- Location
- Italy
technically, why would gryphons coming from a dark age even KNOW that unicorns once moved the sun and moon?
It might very well be considered a legend.
Who Needs Harmony?: An MLP Empire Quest
- Thread starter Questor
- Start date
It might very well be considered a legend.
Say, regarding these Sun and Moon stuff. Is it always natural for the ponies to move them? Pardon me for theory ranting a bit here. I always assumed Discord done something to them during his reign. Like, cutting away the reality between them and Equestria thus even though you can see them you can't physically go there and how they are completely stationary unless moved by beings with magic. I always like this explanation of how the ponies actually shifting the dimension a bit to explain how they actually move the sun and moon as physically moving celestial body is just too ridiculous. Kinda explain how Luna couldn't just fly to Equestria during his banishment too.
So what do you think?
So what do you think?
I think it's more a Tidal lock and what the Unicorns did and later Luna and Celestia provide the spin on the world using the star and planet as the pivots to power Rotation of the world.
After all both Celestia and Luna don't apply constant power to the movement just at the beginning and ends of night and day.
An analogy that isn't accurate would be add extra energy to a top or spinning plate as it slows.
After all both Celestia and Luna don't apply constant power to the movement just at the beginning and ends of night and day.
An analogy that isn't accurate would be add extra energy to a top or spinning plate as it slows.
- Location
- Italy
It could quite literally be anything, we just don't know enough about canon sun and moon.
MLP timeline is a bit inconsistent, but the unicorn raising sun and moon are from BEFORE Discord's age of madness.
Maybe in MLP world the sun and moon are smaller and closer to the planet.
Maybe there even ISN'T a planet, and the world is flat.
Maybe the sun is artificial and made of magic, and not what we normally would think of as a "star".
Maybe before the ponies did it the sun and moon were moved by some god.
Maybe some extradimensional invader somehow messed with laws of physics, and made it so that the sun won't move by itself.
We quite literally don't know.
All we know for certain is:
1)As far as anyone can remember, the Unicorns were the one to move sun and moon. After Celestia and Luna got their cutie marks, they started to do it themselves.
2)partly ascended fanon, but it's usually assumed that it was VERY tiring for the unicorns to do so, and that they slowly lost their magic for the effort.
5)by the end of the show, Celestia and Luna had created an enchanted amulet and gave it to Twilight before their retirement. This amulet somehow gave her the ability to move sun and moon (which implies she couldn't have done it by herself, or at least not easily). This control was not immediately perfect, and there was apparently no immediately bad consequence from the erratic movement of sun and moon. This seems to imply the sun is not a normal sun.
the rest is speculation and headcanons.
3)While the unicorns were the one do it originally, there's no reason why other beings might not be able to move sun and moon with their own magic. Changelings seem to have relatively similar magic to unicorns (or at least the changeling royals), and Zebras have access to strange ritual magic. It's possible that they might be able to move sun and moon with the right knowledge and enough power.
4)We have no idea what the true nature of sun and moon is. we shouldn't assume they're the same as real world stars and natural satellites until we get told so by in-game scientists and researchers. For all we know there's something special going on, and their true nature is very different due to magic. We can't even be sure that Equestria is on a planet and not on a flat world.
- Location
- I think somewhere. I might be nowhere though
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well yeah, I did put emphasis on "immediately believing them." I didn't say the Sun-Moon part is not able to be fact-checked.
Omake: Fallout: New Gryphus
- Location
- Maryland
"So...where exactly are we headed again?"
Sergeant Lighthooves sighed, the motors in his Power Armor whirring as he turned to face Private Wind Whistle.
"Didn't you listen to the briefing newbie?"
The mare attempted to shrug, the gesture made awkward by her own armor. Her face, uncovered by a helmet, conveyed a sense of embarrassment as she shifted uncomfortably on her hooves, not quite meeting his gaze.
"I uh...had latrine cleaning duty."
The fact that she had been given the duty as a punishment went unsaid.
Lighthooves rolled his eyes under his helm. Whistle had only been a soldier in the Grand Pegasus Enclave for a few months, and she had already developed a reputation for being an unreliable and even insubordinate pony. She'd never done anything serious, nothing bad enough to warrant any formal discipline or official reprimands, but she'd missed roll calls, failed uniform inspections, and tried to fake illness to get out of training more times than he could be bothered to count.
She was a hooffull alright, but he didn't think she was beyond redemption. He'd seen his fair share of soldiers like her, still unused to the service and not yet accustomed to the discipline expected of them. One might have questioned the wisdom of bringing such an unreliable and inexperienced mare along as part of a mission outside the Enclave, but in the Sergeant's experience the best way to get a recruit to shape up was to give them a close, personal look at the horrors of the wasteland. An unorthodox means of scaring them straight, but an effective one, or so he thought anyway.
"The Council ordered us out on a recon mission. We're going to Gryphus."
Whistle blinked in surprise, glancing between the non-com and the hangar door behind her, the entrance to the Raptor-class cloudship serving as their transport giving her a clear view of the ashen, irradiated ground passing by beneath them.
"Gryphus? Like, outside Equestria?"
Lighthooves resisted the urge to facehoof.
"Yes, Private. Outside Equestria. Beyond the Northern border."
The light-blue mare seemed to ponder that information for a moment before giving her superior a look of confusion.
"Why?"
Another thing about Wind Whistle that made her a less than stellar example of a soldier: her tendency to question everything. She had apparently never been told that the motto of all good soldiers was "Ours is not to reason why." But, in this particular instance, her question was justified, as the answer was actually relevant to their mission.
"Skies are getting a bit crowded these days kid. Living space above the clouds is at a premium, and while our airquaponics and mineral generation plants do a good job of things, at some point in the future we're going to have to start looking at the ground for resources. But Equestria's a bombed out, irradiated wasteland filled with monsters and savages, so command is looking a little further afield for a solution. We're going to be scouting out what's left of the Empire. It'll be our job to identify resource and tech caches, mineral deposits, and any territory that might be suitable for agriculture."
The Private stared, eyes wide in disbelief and more than a little disgust.
"We're going to grow our food in the dirt?"
Lighthooves shook his head.
"It's far from ideal Private, and I feel sorry for the poor bastards that might get assigned to mud-raking duty, but it beats starvation."
He leaned forward, a teasing lilt slipping into his tone.
"Good thing you're such a model soldier eh? No way anyone would want to make you a ground pounder, now would they?"
Whistle paled, the message clearly received as she hastily turned and grabbed her helmet, practically slamming it over her head before assuming a parade rest posture and saluting.
"No sir!"
Lighthooves smiled behind his helmet. All it took was a little motivation to whip the newbies into shape. He'd make a proper warrior out of this one yet.
—————————————————————————————
"All wings, check in."
Private Wind Whistle pressed her chin against the mic switch in her helmet, keying her suit's integrated communications unit.
"Echo 2-3, nothing to report."
The steady voice of Captain Autumn Leaf responded, his tone as deadpan and professional as always.
"Confirmed Echo 2-3. Remain alert. Next radio check in 15 mics."
Whistle switched her com unit off, biting back a sarcastic retort. She sighed, kicking a rock down the deserted street. She looked up, staring through the yellow lenses of her helmet at the towering form of the Crystal Palace. After four days in the ruins of the Crystal City, the sight had long since lost it's novelty and wonder.
Sentry duty was always boring, but this assignment was on a whole different level. Staring down an empty street in a dead city, only the occasional gust of wind to break the monotony, waiting to spot an enemy that she was convinced didn't exist.
Their company had passed over the Equestrian-Gryphus border just over a week prior, the radiated wastes of the former kingdom giving way to the marginally less radioactive plains and hills of what had once been known in the far distant past as the Crystal Protectorate. The only real difference visible from the air had been the presence of slightly more trees and shrubs, along with the occasional patch of wild grass. They were sickly looking even from several thousand feet in the air, but aside from their discolored nature they didn't seem too different from some of the plants Whistle had seen in Enclave growhouses. Nothing like the things that made up the Everfree.
They'd passed over the Hardbeak Line at high altitude, that grand series of defensive fortifications named for a long-dead war hero that had served as the Empire's border for decades prior to the Last Day. Enclave schools didn't teach much non-Pegasi history, but they often went out of their way to talk about militaristic topics. Whistle knew that the stone fortresses first erected in the age of the First Emperor Golden-Feather had been continuously upgraded and modernized over the years, stone walls reinforced with steel and concrete, cannons and ballistae replaced with rocket batteries and flak guns, enough firepower to destroy an entire invading army. It was the reason why, even during the worst days of the resource crisis, no one had ever seriously considered going to war with Gryphus for it's stockpiles of coal and ore. Even if such an invasion were to have succeeded, the inevitably catastrophic losses would have left Equestria defenseless against Zebrica, and vice versa.
Her superior's fears of raiders or some sort of Imperial Remnant inhabiting the fortresses and firing on their airship had been swiftly disproven by the investigations of the vessel's troop contingent. Though their recon had only raised further questions. The forts and bunker complexes were completely deserted, and in fact looked like they hadn't been inhabited since the Balefires. The storerooms had all been emptied, the communications systems dismantled, and the weapon batteries meant to halt invaders in their tracks appeared to have been unbolted from their mountings and taken somewhere else. All the tunnels in and out of the forts had been demolished, and there wasn't a single scrap of paper or computer data to suggest what had happened or why.
Whistle remembered being taught in school how Gryphus had remained strictly neutral in the Great War, despite multiple attempts by both Equestria and the Zebras to sway them to their respective sides in hopes of breaking the meat-grinder stalemate that had developed soon after the start of hostilities. The Griffons had actually made numerous attempts to use their third party status to broker a ceasefire. All but one of their proposals for peace talks had been rejected out of hoof by the Zebras...save the last one at Shattered Hoof Ridge.
