Fallout: Equestria - The Chrysalis Reviews: Chapter 1 · 9:12pm Jan 22nd, 2017

Video made by me

Well, this is going to be an interesting review in light of season 6's finale.

Changelings in the universe of Fallout: Equestria is a topic that not a lot of authors explore, and especially not to the extent that this fanfic does. This fic is actually really interesting for that reason, and its one of the better spin-off fanfics that I've taken the time to read, so yeah, not really going to be blind this time around thank goodness.

So, lets see how things go in this week's review, Fallout: Equestria - The Chrysalis from Phoenix_Dragon.

I hope you all enjoy it.

---Chapter 1: Ash and Dust---

Well dang, I could have used Radioactive for a joke here if I didn't use it as an Intro.

I suppose if I have to start somewhere, it would be with the day I was reborn.

And when our main character wakes up, the first thing they experience is hunger. The type of hunger that consumes you, tearing at your very soul. Their mind manages to latch onto the one that that matters to it, love, which makes sense given that the character is a Changeling, so on instinct they are driven to seek that out and feed.

As sensation comes back into their body they seem to be having a hard time moving, but they finally manage to do so and grabbed the source of the love that they had detected and fed on it before falling unconscious once more.

They have a dream, though they don't really remember the details, just that the voice of the Changeling Queen Ephema was calling out to them. They think that it may have been of the day they had become an Infiltrator for Ephema and was given their first assignment. They're not even sure if they had dreamed of Ephema, but they want to think that they did.

They wake up again to the sound of an alarm klaxon going off wherever they are. When they become more aware of the area around them, they realize there's an electronic hum along with the sound of dripping liquid. They realize that there is an orange emergency light in their eyes, it seems that they had been in a chrysalis up until just now, though its not clear how they got in there yet.

However it seems that our main character is the only survivor of their hive, the other chrysalises where either empty or the occupant dead, and there where dead Changelings all over. Its ominous, as our hero feels almost as if the dead are blaming them for their deaths.

I lay my head down, eyes shutting again. My heartrate and breathing had accelerated, and I focused on breathing slowly and deeply. I had to focus and stay calm. I had a responsibility. My hive had invested years of training, preparing me to deal with stressful and dangerous situations. I hadn’t anticipated ever finding myself in such a horrible situation, but I knew I couldn’t let that stop me. I owed all of them that much and more.

Its definitely a good scene, it doesn't require any dialog and it gives more backstory to our main character and their role in the Changeling hive. They manage to deal with the feelings of fear and start to calm down a bit. There is a sense of helplessness because they have no idea exactly what had happened to them. They almost seem to hope that refusing to acknowledge the world around them will make it cease to exist, it shows that this is difficult for them to handle, and its well done.

From the corner of their eye, they see a looming figure and when they look they see the corpse of Queen Ephema.

So I opened my eyes again, shakily raising my head, and turned to look at the empty husk of Queen Ephema. Even in death, she still looked regal, laid out with her head leaning against the concrete wall.
I trembled, giving a weak sob around the tightness in my throat. I might have even cried a little. Part of me wanted to just give up; to curl up beside her, close my eyes, and join her. My Queen was dead. My hive, likely, as well. Why else would she still be lying here, uncared for? It was a disgrace, a defilement. Noling would have permitted this, had they been able to do anything about it.

This is a really well done scene that shows the sense of helplessness because of the situation. Its hard to not feel sorry for the main character and their hive.

There's a moment when they wonder if a Changeling that was at Euphema's side had stayed there because they preferred to die at their queen's side than carry on. They shake off these darker thoughts and finds love crystals that where in Euphema's hooves, but they where all empty. It seems that they may have been the only reason that the main character is still alive at this point. They find a data storage device in the Changeling Queen's hoof and gently takes it before setting out to find a computer.

They manage to finally take a good look at the room around them:

The chrysalises filled the center of the room, hung from the exposed piping and arranged in a semi-circle around a slightly raised central platform. Machinery was arranged behind and beside each one, with cables and tubes leading to the various cocoons--or, in many cases, splayed out across the ground where they had fallen upon their cocoon’s failing. Most of those loose cables lay in puddles, and not all of it came from the dripping, just-vacated chrysalis. The walls were stained from the trickling of water running over them, and drops fell from some of the pipes, and from the rusted-over sprinkler head set beside the spinning light.

After some more looking around they find a terminal that they can access, they're not sure of how long they had been in that chrysalis, but based on the way things where going they assumed it had been years. They manage to hobble their way to the terminal so they can get information, and also to hopefully distract them from the death surrounding them.

When the terminal boots up it comes with a simple message: "Welcome back user CoolBug." This makes our main character laugh despite the situation. The terminal also mentions something called CrystalLife Technologies as well as listing the status of the pods, it seems the one the main character came from has failed. There's also a realization that the Queen had likely been trapped by containment locks, which are now being released.

Yeah... it also seems that Equestria is in bad shape, but we all expected that anyway. It seems that our unnamed main character shouldn't even have been woken up yet because of all the external radiation. After doing some math based on the reports, they realize that its been at least 200 years since they had first entered the chrysalis. It seems that Euphema had done all of this to preserve her hive, sadly she was only partially successful.

With that done they put in the data storage device in order to see what was on it... and it seems that the data has been corrupted, denying them Euphema's final gift. They broke down crying for a few minutes before calming down and finally realizing that they're on their own once again, and this time they have no idea where they are. They do have a mission though, to find anything that's left of their Hive still alive out there.

