• Member Since 29th Dec, 2011
  • offline last seen May 18th, 2023

Chaotic Dreams


Writer, Aspiring Novelist, Animation Enthusiast

T
Source

Surprise is a young pegasus mare eking out a modest existence as a third-rate Enclave soldier in the Primum Mobile Military Base, a remote weather outpost on the edge of the cloud cover. Life in the Equestrian Wasteland below is a constant fight for survival, but above the clouds, the worst thing Surprise has to deal with are the hallucinations caused by her schizophrenia.
However, when the base discovers a hurricane is headed towards Enclave airspace, Surprise is among those sent into action to try and intercept it. As Surprise quickly learns, though, the impending tempest is no ordinary storm. Rather, it is a militarized pegasus city from before the Great War, possessing enough prewar wonders and horrors to make whoever gains control of it the most powerful pony in the sky...if the city doesn't completely destroy the aerial nation of the Enclave.

Update: Recently O. Hinds, the esteemed editor for Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons, was amazing enough to read what currently exists of my story. Here's what he had to say about it, which he has given me permission to share:

“While at times Storm Chasers seems to me an odd story in a way that I cannot seem to put my hoof on, this is only a different quality, not an inferior one. I have found the plot and characters to be interesting, and the mechanical quality of the prose is quite impressive, particularly given Chaotic Dreams's lack of an editor; in Chapter 2 (the latest at this message's time of writing), I noticed only a few errors, and, while it has been much longer since I've read the first chapter, I do not recall anything particularly bad in that, nor did I see frequent errors in the skim I undertook just now. Oh, and the illustrations are pretty good.”

Cover art by DoomSp0rk.

Logo by TheOmegaRidley.

Surprise by Zubias.

Hurricane Megaspire by Nukechaser24.

Illustrations by me.

Chapters (3)
Comments ( 47 )

Aww yusss. It's here as well. Can't wait to see more!

This looks good so far.

The only things I would advise to change are:
- the spacing: I think you imported the text from GoogleDoc and that's fine, but considering FIMfiction's one-side-layout, you should devide the paragraphs sometimes.
- it's a bit strange to see/read/hear the general always talking in CAPS LOCK! Seriously, that's looking a bit strange. I think exclamation marks are enough to point out a character is shouting.

Good stuff:
- I like Surprise's character. She acts like an ordinary non-dashite enclave pegasus should act.
- I know Surprise and Firefly from somewhere, but I can't remember...it was good, that's all I know.
- the Enclave not being totally evil and mean and shooty in the first place.
- I like your drawings, illustrations often help to...well, illustrate things. I wish I could draw like this:ajsleepy:
There's much more I like, but can't point out right now.

Question: is Excalibur an alien/star weapon, because it looks like one on your drawing

Keep on writing, you get a like for...buck it, for everything:yay:

Very glad to see this here. Eagerly looking forward to more. :pinkiehappy:

You've got pictures! That's bloody awesome. :heart: it really adds to the reading experience.

So YOU'RE the friend Omegaridely was talking about for this on his tumblr.
I honestly can't wait to read this.

Do you even hurricane?

I don't currently have an editor for this tale, so Chapter 2 might not be as shipshape as it should be. If you find any errors, feel free to point them out and I'll do my best to address them.

Just so you know, G-Man 64 added your story to the Fallout Equestria Group! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions about this :pinkiehappy:

Really that and they get captured w/knockout gas. I hope these good for nothing ponies have a good reason to just be demolishing doors and structural supports of an SPP tower...

Make paragraphs bro, other than that I'm really liking this story so far!:twilightsmile:

low-calibur energy rifles

Should be "caliber"

“I wonder if Gisella will feel the same way.”

Damnit, Gisela!
magiccards.info/scans/en/avr/209.jpg

..aaaand now I'm reading the stealth suit's lines in the voice of the one from Old World Blues. I call her Alice.

It’s essentially a wearable maneframe.

I... I want this IRL. Someone get on it.

northwest of the Neigh’Orleans ruins

New Orleans doesn't have an apostrophe, so I'm a bit confused as to why you're using one here.

The number of teammates my visor displayed as still alive had dropped to just two

Well that was fast.

Teammate firefly communications

Needs a capital "F" there.

That was too much of a coincidence for my liking, but I couldn’t ignore it.

Sorry Surprise, but this is the Wasteland. Nothing is a coincidence anymore.

having seen so many impossible things already, I didn’t question it.

