(Post is still being worked on! Mind the dust.)
Hello, there ponies and other set peoples of this group!

I'm here to talk about a little undertaking a group of friends, including myself are doing. We like the tag name United Minds. (( They didn't like my first name which was Lightfox Labs. Sue me it sounds good. ))

What we have going on is 5 different stories about to kick off that are linked to each other.(( One stories route is currently missing from this map))

We found contact with each other ((Though steam if you don't want to read and be lazy.)) and will be meeting up in Colorado springs.

From Colorado Springs, our plan is to take over a major military site called Cheyenne Mountain.

Why are we talking about this? Well, the site is going to give us some ability to really send out some airwaves. The place is rigged up with some powerful transmitters, and we as a group are not short-handed for people able to figure that stuff out.

We will start broadcasting on a wide range once we get there. This alongside the map our route allows us to plan and be open to crossovers.

SO! If you are a writer and we crossed into your area, AND you feel like doing a crossover. Flag us down!

~Small info dumps here~

Light: Bat Pony Mare. Starting at Santa Clarita, CA. Story link: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/277774/stacked-deck
Neon: unicorn stallion Starting at Misson Viejo, CA. Story link: Will be sharing with Light.
Qesun: Earth pony stallion. Starting in Huntsville, AL. Story link: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/273928/hoofing-it
Wolf: Dimond dog Male. Starting in Plano, TX. Story Link: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/272347/fetch
White: Dragon Female. Starts in Wales, UK. Story link: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/274093/our-not-so-simple-plan
Flux((Not shown on map yet.)): Pegasus Male. Orlando, FL. Story Link: TBA
Mirror((Not shown on map)): Changeling Male.(( they will get back to me later))

Have questions? Feel free to ask me anything!

CROSSOVER DETAILS

Crossovers with us are not hard... at least after a certain date.

After July, 31st There will be a radio broadcast that covers all channels. This broadcast will be a radio show hosted by a person calling themselves "DJ-echos."

Now the broadcast itself from the hours of 5 am to about 5 pm is a preprogrammed playlist of music.
The music will play for three songs, after three songs it will give a short message.

That message will tell you our short wave channel, and that you can come to Colorado Springs. This shorter message will play twice, Once after 3 songs, and then another time after six.

The ninth song broadcast has something that's a lot longer and I will give you a link to that right here.

NOW, if your pony tunes in on the night broadcast you will need to send me a PM so we can work on the details.

Something to remember! For most ponies, we should be an end goal because after you get to the colony there is not a whole lot of story to write anymore. At least not in the whole survive and adventure style. It would need to shift over to a slice of life, which means a squeal for more titles.

4489603 If you guys find a Stargate, you have to let me know. No ifs, no buts, must.

How do you plan on getting in, by the way? That place is a major military base. Some heavy security features.

4489611
A curse on you greycait! Ruining my plans for a sync drop!

We will find a way. Likely includes a plasma torch. ((Who might also be the dragon in the group. ))

4489603 Starting in Plano? Sounds like a job for LEON!!

4489603 Huh. Sounds interesting. Hmmmmm... *ideas are a-brewin*

4489623 If you find a Stargate, I would leave the winter wonderland behind and get their on my own two wings. Well, Robin's wings. Sonic Night Boom.

Actually thank you for this! You just gave me a FANTASTIC idea! *evil grin* Ohhhh I'm SO going to make a thread for this delishous brew

Yes I just used a non-derpy emoticon, A.K.A Shits about to get real

4489629 They are skipping over Ontario. Heathens.

*Le gasp!* BLASPHEMERS!

Quickly! We must take over Niagra Falls before they get too far ahead!

I'd be willing to let you use the characters in my story if you were interested.

4489611
It may not have been locked down when the Event took place. It's also possible the HPI left it unlocked after investigating it (this being a bunker built to survive nuclear blasts, they almost certainly searched in there, and raided any nuclear fuel that may've been stored. Of course that's all a date thing. So long as the characters from this story arrive after it's been searched by the HPI.

4489603
This project sounds awesome (and apparently one of the characters is from the town where I'm living for the summer, no spoilers on which that is). I look forward to following its development. Might it cross the main canon? Depends how the timelines line up. I'm always open to crossover ideas, though. When people suggest them, that is...

4489631
No promise of a stargate. Unless Starscribe comes out of no where to tell us its there... For some reason.

Still, we would love to work with you.

4489648

Would love to work with you Star. We, in truth, were going to contact you soon about working in a cross over with you if we could. Likely be throwing you a PM once more of us get the first part posted.

As for living in a town for the summer... I hope its not Santa Clarita. Its quite boring here. Except for six flags I guess, but even that place gets meh. (( Totally going there in the story though. ))

4489649
Hah, no. The stargate doesn't exist, or the main story would've had O'Neil making awesome jokes and the crossover tag.

4489645 Robin's going for the CFB Kingston Base at some point. We will have heat. We shall take their base right from under their snouts, brother!