When the Zebra delegation's attempt to assassinate Princess Celestia had turned the summit into a bloodbath, the Emperor had been caught in the crossfire, a grenade meant for Celestia's bodyguards exploding right next to him. He was carried back to his homeland on a gurney and the brink of death, missing an eye and half his limbs.
Though the public had been horrified, some within the Equestrian military and government had actually been overjoyed by the results of the summit. With such a blatant violation act of aggression, the near-murder of their beloved Ruler, Gryphus would surely join the war against Zebrica!
Their hopes were quickly dashed in truly dramatic fashion.
Overnight, Gryphus' policy of neutrality changed to one of isolation. All of their embassies were evacuated without warning, not just in Equestria and Zebrica, but around the world. Imperial expats living abroad were told to return to their nation of birth immediately or risk the loss of their citizenship. Equestrian and Zebrican diplomats residing within the Empire were expelled as trade embargoes were placed upon both nations. Foreign nationals living within Gryphus' borders were given the choice of becoming naturalized citizens or being deported back to their country of origin.
Finally, the Empire sealed it's borders completely. No one went in, and no one came out. Months went by without so much as a radio broadcast leaving the country.
The Equestrian leadership went into a panic. Not only had a potential ally made the inexplicable decision to sever all diplomatic ties, but the sudden loss of their largest trade partner sent shockwaves through the economy, and deprived them of one of their few remaining sources of raw materials that were desperately needed for the war effort. No one had any idea what could have prompted such an extreme response, and all attempts to beseech the Griffons for an explanation were met with nothing but silence. The "Hotline", a communications system that utilized dragon fire to allow for direct communication between the Princesses and the Emperor, ceased to function, the other end having been either disabled or outright destroyed by the Griffons. A diplomatic mission, headed by the Element of Kindness herself, was turned back at the border by a company of Imperial soldiers, and warned that any other attempts to cross into the Empire's territory would be met with lethal force.
Many people on both sides of the war had worried that the Griffons were preparing for war against Zebrica and Equestria, to attack and overwhelm the two nations that had been crippled by years of grinding attritional warfare.
Then the Balefires had fallen, and there suddenly wasn't anyone left to worry.
As far as Whistle knew, nopony had seen a Griffon since the bombs. They were just history, a story from the past, like the Princesses and Commander Hurricane. And judging from the lack of any visible life since she and her comrades had crossed the border, it was starting to look like they were history in both senses of the word.
Whistle glanced around at the crystalline buildings, their windows caked with dust from nearly two hundred years of neglect. Gusts of wind whistled around their sharp edges, the only sound in the otherwise silent remains of what had once been a city with a population in the tens of thousands.
It creeped her out something fierce.
Whistle checked her geiger counter, more out of boredom than anything else. Rad poisoning was the least of her concerns here. Gryphus' neutral status meant that it hadn't been targeted by any megaspells, so the level of ambient radiation was substantially less than in Equestria, little enough that between their armor and the standard issue Rad-x there was basically no danger on that front. That wasn't to say there wasn't any radiation to speak of; the detonations of the megaspells had sent radioactive particles high into the stratosphere, spreading it across the entirety of the planet. The Enclave had managed to use their knowledge of cloud manipulation to create an effective barrier against the radiation to protect themselves, but every other country had been irradiated.
The megaspells hadn't just destroyed Equestria and Zebrica. They had doomed the entire world.
The radiation levels had gradually fallen over the years, especially in places where no spells had impacted, to the point that one didn't even need to bother with protective clothing in many areas, but in the weeks and months immediately after the Last Day, lethal amounts of the invisible poison had completely blanketed the Earth. Whistle tried not to think about the countless Griffons, Yaks, Yetis and Dragons that had doubtlessly died a slow and painful death as a result.
She shook her head, refocusing her gaze upon the section of empty street she had been tasked to guard, part of the "security perimeter" that Captain Autumn Leaf had ordered to be established around the Crystal Palace while he and a group of hoof-picked ponies swept it top to bottom. Whistle wasn't sure what they were looking for, but she knew enough Pre-war history to take a guess and assumed that they were searching for the Crystal Heart. Records regarding the object were sparse, but supposedly it was a magical artifact of great power which the Emperor had used to defeat an infamous Necromancer. It had also been the inspiration for an entire religion in the Pre-War era, which was why Wind Whistle wasn't surprised that it hadn't been where the historical records said it would be: any survivors fleeing the city in the days after the Balefires would have doubtlessly tried to take their most holy relic with them.
And it certainly looked like the inhabitants of the City had fled. As far as Wind Whistle and her comrades could determine, they were the only living people here. Airborne surveillance by the Raptor and teams of fliers had turned up no signs of surviving Crystal Ponies, an assessment that was confirmed after multiple sweeps of the city's streets by soldiers on the ground.
There was nothing. The city wasn't just missing its inhabitants, it was completely devoid of all signs of life. No feral ghouls, no mutant plants or animals, no rogue or haywire robots, not even any corpses or skeletal remains. It was like everyone in the city had just up and left, an impression reinforced by the fact that the local train yards and airship docks were completely devoid of vehicles, or even the wreckage of such machines.
First the border fortresses, now this. Wind Whistle didn't like the pattern that was forming.
Her radio crackled in her ear, the voice of Captain Autumn carrying a subtle tone of frustration and disappointment.
"All wings return to the Raptor. There's nothing of value here. We're moving on to the next objective point."
Whistle was airborne before he'd even finished his sentence. As she flapped her wings and climbed through the air, she could see the armored silhouettes of dozens of other Enclave soldiers taking off from their positions in and around the Palace.
Whistle was glad to be moving on. Something wasn't quite right about that city. She'd been on patrols in the Equestrian wasteland, where bandits, mutants and slavers lurked around every corner, and she'd never felt as uneasy as she had been on that quite street corner.
She wasn't about to hope for a firefight or anything...she just hoped that they actually found something at the next recon target.
—————————————————————————————
"Something's wrong here Sarge."
Lighthooves pointedly did not look back at Wind Whistle, keeping his gaze forward and remaining alert, his battle-saddle mounted novasurge rifle aimed down the cobblestone street. Beside him stood the other two members of his fireteam, Red Sky and Fireball, the power armored Pegasi covering his flanks as the group advanced forward, Whistle bringing up the rear. Directly above them, Corporal Aerial Joust led his own team on aerial overwatch, watching the skies and the ground below as the squad made their sweep of the sector.
"Care to elaborate on that rookie?"
He didn't miss the audible tone of unease in Whistle's voice, nor at how she was scanning their surroundings, gaze darting left and right, looking down every alley and through every window they passed.
"It's just...where is everyone? We've been here for weeks and we haven't seen a single Griffon."
Red Sky grunted, the stallion chiming in as he swept his weapon around a corner, staring down an empty side street before moving on.
"They're probably all dead kid. Not much of a mystery."
Wind Whistle shook her head, the barrel of her rifle following her movements.
"But how though? I mean, Equestria got hit by dozens of Balefires, and you can still find survivors scattered about there. Barbaric, cannibalistic mutant survivors sure, but they're there. And Gryphus didn't get hit by any megaspells...so where is everyone?"
Lighthooves scanned a nearby rooftop, mulling over the question. He'd been wondering much the same himself these past couple of weeks, and he'd come up with what he thought was a half decent hypothesis.
"Equestria had the Stables. Gryphus didn't. The fact that they weren't hit didn't mean they weren't affected Private. Between the radiation killing everything it touched and all the dirt blasted into the air blocking out the sun for decades, they probably all starved to death."
"So then where are the bodies? You can't go for a walk on the ground in Equestria without tripping over a corpse, but we haven't seen a single bleached bone since we crossed the border."
Lighthooves didn't get a chance to respond. The private was talking faster now, not bothering to conceal her obvious nervousness.
"And for that matter, where is everything else? The Hardbeak Line, the Crystal City, Lanner, Auklank, everywhere we've been it's the same story! All the forts and armories are empty, the factories are missing most of their machinery, and there's not a single train, airship or robot to be found in any condition! It's like an army of scavengers picked this whole place clean before we got here."
The Sergeant shifted uneasily. She wasn't wrong. It had been assumed that, with the radiation cloud wiping out the majority if not entirety of life outside Equestria, plentiful stockpiles of technology and raw materials left over from before the war would be ripe for the taking by the Enclave. That had been the entire reason High Command had ordered this scouting mission in the first place.
But they'd found no remnants of technology, no piles of mineral wealth, no enchanted objects, not even any abandoned weapons. It appeared as if entire cities had been stripped of anything of value...but when, why and by whom was unclear. The border regions had been one thing. Refugees would have fled North in the aftermath of the Last Day, and likely would have tried to bring anything of value with them. But to find nothing here?
Lighthooves glanced up at the imposing form of the Imperial Palace, the grand building's elevated position relative to the rest of the city causing it to tower over all the other buildings in Gryphus' Peak.
Whistle was right. Something was definitely off about this whole situation. But they were soldiers. They had their orders, and they would carry them out.
The sergeant's radio crackled, the stern voice of Captain Autumn speaking in his ear.
"Bravo Squadron, Sitrep."
"This is Bravo Lead, we've cleared sectors C-1 through D-6, and now entering Sector E-2. Nothing of significance to report, over."
Lighthooves could hear the Captain's frustration in his voice. He could only imagine the look on his CO's face, directing the operation from aboard the Raptor, hovering high overhead. From what he'd heard the Stallion had been counting on the success of this mission in hopes of earning a promotion up the ranks. But they'd been in Gryphus for nearly a month now and had nothing to show for it.
