A generation ago the three tribes of ponies joined together in harmony after the discovery of the new land of Equestria. But even years later this land is still largely unknown. The leaders of the ponies decide that an expedition to travel and learn about their new home is needed.
Locations for settlements, appropriate farmlands, rivers, forests, all need to be discovered. Roads must be planned. Borders drawn. A map made. And Trail Blazer is the pony for the job.
She may be a drunk, a floozy, and lazy, but she’s the best at what she does.
Joined by the fastidious unicorn Lustrous and the martial-minded pegasus Steel Wing the three of them will embark on the greatest undertaking of their lives: To be the first ponies to travel the entirety of Equestria and draw a grand map of it to aid and unite all ponies of present and future.
Dangit! I wanted to use this idea, but this story seems very interesting.
9772499
Thanks. I mean you might as well write it since no one is reading this anyways. I would be happy to see more stories that take place in the founding days of Equestria too.
This story is actually pretty good.
9772677
Well, more about the exploring bit, sort of inspired by Austreoh, but going West instead of East.
I didn’t know Calamity was in this story, but that’s neat.
This story is great, requires a little editing, but this is such a good comedy story!
I’m enjoying so far, and I hope it stays great and doesn’t get too repetitive.
9773346
Thank you. I never expected it to be very popular but it's still nice to get some appreciation.
As for repetitiveness it's not going to be a very long story, I'm looking at around 20 chapters right now of varying length, but I will say that what you've seen so far is pretty much what you'll be getting from the rest. There are some "incidents" and things to happen in the future but for the most part it'll just be following the three as they travel through various parts of Equestria. But there's plenty variety in the landscape and climate of the country at least for them to study and see.
9773480
As long as the incidents are different and the landscape is ever changing, it won’t get repetitive.
Steel Wing actually did something, nice.
I relate so much to Lustrous here. I never go outside, and I usually don’t look out at the scenery when I travel with my family, too. Then, I took a class trip to Washington D.C., that’s about the first time I really got to look at nature, having woken up at 6:00 on the bus we were expected to sleep on.
Well, since then I’ve really come to appreciate looking outside on trips, and I find it incredibly meditative. So yeah, I relate to Lustrous here.
If the main OCs in this story were voiced, what would they sound like?
9790400
Don’t take my word for it, as it’s not the slightest bit canon, but I read every character with a preconceived voice in my head.
Trail Blazer to me has a fairly low female voice, gravelly, and she constantly sounds like she’s irritated and feels she has something else to do.
Lustrous to me sounds rather sophisticated, maybe not quite British, but with shades of it, he also sounds incredibly fed up and irritated half the time as well.
Steel Wing to me is that sort of guy with the low, rumbly, baritone voice, the type that’s a little harder to understand and clearly has not had much experience talking with people before. I see it as very quiet, and as mentioned before, a little tough to understand.
9790400
9790493
Trail Blazer is accurate to how I picture her. Lustrous is close as well but while high class sounding I wouldn't say British, he sounds kind of stuck up and smarmy but that's unintentional, it's just how his voice is. Steel Wing's voice is quiet and even, actually a bit light. If "accentless" was a word it would fit Steel Wing.
So I've managed to catch up to this fic as far as here, and I have to say, you've done a lot of things right. You've introduced all the major original characters well (especially with their establishing moments—from the get-go, for example, I see Trail Blazer already living up to the "hype" the mayor gave her), and you keep characterizing them to the point of being distinctly fun to read about; I also feel that they do have a sensible endpoint to their character, like you're building up to their individual climaxes, so that's good too. Setting and worldbuilding is quite good and this is great for a story that features this newborn Equestria as a fourth main character, so to speak.
The only major problem that I have here is the dialogue tags:
should be:
with the comma over there. I don't think this is a slip-of-the-pen error as well because this is persistent throughout every dialogue tag I've seen so far compared to Rarity Gets Enslaved. It makes me wonder if there's a malfunction going on with your word processor or something like that. However, despite this glaring error, I do want to stay for the ride until the very end.
You've made a good story so far! Just needs work on getting those dialogue tags in order and you'll be even better! I'm looking forward to more great stuff from you.
9794819
Wait, I'm confused. You're saying the period shouldn't be there? It's the end of the sentence. I even put it into a grammar check.
9795762
True, it's the end of the sentence and, normally, a period should be there. However, since it's a quoted thing and you have a said tag (example here is "Lustrous said"), then it should have a comma there because, well, that's not the end of the sentence. In fact, if you have a "Lustrous said" after the character's quoted words, you really can't end the sentence between the quote and "Lustrous said". That's how it's been for, well, a very long time.
In this site's very own writing guide, there's a section on said tags like this. It's a five-minute read or less and explains it in more detail than I could, but if you want to get the gist of it, here's a quote from the section:
9795792
Ugh, grammar. Thank you. I'll try and keep it in mind and fix it for chapters I still need to write, but I don't know if I'll go back and change things for the already released chapters anytime soon. I can't even remember how much I'd need to go through. It's probably similar in my other stories too.
I love how Trail Blazer is one of the only reasons this story is rated teen.
Plot twist!