4489649 But yeah, Norad/Cheyenne Mountain should be able to contact other allied nation's bases.

4489648
Not much nuclear fuel for them to find there. Facility has 6 generators, so odds are that none of them are nuclear reactors. One would be more then enough for a facility like that. Lightfox made me do the research on that. <<;;

4489674
And that there is Qesun of the story! I should mark that in the data post...

4489664 Oh it is ON! PS I rrrrreally hope you don't mind things getting a bit... buggy with AJ later on. No true spoilers but haven't you noticed that other than the ones around the dead bird he hasnt seen ANY? Not even the pesky mosquitoes that are bound to be around?

4489662
Are you kidding? I love Six Flags! Though honestly I prefer Hurricane Harbor, particularly in summer. Can get the summer pass for like fifty bucks, which is totally worth it if you go often enough. Have enough friends who like the park... I guess the lines do get worse the longer summer goes, so there's that.

Guess you can get bored of the coasters after awhile. I wonder if ponies could get those rides working after people. The park has some backup generators, might be able to get one or two working. Would be pretty stupid though. Wouldn't want to get stuck halfway through Goliath or upside down on Batman or something (are any of the ponies even tall enough to ride?)

Totally PM me whenever. I'm generally open to crossover ideas, but the main story is written well in advance, so it might end up in the epilogue, unless its an indirect crossover or something minor I could change without radically altering story structure.

4489674
I didn't actually know what was in there. The HPI Would probably only be interested in nuclear stuff, so the rest of it would be intact. Maybe they left the doors open (not thinking there were other survivors to keep out anyway) Or maybe they left it sealed so the gear inside would better survive the ravages of time. Guess you'll find out when you get there in your stories.

4489663 Yeah no, stargates NEVER lead to good things. The minute I see a stargate I'm just going to turn around and forget I saw it

4489663 Aww...
4489682 Blasphemy! Do not blaspheme! Stargates lead to bad things if you don't know how to use them.

4489691 *ahem* Note I didn't say I would not let others use it, I simply know that messing with a stargate is almost NEVER a good idea, and as such I will not touch one. Lead someone else to it? Hell yeah, if not just to see the looks on their faces!

Whew! And it's my story leading the charge. We'd better hurry!

Everyone else, buckle up. It's time for a road trip.

4489680

Guess you can get bored of the coasters after awhile. I wonder if ponies could get those rides working after people. The park has some backup generators, might be able to get one or two working. Would be pretty stupid though. Wouldn't want to get stuck halfway through Goliath or upside down on Batman or something (are any of the ponies even tall enough to ride?)

Hah... hahhahaha. I am totally not planning on riding ninja in my story. Nope, totally... not... Don't judge me.

4489696 4489649 We can use the solar flares to send somepony back in time and warn people. Or at least set up some time capsules. We can send White! As a dragon he will age well. Just have him nap in a cave somewhere. We can wake him up later.

4489724
Probably the safest ride for a pony short of something really boring like the tower. Not falling out of that one, and if it stops you can probably climb down (unless you get REALLY unlucky, there's one or two parts where it's like ten or twenty feet up).

4489745 Hmmmm... interesting idea... But honestly time shenenigans is not my forte so I tend not to mess with that stuff too often

What's the dragon character like? The reason I'm asking is because the story I'm writing includes the main character being turned into a dragon and when I asked Star if dragons were ok, Star replied with 'what kind of person you are has something to do with what you end up, so it'd have be an interesting person indeed who ended up a dragon'. I just wanted to know what kind of person your group has turning into one.

4489702
I don't think those will fit me anymore.

4489724
4489748
When we were discussing all this, I had to point out to him that he said that if the Ninja were to ever get shut down, he'd spend the entirety of its last day riding it repeatedly until the park closed. Upon the addition of this detail and the fact that it would make for an interesting and perhaps hilarious idea.

He also refers to the Tatsu as the 'Nevada Launch Platform' He didn't enjoy the idea of using it to get to Nevada near as much.

4489898
Someone who reads Terry Pratchett, LARPs, enjoys his alcohol, lives in a nation where a dragon is on the national flag and honestly we had just about one of everything else. At that point it was just fun. I guess it's better if I get him to answer for himself, really.

Now I just need to get everyone else on our end to check my chapter over and I can try tossing it up as well. Too bad they went to bed already. XD Maybe that means I can finally catch up on Murky Number Seven

To bring a downer.
Provision needs to be made now about writers/OC 'death'.
For whatever reason - writers block, getting unexpected amounts of work, forced moves, ... - it is very common for
stories to not be completed.
For a story with multiple closely interrelated stories by different authors, it is likely that one or more of them will hit the above issues, and will stall the story.
Then even if you wait the weeks or months that they need to get back, other writers have at that point dropped out.

Some plan needs to be in place to decide when to move on without an author.
Or for them to step back from writing - to simply writing rough outlines for their part.

4489936 Well, Snowdonia is a region where whole mountains already look like petrified dragons when you look at certain angles... colour me intrigued.

4490044
Our group is in regular enough contact that if such a situation were to arise it would be easy for us to discuss that. Which also means it's hard for some of us to escape from the project that we told the others we would commit to. =P

Ultimately, its a project that we do so we can write, gain experience, and have fun together. If such a point does come that things fall apart, the canon will move on and survive without us.

