixed diameters.

Spoiler:

This particular layout leaves us with several cities with associated SPP towers: San Frantello, Fillydelphia, Appleoosa, Manehattan, Fancee, Hoofington, and Canterlot. I'm not quite sure what that says, but the fact that Appleoosa is included while the closest one to New Oatleans is roughly 40km away probably means that population wasn't too much of a concern. Or that the different sizes are actually quite integral. I might test that sometime... Oh, and Shattered Hoof Ridge being left uncovered was deliberate.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p870-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161068

@WovenTales:
"I can work with that. Sounds like it's not going to be a regular part of their route, but would definitely be quite profitable on those occasions they have good enough stock to make the trip. And with as important as Masozi is (even if they do little externally when we see them), making it stand out from every other town they go through is nice. Sounds like it could give some good backstory as well, both on why the caravan actually trusts those trigger-happy zebras not to shoot them in the back, and how they got visas through the land controlled by those even more trigger-happy pegasi. I imagine there's going to be quite the politics going on to get through the GPE groundspace even before they reach the city."
I'm not sure if you've slightly misunderstood or had an idea that I haven't. I don't think that the GPE actually has any more of a ground presence around Masozi than they do in most of the rest of the Wasteland; there are some observation posts up in the clouds and mostly focused on the city, but not much beyond that. The Enclave doesn't really care about a few Wasteland traders or whatever. Though, now that you've put the idea into my head, I suppose that they might inspect any particularly interesting Wastelanders… such as those with the sort of rare information or tech (or possibly large amounts of gems) that the Miliozi would be willing to trade for… Huh. I never thought of this before. I'm not sure exactly how active the GPE border would be (it probably wouldn't be visible, for one thing, but that doesn't mean much when pegasi can just swoop down from above)… Partly, I'm rather tired at the moment due to a long day of work and too little sleep. This may have potential, though.

"while I don't think anything's said that there's one there, it would make sense"
No, Fillydelphia definitely has a tower; it was one of the mission objectives on the FoE trip to the city.

re spacing: Hey, thanks for doing the work! And hooray for happy coincidences!

"Yeah, definitely using the Wasteland scale of city size. The one I'm planning would would probably be somewhere outside the GPE-controlled area—I doubt they'd be particularly likely to set up a slave trade on the scale I'm imagining for my story (which is what the city is for; I'd rather not have the headquarters be in the middle of nowhere). Still, I'd be a bit surprised if there wasn't a ground-based or -tethered pegasus settlement somewhere around the bay. Might be even more militarized than normal, depending on how active the groundspace is, but there'd probably be something."
Well, I'm not sure about that placing, actually. Sure, the GPE is against slavery in theory, but they didn't exactly rush to do anything about even Fillydelphia. The Miliozi, on the other hand, while I don't think that they're explicitly against slavery (not quite sure; while I know that they definitely don't keep slaves themselves, that's not quite the same thing), would be very interested in another settlement outside their control, in their territory, and using their resources (particularly if the city is making use of the bay at all), and none of the other Alliance members would have reason to reign them in. I highly doubt that Wasteland slaver guards would stand much of a chance against the Miliozi (bandits armed with rusty shotguns vs. trained-from-foalhood soldiers equipped with fully functional tanks, artillery, air support, warships… Yeah, I'm not seeing the slavers winning that one). Also… it strikes me that the city might perhaps prove useful to the GPE as an information source.

"This slightly relates to a question I have. How well will those zebra-pegasus treaties, formal or not, be followed after Littlepip takes the SPP? I'm guessing that the groundspace—as one of the few places the GPE knows will not disappear underneath them—is going to get quite a number of new immigrants, and with enough of a push (especially if tensions are already raw over the hellhounds or something else) might attack, or at the least lay siege to, Masozi, but it sounds like it's something you would have thought about. Or is that one of the things waiting on PH to finish?"
Ah, yes, you did misunderstand earlier. The GPE's groundspace isn't just the area around San Frantello Bay; it's the entire area under the cloud ceiling (though because that's a useful defining feature, not because of the ceiling itself). There's also no particular reason why they'd think that the ground around Masozi was particularly secure, since, unless they've intervened, it's just like the rest of the Wasteland. After all, the Alliance not getting involved to attack doesn't mean that they'll get involved to defend it (indeed, the phrase "hungry grins" comes to mind when pondering most of the Alliance's reaction to the sight of the GPE collapsing, though the use of Celestia On and the activation of the SPP are met with worry in certain quarters).

The details of the Alliance's response to the events at the end of FoE are indeed among the things that I'm waiting for the end of PH to lay out more fully. I have thought of a bit, though. First, semi-random bit of headcanon, I'm thinking that a Raptor might actually, seeing which way the wind is blowing, defect to the Alliance. Second, Masozi is probably going to have gone to high alert as soon as word about Operation Cauterize went out, and I'm not sure when they dropped the alert status. Third, I'm not yet sure when it is yet, but there will be a time when the Alliance ceases to recognize the GPE as an extant state… which means that the prohibitions against operating in what used to be GPE groundspace now weigh less than the paper they're printed on. I'm not sure exactly what the results of that will be, though; sorry.

If there was a GPE attack on Masozi, though, while the city was on high alert… it would be very, very bloody. Friendship city had some pre-apocalypse guns, and it did pretty well against some Raptors. Masozi has lots and lots of shiny new computer-guided AAA and SAM batteries, wings of jet fighters ready to take to the air (some of them inside ZELL capsules), a highly trained, disciplined, and armed citizenry, war robots, etc., not to mention that declaring war against an Alliance state, let along one of the two power centers of the Alliance, is a declaration of war against the entire Alliance. The GPE could probably heavily damage Masozi, by dropping gravity bombs if nothing else, but… yeah, like I said, it would be very bloody.

re map:
Nice! Very, very nice! Thanks! I note that you've chosen to leave the Highlands uncovered too; might I ask why?


=============


Oh, and also the northern islands.

(fuck it, too many quotes)
https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p870-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161077

O. Hinds wrote:

*snip*:
"This slightly relates to a question I have. How well will those zebra-pegasus treaties, formal or not, be followed after Littlepip takes the SPP? I'm guessing that the groundspace—as one of the few places the GPE knows will not disappear underneath them—is going to get quite a number of new immigrants, and with enough of a push (especially if tensions are already raw over the hellhounds or something else) might attack, or at the least lay siege to, Masozi, but it sounds like it's something you would have thought about. Or is that one of the things waiting on PH to finish?"


Ah, yes, you did misunderstand earlier. The GPE's groundspace isn't just the area around San Frantello Bay; it's the entire area under the cloud ceiling (though because that's a useful defining feature, not because of the ceiling itself). There's also no particular reason why they'd think that the ground around Masozi was particularly secure, since, unless they've intervened, it's just like the rest of the Wasteland. After all, the Alliance not getting involved to attack doesn't mean that they'll get involved to defend it (indeed, the phrase "hungry grins" comes to mind when pondering most of the Alliance's reaction to the sight of the GPE collapsing, though the use of Celestia On and the activation of the SPP are met with worry in certain quarters).


Yeah, I'll take the blame for that misunderstanding. I somehow got it into my head that "the Alliance" was referring to a group that included the NCR, among others (zebras definitely a large part of it), and mainly active after Sunshine and Rainbows. Clearing that up, I agree with the pegasi not finding anything particularly special about the area around the bay. They'd actually probably be more likely to stay out of it, as the treaties would consider it not part of their groundspace. Although, does that mean that the Alliance essentially considers nearly all of Equestria as under the control of the GPE? Otherwise, I think I might be missing something else.

@WovenTales:

*snip*:
"I can work with that. Sounds like it's not going to be a regular part of their route, but would definitely be quite profitable on those occasions they have good enough stock to make the trip. And with as important as Masozi is (even if they do little externally when we see them), making it stand out from every other town they go through is nice. Sounds like it could give some good backstory as well, both on why the caravan actually trusts those trigger-happy zebras not to shoot them in the back, and how they got visas through the land controlled by those even more trigger-happy pegasi. I imagine there's going to be quite the politics going on to get through the GPE groundspace even before they reach the city."


I'm not sure if you've slightly misunderstood or had an idea that I haven't. I don't think that the GPE actually has any more of a ground presence around Masozi than they do in most of the rest of the Wasteland; there are some observation posts up in the clouds and mostly focused on the city, but not much beyond that. The Enclave doesn't really care about a few Wasteland traders or whatever. Though, now that you've put the idea into my head, I suppose that they might inspect any particularly interesting Wastelanders… such as those with the sort of rare information or tech (or possibly large amounts of gems) that the Miliozi would be willing to trade for… Huh. I never thought of this before. I'm not sure exactly how active the GPE border would be (it probably wouldn't be visible, for one thing, but that doesn't mean much when pegasi can just swoop down from above)… Partly, I'm rather tired at the moment due to a long day of work and too little sleep. This may have potential, though.


Well, at least it gave you something to think about, and there's some good points in your musings. Coming out of this with something interesting to explore and nothing hurt, I'd say the misunderstanding was an inadvertent success.

"while I don't think anything's said that there's one there, it would make sense"
No, Fillydelphia definitely has a tower; it was one of the mission objectives on the FoE trip to the city.


Ah, well that just helps the map. I was mainly trying to remember if Murky saw anything, but it sounds like I need to get back to rereading FoE.

*snip*:
"Yeah, definitely using the Wasteland scale of city size. The one I'm planning would would probably be somewhere outside the GPE-controlled area—I doubt they'd be particularly likely to set up a slave trade on the scale I'm imagining for my story (which is what the city is for; I'd rather not have the headquarters be in the middle of nowhere). Still, I'd be a bit surprised if there wasn't a ground-based or -tethered pegasus settlement somewhere around the bay. Might be even more militarized than normal, depending on how active the groundspace is, but there'd probably be something."


Well, I'm not sure about that placing, actually. Sure, the GPE is against slavery in theory, but they didn't exactly rush to do anything about even Fillydelphia. The Miliozi, on the other hand, while I don't think that they're explicitly against slavery (not quite sure; while I know that they definitely don't keep slaves themselves, that's not quite the same thing), would be very interested in another settlement outside their control, in their territory, and using their resources (particularly if the city is making use of the bay at all), and none of the other Alliance members would have reason to reign them in. I highly doubt that Wasteland slaver guards would stand much of a chance against the Miliozi (bandits armed with rusty shotguns vs. trained-from-foalhood soldiers equipped with fully functional tanks, artillery, air support, warships… Yeah, I'm not seeing the slavers winning that one). Also… it strikes me that the city might perhaps prove useful to the GPE as an information source.


With my new knowledge that I had "GPE groundspace" completely backwards, it sounds like you don't really disagree with where I thought I was placing the headquarters. Especially since they're staying rather far away from the bay. Not as far as they can get, though; Dawn Bay wouldn't be nearly as profitable. And the rest of this is mostly confusion on one end or the other, though it does give me a nice picture of the Miliozi army.

The details of the Alliance's response to the events at the end of FoE are indeed among the things that I'm waiting for the end of PH to lay out more fully. I have thought of a bit, though. First, semi-random bit of headcanon, I'm thinking that a Raptor might actually, seeing which way the wind is blowing, defect to the Alliance. Second, Masozi is probably going to have gone to high alert as soon as word about Operation Cauterize went out, and I'm not sure when they dropped the alert status. Third, I'm not yet sure when it is yet, but there will be a time when the Alliance ceases to recognize the GPE as an extant state… which means that the prohibitions against operating in what used to be GPE groundspace now weigh less than the paper they're printed on. I'm not sure exactly what the results of that will be, though; sorry.

If there was a GPE attack on Masozi, though, while the city was on high alert… it would be very, very bloody. Friendship city had some pre-apocalypse guns, and it did pretty well against some Raptors. Masozi has lots and lots of shiny new computer-guided AAA and SAM batteries, wings of jet fighters ready to take to the air (some of them inside ZELL capsules), a highly trained, disciplined, and armed citizenry, war robots, etc., not to mention that declaring war against an Alliance state, let along one of the two power centers of the Alliance, is a declaration of war against the entire Alliance. The GPE could probably heavily damage Masozi, by dropping gravity bombs if nothing else, but… yeah, like I said, it would be very bloody.


Sounds like the kind of thing my characters would like to stay away from. I wonder if I can convince/coerce them to go uncomfortably close to the (not-so-)pretty lightshow. But, yeah, let's see what happens.

re map:
Nice! Very, very nice! Thanks! I note that you've chosen to leave the Highlands uncovered too; might I ask why?


The highlands were uncovered because I wasn't sure how strong of a border that was; if it wasn't officially considered part of Equestria, they might not have thought it was worth spending the time and bits to extend the clouds over it. The northern islands were mostly because I was getting lazy. Anyway, here's another version, covering all of Equestria this time and using smaller towers to fill gaps (90km and 60km radii). Again, this is more of an approximation. I don't have a way to account for wind, and the towers would probably be designed with this closer to the minimum area affected, instead of the standard.

Spoiler:

It worked out even more nicely this time. Trottingham, St. Paulomino, Stockhast, Geneighva, Friedrichshorfen, Kalcolta, and New Oatleans are the only shown cities without a tower. Still quite the list, but at least we've only really heard about two of them, as far as I know. No it doesn't mean much, but I'll take what I can get.

Well, I'm beginning to get rambly enough that I should probably get to sleep. If anyone's still on, have a nice night/day!

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p870-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161081

Anyone here remember how far the community of Junction (the place the 10-years-after epilogue takes place in) is supposed to be from Shattered Hoof / New Canterlot ?

Also, what's the geography of the area ? I was under the impression Junction was in a valley between two low hills, and that Shattered Hoof was in some kind of plain.

[Harmony Ltd.]

(someone kill me please)

[Kippershy]

I would ask for a dump, but at this point I just want to know what's up with those symbols and turrets! THEY MUST DO SOMETHING HORRIBLE AND I'M IMPATIENT!

Hahaha. Oh, you want to know do you? I'll be really mean and do this: first spoiler is to hold another spoiler tag containing a spoiler of low level and inside will be another of medium-low.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
OH GOD.
Well, that would be in-character for him... right?

AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
I love you so much.



I'm so, so very tempted to put up a cryptic reveal about it, but I don't want to reveal too much... I mean, it'd be cryptic so you wouldn't get it anyway, but yeah. I dunno.

[CamoBadger]

*look at map to remember where Shattered Hoof is, see 2 Shattered Hoof's on opposite sides of the kingdom*
*promptly tears out hair*

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p900-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161085

Hinds, how interested would the Alliance be by the idea of importing lots and lots fresh food from the NCR ?

I was thinking that after the Gardens, the NCR, with the help of earth pony magic and the control over the climate offered by the SPP, would have the potential to become an agricultural super-power.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p900-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161091

@WovenTales:
"Yeah, I'll take the blame for that misunderstanding. I somehow got it into my head that "the Alliance" was referring to a group that included the NCR, among others (zebras definitely a large part of it), and mainly active after Sunshine and Rainbows. Clearing that up, I agree with the pegasi not finding anything particularly special about the area around the bay. They'd actually probably be more likely to stay out of it, as the treaties would consider it not part of their groundspace. Although, does that mean that the Alliance essentially considers nearly all of Equestria as under the control of the GPE? Otherwise, I think I might be missing something else."
Not considers so much as officially recognizes. The Alliance is well aware that the GPE has little interest in and even less actual control over its groundspace.

"Well, at least it gave you something to think about, and there's some good points in your musings. Coming out of this with something interesting to explore and nothing hurt, I'd say the misunderstanding was an inadvertent success."
Agreed.

"Ah, well that just helps the map. I was mainly trying to remember if Murky saw anything, but it sounds like I need to get back to rereading FoE."
Hm. You know, I don't recall MN7 mentioning the tower. Then again, I suppose that Murky has things on his mind besides mentioning that big white tower that never does anything and that slaves never got to.

"With my new knowledge that I had "GPE groundspace" completely backwards, it sounds like you don't really disagree with where I thought I was placing the headquarters. Especially since they're staying rather far away from the bay. Not as far as they can get, though; Dawn Bay wouldn't be nearly as profitable. And the rest of this is mostly confusion on one end or the other, though it does give me a nice picture of the Miliozi army."
Ah, alright then (if I'm understanding you correctly). Yes, as long as they stay under the GPE, they don't need to worry about the Alliance. (Though if they annoy the Alliance, which, since they're not using the bay, doesn't seem likely, they'd better be sure that they as individuals don't leave GPE groudspace.)
:)
Oh, in case you hadn't picked up on it, "groundspace" is basically the reverse of "airspace"; instead of being the air above a state on land, it's the land under a state in the air (The Alliance also officially recognizes the airspace between the ground and the cloud ceiling, which is usually lobbed in with the groundspace, and the airspace above the GPE (After all, the Vetribi taking off from Masozi engage their cloaks in Alliance airspace, and you can't prove where they go after that…).).
Also, you don't really need to say "the Miliozi army", as the active Miliozi military is considered to consist of every single member of the Miliozi old enough to kick (though discipline is relaxed somewhat for foals).

"Sounds like the kind of thing my characters would like to stay away from. I wonder if I can convince/coerce them to go uncomfortably close to the (not-so-)pretty lightshow. But, yeah, let's see what happens."
Aye, don't do anything about that until we see how PH ends; there is, I think, too much risk of conflict.

