[Fallout Equestria] Setting discussions

Oh, good luck with that!

So, on the topic of Setting, where are we?

I think that we're between active topics at the moment.

Well, actually, it looks like Harmony hasn't commented on my proposed color scheme for Rose Eye yet, but I assume that he's busy with his trip.

Always busy with one thing or another

So, Morality of Property updated recently, and it got me thinking about the Banner's slaving. They're in a rather tricky situation there, really, since their polices prevent them from having a self-sustaining population. If they want to expand or replace losses, they've got to get slaves from elsehwere. The problem is, that's becoming steadily more difficult in the modern world. The Banner isn't going to find slaves west of the central mountains; even if it found a source, any really usable routes quickly became blocked by the NCR and Alliance. Slaves on the Peninsula are probably going to come from the area from Kalcolta to the Highlands, with most of the land south of Kalcolta made difficult to operate in, almost certainly, by whatever's going on with the Remnant. That will also block the land routes north even once the Banner takes the old cross-isthmus canal. That leaves three ways out: south on the west side of the mountains, south on the east side of the mountains, or out into the Sea of Equestria (I suppose that they could also head north in the Moojave and try to cross the mountains, but that would preset difficulties even if one wasn't trying to bring slaves back). If the Banner goes south, they meet much less opposition, but their only prey would be zebras who are probably tough and hard to track. They'd also be difficult to bring back, and the Banner's initially-nonexistent zebra gene pool would make increasing the Banner's numbers with them difficult (though not impossible, and the Banner will probably have to start doing that if pony slave supplies dry up before the Banner is large and developed enough to decide to cease slaving and/or slaving is banned as a condition of a Banner/Guai alliance). So the Banner will likely be seen far from the desert, making raids on the east coast or landing and traveling inland; boats will also make the transport of slaves easier from the time they're taken aboard to when they're unloaded in Banner territory near Shattered Hoof Ridge.

Aside: They'll be on the Sea of Equestria looking for merchandise. Harmony, how much to the capitalist pigs of Porca Porca care about whether the things they're trading in are breathing and thinking?

Anyway, it also occurs to me that villages are unlikely to be at the top of the target priority list. The very top is probably occupied by other slavers, who act as both competition and concentrators of the increasingly scarce resources that the competition is over; they're also traitors, if they originated in Red Eye's empire and failed to present themselves for Banner membership. Then there's the diplomatic considerations; the Banner could give the NCR a bloody nose, maybe even launch a successful terrorist strike doing massive damage to a major NCR city, but the NCR, if sufficiently motivated, could completely wipe the Banner out. Rose Eye tries to play a delicate game of not offending the NCR too much while she strengthens her position. If the Banner is conducting long-range organized slaving raids against peaceful villages, the NCR government will be called on to do something about it (even if some members of the government privately liked the way the raided areas suddenly became more open to NCR appeals). If the Banner is hunting down other slavers while themselves being pretty kindhearted by slaver standards, well, that's much less of an issue.

Thoughts?

I'll give you my thoughts in a few days.

Can't really right now.

I wonder if they have ever considered using Blanks (From PH) as slaves; if you consider them canon

Although the time it would take to train them might be daunting...

Harmony wrote:I'll give you my thoughts in a few days.

Can't really right now.

Ah, okay. Still on your trip? I hope you're having a good time.

Vinylshadow wrote:I wonder if they have ever considered using Blanks (From PH) as slaves; if you consider them canon

Although the time it would take to train them might be daunting...

Oh, blanks are in the universe, but there's a big difference between that and them being accessible to the Banner. And that's before the problems you mentioned with training them.

I'd almost feel sorry for them, but they've done too many bad things to ponies I care about to earn any real sympathy from me

There's more money in trading living thinking creatures, since anyone can be broken

For whom?

Slavers, or anyone who uses others to further themselves

Ah, I see.

I know they have as much a right to the Wasteland like anyone else, but I'm not a fan of their methods

Ah well, gotta go what you have to do to survive; be it enslave other ponies or wipe a country of the face of the planet

...I think that the conversation may perhaps have gotten away from me.

That tends to happen around me

*sips Flux-filled Sparkle Cola RAD*

Mmm...

