[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

So crazy that it could make sense.

swicked wrote:In any case, you just figure they should be kept from the afterlife forever? Hundreds to thousands of years after the fic ends Rampage is still going about?

Personally I'm waiting to see what effect Blackjack's memory therapy is going to have. I don't think it's too unlikely that it will lead to a way to pull out the individuals along with the memories.

Luminous Lead wrote:
In any case, don't soul jars cause souls to be expended to power them?

Nope. Black Book didn't need to eat souls, it just liked watching them go sour.

Does B.B. have a heart crushing side story yet?

@BrentOGara
Methinks Redeye(RandomBlank) had a working theory on bottlecaps as well. Check out the tumblr. I might add a link if I find it.

@Meleagridis
From what I can remember, B.B. was a mad Zebra, probably from the <strike>Stratevakki</strike> star-cursed clans that decided to soul bind himself into several books.

OneMoreDaySK wrote:
From what I can remember, B.B. was a mad Zebra, probably from the <strike>Stratevakki</strike> star-cursed clans that decided to soul bind himself into several books.

Well aware.

So where is the story about how the beloved Mazuri, who brought joy and happiness to everyone around him, was torn down piece by piece until what little was left went insane and placed itself inside a book made from the skin of his family? Though personally I would love to see someone tackle the black book without such grimness- so long as it happens.

Meleagridis wrote:

Personally I'm waiting to see what effect Blackjack's memory therapy is going to have. I don't think it's too unlikely that it will lead to a way to pull out the individuals along with the memories.

Nope. Black Book didn't need to eat souls, it just liked watching them go sour.

Does B.B. have a heart crushing side story yet?

If blackjack figures out how to pull out individuals it may be possible to pull "angel" out of rampage without killing rampage. Or rampage must learn to cope with nurse candy inside her and resist. Nurse Candy could forcibly take near fillies and colts cause up until recently rampage has just been trying to drown out the souls with mentals or booze. Now that she's actually looking through the memory orbs she's getting better. We haven't seen shujaa in a while, nor officer softheart or doctor octopus. It could be that the way she eventually gets psychological help is that her inner souls and personalities stop trying to escape or such. Not necessarily assimilate as right now she has all those personalities tearing at her mind for control. Once rampage unlocks the memories of the souls or uses the memory orbs of the souls she may get better.


As for the topic of the black book, it was evil cause the soul inside was evil. The spells we've seen from the book aren't necessarily vile spells or such, but the book gives a extreme bias towards wanting to harm others. Think of it as nuclear technology and splitting the atom. It's not necessarily evil, it can be used for good such as nuclear power plants or sterilizing food. However to give a analogy it would be like if the black book was real all it would give out information wise is how to make nuclear bombs and nothing else. Like how it refused to tell Rarity a soul spell until she actually performed it. The reason being is that by itself a soul spell isn't evil, like how snips re-tethered blackjack's soul into her body, but it only gave up the information because rarity wanted to make soul jar armor. Or how hemomancy spell it gave littlepip couldn't just be a weapon, she used it to help her friend stop bleeding from killing joke. Rarity was corrupted by her obsession with protecting her friends. Theoretically if a individual refused to be corrupted by their desires then the black book would be out of luck. Like how littlepip refused to be corrupted by the black book's bias towards hemomancy(blood kineses) and instead of using as a weapon used it for medical purposes.


Basically what I am getting as is information is not evil by itself, it's what you do with it that matters.

BrentOGara wrote:As soon as I read that Flim & Flam were the
makers of "Sparkle Cola", the reasons behind Bottle Caps as currency
immediately sprang clear in my mind. F&F are the ultimate
unscrupulous salesgeldings, and have shown themselves willing to do
anything to make a buck, including all kinds of unethical business
practices... including using magic to make their products more
profitable.

So what's to stop them from using the "I want it!"
magic (that Twi used on her old doll to make everypony want it) on
Sparkle Cola bottlecaps? My idea is that the bottle caps (which are
stamped and crimped from long sheets of steel stored on rolls, if
they're anything like RL bottle caps) are enchanted with the spell. An
entire roll of steel sheet (a couple tons on a massive roll) could be
enchanted at once, then stamped, printed, and crimped onto the full
bottles, with each individual cap taking a small portion of the
enchantment placed on the whole. It's just enough to make people 'want'
the bottlecap just a little more than is really reasonable, and the
enchantment lasts until the cap is melted down or otherwise destroyed.
It also boosts sales of Sparkle Cola in a really profitable way!