"The highlands were uncovered because I wasn't sure how strong of a border that was; if it wasn't officially considered part of Equestria, they might not have thought it was worth spending the time and bits to extend the clouds over it. The northern islands were mostly because I was getting lazy. Anyway, here's another version, covering all of Equestria this time and using smaller towers to fill gaps (90km and 60km radii). Again, this is more of an approximation. I don't have a way to account for wind, and the towers would probably be designed with this closer to the minimum area affected, instead of the standard."
Well, I have doubts that Equestria actually draws a border there at all, just I suspect that their maps have the prime meridian running through Canterlot (or maybe Trottingham? I don't know) instead of Roam. :)

"It worked out even more nicely this time. Trottingham, St. Paulomino, Stockhast, Geneighva, Friedrichshorfen, Kalcolta, and New Oatleans are the only shown cities without a tower. Still quite the list, but at least we've only really heard about two of them, as far as I know. No it doesn't mean much, but I'll take what I can get."
Hey, thanks!
Oh, and New Oatleans is from All That Remains, in case you didn't know.
Oh, wait, this map won't work. How did Equestria manage to get a tower built at Dawn Bay when the area was under Zebra control from before the SPP was conceived to the end of the war?


@Harmony Ltd.:
"Anyone here remember how far the community of Junction (the place the 10-years-after epilogue takes place in) is supposed to be from Shattered Hoof / New Canterlot ?"
Well, my map has it as about 10.5 to 11 klicks straight-line.

"Also, what's the geography of the area ? I was under the impression Junction was in a valley between two low hills, and that Shattered Hoof was in some kind of plain."
Where are you getting that from? I don't remember anything like that.

"Hinds, how interested would the Alliance be by the idea of importing lots and lots fresh food from the NCR ?

I was thinking that after the Gardens, the NCR, with the help of earth pony magic and the control over the climate offered by the SPP, would have the potential to become an agricultural super-power."
Not at all interested, sorry. They're running their own, expanding, agricultural operations in the recolonization, and they're trying to gain control of the NCR, not the other way around. Importing food from the NCR means dependence on the NCR and less work in the Alliance heartland.

Incidentally, what are your thoughts on the economy of the NCR? I've been thinking that they're probably a protectionist free market.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p900-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161106

re Agriculture :

That was my impression as well (the Alliance lacking interest in such an agreement), but I wanted to make sure.

On the other hand, I could see the NCR shipping its agricultural surplus to every other neighboring powers free of charge, as "humanitarian aid" (really just an attempt to buy people's sympathy and loyalty through their plates).


Concerning the economy of the NCR I'll need to run a timeline to try to determine the most likely outcome, but at a guess :

It "started" as a wartime economy where pretty much every available resources where mobilized on the conflict against the Bitters, and became more relaxed as the war lost in intensity, until the point where the mobilisation was only nominal.

The nascent agricultural sector was tended to by "volunteers" (young and old citizens, and combat-unfit conscripts), the distribution of the foods being handled by the "logistics corp" of the NCR Army (the term is used pretty loosely here : it was mostly conscripted caravaneers and their escorts).

Same things for the making of the guns, ammunitions, uniforms, medical supplies... and pretty much anything deemed necessary to the war effort.

The principal reason why people accepted to work that hard without being paid more with anything else than with token currency (NCR Bits), and incidentally the prime factor motivating people to rally the Republic, was quite simple : free food and protection from the crazy genocidal bastards. And also, no slavery. When you have lived in the Wasteland for all your life, I'm ready to bet this would be seen as a reason enough to join the Republic, and a pretty damn good one at that.

Privately owned activities were authorized, and somewhat encouraged, but given there wasn't much to trade at first (pretty much everyone being mobilized one way or another), and that anything people would have needed would have been classified as necessary to the war effort (and as such suggested to the same kind of regulatuon as foods and ammo), it wasn't only after the war started to wind down that a private economic sector started to become a reality. The only real part of the economy that was privately owned and propsere during the worst of the wartime economy was the Saloons, bars, hotels and others places of "relaxation", to keep people's morale up.

It's only with the end of the war that the wartime mobilization officially ended. Though by that time the private sector had become a reality, and in fact was more prospere than ever before due to the trades routes being much more secures and easy to travel than they had been during the two previous centuries.


A few details :

- Slavery is officially outlawed inside the territories of the NCR, and the Republic tend to see a power using slavery or supporting it as a justified excuse for a takeover / an invasion. It's not so much for ideological reasons than the fact they depend on Littlepip managing the weather, and she kind of frown on the practice. But at least it gives them a good image with people who aren't slavers or who don't depend on the practice for their living.
- Everyone being guaranteed at least two meals a day is one of the foundations of the Republic, and as such food is either subsidized (which birthed the "Hay Barons", those with big farms profiting from these subsidies and using the money to buy their way into the government of the NCR), or given free of charge to the poorest.
- The Followers of the Apocalypse are partially subsidized by the Republic, tasked by it to offer care to every citizens. The war forced the Republic to invest heavily into healing potions, med-x and hydra production lines, but even then medical supplies are still short in... supply. Especially given the population of the Republic is starting to skyrocket by 30 A.S (the demographic shift really started around 15 or 20 A.S as things finally began to settle).


Oh, yes, a thing :

It is expected that the population will double every thirty years in the foreseeable future : the population of the NCR territories is already in 30 A.S 1.5 times what it was in 1 A.S (this number would be higher if so many people hadn't died during the war). And currently (30 A.S), a third of the population is kids (blank-flanked colts and fillies, griffin younglings, etc...).

If this high natality is something that's kinda wanted these days (because the war killed a lot of people, and the Republic needs lots of helping arms/hooves to help rebuild Equestria), someday in the future this could start to become a problem. But not in this generation or the next.

Anyway, what this means is that if you adventured in your standard NCR settlements, there'd be lots of kids running around.

The Republic tasked the Followers of the Apocalypse to take the role of teaching the kids how to read, counts, and generally be good citizens.

For the more advanced stuff, there's a few academies in New Canterlot, the most famous being the Military Academy : it takes in charge the education of the war orphans, and train them to become NCOs and officers. The Applejack Rangers have an academy teaching technical stuff in New Canterlot ; and the Twilight Society, always ready to do anything to annoy everyone else, opened its own academy to teach magic, but in Tenpony - Manehatten.


===============


Also, as a direct consequence of the War Mobilization, one of the first part of the Republic's administration to have been established, and it's most solid backbone these days,

is the Tax-Collectors / Wealth Inspectors corp.

Most commonly known as the Department of Redistribution, or often dubbed as the "Ministry of Sharing / Theft", depending on your point of view.



First thing to come back when you rebuild Civilization ? The Tax Collectors.

Talk about irony.


==============


But in short, around 30 A.S you could say that the NCR is a "Protectionnist Free Market", yes, with the NCR trying to protect what it deems its vital interests.


==============


Also Hinds, would it be possible to have a version of your map that isn't just barely distinguishable shades of green ? I can't make the distinction between "mountains", "desert", etc...

And also add a scale bar to make life easier to those who don't want to have to chase the pixels to have an idea of the scale of the map. Just trace a 100 pixel long line and say it is a 60 km reference.


==============


Also also, there's two things I have difficulties wrapping my head around :

- Why is the Pax Roamana so fucking huge compared to Equestria ?
- Wasn't the Zebra homeland supposed to be some kind of archipelago according to Kkat ?


Bear with me, I haven't been following the I think pretty much literal at this point half hundred thousand posts of the commentary thread ; and so don't have a precise vision of your headcanon.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p900-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161128

@Harmony Ltd.:
"On the other hand, I could see the NCR shipping its agricultural surplus to every other neighboring powers free of charge, as "humanitarian aid" (really just an attempt to buy people's sympathy and loyalty through their plates)."
Aye, and where there aren't preexisting powers there'd be, eventually, NCR "aid camps".

re economy:
I don't see the NCR's origins as being as military as you do (though you might be right there) and don't really have the fate of the GPE settled in my head, but, given your stated premises, that sounds logical.

The Alliance has similar "High population growth is good!" thing regarding its recolonization efforts (though there are those who worry that this may be diluting the cultures of the various member states). I've not pinned down most of the Alliance's educational system, but I've decided that Profectum decided to start a university.

"Also Hinds, would it be possible to have a version of your map that isn't just barely distinguishable shades of green ? I can't make the distinction between "mountains", "desert", etc..."
I doubt it, sorry. I tried color modification once when someone else requested such a thing, but it wasn't very successful.

"And also add a scale bar to make life easier to those who don't want to have to chase the pixels to have an idea of the scale of the map. Just trace a 100 pixel long line and say it is a 60 km reference."
I guess that I could add one, but how would that be more useful? It just adds more steps to finding the km/px ratio. Though I suppose that it could be useful for resizing the image…

"Also also, there's two things I have difficulties wrapping my head around :

- Why is the Pax Roamana so fucking huge compared to Equestria ?
- Wasn't the Zebra homeland supposed to be some kind of archipelago according to Kkat ?"
In reverse order:
I don't remember anything about that, and it's not in the post from Kkat that I have saved.
My view is that the Pax Roamana (and its ancestors) has been where it is for longer and been more interested in expansion during that time. My timeline doesn't have ponies even arriving on the peninsula until around 180 years after the founding of the Pax Roamana. Then the colonists were too weak to push into the lands occupied by the PR, then Discord arrived, and the the Princesses descended and began guiding Equestria. They don't strike me as being too keen to make war on the zebras, and Equestria was anyway quite bountiful. Oh, I'll repost the rough timeline below for anyone who's interested.

Very Rough Partial Timeline:
formation of the Pax Roamana 0PR
defeat of the Diamond Dog empire by the Northern Zebras 50PR
meteor and fall of the Northern Zebras 80PR
pony colonization of the Equestrian Peninsula 180PR 0E
Discord arrives, Celestia and Luna descend 580PR 400E->0G
Nightmare Moon rises and is defeated 780PR 200G->0C
FiM begins 1780PR 1000C->0D
the war begins 1795PR 15D
Littlehorn 1804PR 21D->0L
the war ends 1815PR 11L
FoE 2015PR 211L->0SR
the NCR allows the EA to begin operating, within limits, in NCR territory 2026PR 11SR

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p900-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161130

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Also also, there's two things I have difficulties wrapping my head around :

- Why is the Pax Roamana so fucking huge compared to Equestria ?

I picture it as a larger landmass, but the residents are more spread out through it with massive tracks of land that are uninhabited.

- Wasn't the Zebra homeland supposed to be some kind of archipelago according to Kkat ?

I don't know.

Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans quotes at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p900-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161135

Here, I did the job for you of adding a scale : https://imgur.com/YIZKmtv

10 MB uncompressed PNG => https://www.dropbox.com/s/fm8cbssw7aav3pb/hinds_equestria_map_v1_9_by_reese8-d4sw4uo_withscale.png


============


From far away, it seems like a miracle that the Zebra didn't steamroll Equestria during the War...


============


Re map scale : "but how would that be more useful?"

=> for people who want to have a rough idea of the scale at first glance without having to use gimp to count the number of pixels.

Trust me, I've been (metaphorically) yelled at enough during my single year as a geography student about how to draw a map to tell you that.


============


Well, I see the origine of the NCR as "military" in the same sense that the origin of the USA is "military" :

Both had to fight for their own existence from the very beginning, the major difference being that where the USA only risked staying a British Colony, the NCR's citizens risked utter annihilation at the hand of genocidal warmongers. So the degree of dedication they had to their fight was proportional to the menace they were fighting against.

This in turn greatly influenced the organization of the NCR as a political entity, and neatly explain how it could have managed to unite the Wasteland, first against a common enemy, and then as a superpower relative to the size and military power of every other power in the Equestrian Peninsula (with maybe the exception of your zebras).

Also, put "military" between quotes, because it was less the idea we make ourselves of a military, and more the Wasteland trying to (re-)learn Warfare at scales which hadn't been seen since the War that ended the World two centuries ago. There was a lot of trial and error involved : like I said, until the Volunteers decided to intervene directly on the side of the Surfacers against the Bitters, every battle saw horrible casualty figures for the former, only the power of desperation holding the NCR's forces (not an army yet) together.


Question : when would the Gardens have been activated ? I was thinking that it would have taken a few month to one year after the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows to find all the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony and bring them to Spike's Cave.

The thing is that the longer that wait would have been, the more probable it would have been that the Enclave (until the end of 1 A.S) and then the Bitters would have attacked the cave in full force - at least to kill Spike, to avenge the attack against Neighvarro.


The "time limit" I have is that it would take around one year in my idea for the Grand Pegasus Enclave to implode from the dissensions between the supporters of the continuation of Operation Cauterize and their adversaries. After that date, the Enclave cease to exist as a coherent political entity, and there's only the Bitters on one side, the Volunteers on the other lending their wings to the surfacers in the fight against the Bitters, and the Isolationists in the middle trying to salvage the Enclave from the Civil War (or at least to ensure the continuation of their way of life). And the Bitters sure as hell wouldn't have lost the occasion to attack Spike's cave, just out of spite.



By the way, the Isolationnists, after a treaty with Littlepip, would be trying to build a Neo-Cloudsdale - still under construction in 30 A.S. They get their food from the ground as "humanitarian aid" from the Republic - a way to keep the peace, as long as everyone stay behind their side of the line.

They still call themselves the Grand Pegasus Enclave, by the way. Many people snicker when saying the "Grand" part of the title.




The fact that the NCR in large part owe its survival to the help given by the Volunteers did wonder to rehabilitate the pegasi in the eyes of most of its citizens. There's still some degree of distrust, going both ways (you don't change generations of resentments in a few years), but the Veterans of the war, having fought side by side, have learned to respect each other.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p900-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161173

@Harmony Ltd:
Eh, okay; I added a scale bar.

"From far away, it seems like a miracle that the Zebra didn't steamroll Equestria during the War..."
Equestria has a high population density and productivity for its size.

"Well, I see the origine of the NCR as "military" in the same sense that the origin of the USA is "military" :

Both had to fight for their own existence from the very beginning, the major difference being that where the USA only risked staying a British Colony, the NCR's citizens risked utter annihilation at the hand of genocidal warmongers. So the degree of dedication they had to their fight was proportional to the menace they were fighting against.

This in turn greatly influenced the organization of the NCR as a political entity, and neatly explain how it could have managed to unite the Wasteland, first against a common enemy, and then as a superpower relative to the size and military power of every other power in the Equestrian Peninsula (with maybe the exception of your zebras).

Also, put "military" between quotes, because it was less the idea we make ourselves of a military, and more the Wasteland trying to (re-)learn Warfare at scales which hadn't been seen since the War that ended the World two centuries ago. There was a lot of trial and error involved : like I said, until the Volunteers decided to intervene directly on the side of the Surfacers against the Bitters, every battle saw horrible casualty figures for the former, only the power of desperation holding the NCR's forces (not an army yet) together."
Ah, I see.

"Question : when would the Gardens have been activated ? I was thinking that it would have taken a few month to one year after the Day of Sunshine and Rainbows to find all the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony and bring them to Spike's Cave."
That I'm not sure of (again, waiting for the end of PH), but your ideas (which I've not bothered to quote) sound interesting.

[Harmony Ltd.]

*look at map to remember where Shattered Hoof is, see 2 Shattered Hoof's on opposite sides of the kingdom*
*promptly tears out hair*

- Shattered Hoof RIDGE : where Big Mac died. In the south
- Shattered Hoof prison complex : What will become New Canterlot. Between Manehatten and New Canterlot.

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t963p990-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161359

Remind me again, but did the Enclave take part in the Battle of Fillydelphia ? I seem to remember words about there being Enclave soldiers fighting both Red Eye's forces and the Applejack/Steel Rangers/The Coalition, the whole thing being a three-way mess ; and I can't be arsed going back to read the chapter right now to hunt for that piece of info.

-------

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/viewtopic.forum?t=973

(and now I'll be able to use the quote function instead of having to CTRL+C / CTRL+V and re-tag by hand everything ! Yay !

but before that, dinnertime !

please refrain from spamming this thread - wait for me to finish all of the dumps before starting a conversation. That'd be great, and avoid cluttering everything, as it's already hard enough to follow everything)

[CamoBadger]

(Just to let you know, there is no way in hell I'm going to read all of that. Just... no)

[Kippershy]

Camo, I decided I'm going to be cheeky. Posting something cryptic in the BB thread.

Edit: Anyway, yeah. If anyone does wanna hear about my story's canon, I'll tell it.not trying to scream out for anyone to ask, but because it got drowned in fuck tonnes of shit, yeah.

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161361

I'm pretty certain you're right about that, yes.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161362

Remind me again, but did the Enclave take part in the Battle of Fillydelphia ? I seem to remember words about there being Enclave soldiers fighting both Red Eye's forces and the Applejack/Steel Rangers/The Coalition, the whole thing being a three-way mess ; and I can't be arsed going back to read the chapter right now to hunt for that piece of info.

Yeah, those were the two fronts of the war. Wasn't that were they had Ditzy use the sonic radboom so they could use celestia 1?
I think it was since Littlepip and company were at the other battle location, Maripony, and there were no rays of death firing from the sky there.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161364

Hmm, good, just what I needed to justify the fact that not even Celestia One was enough to decisively ensure victory for one side.

With a little tweaking, and by drawning out the bloodshed for long enough, I can even make a convincing case as for why the Enclave didn't try to decisively attack Spike's Cave during that time [edit : during the time it tooks people to find the last Elements and activate the Gardens of Equestria], them having already too much on their plate with the Battle of Filly.

Though this force me to revise a bit the reason why the NCR later decided to move all the industrial equipment out of Filly instead of trying to rebuild the city : it had been so thoroughly thrashed by the months of fighting & the Enclave's bombing campaign that it was far easier to go back from scratch (when taking into consideration the other factors I exposed earlier, re the city being a deathtrap no one in their sane mind would want to live in).

