“Reporting to you live from Tenpony tower, this is the voice of the Equestrian Wasteland!” The radio announcer began… Finally, a way to get some understanding of what to expect from this world, but Harry’s excitement quickly died as the radio continued, “For those close by in Manehattan, the newest report is that slaver patrols coming from the south have been seen around the villages of Whitestock and New Bluebell, that’s good news for us in Tenpony, as well as the folks up in Friendship City and Arbu, but I’d steer clear of south unless you want to become a new cog in Red-Eye’s machine, we haven’t had any contact with Whitestock in over a week, so to any merchants heading that way, you may want to turn back… As for the folks up by the Crystal Mountains, it’s the normal, radioactive snow and an even heavier case of toxic rainbows, I will continue to advise ponies to steer clear of Rainbow Falls unless you want to die a very radioactive death. Same goes for those ponies further south in Hoofington, although one of my contacts insists he saw a group of flying ponies heading to the city’s outskirts just last night, and to those brave Enclave goons, good luck, not that it’s going to help…”
Harry was making mental notes, there were regions called Manehattan, Hoofington, Crystal Mountains, with many towns or cities in them, and slavers, who didn’t sound all too friendly, who were ‘cogs in a machine’ to someone, or rather, some pony called Red-Eye, and an Enclave, of some kind, who can apparently fly… And radiation, lots of radiation… Harry was starting to realize why no one seemed to be doing anything about these Slavers, or the monsters that attacked Harry in the MAS place… He had heard about nuclear weapons and the theories about what could happen if too many of them were used at once...
The radio continued, “To the west, in central Equestria, Canterlot is just as toxic as ever, but south, by Ponyville, I’ve heard news that the raider-hub has been completely slaughtered, three survivors were seen leaving the town this very night, all in different directions, let us hope none of those survivors were raider scumbags… And finally, off in West Equestria, there was a massive fight between a raider gang up in Vanhoover and the north-western Steel Rangers, the Rangers won and pushed the raiders out of the city, I don’t much care for the Rangers, but at least the ponies in Vanhoover are safe from those maniacs, for now… Now, it’s time for some music, this is-” The radio kept playing, but Harry didn’t much care for it now that it wasn’t giving her anything useful.
Trotting up, Harry approached Victory, “Victory? Where exactly are we?”
“Hmm? Oh, you mean where Stable 107 is?” Harry nodded in reply, “Oh, we’re just north of the San Palomino Desert, and just south of Las Pegasus…” Harry nodded, that was something, but without a map he has no clue where any of that stuff was, he knew deserts were generally around the tropics though, so, he must be somewhere south, since the radio said something about snow in the north…
“You wouldn’t happen to have a map?”
“Talk to one of the scribes for stuff like that… They know just about everything… Anyway, why do you ask?”
“Well, both Silver, and the Star Paladin, said something about finding me in the Las Pegasus MAS hub…”
“Ah, that place, I think it was called… Somnam, Sabnula, Subnabsusa, something like that long before the war, then the whole town was turned into one big MAS hub, called it Big-S, the Rangers have been trying to get into that place for as long as I can remember.”
“Well, what’s this ‘MAS’?” Harry asked.
Victory sighed, Harry got the feeling he was annoying her, “Ministry of Arcane Science, some big group of magical research ponies from before the war, you should ask one of the scribes for more… Don’t care much about the MAS, they weren't our Ministry.”
Harry could hear the emphasis on that ‘our’, every question she asked just made five more pop up in her mind, but Harry could also hear Victory’s slowly growing annoyance with answering some ‘dumb wastelander’ questions…
Harry quickly started exploring the Stable, the scribes, as she discovered, were the ponies wearing those bulky red robes, she approached one “Excuse me, but do you have any maps of the wasteland, as well as some books or notes about the wasteland’s history?”
The scribe pony responded, “You can find some documents on the terminals on the east wing…”
“Which is?”
“You’ve never been to the east wing?” The scribe looked a little confused, “Oh, you must be that new filly, I’ll show you around the place, tell you which areas are allowed or not…”
Harry was relieved as the scribe guided her throughout the building. The Stable was much bigger than she expected, and apparently, far underground, it was originally some kind of shelter for ponies during the war, but two years ago, the Steel Rangers found it, abandoned, and moved in. Soon Harry arrived at the room the scribe had been talking about… She must have spent hours pouring over the notes, maps, and few books that they had… A war had happened, a bad one, involving lots of magic that turned cities to ash and left radiation in its wake, the nation of Equestria had been at war with a nation called Zebrica, neither survived the war, in fact, there was no evidence that any nation survived the war, in the end, everything was blasted away… Plenty of ponies, a few zebra, and quite a few griffons, and even the occasional dragon, survived the conflict… Now, they were just fighting over the remains… Harry felt horrible after reading even just a vague overview of the conflict.
“So, what exactly are the Steel Rangers?” Harry asked the scribe, one Rosemary.
“We were founded by the survivors of the Ministry of Technology, we follow our founder’s ideology, that technology should be guarded, researched, and used to better the lives of ponykind, of course, we’re rather… Divided… The Manehattan and Fillydelphia chapters just like to horde their tech for themselves, the Fillydelphia chapter in particular, but I can’t blame them, being right in the middle of the biggest army of raiders and slavers the wasteland has ever seen…”
“Raiders, slavers… Who are they?”
“Wow… Umm… Raiders, most are simply bandits, they’ll attack you, try to steal stuff off your body, or simply capture you alive and do… Well… Very bad things to you… They’re a crazy and sadistic lot, but at the very least, they’re reasonable and have some degree of intelligence, they’ll back off if you outnumber or out-gun them, others though are just downright animalistic and bestial… They’ll see you and try to kill you, and won’t stop until you’re a bloody mush… Slavers aren’t much better, but at least they’re much smarter and more logical… They try to capture you alive, many towns and tribes in the wastes will gladly buy ponies for a variety of reasons, mostly just as forced labor though… Slavers are all about survival and profit though, they can be bought or bribed, threatened or reasoned with, at the very least…”
“Why haven’t they all been killed or captured by now if they’re so bad!”
“Because most ponies would rather surrender, or even join them, instead of getting killed, or worse… At least the west is a little safer than the east, to the east is Red Eye, a pony who has built himself a small empire on the back of slavery, with one of the biggest armies in the wasteland, all mercenaries, or pacified raiders.”
Harry paused for a second, as much as he hated to admit it, it made sense… He had put together a picture of this land in his mind, as a bunch of small neighborhoods, like Little Whinging, except every little neighborhood hated each-other and were all armed to the teeth… Thousands of little settlements trying to survive, a scattering of raiders between them, groups of Steel Rangers in what used to be major cities, and then big empires like Red Eye in the east, or the mysterious Enclave in the sky above them, and then there were little pockets which were too dangerous for even the most insane of pony to live in, like Everfree Forest, Hoofington, Canterlot, Rainbow Falls, White Tail Woods, Old Olneigh, or Maripony.
Harry spent some time alone, going back over all the information about this world… He… She didn’t like this place, in many ways, it was worse than her old life, but at least here she might be able to do something about it, magic was real, that was for sure, and here she could do it… She had been told several times that she was rather smart for her age, even if she constantly had to fake stupidity to avoid being beaten for getting better grades than her pig of a cousin… These Steel Rangers, they weren’t perfect, but they were the best hope the wasteland had of restoring order to this radioactive hell. For a second she began to think, perhaps I fell through that portal for a reason, perhaps, this place needed me.