Human - How its sequels would've gone · 5:41pm Sep 27th, 2014
Although in my previous blog I spoke at length about how everything would've gone had I continued Human, I didn't actually cover everything, even when I did go into the side-stories. In truth, the plan for Human deliberately left a lot of unanswered questions and hanging threads. That's because there were plans to resolve most of them in the sequels. I gave little details about it in the comments of that blog, but nothing major. In the blog itself, I specifically avoided talking about it, citing elements of it that I couldn't tell you about without spoiling parts of Shades and Van Helsing, both of which are still being written.
However, I can just leave those parts out and specifically address the parts pertaining to Human, for those wondering about how the story goes from where we left it. So for my one-hundredth blog (yaaaay), let's do that. This is how the sequels would've gone:
Phase 1: Countdown to Secopolis
Before actually getting to the proper sequel to Human, we would've had a series of smaller stories to ease the transition and set-up certain elements. There were five of them planned. While all of them underwent numerous working titles, the names most commonly attributed to them are Black, New Frontiers, Highest Price, Legend of the Apocalypse, and Lord Brian.
Black and Legend of the Apocalypse were planned oneshot sequels to Shades of Grey and Van Helsing respectively, so I can't speak much about them. Suffice to say, they would've carried over elements (not necessarily characters) from both of those stories and shown how those elements would return in Secopolis. These stories may still be written one day, albeit with significant alterations, so I won't be divulging details.
Highest Price and New Frontiers would've focused on the humans arriving in Equestria. Particularly, they would've focused on two villainous human groups, who would've gone on to become antagonists in Secopolis. A detail that these stories would've made clear about the humans in this setting is that none of them gained the same level of power as Second and First did, and that these are all, for the most part, ordinary people.
Highest Price tells the story of a bunch of street punks from Detroit, led by a guy called Marcus, who form an outlaw gang called the Beasts and decide to become dragon-slayers. Being that there are little more than a dozen dragons still alive in this world, they're on the hunt for a long time, but eventually they kill one and attract the attention of Spike, who comes after them and annihilates most of the gang. Marcus escapes alive, though all his friends are dead, and he decides it's time for him and his gang to seek refuge in the cities, leading to them making exodus for Secopolis. The story would've been set against the backdrop of the rest of the human race gathering into various factions, either starting new settlements or heading to the already existing cities as refugees. The Beasts are initially formed in protest to that, as Marcus doesn't want to be like the rest of the "sheep" trying to just survive by running for safety, but wants to make something himself now that they're given the opportunity by being in a fantastic new world. Needless to say, by the end of the story, he has an attitude change, deciding that Equestria is way more dangerous a place than anything they knew on Earth, and that to not head for the cities is suicide.
New Frontiers, meanwhile, would've featured a faction called the Human Republic of Tumbleweed. This story would've revealed that the humans who were drawn into Equestria from Earth were not all from the same time period, and in fact, the HRT is formed by a group of genuine cowboys from the old days of the wild west. Except that that comes with all the unfortunate social attitudes of those times. These men come from a time when slavery was still legal, and the HRT is still actively practicing it. Only instead of other humans, they're enslaving the locals, using ponies for labour and Equestria's sapient cows as food. Even their main town, Tumbleweed, was formerly Appleloosa before they came in with their guns and took it over. The story's main antagonist was going to be the leader of the HRT, Sheriff Grayson, while our protagonist is a Christian missionary from the same time period who recognises how fucked the whole situation is and tries to convince the Sheriff to see reason, to no avail. The story would've seen the HRT's beginnings and expansion, and eventually concluded with the missionary getting the hell out of Dodge to run for one of the human settlements not ran by dickheads, while the HRT is confronted with an impending war with Equestria itself that it cannot hope to win.
Finally, Lord Brian would've been largely irrelevant to the larger story, being just a comedic oneshot for the fans while they're waiting. It would've featured the occasionally-mentioned sibling of Howard's who he had a fight with at their father's funeral, as he arrives in Equestria with the rest of the human race to find that his little brother is locally known as Lord Second, God of Destruction. We would've followed him around as he walks Equestria, meeting the locals, learning more about the absolute fucking lunacy that he just missed, and getting pissed off that he'll now never escape the shadow of his brother. Since Second is already dead, all Brian can do is rage at a statue of him in Secopolis and try to kick it down. The story ends with the statue falling over and crushing Brian to death, and a bunch of Second's worshippers wondering who the idiot was.