If we get into further crossovers beyond our own, we understand the commitment to that person's efforts on top of our own that requires for the length of that collaboration. If we have any issues during a crossover with an individual outside our group, we'll shift resources as necessary to ensure that gets handled cleanly and efficiently so that the other writer may continue their work.

4490174
Two regions over from him, but you have the idea. =)

4490044

With a normal group of people, you would be VERY correct. This kind of project would be kind of crazy and almost doomed to fail.

Thankfully we are not just some random group of people that felt like tossing a massive project together. United Minds (coughLightfoxLabscough) is a group of close friends with basically daily contact with eachother. On top of that I made sure to instill a simple fact onto everyone who jumped in.

You start this you finish it. Star made a really easy request in their rules. They didn't want to see a flood of incomplete stories. We will not be the cause for such a thing.

Dragon here, how ya doin'.

They didn't want to see a flood of incomplete stories. We will not be the cause for such a thing.

And I can't tell you how greatful I am to hear it. Our group has a hard enough time getting stories approved. I don't want to be another Fivescore, where they have to make rules to stop people from doing side-stories. Wonder if that's gonna happen with all these displaced fics...

4493042
'Within the very bowels of the internet, down between forgotten strands of code and lost fragments of sites of another time that bridge the gaps between the sites we know, there lies a place yet deeper where that which is forgotten lays. This is everything from that OC you did when you were 10 to recolors of characters that have somehow merged to make hues only known to some species of chinchillas. In this morass lies the final fate of words once written and now forgotten. Tales that never saw their ends, threads left to flow through the strands of time and internet, muddled together to the point where one can no longer tell where one tale ends and another begins. Many would say that without the author, the tale would end. But without a proper end, how can a tale close? In that sea of words, those tales try to find their end. Instead, they only grow more unruly and dangerous as they grow and fester, consuming lesser tales. Never go there.'

Seriously, though, I don't think I could do it. Leave a story unfinished, that is. A story here by the name Ten Years Gone had one of my favorite premisses for a story. The author still occasionally shows life but at the same time, it hasn't seen updates for a year and a half. I've just gone ahead and just accepted that I probably won't see an end to that tale, left hanging as such. Sad, but I don't see the odds likely that it will finish. It wouldn't be the only story I have watched that has stopped abruptly. I know that feeling and I would hate to do that to anyone else.

Plus if I want to learn anything from this experience, I need to follow it all the way through. I have a vested interest in trying to finish this, even if I have to pick up for some others around me. Which is the other important aspect to our group's dynamic. While writing on our side of things, me and Wolf have been making notes about our characters and timelines for events. In the case of someone having to bow out, we have such a set up that the tale will be continued regardless. We will have at the max 6 people writing, but the group at large also has closer to 8 or 9 people who can put resources and time into it in various regards.

We've worked together on various projects over the years as a group, which includes a campaign going through Eberron. This may not sound impressive at first except that we started in D&D 3.5 around 3 years ago and have built enough things while there and while converting to Pathfinder that we could probably make our own book of crazy inventions, creepy monsters, cool classes, and strange races. If we can get through this project together, that could be our next stop, pooling our resources and skills and attempting something new (and maybe slightly profitable).

I guess another way of describing how tight nit our bunch is would be to say we know most everyone's names, addresses, and phone numbers. We have put forth the time and resources to have actually met up at a physical location when we are scattered across the states (and the UK). It would be hard to escape the commitment we put in, one we understood we were making when we decided to go through with this project.

You ready for this, my boon companions?

The Tale of a Welsh Dragon

4494428

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I am just gonna poke my head in here and say that I plan on providing hella boons to my companions as I exit Mission Viejo. For starters, I'm gonna say hi to that nearby grocery store....

So I decided early on that my story begins in Long Beach, CA.
Which is apparently the half-way point between Light and Neon's starting places.
Those two are about 80 miles apart.
Long Beach is 56 miles from Santa Clarita.
While it's 35 Miles from Mission Vejo.
If you all need a biologist/geneticist dragon that's larger than White's, Doctor Evelyn Grey could help you all.
(By larger I mean he's still six feet tall)

You know what I like about this thread? It helps me keep the stories straight. There's only three so far and already I'm getting confused, but then I can come back to this neat page and get it all straightened out by looking at the first post. ^^

(though adding sexes to the non-pony characters would be useful as well. Perhaps even relationships later as they appear in the story. Would sure help me keep it all straight, anyway)

4495785

Info updated as you requested!

4489634 4489752 4489647

Updated the main post with crossover details! Read if you like.

4513139 Sweet! Thank you for the info!

You know. I thought this thread was over a month old since most of you don't have published stories or only like 1 chapter. Then I saw the time stamp on the thread's first post. Lol. Gah FIMfic why you no show chapter post dates on my phone!?

One month later and I'm here confirming we're not dead! Now I've posted Chapter 2, all these other gits have to get their arses in gear.

4489603 At what date in-story will your characters begin broadcasting signals?

4658366

After July, 31st There will be a radio broadcast that covers all channels. This broadcast will be a radio show hosted by a person calling themselves "DJ-echos."

4657364 I think Light is just absorbed mind and body into minecraft.