Those
caps, scattered around the wasteland, are magically desirable, but the
tiny fraction of the spell on each cap is effectively unnoticeable, and
nobody really questions it anyway. It even has the added effect of
making bottle caps more desirable the larger the amount is... as
the number of caps grows, the tiny fractions of the spell adds up,
making the whole pile that much more attractive.

So... how crazy am I?

That would explain why the soda is popular. The enchantment would be undetectable per soda, but in vending machines or such you would have a strange pull towards buying one that you wouldn't think of otherwise.

Overlong Analysis Cobalt wrote:I would be okay with that. Very okay, even. (Though, as the writer of the song notes, it is a tad off beat on occasion - still good and quite pretty. Oh and the attack [that's what it's called, I think - the "hittiness" of each key press] is a bit strong sometimes IMO, but I'm not a music expert by any stretch of the imagination so I could be totally off base)

You're not off-base.

swicked wrote:This lack of a physical goddess is probably what lead her to join unity. Trixie told her she was her Goddess, and she would forgive her.

That kinda made me think... there's two possibilities when the Goddess dies, right? Either the soul-bits in Lacunae get "amputated" where they are right now and stay put, or everything snaps back to their original owners and Lac becomes Psalm.
Thing is, while Lac has been hanging around Chapel feeling sorry for herself and helping BJ do good, the rest of Psalm -- minus her self-hatred -- has presumably been cheerfully doing Trixie's bidding. When her memory and her morals get back together, it's gonna be bad...

swicked wrote:I think megaspells are supposed to be able to do it. I could have sworn it said that somewhere... which means that the souljars that were stuck in the prison are now free, since a balefire bomb was used on them.

It's unknown. Littlepip wondered whether a balefire bomb could destroy the Black Book, or if it would just be buried forever in a tainted, radioactive tomb.

Luminous Lead wrote:In any case, don't soul jars cause souls to be expended to power them? I think even with (6?) souls Rampage would wind down eventually.

No, souljars do not consume souls for power any more than unicorns expend their souls to perform magic. That was Celestia's whole thesis at the end of FOE: all things that live have to eventually die. Even beings we consider immortal -- Celestia, Luna, the Stars -- ultimately return their souls to the universe. If the soul was eventually consumed, that would itself be death of a sort. But "that’s the real evil of the Black Book. It changes that. It steals death from you and calls it a gift. It’s lying."

BrentOGara wrote:So what's to stop them from using the "I want it!" magic (that Twi used on her old doll to make everypony want it) on Sparkle Cola bottlecaps? [...] So... how crazy am I?

Crazy enough to be right on the money (so to speak, heh.) This is now my headcanon.

Re: Bottlecaps
Ah, here it is:
<a href=http://askredeye.tumblr.com/post/17259150108/a-bottlecaps-legend>Linky</a>

SilentCarto wrote:That kinda made me think... there's two possibilities when the Goddess dies, right? Either the soul-bits in Lacunae get "amputated" where they are right now and stay put, or everything snaps back to their original owners and Lac becomes Psalm.
Thing is, while Lac has been hanging around Chapel feeling sorry for herself and helping BJ do good, the rest of Psalm -- minus her self-hatred -- has presumably been cheerfully doing Trixie's bidding. When her memory and her morals get back together, it's gonna be bad...

I'm going to have to go with amputated. The reason being is that the "Goddess" acts as a central hub to unity which is why lacunae and those cut off in canterlot are the only ones with a different personality. The telepathic ones can only act telepathically NOT send souls across the gap between them. In order for Psalm to come back the goddess would have to reverse unity and put the souls back in. If it was a revert completely to your original body sort of deal then as soon as the goddess died then every alicorn would have snapped back to who they were like a rubber band instead of taking time to revert or develop a identity. The alicorns in canterlot only began reverting after long exposure and only began to revert to their old selves because even though in unity everyone's memories are shared their physical memories are still in place in the original body.

What I mean by that each alicorn acts as a mobile terminal for the goddess. Even though memories and souls are shared alicorns like twilight and the alicorns in canterlot remember their original memories after prolonged times of being cut off from unity. The reason why I think Lacunae will still be is she has gone prolonged periods and often without unity and been in enervation for long periods. She is probably the only alicorn while attached to unity to still have self identity even though it is often washed out. Even though she consists of many souls and many memories she still maintains some for of individuality from unity.

The question however is what is going to happen to her mind when unity is cut? Psalm's memories seem to be in both lacunae and blackjack. It's debatable is psalm's soul is in blackjack. If unity is cut like a string will psalm's soul stay in blackjack? Will Blackjack maintain those memories? Will Lacunae's memories of remorse and regret stay inside her? If the shared memories act as ram then it's going to suck badly for lacunae when it gets deleted.