O. Hinds wrote:Rose Eye tries to play a delicate game of not offending the NCR too much while she strengthens her position

She reminds me of the Kings from New Vegas, a little bit

"Leave us alone and we'll leave you alone"
Even if we hire Couriers that have been shot in the head to take shots at you from time to time

I'm not sure how Rose Eye would be giving that impression, honestly. Unless it's a very little bit. The King is dedicated to liberty and is only mildly against the New California Republic prior to the PC's arrival. Rose Eye is, while intelligent and relatively nice, an authoritarian slaver warlord who openly rails against the New Canterlot Republic.

Ahh, goes to show what I know when it comes to factions

I side with whoever isn't shooting me

So...


RE Rose Eye color scheme: I like it. There's enough contrast between the different shades of red so that it mostly avoid the "solid block of color" kind of appearance that isn't too appealing and is generally the sign of a badly designed OC. The hair are okay. Question: Is the tail supposed to be dreaded? (no pun originally intended)


(other posts to follow, I just want to post it bit by bit to not lose what i'm writing from the browser being dumb)

O. Hinds wrote:So, Morality of Property updated recently, and it got me thinking about the Banner's slaving.  They're in a rather tricky situation there, really, since their polices prevent them from having a self-sustaining population.  If they want to expand or replace losses, they've got to get slaves from elsehwere.  The problem is, that's becoming steadily more difficult in the modern world.  The Banner isn't going to find slaves west of the central mountains; even if it found a source, any really usable routes quickly became blocked by the NCR and Alliance.  Slaves on the Peninsula are probably going to come from the area from Kalcolta to the Highlands, with most of the land south of Kalcolta made difficult to operate in, almost certainly, by whatever's going on with the Remnant.  That will also block the land routes north even once the Banner takes the old cross-isthmus canal.  That leaves three ways out: south on the west side of the mountains, south on the east side of the mountains, or out into the Sea of Equestria (I suppose that they could also head north in the Moojave and try to cross the mountains, but that would preset difficulties even if one wasn't trying to bring slaves back).  If the Banner goes south, they meet much less opposition, but their only prey would be zebras who are probably tough and hard to track.  They'd also be difficult to bring back, and the Banner's initially-nonexistent zebra gene pool would make increasing the Banner's numbers with them difficult (though not impossible, and the Banner will probably have to start doing that if pony slave supplies dry up before the Banner is large and developed enough to decide to cease slaving and/or slaving is banned as a condition of a Banner/Guai alliance).  So the Banner will likely be seen far from the desert, making raids on the east coast or landing and traveling inland; boats will also make the transport of slaves easier from the time they're taken aboard to when they're unloaded in Banner territory near Shattered Hoof Ridge.

I could see this, yes.
Of course, Shattered Hoof Ridge and Neighorleans are so close to each other that there's a risk that boats carrying zebra slaves coming from the Sea of Equestria might get attacked by the Remnants.

O. Hinds wrote:Aside: They'll be on the Sea of Equestria looking for merchandise.  Harmony, how much to the capitalist pigs of Porca Porca care about whether the things they're trading in are breathing and thinking?

Well, they don't strike me as the warlike kind, so any dirty jobs, they'll probably outsource to foreign mercenaries; but in the day and age they live in, I don't see them feeling much remorse trading foreigners to other foreigners as slave if it get them enough money to buy more food from the Dragons, which they'll be able to re-sell with a dirty margin to other dirty foreigners.

The only problem is, as said above, that the Remnant might see zebra being traded away as slaves in a bad light, and the slaves they could take around the Sea of Equestria will mostly be Zebra - if anything, Littlepip will probably do something if she see large scale slaving operations popping up under the perimeter of the SPP, where most ponies in the region are.

But to answer a question that will probably come up: The Pigs won't sell other Pigs as slaves, even their worst criminal scum.

O. Hinds wrote:Anyway, it also occurs to me that villages are unlikely to be at the top of the target priority list.  The very top is probably occupied by other slavers, who act as both competition and concentrators of the increasingly scarce resources that the competition is over; they're also traitors, if they originated in Red Eye's empire and failed to present themselves for Banner membership.  Then there's the diplomatic considerations; the Banner could give the NCR a bloody nose, maybe even launch a successful terrorist strike doing massive damage to a major NCR city, but the NCR, if sufficiently motivated, could completely wipe the Banner out.  Rose Eye tries to play a delicate game of not offending the NCR too much while she strengthens her position.  If the Banner is conducting long-range organized slaving raids against peaceful villages, the NCR government will be called on to do something about it (even if some members of the government privately liked the way the raided areas suddenly became more open to NCR appeals).  If the Banner is hunting down other slavers while themselves being pretty kindhearted by slaver standards, well, that's much less of an issue.

