//------------------------------//
// In the Frozen North 
// Story: Iron Kingdom Equestria 
// by Bitt_Player 
//------------------------------//

	Despite Victor Pendrake's warnings and her own apprehensions, Applejack trekked north from Canterlot, soon leaving Equestria entirely and entering Khadoran territory. Having found a train track on the first day into Khador, Applejack had elected to follow it on the basis that a rail line had to eventually lead to a town of some description. The climate grew rapidly colder as Applejack followed the rails northward across the hilly, frozen land, making her glad she'd thought to bring her cotton-lined saddle and boots. She had forgotten, however, to pack earmuffs, a fact she was constantly reminded of by her unrelentingly talkative traveling companion.
"Gee, it's cold here, isn't it? I feel cold, do you feel cold? Is feeling cold an absolute or relative state? Could some pony feel cold while another pony in the same place feels warm? By nature, all ponies are different and may react differently to the same stimu- look! Clouds! That reminds me, I want to get Twilight to cast that cloud-walking spell on us to we can go to Cloudsdale again, that'd be neat! I wanna sleep on a bed made of clouds next time, do you think they're comfy? Wait, maybe they're damp because they have water inside so it can rain. Do you like rain? I like rain, I like the sound it makes when it hits the roof! It's so random, there's no pattern to it, and I think that's neat, do you think it's neat? I-"
"Pinkie," Applejack said loudly, "can ya please just stop talkin' fer a bit?"
"Aw, but I like talking," Pinkie Pie protested, "talking is fun, and I like fun things! Like parties! Do you think these Kay-doory whozits like parties? I hope they like parties, I've got my party cannon all ready so we can throw a party as soon as we meet some!"
Applejack had to force herself not to wonder where, exactly, the hyperactive mare was storing her signature artillery piece, which was nowhere in sight. "Ya'll need to relax a mite, okay?" The be-hatted pony insisted.
"I can't possibly relax! I'm so excited! We're outside of Equestria! I've never been out of Equestria before! In fact, I wasn't sure there was an 'outside Equestria!' Wait, is there an outside Equestria on our normal world? What if there isn't?! What if..."
The magenta-maned mare continued her unstoppable monologue for the next hour and a half, veering between random small talk and surprisingly deep philosophy, all while prattling so rapidly that Applejack found herself wondering how her friend was able to emit such a constant stream of words without stopping for breath. Just as the farm pony had begun seriously considering a theory that involved Pinkie speaking while both exhaling and inhaling, the way cats purred, the pair rounded a hill and discovered a tall wall made of tree trunks. The wall had a wide gap to allow the train tracks through, and through this opening Applejack saw what appeared to be a fortified train station, as well as a few large tents and hastily-constructed buildings. Armed men and woman in red uniforms were moving constantly about this camp, and a large, red-and-black warjack stood guard at the wall's southern entrance.
"Oooh, look! They look like a fun bunch!" Pinkie said, "they're wearing red, and red is kinda like pink, and pink is my favorite! Maybe I can get them to wear pink, I bet pink is their fav-mmph!"
Applejack had resorted to jamming a hoof in Pinkie's otherwise-unstoppable motor mouth. The farm mare reflected briefly that she'd been putting her hooves into the mouths of other ponies with disturbing frequency ever since she'd met Twilight Sparkle.
"Pinkie," Applejack pronounced with as much seriousness as she could muster under the  circumstances, "I really, really need ya to let me do the talking fer a while. An' whatever ya do, do not, I repeat do not git out yer party cannon. If these guys think it's a real cannon, they're sure ta jus' kill us outright, understand?" Applejack withdrew her hoof.
"I understand perfectly!" Pinkie said gleefully, "I'll be super-duper-extra qui-mrfle!" In went Applejack's hoof again.