Now you're getting it.

yanked out the trigger with my teeth

I yelled up at him as I yanked out another grenade, pulled out the trigger,

The pin. She yanked out the pin. You pull the trigger on a gun.

Before I could reason my way out of it, I yanked out the grenade’s trigger placed it at the edge of the elevator door,

Pin, not trigger, and you need a comma before "placed."

“...We are the Yellow Ones... we feast upon the flesh of the living... we will drain your souls of light and joy... we will erase your very existence from the planes of reality... we will—”

Um. Is this going to be explained later?

Well then, looks like we have our antagonists for the story. I'm really curious. Who are these ponies that they claim to be the forgemasters of the gods? Was Hephaestus born with that name, or did he take it for himself? What in the hypothetical fuck was up with that recording? Who was phone?

Find out next time on STORM CHASERS.

Huh. Well this is interesting. It's like Surprise got the wrong end of a memory orb, and her mind's trying to sort out the data through hallucinations.

I admit, when I saw the letter on the entrance terminal, I thought Pinkie had left it. Wouldn't be the first time her clairvoyance overrode causality in this setting...

In any case, fantastic stuff this chapter. Luna's cutie mark on the sleeping gas grenade was an especially nice touch. Eagerly looking forward to more.

The only error I found was close to the password scene where "Firefly" was not capitalized when it should have been.

This story is getting exciting, hope it'll stay that way!

Well that was an intriguing first chapter. I'm still not sure how I feel about the main characters being Surprise and Firefly, even if it's literally just the names and appearances. It helps immensely they are entirely different characters, and good characters, at that! Surprise's hallucinations were very vivid, and I think the one I like best is when she saw the pony in the hotel lobby who wanted brandy. You did an excellent job of making the scene distressing and even a bit disorienting, flowing it from reality to hallucination smoothly such that even when I re-read it I couldn't tell you where the line was. The best part about that is of course that it really underlines the next few scenes where Surprise is afraid the hallucinations will just one day take over, as the reader has felt their potency firsthand.

I've got a couple minor critiques. Actually, literally just three. There were some hiccups in word choice for dialogue here and there that, for lack of a better description, stutters the pacing a bit. The "pumped full of nitroglycerin" simile broke the flow of its section as well as I stopped to remember what Nitro did and how that would react. Ideally you want to keep the descriptions and analogies for intense sensations like that very primal. Lastly, I love the pictures, but I think they're a little too big as inserts, and I'd consider shrinking them a bit. That could just be me though, and they're still fantastic sketches.

Other than that, it was a great opening, got a lot of great mystery here and great writing overall, and I don't trust Commander Archangel one gods damn bit. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go hit the next chapter button.

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Thank you for taking the time to read the tale, and thank you even more for your kind words!

I don't put spaces between my paragraphs anymore because indentations are all that's needed to indicate new paragraphs, something I've learned the hard way through my experience with the written word. If you don't agree, I respect your opinion, but this is the way I feel it is best for me to indicate paragraphs.

The problem I have with only using exclamation points relates to a problem I have with the written English language in general. Though English is my first language, and I love it to what is probably an unhealthy degree, I have to agree with the Spanish language that indicating a sentence's intonation right from the beginning is more effective than waiting till the end. What I mean is, if there are only exclamations points at the end of a sentence, you won't really know for sure that the character is shouting until you reach the end. When the letters are capitalized throughout the sentence, you know the whole time that the character is shouting. Additionally, it adds some variety to the words.

Please note that I won't use all caps every time I write a character shouting, but for the general, I felt that it worked.

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I've formatted the story so that paragraphs are indicated by indentations. At least, that's what I think I did, and that's how it shows up when I view the chapters. Is this not the case when you view the chapters? If so, I'll have to fix that.

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Thanks for pointing out the typos and other errors. It was kind of you to take the time to write them down for me.

As for why Neigh'Orleans is spelled with an apostrophe, well... I don't really have any other reason than that I liked the way it looked. I know the real-life New Orleans isn't spelled with an apostrophe, but for some reason the apostrophe in Neigh'Orleans looked better to me than the space in Neigh Orleans.

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Thank you very much for your kind words and insightful analysis. It's very encouraging that you took the time to provide them.

Also, as for the illustrations, I'd shrink them down a bit if I knew how, but I'm afraid I'm not very technologically savvy. Do you know how to shrink images? If so, could you tell me?

Well, hellooooooo there... Why haven't I heard of this story until now?

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but for some reason the apostrophe in Neigh'Orleans looked better to me than the space in Neigh Orleans

Fair enough.

