“Crystal tissue? Catalyst Crystal?” Luna read the report given to her by a unicorn wearing a full-body suit covered in soot, oil, and what appeared to be remains of rocks that stuck to her mane and tail. “What are these?”
“I’m glad you asked, Princess!” The unicorn, Crystal Clara, smiled as she dragged out two boxes filled with what appeared to be formations of normal crystals; but seemed to be slightly different in very different ways. “As you can see, the left box is filled with what I call Crystal Tissue, if refined properly! This particular crystal, despite its current form, was found to be incredibly flexible and after me and my team did some tests; where we found out that it has many of what we have been needing. It is flexible, durable, and can even hold mana within longer so we initially theorized that we could use it as something for a reactor.” Within the same box, she levitated away several rope-like materials that shone just like the raw ore next to it. “We found out that it could serve as artificial muscles that act much like our own muscles in our bodies while if we were to spin it like how we make ropes…”
As a demonstration, Crystal picked up three and began to spin it much like a rope and ended with a stranded ‘rope’ made of what was supposed to be some crystals to be mined.
“As you can see, it can store mana, extend and retract like a muscle, and it’s durable enough to withstand harsh impacts!” Luna blinked as she used her own magic to levitate the stranded crystal in front of her.
“That is… certainly impressive.” She paused for a moment before frowning. “Then why haven-”
“It hasn’t been mined for that exact reason, Princess.” The unicorn answered the unspoken question and sighed. “Because it cannot store mana as much as standard refined crystal. “It's considered a useless ore that is processed into cheap jewelry.”
Luna face-hoofed at that and groaned.
“Well, on to the next crystal!” The unicorn looked excited at this far more than Luna was right now. She was still coming to terms of how… stagnate Equestria was right now. “The Catalyst Crystal! I have never seen such a crystal in my life, but this!” She physically hauled out a crystal the size of a normal pony’s head emitting a bright glow according to its color. “It's not a normal magic crystal that merely stores mana, but it can generate more by drawing it from the air! That rate of intake is absurdly slow and has low magical output, my team is confident that we can enhance both by building a reactor around this crystal to make what we are planning on calling an Ether Reactor!”
Luna blinked several times before looking at the crystal held in the unicorn’s hooves. When she went to grab it with her magic…
“Uhhh… Princess, maybe you should have noticed that I grabbed it with my hooves for a reason…?” The unicorn coughed out a cloud of smoke from her mouth just as Luna did, as both stared at the exploded crystal.
“Next time, tell me that it reacts violently to active magic.” Luna deadpanned as she hid a grin behind her annoyance. These islands were much like the chaotic south, with uncontrollable weather and other random things that had the ponies that followed her out here annoyed, but welcoming the challenge. It would make for a great lesson in adaptation, she had told them while bearing the rainstorm that they had to endure for days upon arrival. And this was barely five months after settling down and getting their mining rig set up in the locations marked rather conveniently by signs placed by 'strangers'. Luna knew who they were, but when they were so willing to assist alongside crates of non-magic involving weapons...
But with this new Catalyst Crystal, she might actually be able to do something more than merely react. Do something for her... HER little ponies.
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Crystal Heart considered herself a scientist despite having not gone to any higher education to help her family earn more bits. She possessed a soft aquamarine blue colored coat with a bob-haired mane and an equally shorter tail both colored a startling bright shade of azure blue with her eyes seemingly crafted from a hexagonal crystal colors various shades of blue. Her mother told her that their family had always descended from the Crystal ‘Empire’, but it didn’t matter to her. She had gotten her cutie mark, looking like a single rough crystal colored much like a rainbow when she had refined her first mined crystal without any help from her ‘seniors’.
But unlike in Equestria, here, in the Lunar Novus; she was free to pursue her ideas of creating far more efficient, powerful magic energies that would eventually eclipse anything those arrogant pricks with degrees can pull off. They had always looked down at her for being ‘weak’ magically and was called a brute behind closed doors because she was more than willing to enter ‘filthy’ spaces to fulfill her goals. So when she was offered to follow Princess Luna by her parents, she took it and as of right now, she was one of the most eager ponies to get to work after spending months setting up housing, mining marked sites, and doing her research & development.