Thoughts?

I think the Banner has the best chances to expand Southeast, along the coast of the Sea of Equestria, maintaining as much distance with the Alliance-held territories as she can (because if she fear the NCR as it is, then she must shit her pants about what the Alliance might do if it got pissed enough).

This will be helped by the initial influx of Zebra slaves coming from oversea, after which the Banner might be able to sustain its own overland expansion, with the occasional influx of more oversea zebra slaves. But after some point, if things go on, it will probably become demographically predominantly zebra. Which might push things in a funny direction.

Also: unless some ex-Enclave (probably also ex-Bitters, which may make for some interesting stories) joined the Banner, the only fliers the Banner has, if it has any, is probably Griffins. The kind who didn't want to follow Gadwyna and her silly Republican ideas. But odds they're still very much mercenaries. So unless Rose Eye keeps the dough flowing, they'll probably fly away toward bluer skies (and I just heard the Pigs might be making good offers).

O. Hinds wrote:

Harmony wrote:I'll give you my thoughts in a few days.

Can't really right now.

Ah, okay.  Still on your trip?  I hope you're having a good time.

Well, here's my new desktop

I intend to post a thread with some of my photos, with some comments.

Would the Remnant ever go out of its way to actively attack ships it knew to be carrying Zebras?

See it more like old-timey pirate attacks where the fight is aimed at crippling the boat to board it and kill/incapacitate/capture the crew and steal/recover the cargo and/or the ship itself.

Also, even if they accidentally kill the slaves on board, I guess they'd probably see it as the price to be paid in order to prevent further slaves from being shipped.

Boats can be replaced easily enough, it's the cargo that would be the problem

Training a crew isn't a quick process

Hm...what lies across the Southern Sea?

Actually, in olden times, as is these days, ships are worth more than their crews. Crews can be replaced, but ships takes a long time and lots of resources to build.

Plus, when you board a ship, if you get rid of the opposing crew, you might as well capture it and add it to your own fleet.

Capturing a ship is far more desirable than simply sinking it. This is the historical reason behind the existence of things like the Marines.

"Why build a boat when you can steal one?" - probably many pirates

Welcome back, Harmony!

Harmony wrote:RE Rose Eye color scheme: I like it. There's enough contrast between the different shades of red so that it mostly avoid the "solid block of color" kind of appearance that isn't too appealing and is generally the sign of a badly designed OC. The hair are okay.

Ah, splendid!  And yes, I thought that the colors I had in my head would look good; it was just tricky getting them out (As I recall, I ended up using Photoshop and two different versions of the pony creator.  At the same time, I mean, not this-doesn't-work-let's-try-the-next-idea sequentially.).  I also didn't want to accidentally copy Red Eye's coat color.

Harmony wrote:Question: Is the tail supposed to be dreaded?

Ah, now that I don't know, sorry.  I've not really given much thought to the tail style and just copied what Vinylshadow used.
…Except that, looking back, I see that I made a mistake there.
Fortunately I put the ponycode in the post…
…Except that the v3 pony creator doesn't seem to be working at the moment.  I've tried Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and even TorBrowser, and the thing refuses to load.  The old version looks like it works fine, but of course the code isn't compatible with that.  Argh.  Well, here's the style I meant to use.  I don't have strong feelings about it the way I did about the colors, though.

Harmony wrote:(other posts to follow, I just want to post it bit by bit to not lose what i'm writing from the browser being dumb)

I compose a lot of my posts in TextEdit and paste them.

Harmony wrote:Of course, Shattered Hoof Ridge and Neighorleans are so close to each other that there's a risk that boats carrying zebra slaves coming from the Sea of Equestria might get attacked by the Remnants.

