Your take is way too overcomplicated and confusing. Using your model would pretty much kill any chance of getting any Equestria girls chapters as the author would need to constantly check and recheck "What is the time dilation between pony and human world this week?" it would quickly suck out any writing joy author would have for it, trust me I know from experience of trying something similar and ending up abandoning the project entirely. This is one of the things that fall under the umbrella of 'Keep it simple stupid!' and simple is assuming that when the portal is open time in both worlds goes at a rate of 1:1.
Equestrian Celestial Forge (Celestial Forge/My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)
- Thread starter Ruby Boule
- Start date
Nah, there's twice as many chapters on Fimfiction.
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
I follow a simple principle - we gets what we gets. And, if inspired, I comment on what we gets. Going looking for moar? Well, that led me from FF to SV, following TV...
Strongly agree with this. I've drawn complex charts, invented formulae, and then said - forget it. Saying 'unpredictable dimensional interactions, oh look, sync fits story needs', is very far the easiest and most simple approach. For fun, throwing-in Twilight doing complex math, and failing, can amuse an author.
(BTW, realising that it's the one doing the complex stuff, and calling themselves 'stupid', NOT anyone else doing so, is an important part of KISS.)
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Chapter 15 - A Less-Than-Helpful Speed Boost
Rainbow Dash groaned as the tree-shaped bruise on her side made itself known with every movement. She could faintly hear the sounds of combat across the clearing as Daring Do, her hero, her idol, fought off Ahuitzotl's wildcats.
Alone.
At her insistence.
She needed to get up. To get back in the fight and help but just trying to stand made her bite back a hiss of pain.
There was nothing she could do. She was just useless baggage to the adventurer after all. Just a danger and a liability.
The tingling in her wings only added insult to injury, a sure sign that just when she needed it most, another one of her friends was getting a superpower instead of her. Typical. But the feeling continued to grow, swelling up far past what she'd felt before and her spirits rose with it.
Was it finally her time? She crossed her hooves, mentally begging for something awesome like time travel or ninja skills or even just a sweet sword to help Daring Do fight.
The power surged as it seeped into her skull, filling her mind with knowledge and an awareness of power. Subconscious knowledge on how to move swiftly and efficiently, how to ignore obstacles and just keep working, and overall a overwhelming sense of speed which all came together in the form of—
"The hay? That's it? That's all I get!?" She groaned as she rolled over, her vision getting hazy as she watched Daring Do get carried away, trussed up in ropes, towards a distant temple.
"Lousy stingy power-giving space thing."
Alone.
At her insistence.
She needed to get up. To get back in the fight and help but just trying to stand made her bite back a hiss of pain.
There was nothing she could do. She was just useless baggage to the adventurer after all. Just a danger and a liability.
The tingling in her wings only added insult to injury, a sure sign that just when she needed it most, another one of her friends was getting a superpower instead of her. Typical. But the feeling continued to grow, swelling up far past what she'd felt before and her spirits rose with it.
Was it finally her time? She crossed her hooves, mentally begging for something awesome like time travel or ninja skills or even just a sweet sword to help Daring Do fight.
The power surged as it seeped into her skull, filling her mind with knowledge and an awareness of power. Subconscious knowledge on how to move swiftly and efficiently, how to ignore obstacles and just keep working, and overall a overwhelming sense of speed which all came together in the form of—
"The hay? That's it? That's all I get!?" She groaned as she rolled over, her vision getting hazy as she watched Daring Do get carried away, trussed up in ropes, towards a distant temple.
"Lousy stingy power-giving space thing."
-Rapid Construction (Blazing Saddles) (50CP)
You are not only a truly excellent carpenter, you are an exceptionally fast worker. Any form of construction or crafting will be completed in a tenth the time it would otherwise take, though your overall quality will suffer if you use this at full effect (times ten). At times two, you'll sacrifice none of the quality, but as you get closer to times ten, you'll sacrifice more and more of it.A little baby chapter from when this was still a "Write and post a chapter every day" challenge. Might post the next one early to make up for it.
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Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
Almost certainly stacks with the trap building... And, Rainbow can now use wood as well as clouds to build stuff! Of course, if 'Tailor' comes up, Rarity must not get it - Rainbow would be far more fun.
(Traps made of cloth, wood and clouds!
)
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Loki Thorson
The Iron Wordsmith
- Location
- The Land of Maple Syrup, Midgard
Can't Rainbow already move at close to Mach-1 speeds though? and with precision for both attack and rescue? Would that translate to building some very sturdy cages, very very very fast around rabble rousers. In a sort of discount Flash sort of way.
