Fallout Equestria: Tartarus Contingency

Hey all!  Fresh meat here.

I usually don't post on forums like this, but this place seems pretty nice from the rumors of friends and so on.  It won't kill me, and it certainly won't off you guys.

I'm in the midst of developing and writing a FoE side-fic, The Tartarus Contingency.

I'd like to dump some of the things I've done here, as well as plans for the fic/hate mail magnets/ideas to get some opinions on, and just to dump it.  I don't really host pony based stuff outside of pony sites, so this seems like a good place to start.  It's going to be a TL;DR post, so... yeah.  Sorry about that.

anyway, Synopsis:

The Crystal Kingdom was destroyed in the balefire, just like anything else of Equestrian design.  Without Stables in the hard ground of the north, most had expected the annexed nation to die.  However, it did not suffer the full brunt of the balefire strike; a huge portion of the city was destroyed, including the castle, but the shield that protected it managed to stop the complete annihilation of the tiny nation.  What was left of the Crystal Empire formed the city of Resilience, and due to it's isolation and hostile environment, very few (if any) of it's residents are ever seen in the southern wasteland.  Even fewer southern ponies would ever travel there without a concrete goal in mind, while north and south both have some sinister campfire tales about one another.

Trade to and from Resilience is dwindling, and slowly starving it of necessary resources - pipes to maintain hydroponics, healing supplies, etc.  Snapshot is sent out with many other "pickers" to try and establish trade in any way they can.  In his travels, he finds the pony cities nearest to Resilience hold a wealth of pre-war information that, when organized from their broken state, form the history of his home.  The more he finds, the more he begins to loathe both sides, and the more he realizes that saving Resilience might destroy more than it rectifies.
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Main Characters:
Snapshot
A crystal pony, and a photographer at heart.  He has very plain goals -try to get his hometown in a better situation.  He resorts to some very brutal and despondent means, as he is on a bit of a time limit (spoilers, but it happens quite early anyway).  All in all he's normal for a waster.  He's only trying to survive the day to day grind of the wastes, but in so doing, unearths a great deal of old prejudices just from being a crystal pony.

Phenalope
A flamboyant unicorn stallion, fascinated (if not obsessed) with old world technology and social aspects.  He even goes so far as to collect crystal pony storybooks, pop-up books being a favorite, as he can dissect and reassemble them like a machine.  He is also considered a complete maniac by anyone aware of how he works, situating himself in old world ruins he wants to study and surrounding himself with lethal homemade traps "for his own safety."  He calls these places "fun houses."  Snapshot is one of the few to actually make it through these, and due to a silver tongue and the fact that Snapshot is a real crystal pony, Phen joins him to both study him and for protection.

Hokey
A wing-crippled griffon working for a lawbringing faction known as the Regulators.  She is past middle age, and has a very stoic and amused outlook on everything, and approaches Snapshot over his camera - the Regulators could use him, as he can take photographs of criminals, making hunting them easier (wanted posters).  She later follows Snapshot around as protection under the auspice she's helping him replenish his home once he explains his story.  In the same instant, she uses her gruff but just nature to try and temper Snapshot's violent and hateful attitude, and to help him come to terms with what they find out about the Crystal Empire.  She has a penchant for being "old fashioned" (using lever action weapons and presenting the visage of a spaghetti western sheriff), and can make a mean Bloatsprite stew.  Has a pet Radscorpion named Pokey, complete with little leash and stinger cover.
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I'll post some more side characters if interest is shown, as this post is (as warned) TL;DR.  At this point the story seems to be in limbo - it isn't.  I've been grappling with the problem of the current chapter and how to deal with the monster involved, but that is coming to a close (screw it! I'll clean up what I got) and I've already started the following chapter.

Things to come (SPOILERS)-
A Deer reservation, with non ghoul survivors.
"Dark Days" - that phenomenon in some environments where nights can last several days or weeks, if not more. ("there are things we really don't want to run into after dark...")
An evil pony on par with colonel sanders in terms of appearance, obsessed with competition (war and baseball being his favorites).
Mortal combat involving a shovel (if you think the road flare was bad...)
Arrival at the main train hub past the crystal mountains, and meeting "The Three Sisters" that are seen as the matriarchs of three of the city's main components - trade, medicine, and military.

Hope I didn't bore you- thanks for reading.