Any zebra slaves the Banner took would probably be coming from the south, by land.  There are fewer zebras than ponies on the peninsula, the Banner wants ponies more than it wants zebras, and attacking ponies will be innocuously to many of the Remnant factions and actually pleasing to others.  There is of course, though, the question of what the Banner would do with zebras captured by slavers they raided… hm.  Depending on the circumstances, it might be prudent to let them go or even employ them as temporary guards on the way to the coast.  It's quite possible that the Banner could have a border with whatever comes out of the Remnant Civil War, after all, and that said emergent state might have a natural antipathy towards the NCR.

Harmony wrote:Well, they don't strike me as the warlike kind, so any dirty jobs, they'll probably outsource to foreign mercenaries; but in the day and age they live in, I don't see them feeling much remorse trading foreigners to other foreigners as slave if it get them enough money to buy more food from the Dragons, which they'll be able to re-sell with a dirty margin to other dirty foreigners.

Aye, that's about what I though.

Harmony wrote:and the slaves they could take around the Sea of Equestria will mostly be Zebra

Oh.  Now that's interesting; why do you say that?

Harmony wrote:if anything, Littlepip will probably do something if she see large scale slaving operations popping up under the perimeter of the SPP, where most ponies in the region are.

The scale will have to be smaller, yes, but the SPP isn't a precision weapon.  Thornbush, for instance, is actually covered (unless the Banner has managed to take down the Moojave SPP tower), but LittlePip can't hit it without hitting the entire area, slaves, foals, and bystanders included.  That sort of thing would not be good for her reputation or her desires not to be worshipped and feared (though, in a bit of irony, Rose Eye, if she survived, would actually hate LittlePip a bit less, seeing it as her finally learning to do her job properly, the way Red Eye would have wanted).

Hm, could the Banner have taken down the Moojave SPP tower?  According to the map, the area of Thornbush (and Westside and the Encowmpent) was covered by the Moojave tower (possibly the South Mojave tower, actually depending on how far north the desert under that name extends) and the Shattered Hoof Ridge tower.  Homage blew up the Shattered Hoof Ridge tower already (leaving that area uncovered and providing the Banner with a possible fallback position), so there's just the one left.  P-21 can crack his way into the towers, and the Banner can probably produce at least one pony, probably either one of the foals from Fillydelphia or a Banner native, who can do the same (assuming that the security's not been upgraded).  Combine that with one of the balefire shells from Moover Line South…
So the practical difficulties are probably within the ability of the Banner to overcome.  There's the political fallout, though.  Hm.  Rose Eye could probably spin it locally for at least a neutral reaction ("The people of the Moojave have gotten by for two centuries without weather control, and with griffins and pegasi refugees and no Enclave cloud cover, we still have more than we used to!  We don't need some LittlePip to push clouds around for us, do we?  No!"), but there's the diplomatic situation to consider.  Though this would also be a demonstration of the Banner's possession of and willingness to use balefire weaponry… which could go either way, actually…
Harmony, what do you think the NCR's reaction would be in this scenario?

Harmony wrote:I think the Banner has the best chances to expand Southeast, along the coast of the Sea of Equestria, maintaining as much distance with the Alliance-held territories as she can (because if she fear the NCR as it is, then she must shit her pants about what the Alliance might do if it got pissed enough).

It will probably be a while before they start expanding that way, given that their center of power is on the western side of the mountains.  The Alliance isn't really a concern here, as there's quite a distance between the isthmus and Alliance territory to the south (and if the Alliance expanded towards the isthmus, it would probably be to get a land route onto the peninsula, in which case they'd have to go through Banner land anyway).

Harmony wrote:This will be helped by the initial influx of Zebra slaves coming from oversea, after which the Banner might be able to sustain its own overland expansion, with the occasional influx of more oversea zebra slaves. But after some point, if things go on, it will probably become demographically predominantly zebra. Which might push things in a funny direction.

