[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

Sanguine once sneezed on a nail that Big Daddy is going to step on and die from the infection.

Edit: Love the fact that even though I took the time to type his name out correctly and made damn sure the auto correct didn't change his name, I get back to my computer and saw that my phone put down Sangtime...

I think it was a prediction but not prophecy. He could see that Sanguine was untrustworthy, meant him harm, and was capable of doing it. Or, maybe it WAS prophecy, but Blackjack (as the maiden of the stars) is capable of changing fate, so her intervention altered the eventual outcome. (Or prophecy is just probability and BJ/the maiden tends to make the unlikely become true.)

In fact that would explain a lot of the discrepancies in predictions about Blackjack. As the Maiden, she's a literal wild card; capable of either great good or great evil. Prophecy about her tends to come out twisted because they see both outcomes at once?

FeatherDust wrote:I think it was a prediction but not prophecy. He could see that Sanguine was untrustworthy, meant him harm, and was capable of doing it. Or, maybe it WAS prophecy, but Blackjack (as the maiden of the stars) is capable of changing fate, so her intervention altered the eventual outcome. (Or prophecy is just probability and BJ/the maiden tends to make the unlikely become true.)

In fact that would explain a lot of the discrepancies in predictions about Blackjack. As the Maiden, she's a literal wild card; capable of either great good or great evil. Prophecy about her tends to come out twisted because they see both outcomes at once?

Big Daddy's prophecy has been pretty true. He just saw endless rivers of blood.

Scienza wrote:Big Daddy's prophecy has been pretty true. He just saw endless rivers of blood.

I'm referring specifically to the statement quoted by Carto that he could see that Sanguine was going to kill him.

Difficult to come true now, since Daddy is alive, and Sanguine isn't.

FeatherDust wrote:

Scienza wrote:Big Daddy's prophecy has been pretty true. He just saw endless rivers of blood.

I'm referring specifically to the statement quoted by Carto that he could see that Sanguine was going to kill him.

Difficult to come true now, since Daddy is alive, and Sanguine isn't.

Future ain't set in stone. It's usually written in, like, tea leaves and the curls of smoke. Wispy things that change easily and are erased quick. I'm seriously ticked at any story that has an immutable future that the story's characters can't do anything about. (It's a stupid attitude to take toward life that you can't change anything because changing stuff and things changing IS LIFE.) Especially the ones with time travel because that just makes time travel boring, which is the worst.

Ooh, I wanna jump in on the theories about Blackjack's immunity to Enervation!

I recently re-read the whole thing, and noticed something.

Silver Stripe said, after Blackjack's first upgrade in Chapter 34: "Your systems are powered by an internal microgenerator.. .we were actually very lucky to find an appropriate gem to run it..."
I wonder if the "appropriate gem" is a moonstone, or if there is moonstone somewhere in her body.  

Now, I can't find it, but I thought I remember Blackjack finding a piece of moonstone at some point before this. She never checks her bags anyway, so she probably wouldn't have noticed it missing. I might be remembering wrong, though.

FeatherDust wrote:

Scienza wrote:Big Daddy's prophecy has been pretty true. He just saw endless rivers of blood.

I'm referring specifically to the statement quoted by Carto that he could see that Sanguine was going to kill him.

Difficult to come true now, since Daddy is alive, and Sanguine isn't.

I know.

My money's on the possibility that Sanguine gave the Big D magic syphilis.

@Enervation

Honestly, I think BJ's enervation resistance is just due to a zebra talisman like Snip's running on her internal power.

Twilightrose42 wrote:Silver Stripe said, after Blackjack's first upgrade in Chapter 34: "Your systems are powered by an internal microgenerator.. .we were actually very lucky to find an appropriate gem to run it..."
I wonder if the "appropriate gem" is a moonstone, or if there is moonstone somewhere in her body.

Oooh, interesting catch. Might be a throwaway line, might not. But, as I noted in a previous post, BJ hasn't been fully immune to Enervation since her cyborg conversion. It's ramped up over time since then.

Twilightrose42 wrote:Now, I can't find it, but I thought I remember Blackjack finding a piece of moonstone at some point before this. She never checks her bags anyway, so she probably wouldn't have noticed it missing. I might be remembering wrong, though.

(Edit) You're correct, BJ found a chip of moonstone at Goldenblood's house and a sizable chunk from the cut-open Silver Bullet at Horizon Labs. Shortly after her... experiment... at Goldie's:

Unlike the metal flake, the moonstone was intact.  Only a small indentation had been made in it where I’d forced the two together.  “Woah…” I murmured as I looked at the faintly glowing white stone.
[Stygius] nodded, and I carefully put the crystal away in my saddlebags.  I wondered what had happened to the moonstone that’d been extracted from the Folly shell.  I supposed it was somewhere in the muck at the bottom of the bay underneath the HMS Celestia.  It hadn’t been among the things I’d gotten back in Tenpony.