It specifically said construction or crafting thou. But I do wonder how times ten would make the weather clearing sloppy. Will the clouds break apart into tiny pieces and just float around everywhere?
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
Might want to consider the prospect of the wrong sort of clouds. There are cloud types you really don't want to see in the sky... Get it wrong enough, and do you get massive charge separation in clouds, and, maybe things like ball lightning? But, that's a lot worse than 'sloppy', though...
Rainbow always dresses in style?
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
Overused
Rainbow needs 'Aesthetics and Flair', which includes 'Inexplicable Innuendo' and 'Classy Contortionist'...
(Accessed here to find these.)
I only wish I could write that quickly, but alas, I am no Hal Henderics. Once we get through the backlog it'll probably drop down to one update per 10-14 days.
A minor point of clarification because I've seen multiple people bring it up, while Rainbow Dash's initial Perk mentions building traps, that's mostly flavortext from the source material. The actual effect of that Perk is a knack for building things in such a way they can be disassembled/ break apart easily. While true for snares and cages and such, she didn't receive any mental blueprints or plans for traps specifically.
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Chapter 16 - Snacks Do A Body Good
Fluttershy's shed was not a structure designed to draw attention. It was small, simple, functional. Meant to blend into the background and perform in its capacity as weather-proofed storage unobtrusively.
But if, for some reason, a stranger happened to decide to intrude upon it regardless, they'd find the interior far less mundane.
To the mycologically uninformed, it looked like some massive nest of spiders had turned Fluttershy's shed into their own personal palace. Thin strands of white covered every surface so completely it appeared as if every table, every shelf, even the very walls and floor had been transformed into fuzzy silk.
In truth, there were several spiders working under Fluttershy's employ, but the expanse of white was not their work. They merely kept the mycelium free from pests and invaders.
For that's what it truly was. Mycelium. A thick and healthy spread of it that plunged deeply beneath the surface into the wood, the soil, and the myriad bags of fertilizer. It filled the room like an early snowfall, leaving clear only a carefully maintained path to the back and the large hole that resided there.
Fluttershy had started her little mushroom farm in a series of four window boxes placed as far away from the sunlight as possible and filled with a rich mix of decaying magical plants.
In three days she realized the boxes weren't going to be enough and transplanted them into a large tub. Two days later, the floor itself. It took three more days for her to really comprehend just how vastly she'd underestimated how much root space these mushrooms needed.
Thus, the hole.
Most mushrooms grew just fine straight through the dirt, but the particular strain that the ideas in her mind insisted upon as a base material for other creations spread most quickly along the surface. The work of expansion had begun with her animal friends who were skilled in digging. The moles, the badgers, the rabbits, and even Angel with a custom tiny hammer she made for him. They dug out tunnels and warrens beneath her shed, linking it up to any old abandoned burrows and also the deep furrows that had been left behind when the plundervines disintegrated. Anything to make more room for the mush.
And yet even that seemed insufficient for the space-hungry mycelium.
Luckily, that was about the time Fluttershy met Discord.
The draconequus' help had been surprisingly easy to acquire. After whipping up a custom seed on her request, he admitted to a passing interest in any other ideas she might have, deeming her "a skosh more interesting than the usual boring pony". A snap of his claws was all it took for the animal-sized tunnels to expand into earthen caves wide and tall enough for a pony to walk through. Though to remain true to his nature, he'd insisted upon a few chaotic concessions, including having the tunnels link up in non-euclidean routes and occasionally shifting of their own accord (as well as a few 'special surprises' that he refused to elaborate on).
The mycelium took to the caves like parasprites to a buffet, quickly subsuming the walls with more roots through which to sup the magical nutrients of the rich soil at the Everfree's edge.
With finally enough room to expand, it wasn't long at all before the first red-and-white speckled caps started to push their way out of the soil.
The farmer had been dutiful and the harvest would be bountiful in response.
Fluttershy, however, was not present to see the first of her crop breach the surface. She was currently otherwise occupied with a task she'd been putting off longer than she'd meant to.
"Is this some kind of joke?"
"...No? I don't think so." Fluttershy glanced back at the cart of baked goods and treats she'd brought to the hospital. None of them looked funny at all. But then why did Dr. Horse seem so suspicious of them?
The good doctor eyed her offerings like he had some personal skepticism against the existence of free food. "This has all the markings of a prank. Did Rainbow Dash put you up to this?"
"No."