The zebra slave situation will probably depend a lot on what happens with the Remnant civil war and whether what comes out of that will be interested in affairs beyond the Peninsula.  If Banner slaving continues, though, yes, they could eventually end up with a zebra majority.  Probably not an especially large one, given that they can force their pony population up as long as they have pony slaves and can probably still get a lot of volunteers once the pony slaves run out, but it could happen.  Rose Eye isn't as particular about species as Red Eye's empire, though (which she believes and says is because, while Red Eye's plan was of course about as close to perfect as one can get for the circumstances of the time, those circumstances no longer prevail and she's just doing what Red Eye would do in her situation).
Eventually the Banner would stop slaving (though not actually abolish slavery; it would still be perfectly legal, just not used) on its own, though, due to having a large enough non-slave population to do what it wanted to.  At most, they'd enslave the adults in a region they were expanding into and use them for the expansion.  One of the things I find odd about Morality of Property (though I still enjoy the story) is that it portrays Red Eye's empire as actively pro-slavery rather than just having no problem with using large-scale and harsh slavery to fulfill its ends.  I don't remember whether this was actually in FoE or not, but my view is that Red Eye planned the slaving to be a temporary measure; Rose Eye is following in his hoofprints, though she's happy to point out that he would probably already have finished with it if LittlePip hadn't betrayed him.

Harmony wrote:Also: unless some ex-Enclave (probably also ex-Bitters, which may make for some interesting stories) joined the Banner

Oh, you think they might?  Rose Eye would certainly welcome them, and she tries to discourage anti-pegasus prejudice in the Moojave.  And yes, some interesting situations could result from that.  :)

Harmony wrote:, the only fliers the Banner has, if it has any, is probably Griffins. The kind who didn't want to follow Gadwyna and her silly Republican ideas. But odds they're still very much mercenaries. So unless Rose Eye keeps the dough flowing, they'll probably fly away toward bluer skies (and I just heard the Pigs might be making good offers).

Hm.  That's a possibility.  If the Banner managed to keep the loyalty of any of Stern's griffins, they could try to build from that, but there still might be problems getting a large enough population to do serious weather work and aerial combat.  The Banner can take some of the pressure off with balloons (And maybe airplanes?  WWI-like in design at most, probably, but that would still leave the problem of getting engines and fuel to run them), but still, yes, good point.

Harmony wrote:Well, here's my new desktop

Very nice!

Vinylshadow wrote:Would the Remnant ever go out of its way to actively attack ships it knew to be carrying Zebras?

Well--

Harmony wrote:See it more like old-timey pirate attacks where the fight is aimed at crippling the boat to board it and kill/incapacitate/capture the crew and steal/recover the cargo and/or the ship itself.

Also, even if they accidentally kill the slaves on board, I guess they'd probably see it as the price to be paid in order to prevent further slaves from being shipped.

Mostly, yes.  Remember, though, that by the time the Banner is active, the Remnant as a unified group isn't.  That view is probably the most common one, but some groups probably won't care much at all while others could make recovering such slaves a major objective.

Vinylshadow wrote:Hm...what lies across the Southern Sea?

What do you mean, the "Southern Sea"?  I'm afraid that I've not defined much in the southern hemisphere, if that's what you're asking about, but it's a bit far for any of the current powers we're concerned with to have major dealings anyway, I think.

Vinylshadow wrote:"Why build a boat when you can steal one?" - probably many pirates

Oh, not just pirates.

O. Hinds wrote:I compose a lot of my posts in TextEdit and paste them.

I would to. If I didn't write a lot from my phone. And the times I'm on my PC I just don't think about it, unless I plan to make a really big post. Which isn't often.

O. Hinds wrote:

I wrote:and the slaves they could take around the Sea of Equestria will mostly be Zebra

Oh.  Now that's interesting; why do you say that?

Well, I would tend to assume that Pre-War, the area around the Sea of Equestria that wasn't the Equestrian Peninsula was demographically mostly zebra, and that with the Great War and latter the Days of Fire and all the love and joy that followed, the remaining population would be predominantly zebra.

Am I wrong here?

O. Hinds wrote:

I wrote:if anything, Littlepip will probably do something if she see large scale slaving operations popping up under the perimeter of the SPP, where most ponies in the region are.

The scale will have to be smaller, yes, but the SPP isn't a precision weapon.  Thornbush, for instance, is actually covered (unless the Banner has managed to take down the Moojave SPP tower), but LittlePip can't hit it without hitting the entire area, slaves, foals, and bystanders included.  That sort of thing would not be good for her reputation or her desires not to be worshipped and feared (though, in a bit of irony, Rose Eye, if she survived, would actually hate LittlePip a bit less, seeing it as her finally learning to do her job properly, the way Red Eye would have wanted).