"I've got a good twenty feet ah rope in my saddlebags," Applejack said, glowering, "an' Celestia as my witness I will use every inch of it t' tie yer mouth shut if'n I have to. Now, I'm gonna take mah hoof out, and if so much as one sound follows it outta yer mouth, I will git th' rope out. Are we clear on this?"



Kovnik Egor Pitoev had seen many strange things in his long and illustrious career, and knew that many men regarded his steam-powered Man-O-War armor to be quite odd in itself, but the sight that met his eyes as he checked on the firebase's southern guards was... well, probably not the strangest, honestly. But it was certainly on the top-ten list. Two creatures much like small, oddly-shaped, and even more oddly-colored horses approached the firebase from the south. One of these creatures had an orange coat, a very nice hat, and what could only be called a determined look on its face. The other was pink, had no hat at all, and looked rather dejected. This was understandable, as the lower half of the pink one's face was wrapped up in a long rope evidently intended to prevent it from making any kind of sound.
"Menoth's gaze, have you ever seen horses like those, Kovnik?" One of the Man-O-War guards asked, lifting his faceplate to get a better look.
"I cannot say that I have," Pitoev replied. He rapped the arm of the hulking warjack guarding the railway. "Kodiak, with me, " the officer commanded, starting towards the approaching equines. The streams of smoke rising from the Kodiak's six smokestacks thickened slightly as the eleven-ton brute followed its master. As its steam pressure rose, the warjack accelerated, overtaking the kovnik and interposing itself protectively between him and the strangers. The bipedal machine stopped in front of the new arrivals and loomed menacingly over them. The only thing a Kodiak did better than loom menacingly was use its massive steel hands to crush, destroy, and otherwise remove from combat hostile entities of all shapes and sizes, a fact which Kovnik Pitoev was keenly aware. Kodiaks were among his favorite warjacks to marshal, they had advanced cortexes that made them more self-sufficient than other Khadoran 'jacks, along with their high-pressure steam engines and thick armor.



"Well, uh, hi there, big guy." Applejack greeted the machine nervously as it loomed menacingly over the two ponies. Victor Pendrake had drawn quick sketches of many of the commonly-used warjacks in western Immoren, but Applejack was at a loss to identify this one. Its armor bore a large symbol that resembled a triangle with thick lines crossing each corner. This, according to Pendrake, was the offical symbol of Khador. The human had claimed that it was an anvil, or represented one. Applejack had assumed it was either highly symbolic, or the Khadorans had strange ideas about metalworking. The warjack's face-plate had a single rectangular opening from which glowed a bright, yellow light. Pendrake had said that such openings served as a warjack's eyes, so Applejack looked directly into the glow as she addressed the machine, wondering if it could, as Pendrake insisted, understand what she was saying.
"We're, uh, well, we're lookin' fer the folks in charge, we gotta talk t' the most important Khadorans we can find..." Applejack trailed off as the machine turned slightly, motioning towards what she took for a smaller warjack until it removed its helmet. The human was wearing a massive suit of armor with pistons at the joints and a steam engine on its back, his metal-clad hands gripping a very large axe. Pendrake had described these men as well, calling them "Men-O-War". The small flag rising from the Man-O-War's back marked him as a kovnik, which was -again, according to Pendrake- a fairly high rank within the Khadoran military. Applejack thought it likely that this man was in charge of the train station and the base surrounding it. He appeared to be surprised, probably not expecting Applejack to be able to speak.
"And a good afternoon to you," the kovnik greeted Applejack, recovering from his evident amazement, "please forgive my companion his silence, warjacks are not exactly riveting conversationalists." The Man-O-War chuckled at his own joke and continued, "you seem a bit lost, so allow me to say that you have come upon a firebase maintained by the Third Army of the Khadoran Empire to support our southern expansion. Tell me, what prompts two creatures such as yourselves to wander north along our glorious empire's most excellent rail lines?" Many Khadorans, Applejack had been told, loved to heap praise upon their nation and its people, and this man was apparently one of them.
"Well, that's a long story," Applejack explained, "I suppose I'd best start explainin'."