We also learn a little more about CrystalLife Technologies or C.L.T., which had been a wartime company that worked with five of the Six Ministries and other companies. It was a small company that specialized in cryogenics and stasis technology, however this realization doesn't really help them. They gather up the love crystals and what other gear they can scrounge up like a pistol in a Ministry of Peace medical kit.

I stared at the pistol for a couple seconds, unable to help thinking that the M.o.P. would have been quite upset to find such a thing stored within one of their medical kits.

But of course they're not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, though the gun itself is in such poor condition that it probably won't actually fire anyway, so its left behind. The box though is made into impromptu saddlebags much like Velvet Remedy's. So after managing to get everything together, our hero sets about gathering up the bodies of her fallen sisters. It takes some improvising for the ones still in the pods, and has rather messy results, but she manages to cut them out after a few minutes.

The next moment is one that cannot be summed up fairly, so here you go:

It was even harder forcing myself to rise again, but I knew it was almost done. A little bit of crude sawing and a few moments of dragging, and I had finally gathered all of my fallen hive-mates together. My Queen lay there, still impressive even in death, her daughters clustered close around her. I suppose it was some small comfort that I didn’t recognize any of my sisters. A few looked vaguely familiar, but that was it. Perhaps I had interacted with a few of them in a professional sense, but I didn’t see any of those I had been close to. It left some tiny hope that they had survived, as I had.
Eventually, I lowered my head, pushing a little of my dwindling magic into my horn. I knew every bit of magic I spent was a little less to sustain me, but I had to do this one last thing. They deserved that much.
A green flame burst into being beneath my Queen’s chest and rapidly spread. The dry, empty husks caught quickly; the more sodden remains took longer, but soon they too succumbed to the flame. The room flickered and danced in the light of the green fire.
I rested, watching the flames transform their bodies one final time. Eventually those flames faded, guttered, and died, leaving nothing but ash in their wake.

Its a somber moment as she has to burn the bodies of her hivemates. Retrieving her re-purposed medical box, she sets out to find her way out of the facility. She finds pony skeletons and destroyed storage crates, she manages to salvage some rations, but nothing more. What's more ominous is that its clear that there had been a firefight of some sort in the facility given all the bullet holes. There's also a sense of deja'vu as if she'd been there before.

That's when she remembered the Last Day, she had been leaving Appleloosa after receiving an emergency recall message that had been sent to every Changeling Infiltrator. There was a flash behind her as a megaspell went off, then another in front of her, but strangely this one was closer to Changeling territory not Zebras.

She left the building to step out into C.L.T.'s Experimental Site Alpha that she remembered seeing from the air before. Then she sees some... thing, honestly I'm not sure, its a piece of debris that looked like it had been part of a structure, from the Enclave maybe? Anyway, yeah, its pretty desolate and I wish I could find a clip from Star Wars for that part. Our hero decides to head East towards Dodge City. She tried to fly but had a hard time getting very far, and had to stop between brief jumps.

On the fifth stop she spots some movement, and she spots a set of hindquarters going around a corner to follow tracks. After she's certain that she won't be spotted, she tries to fly once more. That's when she comes across a group of 5 ponies along with their cattle, and of course they're armed. Before we go on we get this bit of text:

Now, I suppose I should make it clear: I don’t hate ponies. I know some ponies got their entire impression of changelings from Queen Chrysalis and her hive, but that would be a very incomplete picture. Me, I actually like ponies. Sure, they can be skittish and scared of things they don’t understand, and yes, they did not handle the tremendous stress of the decades-long war they found themselves in very well, but they’re basically decent beings. Few creatures held so much love, even if their hardships had made them a bit paranoid about sharing it.

It seems that her hive didn't think of the Ponies as enemies, more like, valued livestock... that's kind of a disturbing way to describe sapient creatures to be honest. She does acknowledge that its not benevolent or anything. She figures that finding a group here was good for a source of food and comfort. She observed them, there doesn't seem to be anything too threatening about them, but its kind of hard to tell exactly what they are.

So finally our hero uses her Changeling powers to change into a grey Earth Pony mare, and we finally get something of a name for her, Whisper Winds. She approaches them and overhears some of the conversation between the ponies.

“...But seriously, rainbows!” the smiling mare said, looking up again to the darkening sky. “I’ve never even seen a rainbow before.”
“We know,” the vigilant stallion said with a resigned tone. “You’ve only told us like fifty--”
He had turned to look squarely at the mare, which brought me into his edge of his vision. His reaction speed was impressive. He immediately bit down on the grip of his rifle as he rolled onto his hooves. I staggered to a stop, suddenly looking down a frightfully large barrel.
His voice came out harsh and menacing, his eyes narrowing at me. “Don’t you fucking move.”
It was at that moment I began to worry that I had made a terrible mistake.

Well, seems our hero is off to a great start.

---Final Thoughts---

Yeah, no character analysis section yet, there's not a lot to analyze other than the basics so I'll do that next time.

This is a really good fic, the idea of the main character being a Changeling is something that isn't seen a lot in Fallout: Equestria fics, and Whisper certainly does a good job of doing it. It also expands more on the Changelings within FoE's universe, and for that its really well done and enjoyable.

While there's not a lot of plot this early on, the characterization and worldbuilding is nicely done. The fic continues to build on this in future chapters and I highly recommend you read it.

Its a great story, if you like Changelings or FoE, read it.

Chapter 1 gets a score of 4/5.

Fallout: Equestria belongs to KKat.
Fallout: Equestria - The Chrysalis belongs to Phoenix_Dragon

Original Fanfic.

Next week, we head south for... well honestly I don't know what all to say about it so just look forward to it.