And the reason why it took so long for the Reclamation / Salvaging effort to take place (maybe it started earlier, like in 7 or 8 A.S instead of 10 A.S) was that there was other, higher priority things the workforce was needed for. Like actually making guns, ammunitions, healing potions, etc... instead of trying to set up an industry to do that.



Did Equestria have an automotive industry ? I was thinking of having the NCR make most of its (new) guns relatively crude "AK" style guns made of sheet metal, using hydraulic press salvaged from a few industrial plants it found in Manehatten.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161366

Yeah, those were the two fronts of the war. Wasn't that were they had Ditzy use the sonic radboom so they could use celestia 1?

Indeed I think it is, yes.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161420

Yeah, those were the two fronts of the war. Wasn't that were they had Ditzy use the sonic radboom so they could use celestia 1?
I think it was since Littlepip and company were at the other battle location, Maripony, and there were no rays of death firing from the sky there.

Nearly right, but LittlePip was fighting at Neighvarro.

With a little tweaking, and by drawning out the bloodshed for long enough, I can even make a convincing case as for why the Enclave didn't try to decisively attack Spike's Cave during that time [edit : during the time it tooks people to find the last Elements and activate the Gardens of Equestria], them having already too much on their plate with the Battle of Filly.

They'd also already tried and failed.

But for now, I leave you with this song, an ol’ favorite. I dedicate this one to Strawberry Lemonade, Amber Waves, and every other pony who gave their lives at the Battle of Dragon Mountain. You stood fast, defending valiantly without even knowing what you were dying to protect. Only trusting that your sacrifice was for the good of all Equestria. Your bravery and loyalty are unparalleled. And I promise you this: you didn’t die in vain. Someday very soon… as soon as my little quest is complete… everyone will understand your sacrifice. And history will remember your names with reverence.

Did Equestria have an automotive industry ? I was thinking of having the NCR make most of its (new) guns relatively crude "AK" style guns made of sheet metal, using hydraulic press salvaged from a few industrial plants it found in Manehatten.

I don't think so (though my provisional headcanon has the NCR eventually getting one). Maybe use presses from railway industry? I'm not sure how skywagons were manufactured, but you might be able to use stuff from that, too.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161427

Harmony, it might be better if they use something like the Garand, Mondragon, or BAR. Though that's just my opinion. All three of those are much older designs that perhaps could be built witch greater ease than an AK.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161431

Hmm, yeah, I could imagine those kind of guns being produced in great numbers "by hand" before any real industrial infrastructure could be put in place. Though at that time they would have preferred using all the guns already laying around to fight, even if it would prove a logistical nightmare to supply all the different kinds of ammunition, where they are needed.


@ Hinds : I would imagine that Fillydelphia wasn't the only place in pre-Apocalypse Equestria where there would have been steel mills & laminating equipments. If anything, and if Manehatten was a trading port like I imagine it to be, you could easily imagine that they could find a number of somewhat salvageable equipments in one of the peripheral industrial zones of the city.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161446

Yeah, those were the two fronts of the war. Wasn't that were they had Ditzy use the sonic radboom so they could use celestia 1?
I think it was since Littlepip and company were at the other battle location, Maripony, and there were no rays of death firing from the sky there.

Nearly right, but LittlePip was fighting at Neighvarro.

If that's the right name for the cathedral in the middle of everfree then yes.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161494

Yeah, those were the two fronts of the war. Wasn't that were they had Ditzy use the sonic radboom so they could use celestia 1?
I think it was since Littlepip and company were at the other battle location, Maripony, and there were no rays of death firing from the sky there.

Nearly right, but LittlePip was fighting at Neighvarro.

If that's the right name for the cathedral in the middle of everfree then yes.

Maripony, Neighvarro, and the Cathedral are three separate places, and LittlePip (IIRC, but I'm pretty sure; I'd check, but there's a thunderstorm in progress that might get bad enough for the RAs to send us downstairs any time between now and midnight) was fighting at Neighvarro at the time of the Battle of Fillydelphia.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161498

Yeah, those were the two fronts of the war. Wasn't that were they had Ditzy use the sonic radboom so they could use celestia 1?
I think it was since Littlepip and company were at the other battle location, Maripony, and there were no rays of death firing from the sky there.

Nearly right, but LittlePip was fighting at Neighvarro.

If that's the right name for the cathedral in the middle of everfree then yes.

Maripony, Neighvarro, and the Cathedral are three separate places, and LittlePip (IIRC, but I'm pretty sure; I'd check, but there's a thunderstorm in progress that might get bad enough for the RAs to send us downstairs any time between now and midnight) was fighting at Neighvarro at the time of the Battle of Fillydelphia.

I thought there were two battles going on. Littlepip sent no forces to Filly for the red eye vs. enclave fight going on there beyond Ditzy and Lion/Mouse, the former to open the sky, the later to catch her.
She sent some of Gawd's forces to fight above and defend Tenpony, clearing the sky there so that it could wipe filly from the face of the earth once Ditzy did her thing.
Everyone else went to the Cathedral where, among many things, Littlepip got the offer to become an alicorn god while everyone else fought.

What's Neighvarro, then?
I just remembered that Maripony was probably the first goddess site and that place was already nuked by this point.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161499

Yeah, those were the two fronts of the war. Wasn't that were they had Ditzy use the sonic radboom so they could use celestia 1?
I think it was since Littlepip and company were at the other battle location, Maripony, and there were no rays of death firing from the sky there.

Nearly right, but LittlePip was fighting at Neighvarro.

If that's the right name for the cathedral in the middle of everfree then yes.

Maripony, Neighvarro, and the Cathedral are three separate places, and LittlePip (IIRC, but I'm pretty sure; I'd check, but there's a thunderstorm in progress that might get bad enough for the RAs to send us downstairs any time between now and midnight) was fighting at Neighvarro at the time of the Battle of Fillydelphia.

I thought there were two battles going on. Littlepip sent no forces to Filly for the red eye vs. enclave fight going on there beyond Ditzy and Lion/Mouse, the former to open the sky, the later to catch her.
She sent some of Gawd's forces to fight above and defend Tenpony, clearing the sky there so that it could wipe filly from the face of the earth once Ditzy did her thing.
Everyone else went to the Cathedral where, among many things, Littlepip got the offer to become an alicorn god while everyone else fought.

What's Neighvarro, then?
I just remembered that Maripony was probably the first goddess site and that place was already nuked by this point.

Ah, no, the Cathedral was earlier. Or the Battle of Fillydelphia was later, depending on the exact nature of your temporal confusion. And I have now been able to look it up:

Last Night:

“I’m so sorry…” I told Homage, my voice trembling. My friends were all off making their own preparations. It was just me and her, me alone with the sprite-bot in a secluded corner of the cave.

“For what?” Homage’s voice was soothing. “You did good.”

“I’m sorry for leaving. And… because…” I thought of the dead, all those I didn’t save back in the Everfree Forest. “Not good enough.”

“Stop focusing on the few you couldn’t save and remember that they all would have been dead if it weren’t for you.” Homage chided. “You saved the wasteland from Taint. And not just what would have been spilled. By obliterating both Maripony and Red Eye’s Cathedral, you’ve protected Equestria from all of this happening again.

Ten Minutes Ago:

Brilliant, blazing light erupted across the sunlit skies over Fillydelphia. Beams of purest sunlight, thin as tree trunks, rained down from the crisp blue like white-hot javelins, incinerating everything they touched.

The Twilight Society guided the megaspell’s power judiciously. Instead of bringing the megaspell’s full power to bear, destroying the landscape, they wielded it with surgical precision. Celestia One struck down the worst, the most dangerous, on both sides. The goal was not to win the battle, but to end it. And to save as many of the innocent and the helpless as possible.

In the end, the ponies in the ritual chamber decided, they had chosen to do the right thing after all. Not the pleasant thing. Not something, if they had their preference, that they would ever do again. Not something that would make it easy to sleep at night. But the right thing.

*** *** ***

Right Now:

My hoof hit the hard red barrier, sparks of energy crackling out from it. The shield felt as solid as a steel wall under my hoof.

I reared up and slammed my hoof against the shield surrounding the S.P.P. Central Hub once again, and fell on my tail when I rebounded.

Oh, and yes, Maripony was the Goddess.

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)


https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p30-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161592

Question : does the following strike people as the kind of thing Gawdyna Grimfeather would say ?

“ I'll start this speech with a confession : I've never been a paper-pusher, and quite frankly, I'd sooner be dead than to become one. Since the beginning of my mandate as President of the New Canterlot Republic, I've felt the duty to not simply stay in the Capital and administer it behind my desk, but to try and be as close of the Citizens I have the charge of governing as I can, and this for a simple reason : As a leader, how could I give orders which consequences I cannot fully grasp ? That's why, to the desperation of my guardians – may they forgive the troubles I put them under –, I've decided to tour the brave communities who toil day and night to fuel our war effort, and to meet our soldiers on the front lines.

During this tour I've been able to hear many personal stories. Most of them are full of hatred and bloodshed. Of mistrust, deceit and betrayal. The Wasteland is a dark place, and we all know the perverted pleasure it takes in pushing all of us down, down to our knees, down until all we want is to just lay and let the carrion eaters take us away.

But what I wasn't prepared for was that these stories were equally filled with something I had not expected : Hopes. Dreams. Projects for a better future.

In our darkest hour, as we must assemble all of our meager forces to fight against an enemy that wish nothing less than our complete and utter annihilation, these people, ragged, tired, most of them having lost their brothers and sisters, their parents and their kids to this war, still find the energy to have hopes and dreams. To see the future as something else than the bleakness of today's struggle for survival.

It wouldn't do justice to the sentiment I felt than to say that I have been humbled.

If we needed anything more than our most basic survival instinct to convince us to continue, to carry on and win this war once and for all, then the sheer amount of optimism I've been able to witness among our Citizens is proof enough that victory is not only possible : it is certain.

And this victory will be born of our complete commitment to bring about these dreams of a peaceful future.

Peace. I will be the first to admit that it is a strange word to even pronounce in these times. Most of us have never known it. And in some ways, I doubt any of us really have in the last two centuries.

But I am convinced that we will know it in our times. Already, Littlepip is clearing the cloud cover, bringing the guiding light of the sun we had been denied for so long to more and more of us with each passing days ; and despite the Enclave's ruthlessness to hunt them down, six heroes have already given us more than we could have ever hoped for : clean water and a fertile soil, for everyone.

As vivid as is the pain we must bear with each passing days, not only can we have hope in a better future, we are now more united than we have ever been. Standing together, nothing can take us apart.


Citizens, I assure you, on my Contract as your President, that today's suffering will not be in vain. The Republic will Prevail.

Stand up, carry on and go forth. For Victory is a currency backed in blood, and we all take our part. ”

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p30-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161652

Question : does the following strike people as the kind of thing Gawdyna Grimfeather would say ?

With a bit of help from someone less touched by merc work, maybe. Or I could just be remembering her as a more gruff griff than she was. Where it come from?

...I can't read that and not see it being broadcast to some bitter souls in the worst way imaginable.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p30-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161656

Where does it come from ? I wrote it a few hours ago. Just as a way to flex my writing muscles and try to "triangulate" the character of Gawdyna : to make an analogy with the original Fallout, she's to FoE's New Canterlot Republic the Aradesh/Tandi's to Fallout's New California Republic.

Which is to say, her "dna" will be the one of the Republic. Understanding her character is one of the most important things I have to do if I want my version of the NCR to not completely be Out-of-Character.


Concerning the speech in question, I was thinking that it would be said something like six month after the day of sunshine and rainbows, after the activation of the Gardens a few weeks before but before the implosion of the Enclave as a political entity (its split and the Volunteer proposing their help to the NCR being three to six month away). She'd be holding it in an unimportant town in an active warzone, one of these communities she's talking about (explaining her comment about pissing off her bodyguards), with one of Spike's/Homage's spritebots broadcasting what she's saying to the rest of the wasteland (I kind of wanted to make it one of those "historical speeches" which end up in the history books, but it would be conceited on my part to think that at this point I have the abilities as a writer and an orator to produce something convincing).

As for the speech itself, well... It's mostly her's, though she prepared it in advance and got it looked over by some of her personal councilors. It's not spontaneous. Though she's reciting it by heart - she make a point out of that (to be quite honest, I'm heavily inspiring myself from Charles de Gaulle there )

"Less touched by merc work" : I think I see you point, she seems a bit too... dreamy ? But like she say herself, after having talked to so many people, and heard their dreams, she kind of surprised herself to dream. And given how bleak the situation look for the people of the NCR at the time she give that particular speech, she thought appropriate to try to inspire people to not only carry on with the fight, to win the war ; but also to dream, to make plans for the future, plans for a world at peace. In short, she's trying to get people to hope, to start building now the basis of the Post-War Republic. To get them to think beyond mere survival.

...I can't read that and not see it being broadcast to some bitter souls in the worst way imaginable.

What do you have in mind ?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p30-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161662

Harmony, you might want to give this a listen as well.


https://www.youtube.com/v/6FMNFvKEy4c

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p30-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161665

I know that one almost by heart.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p30-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161666

Maybe cut down on captial C Citizen a little. That's what 'Your President John Henry Eden' calls us.

...I can't read that and not see it being broadcast to some bitter souls in the worst way imaginable.

What do you have in mind ?

Hm.

Someone's trying to open a can of baked beans with a broken knife. Another's trying to force themselves to choke down a chunk of raw radroach flesh with little to no success. The place would be crumbling- probably somewhere outside where there is no shelter from the beating heat of the sun. A building with the walls and roof blown clean away, with half-hearted attempts at creating makeshift shade with corrugated sheets of metal. Someone has to keep watch, always, because it could be the difference between getting out and getting shot. You can't see it, but everything's run dry. Everything useful. Only one left with a few odds and ends and the energy to move under the blazing sun is always working on a project. A hopeless way out that never seems any more done, no matter what goes into it.

Could be anyone. Bandits or raiders, townsfolk or outsiders, travelers or outcasts. Just not warriors. Just not anyone who could pretend that this speech was made for them, couldn't pretend some bird would swear on a sheet of paper to do anything for them. People who heard the world had been saved and they were living in a blessed era where the only difference was that a merciless ball of fire stands in the sky and metal monsters from above the clouds came down to fill the gap left by alicorns.

Or it could overlay soldiers. But I've always been fond of the pedestrian angle- the unfortunate casualties unconsidered and having nothing to do with the tragedy.

Maybe cut down on captial C Citizen a little. That's what 'Your President John Henry Eden' calls us.

Hmm, you know what ? This could be an interesting angle to take.

The NCR from the beginning posing itself as an " allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"universal" power, I mean.

Though the idea of having Gawdyna or someone else in her name do regular radio broadcasts is too funny to be left unexplored.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p30-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161672
"From the beak of your president, directly your ears, Citizens..."
"Dammit, won't anyone make her shut up ?! Man, I miss the day when we could listen to GNR without getting overwhelmed by all this feel good bullshit. Remember those ?"
"Well.... no. It's kinda always been like that."
"Shit. I wish there were more than the one single fucking radio station to listen to."
"Well, at least take the things on the good side : we're so far from Shattered Hoof we don't risk being killed in an enclave attack."
"To die of boredom instead ? Fuck that shit ! ... Man, I'm hungry. Do we still have cram ?"
"Nope."
"Shit. Well, time to go hunt, then..."

*both puts on hockey masks and arm their machine pistols before going out in the streets*

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)


https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161729

...I can't read that and not see it being broadcast to some bitter souls in the worst way imaginable.

What do you have in mind ?

Hm.

Someone's trying to open a can of baked beans with a broken knife. Another's trying to force themselves to choke down a chunk of raw radroach flesh with little to no success. The place would be crumbling- probably somewhere outside where there is no shelter from the beating heat of the sun. A building with the walls and roof blown clean away, with half-hearted attempts at creating makeshift shade with corrugated sheets of metal. Someone has to keep watch, always, because it could be the difference between getting out and getting shot. You can't see it, but everything's run dry. Everything useful. Only one left with a few odds and ends and the energy to move under the blazing sun is always working on a project. A hopeless way out that never seems any more done, no matter what goes into it.

Could be anyone. Bandits or raiders, townsfolk or outsiders, travelers or outcasts. Just not warriors. Just not anyone who could pretend that this speech was made for them, couldn't pretend some bird would swear on a sheet of paper to do anything for them. People who heard the world had been saved and they were living in a blessed era where the only difference was that a merciless ball of fire stands in the sky and metal monsters from above the clouds came down to fill the gap left by alicorns.

Or it could overlay soldiers. But I've always been fond of the pedestrian angle- the unfortunate casualties unconsidered and having nothing to do with the tragedy.

What kind of project ?

Hmm...


"YES ! Finally ! The water-pump is now functional ! At last we'll be able to start irrigating the fields ! Now to tell the-"

*hit by a plasma bolt and melt as several squads of Enclave soldiers swoop down and proceed to wipe the settlement*

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161730

By the way, that's also a reason why people would have started concentrating themselves into NCR cities / refugee camps : because the Enclave started systematically targeting any isolated settlement they came across, to exterminate everyone, Friendship City-style.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161737

By the way, that's also a reason why people would have started concentrating themselves into NCR cities / refugee camps : because the Enclave started systematically targeting any isolated settlement they came across, to exterminate everyone, Friendship City-style.

What about the Enclave dissenters? Where would they be, I mean.

Not to mention a lot of folks were unhappy about the NCR in New Vegas. Handled wrong, Gawd's attempts at peace could lead to a full-blown civil war. Imagine that- world saved, time for a two-way war. Yeesh.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161745

Exactly. Maybe even more sides than that :

You have the three sides of the Enclave Civil War, you have the NCR and its allies fighting against the Enclave and then against the Bitters with the help of the Volunteers, you have the remnants of Red Eye's forces figthing themselves and everyone else, you have the Alicorns as some sort of wild card, and then the Applejack Rangers (on the side of the NCR) pretty much at war with the Steel Rangers (who's to say the Enclave wouldn't propose them an unholy alliance ?), etc ...