Ooh, hey, good spotting...  I don't know if you're correct, but I didn't think of those.  It makes sense.

swicked wrote:...would it be possible for moonstone to grow over time? Like a seed crystal, growing larger with the application of harmony? :P

I sort of doubt it. It sounds like moonstone is condensed soul energy, or ordinary rock infused with souls, or something. Moonstone resonates with Harmony for sure, and exposure to Harmony might amplify its effects, but I think that growing more that way would be a bit like heating up steel in hopes of getting more iron.

[Edit: Speculation removed. Not borne out by the text.]

This is a bit apart from the usual talk, but I had a thought...

A number of you are probably aware that for a while now I've had this "music game", wherein I find a music track and try to find scenes, characters or events it could fit in PH, as a theme, a soundtrack or an evocation. Basically, associating music with the work.

So I was thinking, "what kind of music would fit the climactic final battle against the Eater of Soul". And I had an idea:

The Silence. And not just "an absence of music", but a complete and utter lack of sound. Not even the sound you can ear in your ears when there is almost no sound.

The idea being that the Eater of Souls' "song" is so powerfully all-drowning, that the best way to evoke it is by there not being any sound at all.

Plus the fact that Blackjack will probably need to counter that Song in order to fight the Eater. So something like active noise cancellation => no sound at all.


I dunno. I just had to share the thought.

SilentCarto wrote:

swicked wrote:...would it be possible for moonstone to grow over time? Like a seed crystal, growing larger with the application of harmony? :P

I sort of doubt it. It sounds like moonstone is condensed soul energy, or ordinary rock infused with souls, or something. Moonstone resonates with Harmony for sure, and exposure to Harmony might amplify its effects, but I think that growing more that way would be a bit like heating up steel in hopes of getting more iron.

I disagree. I think it's perfectly possible that there's an alchemical method of making more iron by heating up steel. Probably not efficient enough for practical purposes, but magicy magic magic. (I suppose at a stretch maybe the relative amount of energy you need to build more matter is less than IRL because magic and universal resonance background stuffs.) It's not what I think is most likely, but it'd be hilarious for BJ to find a big chunk of moonstone stuck in the bottom of her saddlebag.

"My Harmony is thiiis big!" 

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Plus the fact that Blackjack will probably need to counter that Song in order to fight the Eater. So something like active noise cancellation => no sound at all.


I dunno. I just had to share the thought.

That's a really cool+awesome+radical idea! Of course, any time things fell out of balance there'd be a huge burst of sound. And flashy lights. Hmm... Maybe what will happen is the complete opposite: BJ and Friends will spontaneously form the most metal band in the metal land and kill the devil with the powers of Love, Rock, and Sexual Innuendos.  

Now I'm just reminded of that one silly TCB fic where Xenolestia gets beaten by metal. Which one was it... Oh yes, this fic.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:This is a bit apart from the usual talk, but I had a thought...

A number of you are probably aware that for a while now I've had this "music game", wherein I find a music track and try to find scenes, characters or events it could fit in PH, as a theme, a soundtrack or an evocation. Basically, associating music with the work.

So I was thinking, "what kind of music would fit the climactic final battle against the Eater of Soul". And I had an idea:

The Silence. And not just "an absence of music", but a complete and utter lack of sound. Not even the sound you can ear in your ears when there is almost no sound.

The idea being that the Eater of Souls' "song" is so powerfully all-drowning, that the best way to evoke it is by there not being any sound at all.

Plus the fact that Blackjack will probably need to counter that Song in order to fight the Eater. So something like active noise cancellation => no sound at all.


I dunno. I just had to share the thought.

That's....that's actually pretty damn spooky.  

Harmony Ltd. wrote:This is a bit apart from the usual talk, but I had a thought...

A number of you are probably aware that for a while now I've had this "music game", wherein I find a music track and try to find scenes, characters or events it could fit in PH, as a theme, a soundtrack or an evocation. Basically, associating music with the work.

So I was thinking, "what kind of music would fit the climactic final battle against the Eater of Soul". And I had an idea:

The Silence. And not just "an absence of music", but a complete and utter lack of sound. Not even the sound you can ear in your ears when there is almost no sound.

The idea being that the Eater of Souls' "song" is so powerfully all-drowning, that the best way to evoke it is by there not being any sound at all.

Plus the fact that Blackjack will probably need to counter that Song in order to fight the Eater. So something like active noise cancellation => no sound at all.


I dunno. I just had to share the thought.

Very interesting. Now, the question is what that silence would do to Blackjack's soul.

Derpmind wrote:Future ain't set in stone. It's usually written in, like, tea leaves and the curls of smoke. Wispy things that change easily and are erased quick.

