Before Snowfall Frost could erase Hearth’s Warming, two spirits had shown her visions of the past and present. A third spirit, the Spirit of Hearth's Warming Yet to Come, now takes her to the future.
In this city filled with snow, fog, and powerful streetlights, Snowfall Frost overhears a conversation between two old friends: Trixie, a brilliant artificer, and Rainbow Dash, Inquisitor of the Order of the Sun. And Snowfall learns what truly desperate ponies will do for survival…
An alternate scenario for A Hearth’s Warming Tail and inspired by Frostpunk.
Written for Bean's Writing Group prompt 35, "An unexpected factoid about magic".
With feedback from:
Summer Knight, short tale, and Scriblits Talo. Thanks for your help!
Chapters (1)
What's Frostpunk?
11457032
City building game set in a world gripped by an apocalyptic ice age
11457032
Rawislon03 put it well. And if you want to know more, Google it.
Good story, liked the use of the contrast between the theocratic and order cities in Canterlot and Manehatten though while it’s obviously a rather short story the violent confrontation between Trixie and Rainbow feels like it comes out of nowhere. Trixie’s obviously being pressured as the leader of Manehatten while Celestia’s cutting the city off from a vital resource, though the encounters descent into a fight still seems a bit sudden, especially with Rainbow and Trixie seemingly being old, if ideologically opposed friends. Trixie curses Celestia and Rainbow launches into an arrest for blasphemy.
Always love me A Christmas Carol story, and an interesting twist with this one. Great job.
11457432
Thank you for your thoughts! I had thought that Rainbow was sufficiently justified in trying to arrest Trixie. The thing Rainbow is most angry about is not the curses, but the fact that Trixie is trying to push the responsibility for the murders of hundreds of homeless ponies onto Celestia (which is what really pushed Rainbow over the edge). And Rainbow is still incredibly loyal, and will be much more so towards Celestia than Trixie. And the two friends have been at odds for a while; notice that Trixie was nervous when Rainbow showed up in her Wonderbolts robes.
However, another thing I know is that the reader's impressions are always right. There are details that I should have explained more or dialogue that needed to be changed to fully justify the outburst from Rainbow. So once again, thanks for the feedback!
11458134
Thank you! Been sitting on this one for 8 months or so, December felt like a good time to finally finish it.
11459830
Ah sorry, that's an angle I entirely forgot about, that Trixie was exiling many of the cities homeless population. Honestly I was in the same seat as Snowfall with the robot picking up the homeless pony as just an inbuilt precaution for their safety. Trixie's exiling and pretty much killing hundreds if not thousands of ponies was only really brought up in discussion rather then being shown.
could've been worse, the future i mean