[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

Evilgidgit wrote:Then that means that there are eight OIA Projects! :squak:How did I miss that? Which chapter is it introduced in?

Introduced what in particular ?

Anyway, just a personal thought :

It was my impression that, if the Redoubt was intended to protect the Aristoponies and other VIPs and what Horse did what simply to double-cross everyone ; its primary function as far as the OIA was concerned was :

1/ to siphon funds from the Aristoponies / VIPs by selling them a ticket to survive the looming apocalypse ;
2/ to ensure their compliance and cooperation in whatever plots the OIA might have needed them for ;
3/ to have an OIA-friendly "stable" that wasn't a Stable-Tec one (let's consider the relationship Scootaloo and Goldenblood shared...)

At least that's the use I would have made of the Redoubt myself.


edit : ninja'd by Somber

There's one last aspect that missed.  It was also to be a command center for if Canterlot was ever lost in a balefire or megaspell attack.  Unlike a stable, it would have the capacity to continue carrying out the war and organizing a counter strike through the Hoofington Megaspell Complex.  Think a ponified Cheyanne Mountain.  However, since it was one of the Projects Goldenblood was suspected of tampering with, Luna didn't evacuate till it was too late.  Celestia didn't know about it.

You have no idea how relevant that is to something I'm currently writing. :D

Thank you for clearing that up, Somber.

Wow. Um, looks like quite a lot happened while I was getting a new laptop battery. Sorry about all this, Somber.

This just goes to show, laptop batteries are the cause of all bad things.

Remember kids : always carry a spare battery with you in cases like these.

- And knowing is half the the battle !

G.I. J- *is shot*

Curse you, laptop battery!!!

To be fair, if Hinds has a mac as I suspect, changing the battery might not be trivial. But enough random chit-chat, that's for the other thread.

So, random speculations time...

How do people here see The Core as actually being like ? Do you think it's a place drowned in enervation where you can hear the screams of the damned in your head ; or do you think it's on the contrary the eye of the storm, eerily calm and peaceful, and still pristine after all these centuries as maintenance robots still go here and there fixing and cleaning things up ?

Okay, hopefully this is close to what I had before it got all mangled from failed copy/paste with text.

I'd like to start with an apology to Somber: I shouldn't have made the Shining Armor jab last night; coming from someone else, it might better have made the illustrative point I meant it to, but from me, it just seems rude. Also, the emoticon was uncalled for.

dramadramadramadrama:

Derpmind wrote:Marvel at my crappy paint skills and perfect timing.

There is no such thing as "crappy paint skills" (but there is such a thing as "failure to spell 'yeah' with an 'h'").:

Oh, and I figure it's probably an Enervation hellhole, but with machinery and infrastructure better preserved than anywhere else in part due to the complete lack of microbial life.

I just noticed the doll in Somber's head is Blackjack. I JUST fucking noticed that, and I've seen that picture a hundred fucking times.

When I think of the Core, I think of the Megadeth song "Tornado of Souls." Not because it describes the Core all that well (though it does work well for PH on the whole) but because the title just fits. =P Mostly I think of an ethereal green spiral, where the pull of the Eater blurs the line between the physical and the metaphysical. Senses break down. The sound I associate with it is that of Darkspace: white noise made from a thousand screams, chaotic and yet clearly echoing a single note. It smells like ozone and concentrated ammonia. Everything about it is overwhelming and indescribable, breaking you down in an instant and tearing you apart, adding your soul to the shrieking fire.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:So, random speculations time...

How do people here see The Core as actually being like ? Do you think it's a place drowned in enervation where you can hear the screams of the damned in your head ; or do you think it's on the contrary the eye of the storm, eerily calm and peaceful, and still pristine after all these centuries as maintenance robots still go here and there fixing and cleaning things up ?