EDIT:
Also, I noticed you got new cover art. I'm really liking it.

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Well, shit somehow I never got a notification that you replied to my comment! Apologies for the delayed response. I do actually know how to shrink the images, but I don't believe it can be done through fimfic. You need to shrink the source image and re-upload/re-link it. Luckily you can cleanly shrink them in MS Paint by just opening the image and hitting the "Resize" button. It's worth noting that if you have any other image editing program whatsoever, you should use it instead of Paint, but I can at least guarantee you have Paint.

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I can solve this mystery, I think. I attribute it to the classic "N'Orleans" abbreviation that comes from saying the city's name with the local accent.

Alright! Finally got 'round to reading chapter 2 after some delays.

These hallucinations are getting stranger and stranger, but in a good way, the way that makes me try to figure out this mystery. I'm certain that memory orbs are somehow getting projected to her, but where from? And then how does that explain the hallucination of herself when Archangel gave her leave to shoot the other pegasus? It could partially explain the vivid hallucination of the refined stallion in the hotel lobby ordering brandy, but that came from Surprise's imagination...didn't it? And wasn't she in control of RD in the Fluttershy hallucination/memory she was having before? Well done, sir.

I initially thought the "We are the Yellow Ones" bit was just something that Firefly had come up with on the spot, a crazy bluff, which would have been awesome. But between the fact that it was a real audio file (could still have been a bluff, just a very old bluff, but that's unlikely) and these tech-zealots, things are getting weird and creepy very fast.

My only critiques are that it seems like Surprise caught on to mouthing commands to the suit, especially in the heat of battle, a little quickly, but in those instances it wouldn't have mattered. For example, when the suit tells her it's taken damage, and she retorts that she's a little busy. It's an awesome feature for a stealth suit, though. Also, the line "Was still Firefly’s forte," didn't quite read the way it was intended. I know what you were going for, but because the whole story is past tense, you probably needed to italicize "still" instead of "was."

But those are both minor, and you're setting up some very interesting stuff here. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes!

I still don't trust Commander Archangel.

How is this possible? A protagonist hearing voices in their head and/or hallucinating for normal reasons they had no control over whatsoever? Heresey!

You must now write more story or be killed with fire for sacrilege. Really though, I'm definetly looking foward to more.


If I may ask, how far ahead have you planned out the plot? I'd hate to see this go down like so many other stories (with lesser plots more easily mended and patched) due to being written into a dead end. Or having 8 month update intervals.

Oh hey I found it. Interesting. Ima read this as soon as I finish the story I am currently reading. (or atleast one of them)

Write more please?

I don't have an explanation for that first part either. Interesting.

…And Luna was going around in disguise again, was she? :D

"I have no interest in antiquated tribal-imperialist political factions."
"My interest is entirely in modern tribal-imperialist political factions."

Hm. Sounds like the pegasi here have a warrior culture.

…I wonder, are these ponies attacking surprise not thinking things through, or would the Hippoi Athanatoi really accept Random Gunner #13 as their new Lord General? I suppose that it depends on how their culture of honor works… but I'm going to guess that, were anyone to kill Surprise here, they themselves would be challenged as soon as a suitable Lord General could reach them.

And I really don't think that the leadership would be pleased with a new Lord General who burned down her base in the process of getting her title. :D

In the throws of a hallucination, too… and the fact that you supposedly wouldn't go that sort of crazy was one of your great comforts… Oh dear.

Yellow Ones? Huh. Well, that will lead to an explanation, at least! :D

In the meantime, though, yeah. I was expecting something like this (or deep depression) even without the whole "Yellow Ones" thing.

Well! This just don't seem to be going right for Surprise, do they?

That escalated quickly.

All hail Lord General creepy, insane, pony-eating shadow! Though we know she won't actually die.

I feel like the needle gun is a TF2 reference

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I have a question for you all, and would greatly appreciate it if you took the time to answer:
Question for Readers

Holy shit, Surprise is one cold motherfucker.

I must say this is one of the best story's i have read and look forward to more. also have you ever thought about posting the art its really good.

I'm liking the story so far. Surprise is unusual with her hallucinations and they are a really good way to get a good look at the 'past'. You were pretty bold introducing such an array of new equipment and new technologically advanced factions to the world- if not handled properly it is a recipe for disaster, but you seem to be doing pretty well with it so far.