"Copy that, Bravo. Continue your sweep and report in-"
The Captain's Transmission cut off in a squeal of static, the jarring noise making Lighthooves flinch. Judging by the way all of his subordinates mirrored the action, they'd all heard it too. He shook his head and toggled his comms back on.
"Captain, your transmission was garbled. Repeat, over?"
Nothing. No response, not even the static of an empty channel. Lighthooves glanced up towards the Raptor just in time to see it explode, a giant beam of brilliant red light from the peak of the mountain spearing straight through it. A massive fireball consumed the airship as it's munitions ignited, the explosion ringing out with an ear piercing roar throughout the city, shattering the eerie silence that had blanketed it.
For a fraction of a second, the squadron simply stared up at the cloud of smoke and vaporized metal that had replaced the symbol of Pegasus superiority, watching scraps of debris fall to Earth.
Then Aerial Joust's head exploded.
The Enclave soldiers dove for cover as the bloodstained corpse of their comrade hit the cobblestone street with a meaty thud, his airborne colleagues going to ground and joining the other seven Ponies hunkering down in an alley as the delayed crack of an Anti-Material Rifle echoed through the air.
"Does anyone have a visual?!"
Lighthooves tried to keep his voice steady as his eyes darted from one building to another, trying to pinpoint the location of the shooter.
"Negative I-"
Red Sky was cut off as another beam of red light, this one much smaller but no less deadly, pierced his chest, his armor boiling away in a microsecond as the laser burned through the magically-reinforced steel. The Sergeant glanced towards his subordinate just long enough to see him collapse like a puppet with it's strings cut, a charred and smoking hole where his heart had once been, before his gaze shifted to follow the path of the beam that had killed him.
There at the other end of the alley stood a trio of power-armored quadrupedal forms, their sharp talons and protruding beaks obviously marking them as Griffons. Their armor was an almost light-absorbent pitch black, covering almost every inch of their bodies, their eye slits glowing a baleful red that matched the barrels of the weapons mounted on their shoulders.
Barrels that flashed, sending lances of fire through two more ponies as they turned to bring their own rifles to bear. Lighthooves was faster than his surviving comrades, his reflexes and instincts honed from years of experience. Before his enemy could get off another volley, before any of the other surviving Pegasi could reorient to target the new threat, he took aim at the lead Griffon and fired his Novasurge.
The Novasurge Mk6 was the single most advanced piece of pony-portable magical weaponry the Enclave could produce. It's predecessor, the Mk1, had been on the absolute cutting edge of magitech when it had been introduced just prior to the Last Day, and in the decades since Enclave scientists had worked tirelessly to improve upon the design. It's bolts of concentrated magic were powerful enough to pierce through multiple layers of armor plating, cohesive enough to have a range nearly equal to that of a traditional sniper rifle. Over the course of his military career, Lighthooves had used his rifle to cut down countless radwolves, ghouls, even a mutant Hydra, all with a single shot.
The bolt of bright cyan splashed across the Griffon's armor like water off of a stone. There was no penetration, no melted metal, not even a visible mark where the bolt had impacted in the dead center of his chest. The bastard didn't even flinch, continuing to advance, the laser weapon mounted to it's armor flashing as Fireball dropped, a singed hole the size of a pre-war bit coin drilled through his helmet.
A less experienced squad leader would have panicked, frozen up, continued pouring fire into an enemy that had shown no reaction to it.
Lighthooves was sharper than that.
"Move!"
The surviving Pegasi lifted off, trying to escape the kill box they'd suddenly found themselves in the center of. They jinked and weaved, flying erratically in an attempt to dodge the hostile fire. Lighthooves saw lances of red light flash past him, heard the crack of echoing gunfire from earlier...they had flown back into the sniper's crosshairs.
He knew that he and the other surviving Enclave couldn't dodge the sharpshooter forever, that every second they spent airborne allowed the shooter to hone in on them and adjust their aim. After putting only a couple hundred yards of distance between himself and the three Griffons, he dove back to the ground and below the city skyline, taking cover behind a chest-high stone wall marking the boundary of what had once been a park. Barren soil crunched beneath his armored hooves as he landed, spinning back around to face the hostiles that he knew would be in pursuit.
Wind Whistle landed a moment after he did, throwing herself up against the wall, hyperventilating and visibly shaking.
No other Ponies landed beside them. They were all that remained.
Lighthooves scanned the street and the sky, his weapon following his line of sight as he reached out a foreleg and pulled the panicking private to her feet.
"Pull it together kid! Eyes up and weapon ready! Aim for their joints!"
There had to be a weak point in their armor. A gap, a thin layer, something.
He saw a beaked head dart out from an alleyway, red eyes staring him down. He clenched his jaw, bit down on the trigger, a bolt of raw mana spitting out and melting a hole through brickwork as the Griffon ducked back behind cover. Good, that meant they weren't invulnerable. They could feel fear, they could be suppressed, and with any luck they could be killed. He glanced back towards Whistle, still shaking in her boots as she blankly stared down the street.
"For buck's sake rookie, fire your-"
An armored fist burst out from the ground beneath his feet, a bladed gauntlet punching through his armor and impaling him from below.
He gasped in pain as his hind legs gave out, falling to the ground and onto his side as Wind Whistle screamed. He felt the blade wrench itself from his abdomen, saw a hunched, bipedal form with a canine muzzle burst up and out from the ground, the same black armor coating it from head to toe. He struggled to move, to stand, but he couldn't feel his rear legs. His rifle shifted to track the being that had gutted him. If he was going down he was taking them with-
The subterranean ambusher brought up it's other arm, a massive pistol in it's grip. Lighthooves stared down a barrel large enough to fit a grape as his executioner pulled the trigger, his head vanishing in a squall of gore.
Wind Whistle watched her superior's body slump to the ground, the armored Diamond Dog's head snapping up to face her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the three Griffons step out from the alley down the street, their weapons trained on her.
A proper soldier would have kept their head. Would have shot back, or even tried to retreat.
Wind Whistle was not a proper soldier.
She hit the emergency release for her rifle, the weapon detaching itself from her armor as she threw herself to the ground, her hooves on her head.
"I surrender! I surrend-!"
The Diamond Dog closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, it's fist impacting her face with enough force to shatter the lenses of her helmet and instantly knock her out.
—————————————————————————————
Wind Whistle stirred, groaning as she regained consciousness. Her head was pounding, her limbs felt like lead weights. Her vision swam as she opened her eyes, blinking in confusion at the bright light. She could feel a vibration in the cold metal floor beneath her, a steady hum that accompanied a vague sense of movement, like the kind she'd felt whenever she'd ridden a lift or an elevator.
She realized that she was laying upon the ground, the familiar weight and feel of her armor absent. She shakily tried to get her hooves underneath her, tried to stand...
A set of armored talons pressed into the spot right between her wings, roughly shoving her back down to the floor.
She looked up into a pair of glowing red optics, the armored beak of the Griffon soldier's helmet just a foot away from her face, his voice managing to convey a tone of steel even through the distortion of an electronic speaker.
"Stay. Down."
She laid there, frozen with both fear and surprise that the foreigner spoke Equestrian, as her captor stood back to his full height. It was only then that she noticed the collar around her neck, a thing of interlocking metal that felt heavy on her throat. An instinctive tug on it with her hooves prompted a yelp of pain as she received a mild electric shock, reminding her of the time she'd touched the wrong wire while performing maintenance on her rifle.
"It goes to lethal levels, so don't get any ideas."
She looked over at the speaker, a whimper in her throat as she recognized the Diamond Dog that had knocked her out, that had killed the Sergeant. A quick, nervous examination of her surroundings revealed that she was utterly surrounded by the black-armored forms of Griffins and Diamond Dogs, each one with weapons either holstered on their hips or mounted to their shoulders, and all of them looking right at her.
It took her a minute to realize where she was, what the vibration beneath her hooves and the vague sense of movement meant. It wasn't until she saw the sliding mechanical doors spaced at regular intervals along the series of linked rooms she and her captors were in that she drew the connection between her current circumstances and a snippet of information from the mission briefing.
A few years before the Empire had severed all ties with the outside world, there had been a big to-do about a new public works project their government had launched: an underground rail line, powered by electricity and intended to ease congestion in the increasingly crowded skies and streets. The Imperial Capital had been the first city to play host to the new "metro", and she and her squad mates had been told to keep an eye out for any openings to the elaborate railtunnel network that had been constructed beneath the city.
Prior to their crossing the border, Captain Autumn had openly speculated that the metro could have served as an emergency shelter, or a hiding place for caches of technology. He'd even gone so far as to suggest that such a large-scale project could have served as a cover for the construction of other subterranean facilities.
It appeared as though he had been right. Too bad he wasn't alive to see it.
Wind Whistle wasn't sure how long she sat there, surrounded by armed foreigners as the train took her who-knew-where. It could have been minutes if it could have been hours. All she knew was that, when she felt the train suddenly slow and come to a stop, the Griffon nearest to her grabbed her by the foreleg and literally lifted her up. She scarcely had the chance to get her bearings before the doors slid open and she was ushered out onto a concrete landing and what looked like an underground muster field, large enough to comfortably host an entire company of power-armored infantry. It actually looked a lot like the hangar on a Raptor or Thunderhead, only with a train instead of a door to the open sky.
She didn't have time to take in the sights though. The soldiers ushered her forwards, surrounding her as she was escorted down a winding corridor. She tried to keep track of each turn they made, to keep her eyes open for anything that might help her navigate back the way they had come, but she quickly became disoriented. The halls were all bare concrete, interrupted only by the occasional steel door. There were no signs, no guide maps, nothing to indicate where they were or where she was being taken. She didn't know how her captors knew where they were going. Some kind of map in their armor? A heads up display? Or did they just have the route memorized?