Pitoev sat inside his tent and considered Applejack's story carefully. Just outside, Pinkie Pie chattered endlessly at his Kodiak, apparently not knowing or not caring that it could not reply. The warjack, indeed, seemed fascinated by the pony. The machine watched Pinkie constantly as she hopped and bounced all around it, emitting a constant torrent of words. He found the pink one utterly incomprehensible, and was much more at ease with with the practical and patriotic Applejack. Listening to the yellow-maned pony talk of Equestria and its people made it quite clear to Pitoev that she loved her country as much as he loved Khador. It sounded like a pleasant place at that, he wondered if it was worth angling for a posting closer to the nation. High Kommand would consider border garrisons at the edge of their new neighbor-state's territory an absolute essential, and setting them up quickly meant manning them with soldiers already in the area.
The kovnik's thoughts were interrupted by the clanging of alarm bells. One of his battle mechaniks burst into the tent and shouted, "Kovnik! Trolls!"
Pitoev needed no further information. "Quickly, my armor!" The Man-O-War shouted, leaping to his feet. Trollkin raiding parties were increasingly common in the region. These parties were typically accompanied by larger, full-blooded trolls, and -with distressingly increasing frequency- brutal dire trolls, which were each a match for even Khadoran warjacks in hand-to-hand combat. With the mechanik's help, the officer quickly donned his heavy armor and strode from his tent to assess the situation.



"Just what in the hay are those?!" Applejack demanded, looking down from the wooden wall at the motley throng of blue-skinned humanoids approaching the firebase.
"Trollkin!" A nearby Winter Guard Rifleman exclaimed. The Rifle Corps were highly-trained soldiers drilled in firing their weapons accurately and with great speed to suppress approaching enemies. Dozens of them stood on the raised platform on the inner side of the wall, waiting for the attackers to come within range of their guns. "Looks like there's a few full-blood trolls, as well," the rifleman continued, "and Menoth save us, I see dire trolls!".
Applejack noticed that the approaching horde seemed to be lead by a large trollkin carrying a simple, heavy-looking mace and wearing a tattered cloak with a thick fur collar. As she watched, this troll seized a wooden keg from a waist-high troll walking beside him and tipped it back, downing several gulps of its contents before clumsily pushing the keg into the hands of the pygmy troll and raising his mace.
"LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!!" The fur-collared-trollkin bellowed, leaning slightly to one side. Glowing, blue-white runes surrounded him, floating in midair and spreading out to encompass his party.
"Warlock!" The rifleman next to Applejack shouted, "shoot the warlock!"
As the approaching rabble of trolls charged forward, the warlock used his runic magic to create a barrier of howling wind around himself and the trollkin nearest him, causing the bullets of the Winter Guard to fly harmlessly away from them. A full-blooded troll with a quiver full of huge, crudely-made spears on its back motioned towards a gigantic troll that carried a keg with a rope fuse in each hand. The dire troll's eyes glowed white as it raised its powder kegs, and a pygmy troll riding on its hunched back lit each fuse with a large torch.
"Git off th' wall!" Applejack shouted, realizing what was coming. The pony leaped down without thinking, hitting the ground hard and stumbling as she ran away. Most of the riflemen tried to reach ladders, but were caught in the blast as the dire troll's well-timed throws let the powder kegs detonate mere inches from the wall, which exploded into clouds of lethal splinters. The spear-carrying troll threw one of his great weapons with such force that it slammed a nearby Man-O-War several feet backwards, leaving him sideways on the ground and surrounded by the billowing steam from his ruptured boiler. A large gang of trollkin rushed through the gap, carrying wooden shields and an assortment of swords, axes, and hammers. 
Applejack looked around desperately and saw Pitoev's Kodiak walking towards the fight. "You! Big guy! Take 'em out!" Applejack shouted at the machine. To her surprise, it reacted, gathering speed to slam into the crowd of trolls.