Basically, you have all the ingredients for a glorious free for all.

The only thing Littlepip managed was :

- Get rid of the cloud cover
- Kickstart the race to find the EoH to activate the gardens
- Kickstart the creation of the NCR by convincing Gawd to try it.
- Kickstarting Operation Cauterize and thus the fall of the Enclave.
- Ensure the fall of Red Eye.
- Ensure the fall of the Goddess.
- Give the means to her friends of one day allowing the Alicorns to reproduce

Notice that the word "peace" is nowhere in this list. In fact, I'd say she more than anything else deserved the title the Alicorns gave her : "The Destroyer". She's good at breaking things.

It's up to the others to follow in her wake and turn all the chaos she caused into something worthwile.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161751

Ha! Bitter. Speaking of which, who're the Bitters?

(Have to say I really like the idea of the hardline BoS (er, Rangers) going in with the Enclave- with recent dissent and shakeups they could both use the numbers, and it would make for a downright frightening fighting force.)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161756

To answer your question, I'm still thinking about it, but basically what happens to the Enclave kind of has similarities to what happened / is happening with Syria :

- First, pacific protests against the war
- High Command send the troops and crush some skulls
- The public opinion become polarized
- Radicalization of the Opposition (at first they were only calling for an end to the hostilities but more and more they're calling for a Revolution)
- Further escalation of the conflict brought on by the decision of the High Command to impose the martial law. Troops sent to arrest the Opposition leaders.
- Riots repressed in blood.
- Roughly 9 month after the battle of Neighvarro, the Enclave's military fall into mutiny as a number of soldiers and officers feel that what they're doing conflict with their loyalties to the Enclave's people. And on the other side of the spectrum, others feels that the governement of the Enclave is holding them back on fighting the War against the surfacers. Split of the Enclave's military, the Bitters take a third of the soldiers, a fourth of the population, and almost all the ships. The Volunteers take a third of the soldiers and a bit less than half of the Civilians, but not much equipment compared to the Bitters and Isolationnists. As for the Isolationnists, they take the rest.

A large part of the Volunteers flee to the surface and strike a deal with the NCR, the fire of revenge burning in their heart - they wanted to help the surfacers, but to have to -live- there ?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161759

Ha! Bitter. Speaking of which, who're the Bitters?

(Have to say I really like the idea of the hardline BoS (er, Rangers) going in with the Enclave- with recent dissent and shakeups they could both use the numbers, and it would make for a downright frightening fighting force.)

The Bitters are the part of the Enclave who want to fight to the Bitter End against the surface - pushing Operation Cauterize to its logical extreme by pretty much getting rid of the surface completely.

You can see it as President Richardson's Enclave from Fallout 2 which wanted to release the FEV into the atmosphere. Played on that with the Bitters going all bio-warfare during the conflict once they saw they couldn't win the war as easily as they had thought they could through conventional means.

By the way, thinking of putting to use Lighthoove's raider-making / pegasi-killing disease...

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161789

By the way, thinking of putting to use Lighthoove's raider-making / pegasi-killing disease...

Might want to wait until we find out what happens to Lighthooves. Never know if there may be an attempt to eradicate it- or if it gets unleashed.

...What if it gets unleashed? There's no promise Thunderhead will be around by the end of PH- sorry, I'm accidentally bringing non-chat into the chat thread, aren't I?

Does anyone remember what Littlepip's stance on using the SPP as a weapon was? Either full-canon LP (if it was mentioned) or the tumblr one?

(you're welcome)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161792

Never followed the Tumblr, and it's been (roughly) a whole year since I've read the original FoE, so I'm not sure. But given the whole reason why she decided to gradually remove the cloud cover instead of pulling the rug under those fuckers' hooves was that she wanted to give time to the Enclave to... peacefully... come to term with the idea that they would have to change their way of life, well...

I know that she's no BlackJack, but I guess she'd be kind of hesitant / wary of using the SPP against even the Bitters outside of maybe a few edge cases ; mostly out of guilt & self-doubt, given she'd be the reason why Operation Cauterize and the Civil War happened in the first place.

I was kind of under the impression that she didn't want to be the kind of "meddling god" that Red Eye would have been. Given the chaos she caused out of her good sentiments while just being a simple mare, and able to witness every last bit of the consequences through the SPP's information gathering net', she'd be VERY wary of meddling with the affairs of mortals outside of her role as the "Weather Goddess".

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161814

I know it's only my headcanon, but in my mind, the Enclave fell after less than a year of in-fighting after a rebellion of soldiers and civilians fought against loyalists.

In my story I don't intend to detail it heavily, though

Spoiler:

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161822

You know, there's a thing I have to consciously fight against in my writing :

I tend to subconsciously design events to take apocalyptic proportions, resulting in incredible levels of death and destruction ; simply to then show how people rebuild from there.


I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't tone down a bit the sheer intensity I was envisioning for the various wars and conflict following the Day of Sunshine and rainbows. Or at least make it more believable and don't just seem like author fiat.

For the latter, the thing is I'd need to really think about what would have happened in details. Not impossible but damn, that's going to be some serious amount of world-building. Which will probably never be used in the story. Unless I write a series of short stories focusing on these various events.



Anyway, point is, I think a pretty accurate way to describe my writing and its faults would be "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic".




I mean, for example one of my ideas for a Sci-fi / Space Opera setting has, among other things and in no particular order :

- One of the orbital colonies around Earth (a hundred kilometers-long asteroid) being de-orbited, falling on Earth, with an experimental "void-energy" reactor of the colony exploding upon impact, vaporizing a large chunk of Earth's crust in the process and resulting in the oceans boiling away and the atmosphere becoming kind of Venusian in nature.
- A century-long war at the scale of thousands of worlds and uncountable space colonies, at the end of which half a hundred worlds had been rendered uninhabitable, the total casualties numbers being estimated to be in the range of the tens of thousand of billions deceased.

On the plus side, humans live in symbiosis with artificial intelligences, and everyone is effectively immortal until they decide to die.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161825

Yeah, maybe try writing a few smaller-scale pieces, just to get balanced out.

You could even do a little challenge where you limit what resources you're allowed to use. For instance, try and get a good, compelling story featuring, say, three people in a house. For whatever reason, the story's narrative never leaves the house, nor do the characters interact with people outside the house. That should help you with writing more personal perspectives

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161827

Good idea.


In that space opera setting I had an idea for a story, with someone leading an investigation over his own murder. Though I kind of had a block and didn't go back to it.

Because to write something believable I would have needed to have a more in-depth vision of the story's universe.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161829

(also writing mystery / detective fics may not be my forte)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161832

Good idea.


In that space opera setting I had an idea for a story, with someone leading an investigation over his own murder. Though I kind of had a block and didn't go back to it.

Because to write something believable I would have needed to have a more in-depth vision of the story's universe.

In a "closed-circle" setting, you don't even have to give that view of the universe. You could have characters casually replicating food before going into cryo-storage, with no explanation whatsoever about why they're going into cryo, what replicating food involves, or even their occupation. So much is left to the reader's imagination that more possibilities are opened than are shut by denying yourself those resources

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161861

Say, have we seen any evidence of .45 weapons in the Wasteland?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161863

Say, have we seen any evidence of .45 weapons in the Wasteland?

Not that I can find in Fo:E, but they are common enough in side stories.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161866

in fallout, there are so many eapons that the game makers only make a sample, I mean why wouldn't there tbe the .45 calibur? I am only thinking of the .45 gov't tho as a first one to pop in my head. but eh we've used the army round for long enough it should stick just fine

fallout 2 uses the .45 calibur in M3A1 "Grease Gun" SMG
Tommy gun

New Vegas adds a .45 Auto Pistol in Honest Hearts

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161868

I went waaay over the top in Armed Redemption by giving the protagonist-group's scout, Sonar, a .50 Action Express Sub Machine Gun. To put things in simply, it's an automatic weapon firing rounds that, according to Wikipedia, is normally reserved for metallic target shooting and medium/big game hunting, as well as predator defense against bears.

Fuck, I don't whether I should feel proud or brain dead.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161875

I went waaay over the top in Armed Redemption by giving the protagonist-group's scout, Sonar, a .50 Action Express Sub Machine Gun. To put things in simply, it's an automatic weapon firing rounds that, according to Wikipedia, is normally reserved for metallic target shooting and medium/big game hunting, as well as predator defense against bears.

Fuck, I don't whether I should feel proud or brain dead.

>scout
>big fuck off gun
ur doin it wrong

Scouts should use rifles, be they DMR or a sniper rifles actual.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p60-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161876

I went waaay over the top in Armed Redemption by giving the protagonist-group's scout, Sonar, a .50 Action Express Sub Machine Gun. To put things in simply, it's an automatic weapon firing rounds that, according to Wikipedia, is normally reserved for metallic target shooting and medium/big game hunting, as well as predator defense against bears.

Fuck, I don't whether I should feel proud or brain dead.

>scout
>big fuck off gun
ur doin it wrong

Scouts should use rifles, be they DMR or a sniper rifles actual.

Scouts use baseball bats, pistols, and scatterguns by default.

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)


https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p90-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161881

I though scouts used bows, and that's why elves make the best scouts

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p90-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161888

Spoiler:

Have you thought about the possibilities of it being a cold war? On the verge, instead of falling?

I though scouts used bows, and that's why elves make the best scouts

Scouts use baseball bats, pistols, and scatterguns by default.

And sport drinks.

You two get an Honorary Terrible For Co-ordinated Terrible.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p90-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161889

Have you thought about the possibilities of it being a cold war? On the verge, instead of falling?

The Space Opera war, or the NCR / Enclave one ?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p90-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161890

Have you thought about the possibilities of it being a cold war? On the verge, instead of falling?

The Space Opera war, or the NCR / Enclave one ?

Meant Fallout, but there's no harm in some thought on either one.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p90-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161894

@Kipper

I'm definitely using the term "big fuck off gun" at some point. Anyway, he's not only the scout, but the resident computer/energy weapons tech. The group already has a sharpshooter (Iron Fury) and a backup sharpshooter (Eagle Eyes), Sonar is the scout because he's the most perceptive and the fastest in the group.

@Cobalt

Believe it or not, Sonar was originally based on the Scout.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p90-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161896

Hmmm...

The thing is that I'm pretty sure the Enclave would continue Operation Cauterize after the Battle of Neighvarro, at least until someone or the public opinion could convince High Command of stopping it.

To moderate this, if we go by what happened at the Battle of the Cathedral, it's possible that in a few months the Enclave wouldn't have any ships left, or barely any, seriously weakening it and forcing them, if not to pronounce a truce, at least to severely back down on the intensity of their operations : they would still be in open conflict with the surface, but they just wouldn't put as much resources into it as they had at the start of Operation Cauterize.

The peace protests would continue, leading the Enclave on the verge of open Civil War.


I kind of want to see the Enclave implode - if it isn't now, it'll be later : In my opinion, once the surface become able to produce non-contaminated food again, the temptation will be just too great for the Enclave to not try to take over the wasteland (though in this case they'd try first to reduce the wastelanders into slavery I'd guess). And once the population become more and more aware of the situation in the Wasteland, there's going to be more and more tensions in the Enclave's society regarding what to do about it. After all, after the activation of the Gardens, the original and principal argument High Command used to justify the ban on travelling to the surface (it being a radioactive hellhole) just went up in smoke. People will be starting to ask questions.


Hmmm... This has the advantage of reducing the scale of the conflict while still pushing the NCR to unite more and more people (the Enclave is still at war with the surface, they're just not going all out genocidal on them). AND, later on, when the Enclave implode, you could have a fringe of the Enclave's military ("Bitters") going nut against the surface and the traitors (the "Volunteers", the pegasi helping the surface).

That'd leave the Grand Pegasus Enclave as only a husk of its former glory, and having to come to term with the fact that the game has changed (the "Isolationnists").

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p90-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161898

To moderate this, if we go by what happened at the Battle of the Cathedral, it's possible that in a few months the Enclave wouldn't have any ships left

...They do have an undefeatable D.E.M. superweapon being used against them, yeah.

I'll take a guess and say that that's one of the reasons why people have problems with the end part of the original FoE.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p90-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161902

It kind of felt rushed, in my opinion.

Almost as if Kkat had looked at her creation and said "shit, I'm almost at half a million words !" and then went to try to tie all the loose ends of her story.

Or maybe not exactly that, but still, it felt rushed compared to the rest of the story.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p90-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161933
[quote="O. Hinds"]

Somehow, I like this picture a lot.

[spoiler]

To moderate this, if we go by what happened at the Battle of the Cathedral, it's possible that in a few months the Enclave wouldn't have any ships left

...They do have an undefeatable D.E.M. superweapon being used against them, yeah.

I'll take a guess and say that that's one of the reasons why people have problems with the end part of the original FoE.

D.E.M.?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p90-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#161940

Deus Ex Machina, I guess ?

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)


(will lead to a FoE thing a bit further down the line)
https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p120-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162037

ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL


Aaaaanyway...



HOLY SHIT !

Watch the following video :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y36UT2tOvkI

Watch from beginning to the end. The conclusion will blow you mind.

Especially you, Swicked. Twist the idea into your head, and think about how it could relate to the Lunaverse.

Like one of the video's comment said (don't read the following spoiler before watching the video) :

Spoiler:

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p120-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162040

ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL


Aaaaanyway...



HOLY SHIT !

Watch the following video :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y36UT2tOvkI

Watch from beginning to the end. The conclusion will blow you mind.

Especially you, Swicked. Twist the idea into your head, and think about how it could relate to the Lunaverse.

...sweet mother of all that is holy in this world and the next...

((Damnit, I think I've spent too much time watching Supernatural because now that's what I want to happen...))

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p120-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162043

...sweet mother of all that is holy in this world and the next...

((Damnit, I think I've spent too much time watching Supernatural because now that's what I want to happen...))

I know, right ?

And to add to it (still spoiler for the video)

Spoiler:

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p120-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162046

RE that vid and the Lunaverse (for Swicked) :

Spoiler:

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p120-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162053

RE that vid and the Lunaverse (for Swicked) :

Spoiler:

I was just thinking that between seeing the video and reading this comment! It is certainly an interesting idea...

Spoiler:

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)

(the FoE related post)
https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162056

RE that vid and the Lunaverse (for Swicked) :

Spoiler:

I was just thinking that between seeing the video and reading this comment! It is certainly an interesting idea...

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162057

RE that vid and the Lunaverse (for Swicked) :

Spoiler:

I was just thinking that between seeing the video and reading this comment! It is certainly an interesting idea...

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162062

I honestly have to wonder what prompts you people to think of stuff like Luna's magnificent bitch chess playing. Something like that would elude me completely.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162063

The video I talked about before. Watch it if you haven't already.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162065

I was a little vague there. I saw the video, but what I meant is that you and Hinds seem like you've come up with something like that before.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162066

As far as I'm concerned, I just came up with it.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162067

...I don't even.

( )

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162068

What seems to be the trouble ?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162069

I was a little vague there. I saw the video, but what I meant is that you and Hinds seem like you've come up with something like that before.

Did I ever tell you about the story I was going to write about how NMM was never defeated and actually captured the Mane6? She put them in a magical coma that caused them all to dream about life as if they had defeated her, meanwhile she's been ruling Equestria for almost a century.

Then I decided to write my FoE story instead.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162071

Bah, I just get a little case of 'wat' every time I try to figure out how you people think of this stuff so fast. Now that I think about it, I am kind of out of the loop in the mythological stuff, so maybe it's just a thing of familiarity.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162079

Bah, I just get a little case of 'wat' every time I try to figure out how you people think of this stuff so fast. Now that I think about it, I am kind of out of the loop in the mythological stuff, so maybe it's just a thing of familiarity.

Possibly. I was obsessed with mythology and occult stuff during middle and high-school, so I read about it a lot.

Hell, I'm still obsessed with it, it's so interesting.

I also may or may not analyze things WAY too deeply for what they are.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162084

@Camo Somehow I take that as more motivation to read into the occult. *draws sword* To literature!

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p150-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162085

Bah, I just get a little case of 'wat' every time I try to figure out how you people think of this stuff so fast. Now that I think about it, I am kind of out of the loop in the mythological stuff, so maybe it's just a thing of familiarity.

Possibly. I was obsessed with mythology and occult stuff during middle and high-school, so I read about it a lot.

Hell, I'm still obsessed with it, it's so interesting.

I also may or may not analyze things WAY too deeply for what they are.

Personally, it's a mix of knowing a decent amount of mythology, and having an analytical mind which tend to run pretty quickly on stuff I find interesting and stimulating.

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p240-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162176

Before going to bed... One last thing about Luna :

Spoiler:

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p270-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162296

Any headcanons on what happened to the children that Red Eye was raising? I've currently got them splitting in relatively even thirds to the Children of the Cathedral, the NCR/Followers of the Apocalypse, and the Rose Banner (the last faction being pretty much 100% Hindsbrain headcanon).

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p270-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162297

Any headcanons on what happened to the children that Red Eye was raising? I've currently got them splitting in relatively even thirds to the Children of the Cathedral, the NCR/Followers of the Apocalypse, and the Rose Banner (the last faction being pretty much 100% Hindsbrain headcanon).