Phase 2: Secopolis
Secopolis would've been my true masterpiece, being just as long as Human but with a greater balance between the humour and the drama, and a tighter story that kept the plot less complicated and the focus squarely centred on one character instead of fifteen or so. To that end, it would've been a first-person story. Our perspective character is a former lieutenant of the Royal Guard by name of Meticulous Planning, known to his friends as Met, who deserted some time during the apocalypse when bad things went down at the research facility he was stationed at.
He was referenced a few times in Human before it ended, most prominently during the afterlife arc in one of First's files. But the less direct reference (and the earliest one), was when Second entered the hall of mirrors and discovered a mirror for an unknown pony whose cutie mark was of a map with a pin in it. That was Meticulous Planning's mark, and so what Second saw in that mirror was in fact Met's greatest fear, not Chain Mail's. This is relevant, because Meticulous is about to live through his worst nightmare in this story.
As well as our protagonist, the other major character of Secopolis is his best friend, an African American man from Miami who is exclusively referred to as Major Tom. The story behind this nickname is a long and convoluted one that he tries to explain several times throughout the story to several different characters, but the audience only ever hears snippets of these explanations, and none of the characters besides Tom seem to understand what he's talking about anyway. Met and Major Tom met sometime after the arrival of the humans and began travelling Equestria together, Met contributing his knowledge of the world, and Major Tom providing a luxury sports car to get them around.
When the story starts, it's six months after the end of Human, and the two of them are driving towards Secopolis. The humans have since set up radio in Equestria, and one DJ Jazz Hands provides regular news reports over the airwaves to let the humans of Equestria know what's going on. The audience learns from his regular reports that besides the HRT, there are three major human settlements. These are Little Washington, New Melbourne, and Fivefinger. The former two are mostly just shantytowns set up in remote locations, while the latter was once a pony town called Hollow Shades that got wiped out by zombies and found abandoned. Almost everyone who didn't join one of these places either sought refuge in a pony city, or else headed for Secopolis, as Met and Tom are doing, because Secopolis is a technologically advanced wonderland filled with every luxury a man could dream of. However, the catch is that it's also a raging warzone, because since Second died, EVERYONE wants the city.
While it takes our hero several chapters to get a lay of the land, here's the gist of it:
After Second died, the factions in the city began infighting almost immediately. Congress assert that they should be in charge, with President John Fist hoping to become the new emperor. They are supported by the Church of Humanity, who are now being ran by Archbishop Sun Rise. The Church have sway over a lot of the pony population of Secopolis, as they continue the old religion of worshipping the human lords, even though they're dead. Sun Rise himself makes regular broadcasts to the city through a series of jumbotrons, giving comforting messages to the locals and reasserting the authority of Congress. The Church also has a number of guardians, breakaways from the Knights of Man. The main contingent of the Knights stand on the other side of the conflict, making their base out of Fort First, and they are supported by the Mage's Guild. Meanwhile, Silver took her heavy troopers and set up headquarters in the city's nuclear plant, deciding that they listen to nobody, although they keep good relations with the Guild.
In addition to this, there are a number of new guys. Equestria has a military base set up on the outskirts of the city, and the Elements of Harmony are there waiting to be called into action. They're there allegedly as a peacekeeping force, but it's no secret that they want to incorporate Secopolis into Equestria as they did with the Crystal Empire, and they're just waiting for the civil war to end before they step in and do so. In the city itself, meanwhile, we've got a group called the Colonel's Commonwealth. This is where all the human refugees go to, and it's guarded by a large number of human soldiers who all answer to a former U.S. Army colonel, called the Colonel, who keeps his people safe as best he can, which is no easy feat, as I'll get into later. A number of embassies have been set up in the city too, including ones for the changelings, the zebras, the griffins, the HRT and Little Washington, all of whom are hoping to take over the city when the civil war ends, just like Equestria.
And if that weren't enough, there's also a local militia standing in for a police force, the Manehattan Mafia already own a few small businesses in the city with intent to expand, there's a social movement called the Undead Society being formed by the intelligent zombies that resulted from the second battle of Canterlot, the Beasts, and two separate groups of extremists that are classified as terrorists by Equestria. One is an all-pony organisation called the Heretics who hate humans and have been hiding in the city and striking at the Colonel's Commonwealth from the shadows. The other is an only mostly pony organisation called the Survivors who hate zombies, and have been harassing the Undead Society.
Later chapters would also reintroduce the demon legion, and give is another new group called the Clergymen, who are a mixed human and pony organisation dedicated to hunting down demons.
Now, with all this shit going on, the exact order of events and when Met and Major Tom would meet and deal with each faction was a detail that I never fully worked out. However, the general order of the first act of the story is that the two of them would enter the city, see how the civil war is exploding, and take refuge in the Commonwealth under the Colonel's protection, during which time they ask around and search for Major Tom's girlfriend, who he was separated from when they came to Equestria.
This is their reason for being in Secopolis in the first place, but what truly sets off the adventure is a combination of three major events. Firstly, they nearly catch a mysterious pony who has been murdering humans in the Commonwealth, but he gets away. Secondly, they discover the Mafia's presence in the city, and Met goes to Chain Mail, his old boss, telling him to do something about it. Thirdly, while wandering the city, the two of them enter a park and find a cult who are gathered there to worship a mysterious alicorn, who claims to be Lord Second reborn, and who in fact perfectly resembles Second's alicorn form from the alternate ending of Human. This is only the first part of the many deceptions planned to confuse the readers as to which ending was the canon one. An unfortunate choice of words leads to this alicorn trying to kill both Met and Tom, but it does not go as planned for him, and they are somehow able to beat him back, so he runs away to lick his wounds and get over the humiliation of having been defeated by two mortals.
Since the narrative is so non-linear, I'll explain the deal right away. In the aftermath of Second's death, Secopolis would've featured a number of imposters and pretenders to his throne trying to claim his identity. Loosely inspired by the Reign of the Supermen, each of the impostors would've been given a nickname spoofing Second's, and part of their character would've been based on one of Second's informal titles. The alicorn was inspired by Second's self-given title of Emperor of the New Human Empire. The alicorn represents the Emperor, his aspiration being power and control over Secopolis, and his nickname is Twice. He would've eventually have been revealed to be one of the surviving OC alicorns Second called into being for the second battle of Canterlot, who disguised himself and impersonated Second because he desired power. It is Silver who ultimately reveals his true identity, as she saw the real Second die before she escaped the time void. Twice is not a major major villain, but makes a later appearance trying to forge an alliance with the mafia, which fails due to Met's interference, and he later outright attacks Met in public, resulting in Twice's death.
The hunt for the murderer, meanwhile, leads to Met going around to various factions while trying to track him down. We first meet the Beasts while Met is searching for information on where to find the Heretics, who are the main suspects for obvious reasons. Marcus gives up the information after getting a beatdown from Major Tom in their underground fight club, and Met heads into the sewers the following chapter to meet with the Heretic leader, who denies responsibility for the murders. What we do learn, however, is that the Heretics serve another power, and it is revealed that Discord is free from his stone prison again and is behind the group. Not canon Discord, though. Oh no. This is oldschool fanon Discord, based purely on season two, who could conceivably be imagined in a much darker light. He's lending his magic to the Heretics and encouraging them to spread conflict and bloodshed, because he plans to push humans and ponies into a Conversion Bureau-esque war that will end with the total collapse of all society. He even tells this to Met, but because of Discord's magic, Met is unable to say anything to anyone about it. And since he can't fight a being as powerful as Discord, he has no choice but to run away and leave them to it.
Despite that grimness, the search for the true murderer does continue, and Met goes to the other factions in the city, looking for help in finding the culprit. Earliest among these is a visit to the nuclear plant, where we are reintroduced to Silver and her heavy troopers. It is also at this facility that the second impostor is introduced. This is Squared, an intelligent supercomputer containing an imprint of Second's mind, and he has been running the systems for Silver and her group for a while. However, what Silver and the rest don't know is that Squared is even more insane than Second was, perhaps even more than Hyde. All Second lived for in his final days was the hope of seeing home again. For Squared, that is completely impossible. Now all he has is revenge, and his goal is nothing less than the total annihilation of all organic life, which he plans to achieve through launching all the remaining nuclear weapons in Secopolis. Incidentally, the title of Second's that inspired Squared was "Last Man Standing". Squared has been spending all his time since coming online trying and failing to gain control of the nukes from the plant's computer, but he finally gains the control needed shortly after Met and Tom arrive there. He is foiled by them setting off a convenient EMP in the plant, but Squared escapes by the wifi to somewhere else in the city.
A visit to the Mage's Guild gives us our first encounter with the demons, who are led by one particular demon claiming to be Lord Second reborn. This is Minute, and he is based on Second's title of "the Reverend", which is something he would've called himself by in later chapters during all his dealings with the demons. Minute's true identity, although we don't learn it for a while, is Qramstarflokrinhir, and he spends the story trying to convince various factions that he is Second because he wants one of them to grant him access to Project Pandora. There, Tirac is still imprisoned after the events of Human, and Qramstarflokrinhir is making a play to get to Tirac and kill him so that he can be the new demon king. This subplot eventually ends with Met, Tom and Silver Vein storming the facility where Project Pandora is held with a force of Clergymen and heavy troopers, and battling the demons.
During this battle is also when we meet the final of the four impostors, although impostor may be the wrong word in this case, as in a side lab locked away from the main facility, Tom and Met find none other than our old friend, Jekyll, also called Double. It is with Jekyll's help that they are able to reach the centre of the facility and open Project Pandora, releasing Tirac and allowing them to kill him themselves while he is weakened. Qramstarflokrinhir's succession plan fails, and the other demons turn on him and tear him to pieces, each trying to steal what little power he has instead, since Tirac is no longer around and the chain of succession is broken.
Earlier than the battle for Pandora, the two also seek help from Congress, and Congress agrees to look into it in exchange for their help. Acting as an agent of Congress, Met carries out a series of jobs. Undermining Twice and the mafia is one of these, which results in the death of the mafia leader, the briefly mentioned Don Dynamite, who Explodey was mistaken for in one chapter of Human. Another of these jobs involves watching a meeting between the Colonel's Commonwealth, Little Washington and the HRT, and to protect the leaders of the former two. This meeting is broken up when the Heretics attack, and Sheriff Grayson is killed in the confusion here, but the president of Little Washington and the Colonel escape. The Heretics also wipe out the Beasts around this time.
Squared reappears in the conclusion of the murderer subplot, and we learn that the killer was trying to provoke the Commonwealth to open war with the Heretics in the hopes that they'd wipe out each other. This is because the murderer is an agent of the Equestrian Secret Service, who were first introduced with Agent C in Human and who were revealed in Shades to be a secretive organisation with no oversight whatsoever, even from the princesses themselves. The ESS, in their wisdom, decided to try to drive the factions of Secopolis to kill each other so that Equestria could take over unopposed, but this agent came across Squared and decided to work with him to just wipe out the city the easy way, regardless of the fact that many Equestrians are still inhabiting the city, including the Elements of Harmony. The agent is killed in the battle with Met, and the flying fortress crashes outside the city as Squared makes his escape.
After both this battle and the demon one, Met would've left Congress and gone out alone, only to be captured by Sun Rise and the forces of the Church, who are planning to make a coup against Congress using the nukes. However, since Silver and her troops control the nuclear plant, he wants to set them off remotely, using a control that can be found inside the wreckage of the Prometheus, which is still where it crash-landed during the events of Human. Since the Prometheus is a deathtrap and the crash zone is quarantined, Met and Major Tom are sent in alone to deal with it, where they have their final encounter with Squared, who downloads himself into the body of the robot chef from Human. In this form, he is finally killed. Met and Tom escape afterwards, but Sun Rise gets the control he wants and nukes Congress, not understanding just how dangerous a nuke actually is. Fortunately, it is a primitive enough model that a lot of the city survives, and the Elements of Harmony go off to purge the radiation shortly after. The heavy troops then mobilise against Sun Rise, and he is killed by Silver in the following battle.
The Heretics take the opportunity to attack the Commonwealth, but by this point, the remaining factions minus Equestria have all united and been brought together, and they repel the attack. Their leader is killed in the battle by Met, but Major Tom also loses his life. Discord then finally makes his presence known and starts discording the surviving humans and ponies at random to reignite the conflict. His mistake in this, however, is that one of the humans he discords is Jekyll. The discorded Jekyll essentially becomes Hyde, and Hyde is able to channel the Lordforce, unlike Jekyll. What follows is a very destructive battle between the two that takes them across the city. While Hyde is in flight, Discord reverses the effect and turns him back into Jekyll, who falls to his possible death. However, Discord is injured by the fight, and it just so happens that he is found in his battered state by the Equestrians, who bring out the Elements of Harmony to turn him to stone again.
Jekyll is found alive by Silver, this being the first time the two have met in-story, and she takes him away to safety to get him healed up. Miraculously, Jekyll looks likely to survive, and Met hands over Jekyll to Silver's care, putting her in charge of ensuring his safety. Met then leaves to bring together the united factions, both human and local, and they all stand against the Equestrians. Met tells Chain Mail that Secopolis will be remaining an independent zone, and tells him to get out of his city. The story ends with the Equestrian military withdrawing, and us seeing the beginnings of Secopolis's reconstruction.
Phase 3: Reich
Beyond this, my plans for sequels get a lot vaguer. There would have been another countdown series to set it all up, but the gist of it is that following Secopolis, the human settlements all united and formed their own nation with Secopolis as the capital, and most of the main characters from Secopolis went on to become prominent figures in it. Silver in particular did very well for herself, becoming the head of the military. This new nation is very multicultural, being a mix of humans and ponies, and thanks to the technology of Secopolis, it is also a very advanced one. Equestria meanwhile crumbles into a lot of sub-territories and rogue states thanks to its internal problems, but the central Equestrian state which is still ruled by the princesses survives and is gradually growing stronger again, benefitting technologically and culturally from having formed an alliance with its new neighbour.
Reich was going to be set many decades after Secopolis and with a new protagonist, who is a government agent working for the human nation. The basic plot is that is Equestrian and human outposts and towns are getting hit along the border between their countries, and both sides assume that an unseen third faction is trying to push them to war against one another. The most recent Elements of Harmony are sent by Equestria's side to investigate and deal with the problem, while the humans send this story's protagonist from their side. The story would've basically followed their investigations, which take them all across both nations and would've given me a lot of opportunity to explore this new world's culture and do some worldbuilding. The unseen third faction is Nazis, by the way. You could probably guess by the fact the story's called Reich. It's some HYDRA kind of shit going on here, but I swear I came up with this story before Winter Soldier came out.
Conclusion:
Anyway, I think that about covers it. So now you know the ultimate destination of Human's story, not only to the end of that story, but into its sequels too. Now, I mentioned that Secopolis was going to contain elements from both Shades and Helsing, and that neither of those stories are cancelled, so you may be wondering what the full plan is from here.
Well, for one thing, Draven has stated that he absoluetly plans to continue writing Shades, and I will continue to support him with that. And while Shades will likely take the rest of my future plans for Human as canon, I think it's fair to say that Secopolis isn't going to happen, so we may make changes to the plans for Shades so that it resolves all of its lingering threads within its own story, or at least so that everything is resolved by Black. Helsing meanwhile will be rewritten as an original story, or possibly folded into another project. And as for Secopolis, I have plans to salvage a lot of the ideas I had for it and write a new story. Now, I have spoiled a lot of details for Secopolis here, but to write Secopolis without the connection to Human would require massive amounts of revisions anyway, so I think the reworked story will be pretty different than what I posted here.
Other than that, I now hand over Human to all of you. For all the many of you that have contacted me about wanting to write side-stories before, now is your chance. You know basically everything I intended, you know how the story goes, and you know the world you're writing in. So do as you please. Have at it. Make something excellent.
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Soooooooo ............. idk what to say XD
You had it planned out reaaaaaaally far ahead, didn't you
Well, something might still come of it, so we'll just keep on our toes
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What can I say? I'm an obsessive motherfucker.
It shocks me how far ahead you planned. When I write I'm usually just like, "Oh fuck it, let's see what happens if I do this!" It's like chemistry class when the professor leaves and all the supplies are left out. I try to write a story and end up creating a new compound and four dead high school students.
The one question I have is: you mentioned that Second would likely have been floating through the void at the end of Human, would he have ever made it home?
Honestly these blog posts are surely interesting but reading even the title is twisting... wait no, SPINNING the knife inside the wound. I loved Human, still do... the disappointment was severe.
Now that I have cried, thanks for informing about these things ♥
Wow. This would have been enough Human content to last an entire lifetime! You probably would have been writing this well into old age (and we of course, would have been reading it for as long)!
I'm actually satisfied after reading all of this. Sometimes just knowing the major events of the story is good enough. Kind of like how they tell folktales and myths.
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Well, he was left floating alive through the void in one ending, and that's the ending that would've led into The Long Way Home (see the side stories part of the previous blog).
That particular version of Second never made it home, but did eventually find his way out of the myriad pony universes and into a part of the multiverse primarily inhabited by humans again. His evolution continued as his mastery of the Lordforce grew, but he did not become truly omnipotent until he had aged enough to entirely forget his origins and stop caring about them.
He came to assume that he had always existed and always been a god, and that his strong affinity for humanity was because he had created them and forgot about it, leading to him spending eternity on various alternate Earths in various forms and with various levels of intervention. The one connection to his past that remains constant through it all, is that for reasons he will never quite understand, he is filled with inexplicable rage by the thought of equine creatures of any kind, and alternate Earths where the My Little Pony brand exist are the bane of his existence.
As for the canonical Second, he got a much worse deal, his bone dust falling through the void of time and into the realms beyond. It too got sucked up by the universal slipstreams and ended up in alternate worlds, but he never really went anywhere. His bones would partially re-form during that time, but the power of the Elements of Harmony ensured that he was unable to fully regenerate, and his soul remained bound to his immobile skeleton somewhere in the chaotic netherworld of another universe for a few million years. Eventually, he would be happened upon by an alternate Twilight Sparkle and Discord, on an adventure of their own, who put him out of his misery.
>:(