Several vents on the Kodiak opened up, and it blasted a cloud of flesh-searing steam from its boiler. The trollkin surrounding it cried out in pain as they were cooked alive by the intense heat. The Kodiak trudged out of the cloud, bashing its fists into any trollkin in its way. The dire troll bomber stopped the warjack just as it reached the gap in the wall, and the hulks of muscle and metal began to batter each other relentlessly. The Kodiak seemed to have the advantage until a second dire troll, this one carrying a massive axe in one hand, gave an earsplitting bellow that was answered by a roar from the bomber, which began to bash the Kodiak with increased brutality, tearing one of the warjack's arms off and bludgeoning the machine with it until it collapsed.
Applejack backed away from the fight, not sure what to do. She found herself next to Pinkie Pie, who also looked confused.
"When the guy with the collar said it was a party, this wasn't what I had in mind," Pinkie said bluntly as the axe-carrying dire troll froze a group of Men-O-War with a blast of frost from its mouth.
Applejack was about to answer when she felt a cold, metal hand on her shoulder. She turned to see Kovnik Pitoev, who looked grim.
"We are in terrible trouble," Pitoev said, "the Kodiak was our only warjack, I was counting on it to eliminate at least one dire troll. My Men-O-War can bring down one. If not for the warlock, maybe both, but he is so well-protected by his men and his magic that we would all be crushed between them and his dire trolls if we tried to kill him first. So I am asking you two, since I can spare no soldiers, to follow the rails north to the next firebase, and tell them of this attack. My soldiers and I will stay, and we will hold this place as long as we can."
"But... these troll guys are crazy," Applejack said, "they'll kill all y'all!"
"Perhaps so," Pitoev said, "but tell me, what use is a soldier who grows too old to fight? Men-O-War, we do not fade away, dying slowly in front of warm fires. Better to be eaten by a dire troll in defense of the Motherland," Pitoev delivered this pronouncement with such conviction that Applejack was sure he truly meant it. "It is likely that my fellow soldiers will need to re-take this base by the time they arrive, please relay that."
"I... all right," Applejack said, "I hate t' leave ya like this, but yer right, yer people have got t' know about this."
"Then you understand. Good". With that, Pitoev gave a battle cry and charged towards the dire troll bomber, joining his axe-wielding fellows in their brutal, coordinated strikes against the great beast.
Applejack turned back to Pinkie Pie. "Le's go, Pinkie, y'all heard th' man."
"I'm not going," Pinkie replied, a look of absolute seriousness on her face, "I wanna see if these trollkin will let me hang around with them for a while."
"What in tarnation are you talkin' about?!" Applejack demanded, "In case you haven't noticed, these here trolls are currently killin' everythin' they lay eyes on that ain't a troll. Only reason we ain't dead is they ain't noticed us yet". Applejack began to walk away from the battle, with Pinkie following her.
"I know, but remember what Victor said about them?" The pink mare replied, "he said they keep getting kicked out of their homes because of all the fighting. I figure, Equestria's got lots and lots of empty space, maybe they can stay there for a while. Besides, you saw that warlock's crazy magic, maybe one of them can help us go home."
Applejack considered this carefully. Amazingly enough, Pinkie raised some good points. A good home and some good friends might be exactly what the trolls needed, and Equestria needed access to as many types of magic as they could muster to stand a chance of going back where they came from. Still it was extremely dangerous. On the other hoof, Pinkie seemed able to stumble her way out of nearly any kind of situation by sheer randomness or dumb luck. On top of that, the trolls seemed as wild and exuberant as Pinkie herself. Applejack sighed.
"All right," Applejack relented, "go join th' trolls if'n it suits ya. But I'm tellin' ya, one sign of trouble from any of 'em, you run clear back t' Canterlot, understand?"
"Clear as crystal!" Pinkie said, hopping away.
Applejack sighed again, turned towards the firebase's rail station, and began her lonely walk north.