Occasionally they would pass someone in the halls. A Griffon in what looked like a radiation suit, a toolbox clutched in one talon. A pair of Diamond Dogs, garbed in the ballistic weave and metallic plates of conventional combat armor, a pair of automatic shotguns held in their paws. She saw a bizarre, equinoid being with a chitinous hide and insect-like wings, it's horn flaring a bright green as it hefted a heavy briefcase in it's telekinesis. She even saw what could only have been a young dragon garbed in heavy robes, a crystal pendant in the shape of a heart around his neck.
Every one of them stepped to the side to make way for her escorts, saluting them as they passed. Some did a double take when they saw her, staring after her with obvious looks of surprise that quickly turned to scorn and anger as she was led away.
It did not escape her how many of the halls they were traversing sloped downwards. How deep underground were they? How big was this complex? When had it been built? Before the war? After? She didn't have any answers. She wasn't sure if she would ever get any.
Eventually, after what felt like hours, they exited out into a truly massive tunnel, large enough to fit at least eight locomotives side by side, sloping up towards what she assumed to be another, equally massive entrance to this labyrinthine web of subterranean routes. After yet more walking downwards into the darkness (did her captors have night-vision?), the party and their prisoner arrived at a truly gargantuan door, made of the same dark metal as the armor of the soldiers escorting her. Their arrival was evidently expected as, with a hiss of escaping air and the groaning of straining machinery, the door opened before them.
Wind Whistle stepped through...and gaped.
She was standing on a cliff edge, a ceiling of stone not far above her head, looking out over...a city. There was no other word for it. Buildings, dozens of stories tall, carved out of bedrock and reaching from the floor to the ceiling of the cavern, stretched on as far as she could see, roads and walkways teeming with countless creatures of every shape and size running in between them. She stared, searching for the other side of the cave, looking for the boundary where the city met sheer stone.
She couldn't find it. The underground city's skyline stretched beyond the horizon, seemingly without end.
She didn't have time to process the implications of that however, as her captors pushed her forwards, down a walkway and onto yet another train, this one suspended on rails held aloft between the subterranean skyscrapers. Unlike her previous transport, this one had windows which allowed her to look out over the cityscape as it passed by in a blur of motion. She stared uncomprehendingly at the sight of countless beings, many of races long thought extinct, going about their daily routines. She saw Yaks, Caribou, Qilin, Tanuki, Kitsune, and Ponies of every tribe walking the streets. If one didn't look up to see the stone ceiling above their heads, one could mistake it for a scene from a pre-war movie, a snapshot of life before the Balefires.
She even saw robots. Small spherical drones carrying parcels, large box shaped rigs on treads cleaning the streets, she even saw what looked like a Griffon made of metal flying between buildings, it's eyes glowing an almost neon green. She knew from her school days that Gryphus had been one of the earliest pioneers in robotics, paving the way for Earth Pony and Zebra scientists to build their own versions, the kind that even now could still be found roaming the wastelands. But these machines looked nothing like the rusted hulks that her fellow Pegasi would take pot-shots at. These ones were so pristine they looked like they'd rolled right off an assembly line that morning...maybe they had.
She wasn't sure how long they traveled for, but it felt like hours. And with how fast the train was moving, faster than any Pegasus alive today could fly...just how big was this place?
Eventually, the train (monorail, she'd heard her captors call it) finally pulled to a stop within sight of what she could only assume was their destination: an almost exact replica of the Imperial Palace, practically identical to the one she had seen aboveground. But it was what was above it that really caught her attention: the Crystal Heart, slowly spinning as it hung suspended in mid-air.
But something was wrong. Pre-War records, the kind that had been used to construct the briefings that she and her comrades had received, said that the Crystal Heart was a pale blue, and glowed with a soft, soothing light.
The Heart hanging over her head was glowing a deep, angry red. As the soldiers led her up the steps to the palace, she swore that she could feel the thing staring at her, an almost physical weight pressing down on her as she passed beneath it.
The Palace's interior, while fairly spartan by Pre-War standards, was the height of luxury in the eyes of the Enclave soldier. Carved wood paneling, polished marble floors, pre-war art and historical artifacts...it made the Enclave Officer's lounges, which she and her fellow grunts had only ever heard stories about, look like unadorned barracks.
She was led before a set of doors etched with gold leaf, another pair of power-armored soldiers standing guard before it. The Diamond Dog that had shot Lighthooves, who, judging by how she had seen the other soldiers treat him, she assumed to be some sort of officer, nodded to the sentinels, who pulled open the doors. She was herded through the entryway, her hooves stumbling onto the carpeted floor of an office with a commanding view of the city.
Behind a desk that appeared to have been carved out of ebony, an older, male Griffon sat in a chair, his talons folded in front of him, his eyes boring into her with an intensity that almost hurt to look back at. She flinched under his gaze, eyes instinctively turning downwards as her legs shook.
She almost didn't notice the crown on his desk.
The Diamond Dog pressed a clawed hand against her back, forcing her to her haunches before he stepped forward, a fist crashing against his breastplate in a salute.
"The Trespassers have been annihilated my Lord. No casualties were taken, and not a trace of the enemy remains."
A pair of glowing optics turned and stared at her, her breath hitching as she quaked under the stare of the beast that had nearly killed her.
"Save this one."
The Griffon, who Whistle was just now realizing had to be the Emperor himself, simply nodded, getting up from his seat and making his way towards her.
"Very good."
The Royal stood before her, eyeing her with an unreadable expression before turning to regard her captor.
"A commendation is in order for you and your troops Commander Russ. You've done Gryphus proud this day."
The canine seemed to almost inflate at the praise, silently bowing his head in thanks. The Emperor turned back to regard her as one would an insect.
"Do know why you are still alive? Why you still breath when so many of your fellows do not?"
There was no malice in his tone, no anger or mockery. He might as well have been asking a question about the weather. Somehow that scared her more than anything else. She wordlessly shook her head, not trusting her voice.
"Because we need a witness."
He turned to the window, staring out at the subterranean cityscape as he spoke.
"When the Emperor returned home to Gryphus on the brink of death, nearly murdered for the crime of trying to end a senseless war, he knew that peace was no longer an option. Imperial Intelligence had learned of the Megaspells, seen the writing on the wall. He knew that the Equestrians and the Zebricans were prepared to burn the world to be rid of each other, and that it was too late to stop the inevitable outcome of the conflict."
He gestured with a talon to the city outside, bustling with life.
"For generations, the Diamond Dogs had lived below the Empire's cities, carving out their own underground metropolises to mirror the ones aboveground. In a way, the Empire had been preparing for the Bombs for decades before we ever realized the necessity of doing so. When we realized that the end of the world was upon us, we simply dug deeper, expanding the already existing settlements, reinforcing them and making them as self-sufficient and self-contained as possible."
"The work crews dug until their hands bled and their fingers broke. The greatest minds of a generation were rallied to prepare the population for life below ground, producing new agricultural and manufacturing techniques, clean power plants that ran on magically reactive minerals, and air and water purifiers to shield us from the radiation cloud that would envelope the planet. The treasury was emptied, our economy completely re-tooled to support the construction of the bunkers that would be our salvation, our only chance to survive the war that we had had no part in."
He practically spat the final words, his head jerking back in her direction with a furious expression that nearly made her heart stop. He took a breath to steady himself, turning back to stare out over the metropolis outside, his tone suddenly somber.
"Our forefathers crafted an Empire fit to stand for ten thousand years. They endured the violence of the Unification War, the ravages of plague, the scourge of piracy, and the horrors of the dread-lord Sombra. They built wonders of technology, promoted peace throughout the world, and united peoples of every race under the banner of a single nation."
"Your forefathers murdered the planet."
He turned back to her, his glare returning as his voice grew louder, an accusatory talon pointed at her.
"Your ancestors killed something stronger than Zebrica, greater than Equestria! You poisoned the earth and the sea and sky, stole the surface world away from us and drove us underground, destroyed everything that we had ever built!"
His shouts made the Pegasus wince, cowering before the leonine avian. His finger pulled back into his fist as he stalked back behind his desk, gesturing about his office as he did so.
"But try as they might, they could not steal from us our future. We have done more than simply survive, we have thrived. We have built, we have learned, we have trained, and we have prepared for the day when we may finally reclaim our birthright and take back what is rightfully ours."
Wind Whistle found her eyes straying to the armed and armored Diamond Dog still standing at attention beside her, the armor that had repelled point-blank magic blasts coating his form. How many more soldiers like him did they have? What other weapons of war had they built over the decades between the war and now, with nothing but cold rage and righteous fury to fuel their efforts?
The Emperor sat back down in his chair, gently picking his crown up off of the desk and placing it upon his head before fixing her with a final glare.
"You will return to Equestria. You will report back to your superiors, cowering behind their cloud cover and so assured in their superiority, and you will tell them everything that you have seen here. Tell them that the Great War is finally over."
The Emperor leaned forward and smiled.
"Tell them that Gryphus won."
—————————————————————————————
Me: Just a quick Omake, it'll be good for a laugh.
My Muse: The longest single non-results threadmark you've made so far.
But yeah, I'm back. Covid Vaccine knocked me on my ass for a bit, but I'm back in the saddle now. Had been wanting to do something like this ever since the Quest really took off, so I'm glad to have scratched that itch and done something just a little bit different.
Rest assured that the actual update and continuation of the Equestrian Interlude will be coming soon. I have been working on that in parallel with this Omake, I simply finished this first and wanted to post it immediately.
Sergeant Lighthooves sighed, the motors in his Power Armor whirring as he turned to face Private Wind Whistle.
"Didn't you listen to the briefing newbie?"