Well, she could always use the Knights to mount an operation to freed the slaves from an encampment (could be mercenaries, could be the NCR's Special Forces, could be her own private-army), and then have a tornado destroy that encampment just to make a point. It seems like the kind of stupid shit she'd do to make her point.

O. Hinds wrote:Hm, could the Banner have taken down the Moojave SPP tower?  According to the map, the area of Thornbush (and Westside and the Encowmpent) was covered by the Moojave tower (possibly the South Mojave tower, actually depending on how far north the desert under that name extends) and the Shattered Hoof Ridge tower.  Homage blew up the Shattered Hoof Ridge tower already (leaving that area uncovered and providing the Banner with a possible fallback position), so there's just the one left.  P-21 can crack his way into the towers, and the Banner can probably produce at least one pony, probably either one of the foals from Fillydelphia or a Banner native, who can do the same (assuming that the security's not been upgraded).  Combine that with one of the balefire shells from Moover Line South…
So the practical difficulties are probably within the ability of the Banner to overcome.  There's the political fallout, though.  Hm.  Rose Eye could probably spin it locally for at least a neutral reaction ("The people of the Moojave have gotten by for two centuries without weather control, and with griffins and pegasi refugees and no Enclave cloud cover, we still have more than we used to!  We don't need some LittlePip to push clouds around for us, do we?  No!"), but there's the diplomatic situation to consider.  Though this would also be a demonstration of the Banner's possession of and willingness to use balefire weaponry… which could go either way, actually…
Harmony, what do you think the NCR's reaction would be in this scenario?

It would probably strengthen the Hawks' position inside the NCR's military and political structure. On the lower end of the scale, I expect them to send a company or two into the Moojave and have them set camp just outside the Banner's territories. On the higher-end of the scale, I could see them fire a megaspell of their own, Celestia-prime or a more "classical" megaspell, on one of the mountains a few kilometers from the Fort, as their final warning on what their answer will be to further use of megaspell weaponries.

On the highest end of the spectrum, if the Hawks could wipe up enough outrage, they could probably successfully call for the Fort to be megaspell'd and the remnants of Rose Eye's forces to be wiped-out in another "Streetcleaner" operation. As a power willing and able to use megaspells on the Equestrian peninsula and which has used them offensively and aggressively against something so vital to the NCR's interests as the SPP will be interpreted as a direct menace toward the continued existence of the NCR.

Though hopefully for Rose Eye, the Doves will probably try to calm them down, as the NCR snapping and just up and deciding to wipe up whole settlements with megaspells who didn't declare war on them just because they destroyed some old piece of archeotech far outside of the NCR's territories will probably have quite unpleasing diplomatic consequences for the NCR.

O. Hinds wrote:

I wrote:Also: unless some ex-Enclave (probably also ex-Bitters, which may make for some interesting stories) joined the Banner

Oh, you think they might?  Rose Eye would certainly welcome them, and she tries to discourage anti-pegasus prejudice in the Moojave.  And yes, some interesting situations could result from that.  :)

Well, the most hardcore Bitters probably went down with the ship, or are still out there working in the shadows, bidding their times or working on some sinister plot; but the less-hardcore-but-still-pretty-bitter Bitters who had enough common sense to desert before it was too late are most probably holding a huge grudge against the NCR, Littlepip, and all those goody-two-shoes who support either, so they'd probably see siding with a mud-maggot like Rose Eye a degrading but ultimately satisfying decision to make, if only to have the satisfaction of still fighting the horned slut and its cohort of mudmaggot followers, as with getting a chance to get back at the Traitors (the Followers and the Isolationists).

If some Bitter Scientists join, they may even offer to design some bio-weapons for the Banner, be it diseases or arcano-modified organism/fauna. Or maybe even design weapons the Banner could produce with its reduced industrial capacity.

Harmony wrote:Well, I would tend to assume that Pre-War, the area around the Sea of Equestria that wasn't the Equestrian Peninsula was demographically mostly zebra, and that with the Great War and latter the Days of Fire and all the love and joy that followed, the remaining population would be predominantly zebra.

Am I wrong here?

Oh, yes, certainly.  I was only speaking of the Peninsula; the Banner would raid there for ponies before turning to the southern coast for zebras, ponies being currently more desirable and increasingly scarce.