Or as Yoda said it, "Always in motion is the future."

You make a good point; even the best oracle of the age (overdosed Pinkie Pie) wasn't sure about the outcomes of events. By her own admission, even her best attempts to guide Pip and BJ had, at best, a tiny, slim chance of making everything come out okay in the end -- so that means they could have failed at any number of points, and her predictive abilities only let her see probabilities, not certainties.

Twilightrose42 wrote:Silver Stripe said, after Blackjack's first upgrade in Chapter 34: "Your systems are powered by an internal microgenerator.. .we were actually very lucky to find an appropriate gem to run it..."
I wonder if the "appropriate gem" is a moonstone, or if there is moonstone somewhere in her body.

Very interesting... I wouldn't have thought of moonstone as a gem, though. It's more of a powdery rock, isn't it? (I don't recall how it was described in the Choir lab or Goldie's cottage, so I could be mixing up real life moonstone with an unrelated FoE material.)

Also I would think BJ's recent moonstone trip would've made mention of having moonstone inside her if she did -- the moonstone chip talked about her having and fostering "the song", but didn't talk about her having something like itself inside her. Not proof, just circumstantial evidence.

SilentCarto wrote:

swicked wrote:...would it be possible for moonstone to grow over time? Like a seed crystal, growing larger with the application of harmony? :P

I sort of doubt it. It sounds like moonstone is condensed soul energy, or ordinary rock infused with souls, or something. Moonstone resonates with Harmony for sure, and exposure to Harmony might amplify its effects, but I think that growing more that way would be a bit like heating up steel in hopes of getting more iron.

On the other hand, you can convert moonstone into starmetal. It's entirely possible you could reverse that process... but I somehow doubt it (or that's what the annihilation reaction IS)...

Scienza wrote:Very interesting. Now, the question is what that silence would do to Blackjack's soul.

If we go with the "noise cancelling" thing? Probably nothing. I'd think it's when things get out of sync that the all-drowning scream start blasting away at her ego like a high pressure sand scraper (*).



(*): one Harmony point to anyone able to give me the English name of that thing

Harmony Ltd. wrote:

Scienza wrote:Very interesting. Now, the question is what that silence would do to Blackjack's soul.

If we go with the "noise cancelling" thing? Probably nothing. I'd think it's when things get out of sync that the all-drowning scream start blasting away at her ego like a high pressure sand scraper (*).



(*): one Harmony point to anyone able to give me the English name of that thing

Is the song actual noise, or is it arcane resonance? Because if it's the latter, going completely silent might amount to the utter erasure of Blackjack's soul.

Arcane mumbo-jumbo I'd say? And that's an interesting question now that I think of it.

The counter to the EoS's song is Harmony / "Moon Song", and thinking of it, both songs seems to lead toward the loss of individuality and absorption into a greater whole.

I don't know.

FeatherDust wrote:Very interesting... I wouldn't have thought of moonstone as a gem, though.  It's more of a powdery rock, isn't it?  (I don't recall how it was described in the Choir lab or Goldie's cottage, so I could be mixing up real life moonstone with an unrelated FoE material.)

Moonstone is a crystal.

It might have been bullet-shaped, but the entire thing was one solid worked piece of metal divided into two sections.  The larger of the two, a distorted half-sphere near the base of the shell and with its broad, flat side on the dividing wall, was packed full of a grayish paste like P-21’s explosives.  A small hole pierced through the shell to the small compartment, most of which was taken up by a strange, glowing hexagonal piece of crystalline stone that the robot arm’s saw hadn’t been able to cut through.

Later, showing it to Glory:

“Well…” she turned it over.  “It’s hexagonal… it might be quartz.  It looks like it’s a talisman, but there’s no glyph for the spell inside.”

Harmony Ltd. wrote:high pressure sand scraper (*).

(*): one Harmony point to anyone able to give me the English name of that thing

Well, the process is called sandblasting, but there's not a good name for the device because it's more like three or four devices hooked together. You have a compressor that supplies high-pressure air, a blast pot that holds the abrasive material, and some kind of nozzle to adjust the airflow. The whole setup is apparently called a "blast system" or "sandblasting system".

Harmony Ltd. wrote:The counter to the EoS's song is Harmony / "Moon Song", and thinking of it, both songs seems to lead toward the loss of individuality and absorption into a greater whole.

I don't know.

Not at all! The Goddess's Unity was what you describe, but Harmony celebrates the differences between individuals. That's what provides the various notes that make up the harmony, after all.

Scienza wrote:

Harmony Ltd. wrote:This is a bit apart from the usual talk, but I had a thought...

A number of you are probably aware that for a while now I've had this "music game", wherein I find a music track and try to find scenes, characters or events it could fit in PH, as a theme, a soundtrack or an evocation. Basically, associating music with the work.