The mare attempted to shrug, the gesture made awkward by her own armor. Her face, uncovered by a helmet, conveyed a sense of embarrassment as she shifted uncomfortably on her hooves, not quite meeting his gaze.
"I uh...had latrine cleaning duty."
The fact that she had been given the duty as a punishment went unsaid.
Lighthooves rolled his eyes under his helm. Whistle had only been a soldier in the Grand Pegasus Enclave for a few months, and she had already developed a reputation for being an unreliable and even insubordinate pony. She'd never done anything serious, nothing bad enough to warrant any formal discipline or official reprimands, but she'd missed roll calls, failed uniform inspections, and tried to fake illness to get out of training more times than he could be bothered to count.
She was a hooffull alright, but he didn't think she was beyond redemption. He'd seen his fair share of soldiers like her, still unused to the service and not yet accustomed to the discipline expected of them. One might have questioned the wisdom of bringing such an unreliable and inexperienced mare along as part of a mission outside the Enclave, but in the Sergeant's experience the best way to get a recruit to shape up was to give them a close, personal look at the horrors of the wasteland. An unorthodox means of scaring them straight, but an effective one, or so he thought anyway.
"The Council ordered us out on a recon mission. We're going to Gryphus."
Whistle blinked in surprise, glancing between the non-com and the hangar door behind her, the entrance to the Raptor-class cloudship serving as their transport giving her a clear view of the ashen, irradiated ground passing by beneath them.
"Gryphus? Like, outside Equestria?"
Lighthooves resisted the urge to facehoof.
"Yes, Private. Outside Equestria. Beyond the Northern border."
The light-blue mare seemed to ponder that information for a moment before giving her superior a look of confusion.
"Why?"
Another thing about Wind Whistle that made her a less than stellar example of a soldier: her tendency to question everything. She had apparently never been told that the motto of all good soldiers was "Ours is not to reason why." But, in this particular instance, her question was justified, as the answer was actually relevant to their mission.
"Skies are getting a bit crowded these days kid. Living space above the clouds is at a premium, and while our airquaponics and mineral generation plants do a good job of things, at some point in the future we're going to have to start looking at the ground for resources. But Equestria's a bombed out, irradiated wasteland filled with monsters and savages, so command is looking a little further afield for a solution. We're going to be scouting out what's left of the Empire. It'll be our job to identify resource and tech caches, mineral deposits, and any territory that might be suitable for agriculture."
The Private stared, eyes wide in disbelief and more than a little disgust.
"We're going to grow our food in the dirt?"
Lighthooves shook his head.
"It's far from ideal Private, and I feel sorry for the poor bastards that might get assigned to mud-raking duty, but it beats starvation."
He leaned forward, a teasing lilt slipping into his tone.
"Good thing you're such a model soldier eh? No way anyone would want to make you a ground pounder, now would they?"
Whistle paled, the message clearly received as she hastily turned and grabbed her helmet, practically slamming it over her head before assuming a parade rest posture and saluting.
"No sir!"
Lighthooves smiled behind his helmet. All it took was a little motivation to whip the newbies into shape. He'd make a proper warrior out of this one yet.
—————————————————————————————
"All wings, check in."
Private Wind Whistle pressed her chin against the mic switch in her helmet, keying her suit's integrated communications unit.
"Echo 2-3, nothing to report."
The steady voice of Captain Autumn Leaf responded, his tone as deadpan and professional as always.
"Confirmed Echo 2-3. Remain alert. Next radio check in 15 mics."
Whistle switched her com unit off, biting back a sarcastic retort. She sighed, kicking a rock down the deserted street. She looked up, staring through the yellow lenses of her helmet at the towering form of the Crystal Palace. After four days in the ruins of the Crystal City, the sight had long since lost it's novelty and wonder.
Sentry duty was always boring, but this assignment was on a whole different level. Staring down an empty street in a dead city, only the occasional gust of wind to break the monotony, waiting to spot an enemy that she was convinced didn't exist.
Their company had passed over the Equestrian-Gryphus border just over a week prior, the radiated wastes of the former kingdom giving way to the marginally less radioactive plains and hills of what had once been known in the far distant past as the Crystal Protectorate. The only real difference visible from the air had been the presence of slightly more trees and shrubs, along with the occasional patch of wild grass. They were sickly looking even from several thousand feet in the air, but aside from their discolored nature they didn't seem too different from some of the plants Whistle had seen in Enclave growhouses. Nothing like the things that made up the Everfree.
They'd passed over the Hardbeak Line at high altitude, that grand series of defensive fortifications named for a long-dead war hero that had served as the Empire's border for decades prior to the Last Day. Enclave schools didn't teach much non-Pegasi history, but they often went out of their way to talk about militaristic topics. Whistle knew that the stone fortresses first erected in the age of the First Emperor Golden-Feather had been continuously upgraded and modernized over the years, stone walls reinforced with steel and concrete, cannons and ballistae replaced with rocket batteries and flak guns, enough firepower to destroy an entire invading army. It was the reason why, even during the worst days of the resource crisis, no one had ever seriously considered going to war with Gryphus for it's stockpiles of coal and ore. Even if such an invasion were to have succeeded, the inevitably catastrophic losses would have left Equestria defenseless against Zebrica, and vice versa.
Her superior's fears of raiders or some sort of Imperial Remnant inhabiting the fortresses and firing on their airship had been swiftly disproven by the investigations of the vessel's troop contingent. Though their recon had only raised further questions. The forts and bunker complexes were completely deserted, and in fact looked like they hadn't been inhabited since the Balefires. The storerooms had all been emptied, the communications systems dismantled, and the weapon batteries meant to halt invaders in their tracks appeared to have been unbolted from their mountings and taken somewhere else. All the tunnels in and out of the forts had been demolished, and there wasn't a single scrap of paper or computer data to suggest what had happened or why.
Whistle remembered being taught in school how Gryphus had remained strictly neutral in the Great War, despite multiple attempts by both Equestria and the Zebras to sway them to their respective sides in hopes of breaking the meat-grinder stalemate that had developed soon after the start of hostilities. The Griffons had actually made numerous attempts to use their third party status to broker a ceasefire. All but one of their proposals for peace talks had been rejected out of hoof by the Zebras...save the last one at Shattered Hoof Ridge.
When the Zebra delegation's attempt to assassinate Princess Celestia had turned the summit into a bloodbath, the Emperor had been caught in the crossfire, a grenade meant for Celestia's bodyguards exploding right next to him. He was carried back to his homeland on a gurney and the brink of death, missing an eye and half his limbs.
Though the public had been horrified, some within the Equestrian military and government had actually been overjoyed by the results of the summit. With such a blatant violation act of aggression, the near-murder of their beloved Ruler, Gryphus would surely join the war against Zebrica!
Their hopes were quickly dashed in truly dramatic fashion.
Overnight, Gryphus' policy of neutrality changed to one of isolation. All of their embassies were evacuated without warning, not just in Equestria and Zebrica, but around the world. Imperial expats living abroad were told to return to their nation of birth immediately or risk the loss of their citizenship. Equestrian and Zebrican diplomats residing within the Empire were expelled as trade embargoes were placed upon both nations. Foreign nationals living within Gryphus' borders were given the choice of becoming naturalized citizens or being deported back to their country of origin.
Finally, the Empire sealed it's borders completely. No one went in, and no one came out. Months went by without so much as a radio broadcast leaving the country.
The Equestrian leadership went into a panic. Not only had a potential ally made the inexplicable decision to sever all diplomatic ties, but the sudden loss of their largest trade partner sent shockwaves through the economy, and deprived them of one of their few remaining sources of raw materials that were desperately needed for the war effort. No one had any idea what could have prompted such an extreme response, and all attempts to beseech the Griffons for an explanation were met with nothing but silence. The "Hotline", a communications system that utilized dragon fire to allow for direct communication between the Princesses and the Emperor, ceased to function, the other end having been either disabled or outright destroyed by the Griffons. A diplomatic mission, headed by the Element of Kindness herself, was turned back at the border by a company of Imperial soldiers, and warned that any other attempts to cross into the Empire's territory would be met with lethal force.
Many people on both sides of the war had worried that the Griffons were preparing for war against Zebrica and Equestria, to attack and overwhelm the two nations that had been crippled by years of grinding attritional warfare.
Then the Balefires had fallen, and there suddenly wasn't anyone left to worry.
As far as Whistle knew, nopony had seen a Griffon since the bombs. They were just history, a story from the past, like the Princesses and Commander Hurricane. And judging from the lack of any visible life since she and her comrades had crossed the border, it was starting to look like they were history in both senses of the word.
Whistle glanced around at the crystalline buildings, their windows caked with dust from nearly two hundred years of neglect. Gusts of wind whistled around their sharp edges, the only sound in the otherwise silent remains of what had once been a city with a population in the tens of thousands.
It creeped her out something fierce.
Whistle checked her geiger counter, more out of boredom than anything else. Rad poisoning was the least of her concerns here. Gryphus' neutral status meant that it hadn't been targeted by any megaspells, so the level of ambient radiation was substantially less than in Equestria, little enough that between their armor and the standard issue Rad-x there was basically no danger on that front. That wasn't to say there wasn't any radiation to speak of; the detonations of the megaspells had sent radioactive particles high into the stratosphere, spreading it across the entirety of the planet. The Enclave had managed to use their knowledge of cloud manipulation to create an effective barrier against the radiation to protect themselves, but every other country had been irradiated.
The megaspells hadn't just destroyed Equestria and Zebrica. They had doomed the entire world.
The radiation levels had gradually fallen over the years, especially in places where no spells had impacted, to the point that one didn't even need to bother with protective clothing in many areas, but in the weeks and months immediately after the Last Day, lethal amounts of the invisible poison had completely blanketed the Earth. Whistle tried not to think about the countless Griffons, Yaks, Yetis and Dragons that had doubtlessly died a slow and painful death as a result.