I've got one of them roaming around, trying to figure out what to make of his life and figure out his place in the emergent civilization and society. Not the main character, though.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p270-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162300

@Red Eye Children:
Honestly, I've got a bit of a darker turn on them.
After Red Eye died, riots ended in many of them dying when angry slaves (mostly the ex-raiders) took out their frustration and hatred on the children because they were treated so well. Some were captured or enslaved by the suddenly leaderless slavers who used to work for Red Eye, but others were kept safe by either hiding or being lucky enough to be found by someone who wanted to protect them.

The ones who weren't enslaved or killed ended up in families of escaped slaves who cared for them, but that was very VERY few of the children.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p270-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162308

Any headcanons on what happened to the children that Red Eye was raising? I've currently got them splitting in relatively even thirds to the Children of the Cathedral, the NCR/Followers of the Apocalypse, and the Rose Banner (the last faction being pretty much 100% Hindsbrain headcanon).

Let's see if I can still find... got it. Ilaris, you are a pain to locate.

Maybe it isn't the best specific example, just have to consider that- with the alicorns basically being oversized hall monitors -those kids would be one of the few to have any problems with wing/horn presence. Following disaster, they might run to whatever is familiar. Like a wing of alicorns.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p270-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162313

Aye, yes, I hadn't thought of the Children of the Cathedral... Fillydelphia fell into civil war, but the Cathedral itself, there still remained people, the vast majority of them more loyal to Red Eye himself and his ideals than the Fillydelphia's slavers were to bottlecaps and raw power over their fellow ponies.

I guess they would still roam the wasteland, trying to keep a low profile while at the same time trying to keep the Faith alive - Red Eye at this point (thirty years after Littlepip ruining his shit) having acquired the status of Divinity in their eyes.

As for the statistics of where would have Red Eye's kids gone after the fall of his Empire...

I'd say a third died in circumstances surrounding the fall of said empire, of the remaining two third, a third joining the CotC (Children of the Cathedral) or being raised / indoctrinated by them, a third joining the NCR / The Followers of the Apocalypse (mostly the Followers I would guess), and the rest going their (not so in most cases) merry ways.


What's the Rose banner, in your head-mounted kinetic projectile actuator device, Hinds ?


--------


Unrelated :

Anyone remember what happened to all the memory orbs which were stored under Shattered Hoof after Littlepip defeated the Dragon who was living there ? I seem to remember she traded them to Gawdyna (though I don't remember for what). Is my memory correct ?

Because that would effectively be a great tool to explain how the young NCR could have relatively easily found a number of weapon caches or things like that, and how to this day it would still have a number of informations regarding sensitive Pre-Apocalypse topics, like Ministry Affairs and other conspiracies.


--------


Headcanon dump :


- In 30 A.S, Shattered Hoof - officially "New Canterlot", but that's only for the official documents, most people call it "Shatty" or "Shathoof" (which by the way leads people to make a number of... tasteless jokes about the city), is the most populated city of the NCR, with around 50,000 inhabitants, 1/3 of them being griffins, the two other thirds being mostly ponies (45% earth ponies, 35% unicorns, 20% pegasi), and a few other minority species. It's to be noted that almost a third of the NCR's pegasi population lives in New Canterlot, the rest of them being concentrated in the other major population centers of the Republic, as the "countryside" is still quite bigoted against them.

- Due to their high fertility rate, the griffins nowaday represent almost a fifth of the NCR's population. This is leading to growing racial tensions in the Republic.

- Without conscious concerted effort on their sides, the Unicorns are currently on their way to turn Manehatten into their own "Canterlot", half of the city's population being made of unicorns, and the city's economy being mostly turned toward the Arcane Sciences and their practical applications (New Canterlot / Shattered Hoof supply the magical gems, the Twilight Society use them to build arcano-technological devices like neo-pipbucks).

- The NCR's army has quickly understood the practical interest of Pipbucks in combat-related situations. In order to emulate its effects, One in Five soldiers are equipped with neo-pipbucks, crude arcano-technological devices conceived by the Twilight Society and the Applejack Rangers by retro-engineering genuine Stable-Tec-built Pipbucks. Their principal features are the following :
=> Crude Eye-Forward-Sparkle spell matrix (limited range and sensibility, but good enough for most situations a soldier will encounter)
=> A radio transceiver (up- and down-link with the chain of command) with some limited signal encryption capabilities.
=> An "auto-scout", a spell which automatically create a crude map of the wearer's surroundings and can be linked to a larger cartographic database - the NCR use it to slowly bu surely build an accurate map of the Wasteland. In the right conditions it can be used as a GPS, though it is not really accurate.
The tremendous advantage offered by these devices and their wide availability to the troops is offset by the fact that they are built on the cheap and unreliable. Still, when they function, they can make a well trained NCR force a fearsome enemy to most forces in the Wasteland.

- Originally, the NCR's armed forces were trained by ex-talon Mercenaries and Applejack Rangers. This led to a tradition of divinding the forces into the "Feather Force" and the "Hoof Force", the former being specialized in quick operations focusing on shock tactics, making them primarily used for recon & special operations, and in offering aerial support to the troops ; and the latter focusing more on the strategies and tactics behind the use of raw firepower, making them the "primary" force of the NCR's army.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p270-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162323

Any headcanons on what happened to the children that Red Eye was raising? I've currently got them splitting in relatively even thirds to the Children of the Cathedral, the NCR/Followers of the Apocalypse, and the Rose Banner (the last faction being pretty much 100% Hindsbrain headcanon).

Let's see if I can still find... got it. Ilaris, you are a pain to locate.

Oh, neat; I hadn't seen that. Thanks.

Maybe it isn't the best specific example, just have to consider that- with the alicorns basically being oversized hall monitors -those kids would be one of the few to have any problems with wing/horn presence. Following disaster, they might run to whatever is familiar. Like a wing of alicorns.

Oh, good point. A four-way split, then.

@Red Eye Children:
Honestly, I've got a bit of a darker turn on them.
After Red Eye died, riots ended in many of them dying when angry slaves (mostly the ex-raiders) took out their frustration and hatred on the children because they were treated so well. Some were captured or enslaved by the suddenly leaderless slavers who used to work for Red Eye, but others were kept safe by either hiding or being lucky enough to be found by someone who wanted to protect them.

The ones who weren't enslaved or killed ended up in families of escaped slaves who cared for them, but that was very VERY few of the children.

Well, I think you may have forgotten the children at the Cathedral (if not, please explain what you think happened to them), who I'm assuming almost entirely went to the Children of the Cathedral.

As for those in Fillydelphia... Yeah, it doesn't look good. In canon, some of them probably made it to fighters aligned with the future NCR, but there were probably heavy casualties. As much as the old ones would try to protect the younger ones, against raiders...
In my headcanon things are slightly different, since Rose Eye (name still slightly in flux) is there protecting the children and alternately rallying and killing former followers of Red Eye.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p270-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162325

@Harmony Ltd:
I need to go to lunch now, but I definitely want to reply to that. Partial reply:
"Anyone remember what happened to all the memory orbs which were stored under Shattered Hoof after Littlepip defeated the Dragon who was living there ? I seem to remember she traded them to Gawdyna (though I don't remember for what). Is my memory correct ?

Because that would effectively be a great tool to explain how the young NCR could have relatively easily found a number of weapon caches or things like that, and how to this day it would still have a number of informations regarding sensitive Pre-Apocalypse topics, like Ministry Affairs and other conspiracies."
It agrees with my memory there (and the trade was for Junction R7), and, IIRC, that usefulness was actually mentioned in FoE.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p270-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162330

Well, I think you may have forgotten the children at the Cathedral (if not, please explain what you think happened to them), who I'm assuming almost entirely went to the Children of the Cathedral.

As for those in Fillydelphia... Yeah, it doesn't look good. In canon, some of them probably made it to fighters aligned with the future NCR, but there were probably heavy casualties. As much as the old ones would try to protect the younger ones, against raiders...
In my headcanon things are slightly different, since Rose Eye (name still slightly in flux) is there protecting the children and alternately rallying and killing former followers of Red Eye.

Yeah, I didn't even know there were children at the Cathedral. And I forgot that Children of the Cathedral even existed (I haven't read the story in over a year now).

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p270-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162333

Well, I think you may have forgotten the children at the Cathedral (if not, please explain what you think happened to them), who I'm assuming almost entirely went to the Children of the Cathedral.

As for those in Fillydelphia... Yeah, it doesn't look good. In canon, some of them probably made it to fighters aligned with the future NCR, but there were probably heavy casualties. As much as the old ones would try to protect the younger ones, against raiders...
In my headcanon things are slightly different, since Rose Eye (name still slightly in flux) is there protecting the children and alternately rallying and killing former followers of Red Eye.

Yeah, I didn't even know there were children at the Cathedral. And I forgot that Children of the Cathedral even existed (I haven't read the story in over a year now).

I led them into a side hall that connected the chapel to the Cathedral’s school and nursery wing. Through open doors on either side of us, we could see the workrooms where the Disciples of the New Unity were creating schoolbooks and educational materials for the new schools that Red Eye intended to establish all across Equestria. The rooms reminded me severely of the Ministry of Image.

The doors to the school wing opened, several robed ponies herding a gaggle of colts and fillies, most of whom sounded more excited than frightened. Several of the children, I saw with sick alarm, were wearing alicorn costumes.

“But we wanna see the battle!” one little colt protested. “We wanna see the good guys win!”

“We already know Red Eye will win,” the adult intoned. “It has been ordained. Now move along. Red Eye wants you all safe in the shelter.” Another of the adult ponies was opening a side door leading to descending stone steps. That was the door we wanted. That should take us down to... cybersurgery? No, no, that was sublevel… two, I thought. What was sublevel one?

The colt whined. “We knoooow it’s ordated. But we wanna seeeee it!”

“Down that way,” I told Reggie. “As soon as the children are through.”

However, I have it on good authority that the Applejack’s Rangers have taken up a project t’ convert much of the forest’s area t’ farmland, pending negotiations with the Children of the Cathedral, a relatively non-hostile band of Red Eye remnants who have made their home in the wreckage of the Thunderhead Overcast.

Happy to help!

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162335

And so my headcanon burns into dust.

*cries self to sleep*

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162344

Headcanon dump (continued - I had a power shortage while editing my previous post and had to go to dinner after it was solved) :


- Most of the NCR's population (~ 80%) lives in rural area, though most of them live in relatively large communities (by wasteland standard) of around 500 people. That is an heritage of the war against the Enclave, as the populations needed to regroup in order to better protect themselves against attacks. These communities work the surrounding land, the NCR's economy being still mostly based on agriculture, the central government subsidizing the farmers production (the central government being the one to mint the NCR bits, this is a plan to jumpstart a private economy by injecting currency into the system).

- The NCR Bits : The administration of the NCR Bit is directed by the Currency Office of the Department of Economy. A few words on the Bits themselves : each bit is magically enchanted in such a way that an easily learnt identification spell can without any doubt identify a true Bit from a counterfeited one. Moreover, the magical imprint that give its "value" to the Bit and differentiate it from a vulgar piece of metal like bottlecaps has variations which make it unique and different from every other bits (like a fingerprint), these fingerprints being stored into an arcane database. What's more, the fingerprint spell is cast in such a way that the Arcane Database can, at every moment, tell the exact location of each and every one of the bits it has registered. Said database regularly keeps track of the bits movements - a feature loved by the Tax Office and the Department of Internal Affairs alike.
Effectively, this makes it next to impossible for criminals to steal bits and get away with it. Under certain conditions, it also allow to follow specific individuals around. A side-effect of this is that the NCR can easily know which foreign powers keep reserve of its currency, in which numbers, and where.
It goes without saying that the exact nature and geographical location of this Arcane Database is among one of the most closely kept secret of the Republic, these informations being Presidential Secrets. All the general public knows is that the Twilight Society has a hoof in that pie, something the TS neither deny nor confirm.
It also goes without saying that there's a lot of research being led in some circles on ways to mislead the Arcane Database's tracking function - it's relatively easy for people to mask the tracking signal outright, but this practice is frowned upon by the Currency Office and the Department of Internal Affairs and will quickly lead to investigations.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162351

It agrees with my memory there (and the trade was for Junction R7), and, IIRC, that usefulness was actually mentioned in FoE.

The way I see it, Junction-7 (now known as "Junction City", "Junction", or sometimes "The Hub") has become the headquarter of the Followers of the Apocalypse, and the city thrives on the fact that it is a major trading hub at the center of the NCR, being on the road between Manehatten in the West, New Centerlot (that's not a typo, some people are beginning to call it that) a few miles up North, New Appleloosa / Ponyville / the Cathedral / the Canterlot Ruins and Zebratown in the East, and New Appleloosa and Fillydelphia / "Junktown" in the South.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162352

By the way, given the geographical distances involved, Fillydelphia is considered as a "frontier" town by the authorities of the NCR, and Junktown (that scavenger town) is mostly a colony / protectorate, under direct military control.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162356

While New Canterlot is the political center of the Republic and the heart of its gem-mining activities [*], Junction City is quickly becoming its trading & manufacturing heart.

Given how close the two cities are to each other ( http://reese8.deviantart.com/art/Hinds-Equestria-map-v1-10-290393232 => aroound 10 kilometers apart), and how quickly their population numbers and horizontal spread grows, it is a fairly safe bet that in roughly fifty years (by 80 A.S) they will form a single, continuous urban unit.

As of now, they are in some awkward form of both being partners and rivals in the nascent economy of the Republic.


[*] : at roughly equal part with Shattered Hoof / New Canterlot, Maripony is the other major gem-mining center in the Republic, though it being an Hellhound enclave the Republic prefer not to rely too much on it, as it is wary of the possibility of the Hellhounds breaking their ties with the Republic.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162357

@ Hinds :

What's your headcanon about Geneighva and Freidrichsorfen ? Do they come from a side-story ? What do the mountains they're surrounded by look like ? And what about that giant lake ?

I may want to exploit them in one of my stories so I need to know if they already have an existing background.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162365

[*] : at roughly equal part with Shattered Hoof / New Canterlot, Maripony is the other major gem-mining center in the Republic, though it being an Hellhound enclave the Republic prefer not to rely too much on it, as it is wary of the possibility of the Hellhounds breaking their ties with the Republic.

On the other hand, the economic wealth coming from the exploitation of gems in the Maripony area is giving the Hellhounds un-precendented leverage in the Republic's political institutions, which they are using to further their agenda of gaining more autonomy while keeping the full benefit of being a member state of the NCR.

Currently, they are a semi-autonomous polity, with their own code of law regarding internal affairs. Being officially a member state of the NCR, they don't officially have a foreign policy of their own. This doesn't stop them from trading a portion of their production to foreign powers without going through the Department of Trade - a business the Capital is aware of but turn a blind eye to as they see it as a way to keep the peace with both the Hellhounds and the powers in question.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162370

@Harmony Ltd.:
Sorry that this took so long!

"What's the Rose banner, in your head-mounted kinetic projectile actuator device, Hinds ?"
Well, firstly, you can thank Meleagridis for the initial inspiration for this; it's all grown from wanting a faction across the river in the Moojave. :)

The Rose Banner, a name which I only recently finally came up with, is a group of ex-Red Eye followers formed and lead by a pony named Rose Eye (though probably still called Red Rose at the time of formation; my current headcanon has the current three names I have for her being sequential). Bloodflower was born the daughter of the leader of an otherwise-insignificant band of raiders operating out of an old gardening emporium. She was an intelligent unicorn, possibly to the point of being a prodigy, and, being the acknowledged daughter of a raider leader, was well on her way to taking over the band. Then some of Red Eye's forces moved through the area and attacked; the raiders, though they fought well, were hideously outmatched and were probably only prevented from being wiped out because Bloodflower, her mother having died in battle, called a surrender and killed the first pony to object. The adults were, of course, enslaved (I'm not sure if there were any other foals), but Bloodflower, being young and not yet having her cutie mark, was processed through the system for captured foals. There were initially some concerns that it wouldn't be safe to put her with the other foals, but these proved incorrect; to put it mildly, Bloodflower was awed by Fillydelphia, its industry, its genuine rebuilding, and the conditions provided for foals, and it was then that she got her cutie mark of a red rose in the shape of an equine eye. It was decided that she should go with the foals anyway, as using her as just another slave would be quite a waste and it was suspected that he intelligence would be more useful with additional training. She took the name "Red Rose", as "Bloodflower" doesn't fit a non-raider quite as well, and prospered. In particular she studied governance, military science, and the arts of leadership, though she did not neglect basic combat training. She was even honored by Red Eye with the personal gift of custom pistol (an expy of A Light Shining in Darkness that I'm still playing around with names for ("Red Sunrise"?); I'm not sure if .45 caliber is available, but either the weapon could be rechambered or the rounds could be custom-made by Rose Eye); it was expected that she was going places… and then the Fall of Red Eye happened. Red Rose was in Fillydelphia during the events; this was partly because Red Eye thought that she'd be good to have there if anything went wrong, and this turned out to be a good idea. During the Battle of Fillydelphia, Red Rose defended the children and some of the slaves, rallied as many fighters as possible (occasionally through summarily executing the previous commander), and organized the defense as much as possible. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that, whether or not they were exactly losing, their objective/battlefield was rapidly becoming less and less worth fighting for. A debate arose in the as-yet-unnamed faction around the question of whether they ought to break north to the Children of the Cathedral , which were in the process of forming, or whether they ought to strike out on their own. Red Rose and her supporters argued a specific form of the latter; Red Rose thought that the Children of the Cathedral could have difficulty surviving in the long term and that the chances for survival were maximized by forming a separate settlement, and she believed that she'd found just the place in some salvaged scouting reports. Her side eventually won the debate, and so, under cover of a diversionary assault, they loaded as much as they could (including those slaves that they thought they could hang onto without skimping on other necessities) onto a train and retreated south through the desert. The objective was Moover Line South, a fortress originally built in the early days of the war just on the far bank of the river running along old Equestria's southern border. The reports had indicated that the land around the fort was reasonably fertile, having not really been targeted by either side's megaspells, that the fortress itself still had power, presumably from a functioning reactor, and that it was occupied by no more than some raiders and wild beasts. The train managed to make it through the desert and to the river, where an obstacle was encountered: the movable bridge (design details still uncertain; I think that it's a swing bridge, but I'm not sure; I'm reading a Google book preview on movable bridge engineering at the moment, though) was still in the open position. Red Rose offered a deal to the ponies and living nearby: they could either help out until Moover Line South was taken and the farms were up and running, gaining her forces' protection until that time, or they could be enslaved and help out permanently. They chose the former, the bridge was repaired and closed, the fort was taken, and farms were set up using volunteers, any slaves that could be found, and, to make up the difference, voluntold soldiers; both the Rose Banner and the town of Thornbush were born. Rose Eye, as she now renamed herself, kept her word to the local ponies and has since tried to maintain good relations with them; while it's pretty much universally suspected that she'd like to take them and put them to use, she also either does not want to or does not think that she can afford to gain a reputation as somepony who breaks deals. The Rose Banner also tries to maintain good relations with the Children of the Cathedral, and they don't have much of a problem working with the Alliance. Indeed, considering her origins and technically-another-Red-Eye-warlord current position, Rose Eye is a very reasonable and easy to work with pony. With one exception. It will likely be a very long time, if ever, before the Rose Banner is willing to have non-antagonistic dealings with the NCR, the Followers, the Applejack's Rangers, or any other groups of "LittlePipites", as Rose Eye spittingly calls them. She haaaaaaates LittlePip. Hates her as in "uses her name as a swearword", "has the Rose Banner's firing ranges stocked with pictures of her to use as targets", "makes highly detailed and painted sculptures of her for the express purpose of smashing them to powder", etc. Rose Eye holds that Red Eye was one of the greatest ponies, if not the greatest, to ever live and was the Wasteland's true savior; LittlePip, by contrast, was an idiot kid who tripped over old tech and, blissfully ignorant of how horribly unqualified she was, proceeded to ruin everything. She particularly likes doing her statue-smashing in full view of the Moojave SPP tower (which she wants to blow up). The NCR doesn't much like the Rose Banner either, as, while the Banner's slaves are considered valuable resources and relatively well treated, it is still actively seeking more of them.