"Is Pinkie Pie going to jump out of that and proclaim that laughter is the best medicine?"
Fluttershy regarded the completely normal sized cake. "I don't think she would fit in there."
Doctor Horse snorted. "I wouldn't put it past her. I watched that mare crawl out of an air vent once. Body like a cat, that one."
This was true. Fluttershy had once caught her stuck inside a birdhouse, stalwartly determined to give a trio of eggs a zeroth birthday party the instant they hatched.
"There's no prank, really," she insisted as she pulled her cart a little closer to waft the scents in his direction. "I just wanted to do something to help all the poor ponies still recovering from the plunderseed attack."
It had taken a lot of time and effort (not to mention quite a few promised favors in return for borrowing Mr. and Mrs. Cake's kitchens and ovens for the better part of a day) but the finished goods spoke for themselves. Her cart was absolutely brimming with all kinds of tasty treats made from the myriad recipes that had filled her mind after coming across a bag of cake mix.
Decadent three-layer choco cake and rich mousse cake with cream and fresh strawberries. Big cookies filled with berries and small sweet ones shaped like cute lizards. Apple pies, their fruit fresh from Applejack's orchard and still steaming in their pans. A big bowl of hard candies for patients with more sensitive stomachs, in flavors ranging from lemon and lime to spicy and chocolate. But what was a feast without drinks? A wheeled cooler lashed to the back of the cart held all manner of tonics and teas and shakes and sodas galore to help wash it all down.
Dr. Horse's eyes fluttered and his whole body shuddered as the myriad smells washed over him. "Well... alright. Since it's you Miss Fluttershy, I suppose I can accept these in the spirit they were given. I'm sure our patients will appreciate a bit of variety in their meals."
"So long as they don't have any mushroom allergies."
He hesitated and glanced at a pie, a taste of his former wariness returned. "Mushrooms?"
"Just a little," she admitted. "For the protein and to help promote healing."
"Ah, yes. Very well then. Can't say it'll do much on the healing side, but there's a lot of good to be done through raised spirits."
Fluttershy gave him an odd smile. "I think you might be surprised just how healing a few treats baked with love can be."
But if, for some reason, a stranger happened to decide to intrude upon it regardless, they'd find the interior far less mundane.
To the mycologically uninformed, it looked like some massive nest of spiders had turned Fluttershy's shed into their own personal palace. Thin strands of white covered every surface so completely it appeared as if every table, every shelf, even the very walls and floor had been transformed into fuzzy silk.
In truth, there were several spiders working under Fluttershy's employ, but the expanse of white was not their work. They merely kept the mycelium free from pests and invaders.
For that's what it truly was. Mycelium. A thick and healthy spread of it that plunged deeply beneath the surface into the wood, the soil, and the myriad bags of fertilizer. It filled the room like an early snowfall, leaving clear only a carefully maintained path to the back and the large hole that resided there.
Fluttershy had started her little mushroom farm in a series of four window boxes placed as far away from the sunlight as possible and filled with a rich mix of decaying magical plants.
In three days she realized the boxes weren't going to be enough and transplanted them into a large tub. Two days later, the floor itself. It took three more days for her to really comprehend just how vastly she'd underestimated how much root space these mushrooms needed.
Thus, the hole.
Most mushrooms grew just fine straight through the dirt, but the particular strain that the ideas in her mind insisted upon as a base material for other creations spread most quickly along the surface. The work of expansion had begun with her animal friends who were skilled in digging. The moles, the badgers, the rabbits, and even Angel with a custom tiny hammer she made for him. They dug out tunnels and warrens beneath her shed, linking it up to any old abandoned burrows and also the deep furrows that had been left behind when the plundervines disintegrated. Anything to make more room for the mush.
And yet even that seemed insufficient for the space-hungry mycelium.
Luckily, that was about the time Fluttershy met Discord.
The draconequus' help had been surprisingly easy to acquire. After whipping up a custom seed on her request, he admitted to a passing interest in any other ideas she might have, deeming her "a skosh more interesting than the usual boring pony". A snap of his claws was all it took for the animal-sized tunnels to expand into earthen caves wide and tall enough for a pony to walk through. Though to remain true to his nature, he'd insisted upon a few chaotic concessions, including having the tunnels link up in non-euclidean routes and occasionally shifting of their own accord (as well as a few 'special surprises' that he refused to elaborate on).
The mycelium took to the caves like parasprites to a buffet, quickly subsuming the walls with more roots through which to sup the magical nutrients of the rich soil at the Everfree's edge.
