Fallout Equestria: The Crystal's Howling Dance Reviews Introduction and Chapter 1 · 8:13pm Jan 8th, 2017
Video Made by Me
You know maybe I should stop doing blind reviews, I tend to make mistakes in retrospect, oh well.
Anyway, this week we'll be looking at a fanfic I've never actually read, though I am friends with the writer. This week we'll be looking at The Crystal's Howling Dance by Megaskullmon. The fic recently completed which is a really strange coincidence, but what the heck.
So lets get going shall we?
---Introduction---
"The journey starts with a sin. Then the sin is what you see in the end."
Well, that's an interesting opening line to say the least, not quite sure what that means, I'm sure it'll make sense later.
The fanfic itself starts out in an underground lab complex on the borders of Old and New Appleloosa, it seems that it was once home to a lot of creatures given the amount of broken cages that hadn't survived the radiation. There's a sound of metal hooves moving along the floor, even without emotion the owner of the hooves seems to feel almost sad. The robot opens a door and finds a Ghoul pony, there is a bit of interaction where the robot tells the Ghoul that it won't kill him.
As it turns out the robot or android apparently (does it really count as an android if its not humanoid?) had come to the lab to learn what had transpired there. The Ghoul seems to believe that the current state of Equestria is in part because of the Ministry Mares, and he's not entirely wrong. The Ghoul says that he'll talk about the Ministry Mares and their sins that lead to what happened to Equestria, starting with Twilight Sparkle.
It also turns out that the ghoul had been hired by Stable-Tec and in particular Scootaloo in order to help preserve their way of life. It seemed that Fluttershy actually initially opposed the project until she realized what it would mean, that they should be nurtured not experimented on. It seems that something still went wrong of course given all the empty cages and scratches, something he calls Project Iron Wolf, what a great sounding name.
We don't learn a lot about Iron Wolf right away, it seems that the creatures it made had devoured everything they could and escaped the lab 7 months prior. It also seems there was a certain crystal that they had been fighting over that had been used to create the creatures.
"This... crystal had a strange magic around it. It, like all the gems and crystals that were harvested from within the mines, was used in our magical weapons. You may have encountered some of them out in the wasteland. This crystal, shaped like a full moon, seemed to attract these 'wolves' to the mines. The crystals were to be shipped out to our weapon factories but came to me instead, so I'd be able to use it to further my experimentation. They also gave me several wolves and miners that agreed to take part in the experiment."
And then it shows one of the experiments being performed on a pony named Hard Hat and its... gruesome to say the least. Hard Hat didn't really react well to whatever he was injected with, which caused him to explode into goo and guts. The scientist had improved on it a little, and by improve on it I of course mean that it turned them into wolf creatures instead of making them explode into goo and guts.
And this fillies and gentlecolts is why you don't mess with this kind of thing.
Video Belongs to Universal
It seems that the crystal has been named the Howling Dance, which I guess explains the title of the fanfic, points for creativity there I suppose, it seems that it was taken by Raiders. The Android, Silver Gunner, asks what it should do if it sees any of these wolf creatures, the ghoul just tells it to let them go, but bring any younglings they find back to the lab. Silver suggests telling them about the lab so that they may learn forgiveness, and the ghoul admits that might be best.
With that Silver Gun leaves the lab with music playing, he spots a group of Raiders, and it ends on one final line.
"War... War never changes... But WE do..."
---Chapter 1: The Journey---
The fanfic itself starts out 50 years after the wolves or the Vulf'van as they're apparently called have left the lab, we get a little bit of backstory and description for them and their society:
Fifty years have passed since the Vulf'van have left that lab. But they wished to not to explain to the young about things such as this. So they created a story about how The Howling dance created them. How The Howling Dance made them be Guardian's of Equestria and protect the ponies of the world. But then The Howling dance told them to go underground and cause war's with their own species. It's a sad thing from what happen to guardians to being just like the one's that created them. Becoming petty and full of hate and anger. They set their young to different jobs and duties. The weaker ones were meant to be hunter's or medical. The medium were meant to be breeders and pointless fodder males and females. The larger warrior's they used some magic... But that was kept for the medical and the hunters. The warriors were sent out to take care of what they called issues. They had different branches of warriors. Warrior's of The Moon were meant to be ones you sent out to die. Warrior's of the flower. One's that protected the young. Warriors of the sun one's that protect the elders and the entire den. It was easy to keep them in line.
It seems that some warriors are even trained from birth to be warriors, its an interesting idea for characterization. They seem to have built their own society out of the cave systems. We soon come to the actual story of the fanfic and our hero who is one of the warriors of the Vulf'van race.
We learn a little bit about our hero, apparently her mother had left the caves at some point to go on a journey, she starts to lament on the fact that she had to raise herself, before she got smacked on the head by the elder.