Harmony wrote:Well, she could always use the Knights to mount an operation to freed the slaves from an encampment (could be mercenaries, could be the NCR's Special Forces, could be her own private-army), and then have a tornado destroy that encampment just to make a point. It seems like the kind of stupid shit she'd do to make her point.

Aye.  The slavers would have to get clever, and they're still a dying breed.

Harmony wrote:It would probably strengthen the Hawks' position inside the NCR's military and political structure. On the lower end of the scale, I expect them to send a company or two into the Moojave and have them set camp just outside the Banner's territories. On the higher-end of the scale, I could see them fire a megaspell of their own, Celestia-prime or a more "classical" megaspell, on one of the mountains a few kilometers from the Fort, as their final warning on what their answer will be to further use of megaspell weaponries.

On the highest end of the spectrum, if the Hawks could wipe up enough outrage, they could probably successfully call for the Fort to be megaspell'd and the remnants of Rose Eye's forces to be wiped-out in another "Streetcleaner" operation. As a power willing and able to use megaspells on the Equestrian peninsula and which has used them offensively and aggressively against something so vital to the NCR's interests as the SPP will be interpreted as a direct menace toward the continued existence of the NCR.

Though hopefully for Rose Eye, the Doves will probably try to calm them down, as the NCR snapping and just up and deciding to wipe up whole settlements with megaspells who didn't declare war on them just because they destroyed some old piece of archeotech far outside of the NCR's territories will probably have quite unpleasing diplomatic consequences for the NCR.

Well, I was thinking that it would be a risky move with complicated consequences; seems like you concur.  So the big question is… does Rose Eye think she could get away with it?  After all, as you said, unless the NCR wants to flat-out claim ownership of the entire SPP, this is technically a purely foreign matter to them.  And if Rose Eye had meant this as an actual attack on the NCR, she probably could have smuggled the warhead somewhere more directly damaging (even if the NCR doesn't believe that she could hit an NCR population center, she could annihilate any continued efforts to salvage Fillydelphia, to pick just one example).  And if the NCR does claim the entire SPP, yeah, diplomatic problems (Among other things, while Masozi itself is outside the coverage area due to the destruction of the San Frantello tower at the end of the war, much of the new Miliozi territory is covered by towers in NCR territory.  Given that Las Pegasus, a cloud city is also covered by a tower in NCR territory…).  Even LittlePip might object.  Of course, if LittlePip asked for the NCR's help in the wake of the South Moojave tower's destruction, there wouldn't be that problem.  Hm…

I'm thinking that Rose Eye might have done it right after (as in, days) the end of the Bitter war, when people are just starting to relax.  They don't want another war.  Even if they could wipe Thornbush out, Banner members could hide in the mountains, wait out the destruction, and launch terror strikes in revenge.  Soldiers and civilians would die, not most of them, but maybe you or your loved ones would be among the unlucky.  Or not.  Rose  Eye would make it clear that this wasn't an attack on the NCR, it was a matter matter between LittlePip and the people of the Moojave.  Rose Eye knows she couldn't win against the NCR (or would tell them so, at least) and isn't stupid enough to try; they don't have to attack her to protect themselves.  If they want to blow up a nearby mountain, they can go ahead; it won't actually hinder the Banner's operations (and Rose Eye expects that the next time the Banner opens its limited stock of megaspells, it will be either for defense or in a way that will render the NCR incapable of retaliating).  Between the desire not to have another war, her propaganda and diplomatic efforts, and the efforts of the Doves in the NCR, she'll think that she can get away with it and get the risk of interference by LittlePip out of the Moojave.  She'll also have the irrational motive of it being a poke at LittlePip.  The main risk is LittlePip asking for the NCR's assistance, but that would at least give Rose Eye the satisfaction of making LittlePip admit that no, she can't be some aloof non-Goddess; she does need to command an army if she's to do what she wants to.  Do you think that would work?

Actually, wait:  What would the Knights do?  That might be enough to convince Rose Eye that it was too risky to attempt.

Harmony wrote:Well, the most hardcore Bitters probably went down with the ship, or are still out there working in the shadows, bidding their times or working on some sinister plot

Aye; the really hardcore ones, after all, consider "I'm not a pegasus" to be equivalent to "I should be exterminated at your earliest convenience, ma'am".