With finally enough room to expand, it wasn't long at all before the first red-and-white speckled caps started to push their way out of the soil.
The farmer had been dutiful and the harvest would be bountiful in response.
Fluttershy, however, was not present to see the first of her crop breach the surface. She was currently otherwise occupied with a task she'd been putting off longer than she'd meant to.
"Is this some kind of joke?"
"...No? I don't think so." Fluttershy glanced back at the cart of baked goods and treats she'd brought to the hospital. None of them looked funny at all. But then why did Dr. Horse seem so suspicious of them?
The good doctor eyed her offerings like he had some personal skepticism against the existence of free food. "This has all the markings of a prank. Did Rainbow Dash put you up to this?"
"No."
"Is Pinkie Pie going to jump out of that and proclaim that laughter is the best medicine?"
Fluttershy regarded the completely normal sized cake. "I don't think she would fit in there."
Doctor Horse snorted. "I wouldn't put it past her. I watched that mare crawl out of an air vent once. Body like a cat, that one."
This was true. Fluttershy had once caught her stuck inside a birdhouse, stalwartly determined to give a trio of eggs a zeroth birthday party the instant they hatched.
"There's no prank, really," she insisted as she pulled her cart a little closer to waft the scents in his direction. "I just wanted to do something to help all the poor ponies still recovering from the plunderseed attack."
It had taken a lot of time and effort (not to mention quite a few promised favors in return for borrowing Mr. and Mrs. Cake's kitchens and ovens for the better part of a day) but the finished goods spoke for themselves. Her cart was absolutely brimming with all kinds of tasty treats made from the myriad recipes that had filled her mind after coming across a bag of cake mix.
Decadent three-layer choco cake and rich mousse cake with cream and fresh strawberries. Big cookies filled with berries and small sweet ones shaped like cute lizards. Apple pies, their fruit fresh from Applejack's orchard and still steaming in their pans. A big bowl of hard candies for patients with more sensitive stomachs, in flavors ranging from lemon and lime to spicy and chocolate. But what was a feast without drinks? A wheeled cooler lashed to the back of the cart held all manner of tonics and teas and shakes and sodas galore to help wash it all down.
Dr. Horse's eyes fluttered and his whole body shuddered as the myriad smells washed over him. "Well... alright. Since it's you Miss Fluttershy, I suppose I can accept these in the spirit they were given. I'm sure our patients will appreciate a bit of variety in their meals."
"So long as they don't have any mushroom allergies."
He hesitated and glanced at a pie, a taste of his former wariness returned. "Mushrooms?"
"Just a little," she admitted. "For the protein and to help promote healing."
"Ah, yes. Very well then. Can't say it'll do much on the healing side, but there's a lot of good to be done through raised spirits."
Fluttershy gave him an odd smile. "I think you might be surprised just how healing a few treats baked with love can be."
Lagoon12002
How far have I fell down into this deep deep sea
Again, if this was any other type of fic and we didn't know what was actually happening, Fluttershy's actions would be incredibly suspicious.
Thank you for the chapter, it is good.
Thank you for the chapter, it is good.
Who's Hal Hendricks? I googled it and received nothing.
It would probably help if I had spelled it correctly (I've edited the original post now). Author of Collection Quest (Worm/Multicross), which managed 2-5k word daily updates (sometimes two or three updates per day) for weeks and weeks. Posted nearly a half a million words since last November before they finally either burned out or decided they needed a break.
And I say again, no matter how much Pinkie Pie tends to break reality, it is Fluttershy who I consider more eldritch.
All beasts obey her and are cowed by her. DISCORD likes her enough to restrict himself and even be helpful on occasion! Her growing Mega-Mycelium beneath her little shed, spreading for what seems miles all around into the Everfree itself, just makes it even worse.....
All beasts obey her and are cowed by her. DISCORD likes her enough to restrict himself and even be helpful on occasion! Her growing Mega-Mycelium beneath her little shed, spreading for what seems miles all around into the Everfree itself, just makes it even worse.....
KaiserDrgn
(Verified Dragon)
This fic is great. I've been chuckling out loud the whole time I read it. Eager to see more.
could...could they make DIscord say things, inscribe it into themself for powers? can they write things in discord to empower discord with his own sayings?
the share weirdness about if it is possible ought to make discord comply atleast
- Location
- Up on a Hill
I love this idea. It's the kind of thing that can only avoid going obviously, horribly wrong by going horribly, horribly right.
I feel like the joke would be they'd find all those runes already carved in there (and immediately get sanity damage).
Chapter 17 - Toolbox Spatials and Table Appraisals
"Are you ready, Pinkie?"
"Aye aye, captain!" She gave a sloppy salute that would have made Shining Armor wince. Her toolbox clattered as she dropped it onto the Hub's table, the lid already open to an inky void. "One question, though."
"Shoot."
"How come you're doing this and not Twilight?"
Spike leaned back in the wooden chair he'd dragged through Twilight's Door. There was no shortage of them in the library these days, and one wouldn't go amiss if it ended up breaking or disappearing through someone else's Door or accidentally falling into that fancy alchemy box that made really tasty gems. It'd be a terrible shame, but what can you do? Accidents happen.
"Because Twilight got all excited about Dash's new thing so now they're having a wood-off."
"A wood-off?"
"A wood-off," he confirmed. "And that's probably going to take all day so she asked me to handle some of her easier research projects that have been piling up."
'Asked' was a strong word to use. What she'd done was set up a corkboard with dozens of projects she planned to research but that kept getting pushed back every time someone got a new power. Each task had a list of the specific data she wanted to collect and, more importantly, a listed reward he'd get if he helped out. Sure, it wasn't polite as actually just asking him to help out, but the chore wheel never had rewards on it and half the crazy stuff that was going on had him just as interested as she was. Win-win, in his opinion.
Plus, it never said he couldn't farm out the research to others either.
He glanced again at the ripped page that had the instructions for his current assignment. It was one of the simpler ones, and also one that involved hanging out with a friend.
He dipped his quill in the ink and hovered it over the top of the scroll. "Let's start with some easy ones. How many tools does it have?"
Pinkie shrugged. "I dunno. A lot? I've never managed to take them all out."
"Okay. Let's start with the screwdrivers and we'll go from there. There can't be that many."
"Okie Dokie Lokie." Pinkie reached in and pulled out a normal-looking flathead screwdriver with a rigid red grip. "One." Spike marked a tally on his sheet. She tossed it onto the table and pulled out another, similar, but slightly shorter and with a textured blue grip. "Two."
Then she pulled another. "Three."
And another. "Four."
"Five... Six... Seven... Eight... Nine... Ten... Eleven..."
~~~
Spike woke with a start, the faint memory of a dream about being adopted by a Timberwolf already fading from his mind. A small avalanche of screwdrivers fell away from his head as he shook himself back to total wakefulness.
"Two thousand three-hundred and forty one... Two thousand three-hundred and forty two... Two thousand three-hundred and forty three..."
The table was full. So was his lap and a good portion of the floor. An ocean of screwdrivers in a rainbow of colors had consumed the room, leaving him adrift amongst the metal.
"Pinkie?" he ventured tentatively.
"Yep?" She remained seated where she'd been what felt like a minute ago at screwdriver number one and looked, surprisingly, not bored in the slightest. "What's up? Lose your place?"
"Uh… maybe." He'd lost his entire scroll. And his quill. And the ink. "How long have you been counting?"
"About twenty minutes, maybe a little more. You wanna keep going? There's more in there—" She pulled out a decidedly weird screwdriver as long as her foreleg with two flexible joints, three gripping areas, and a head that looked more like a diecast inkblot test. "—but I think we're starting to blur the line of what counts as a screwdriver."
Spike groaned and rubbed his eyes. So much for that being an easy task for an easy reward. He started to reply but stopped as he noticed how still Pinkie had gotten. Then she twitched, a slow vibration that ran up her legs through her body and dissipated out of her mane and tail in tiny little whip cracks. He'd never witnessed Pinkie get a power before, but he'd seen it often enough in Twilight to make the connection. "New power?"
She shook her head. "Not me, but I caught a whiff of it as it went by. Felt like an odd one."
His ear frills perked up at the sound of a potentially reward-worthy discovery. "You can feel them? Or, I guess, smell them?"
"Sorta, kinda, iffy-whiffy." She waggled her hoof. "It's a lot like when I was just figuring out my Pinkie Sense. Lots of new feelings but I don't know what means what yet."
Spike shrugged and mentally tossed the idea aside. If it was anything like her Pinkie Sense, it wouldn't be worth the headache. "Whatever. You wanna just toss some stuff in the alchemy cube and see if we get anything fun?"
"You had me at 'fun'!" she grinned before gesturing to the still very-much-present-and-door-blocking ocean of metal and plastic. "Just let me clear a path." She grabbed an armload of tools and dumped them back in the toolbox.