"Tiria... you know better than sleeping during a teaching. You young lady need to learn manners. Now it's time for your graduation to be a full warrior. You better get your ass there child."
So with that Tiria rushes off to the graduation ceremony with the others that are going to graduate, apparently she doesn't have many friends because she's considered a freak because she is larger and stronger than the others. In the ceremony, the trainer Blood Claw gave each of them a sword that would represent what kind of warrior they are, Tiria was given one with the symbol of the crescent moon, making her a Warrior of the Moon.
There's a bit of a reveal in that Blood Claw seems to be Tiria's father and there is still a bit of animosity left over because her mother had left and is considered a traitor. She takes stock of what she has in her room, mostly weapons she had collected, and goes to sleep on apparently a very hard bed.
Then when she wakes up on the second day, she finds herself chained to a wall in the Elder's room.
Video Belongs to, someone.
Okay apparently the Elder didn't actually order her chained up, just for her to be taken to the room and his bodyguard went a little overboard with it, apparently because she's a Moon Warrior. As it turns out Tiria's mother hadn't just left the caves on a normal journey, she had left to search for the Howling Dance itself. It seems that Tiria is being sent out to hunt down the Howling Dance as well and that she will be exiled from the caves until she comes back with it.
The moon fall out of the sky and hit for being stupid?
Video Belongs to Nintendo.
Anyway, Tiria goes to meet up with what friends she has, they then gave her nasty looks, which makes her think that they don't want to speak to her. Apparently by now word has gotten out about why her mother had left the caves, and so she has no friends to speak to she heads to the Hall of Eating. There is a tense moment when other warriors approach her wanting to pick a fight, and after a moment they let her go pass.
When she wakes up the next day, she wakes up to her trainer swinging his sword at her. He tells her that she needs to get out of the caves now instead of waiting until the next day, but as she tries to escape she gets confronted by the Elder and his guards. The elder gives her some parting advice before she can leave though:
"If you find The Moon you will be welcomed back. But if you don't find friends out there and make a life for yourself. I wish you happy Tiria. You really didn't deserve this treatment. But you have become a problem. You don't follow the way things are done. You have to be just like your mother. So please child any friend you meet... Protect them as much as you can."
She seems to be a little confused by that, but she nods and leaves the caves.
So she finds herself outside of the caves in Shattered Hoof under the cloud cover, she then comes across a crashed sky wagon with books about Equestria during the war and a Sparkle Cola. She took the books and drank the cola before continuing on her way. There's a definite sense of curiosity as she looks at the world around her, and looking around she spots a group of 5 ponies dressed in armor.
Tiria stops to listen to the ponies, apparently they're waiting in ambush for Griffins, and then they capture her and its now pretty obvious that she's dealing with Raiders when they say they're going to rape her. Then after that, Tiria basically threatens him and calls him brain dead, she then kills one of the Raiders and taunts the others. After taking a shot to the arm, and then the Griffins show up and they take out the Raiders quickly.
And the chapter ends with Tiria getting knocked out.
---Character Analysis: Tiria---
Okay, well I'm not quite sure what all to say about her. She's an interesting character to say the least, she's not a pony which you don't see often in Fallout: Equestria fanfics, but its actually done really well. Admittedly, the way the race was created was a bit extreme, but its still an interesting idea for a fanfic.
I actually like Tiria, she again falls under the category we've seen of being a Stable Dweller character without actually being from a Stable. When you add the fact that she's not even a pony, this adds a pretty interesting element to her character. Its a well executed idea, and the backstory and society of the Vulf'van is pretty interesting and creative.
I give the author credit for this amount of creativity and I hope to see more of it in the future.
---Final Thoughts---
This is a really good chapter, it does a good job to establish not only the main character, but also her backstory and species. It works well to expand on the universe that its set in, and does so in very creative ways.
This fanfic is good so far and I recommend that anyone that is into Fallout: Equestria check it out. I know some readers don't like the idea of a non-pony protagonist, but this one does it exceptionally well. If I had any real complaints its that the introduction introduces the origin of the Vulf'van too quickly instead of letting you learn it in the fanfic itself.
I hope you all enjoyed the reviews and look forward to next week.
I give the Introduction a final score of 4/5.
I give chapter 1 a final score of 5/5.
Fallout: Equestria belongs to KKat.
Fallout Equestria: The Crystal's Howling Dance belongs to Megaskullmon.
Next week, we have another blind review unless I decide to read it beforehand for once.
Video Made by Me
Well I am happy you like it as much and yeah Kind of the idea of a stable..
But yes I learned from my mistakes with this story that the next one i do that takes place a little time after...this one
4374521 Well, I'm glad you learned from your mistakes, its a good fanfic so far but it just could've used a little work, don't worry about it, no one is perfect.
One of the Silver Trail stories right after the other. Glad to see you liked it just as much as I did Ruin
Me and Mega are actually working on something together, so look forward to it when I have the first chapter done.