A little of column A and a little of column B. My current headcannon for the inside of The Core is that it has habitable, fully functional areas that are oddly devoid of Enervation, but all it takes is one turn of a corner or entering a different room to suddenly be bathed in so much Enervation you pretty much start liquifying in seconds. I tend to think of it as a Doom-esque labyrinth, only replace the zombies and demons with robots and cybernetic hybrid monstrosities (like mass production versions of Dawn).

Somber wrote:Sucks.  Just... horrible.  Probably going to cut it short so it might only be 20-25 pages.

Can't speak for anyone else but I'd be in favor of shorter chapters. I usually have to take a break before the end of chapter though, I'm a pretty slow reader.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:So, random speculations time...

How do people here see The Core as actually being like ? Do you think it's a place drowned in enervation where you can hear the screams of the damned in your head ; or do you think it's on the contrary the eye of the storm, eerily calm and peaceful, and still pristine after all these centuries as maintenance robots still go here and there fixing and cleaning things up ?

 Didn't somebody say that Rampage managed to get into the core once, and that she raved about a "city of meat and blood" or something similar?  That has me thinking it's gonna look like Horizons Lab, but bigger.

And on the subject of random speculation:  remember Rampage's Twist's freakout in Tenpony?  Here, I'll post it for completion's sake, with the most intriguing section in bold:

Chapter 34 wrote:
“What’s… what’s happened?  Where am I?  This isn’t Miramare!  Where’s Peppermint?  What happened to her?”  She began looking around wildly.  “Where are they?  This is a hospital!  Are they hurt?  What’s going on?”

Now, think about this: you're a mare who's just been able to conceive a child with the mare you love.  Perhaps its through freaky Zebra alchemy, perhaps some MoP shenanigans.  You're daughter comes out a healthy, red-striped zony.  You've spent all your civilian life making candies, specifically peppermints.  What would you name your new red-and-white striped daughter?  Maybe "Peppermint"? 

And when the world is ending, what would you do to protect your young foal, who's maybe five or six?  What would you do if you knew that your lover had put her super regeneration talisman in you to save your life?

What I think is that Rampage is Twist and Shujaa's magical lesbian spawn who then got the Phoenix talisman put in her by Twist when during the final bombing.

I have no clue what's been going on the last few days here, been worked to death(short version is incompetent manager at work more focused on getting everything 100% OCD levels of aligned before even putting things on the shelf before opening the store; so we're doing 5x the amount of work needed to actually get a store opened), any ways that's neither here nor there; I did have a interesting thought while working though.

Ironpony made the most long term sense militarily out of all the projects.  Sure alicorns would have ended the war, BUT if you had 10000 alicorns versus 10000 Blackjacks who would win?  The alicorns would have been a magic bullet to win the war, but the problem with alicorns is they're still flesh and blood.  The super alicorn in the original FoE, even though it was insanely huge, it still died when balefire eggs were set off inside her shield.

What probably would have happened if the world didn't end would be Equestria would have won the war, but considering the zebras had bypass spells then in the long run the most likely outcome would have been bypass spells would have been perfected and then back to ground zero.  Like how power armor was supposed to be all powerful armor that was supposed to protect ponies from everything, yes they are powerful, but not immortal.  What I mean by this is if Twilight had made alicorns earlier then the most likely outcome is Equestria would win the war, but in the long run bypass spells would have found it's ways into weaponry.  Like instead of armor piercing bullets for steel rangers have alicorn killer bullets.
The problem: You can't upgrade a alicorn to survive without vital organs.

Ironpony on the other hand just look at deus.  Deus took a bomb to the insides to blow in half and he's still alive.  A alicorn with a bomb inside it's organs, nuh uh they dead.  A cyborg that's a brain in a toaster as long as you don't destroy the brain can be fixed and upgraded.  I can see why the leader of the zebras(don't remember his name for some reason) is using cyborgs.  I would not be surprised if the "dead" cyborg zebras after a battle are dragged off to get fixed.  With a almost metal cyborg to make sure they're dead dead you would have to cut their life support and then destroy the brain to make sure, otherwise who's to say their side won't just grab their brain(even though it's damaged) and pop them into another body.

With cyborgs you would just need to put the hardest shielding as the brain case, enclose a micro oxygen intake in case of decapitation to keep the brain stable, a short term supply of nutrients, and you'd have the closest to a perfect soldier you could get.
A entire battalion of these would be downright terrifying; not cause they would be as powerful as alicorns, rather you cut them down and after the battle most of them would get repaired, you cut them down again and get repaired, you cut them down again and they get repaired, you cut them down again and they get repaired, you cut them down again and they get repaired.
Such a army you would HAVE to headshot every time or face them again in battle and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.
Not to mention that they were fighting HELLHOUNDS, as in the creature that can slice through a alicorn's shield like tissue paper, and slowly starting to win is even more terrifying.

Technowolf wrote:

Chapter 34 wrote:
“What’s… what’s happened?  Where am I?  This isn’t Miramare!  Where’s Peppermint?  What happened to her?”  She began looking around wildly.  “Where are they?  This is a hospital!  Are they hurt?  What’s going on?”

Nice job spotting that! I think everyone missed that, looking back at the old comments I don't see it mentioned at all. The second part of the quote's kinda more opaque: We have no idea who 'they' are. Maybe Twist was minding a group of foals, and that included Peppermint? Anyways, it's kinda funny that Rampage being Twist's daughter is surprisingly plausible.

So here's a question: Now that we know that BJ is being wired into the Goddess, we know another trippy sequence is gonna happen and this time it will be psychic weirdness ahoy. One possibility, though, is that BJ might get completely integrated before the bomb that kills the Goddess goes off. So I think it is actually quite likely that Blackjack might gain a new pair of wings soon.  

Technowolf wrote:What I think is that Rampage is Twist and Shujaa's magical lesbian spawn who then got the Phoenix talisman put in her by Twist when during the final bombing.

…I say, I think that that's brilliant! No idea if it's right, but it makes so much sense… not at all bad for someone with fewer than ten posts here so far!

:)

Somber, you seem talkative lately. Can't say I mind; it's nice having you around.

I'm exhausted.  72 hours with almost no sleep.  Popping off here soon.

Somber wrote:I'm exhausted.  72 hours with almost no sleep.  Popping off here soon.

...72 HOURS?! Oh my. I hope that you can get some good rest soon, Somber.

I got your message, Hinds. Was buried under a mountain of spam in my inbox (LOL, even with Gmail's impressive filters, I still get spam now and then). Also, I sent you an email, Somber.

Keep up the good work, by the way.

Oh, and for the love of god, get some sleep. You don't want to end up like one of those Korean net cafe dudes.

 

Somber wrote:I'm exhausted.  72 hours with almost no sleep.  Popping off here soon.

 I know how that feels hehe, go on and get some sleep if you're that tired.  Hopefully you won't feel so exhausted in the morning.

I need to pay more attention here. D:

No sleep for 72 hours!? Somber, you got to bed right now!

As for the Core, I keep imagining that Blackjack's team will get there and they will find Goldenblood waiting for them. Though I would be very happy if he is still alive that he would get redemption and could reunite with Fluttershy and their daughter.

72 hours ain't got nothing on my 216, but seriously, never go past 100.
9 days straight without sleep is close to lethal and even after the first 50 you begin to receive signs of damage from sleep deprivation.
Just hope you've been able to sleep since, Somber.

What propels you to go that long without sleep? Unless it was a dare or something I can't see how anyone, minus a meth addiction, can go that long or would actively want to.

I don't suppose it's grading finales ?

Caoimhe wrote:What propels you to go that long without sleep? Unless it was a dare or something I can't see how anyone, minus a meth addiction, can go that long or would actively want to.

For Somber, he's been off his medication after his insurance company/policy failed him and he ran out.
For me? The first two days I was like, fuck it, too bored to sleep. Day three it became funny. Day four it became a challenge. Day seven is when it became inability to sleep. Day nine rolled along and I took a whole pot of sleeping meds because I knew if I didn't, I'd eventually die from it.