I just have to say, given that this is one of the only stories I want to update that actually does consistently enough is great. Even on slow weeks, I can always rely on this story updating and giving me a snile.
9809509
Thanks, really makes me happy to hear that. Updates might slow to once a week later but I should still be able to keep a good pace.
9790493
9790580
I meant in terms of voice actors.
Somehow you made me sympathetic to Trail Blazer, that’s a feat in of itself.
’Cause I’m still breathing, I’m still breathing on my own. My head’s above the rain and roses, making my way, my way...
This story has evolved into something greater than the summary you told me when I commented all the way back on the first village chapter.
I love it, it’s almost good enough to be one of my favorites.
...As he pulls down his black hat and adjusts his battle saddle...
Wait, different rust-colored pegasus.
Oh... Oh...Ohhhh...
Oh yeah, Lustrous was Accidentally In Love there, and he took it a bit too far.
Wow, shit’s getting real.
And when I swear, something has obviously gone very wrong.
I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy that ending, it’s exactly the type of ending that was so good in Inheritance, The Westing Game, and Darkness of Dragons. The ‘where are they now’ ending is a succinct way to close the story and is always a nice smile when it happens.
This story is criminally underrated, and I tried to give it a little bit of a boost, it didn’t seem to do much though.
Also, I’d attempt to get a commission for the painting mentioned at the end of this chapter to give this story some cover art, but I can’t seem to find anybody.
Anyways, good story, and if there weren’t grammar inconsistencies and word overuses, this would definitely be one of my favorites.
9858041
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the story so much. I wish it was more popular too but I'm happy just having been able to write it all.
Well, I managed to finish the story.
Let's get the room-for-improvement stuff out of the way.
First off: Several grammatical errors remain consistent throughout the story. One, while the periods at the end of quotations have switched to commas, there's now the new problem of having the first word after it immediately becoming capitalized. This...
... should be...
Another thing related to this is that it seems that the final punctuation mark of quotations (not ending a paragraph) are almost always commas now, which makes sentences such as this...
... somewhat awkward. It's either that that's a period at the end of the quoted section or it would be something like,
Which leads to another aspect of quotations: They seem to have their dialogue tags at the end of it too often. Perhaps this is a matter of personal taste, but seeing three or more sentences in a quote and then having something like "Steel Wing said" sometimes makes the reader take too long to figure out who's saying the words, especially since there's three main characters and it can take a bit longer than necessary to guess which of the other two are speaking now.
I'll stop here because I don't want to fill this up with lots of critical stuff. May I politely ask: Do you use a proofreading program of some sort, like the Spellcheck of Microsoft Word/LibreOffice Writer or, even better, Grammarly or LanguageTool? Using such programs would help to eliminate a lot of the grammatical errors, minimizing possible distractions for the reader.
So, let's get to the stuff you did very well.
It is depressing that this story has fewer than a hundred views and fifteen thumbs up, because it is great (which also goes for your other stories I've read).
The characters have not only been established well (with their distinct traits persisting in various forms, ensuring that they're not cardboard cutouts of each other), but you keep characterizing them well to the very end. You pace their development very well—going slow when you need be (such as the beginning leg of the trek), and going fast when you need to (with reveals such as Trail Blazer's past and the subsequent friendship scenes). Also, this is extra good considering that these are OCs which are usually harder to pull off than canon characters like in the previous three stories you've done. In the end, Trail Blazer, Lustrous, and Steel Wing will certainly live on as brilliant ponies to me.
You also nail not just character pace but the pace of the story in general. Maybe the term I'm looking for is mood. You don't dwell on a certain mood for too long or too short—and you don't prematurely announce what the primary mood is for the chapter until the reader actually gets there. (Prime example is, again, Trail Blazer's past, taken after some bits of mere journeying and foreshadowing of said event, and taken before some calming breathing room for the reader.) You know how to handle moods well!
Finally, there's that thing you have a nice knack for: worldbuilding. You've delivered in Applejack Gets Lost and Rarity Gets Enslaved, and you've done it again with this story. Given the mild historian flavor you've given your narrative voice here, it makes your exposition over various parts of Equestria very smooth, along with the characters sometimes saying a piece of culture here or there quite naturally. The rest of the worldbuilding, which are descriptions of the place and the populace (including the one-shot characters and so on), truly make early Equestria alive. Keep honing this craft of yours!
And that ending... it made me stop and think. Made me wistful with both post-story blues and, well, given how you tell how their lives ended to us like a typical history teacher—and after allowing us to know them for so long... it hurts beautifully.
Overall, despite the rough edges around the story, this is a fantastic story! It's sad that you've left no loose ends for a sequel to hook onto, but I guess that's just my post-story blues kicking in again. Ah, and I'm looking forward to starting Trixie Searches For Magic soon.
Keep doing what you're doing, MagicS!
9870487
As Always I appreciate your praise and detailed comments.