She shook her head, refocusing her gaze upon the section of empty street she had been tasked to guard, part of the "security perimeter" that Captain Autumn Leaf had ordered to be established around the Crystal Palace while he and a group of hoof-picked ponies swept it top to bottom. Whistle wasn't sure what they were looking for, but she knew enough Pre-war history to take a guess and assumed that they were searching for the Crystal Heart. Records regarding the object were sparse, but supposedly it was a magical artifact of great power which the Emperor had used to defeat an infamous Necromancer. It had also been the inspiration for an entire religion in the Pre-War era, which was why Wind Whistle wasn't surprised that it hadn't been where the historical records said it would be: any survivors fleeing the city in the days after the Balefires would have doubtlessly tried to take their most holy relic with them.
And it certainly looked like the inhabitants of the City had fled. As far as Wind Whistle and her comrades could determine, they were the only living people here. Airborne surveillance by the Raptor and teams of fliers had turned up no signs of surviving Crystal Ponies, an assessment that was confirmed after multiple sweeps of the city's streets by soldiers on the ground.
There was nothing. The city wasn't just missing its inhabitants, it was completely devoid of all signs of life. No feral ghouls, no mutant plants or animals, no rogue or haywire robots, not even any corpses or skeletal remains. It was like everyone in the city had just up and left, an impression reinforced by the fact that the local train yards and airship docks were completely devoid of vehicles, or even the wreckage of such machines.
First the border fortresses, now this. Wind Whistle didn't like the pattern that was forming.
Her radio crackled in her ear, the voice of Captain Autumn carrying a subtle tone of frustration and disappointment.
"All wings return to the Raptor. There's nothing of value here. We're moving on to the next objective point."
Whistle was airborne before he'd even finished his sentence. As she flapped her wings and climbed through the air, she could see the armored silhouettes of dozens of other Enclave soldiers taking off from their positions in and around the Palace.
Whistle was glad to be moving on. Something wasn't quite right about that city. She'd been on patrols in the Equestrian wasteland, where bandits, mutants and slavers lurked around every corner, and she'd never felt as uneasy as she had been on that quite street corner.
She wasn't about to hope for a firefight or anything...she just hoped that they actually found something at the next recon target.
—————————————————————————————
"Something's wrong here Sarge."
Lighthooves pointedly did not look back at Wind Whistle, keeping his gaze forward and remaining alert, his battle-saddle mounted novasurge rifle aimed down the cobblestone street. Beside him stood the other two members of his fireteam, Red Sky and Fireball, the power armored Pegasi covering his flanks as the group advanced forward, Whistle bringing up the rear. Directly above them, Corporal Aerial Joust led his own team on aerial overwatch, watching the skies and the ground below as the squad made their sweep of the sector.
"Care to elaborate on that rookie?"
He didn't miss the audible tone of unease in Whistle's voice, nor at how she was scanning their surroundings, gaze darting left and right, looking down every alley and through every window they passed.
"It's just...where is everyone? We've been here for weeks and we haven't seen a single Griffon."
Red Sky grunted, the stallion chiming in as he swept his weapon around a corner, staring down an empty side street before moving on.
"They're probably all dead kid. Not much of a mystery."
Wind Whistle shook her head, the barrel of her rifle following her movements.
"But how though? I mean, Equestria got hit by dozens of Balefires, and you can still find survivors scattered about there. Barbaric, cannibalistic mutant survivors sure, but they're there. And Gryphus didn't get hit by any megaspells...so where is everyone?"
Lighthooves scanned a nearby rooftop, mulling over the question. He'd been wondering much the same himself these past couple of weeks, and he'd come up with what he thought was a half decent hypothesis.
"Equestria had the Stables. Gryphus didn't. The fact that they weren't hit didn't mean they weren't affected Private. Between the radiation killing everything it touched and all the dirt blasted into the air blocking out the sun for decades, they probably all starved to death."
"So then where are the bodies? You can't go for a walk on the ground in Equestria without tripping over a corpse, but we haven't seen a single bleached bone since we crossed the border."
Lighthooves didn't get a chance to respond. The private was talking faster now, not bothering to conceal her obvious nervousness.
"And for that matter, where is everything else? The Hardbeak Line, the Crystal City, Lanner, Auklank, everywhere we've been it's the same story! All the forts and armories are empty, the factories are missing most of their machinery, and there's not a single train, airship or robot to be found in any condition! It's like an army of scavengers picked this whole place clean before we got here."
The Sergeant shifted uneasily. She wasn't wrong. It had been assumed that, with the radiation cloud wiping out the majority if not entirety of life outside Equestria, plentiful stockpiles of technology and raw materials left over from before the war would be ripe for the taking by the Enclave. That had been the entire reason High Command had ordered this scouting mission in the first place.
But they'd found no remnants of technology, no piles of mineral wealth, no enchanted objects, not even any abandoned weapons. It appeared as if entire cities had been stripped of anything of value...but when, why and by whom was unclear. The border regions had been one thing. Refugees would have fled North in the aftermath of the Last Day, and likely would have tried to bring anything of value with them. But to find nothing here?
Lighthooves glanced up at the imposing form of the Imperial Palace, the grand building's elevated position relative to the rest of the city causing it to tower over all the other buildings in Gryphus' Peak.
Whistle was right. Something was definitely off about this whole situation. But they were soldiers. They had their orders, and they would carry them out.
The sergeant's radio crackled, the stern voice of Captain Autumn speaking in his ear.
"Bravo Squadron, Sitrep."
"This is Bravo Lead, we've cleared sectors C-1 through D-6, and now entering Sector E-2. Nothing of significance to report, over."
Lighthooves could hear the Captain's frustration in his voice. He could only imagine the look on his CO's face, directing the operation from aboard the Raptor, hovering high overhead. From what he'd heard the Stallion had been counting on the success of this mission in hopes of earning a promotion up the ranks. But they'd been in Gryphus for nearly a month now and had nothing to show for it.
"Copy that, Bravo. Continue your sweep and report in-"
The Captain's Transmission cut off in a squeal of static, the jarring noise making Lighthooves flinch. Judging by the way all of his subordinates mirrored the action, they'd all heard it too. He shook his head and toggled his comms back on.
"Captain, your transmission was garbled. Repeat, over?"
Nothing. No response, not even the static of an empty channel. Lighthooves glanced up towards the Raptor just in time to see it explode, a giant beam of brilliant red light from the peak of the mountain spearing straight through it. A massive fireball consumed the airship as it's munitions ignited, the explosion ringing out with an ear piercing roar throughout the city, shattering the eerie silence that had blanketed it.
For a fraction of a second, the squadron simply stared up at the cloud of smoke and vaporized metal that had replaced the symbol of Pegasus superiority, watching scraps of debris fall to Earth.
Then Aerial Joust's head exploded.
The Enclave soldiers dove for cover as the bloodstained corpse of their comrade hit the cobblestone street with a meaty thud, his airborne colleagues going to ground and joining the other seven Ponies hunkering down in an alley as the delayed crack of an Anti-Material Rifle echoed through the air.
"Does anyone have a visual?!"
Lighthooves tried to keep his voice steady as his eyes darted from one building to another, trying to pinpoint the location of the shooter.
"Negative I-"
Red Sky was cut off as another beam of red light, this one much smaller but no less deadly, pierced his chest, his armor boiling away in a microsecond as the laser burned through the magically-reinforced steel. The Sergeant glanced towards his subordinate just long enough to see him collapse like a puppet with it's strings cut, a charred and smoking hole where his heart had once been, before his gaze shifted to follow the path of the beam that had killed him.
There at the other end of the alley stood a trio of power-armored quadrupedal forms, their sharp talons and protruding beaks obviously marking them as Griffons. Their armor was an almost light-absorbent pitch black, covering almost every inch of their bodies, their eye slits glowing a baleful red that matched the barrels of the weapons mounted on their shoulders.
Barrels that flashed, sending lances of fire through two more ponies as they turned to bring their own rifles to bear. Lighthooves was faster than his surviving comrades, his reflexes and instincts honed from years of experience. Before his enemy could get off another volley, before any of the other surviving Pegasi could reorient to target the new threat, he took aim at the lead Griffon and fired his Novasurge.
The Novasurge Mk6 was the single most advanced piece of pony-portable magical weaponry the Enclave could produce. It's predecessor, the Mk1, had been on the absolute cutting edge of magitech when it had been introduced just prior to the Last Day, and in the decades since Enclave scientists had worked tirelessly to improve upon the design. It's bolts of concentrated magic were powerful enough to pierce through multiple layers of armor plating, cohesive enough to have a range nearly equal to that of a traditional sniper rifle. Over the course of his military career, Lighthooves had used his rifle to cut down countless radwolves, ghouls, even a mutant Hydra, all with a single shot.
The bolt of bright cyan splashed across the Griffon's armor like water off of a stone. There was no penetration, no melted metal, not even a visible mark where the bolt had impacted in the dead center of his chest. The bastard didn't even flinch, continuing to advance, the laser weapon mounted to it's armor flashing as Fireball dropped, a singed hole the size of a pre-war bit coin drilled through his helmet.
A less experienced squad leader would have panicked, frozen up, continued pouring fire into an enemy that had shown no reaction to it.
Lighthooves was sharper than that.
"Move!"
The surviving Pegasi lifted off, trying to escape the kill box they'd suddenly found themselves in the center of. They jinked and weaved, flying erratically in an attempt to dodge the hostile fire. Lighthooves saw lances of red light flash past him, heard the crack of echoing gunfire from earlier...they had flown back into the sniper's crosshairs.
