Travelers or Nomads?

by bigmacbush

Volume Two: Raids and Construction

Deciding to get back on the road, we had to discuss where to go, after a quick debate we decided to search the northern edges of Equestria, near the border between the Crystal Empire and Equestria. On the way we had talked about whether they had clothing capable of taking the cold, apparently none of us did, so we decided to look for a village to go clothes shopping, something I hadn't done in a while. After getting some clothes capable of travelling near the Crystal Empire, we searched for places of interest, we had discovered a few abandoned mines, ancient manors of unknown content, and what appeared to be an abandoned village, but upon closer inspection, wasn't. Upon arriving we were greeted with the most kind and heartwarming way possible, what was rather peculiar was how they were dressed, or lack there of.
The three of us knew that it would be freezing around here, but why do the locals around here seem to be alright about it? After some simple sightseeing, we were taken to the hotel of sorts with regulated heating, how? I decided to keep my warm clothes on anyway, since it didn't seem to make a difference. After some unsettling service, I wandered for a bit, then I found some records from way back when, I don't even know what year it looked like, yet these ponies look the same as those around here, realizing what was going on, I ran to warn the other two.
Thank Luna, I found them when I did, if I took any longer I would have lost them, and potentially myself. After getting them up to speed, we decided to high-tail it out of there, we were prepared for many things, but not exorcism. A while after we left we decided to set up camp as far away from that ghost town as possible, hoping to not go back we went to sleep and ventured off in a different direction in the morning.

The morning after the ghost town incident, we decided to go to a more warmer part of the border lands, when we ran into a little mare, asking us for food and directions, giving in we decided to give her some of our rations and some Bits for the village a few treks from here.
After giving her some of our resources she said "Thank you sirs for the directions."
In which we said "No problem, take care of yourself out there."
She said nothing in reply and just walked off, something was off about her,
I told the others, "Something's wrong here, come on guys I know a shortcut to where she's going."
It was a bit treacherous but we made it there before she did, we saw her again, from a different vantage, point, a few minutes away from the village I mentioned. She wasn't alone, apparently she was a recon pony for a group of bandits, looking to get intel from unsuspecting travelers, odds are she saw our weaponry and decided to not fight us. We decided to take refuge in the village in question, and hid out of bandit sight, we told the locals to remain calm and stay indoors, as we waited for them to attack. It was midnight, a fog was rolling over, it was the perfect set-up for a raid, silence was everywhere,
that was until they came yelling "CHARGE!!!"
Upon hearing that we rushed into action, with me in the lead and the others taking the rear, making sure they didn't get into the village, they weren't quite ready to be taking us on, the equipment they had were nothing short of simple. I won't go into specifics, but we managed to take care of most of them, with little to no casualties, in which they begged for forgiveness, there were roughly nine of them left. We decided to give them forgiveness as long as they become the village guards, in which they agreed, the little recon pony wanted to join us, weirdly enough, in which we decided to let her join, we have a warrior (me), our fast hitter (Smiley), and a mage (Crazy)? Now we have a recon pony named Maple Sight, quite a small rag-time group we have here.

Since we have a new comrade, we decided to show off our place of residence, but we had to get back home, it's a shame we might not find those places again, I'm not a cartographer by any means. Later I found out our latest member already mapped out the area on her own time, she could be more useful than I thought. Luckily we made a couple of extra rooms, so now she can just move into one of the rooms we made way back when, however we noticed a complete lack of things she owned, as a new member of our group, I took it upon myself to get her some new things for her room, cue the huge shopping trip!
Despite my huge amount of Bits, that took a lot out of my wallet, well as long as there's enough for more food and such in the future. After getting her set in, I also had to give her formal combat training, she's not that bad for a small Earth pony, pretty quick, no wonder she's so good at doing recon work. While she was in freestyle training, I decided to give my blade a look-over, for adjustments or change in fighting style overall, maybe I should change to a sword and shield style, I'm not only fighting for myself after all. The four of us decided to stay in town a while, at least until we felt like travelling again, this however lead to the first they saw me in the morning, before, I woke up before them and got ready for the day in advance, cause I'm not a morning pony, not in the slightest. It happened one morning, when we were on our break, Maple got up before any of us, and found out we were low on food, and went to go wake me up, she'll never do that again after what happened. She came into my room, came up to me and tried to shake me awake,
"Leave me be." I said tiredly and angrily, she persisted,
in which I snapped at her "GET THE HELL OUT OF MY ROOM AND LET ME SLEEP!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, she ran off and I'm not sure but I think she cried and didn't leave the entire day.
Needless to say, things were going to start getting rocky starting today.

Despite what happened yesterday, everyone acted like it never happened, minus the obvious carefulness around me. Throughout the day, I seem perfectly normal and fine, because nopony sees me in the morning, unless they see me in serious combat or on the verge of snapping, in which they try to stay on my good side, assuming I have one. I spent the day shopping for wood and materials, I would like to attempt advanced engineering, make I could make an automatic grappling hook, one you don't need to throw to use. For some time, while coming up with a schematic, many ponies were making assumptions that I was coming up with an evil plot, being in my room for days on end and not talking to anyone, I still ate but none of the guys (and girl) asked me what I was doing, they must understand what I'm doing. After two weeks I finished the grappling hook, but it needed a test, so I used a mannequin to test it out, it works amazingly well, but could use some more tinkering.
Later after the tinkering, I gave a model of it to Smiley, Crazy, and Maple, being non-pegasi gave them a disadvantage in movement, so I decided to fix that, working it into their combat style could take a while though. Crazy in particular did not want to use the grappling hooks, it felt unnatural to him, so I decided to leave him be. Since only Smiley and Maple decided to use them, and I decided to use them for potential if my wings can't do the job, or if it's too windy, thinking about these kinds of things helps calm me down, thankfully we have the armory to help calm me down.

Roughly a week and half later I remember that we were planning to renovate a room into a hot spring of sort, to help us relax at our house. It took a while but after getting the area ready, and breaking and making a support for an open-air bath in the back of the house, it has the best view at night. Getting solid amounts of natural hot water took a while to and lead over to our house took forever to do, oh well it'll all be worth it after the hot spring is set up. Two weeks later the hot spring is finally set up, to celebrate we all decide to take the first bath at the same time, weirdly Maple was okay with being in there with three stallions, it didn't matter to me anyway, though Crazy Bread to be awfully sweaty and nervous about being in there, he decided to take his bath later, oh well his loss, don't worry nothing major happened in there, just normal bathing.
Bored I decided to head into the basement to find some things we could use in an expedition in the near future, I was extremely surprised by all the stuff down here, apparently Maple had a lot of things to bring with her and she put most of the things she doesn't want in her room in the basement. Over in my room, I don't know why but I wanted a balcony in my room, so obviously I went to go get the things I needed for that to happen, and it took another few days to get it made, Timby helped me by telling me where to get the most sturdy wood for the balcony, it looks amazing for something only made with wood, since painting it wasn't really necessary for the natural look I wanted for a balcony, after putting up a railing for safety reasons, I realized the amazing view only rivaled by the view in the bath, I could get used to simple peaceful life, instead of being a nomad with no place to be.
This is the beginning of regular visits here after travelling for months on end, now that I think about, I should ask the Princesses to allow me to check out the more ancient parts of Equestria, remnants of the old civilizations of the land, even before the founding of Equestria. It was at this point my life was going to take a more crazy and drastic turns of events after my first "ancient" expedition.