So I was thinking, "what kind of music would fit the climactic final battle against the Eater of Soul". And I had an idea:

The Silence. And not just "an absence of music", but a complete and utter lack of sound. Not even the sound you can ear in your ears when there is almost no sound.

The idea being that the Eater of Souls' "song" is so powerfully all-drowning, that the best way to evoke it is by there not being any sound at all.

Plus the fact that Blackjack will probably need to counter that Song in order to fight the Eater. So something like active noise cancellation => no sound at all.


I dunno. I just had to share the thought.

Very interesting. Now, the question is what that silence would do to Blackjack's soul.

I hate myself for thinking it, and even more for sharing it, but now I've got a vision of a completely silent final confrontation. Bad Guy looks smug. BJ is trying to scream epithets. Then, off in the distance, something faint that slowly grows in intensity until-
CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNT!

Which reminds me, we never got to the bottom of Doof's aphasia. I really hope that gets sorted out- I was itching with a need to know ever since it came up.

Meleagridis wrote:I hate myself for thinking it, and even more for sharing it, but now I've got a vision of a completely silent final confrontation. Bad Guy looks smug. BJ is trying to scream epithets. Then, off in the distance, something faint that slowly grows in intensity until-
CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNT!

Which reminds me, we never got to the bottom of Doof's aphasia. I really hope that gets sorted out- I was itching with a need to know ever since it came up.

LOL. Doof has obscenity-based superpowers?   

I thought his aphasia was just due to the trauma of losing his body.

Are we sure his aphasia was a real inability to speak, and not just him choosing -not- to speak?

Or something more complex than that, a psychological issue having physiological repercussions, a psychosomatic trouble?

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Are we sure his aphasia was a real inability to speak, and not just him choosing -not- to speak?

Or something more complex than that, a psychological issue having physiological repercussions, a psychosomatic trouble?

Or maybe he can communicate but on a wavelength that they can't, or don't particularly care to, interpret? He is a tank after all.

One sentence. This post was going to be one single solitary sentence.

Scienza wrote:

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Are we sure his aphasia was a real inability to speak, and not just him choosing -not- to speak?

Or something more complex than that, a psychological issue having physiological repercussions, a psychosomatic trouble?

Or maybe he can communicate but on a wavelength that they can't, or don't particularly care to, interpret? He is a tank after all.

P-21 figured out that Deus could just talk through his speakers at any time. He just... didn't. Which really piques my interest.

If we take Blackjack out of the running (because it would be unfair otherwise), Deus/Doof is one of the characters competing for the PH top ten of suffering. He's got all the cyber-angst of Blackjack with a few of her lifetimes thrown on top, with the added cherry of those painful proto-augments. He is one of a dime-a-dozen characters that just gave up on the good stuff when life wouldn't stop shitting on him- but it's worth noting that he fought that urge until his bitter end in Hightower, not long before his cyberization. But unlike every other once-good character, Doof is now once again trying to do good things. Maybe it's the Blackjack style combination of stupid and tough that not only sees him through to the chance of redemption but also makes him willing to try it. But he's there. He's alive, in pain, and working for the better.

I really want to hear what this guy has to say. What went through his mind after every horrible thing that happened to him, after being dragged through a personal metal hell back into a mock-up of life only to find himself staring back at Blackjack down the barrel of his cannon. What does he think of her? When you live like he did, you couldn't know anyone for more than maybe a month, just long enough for payment. Save for Gorgon and Rampage, maybe Sanguine, there probably wasn't anyone in the post-war world that actually had a role in Deus' life. Then, suddenly, Blackjack. She not only becomes important, but she survives despite being on the receiving end of him, a pre-war death machine. And then she (indirectly, but I doubt he much cares) defeats him. Who else could have done that? Maybe Rampage, but we know he probably wouldn't even fight her.

So in walks this one mare, untouchable to a god. She brings back things, right from the beginning, that he had buried beyond reach. She uses a dead name. Then she kills him. Mostly. He comes back and, sure enough, there she is. So he tries again and this time he has her. She's helpless, he's armed. And she defeats him. With memories. With a dead name.

Who is she to him?

And why won't he tell her?

...Hm. That is a good insight. I don't know if it's correct, but it certainly makes sense.

For some reason I dreamt last night that Somber posted the exact time the next chapter would be up. I rarely remember my dreams so that alone was unusual, but my first action on waking up was to cock my head and wonder why he posted it in 24-hr format.

I am now questioning my sanity.

Vergil wrote:For some reason I dreamt last night that Somber posted the exact time the next chapter would be up. I rarely remember my dreams so that alone was unusual,  but my first action on waking up was to cock my head and wonder why he posted it in 24-hr format.

I am now questioning my sanity.

Or you're a prophet.

Also yes.

...Well, I almost always use a 24 hour clock. Does that make this more or less weird?