If work on the Moojave progresses, I think that this could provide an interesting complication beyond New Vegas. After all, the people of the Mojave may not have liked the NCR much, but they liked Caesar a whole lot less. In the Moojave, the locals are being approached in a genuinely friendly and positive manner from both directions, but siding with either one would still make the other an enemy and put them on the front lines.

re your NCR headcanon:
Neat!

"A side-effect of this is that the NCR can easily know which foreign powers keep reserve of its currency, in which numbers, and where."
This will, of course, discourage foreign powers from keeping reserves of NCR bits unless they block the tracking.

"the Canterlot Ruins and Zebratown"
…Are the piles of rubble really that important?

Where is Junktown? My apologies, but I don't remember you mentioning it before.

I'm starting to come around to your view that Fillydelphia would be in ruins.

You still have Hellhounds at Maripony?

"@ Hinds :

What's your headcanon about Geneighva and Freidrichsorfen ? Do they come from a side-story ? What do the mountains they're surrounded by look like ? And what about that giant lake ?

I may want to exploit them in one of my stories so I need to know if they already have an existing background."
As far as I know, I made them up more or less on the spot. I'm not entirely sure what the mountains and lake look like, but you might want to look into Switzerland and the area around Lake Constance ("Freidrichshorfen" is based on "Freidrichshafen").

"On the other hand, the economic wealth coming from the exploitation of gems in the Maripony area is giving the Hellhounds un-precendented leverage in the Republic's political institutions, which they are using to further their agenda of gaining more autonomy while keeping the full benefit of being a member state of the NCR.

Currently, they are a semi-autonomous polity, with their own code of law regarding internal affairs. Being officially a member state of the NCR, they don't officially have a foreign policy of their own. This doesn't stop them from trading a portion of their production to foreign powers without going through the Department of Trade - a business the Capital is aware of but turn a blind eye to as they see it as a way to keep the peace with both the Hellhounds and the powers in question."
Hm… I wonder how that relates to Hell? Though this may be one area in which our headcanons are incompatible, I have very few hellhounds staying in irradiated Maripony (sure, Gardens fixes that, but no one knew that at the time, and why would Ponyville be needed as a "Hellhound Sanctuary" if there was a functional hellhound community at Maripony). Actually, how do you explain the presence of both the Hellhound Sanctuary at Ponyville at a semi-independent hellhound member state?
I like that both our headcanons seem to have independently developed hellhounds in nice suits smugly dictating NCR policy through economic necessity, though. :)

(Attack of the 50 Foot Text-Walls)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162371

...My, that wall of text looks rather larger now than it did when I was writing it...

(you don't say)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162372

...Sweet mother of headcanon, Batman...

(you don't say)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162379

@RoboRed:
And that is but ONE SMALL PART of my ENORMOUS HEADCANNON OF DOOM!
…Er, headcanon. Not cannon. Certainly no brain-mounted superweapons here, nope…


Also, it's this book I was referring to, if anyone's interested.

(my anus is clenching)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162381

Hm... Or would it be better to wait to repair the bridge and instead make the initial crossing on boats? I'm not sure which would be easier; I suppose that it depends on the exact condition of the bridge and the availability of watercraft. Though rafts could probably be made out of local trees... assuming that the raiders in Moover Line South didn't cause problems... Hm...

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162383

We'll assume, then, that Rose's research included how to make rafts/boats, because few Wastelanders likely knew much about it.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162384

@RoboRed:
And that is but ONE SMALL PART of my ENORMOUS HEADCANNON OF DOOM!
…Er, headcanon. Not cannon. Certainly no brain-mounted superweapons here, nope…

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/171/1/4/what_i_think_of_when_headcanon_by_ennervateindustries-d548mg0.png

(jesus christ how horrifying)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p300-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162394

We'll assume, then, that Rose's research included how to make rafts/boats, because few Wastelanders likely knew much about it.

...Another good point. Granted, they're only boats to cross a river, and there'd be local ponies helping... but they'd still need to carry a larger load than, say, small fishing boats... Hm... This complicates things further.

@Hinds
How wide should the .gif be to not be too wide for your screen?
Now that I've made it once, I think I've figured out how to make it much faster a second time.
Please give the width in pixels, too.

You don't have to put yourself out for me. If you want the information, though, I expect that you ought be able to extract all you need from this screenshot.

Spoiler:

...maybe not as helpful as you'd think, but I eyeballed it and came up with this.
I'd kinda like everyone to enjoy it, rather than just me XD

Edit:
Now that I know how to do it, it's not that hard. If anyone ever wants me to try and make one of these out of a youtube video or something, just ask ^_^

That fits.

[CamoBadger]

My god, how long is this conversation already?

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162427

Spoiler:

I've always found that posts this long spark some inspiration pretty easily, so I'm just going to tuck this here until I have time to act on any possible potential. And it's Hinds, so you know it will be good. Hinds: 57 varieties (of headcanon)!

- The NCR Bits : The administration of the NCR Bit is directed by the Currency Office of the Department of Economy. A few words on the Bits themselves : each bit is magically enchanted in such a way that an easily learnt identification spell can without any doubt identify a true Bit from a counterfeited one.

Doesn't that more just shift counterfeiting from mundane to magical? Now an enchantment has to be counterfeited along with the actual bit.

(Also find it amusing that pony NCR uses coins. We gonna find out Legionnaires use paper money?)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162437

@ Hind, two quick points as I'm riding the bus to work :

- Junktown is that settlement of NCR scavengers who are working on dismantling anything of value that they can find in Fillydelphia and the surrounding area, be it pieces of machinery or scrap metal. Being a frontier city and the closest major settlement near San Frantello, it's home to a large army garrison, tasked to protect & control the southern border of the Republic.

- Canterlot Ruins / Zebratown : the ruins themselves are pretty much worthless, the fact that they are still soaked in Pink Cloud making it hard to scavenge anything out of them ; but what is of value is that Zebra settlement which Xenith's daughter became the leader of, and which supply most of the NCR's medical supplies. They also opened their own academy in partnership with the Followers to teach people advanced knowledge of medical science - teaching healing spells is all well and good, but when you're not an unicorn, this is quite limited...

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162438

@ Mel : yes, this displace counterfeiting in the domain of magic. Though it would be non-trivial to reproduce the fingerprint enchantment in such a way that the authentication spell could be fooled. The cost of the necessary enchantment would be roughly equal the value of the bit, or even more : only the Currency Office having the processes (kept secret) to enchant coins on an industrial basis.


By the way (random) :

The Currency Office has acquired such a reputation for secrecy (even their public office in the Capital being unadvertised) that a number of people have started to call it...

the Secret Service

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162439

RE paper money :

Well, I don't know about Legionnaires, but I have ideas which might involve people (re)discovering the old art of Banking.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162440

RE Maripony Hellhounds :

Well, the place is a well known source of gems, the Gardens cleared the taint & radiations, and most importantly the Hellhounds consider it their home - and everyone knows how territorial they are, and no one want to piss them off if they can avoid it.

The NCR and the Hellhounds came to an agreement regarding the exploitation of the region's natural resources.


Maripony itself, as in the ruins of the Goddess' lair, is sort of a pilgrimage place for the Alicorns, regardless of if they live with the NCR / Followers or chose their own path. There's also a little community of alicorns living in the surrounding area.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162441

Though there's a military outpost mear Maripony's ruins. There's a small contingent of scientists there studying the IMP.

(plot idea : they may also have discovered something under the rubble. Something that is still, amazingly enough... alive.)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162452

Spoiler:

I've always found that posts this long spark some inspiration pretty easily, so I'm just going to tuck this here until I have time to act on any possible potential. And it's Hinds, so you know it will be good. Hinds: 57 varieties (of headcanon)!

...Um, thanks. O.o

- The NCR Bits : The administration of the NCR Bit is directed by the Currency Office of the Department of Economy. A few words on the Bits themselves : each bit is magically enchanted in such a way that an easily learnt identification spell can without any doubt identify a true Bit from a counterfeited one.

Doesn't that more just shift counterfeiting from mundane to magical? Now an enchantment has to be counterfeited along with the actual bit.

(Also find it amusing that pony NCR uses coins. We gonna find out Legionnaires use paper money?)

Hm... I'm not sure if the Remnant or Rose Banner, probably the closest analogues to the Legion (assuming that the Remnant survives long enough; again, not sure what shape they'll be in after PH), use money at all, but it could make sense for them to use paper. :D
Oh, the Alliance, if you were wondering, uses either virtual or plastic currency (No, not plastic as in "debit card", plastic as in coins made out of plastic). Singular ka, plura kae (pronounced "k-aye", roughly; I don't know IPA), first declension in Roaman Zebra.

@ Hind, two quick points as I'm riding the bus to work :

- Junktown is that settlement of NCR scavengers who are working on dismantling anything of value that they can find in Fillydelphia and the surrounding area, be it pieces of machinery or scrap metal. Being a frontier city and the closest major settlement near San Frantello, it's home to a large army garrison, tasked to protect & control the southern border of the Republic.

Ah, I see.

- Canterlot Ruins / Zebratown : the ruins themselves are pretty much worthless, the fact that they are still soaked in Pink Cloud making it hard to scavenge anything out of them ; but what is of value is that Zebra settlement which Xenith's daughter became the leader of, and which supply most of the NCR's medical supplies. They also opened their own academy in partnership with the Followers to teach people advanced knowledge of medical science - teaching healing spells is all well and good, but when you're not an unicorn, this is quite limited...

Oh, I think that you might be getting Zebratown confused with Glyphmark (a lot of people seem to do that, for some reason). The former is the town of resettled Equestrian zebras built under Canterlot and later crushed by it; the latter is the still-extant base of the Angels.

RE Maripony Hellhounds :

Well, the place is a well known source of gems, the Gardens cleared the taint & radiations, and most importantly the Hellhounds consider it their home - and everyone knows how territorial they are, and no one want to piss them off if they can avoid it.

The NCR and the Hellhounds came to an agreement regarding the exploitation of the region's natural resources.

Okay, that makes sense, but again: if they were in such good shape, why did they need an official sanctuary a full ten years after FoE?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162453

Though there's a military outpost mear Maripony's ruins. There's a small contingent of scientists there studying the IMP.

(plot idea : they may also have discovered something under the rubble. Something that is still, amazingly enough... alive.)

Wait, there's still IMP left? Didn't Gardens clear that out?

Oh, also, are you having Gardens having been so thorough that it shut down even reactors and radiation-using batteries? I recall Ask LittlePip saying that, but I don't know how widespread it is.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162455

Maripony / Hellhounds ... it's not a sanctuary, a reserve : it's their home. That and most of them are still uncomfortable around ponies, and most ponies are still uncomfortable around hellhounds.

Concerning the IMP : maybe the gardens cleared it, maybe not.... but there may still remain secondary traces of the potion itself which may help determine how it was made, or how it could be reproduced, things like that. They don't have much hope of being able to reproduce the formula - the main ingredient was flux / taint, and the Gardens cleaned most of it ; but it still the kind of information which may prove valuable in the long run. It's not as if they expand much resources on that, it's more of a token effort, really.
The point that interest them the most, beyond the IMP research, is the possibility of finding the Goddess remains, or part of it, in order to study them. Which kind of piss off the Alicorns...


As for Glyphmark, I know it isn't Zebratown. I just couldn't remember the name. Thanks for refeshing my memory, by the way.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162457

As for radiations... My headcanon is that the Gardens weren't that thorough, they mostly contented themselves with cleaning the soil, the buildings, the rivers... Basically, focusing more on making the land livable than on cleaning ALL the radiation :

If it wanted to do that, all it would have needed would have been the raw power of the Elements of Harmony. In my mind the Crusader Maneframe was there to give "intelligence" to the spell.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162458

Perhaps this stuff should be archived in a file or something in case someone wants to come back and read it without digging through the thread. It's just a thought, this discussion is interesting, but somewhat difficult to keep up with.

Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162459

That's a thought.

Wanna do it ?

(Fuck you, past Harmony)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162461

I ain't got a computer at the moment. XD

(Someday... you'll pay for that)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162464

@Harmony Ltd.:
"Maripony / Hellhounds ... it's not a sanctuary, a reserve : it's their home. That and most of them are still uncomfortable around ponies, and most ponies are still uncomfortable around hellhounds."
No, I'm talking about the Hellhound Sanctuary in Ponyville.

“Did you see Ponyville?” she asked suddenly.

“Ayep,” Calamity answered as he flew, pulling the chariot behind him. “They seem t’ be doin’ alright. Fer hellhounds. Not even raiders are stupid enough t’ wander near Ponyville.”

She felt the presence of the hellhound as he came up behind her. The old cyberhound crouched down next to her, his cyberleg giving a metallic whine. At last, the aging albino spoke, “You ready fer this?”

Fluttershy nodded.

She would not allow the new age of Equestria to be born out of genocide. The hellhounds were on the precipice of extinction, and it was (largely) the fault of ponies.

Wanted or not, warranted or not, she had been once again put in a position where her words carried weight. And as much as she hated being looked to as a leader, she wasn’t going to shy away. Not after everything. This is something she must do. She must.

She must.

The Applejack’s Rangers weren’t going to be happy about it, but she would convince them. The Hellhound Sanctuary was the right thing to do.

The elderly albino hellhound got back up as she turned around, and followed her as she marched toward the council hall.

Actually, that makes their condition sound even worse than I remembered. (At this point, in my headcanon, the NCR and such weren't yet aware of the resettlement efforts that the Alliance was providing.)

"Concerning the IMP : maybe the gardens cleared it, maybe not.... but there may still remain secondary traces of the potion itself which may help determine how it was made, or how it could be reproduced, things like that. They don't have much hope of being able to reproduce the formula - the main ingredient was flux / taint, and the Gardens cleaned most of it ; but it still the kind of information which may prove valuable in the long run. It's not as if they expand much resources on that, it's more of a token effort, really.
The point that interest them the most, beyond the IMP research, is the possibility of finding the Goddess remains, or part of it, in order to study them. Which kind of piss off the Alicorns..."
Ah, that makes some sense. I'm not sure what exactly they hope to find, given that the facility has been twice-balefired, but I suppose that there might still be something in the rubble.

"As for Glyphmark, I know it isn't Zebratown. I just couldn't remember the name. Thanks for refeshing my memory, by the way."
You're welcome. :)

"As for radiations... My headcanon is that the Gardens weren't that thorough, they mostly contented themselves with cleaning the soil, the buildings, the rivers... Basically, focusing more on making the land livable than on cleaning ALL the radiation :

If it wanted to do that, all it would have needed would have been the raw power of the Elements of Harmony. In my mind the Crusader Maneframe was there to give "intelligence" to the spell."
A good point, I think.

Perhaps this stuff should be archived in a file or something in case someone wants to come back and read it without digging through the thread. It's just a thought, this discussion is interesting, but somewhat difficult to keep up with.

A good idea, probably. I've been keeping some archives, but I've already lost other things in the mists of the threads.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162465

Well, as I said, at this point my policy toward the "10 years after" part of FoE is "ignore if convenient". For example, here... Why would the Hellhounds be on the precipice of extinction ?

Maripony has been balefired, but then again it had already been in the past, and I was under the impression that the Hellhounds were immune to the adverse effects of radiation. So that's one thing.