“By the moon…” Another unicorn, one of thestral descent, looked awed at the silver metallic ‘heart’ the size of three ponies connected to three intake ‘pipes’ and three out-take ‘pipes’ connected to the prototype Ether Reactor. “We are producing enough magic to power a destroyer-class airship with just one of these things!”
“This is nothing more than a prototype!” Crystal yelled excitedly. “When it comes to the point where we can mass-produce these, we’ll be able to do more than airships! They are small enough to be mounted on as engines and maybe even our own walkers to rival those Griffons!”
The mad cackling of the unicorn that sounded from the labs were frightening enough for many of the other ponies began to walk away as fast as possible. It might take two to three months to get the kinks out of her design, but Crystal Clara knew that she had just made something that would make Equestrian unicorns jealous of her invention.
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Luna looked at the armorless form of the centaur-like machine before her with a bit of glee and worry. While she with her research and development committee had gone over many designs to prototype their first combat mecha, but had come to arguments on the form of the machine. Many of those that were from various schools had declared that they should only make machines in the form of ponies while others had said that the bipedal locomotion of the other factions were far more versatile and were capable of more using the implementation of hands instead of fixed weapons.
So Luna was forced to compromise between the two. The locomotion would be that of a pony while the ‘head’ would be replaced by a humanoid torso with two arms capable of holding and changing weapons on the fly. Of course, they were already designing ‘lesser’ models of machines that were either bipedal; which were to be the standard ‘infantry’ while the pony form would be used for anti-air and a heavy weapons platform as this model was the most heavily armored and sadly, the slowest for that reason. The centaur model, Tzendrinble, would be the primary ‘attacker’ of the Lunar Novus as while possessing light armor; was capable of incredible speed to maneuver around enemies in an organic manner while wielding weapons that can take advantage of their mobility would be designed. The bipedal machine, Karrdator, possessed slightly more armor than the Tzendrinble; but lacked its mobility in the favor of focusing more on a wider type of ranged weaponry and various forms of close combat. The only downside to these two models was that pilot training was harsher due to her ponies not being used to any form of bipedal movement until now. While the cockpits were designed so that the pony would be comfortable ‘lying’ on their stomach and using the controls that were designed as user-friendly as possible. Their rear legs manipulated pedals that moved the machine while their forelegs would use a series of magically-enhanced ‘pads’ that translated subtle movements to move the four-fingered hands as if they were their own with the head of the machines providing ‘sight’. The pony model, to be called Equibelli, was the most heavily armored of the trio while also being the shortest of the three. Despite its short height, it was capable of hauling nearly three to four times the cargo of the Tzendrinble; and also utilizing what would usually be labeled as siege weaponry.
Of course, designing them was easy. Implementing them?
Easier said than done. Even with Patina’s ‘support’ of a basic autocannon/2, machine gun, and what her engineers called an ‘tube’-based artillery. It simply startled her on how fast these physical based weapons fired and simply overpowered all ‘standard’ magic shields with absurd ease, or some did faster compared to the size of their rounds. To Luna and her ponies, the different types of ammunition seemed like a logistical nightmare. The small, yet fast firing machine gun rounds were easy to craft using a bit of transfiguration of metals; but it only seemed useful mostly against infantry when they had tested their own ammunition with a fixed mounted ‘bunker’. The autocannon/2, as the Changelings called it, was a marvel of automatic loading, incredible range, and reliability. It was relatively easy to make it themselves when they put their minds to it, but the ammunition for these weapons were on a different scale. In fact, her engineers had told her that creating such multi-core rounds was out of their league entirely. What they could do was to mimic such functions by using a hollow metal round with a crystal packed with spells that could perform similar actions as the ammunition provided by Patina. Then there was the tube-artillery. It was not as fast firing as Equestria’s standard magic cannons, but what they lacked in firing rate, was replaced by nearly three times the range and possessing the capability to smash aside triple-layered magical shields in two shots. It was a trade off, but one that Luna knew was important. The Changelings had outranged them in the encounter in the south so long ago, so she knew how important such fire support was.