Harmony wrote:but the less-hardcore-but-still-pretty-bitter Bitters who had enough common sense to desert before it was too late are most probably holding a huge grudge against the NCR, Littlepip, and all those goody-two-shoes who support either, so they'd probably see siding with a mud-maggot like Rose Eye a degrading but ultimately satisfying decision to make, if only to have the satisfaction of still fighting the horned slut and its cohort of mudmaggot followers, as with getting a chance to get back at the Traitors (the Followers and the Isolationists).

No doubt there will be quite a lot of bickering over the assimilation of the pegasi into the Banner.  If they want their foals to have access to the Banner's educational resources, though, assimilation is probably going to happen.  And they'd have been working with the Banner for twenty years or so by this point, so a lot of them may have said "You lot aren't actually that bad" anyway.  There is the issue of the fact that Red Eye and the Enclave were in fact trying to wipe each other out when LittlePip interrupted and the two groups are likely to have different views on who would have won, but hopefully that will be smoothed over by the fact that, thanks to said interruption, they both lost.

Harmony wrote:If some Bitter Scientists join, they may even offer to design some bio-weapons for the Banner, be it diseases or arcano-modified organism/fauna. Or maybe even design weapons the Banner could produce with its reduced industrial capacity.

The latter the Banner probably already a bit of skill with, from Fillydelphia's educational system, but more would certainly be welcome.  The former would be even more welcome, though of course one has to be careful with bioweapons that can infect one's own species.

…You know, I hope Meleagridis comes around again soon.  I just had the slightly funny image of a pegasus scientist in a Rose Banner uniform being ordered to try and assist the Great Cows in their medical efforts as part of Rose Eye's attempts to build goodwill (and possibly of said pegasus scientist annoying her in some way a desire to improve the team spirit of the Banner's new pegasus immigrants).

Oh, and while the text for foreign consumption would be "We can't hurt the NCR, haven't tried, and won't try", the subtext for consumption in the Moojave (which Banner members in the Moojave will help spread in ways that don't reach the NCR public so easily) is of course more along the lines of "Sure, they could have badly hurt us, but what they actually did was attack a mountain no one was using. We took out a major edifice of foreign intervention in our lands and spooked the big bad NCR even though we 'can't hurt them'."
And if the NCR does send soldiers to just outside the Banner's territories in the Moojave, they'll see the Banner on their best behavior, Banner members politely helping out the safe and happy inhabitants of Westside. Particularly having just come for the decidedly not-polite Bitter War or dealing with the remaining raiders and normal slavers on the frontier, the Banner probably won't look too bad. And Rose Eye can even invite the company's officers across the river to see the latest school play full of smiling, innocent-eyed, well-fed foals adorably stumbling over their lines.

No, in the situation you've outlined, I think that Rose Eye would think that she could handle the NCR's reaction unless LittlePip threw her weight in (and thus admittedly that Red Eye was more right than she's been claiming). The Knights of Harmony don't have a public sentiment to manipulate, though, which makes them potentially much more dangerous.

Well, what the Knights can or cannot do is a bit hard to quantify, as they are, as an organization, nebulous by design. And to be quite honest there's a number of degrees through which one can work for the organization, several of them unwittingly.

If we go with the more conservative approach and say that they only have a few powerful members who are mostly known (Calamity, Ditzy, and a few others), and rely mostly on hired help or covert manipulation, there's not so much they can directly do against the Banner. They could always pull some strings to have an NCR Special Force team intervene in the Moojave covertly, justified to the NCR's non-Knight leadership as "keeping the Banner in check and showing them our continued determination to see slavery ended", having this team striking against Rose Eye's slavers and liberating some slaves, things like that; but we both knows, and they know and Rose Eye knows this isn't much.

On the other hand, if the the Knights have enough influence to have gained the loyalty of a large number of NCR officers, politicians and other public figure, and have enough resources to entertain a large network of people working for them more or less knowingly, they could actually pull out large-scale covert-action, of the very disruptive kind for the Banner.

But you know, there's a thing the Knights could probably do even in the conservative scenario: Attempt to assassinate Rose Eye. Without her at the helm, what are the odds of the Banner dissolving like Red Eye's empire did before?

This poses two questions, though: Would and could they pull it off?

Is Littlepip ready to call for the murder of Rose Eye?

My own interpretation:

Spoiler: