My Little Fortress: Shadytrails – Introduction and our RPing process. · 12:24am May 13th, 2015
Key:
The significance of colors:
Green represents the OOC notes in an in-character post, such as an explanation that game mechanics glitched or a clarification. They may or may not appear in this story even though they're in the forum posts.
Blue is for other content that can't be expressed via words, and usually in a journal entry. Purple will be used for any notes I felt prudent to add as an assembler, which would be distinct from any green messages left in my RPs, as it has a different purpose. This includes game messages that may need to be included.
My Little Fortress is a ponification mod for the popular game, "Dwarf Fortress", and it features a variety of species from the show, as well as additional hostile civilizations.
Dwarf Fortress, and thus the ponified version, has a system of caverns one can mine into accidentally, which contain both a large amount of riches but also a substantial population of monsters.
Setting & Species:
So, you don't have the inhuman willpower to read all of Dawnpick to get a feel for the setting? Or, even if you did, has anything changed? Yes, so read on.
The World
First off, this is not Equestria from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. There is no direct correlation whatsoever! Other than the creatures found here (that is, ponies, griffons, zebras and so on), there is very little connecting the two. Characters who exist in the cartoon do not exist here.Relatively little has been established about the world other than that. For our purposes, many things are up in the air, especially since this is a multinational group. For now, just remember that in game everyone worships a pantheon of gods and not Princess Celestia or Princess Luna. Here's a sample of some of the deities that the embark group had:
Glitter Honorintricacy - A female pegasus associated with love and charity.
Discover the Numerical Counsellors - A female earth pony associated with inspiration.
Tornado - A female pegasus associated with war and valor.
Language Lenspapers - A male zebra associated with scholarship.
Glad the Gladness of Kindness - A male pegasus associated with generosity and rainbows.
Fog Whisperpuzzle the Lost Dusks - A male unicorn associated with twilight.
Virtue the Fair Decency - A male unicorn associated with happiness.
Saint the Compassionate Mirthful Purity - A male earth pony associated with forgiveness.
Responsible the Friendly Virtue - A male zebra associated with laws, oaths and loyalty.Ponies:
Anyone who has used Nidokoenig's My Little Fortress mod should be pretty familiar with these critters. I have however, made some changes that are worth knowing.First off, ponies have been scaled to roughly human size. This will affect combat balancing somewhat, but since I changed all of the pony mod species, not very much.
Secondly, ponies have had their peculiar life spans altered a bit. Ponies now have human like lifespans, dying of age from around 70 on up. They also mature at more human like rates: ponies grow up at 10. This is different from Dawnpick, where foals grew up at 6.
Third, ponies do not eat meat in this fort. They do not fish, nor do they hunt. The other species will, so that means that meat is around and they'll eat it in game, but... this would be very strange in RP.
Fourth, I have removed alicorns from the game. They just don't fit in with my headcanon and cause trouble all over the place. They are still present in canon, to accommodate characters from Dawnpick. Just don't expect to see new ones.
Bat-Ponies/Thestrals are their own species, and the acceptance of either term as a form of address will vary between characters, though currently the only one is Silver Rush, who doesn't mind. I personally see calling them a bat-pony as degrading since it's comparable to calling a human a monkey hybrid, but to a lesser extent.
Like in Dawnpick, only unicorns or a creature with some form of hand will be assigned shields in combat.
Crystal Ponies and Minotaurs do not have representation at the current time.
Griffons:
Not much to say here. They're a bit bigger than ponies, fly, and do eat meat and fish. They also lay eggs.
Zebras:
Not much different from ponies.
Horses:
Known as Saddle Arabians in the cartoon, these are larger equines but aren't much different from ponies in most ways. I haven't done anything to really flesh out their culture, so this could be interesting if any show up to the fort. Note that Patina (see characters), for example, are considered ponies rather than horses.
"Rainbow Ponies"
Rainbow ponies are a race which includes Ponies, Griffins, Zebras, and Horses. Keep in mind that the Caste system is repurposed to define species, with each species being a caste, with rules regarding what can be born from relationships between two different castes.
Other Species:
The world is also filled with a few other species, but the important thing to know is that I've removed the noncanon castes from them all and all royals.
Note that diomedian ponies still exist in canon to accomodate the characters from Dawnpick. They just won't be showing up in this game. There is no correlation between diomedian and the discordant ponies from Duskfields whatsoever.
All of these have been rescaled to more human (or relative) proportions, and have human like life spans, just like ponies.
Civilizations:
The Prestigious Confederation ("Rainbow Ponies"):
The Prestigious Confederation is a powerful merchant organization (similar to what Venice was), and they're the civilization the town is run by.Kingdom of Coupledye (Ponies):
The civilization which founds Dawnpick, 30 years in the future.Diamond Dogs:
There's a large, hostile civilization not far from Shadytrails. Probably going to be an issue. They're represented by the Omega signs along the western edge of the map.
The RPing process.
The system used has 3 visible components and two behind-the-scenes processes.
The components are:
1. ★ Updates: These are Telgin's updates composed of the in-game events, written as Isolde's journal. They'll be marked with a star (★).
2. Journals: Self-explanatory, these are a character's journals.
3. Scenes: Scenes are scenes role-played between two characters which are posted on the thread. The IRC is usually most active after 10 p.m. eastern. Scenes are done both in one sitting on a google document and over a period of time.
Additionally, there is an irc channel on mibbit we use and all RP Scenes are done on a GDoc shared between the relevant parties. Scenes can be planned ahead of time or be supr-of-the-moment events.
The game updates are rough dividers between RP periods, with the time elapsed over the most recent update being the primary time of any journals or scenes between it and the next update. I'll usually be an update or two behind to better ensure that no sections are in the wrong order.
If you have joined and claimed a pony that has been present for a substantial amount of time, you are welcome to post journals/scenes from the past. Please make it clear that they're well out of order on the thread and try to link to the page of the approximate time period, that was I can easily put them in the correct spot!
If you have joined and do not wish to be included in the fimfiction version please let me know; otherwise I will assume you don't object.
The calendar (28 days per month) is as follows:
Most of this was written by me, but there are portions from Telgin's introduction.