So she pushed her engineers to create three types of long ranged support. A light artillery that can be hauled around by her infantry without the need for external assistance and focusing on armor penetration. Several variations of medium artillery that was to be used by Luna’s Tanks and those to be hauled by said tanks to be set up and behind main lines. The final form of artillery was to be mounted on their Equibelli quadrupedal mecha as mobile artillery pieces designed to outrange her enemies and others dragged by any form of vehicles to be set up and fired.
That and Luna liked the sound of drowning her enemies in a sea of thunderous barrage of magic and steel.
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“Amazing.” Luna smiled as she observed the incredible maneuvering of the Tzendrinble as the centaur-like machine galloped through an obstacle course while using a large lance to break aside stationary wooden targets with little difficulty. The machine, as it jumped across a small river, threw its lance at a target that popped up and drew a large handheld rifle made of wood and metal; and pulled back a lever as it racked a sizable round and aimed without stopping to put down five more targets moving side to side to while maintaining a decent speed as it had to slow down to fire accurately. As the fifth round fired, the machine swiftly reloaded one by one from a small pouch behind it’s back and fired at another five before coming to a slow trot, headed towards where Luna had been observing from. “If we can increase the ammunition held by the weapon and perhaps add another close-combat weapon, we might have a proper machine of war.”
“So…” Crystal Clara’s eyes were gleaming with pride and joy as Luna smiled openly at the display shown to her. It was something to be expecting one thing, but to be given something far beyond one’s expectations…
“From what I’ve seen from all three machines, I can expect many great things to happen now.” Luna nodded to herself until she noticed Crystal Clara shaking her head. “Is there a problem?”
“Princess, these ‘machines’ are to be called ‘Silhouette Knights’.”
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A pair of caterpillar treads, made of magically-reinforced steel, crushed rocks under their sheer weight as dozens of ten foot long, four feet wide and four foot high moved in sync across the newly flattened training area. As Luna and other engineers that were working on their tank designs had learned that the Griffon-made tanks lacked mobility and the ability to aim its main cannon behind itself, they had sought to improve upon their previous Charioteer design by making their own tanks fitted with reinforced turrets fitted with modified autocannons that were fitted to fire magical shells or even a newly designed shell that was designed for the extreme penetration of armor. A magically enhanced metal arrow was fitted into a shell and was given a far more concentrated magical catalyst to send it faster than ‘normal’ shells at their targets. The only problem was that they could not be fired rapidly like other shells due to their increased recoil and heat. Not to mention the fact that while the thickest armor in the front was only 100mm compared to the 200mm of the Griffons’ tanks, but what gave them an edge was their impressive output from the Ether Reactor that allowed the vehicle surpass their foes with an incredible speed of 75 kph with the added protection of enchantments that could do many things in case of emergencies.
There were other tanks designed for different purposes: one fitted with four autocannon/2’s designed to engage aerial targets using fragmentation shells that detonated near enemy aerial units, another chassis that was twice the size of the main tanks but fielding larger tube artillery designed to fire straight forwards as an anti-tank/fortress platform, and an armored personnel carrier fitted with Lunar Novus’ own machine gun. Much like the machine guns provided by Patina, Luna’s engineers had gone the path of ammunition, except for a key difference. Lunar Novus had opted for slower firing, but heavier rounds that would take down armored infantry far easier.
Overall, the military arm of the Lunar Novus was gaining much traction in its strength. All that it was missing was the number of soldiers to man such vehicles of war.
But if Luna’s informants were to be believed, there would soon be a chance for her to appear as the savior instead of a ‘renegade’ as claimed by the Unicorn Nobility after her departure years ago. Let them think what they want, but reality was about to down on them far sooner than those arrogant bastards realized.