Personally what I'm betting on is that shared memories act are temporary whereas original memories and memories the alicorn experiences are stored in their actual physical mind and not in unity as well, whereas souls have to physically reside in a pony even if it is across several ponies. I don't think all the shared memories of unity are always stored in every alicorn's mind though, cause that would be way too much information; so much as every pony can access the memories.

So basically $10's on psychological whiplash cranked up to 11 with no more shared memories of unity, only the memories of lacunae and psalm. Lacunae's going to need some serious psychological support

jacky2734 wrote:Aaand on a completely unrelated topic:
I happened to glance at Somber's Brohoof count, and I do believe that he has the highest Brohoof count on the entire forum. Does everybody just immediately brohoof him whenever he makes a post?

I got a confession to make. I don't really comment on here much anymore, but I still feel a little bit guilty. I used to Brohoof almost every post Somber made. Basically because I like Somber and I could. I don't do it now, obv, but some uncounted hundreds of Somber's Brohoofs come straight from me. So, uh, sorry for that.

And after a scan of this page I find no discussion I can meaningfully add to.

@Derpmind
Man, I know I'm not alone in missing some of the old hands. Random and Sindri come to mind for two. Glad you still check and talk every now and again, though! :)

Overlong Analysis Cobalt wrote:@Derpmind
Man, I know I'm not alone in missing some of the old hands. Random and Sindri come to mind for two. Glad you still check and talk every now and again, though! :)

yeah, whatever happened to those two? eh, life happens I guess

Sindri still come here from time to time IIRC, but Random Blank I haven't seen around here in a long while.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Sindri still come here from time to time IIRC, but Random Blank I haven't seen around here in a long while.

A damn shame, that. Someone with the gumption to run Red Eye was certainly a good thing for the discussion here.

CannonFodder wrote:cantercorns

About those Cantercorns. I may be recalling this incorrectly, but I'm fairly certain that there isn't any evidence saying they regressed to pre-Goddess identities. It is debatable that the people they became might have resembled their past selves, but I don't recall anything supporting that.

I think they just went loopy.

I really do miss folks like Sindri and Derpmind and others. But I'm guilty of it myself. I remember coming in here and posting two, three, or four times a day. Now it's exceptional if I do it once a week. For a time it was simply because everyone else was so chatty that I didn't feel like I could add to it. I do miss their feedback though. Feedback is the most precious thing to me... telling me what works and what didn't. Ideas. Suggestions. Even wild mass guesses that prove frustratingly accurate.

They may come back some day.

Flood their PM boxes and all that.

@people who have been gone for a while.
Kim is also missing, but she'll be back. She always does come back.

@Loopy Cantercorns.
They certainly weren't normal. Wearing the bones of their 'progenitor' was weird enough. And they were using blood magic, and I think Littlepip did at some point in Canterlot as well. Alicorns don't usually use that magic, IIRC.
I'm getting the feeling I'm getting a few mix-ups in there.

If memory serves about the Cantercorns, something about the city caused them to break free or just cut them off from the Goddess' control.

Only two of note was the one in the kitchen that I'm guessing was based off Dog/God from the New Vegas DLC Dead Money since it was arguing with itself and eventually blew itself up.

The other was the apparent leader of the Cantercorns, who used blood magic granted by the Black Book and was wearing Luna's bones.

Just throwing this out there, and I don't remember if it was explained in story or not, but I'm going with a mix between the Pink Cloud's necromancy magic, the presence of the killer signal from the radios and the influence of the Black Book cause them to be, the way they are.

In a round about way it was from the Pink Cloud that the radios where making that sound, but other then heavy concentration of Pink Cloud the radios where the only thing different about Canterlot.

I was grasping for straws and grabbed the different ones.

For whatever reason I gonna say the Black Book is kinda like the One Ring but not picky on who owns it. It corrupts the owner and makes them possessive and protective of it, in hopes somebody more powerful will come along and kill them and take possession of it. No fun if it's just handed over to the strongest around.

Cut off from the Goddess, the alicorns fell pray to it, the leader probable getting in her mind that she could be just as powerful as the Goddess if not more so if she kept it.

Once Littlepip got it, the book was tempting her with it's power, getting her to use the blood magic. Just that Littlepip had main character plot armor which helped stave off the corruption so she could destroy it.

swicked wrote:

Moodyman90 wrote:Just throwing this out there, and I don't remember if it was explained in story or not, but I'm going with a mix between the Pink Cloud's necromancy magic, the presence of the killer signal from the radios and the influence of the Black Book cause them to be, the way they are.