He knew that he and the other surviving Enclave couldn't dodge the sharpshooter forever, that every second they spent airborne allowed the shooter to hone in on them and adjust their aim. After putting only a couple hundred yards of distance between himself and the three Griffons, he dove back to the ground and below the city skyline, taking cover behind a chest-high stone wall marking the boundary of what had once been a park. Barren soil crunched beneath his armored hooves as he landed, spinning back around to face the hostiles that he knew would be in pursuit.
Wind Whistle landed a moment after he did, throwing herself up against the wall, hyperventilating and visibly shaking.
No other Ponies landed beside them. They were all that remained.
Lighthooves scanned the street and the sky, his weapon following his line of sight as he reached out a foreleg and pulled the panicking private to her feet.
"Pull it together kid! Eyes up and weapon ready! Aim for their joints!"
There had to be a weak point in their armor. A gap, a thin layer, something.
He saw a beaked head dart out from an alleyway, red eyes staring him down. He clenched his jaw, bit down on the trigger, a bolt of raw mana spitting out and melting a hole through brickwork as the Griffon ducked back behind cover. Good, that meant they weren't invulnerable. They could feel fear, they could be suppressed, and with any luck they could be killed. He glanced back towards Whistle, still shaking in her boots as she blankly stared down the street.
"For buck's sake rookie, fire your-"
An armored fist burst out from the ground beneath his feet, a bladed gauntlet punching through his armor and impaling him from below.
He gasped in pain as his hind legs gave out, falling to the ground and onto his side as Wind Whistle screamed. He felt the blade wrench itself from his abdomen, saw a hunched, bipedal form with a canine muzzle burst up and out from the ground, the same black armor coating it from head to toe. He struggled to move, to stand, but he couldn't feel his rear legs. His rifle shifted to track the being that had gutted him. If he was going down he was taking them with-
The subterranean ambusher brought up it's other arm, a massive pistol in it's grip. Lighthooves stared down a barrel large enough to fit a grape as his executioner pulled the trigger, his head vanishing in a squall of gore.
Wind Whistle watched her superior's body slump to the ground, the armored Diamond Dog's head snapping up to face her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the three Griffons step out from the alley down the street, their weapons trained on her.
A proper soldier would have kept their head. Would have shot back, or even tried to retreat.
Wind Whistle was not a proper soldier.
She hit the emergency release for her rifle, the weapon detaching itself from her armor as she threw herself to the ground, her hooves on her head.
"I surrender! I surrend-!"
The Diamond Dog closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, it's fist impacting her face with enough force to shatter the lenses of her helmet and instantly knock her out.
—————————————————————————————
Wind Whistle stirred, groaning as she regained consciousness. Her head was pounding, her limbs felt like lead weights. Her vision swam as she opened her eyes, blinking in confusion at the bright light. She could feel a vibration in the cold metal floor beneath her, a steady hum that accompanied a vague sense of movement, like the kind she'd felt whenever she'd ridden a lift or an elevator.
She realized that she was laying upon the ground, the familiar weight and feel of her armor absent. She shakily tried to get her hooves underneath her, tried to stand...
A set of armored talons pressed into the spot right between her wings, roughly shoving her back down to the floor.
She looked up into a pair of glowing red optics, the armored beak of the Griffon soldier's helmet just a foot away from her face, his voice managing to convey a tone of steel even through the distortion of an electronic speaker.
"Stay. Down."
She laid there, frozen with both fear and surprise that the foreigner spoke Equestrian, as her captor stood back to his full height. It was only then that she noticed the collar around her neck, a thing of interlocking metal that felt heavy on her throat. An instinctive tug on it with her hooves prompted a yelp of pain as she received a mild electric shock, reminding her of the time she'd touched the wrong wire while performing maintenance on her rifle.
"It goes to lethal levels, so don't get any ideas."
She looked over at the speaker, a whimper in her throat as she recognized the Diamond Dog that had knocked her out, that had killed the Sergeant. A quick, nervous examination of her surroundings revealed that she was utterly surrounded by the black-armored forms of Griffins and Diamond Dogs, each one with weapons either holstered on their hips or mounted to their shoulders, and all of them looking right at her.
It took her a minute to realize where she was, what the vibration beneath her hooves and the vague sense of movement meant. It wasn't until she saw the sliding mechanical doors spaced at regular intervals along the series of linked rooms she and her captors were in that she drew the connection between her current circumstances and a snippet of information from the mission briefing.
A few years before the Empire had severed all ties with the outside world, there had been a big to-do about a new public works project their government had launched: an underground rail line, powered by electricity and intended to ease congestion in the increasingly crowded skies and streets. The Imperial Capital had been the first city to play host to the new "metro", and she and her squad mates had been told to keep an eye out for any openings to the elaborate railtunnel network that had been constructed beneath the city.
Prior to their crossing the border, Captain Autumn had openly speculated that the metro could have served as an emergency shelter, or a hiding place for caches of technology. He'd even gone so far as to suggest that such a large-scale project could have served as a cover for the construction of other subterranean facilities.
It appeared as though he had been right. Too bad he wasn't alive to see it.
Wind Whistle wasn't sure how long she sat there, surrounded by armed foreigners as the train took her who-knew-where. It could have been minutes if it could have been hours. All she knew was that, when she felt the train suddenly slow and come to a stop, the Griffon nearest to her grabbed her by the foreleg and literally lifted her up. She scarcely had the chance to get her bearings before the doors slid open and she was ushered out onto a concrete landing and what looked like an underground muster field, large enough to comfortably host an entire company of power-armored infantry. It actually looked a lot like the hangar on a Raptor or Thunderhead, only with a train instead of a door to the open sky.
She didn't have time to take in the sights though. The soldiers ushered her forwards, surrounding her as she was escorted down a winding corridor. She tried to keep track of each turn they made, to keep her eyes open for anything that might help her navigate back the way they had come, but she quickly became disoriented. The halls were all bare concrete, interrupted only by the occasional steel door. There were no signs, no guide maps, nothing to indicate where they were or where she was being taken. She didn't know how her captors knew where they were going. Some kind of map in their armor? A heads up display? Or did they just have the route memorized?
Occasionally they would pass someone in the halls. A Griffon in what looked like a radiation suit, a toolbox clutched in one talon. A pair of Diamond Dogs, garbed in the ballistic weave and metallic plates of conventional combat armor, a pair of automatic shotguns held in their paws. She saw a bizarre, equinoid being with a chitinous hide and insect-like wings, it's horn flaring a bright green as it hefted a heavy briefcase in it's telekinesis. She even saw what could only have been a young dragon garbed in heavy robes, a crystal pendant in the shape of a heart around his neck.
Every one of them stepped to the side to make way for her escorts, saluting them as they passed. Some did a double take when they saw her, staring after her with obvious looks of surprise that quickly turned to scorn and anger as she was led away.
It did not escape her how many of the halls they were traversing sloped downwards. How deep underground were they? How big was this complex? When had it been built? Before the war? After? She didn't have any answers. She wasn't sure if she would ever get any.
Eventually, after what felt like hours, they exited out into a truly massive tunnel, large enough to fit at least eight locomotives side by side, sloping up towards what she assumed to be another, equally massive entrance to this labyrinthine web of subterranean routes. After yet more walking downwards into the darkness (did her captors have night-vision?), the party and their prisoner arrived at a truly gargantuan door, made of the same dark metal as the armor of the soldiers escorting her. Their arrival was evidently expected as, with a hiss of escaping air and the groaning of straining machinery, the door opened before them.
Wind Whistle stepped through...and gaped.
She was standing on a cliff edge, a ceiling of stone not far above her head, looking out over...a city. There was no other word for it. Buildings, dozens of stories tall, carved out of bedrock and reaching from the floor to the ceiling of the cavern, stretched on as far as she could see, roads and walkways teeming with countless creatures of every shape and size running in between them. She stared, searching for the other side of the cave, looking for the boundary where the city met sheer stone.
She couldn't find it. The underground city's skyline stretched beyond the horizon, seemingly without end.
She didn't have time to process the implications of that however, as her captors pushed her forwards, down a walkway and onto yet another train, this one suspended on rails held aloft between the subterranean skyscrapers. Unlike her previous transport, this one had windows which allowed her to look out over the cityscape as it passed by in a blur of motion. She stared uncomprehendingly at the sight of countless beings, many of races long thought extinct, going about their daily routines. She saw Yaks, Caribou, Qilin, Tanuki, Kitsune, and Ponies of every tribe walking the streets. If one didn't look up to see the stone ceiling above their heads, one could mistake it for a scene from a pre-war movie, a snapshot of life before the Balefires.
She even saw robots. Small spherical drones carrying parcels, large box shaped rigs on treads cleaning the streets, she even saw what looked like a Griffon made of metal flying between buildings, it's eyes glowing an almost neon green. She knew from her school days that Gryphus had been one of the earliest pioneers in robotics, paving the way for Earth Pony and Zebra scientists to build their own versions, the kind that even now could still be found roaming the wastelands. But these machines looked nothing like the rusted hulks that her fellow Pegasi would take pot-shots at. These ones were so pristine they looked like they'd rolled right off an assembly line that morning...maybe they had.
She wasn't sure how long they traveled for, but it felt like hours. And with how fast the train was moving, faster than any Pegasus alive today could fly...just how big was this place?
Eventually, the train (monorail, she'd heard her captors call it) finally pulled to a stop within sight of what she could only assume was their destination: an almost exact replica of the Imperial Palace, practically identical to the one she had seen aboveground. But it was what was above it that really caught her attention: the Crystal Heart, slowly spinning as it hung suspended in mid-air.
But something was wrong. Pre-War records, the kind that had been used to construct the briefings that she and her comrades had received, said that the Crystal Heart was a pale blue, and glowed with a soft, soothing light.