It's more than probable that a lot of hounds died in the detonation, but only a portion of them.

I mean, shit, the Hellhounds are some of the toughest, nastiest motherfuckers in the Wasteland. Kkat made that point abundantly clears with all the descriptions she made of them. And then she says that an underground detonation which at worst caused most of the tunnels in a 10 km radius to collapse, was enough to lead them "to the precipice of extinction" ? The same Hellhounds which can dig as fast than ponies can walk ?

Let's get serious for a second. Yeah, a lot of them probably died, and they must be among those in the Wasteland with a grudge toward Littlepip, but they wouldn't be in THAT bad a situation.


ESPECIALLY if the Followers, led by Velvet Remedy, pressured the NCR to make amend to the hounds by letting them have their land, and by trading with them for the gems. With all the bits that trade would have generated for them, they would have had no difficulty importing all the food and medicines they would need.


If anything, the only serious reason I could see the Hellhounds on the decline would have been if the Enclave generalized the use of the mind control devices on them during the war, leading to a vast number of them dying in the fights.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162467

Well, as I said, at this point my policy toward the "10 years after" part of FoE is "ignore if convenient". For example, here... Why would the Hellhounds be on the precipice of extinction ?

Maripony has been balefired, but then again it had already been in the past, and I was under the impression that the Hellhounds were immune to the adverse effects of radiation. So that's one thing.

It's more than probable that a lot of hounds died in the detonation, but only a portion of them.

I mean, shit, the Hellhounds are some of the toughest, nastiest motherfuckers in the Wasteland. Kkat made that point abundantly clears with all the descriptions she made of them. And then she says that an underground detonation which at worst caused most of the tunnels in a 10 km radius to collapse, was enough to lead them "to the precipice of extinction" ? The same Hellhounds which can dig as fast than ponies can walk ?

Let's get serious for a second. Yeah, a lot of them probably died, and they must be among those in the Wasteland with a grudge toward Littlepip, but they wouldn't be in THAT bad a situation.


ESPECIALLY if the Followers, led by Velvet Remedy, pressured the NCR to make amend to the hounds by letting them have their land, and by trading with them for the gems. With all the bits that trade would have generated for them, they would have had no difficulty importing all the food and medicines they would need.


If anything, the only serious reason I could see the Hellhounds on the decline would have been if the Enclave generalized the use of the mind control devices on them during the war, leading to a vast number of them dying in the fights.

Ah, so you explain it away by making a headcanon discontinuity of it. :)

Interesting ideas. The "can dig as fast as ponies can walk" thing would only have saved those just trapped by the blast, though, not those even indirectly hit by it. Also, wasn't the underground of Maripony pretty much the center of Hellhound civilization? Even if a lot of the people physically survive, having the center of your government and culture blown up isn't exactly likely to increase your survival chances.

Also, it occurs to me, that last point... They would need as many soldiers as possible, particularly for strikes against hardened ground targets.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162468

Maripony's Underground : I was under the impression that they were living around (underground) the military base and not under it proper.


Also, I wasn't under the impression that the Hounds had a proper "government" to speak of. Not anything that could severely cripple their ability to survive it it was destroyed at least : in my mind their primary social unit is the "pack" anyway (groups of a few dozens individual, less than a hundred), their society as a whole being pretty decentralized.

I was seeing Maripony more as the center of their Civilization, in the sense that it's where they came from and the place they used to meet & exchange with each others, most of them living farther away in the land surrounding Maripony's Military Base.



Note that I have read FoE only once, and it was a year ago.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p330-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162469

strikes against hardened ground targets.

The Enclave has Pegasi. Saying that is a tautology.

Pegasi who can carry relatively heavy loads.

Dive / Carpet bombing ?


Though I recognize they would try to use Hellhounds during the war - after all, they developed the technology to control them just for that kind of situations.

The thing is, IIRC, we've already seen in FoE people jam the mind-control devices, allowing the Hounds to free themselves and turn their claws back against the Enclave.

So I doubt that weapon would have remained effective for very long.

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162501

strikes against hardened ground targets.

The Enclave has Pegasi. Saying that is a tautology.

Pegasi who can carry relatively heavy loads.

Dive / Carpet bombing ?

I'm afraid that I must disagree. The Enclave has a great deal of air power, yes, but we've not seen any significant subsurface-targeted weapons. Now, that doesn't mean that they don't exist, but remember that they chose to use hellhounds against the apotheosis chamber under the Cathedral. GPE soldiers also lack experience in ground combat, and their low numbers ought to amplify an already casualty-averse nature (at least, I expect that they'd already be casualty-averse). Result: the GPE is bad at attacking any surface structures that it can't just blow to bits from the air, is even worse against subsurface installations, and would rather not commit its people to either. Hellhounds are expendable, quite formidable on the surface, and devastating in subsurface combat. Using both allows the GPE to bring its air superiority to bear in 3D pincers, and the GPE apart from everything else has a vested interest in the NCR not having hellhounds (NCR convoy surprised? Bunker dug before you can sneeze!).

Though I recognize they would try to use Hellhounds during the war - after all, they developed the technology to control them just for that kind of situations.

The thing is, IIRC, we've already seen in FoE people jam the mind-control devices, allowing the Hounds to free themselves and turn their claws back against the Enclave.

So I doubt that weapon would have remained effective for very long.

See, it seems to me that the mind control is probably the difficult part. The GPE might actually already have better com tech and just not deployed it because they didn't think that they'd need it. Even apart from that, it seems relatively simple to fit auxiliary units (containing basic commands such as "return to base", "hold position", "kill everything in sight that isn't a helmeted hellhound for as long as there's no signal", etc.) to the helmets that take over if the signal is lost.


Also, interestingly, I've realized that, were I to have hellhounds prosper in my headcanon as they have in yours, it would be a "no good deed goes unpunished" scenario for the NCR. Helping the hellhounds rebuild means no hellhound exodus and resettlement means no Hell means no Canine Petroleum means that NEROC will keep its monopoly for the foreseeable future.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162511

You know what I could see happening sooner or later ?

The NCR building solar boilers near Appleloosa or in some other well exposed to solar radiations region, and use the energy it produce to fuel a local industry.

After all, with the help of Littlepip, they can decide to have the sun shine all year round in a given region.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162515

Example :

http://papundits.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/vista_aerea.jpg

built with polished plates of metal pointing toward a boiler enchanted to not melt under the intense heat it's subjected to.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162518

I agree that the Enclave will try to use the Hellhounds. All I'm saying is, I doubt even that would be enough to push them near extinction.


Concerning the "no good deed goes unpunished", that had crossed my mind, too. Though in my own headcanon, if the NCR were to trade for anything, it would be for machine tools, industrial equipment, refined ores and some technical expertise : given how productive I'm envisioning their agriculture to be (3 to 4 harvests per year...), I could easily see them extensively using biofuels.

Not that it would goes against the Alliance's interests : the NCR is still relying on them for most of their industrial infrastructure, just in a different way.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162524

You know what I could see happening sooner or later ?

The NCR building solar boilers near Appleloosa or in some other well exposed to solar radiations region, and use the energy it produce to fuel a local industry.

After all, with the help of Littlepip, they can decide to have the sun shine all year round in a given region.

Interesting idea.

I agree that the Enclave will try to use the Hellhounds. All I'm saying is, I doubt even that would be enough to push them near extinction.

...I'd rather like to know what Kkat was thinking when she wrote that.

Concerning the "no good deed goes unpunished", that had crossed my mind, too. Though in my own headcanon, if the NCR were to trade for anything, it would be for machine tools, industrial equipment, refined ores and some technical expertise : given how productive I'm envisioning their agriculture to be (3 to 4 harvests per year...), I could easily see them extensively using biofuels.

Oh, I've got the NCR trying to develop a domestic biofuel industry too, starting with alcohol-burning steam engines. The thing is, while it has a high potential productivity in that sector, it has zero initial capacity. It will take time to develop and produce even the basic system, and throughout that time the Alliance is offering artificially cheap diesel and the powerful, efficient engines to run on it. It's a pretty obvious ploy for power with only a thin disguise of helping the people of the NCR out... but it would provide the NCR was a much cheaper and more powerful energy system much sooner. I imagine that that would be pretty tempting, particularly since they could keep developing biofuels in the meantime (Elusive is betting, though, that they'll like petroleum so much and that they'll get hooked and won't develop a viable alternative until it's too late).

Not that it would goes against the Alliance's interests : the NCR is still relying on them for most of their industrial infrastructure, just in a different way.

Not really. Petroleum is a commodity; the NCR, to make good use of it, has to keep buying more of it. Machine tools, industrial equipment, etc. both are more or less one-time purchases and would make it easier for the NCR to produce goods domestically instead of buying from the Alliance.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162525

ANYONE ELSE HAVE IDEAS ON WHAT HAPPENED TO THE HELLHOUNDS EITHER TO BRING ABOUT THEIR CANON END OR INSTEAD OF IT?
Sorry for shouting, but I'm aware that a lot of people probably just skim discussions like these, if that.

(No one ever told you it's rude to shout ? jk )

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162528

Yeah... Well, sure, there'll be trade, yes.

Hmm... Yeah, indeed, potential for economic warfare, with both parties fully aware of the game they're playing, and trying to get the most out of the situation while they can.

I mean, pretty much everyone with a degree of culture above "rabid raider" knows why the War was fought in the first place place, so they have all the incentives in the world to not grow too reliant on external trade to support their own economy.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162546

Yeah... Well, sure, there'll be trade, yes.

Hmm... Yeah, indeed, potential for economic warfare, with both parties fully aware of the game they're playing, and trying to get the most out of the situation while they can.

I mean, pretty much everyone with a degree of culture above "rabid raider" knows why the War was fought in the first place place, so they have all the incentives in the world to not grow too reliant on external trade to support their own economy.

Right, both sides know that. If both sides are determined to be self-sufficient, though, there's no trade. That would work, but both sides get less than they otherwise would (particularly the NCR, particularly if the Alliance can get gem sources on the peninsula but outside the NCR). Opening trade increases resources, but it also increases the power the seller has over you. Even an equal-value exchange could be a problem, since it builds dependencies that could be cut, and an asymmetrical-value exchange increases the power of one party over the other. The questions are what sort of power balance an exchange will end up having and whether the benefits of the additional resources could offset the potential foreign power increase. By entering into trade agreements, the NCR and Alliance are both benefitting, but they're also both gambling that they'll end up on top.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162551

There's different values of "coming out on top".

From my point of view, it'd be : trying to exploit the opportunity while remaining aware that it could be cut at any moment, and making a conscious effort to keep alternatives ready.

Like, in your example, buying diesel engines and the diesel to fuel them, and using them to jumpstart a biofuel production capability, which will fuel a metal working industry, which will feed a motor industry (boilers, electric motors, internal combustion engines, etc...), which will then goes to feed the entire economy...

Using, riding trade to jumpstart your economy, in place of growing reliant on trade to sustain your economy.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162558

There's different values of "coming out on top".

From my point of view, it'd be : trying to exploit the opportunity while remaining aware that it could be cut at any moment, and making a conscious effort to keep alternatives ready.

Like, in your example, buying diesel engines and the diesel to fuel them, and using them to jumpstart a biofuel production capability, which will fuel a metal working industry, which will feed a motor industry (boilers, electric motors, internal combustion engines, etc...), which will then goes to feed the entire economy...

Using, riding trade to jumpstart your economy, in place of growing reliant on trade to sustain your economy.

Well, biodiesel would be a later-stage biofuel, but yeah. Elusive is hoping, in my current headcanon, that the NCR's short-memoried democratic government will get comfortable with petroleum and drop support for biofuel development while the NCR is still hooked. Or at least that they won't have built their military up too much when they stop the trade, though he'd then have to listen to the Miliozi saying "Told you so!" and deal with them getting the majority of the NCR's resources instead of him. Of course, the NCR probably would have built its military up enough to give the Alliance pause, which could potentially lead to an interesting cold war scenario. The major difficulty would be the SPP and any megaspell facilities that the NCR reactivates; Celestia One, while formidable, is also relatively vulnerable and could be taken out in a first strike (or even a pre-hot-war plausibly deniable precision ground strike).
And this gives a FoE setting for sixties spy fiction!

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162567

So… this got longer than I expected. I feel a bit like I'm writing the multiple endings for a Fallout game.

The key thing is, though, I think, whether the NCR will be successfully seduced by foreign petroleum.
__If so, we get a friendly, productive, and extensive trade relationship with the Alliance with two sub-possibilities:
____If Hell exists, Canine Petroleum prevents the Alliance from winning the economic war; while the NCR is dependent on imported petroleum, it has two potential sources that it can play off each other to its benefit.
____If Hell doesn't exist, NEROC's monopoly continues. The NCR, unless they can find their own petroleum source (using equipment either acquired by espionage or fully domestically designed and produced, since the Alliance certainly won't sell them any) or manage to get biofuel production back up and running, probably eventually become the third central member of the Alliance, which is then the dominant power on the planet.
__If the NCR rejects petroleum, the Alliance loses its by far most potent weapon in the economic war; when it becomes clear that it can't win, it will withdraw. Again, we've two sub-possibilities:
____If the Alliance judges the NCR military to already be too strong, the two powers enter a state of cold war, each scheming to try and find a way to topple the other but not daring a direct conflict. No idea how that will end, but it sounds like an interesting setting.
____If the Alliance thinks that a military victory would be practical, the Miliozi will lead an invasion. This has its own sub-possibilities:
______The Alliance wins, and subsequent NCR freedom fighters are unsuccessful. The Miliozi, as the driving force behind the military solution, receive most of the spoils. Most of the NCR's territory becomes Miliozi territory, and the rest of the Alliance snaps up the remainder. The rest of the peninsula follows in kind. The power balance of the Alliance is tipped in favor of the Miliozi, who begin to exert more control over the lesser members, the mixed new settlements, and even the Elusive Company. Exactly where the future goes from there is uncertain, but its government will probably be a benevolent military dictatorship of zebras.
______The Alliance wins but is eventually forced to pull out. The NCR, if it still recognizably exists, will be starting out with nearly no infrastructure; the Alliance will raze as much as possible in the later stages of the resistance to tray and make the people of the region completely dependent on imports. Everything will have to be rebuilt from scratch, and the Alliance will be leaning on everyone it can to not help. The NCR probably ends up massively eclipsed by the Alliance both technologically and economically and will likely not recover; they may eventually join the Alliance as a minor power.
______The NCR repels the invasion. The NCR will be damaged and angry and will probably launch a counter-invasion as soon as possible. That gets a bit too complex to simulate here, I think.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162573

RE Maripony Hellhounds :

Well, the place is a well known source of gems, the Gardens cleared the taint & radiations, and most importantly the Hellhounds consider it their home - and everyone knows how territorial they are, and no one want to piss them off if they can avoid it.

The NCR and the Hellhounds came to an agreement regarding the exploitation of the region's natural resources.


Maripony itself, as in the ruins of the Goddess' lair, is sort of a pilgrimage place for the Alicorns, regardless of if they live with the NCR / Followers or chose their own path. There's also a little community of alicorns living in the surrounding area.

gardens would have cleared out all the IMP, the mines were cleaned out which is why the base was built there in the first place and then used as a storage facility. There are no gems to mine anymore.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162576

RE Maripony Hellhounds :

Well, the place is a well known source of gems, the Gardens cleared the taint & radiations, and most importantly the Hellhounds consider it their home - and everyone knows how territorial they are, and no one want to piss them off if they can avoid it.

The NCR and the Hellhounds came to an agreement regarding the exploitation of the region's natural resources.


Maripony itself, as in the ruins of the Goddess' lair, is sort of a pilgrimage place for the Alicorns, regardless of if they live with the NCR / Followers or chose their own path. There's also a little community of alicorns living in the surrounding area.

gardens would have cleared out all the IMP, the mines were cleaned out which is why the base was built there in the first place and then used as a storage facility. There are no gems to mine anymore.

Ah, a moment's research shows that you are correct about the lack of gems! Thank you very much for the information.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162713

RE Maripony Hellhounds :

Well, the place is a well known source of gems, the Gardens cleared the taint & radiations, and most importantly the Hellhounds consider it their home - and everyone knows how territorial they are, and no one want to piss them off if they can avoid it.

The NCR and the Hellhounds came to an agreement regarding the exploitation of the region's natural resources.


Maripony itself, as in the ruins of the Goddess' lair, is sort of a pilgrimage place for the Alicorns, regardless of if they live with the NCR / Followers or chose their own path. There's also a little community of alicorns living in the surrounding area.

gardens would have cleared out all the IMP, the mines were cleaned out which is why the base was built there in the first place and then used as a storage facility. There are no gems to mine anymore.

Ah, a moment's research shows that you are correct about the lack of gems! Thank you very much for the information.

Happy to keep a head cannon from misfiring.


I would rather call it a world view anyway.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162714

Then Hell exist, and it is populated by over-sized, over-territorial and over-aggressive dogs.

A thing I haven't quite understood : what's the causal link between the Dogs / Hounds living in Hell and them presenting an alternative to NEROC's monopoly on oil ?

By the way, what does "NEROC" stands for ?


Oh, and one last thing : "Hell" is the new name for Ponyville and the surrounding area, right ?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162716

Why would the Alliance be so keen on going to war, either economic or armed, with the Equestrian Peninsula ? Are they still hung up about the whole "nuclear war" deal, or is it something else ?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162734

Then Hell exist, and it is populated by over-sized, over-territorial and over-aggressive dogs.

A thing I haven't quite understood : what's the causal link between the Dogs / Hounds living in Hell and them presenting an alternative to NEROC's monopoly on oil ?