"Cool. I'm gonna go get a snack. You want anything?"
"Cupcakes if you have 'em, anything else if you don't." Spike shot her a pair of finger guns then hop, skip, and jumped his way over the landslide and out the door into the library.
Pinkie continued to toss her tools back into storage with the kind of reckless abandon of someone who didn't have to pay for them if they broke. As she pulled a load-bearing pile from the lower level, an unstable portion on the table was able to slip off and bounce and roll beneath. "Whoops! Get back here you little scamps!" She hopped out of her chair (further disturbing the delicate pile) and shimmied her way underneath.
"There you are! Now I— Ooh, that's neat. I wonder what all these carvings mean?"
The life of a carpenter was a straightforward one, or so was the philosophy of Wicker Mare. Furniture was not a heavy-turnover market. She got by day-to-day making simple, functional pieces to supply Barnyard Bargains and other resellers and when she had the time she made more artistic pieces (though no less functional for their beauty) which she sold out of the first floor of her home. Once in a blue moon she'd get a commission for a custom piece—usually by a neighbor or friend of a friend who needed a peculiarly shaped table to fit an awkward corner of their home or a chair made in a particular outdated style to replace one of a set that had broken—though those were few and far between.
She wasn't rolling in wealth, but neither was she destitute. She got to do what she loved for a living and had never made the mistake of working for a furniture manufacturer (unlike her cousin Birch who had spent six years making identical cupboard doors for home-installation kits day after day).
What was unusual was the amount of consultancy gigs she'd found herself getting paid for in recent days.
Consultancy was not the realm of the woodworker. If you wanted an expansion for your wooden house, you called a contractor. If something broke, you hired a dedicated repair pony. Rarely was she needed to look at a piece of furniture that had already been sold, let alone to look at something that somepony else had made.
And yet, she'd been asked to do so three times in the past two weeks. And paid handsomely for it too.
Today, there were three objects awaiting her appraisal. End tables all, but they couldn't be more wildly different.
The first was finely made. The lines were clean, the sides straight, the chamfering was smooth and even. A fine piece of work that nopony would mind having in their home.
…but that was it. It was simple. Straightforward. There was nothing particularly special about it; just a fine, serviceable end table. There was no real spark to it. No sign of passion from its creator. It reminded her rather a lot of Birch and his factory-made parts. There was nothing wrong with it, but nothing terribly interesting either. Like someone took the pony out of the design process and just gave them a set of finely detailed instructions.
The second table was different. There was a style to it. All the technical details were just as finely applied, but this one took some bold design choices where the first kept it safe. The asymmetric trim should have looked poorly cut, but combined with the bowed legs and detailed carving, it gave the impression that the whole table was somehow lighter than air and about to float off. It was the kind of piece only particularly eccentric ponies would be interested in buying, but aside from that she would put it on par with her own experimental pieces.
The third table was undoubtedly the odd duck out. A shoddy replica of the second, riddled with shortcuts and questionable design choices. It still looked decent: to the untrained observer. But to Wicker's eyes it was clearly inferior. She doubted it could take the weight of more than a book or two. She could practically see exactly which pins would fail and predict how it would collapse into a neat pile of loose timbers.
The only really impressive thing about it was how she'd personally watched a mare that she knew had zero history in woodworking craft it from raw planks into a finished (if questionable) product in the time she would have needed to properly measure and cut the pieces.
She sighed as she took a long draw from her doctored coffee and thanked the stars that she was an earth pony. Magic had some truly crazy depths if it could teach a pegasus to do that in no time flat. She took another slurp and wondered just how she was supposed to summarize all her assessments up in a way that would satisfy Twilight.
And also if Rainbow Dash would mind dropping by to give her apprentice a lesson or two on how to properly bevel corner pieces. His always ended up uneven while hers (when she wasn't rushing) looked like a single carved piece.
The chance of you finding what you're searching for decreases exponentially with the material's strength and rarity, and increases by how much you know about said material, scientifically, and how good your technology skills are. So while a regular schmuck would probably never find Adamantium, someone who could reproduce it themselves in only a few years would have much, much better chances. So if you're in a situation where it is impossible to get what you want with what you know and where you are right now? Then you'll have to get to work yourself. Good riddance then that you can eventually reproduce any material or alloy that you have seen, though for extremely advanced ones it might take an unreasonable amount of time and skill.
"Aye aye, captain!" She gave a sloppy salute that would have made Shining Armor wince. Her toolbox clattered as she dropped it onto the Hub's table, the lid already open to an inky void. "One question, though."