The sound from the radios did drown out the goddess, iirc.
It was just the black book that could teach that blood magic... which begs the question, why didn't the black book want to meet the goddess? It's got its own consciousness, it wants to be used, were all the alicorns it meant so messed up it could influence them no more than to teach then a couple new spells? Because, otherwise, I'd of thought it'd want them to take it to their goddess.

The radio thing makes sense, as the Goddess' presence manifests in voice, which would be disrupted by evil magic speakers.
The book might have seduced them with power the Goddess couldn't offer: Necromancy. Even if it did tell them to take it to the Goddess, then they might have ignored it in favor of keeping it for themselves.
I specifically remember Littlepip learning blood manipulation on the fly, using telekinesis.

Wow, I just had a interesting thought. Imagine what would have happened if twilight and trixie's talk when the bombs fell was delayed Like if Twilight stopped five seconds to get a sparkle cola from a vending machine and instead of trixie standing above the vats it was twilight. The wasteland would be a completely different place.

Indeed it could be. Wonder if anyone's going to write a story on that possible divergence.

Unrelated: Early in Project Horizons, the stable is described just a step away from completely failing and taking everyone in it with it. I have to question if that's a trait Blackjack effectively inherited from the environment, seeing how she screwed up early in, nearly broke then, then screwed up again and stayed borderline stable since.

Then again, she had more extra chances than her stable ever did.

Given her cutie marks represent a game of chance and gamble, maybe that means that getting away with gambits through sheer luck is her special talent ?

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Given her cutie marks represent a game of chance and gamble, maybe that means that getting away with gambits through sheer luck is her special talent ?

this is now my new headcanon

Retl wrote:Indeed it could be. Wonder if anyone's going to write a story on that possible divergence.

Unrelated: Early in Project Horizons, the stable is described just a step away from completely failing and taking everyone in it with it. I have to question if that's a trait Blackjack effectively inherited from the environment, seeing how she screwed up early in, nearly broke then, then screwed up again and stayed borderline stable since.

Then again, she had more extra chances than her stable ever did.

That would be a pretty good idea for a fanfic. Like a alternate universe fallout equestria. It would be a even more bloody equestria cause no goddess means no red eye doesn't have alicorn backup meaning no manehatten raider town and no lacunae. It would be the enclave and red eye literally fighting to the death until both sides are completely dead and everyone getting boned in the end cause a power vacuum in already a post apocalyptic wasteland is not good. At least with the original littlepip was able to fill the power vacuum of red eye and the enclave when they were destroyed, not with that parallel timeline. That would be cool idea of equestria with no SPP and no elements of harmony megaspell and no alicorns.


It could be. If she was taught how to keep it together even when things are screwed up from early on it would explain her high resilience.

Harmony Ltd. wrote:Given her cutie marks represent a game of chance and gamble, maybe that means that getting away with gambits through sheer luck is her special talent ?

Sweet Celestia! That simply has to be it!

Somber wrote:Even wild mass guesses that prove frustratingly accurate.

How many times has this happened and whose done it? I'm curious to know.

Kippershy wrote:

Somber wrote:Even wild mass guesses that prove frustratingly accurate.

How many times has this happened and whose done it? I'm curious to know.

I'm curious as well. Don't even have to mention anything about anything in future chapters, there's enough behind us there's got to be plenty of examples from them.

Somber wrote:Even wild mass guesses that prove frustratingly accurate.

. . . Sorry, I'm just such a massive bookworm of fiction that unless spaghetti men from mars invade chances are I can tell where a story is going. Seriously people find it annoying whenever they go to the movies with me cause I'll hold up three fingers, two fingers, one finger and then a jump scare or a surprise happens in the movie.

CannonFodder wrote:

Somber wrote:Even wild mass guesses that prove frustratingly accurate.

. . . Sorry, I'm just such a massive bookworm of fiction that unless spaghetti men from mars invade chances are I can tell where a story is going. Seriously people find it annoying whenever they go to the movies with me cause I'll hold up three fingers, two fingers, one finger and then a jump scare or a surprise happens in the movie.

But they telegraph jump scares so badly these days. You don't even need to count down.

Caoimhe wrote:almost like something you'd tell an upset child that learned his/her fav character died off screen for comfort.

Quite amusing that you should phrase it that way, since my favorite character died off screen.

Somber wrote:

*hugs*


And I'm sorry...

Spoiler:

http://wavemasterryx.tumblr.com/post/42233891985