Same goes for the illustrations. I actually read this on an e-reader so I didn't get the illustrations until after I'd finished. They add a certain charm to things, even if what I'd imagined for some of the objects shown (like the trucks), were radically different. For the drawings, there are only two pieces of criticism. The truck's cannon bore seems too huge and the armoured 'super steel ranger' has a really long body (this is something I do a lot when drawing ponies too). That said, you shouldn't be discouraged. All of the other character portraits have been really good and the final illustration with the shadows under the door really does the scene justice.

I would say that the biggest issue in the story at the moment is the point where Surprise and Firefly first venture beneath the clouds. The whole squadron gets wiped out, more or less but there's no real impact to it. First off, numbers are really vague. I don't actually know how many ponies there are (if an Enclave squadron has an actual defined number in the original FoE I've forgotten it a long time ago). I'd naturally guess twelve, but that's just because I'm British. The most important thing however is that we're not introduced to any of the other members of the squadron at all so they're essentially all faceless drones who get killed very quickly. The mare getting vaporised in front of Surprise was pretty grim but given the lack of information about her it was pretty hollow. Giving them names and having more interaction beforehand would have made the encounter more engaging. To take an example from Dan Abnett's Ghostmaker, a character is introduced with just a name who pairs up with a main character. He says one line, there's an offhand comment about 'his eyes being sharp as ever' then he crawls forward and gets his head taken off by a lucky shot, all in the space of a paragraph. Even though he lived to die, so to speak, that tiny amount of description to his character makes the reader feel bad when he dies.

There actually isn't much wrong with the actual engagement though- inexperienced soldiers with no real solid leadership there's no real surprise that they got cut to ribbons.

I like the pegasus tribe you introduced us to. I was intrigued when it was revealed that the red pegasus with a bad case of fatal overconfidence was a Lord General- getting into fights, especially alone, is generally a really bad idea for an officer of such rank since injury or death would have massive repercussions. However, when their particular hierarchy was revealed it all made sense (even if by the same token it means that they're unlikely to be winning any wars any time soon).

The other soldiers, Firefly, and I trotted to the end of the hallway and made our way down to the ground level.

I just wanted to congratulate you on the perfect use of the Oxford comma, there :moustache:

It was getting worse, and I was worried. I’d never named my hallucinations before. They’d always just kind of...been there. But if I was coming up with actual personas, actual identities for them now...

Schizophrenic, or channeling old ghosts? :rainbowderp:

“Shoot. Him. Now!” roared the other me—or whatever she was now. “SHOOT HIM!!”
“NO!” I shouted right back. I threw Excalibur to the ground, and the other me vanished.

...that was a star weapon. A weapon with an urge to kill. And she saw it as a person. I'm beginning to suspect her "hallucinations" are just a small side effect of some kind of telepathic gift... and that the Enclave staff knows about it.

On a related note, she's lucky that weapon is apparently cloud-enchanted, or she'd have to go look for it below cloud cover :rainbowwild:

From her cream-colored coat to her pink mane and elongated tail, Ministry Mare Fluttershy stood before me.

Huh. Given the fact that Fluttershy is still alive during and after the main story, I guess Surprise isn't picking up ghosts after all. Memories, maybe? Psychic imprints?

For some reason, I noticed, the hat seemed heavier in my pocket than I would have expected.

Hmm...

Fluttershy reached into a pocket in her suit and pulled out a butterfly pendant identical to the one pinned to her hat.

I guess that thing is still pinned on that hat? :trixieshiftright:

I’d blown it up! I’d blown up the Primum Mobile Military Base!

Well. Ouch. Another posthumous strike of Rainbow Dash against the Enclave! No wait, it was Fluttershy :rainbowlaugh:

I knew this was it. Whether I was kicked out of the military and left to starve on the streets of the nearest cloud city, as I had no other skills

Machine maintenance seems like a pretty useful skill, actually...

“I WAS THIS MOTHERBUCKING CLOSE TO GETTING HIM TO TRANSFER ME TO A BASE THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS, AND THEN THE WHOLE COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK SHITS ITSELF!”

Good news, general! Your chances of getting transferred off this base are 100% anyway, since there is no more base!

I vaguely considered whether or not I shouldn’t just make a run for it. There was no way General Firmament himself would catch me.

lawl.

“Just wear your headphones like a good little general and I’ll feed you later,” the commander promised.