Hell's territory contains petroleum reserves, and the Alliance is friendly enough with Hell/the hellhounds are clever enough to start working with them. By the time the Alliance realizes that, kindness or not, the hellhounds are still striking out on their own, the newly-founded Canine Petroleum is established enough to start trading with Equestria.

By the way, what does "NEROC" stands for ?

New Equestria Rock Oil Company, the Elusive-Company-owned petroleum company that is the Alliance's primary weapon in the economic war.

Oh, and one last thing : "Hell" is the new name for Ponyville and the surrounding area, right ?

Oh, no! Sorry about the confusion. Hell is around hereish, I think:

Why would the Alliance be so keen on going to war, either economic or armed, with the Equestrian Peninsula ? Are they still hung up about the whole "nuclear war" deal, or is it something else ?

Oh, no, they don't want strategic megaspells deployed again. (Which is not to say that CARE won't pop right back into being if this goes into a cold war, since the Alliance has Profectum and the NCR has Celestia One and, probably, old megaspell casting facilities.) The Alliance wants economic war primarily because Elusive wants to conquer the peninsula though mostly economic/political means; that would remove a potential threat, greatly increase the Alliance's power, and, due to the prominent role of the Elusive Company and its subsidiaries in such an endeavor, greatly increase Elusive's power within the Alliance. The Alliance wants a war of arms primarily because the Miliozi want to conquer the peninsula through force of arms; that would remove a potential threat, greatly increase the Alliance's power, and, due to the prominent role of the Miliozi in such an endeavor, greatly increase their power within the Alliance. The only reason why they didn't try this early is that the GPE wasn't interested in trade, was isolationist by nature and not stupid enough to think that attacking the Alliance would solve their resource shortages, and was judged strong enough to make a military conquest quite a headache (in particular, they had a massive terrain advantage; the Alliance is good at fighting in the air as the air, but they've almost nothing that can fight on cloud terrain).

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162741

Gurble! This is getting difficult to keep up with! Is there an encyclopedia yet?

Maripony has been balefired, but then again it had already been in the past, and I was under the impression that the Hellhounds were immune to the adverse effects of radiation. So that's one thing.

Hellhounds are based off of deathclaws, and there's a little thing about them that I like: in spite of all the magical mutagen (in both settings) and the near-superpower strength that came of it, these guys are still basically normal animals. Deathclaws (and likely hellhounds) don't live to 200, you won't find a living example from during the war. Goris (albino hellhound) was specifically described as elderly near the end. There also isn't any evidence that they're immune to radiation- but if you've ever played Fallout (especially the console versions, where you're treated to loading screen messages for minutes at a time) then you probably know that "Throughout the years, dogs have remained largely unaltered by radiation." It doesn't imply immunity, it's just saying that there aren't mutant/ghoul dogs. Something FOE has already thrown out the window.

As for the population decimation... you've got to remember that hellhounds weren't all that numerous even before the incident. They had precisely one known settlement and one hidden settlement. Blow up the ones living in Maripony and all that's left are wanderers, raiders, the farm hellhounds and the enslaves. They were already endangered, then Littlepip murdered half of them. Yeah?

("Gurble! This is getting difficult to keep up with! Is there an encyclopedia yet?" => In retrospect.... that wasn't as ridiculous as it sounded...)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162743

Gurble! This is getting difficult to keep up with! Is there an encyclopedia yet?

Maripony has been balefired, but then again it had already been in the past, and I was under the impression that the Hellhounds were immune to the adverse effects of radiation. So that's one thing.

Hellhounds are based off of deathclaws, and there's a little thing about them that I like: in spite of all the magical mutagen (in both settings) and the near-superpower strength that came of it, these guys are still basically normal animals. Deathclaws (and likely hellhounds) don't live to 200, you won't find a living example from during the war. Goris (albino hellhound) was specifically described as elderly near the end. There also isn't any evidence that they're immune to radiation- but if you've ever played Fallout (especially the console versions, where you're treated to loading screen messages for minutes at a time) then you probably know that "Throughout the years, dogs have remained largely unaltered by radiation." It doesn't imply immunity, it's just saying that there aren't mutant/ghoul dogs. Something FOE has already thrown out the window.

As for the population decimation... you've got to remember that hellhounds weren't all that numerous even before the incident. They had precisely one known settlement and one hidden settlement. Blow up the ones living in Maripony and all that's left are wanderers, raiders, the farm hellhounds and the enslaves. They were already endangered, then Littlepip murdered half of them. Yeah?

Of course, PH adds the hellhounds at the army base in Hoofington, implying that there may also be other settlements on the peninsula, but Maripony was still probably their center.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162744

Fair enough.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p360-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162748

Fair enough.

What is?

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162750

Fair enough.

What is?

What Mel said about Hellhounds and which justify Kkat's statement of them being an endangered species.

Which would tend to echo the fate of the talking deathclaws in Fallout 2.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162753

Fair enough.

What is?

What Mel said about Hellhounds and which justify Kkat's statement of them being an endangered species.

Which would tend to echo the fate of the talking deathclaws in Fallout 2.

Ah.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162755

Basically, collateral damage of the Hero's quest for the greater good.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162763

Oh, and one last thing : "Hell" is the new name for Ponyville and the surrounding area, right ?

Oh, no! Sorry about the confusion. Hell is around hereish, I think:

So on the East Coast of the Marediterranean Sea, right ? So it's, like, FoE!Israel, right ? The Dogs' promised land ?

This bring an interesting idea : tankers cruising the MT Sea, and people building naval fleet to protect / embargo the oil trade.

Also, possible tensions around the "Gibraltar" straight.

Spoiler:

Remind me again what you call "CARE" ? Also, what about Profectum that makes it important in such a scenario ?

The question is, why do they want to conquer the Peninsula, or remove a potential threat ? Have they not heard of self-fulfilling prophecies ?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162767

Hinds... question.

You don't intend to write a fic yet you have so much headcanon for so many things... why?
I'm not trying to trample all over your fun, it's just strange to see is all.
Strange =! bad, don't get me wrong. I'm just curious as to why you'd have all these headcanon happenings and situations if you never truly intend to "use" them.

(that's a point...)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162770

Can't answer for him, but for me... because it's fun.

Some people have their brains always turned on, and that's a way like any other to keep it active and entertained.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162776

"So on the East Coast of the Marediterranean Sea, right ? So it's, like, FoE!Israel, right ? The Dogs' promised land ?"
With most of the building being underground (partly because the hellhounds like it that way and partly because the wildlife on the surface in the area is particularly nasty, one of the reasons why the Alliance let the land go to the dogs :)), but, yeah, together with the petroleum reserves, I did have in mind some Middle Eastern influence.

"This bring an interesting idea : tankers cruising the MT Sea, and people building naval fleet to protect / embargo the oil trade.

Also, possible tensions around the "Gibraltar" straight."
I've had similar ideas. The Principality of Gibhalter controls the strait and is an Alliance member (and the Alliance navy more or less controls the Mareditteranean, not that they've too much competition)… but the Alliance is on friendly terms with Hell. The hellhounds ran gems and intelligence to the Alliance during the Wasteland era; the two groups have been trading for some time, and Elusive is proud to be liked by them. He spearheaded the resettlement effort after the peninsular population was devastated, hoping that the new state would eventually join the Alliance. Then the hellhounds discovered oil. The Alliance can't stop Hell-flagged tankers from crossing the strait, as it still wants to be on good terms with Hell, partly because it doesn't want to be seen as ready to cast aside old friendships the moment the reward of betrayal goes high enough. At the same time, allowing those tankers through supplies the NCR with another source of oil, and Hell, while it also wants to be on good terms with the Alliance, is quite eager to trade with the NCR (partly for the actual benefits of trade, partly to rub the NCR's face in the fact that they need the hellhounds again and this time it's the dogs who are in charge).

"Remind me again what you call "CARE" ?"
Oh, CARE's not actually mine; it's from FoE. :) "Communally Assured Reciprocal Existence", FoE's positive-spun name for MAD.

"Also, what about Profectum that makes it important in such a scenario ?"
I'm not sure what you mean by that, unless you've forgotten or haven't read what I've said about Profectum before. Basically, Profectum was the Pax Roamana's half-counterpart to Hoofington (counterpart in terms of being the R&D center, not counterpart in terms of being a deliberate target for the enemy). Though hit heavily in the apocalypse, it had the benefit of a bunch of prototype defensive technology that, for one reason or another, never saw mass production. It survived reasonably intact (though with a relatively high ghoul population) and later became an Alliance member. Basically, the Alliance having Profectum means that they've got one of the finest R&D centers (and university, post-apocalypse) in the modern world. Even without new designs, having Profectum means that they have the plans, and in some cases the designers, for most of the Zebra weapons of the war. Including SACIIs. Of course, the Alliance would prefer to use cast megaspells and is indeed working on them, but they're harder to get online than a good old balefire-tipped strategic missile.

"The question is, why do they want to conquer the Peninsula, or remove a potential threat ? Have they not heard of self-fulfilling prophecies ?"
Elusive is openly expansionist; he technically is, remember, a rogue AI that wants to take over the world. A large part of the reason why he wants the peninsula is simply that it's there. The Miliozi, unlike the Elusive Company, aren't fundamentally expansionist, but Alliance internal politics make them just as eager to conquer the peninsula as Elusive is. The Miliozi also operate pretty much all the time in some degree of siege mindset; it's ingrained into their culture by this point. Lastly, the Alliance would really like to have more control over and access to peninsular gem supplies, and the massive amounts of food available wouldn't hurt either.
Simple version: The Alliance wants resources, the Elusive Company wants to expand just because, the Miliozi are paranoid and defensive, and the Elusive Company and the Miliozi are both eager to take the peninsula before the other one does.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162777

Hinds... question.

You don't intend to write a fic yet you have so much headcanon for so many things... why?
I'm not trying to trample all over your fun, it's just strange to see is all.
Strange =! bad, don't get me wrong. I'm just curious as to why you'd have all these headcanon happenings and situations if you never truly intend to "use" them.

Well--

Can't answer for him, but for me... because it's fun.

Some people have their brains always turned on, and that's a way like any other to keep it active and entertained.

Okay, it looks like, in this case, you can answer for me. :)

(... which is swiftly brushed aside)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162778

Don't take it wrong, just as a reminder : I barely follow the Comment Thread, and I've not been here (as in, in the Comment Crew) since the beginning ; and I'm also not in your head. So unless you wrote all of that somewhere, most people who are in the same case as me won't know all the intricacies of your headcannon. Which is why by the way I'm considering Iron's idea of starting a thread to dump all these headcanon discussions into.


Anyway :

Profectum & the power of SCIENCE ! Got it.

Rogue AI ? can you tell me more about that ?

What's the origin of the Miliozi again ?

(Ha. Haha. HAHAHAHAA. HAAAAAAA. Oh god... Have mercy on my soul)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162789

@Harmony Ltd.:
"Don't take it wrong, just as a reminder : I barely follow the Comment Thread, and I've not been here (as in, in the Comment Crew) since the beginning ; and I'm also not in your head. So unless you wrote all of that somewhere, most people who are in the same case as me won't know all the intricacies of your headcannon. Which is why by the way I'm considering Iron's idea of starting a thread to dump all these headcanon discussions into."
Ah, sorry.

"Profectum & the power of SCIENCE ! Got it."
Aye. Someone actually point out that it might also be possible to make Half Life references, which I hadn't considered, since Profectum is built mostly inside a mesa in the middle of a desert.

"Rogue AI ? can you tell me more about that ?"
Ah.

(His preferred avatar, or the best approximation that I could make with the pony creator. Yes, he probably does look familiar; I started waaaaay back with a base of R63 Rarity because why not, and it's too late to change it. My explanation is that the head programmer was a fan of the Mare of the Ministry of Image.)
Elusive started out as the onboard AI of the Elusive, an Equestrian cruise/Q ship built near the end of the war partly as a "We are so confident now that we're building a cruise ship and sending it out into the ocean. Want to go ahead and surrender?" gesture and partly as another possible retreat for certain wealthy and powerful ponies in the event of a megaspell exchange. The ship was equipped with good quarters, an emergency food recycling and ocean-harvesting system, a state-of-the-art defense system, enough robots and automation to be run entirely by the ship's computer (and minimize the poor ponies needed aboard as servants), and a reactor to power it all. What it lacked, next to Stables and the Redoubt, in static defenses and size, it would, so the thought went, make up for with mobility and the ability to take in resources from the outside.

The Elusive was at sea when the apocalypse happened, and the planning worked… more or less. What was not planned was that Elusive would jump over his safeguards, lock down all command systems, and take control of the ship for the good of the ponies aboard. To make a long story short, he made his way into the Marediterranean, used his 10 charisma (useful for pacifying spoiled rich ponies) and cleverness to talk some Zebra ships into joining with him for mutual survival, including, pivotally, one of the first drillships. The floating metropolis of Elusive City grew up around the drillship and the Elusive.

(Sorry that this is so brief, but I'm somewhat busy at the moment.)

"What's the origin of the Miliozi again ?"
Well, here's something dated 2013-4-8:

Spoiler:

Here's something older but more detailed, dated 2012-1-24; I've not reread all of it, but it ought to still be at least mostly accurate (though note the changed Equestrian name of the city; this was before Caoimhe helped me out finding the new one):

Spoiler:

edit: Oh, to clarify Elusive's reasons for expansionism: it's an extension of his programming to take care of the ponies on the original ship. He wants to take care of people, fundamentally. He just happens to think that the best way to do that is to rule all of them. Oh, also, I forgot one of the most important parts of his design! He's a network-based AI, not a maneframe-based one. Adding more nodes to him increases his capabilities (with some practical constraints but in theory indefinitely).

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162791

I'll eventually contribute to the headcanon, I'm just...well...you people have a fair idea of how I am about this stuff. Plus I'm abnormally busy.

But my contributions might have to do with sky carriages.
Because technology.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162795

Exactly what is going on with the whole headcanon thing right now? I remember it being about hellhounds, but now it's a rogue AI?

(I don't see how you can be confused. Isn't it CLEAR ENOUGH ??! *sarcasm*)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162797

Elusive... Rarity R63... I see what you did there, buddy.

So, basically, it's the Poseidon Oil Rig. (unrelated : http://www.poseidonoil.com/ it exist)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162798

Exactly what is going on with the whole headcanon thing right now? I remember it being about hellhounds, but now it's a rogue AI?

You cannot grasp the true form of our discussions.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162799

But seriously, just go a few pages back, read the whole thing, and it will become clear(er).

(to my defense, I had not the slightest idea of how out of hand it had become at this point)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p390-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162800

TL;WR

(you bet your fucking -ass- you will)

[Harmony Ltd.]

(continued)

Elusive... Rarity R63... I see what you did there, buddy.

So, basically, it's the Poseidon Oil Rig.

(The name "Elusive" isn't mine, just to be clear; I found it being used for R63 Rarity somewhere else.)
...I hadn't thought of it like that, but I suppose that there are similarities, yeah. Interesting.
Oh, random: I think that Elusive City's mass transit system is an urbanaut-style monorail. I also seem to recall that my latest detailed thoughts about this city had it being roughly crescent-shaped. I had a pretty fun time researching floating structures for its non-seaplane/amphibian new airport.

(unrelated : http://www.poseidonoil.com/ it exist)

...So it does. Wow. Not nearly as impressive in real life, though. :)

harmonybait:

As an aside, Babs might have ended up involved with the Elusive. This area of my headcanon doesn't have much detail, but I recall thinking that she might have gone to work for Apple Pancake Enterprises and that they did a lot of work on the ship. Not sure, though.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p420-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162817

Elusive is openly expansionist; he technically is, remember, a rogue AI that wants to take over the world.

Didn't remember until this reminder. Encyclopedia would help clear such forgettings up right quick!

one of the reasons why the Alliance let the land go to the dogs

Can't quite say why I enjoy the new depth given to this classic turn of phrase here.

Anyway, not to seem irreverent, but in explosion news, my plant's aux. transformer is now a smoldering wreck.
I really hope this doesn't become a thing.

How was work today?
Okay, I guess. A transformer blew up.

You really can't say that about a lot of jobs. And... man, I can not concentrate with that banner. I don't even notice it when I just start to bob along. Plus now that I've seen that insidious video I've got that bloody song in my head.

murica:

100% RL-3 Approved!:

Though shouldn't that be 'patriotic cancer?'

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p420-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162822

harmonybait:

As an aside, Babs might have ended up involved with the Elusive. This area of my headcanon doesn't have much detail, but I recall thinking that she might have gone to work for Apple Pancake Enterprises and that they did a lot of work on the ship. Not sure, though.

Alternatively :



The artist's story for that drawing at the source => http://kimba77.deviantart.com/art/FoE-War-Babs-344327754

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p420-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162826

(The name "Elusive" isn't mine, just to be clear; I found it being used for R63 Rarity somewhere else.)

That was what I was pointing out.

...I hadn't thought of it like that, but I suppose that there are similarities, yeah. Interesting.
Oh, random: I think that Elusive City's mass transit system is an urbanaut-style monorail. I also seem to recall that my latest detailed thoughts about this city had it being roughly crescent-shaped. I had a pretty fun time researching floating structures for its non-seaplane/amphibian new airport.

Well, first thing first... Is it a fleet of ships, a single monolithic structure, or a mix between the two ?

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p420-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162849

@ Hinds :

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p420-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162851

...I can't even begin to explain how I feel about the thread at this moment...

(I'm not sure either)

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p420-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162852

Go on, give it a try.

I am curious.

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p420-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162853

@ Hinds (continued) :

https://cloudsville.rpg-board.net/t973p420-official-project-horizons-comment-crew-chat-thread#162856

Spoiler:

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