With this story I feel like there could be so much more to it. It was a really open kind of story due to its nature, I could've had the three traveling through every little piece of Equestria and gone into more detail on it. I can easily imagine other authors writing a story like this but having it be much longer and more descriptive. I'm not one for flowery praise though, that's kind of my weakness. My prose is usually very simple and direct and I think more poetic people could've done the scenery and landscape of Equestria more justice. I think if I was better at padding things out I could've written dozens of chapters of them just traveling down rivers, or across mountains, or through forests, etc. instead of the relatively small snippets (in short chapters too) of that kind of stuff we got. I feel like I'm not able to stay on one thing and give it as much time/description/thought as it needs.
As for the grammar, I use LibreOffice to write but I just manually reread/proofread my chapters before publishing them.
I always preferred history in school. I'll try my best but it's still:
Grammar 
Hope you enjoy Trixie's story and all the rest I'll be writing.
That leads off into another thing about your prose here: It seems too simple for something that's expansive as a worldbuilding trip throughout Equestria. Increasing the number of locations visited wouldn't really solve the problem, and, yes, some of that simplicity is warranted if you're going for that mild historian flavor as a narrator.
However... well, that's the thing. Everybody knows what a river or a tree or a forest or a desert or a what-have-you is. Part of what makes a mere river look so majestic in poetic prose is, ultimately, rhetoric. It's not sufficient to go reading more poetic prose and appreciating it—you have to understand what exactly they're using. Sprinkling some rhetorical devices in your world descriptions would liven up your writing (though, think of it as a seasoning—it's supposed to enhance the story's flavor by being in drops, not replace the flavor by overtaking it). There's a list of rhetorical devices here.
Another thing is being poetic with your sentences. Not just in the word choice but also in how long and short your sentences are. Don't just tell us facts and descriptions about it. Treat it like a song. Gary Provost put it this way:
Another thing about padding things out is to describe other stuff. Everyone talks about rivers and we know what rivers are and they're mostly the same no matter what story you've read. However, what we may not know (or at least think about often) is how the setting sun's light refracts off of the river or how it has that fresh smell some rivers have or how cool the splashes are after a missile of it shoots off a rock or, perhaps, how it's so clear that we can see the million smooth pebbles and it's like a distorted beach down there...
That kind of thing. In short, focus on the trivial stuff when you describe stuff at times. With that, your river stands out from the average river the reader thinks of.
One final thing about padding things out without being unnecessary filler is... well, I guess you know this already, but just have more fun small stuff happening between the characters. For example, I'm sure setting up camp isn't that easy and takes more than a few steps—their dynamic could be played out there as you describe the three main ponies setting up camp. It can also be a bit different if they're setting up camp in the fields versus the desert or in the Frozen North. So, think about the things adventurers/travelers like them have to do and see how their dynamic would make those things slightly different in their hooves. And this is on top of things like regular conversation, trying out jokes... things like that.
Well, you at least need some automated assistance. LibreOffice has a spellcheck function that, if I recall correctly, also serves as a grammarcheck function too—though to use it fully, you have to go to one of the toolbars at the top. If that's not enough, then using Grammarly or LanguageTool (which I use) helps. Sure, it's a bit of a hassle to work with the word limit of LanguageTool's free version, but I just split my finished chapter into chunks, let LanguageTool catch the errors it catches, and then stitch the polished chunks into a better version of the same chapter.
Again, reading Fimfiction's very own writing guide will help a lot in terms of grammar. You already seem to be reading a lot here, but don't forget to at least occasionally read published stories out there—usually, editing there is air-tight, so grammar rules would be followed to the letter there.
I will! Again, thank you for this story!
Ok, this story has got me hooked
9946765
Keep reading, you won’t regret it.
This looks like the start of a good story even though I don't frequently read OC only stories.
It's good that despite his flwas Lustrous is taking his job serious and manages to keep Trail Blazer on track.
This is an interesting development and Trail blazer really isn't interested in making friends.
It's good that they managed to find friendly ponies.
They seem to be getting to know each other a bit better.
Trail Blazer's past is very tragic.
This was a nice story and I've upvoted it. This should really get more views and likes than it has now.
10138001
Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed the story.
Whelp, guess I’m reading this again.
Here’s a drinking game: take a shot each time Trail Blazer says she wants a drink.
On second thought, maybe don’t, lest you become as drunk as Trail Blazer herself.
It turns out that despite grammar inconsistencies and word overuses, I said “fuck it” and added the story to my favorites anyways.
This story is just as good as it was the first time, and the ending of the story is still amazing. It just kind of... ends. There’s no fanfare, it just ends. That is probably the best way this story could’ve ended, honestly. I’m happy to put this story in my top favorites.
I don’t even know how to describe the feeling of reading the stories, this is the 4th story that I have now read, starting with “Applejack Gets Lost”. This is the writing style that stands out for me, there is no clutter of text, sometimes unnecessary description of everything, just as much as needed, interesting and easy to read. The main characters in all the stories look quite alive and fit harmoniously into the stories, even if sometimes only for a couple of chapters, their stories touch the soul. The references to your own stories make you smile.
I have such a feeling of incomprehensible sadness after reading, in general, for the first time I don’t feel tired from reading, even though I started the day before yesterday
(insomnia provides certain benefits)
I'll go read more :)
(I may have written something incoherently somewhere, but now I’ve rewritten this 20 times already, so let it be so)