"Shoot."
"How come you're doing this and not Twilight?"
Spike leaned back in the wooden chair he'd dragged through Twilight's Door. There was no shortage of them in the library these days, and one wouldn't go amiss if it ended up breaking or disappearing through someone else's Door or accidentally falling into that fancy alchemy box that made really tasty gems. It'd be a terrible shame, but what can you do? Accidents happen.
"Because Twilight got all excited about Dash's new thing so now they're having a wood-off."
"A wood-off?"
"A wood-off," he confirmed. "And that's probably going to take all day so she asked me to handle some of her easier research projects that have been piling up."
'Asked' was a strong word to use. What she'd done was set up a corkboard with dozens of projects she planned to research but that kept getting pushed back every time someone got a new power. Each task had a list of the specific data she wanted to collect and, more importantly, a listed reward he'd get if he helped out. Sure, it wasn't polite as actually just asking him to help out, but the chore wheel never had rewards on it and half the crazy stuff that was going on had him just as interested as she was. Win-win, in his opinion.
Plus, it never said he couldn't farm out the research to others either.
He glanced again at the ripped page that had the instructions for his current assignment. It was one of the simpler ones, and also one that involved hanging out with a friend.
He dipped his quill in the ink and hovered it over the top of the scroll. "Let's start with some easy ones. How many tools does it have?"
Pinkie shrugged. "I dunno. A lot? I've never managed to take them all out."
"Okay. Let's start with the screwdrivers and we'll go from there. There can't be that many."
"Okie Dokie Lokie." Pinkie reached in and pulled out a normal-looking flathead screwdriver with a rigid red grip. "One." Spike marked a tally on his sheet. She tossed it onto the table and pulled out another, similar, but slightly shorter and with a textured blue grip. "Two."
Then she pulled another. "Three."
And another. "Four."
"Five... Six... Seven... Eight... Nine... Ten... Eleven..."
~~~
Spike woke with a start, the faint memory of a dream about being adopted by a Timberwolf already fading from his mind. A small avalanche of screwdrivers fell away from his head as he shook himself back to total wakefulness.
"Two thousand three-hundred and forty one... Two thousand three-hundred and forty two... Two thousand three-hundred and forty three..."
The table was full. So was his lap and a good portion of the floor. An ocean of screwdrivers in a rainbow of colors had consumed the room, leaving him adrift amongst the metal.
"Pinkie?" he ventured tentatively.
"Yep?" She remained seated where she'd been what felt like a minute ago at screwdriver number one and looked, surprisingly, not bored in the slightest. "What's up? Lose your place?"
"Uh… maybe." He'd lost his entire scroll. And his quill. And the ink. "How long have you been counting?"
"About twenty minutes, maybe a little more. You wanna keep going? There's more in there—" She pulled out a decidedly weird screwdriver as long as her foreleg with two flexible joints, three gripping areas, and a head that looked more like a diecast inkblot test. "—but I think we're starting to blur the line of what counts as a screwdriver."
Spike groaned and rubbed his eyes. So much for that being an easy task for an easy reward. He started to reply but stopped as he noticed how still Pinkie had gotten. Then she twitched, a slow vibration that ran up her legs through her body and dissipated out of her mane and tail in tiny little whip cracks. He'd never witnessed Pinkie get a power before, but he'd seen it often enough in Twilight to make the connection. "New power?"
She shook her head. "Not me, but I caught a whiff of it as it went by. Felt like an odd one."
His ear frills perked up at the sound of a potentially reward-worthy discovery. "You can feel them? Or, I guess, smell them?"
"Sorta, kinda, iffy-whiffy." She waggled her hoof. "It's a lot like when I was just figuring out my Pinkie Sense. Lots of new feelings but I don't know what means what yet."
Spike shrugged and mentally tossed the idea aside. If it was anything like her Pinkie Sense, it wouldn't be worth the headache. "Whatever. You wanna just toss some stuff in the alchemy cube and see if we get anything fun?"
"You had me at 'fun'!" she grinned before gesturing to the still very-much-present-and-door-blocking ocean of metal and plastic. "Just let me clear a path." She grabbed an armload of tools and dumped them back in the toolbox.
"Cool. I'm gonna go get a snack. You want anything?"
"Cupcakes if you have 'em, anything else if you don't." Spike shot her a pair of finger guns then hop, skip, and jumped his way over the landslide and out the door into the library.