The Heart hanging over her head was glowing a deep, angry red. As the soldiers led her up the steps to the palace, she swore that she could feel the thing staring at her, an almost physical weight pressing down on her as she passed beneath it.
The Palace's interior, while fairly spartan by Pre-War standards, was the height of luxury in the eyes of the Enclave soldier. Carved wood paneling, polished marble floors, pre-war art and historical artifacts...it made the Enclave Officer's lounges, which she and her fellow grunts had only ever heard stories about, look like unadorned barracks.
She was led before a set of doors etched with gold leaf, another pair of power-armored soldiers standing guard before it. The Diamond Dog that had shot Lighthooves, who, judging by how she had seen the other soldiers treat him, she assumed to be some sort of officer, nodded to the sentinels, who pulled open the doors. She was herded through the entryway, her hooves stumbling onto the carpeted floor of an office with a commanding view of the city.
Behind a desk that appeared to have been carved out of ebony, an older, male Griffon sat in a chair, his talons folded in front of him, his eyes boring into her with an intensity that almost hurt to look back at. She flinched under his gaze, eyes instinctively turning downwards as her legs shook.
She almost didn't notice the crown on his desk.
The Diamond Dog pressed a clawed hand against her back, forcing her to her haunches before he stepped forward, a fist crashing against his breastplate in a salute.
"The Trespassers have been annihilated my Lord. No casualties were taken, and not a trace of the enemy remains."
A pair of glowing optics turned and stared at her, her breath hitching as she quaked under the stare of the beast that had nearly killed her.
"Save this one."
The Griffon, who Whistle was just now realizing had to be the Emperor himself, simply nodded, getting up from his seat and making his way towards her.
"Very good."
The Royal stood before her, eyeing her with an unreadable expression before turning to regard her captor.
"A commendation is in order for you and your troops Commander Russ. You've done Gryphus proud this day."
The canine seemed to almost inflate at the praise, silently bowing his head in thanks. The Emperor turned back to regard her as one would an insect.
"Do know why you are still alive? Why you still breath when so many of your fellows do not?"
There was no malice in his tone, no anger or mockery. He might as well have been asking a question about the weather. Somehow that scared her more than anything else. She wordlessly shook her head, not trusting her voice.
"Because we need a witness."
He turned to the window, staring out at the subterranean cityscape as he spoke.
"When the Emperor returned home to Gryphus on the brink of death, nearly murdered for the crime of trying to end a senseless war, he knew that peace was no longer an option. Imperial Intelligence had learned of the Megaspells, seen the writing on the wall. He knew that the Equestrians and the Zebricans were prepared to burn the world to be rid of each other, and that it was too late to stop the inevitable outcome of the conflict."
He gestured with a talon to the city outside, bustling with life.
"For generations, the Diamond Dogs had lived below the Empire's cities, carving out their own underground metropolises to mirror the ones aboveground. In a way, the Empire had been preparing for the Bombs for decades before we ever realized the necessity of doing so. When we realized that the end of the world was upon us, we simply dug deeper, expanding the already existing settlements, reinforcing them and making them as self-sufficient and self-contained as possible."
"The work crews dug until their hands bled and their fingers broke. The greatest minds of a generation were rallied to prepare the population for life below ground, producing new agricultural and manufacturing techniques, clean power plants that ran on magically reactive minerals, and air and water purifiers to shield us from the radiation cloud that would envelope the planet. The treasury was emptied, our economy completely re-tooled to support the construction of the bunkers that would be our salvation, our only chance to survive the war that we had had no part in."
He practically spat the final words, his head jerking back in her direction with a furious expression that nearly made her heart stop. He took a breath to steady himself, turning back to stare out over the metropolis outside, his tone suddenly somber.
"Our forefathers crafted an Empire fit to stand for ten thousand years. They endured the violence of the Unification War, the ravages of plague, the scourge of piracy, and the horrors of the dread-lord Sombra. They built wonders of technology, promoted peace throughout the world, and united peoples of every race under the banner of a single nation."
"Your forefathers murdered the planet."
He turned back to her, his glare returning as his voice grew louder, an accusatory talon pointed at her.
"Your ancestors killed something stronger than Zebrica, greater than Equestria! You poisoned the earth and the sea and sky, stole the surface world away from us and drove us underground, destroyed everything that we had ever built!"
His shouts made the Pegasus wince, cowering before the leonine avian. His finger pulled back into his fist as he stalked back behind his desk, gesturing about his office as he did so.
"But try as they might, they could not steal from us our future. We have done more than simply survive, we have thrived. We have built, we have learned, we have trained, and we have prepared for the day when we may finally reclaim our birthright and take back what is rightfully ours."
Wind Whistle found her eyes straying to the armed and armored Diamond Dog still standing at attention beside her, the armor that had repelled point-blank magic blasts coating his form. How many more soldiers like him did they have? What other weapons of war had they built over the decades between the war and now, with nothing but cold rage and righteous fury to fuel their efforts?
The Emperor sat back down in his chair, gently picking his crown up off of the desk and placing it upon his head before fixing her with a final glare.
"You will return to Equestria. You will report back to your superiors, cowering behind their cloud cover and so assured in their superiority, and you will tell them everything that you have seen here. Tell them that the Great War is finally over."
The Emperor leaned forward and smiled.
"Tell them that Gryphus won."
—————————————————————————————
Me: Just a quick Omake, it'll be good for a laugh.
My Muse: The longest single non-results threadmark you've made so far.
But yeah, I'm back. Covid Vaccine knocked me on my ass for a bit, but I'm back in the saddle now. Had been wanting to do something like this ever since the Quest really took off, so I'm glad to have scratched that itch and done something just a little bit different.
Rest assured that the actual update and continuation of the Equestrian Interlude will be coming soon. I have been working on that in parallel with this Omake, I simply finished this first and wanted to post it immediately.
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- Pronouns
- He/him
So I completely forgot to post it here, but this is the CYOA that I had finished, like, a month ago. Sorry...
MLP: Empires of Legends
MLP: Empires of Legends
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- Location
- I think somewhere. I might be nowhere though
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well that made for a pretty fun omake. Admittedly I know even less of Fallout: Equestria than I do MLP: FiM proper (which is still relatively basic) since the "EaW: Balefire Blues" mod is still rather undeveloped, but I at least recognized some names and concepts. It's neat seeing how the quest's version of the Empire survived and thrived in such an apocalypse.
sargentorion
Hunter of bunnycats
- Location
- West Sussex, England
I mean it actually makes sense that the empire would survive I mean it had millennia of digging underground cities that mean the most time consuming prep for dealing with what is basically nuclear Armageddon were already in place.
- Pronouns
- He/him
I was not expecting a Fallout: Equestria omake, but this is amazing!
- Location
- Florida
Daaaaaaaaamn. That was an enthralling omake, and this was definitely an excellent closing line.
ConfusedCanuck
Where did it all go wrong?
- Location
- Neverland
Well that was a well done omake and honestly the Gryphus there has every reason to be furious at the others who caused that mess and have good reason to come gunning for them.
- Location
- Borderworld, Xen
Good to have you back, going to get my second next week, gonna suck with my weak immune system :/
Nice, the Enclave would be shiting their pan-- power armor? It would be amusing to see their reaction too not being the biggest baddest tech powerhouse anymore.
- Location
- Florida
Honestly what sticks out to me the most is the Crystal Heart turning red. That is some scary juju. Not a good sign when the magic artifact of love and happiness is now filled with what I can only assume is anger and hate.
Well it looks like Gryphus is going to do manifest destiny of its own here like that Authurian nation we met
NuclearConsensus
Herald of the Thorned One
- Location
- the Philippines
An excellent omake. I do wonder if Gryphus will be sending Wind Whistle back with some sort of proof of their existence or if she'll only have her word to back her up, and if the Enclave will take her story seriously even with proof.
FictionPack
Monochromatic Ursine
- Location
- Tennessee
- Pronouns
- He/Him
They even managed to make the Crystal Heart mad.
That takes effort.
That takes effort.
- Location
- Swansea
I didn't know I needed this, but I am glad to have experienced it now I have.
It is nice to see this back!
It is nice to see this back!
- Location
- Northish
Almost as much effort as it is going to take getting a giant sharpie up there to draw angry eyebrows and frowny face on it to show its displeasure.
- Location
- MN
Have to wonder how Gryphus would respond to Equestria after the end of the fallout storyline where they use the elements of harmony to purify Equestria of all radiation... and only Equestria. I mean I'm sensing a lot of anger and hate that seems to have been bubbling for at least a few centuries so Gryphus suddenly learning that Equestria, the nation that killed the world suddenly can walk outside and feel the dirt beneath them, feel the winds of an open sky upon them, to gaze at the heavens above without any protection and suffer no ill effects while they're still trapped underground.
Well I bet upset wouldn't even begin to describe how they'd feel.
Well I bet upset wouldn't even begin to describe how they'd feel.
- Location
- USA
So we've got Fallout, Metro, and the Gryphons becoming the Helghast from Killzone aesthetically.
Any other crosses I've missed?
Either way an amazing omake to get us excited for the next update.
Any other crosses I've missed?
Either way an amazing omake to get us excited for the next update.
- Location
- Somewhere
I imagine it would be kinda dull. Gryphus is in a really strong position. They have multiple races, high tech advancement, large population. They will steam-roll the world if they move out of the caverns. Unfortunately for Gryphus the world is still irradiated, so the outside is not worth the trouble of taking, yet.
NexysDhyArchen
Throne Breaker
I have to imagine that Gryphus Power Armor is weaker against physical ammunition. Not weak, but certainly weaker as it appears blacksteel is a part of its construction.