Oh, wow. He's got a pet general :rainbowlaugh:

“I didn’t say that,” the commander continued. “In fact, it most certainly is. There is a very, very small chance that this is the real thing, the one I’ve been waiting for. And, if it is, and if you hold up your end of the deal, you will finally have all that I promised and more. The catch is, though, that we simply won’t know without further investigation. Do I have your support in this matter?”

Interesting how he doesn't even bother to mention the base was kinda destroyed :trixieshiftright:

All communications between Primum Mobile and the inner Enclave Airspace go dark, save for this line, until I give the all-clear.

Welp. There goes the General's transfer.

Every recruit had been here long enough to know that there was no asking of questions after a Commander Archangel debriefing.

Hah.

“We’ll need ponies like you two if we’re to find what we’re looking for.”

I'm about 80% sure he's referring to her 'flashback' ability :trixieshiftright:

“Weren’t you paying attention earlier, Private Firefly?” Commander Archangel said, finally breaking his gaze on the horizon. “Hurricane is out there. All it requests is an access code. If you find it, we find Hurricane.”

But... Fluttershy said Hurricane was a city! New Cloudsdale! That'd imply it's a cloud city...

...or a Stable :rainbowderp:

Remarks and corrections:
> it save me from wretching every meal
it save[d] me from [retching] every meal
> I started to trot off towards the surge generator...before backtrotting and rereading the note.
You should put a space behind any ellipsis you use; text processors and HTML renderers alike never split a line on a period, meaning the "generator...before" is now one big unsplittable block. There are a few more of these; best to fix them all.
> representing Equestria’s dual-monarchy before Celestia had abdicated.
"Monarchy" (mono) specifically refers to ruling alone. Old-Equestria was a "diarchy".
> “It’s name is Hurricane!” Fluttershy almost shouted.
You triggered my pet peeve! :pinkiegasp: – "[Its] name"
> breaks like this almost always happened nearer to the surge generator than further
I think that should be "nearer to the surge generator [rather] than further"
> In fact, almost everypony I could see were moving their mouths
"everypony" is technically short for "every single pony", and is thus singular, so, "everypony I could see [was] moving"
> “Excellent,” he approved
I'm fairly sure "to approve" isn't actually a speaking verb. This should probably be "said approvingly".
> Helping me up, she took wing
Written like that, those are simultaneous actions, while I'm fairly sure she can't both help Surprise up and fly away at the same time. I'd suggest "She helped me up and took wing"

Dear Chaotic Dreams

If you would be so kind could you give us fans of this story a clue on to the status of this fic. Is it on hiatus or cancelled i would very much like to know as i enjoy it quite alot. I would love to see it go on but if not i understand. :heart:

It was an interesting story.

I'm not really sure what to make of the shadows and the mystery behind Surprise's eyes. Though I can understand those are possibly some mysteries that would have come later if the story continued. If anything, the reaction of other ponies here at seeing her new eyes and some of the by chance incidents of her getting the upper hoof on others does point that their must be more to it then just simple delusions or simple mental instability.

You made the steel rangers and the Pegasi down there also interesting unique without certain similarities that one might expect from a group that works from the wasteland swamps.

Comment posted by sadron deleted Jan 5th, 2016

So I was digging through my favorites looking for something I knew I already liked to reread and I found this. Wondering how I could have possibly forgotten about it, I came to have a look. I can't tell you how devastated I was to see it marked canceled.

I went looking through your blogs so I think I can guess why, but can you please share why this intriguing story was cancelled before its time?

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Thank you very much for your kind words and for your interest in my story. They really mean a lot to me.

As for why the story was cancelled, I've struggled with finishing writing projects on FIMFiction since I first joined the site. Unless they were very short works, I don't think I've actually completed a single story. I've often felt awful about this, but I thankfully have made progress in the years since I cancelled this story. I've been much better about completing things when it comes to my original fiction.

Unfortunately, I've been slowly drifting in and out of the pony fiction community for ages now. I've always loved the great people I've found here and the fun of connecting with others through the written word, but it's become increasingly difficult for me to find the motivating spark to write pony fiction. I'd love to get back into it and reconnect with the site, but I'm not so sure that will happen with the busy road of life ahead of me.

Thank you again.

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I didn't know about the life on the road bit, but otherwise that's what I expected. I hope your original work does well, but I also hope to see this contuined one day... We all have our dreams.

Best of luck to you!

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Thank you, and best of luck to you as well!

I really liked the story! I haven't been so involved in history for a long time, thank you!

i know you will most likely never read this but thank you for the story it was very well done for how short it was
I hope you find success in life and plenty of joy and when ever you down remember your story's brought joy

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