Pinkie continued to toss her tools back into storage with the kind of reckless abandon of someone who didn't have to pay for them if they broke. As she pulled a load-bearing pile from the lower level, an unstable portion on the table was able to slip off and bounce and roll beneath. "Whoops! Get back here you little scamps!" She hopped out of her chair (further disturbing the delicate pile) and shimmied her way underneath.
"There you are! Now I— Ooh, that's neat. I wonder what all these carvings mean?"
The life of a carpenter was a straightforward one, or so was the philosophy of Wicker Mare. Furniture was not a heavy-turnover market. She got by day-to-day making simple, functional pieces to supply Barnyard Bargains and other resellers and when she had the time she made more artistic pieces (though no less functional for their beauty) which she sold out of the first floor of her home. Once in a blue moon she'd get a commission for a custom piece—usually by a neighbor or friend of a friend who needed a peculiarly shaped table to fit an awkward corner of their home or a chair made in a particular outdated style to replace one of a set that had broken—though those were few and far between.
She wasn't rolling in wealth, but neither was she destitute. She got to do what she loved for a living and had never made the mistake of working for a furniture manufacturer (unlike her cousin Birch who had spent six years making identical cupboard doors for home-installation kits day after day).
What was unusual was the amount of consultancy gigs she'd found herself getting paid for in recent days.
Consultancy was not the realm of the woodworker. If you wanted an expansion for your wooden house, you called a contractor. If something broke, you hired a dedicated repair pony. Rarely was she needed to look at a piece of furniture that had already been sold, let alone to look at something that somepony else had made.
And yet, she'd been asked to do so three times in the past two weeks. And paid handsomely for it too.
Today, there were three objects awaiting her appraisal. End tables all, but they couldn't be more wildly different.
The first was finely made. The lines were clean, the sides straight, the chamfering was smooth and even. A fine piece of work that nopony would mind having in their home.
…but that was it. It was simple. Straightforward. There was nothing particularly special about it; just a fine, serviceable end table. There was no real spark to it. No sign of passion from its creator. It reminded her rather a lot of Birch and his factory-made parts. There was nothing wrong with it, but nothing terribly interesting either. Like someone took the pony out of the design process and just gave them a set of finely detailed instructions.
The second table was different. There was a style to it. All the technical details were just as finely applied, but this one took some bold design choices where the first kept it safe. The asymmetric trim should have looked poorly cut, but combined with the bowed legs and detailed carving, it gave the impression that the whole table was somehow lighter than air and about to float off. It was the kind of piece only particularly eccentric ponies would be interested in buying, but aside from that she would put it on par with her own experimental pieces.
The third table was undoubtedly the odd duck out. A shoddy replica of the second, riddled with shortcuts and questionable design choices. It still looked decent: to the untrained observer. But to Wicker's eyes it was clearly inferior. She doubted it could take the weight of more than a book or two. She could practically see exactly which pins would fail and predict how it would collapse into a neat pile of loose timbers.
The only really impressive thing about it was how she'd personally watched a mare that she knew had zero history in woodworking craft it from raw planks into a finished (if questionable) product in the time she would have needed to properly measure and cut the pieces.
She sighed as she took a long draw from her doctored coffee and thanked the stars that she was an earth pony. Magic had some truly crazy depths if it could teach a pegasus to do that in no time flat. She took another slurp and wondered just how she was supposed to summarize all her assessments up in a way that would satisfy Twilight.
And also if Rainbow Dash would mind dropping by to give her apprentice a lesson or two on how to properly bevel corner pieces. His always ended up uneven while hers (when she wasn't rushing) looked like a single carved piece.
Material Limitations (World Seed) (100CP)
Even with the advanced technology commonplace on Earth nowadays, material limitations haven't changed. Or rather, you could say that they've gotten even worse. After all, how are you going to store antimatter if you have only steel at hand? Luckily, you won't ever have problems finding the materials you need. Whether you'll stumble upon them while searching through a scrapyard, or find just the right people who can get you that obscure alloy you need, nothing will stop you from building whatever you want besides your own skill. Well, if you're keeping it reasonable, at least.The chance of you finding what you're searching for decreases exponentially with the material's strength and rarity, and increases by how much you know about said material, scientifically, and how good your technology skills are. So while a regular schmuck would probably never find Adamantium, someone who could reproduce it themselves in only a few years would have much, much better chances. So if you're in a situation where it is impossible to get what you want with what you know and where you are right now? Then you'll have to get to work yourself. Good riddance then that you can eventually reproduce any material or alloy that you have seen, though for extremely advanced ones it might take an unreasonable amount of time and skill.
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