Chapter Sixteen: Into the South
“… crisis may have abated, at least for the moment. It’s too soon t—if whatever drove the scavengers to Plea—oast in the first place has b—esolved, but we can only ho—ife will re—to normal and the sca—eak their camps an—”
I switched the radio on my PipBeak off and gave up on trying to listen to the Commonwealth Crooner’s news amid the increasing interruptions as the signal from Radio PC repeatedly broke up. It wasn’t like I’d been able to make out much even without the bad reception. The roar and rattle of the vehicle I was strapped into meant that I could barely hear the words, even with the volume on my PipBeak turned up to the maximum.
The Dust Riders had been in no shape to leave the camps around Pleasure Coast, ravaged as they were, but I had managed to find another clan of scavengers who were undaunted by the Dog of War attacks and ready to go back out into the wastes. Paran, pathfinder of the Whirlwind Wranglers, had agreed to let me ride with them south to Castoway; from there, I’d make my way to the Iron Valley. I wasn’t riding with the pathfinder himself, but with Quince, another member of the clan. His “road-beast” had two wheels on the front in the normal configuration for an auto-carriage, but the two at the vehicle’s rear were inline, and swiveled as Quince steered. The seating was also inline, and seats had to be entered by climbing in from above. Though the vehicle had space for three riders in addition to the driver, those seats had been filled by supplies, and I’d had to help Quince resituate those in my seat and strap them securely to the vehicle before we could depart. I sat immediately behind the griffin as we rumbled along through the wastes, my head exposed to the elements.
Before we left, I’d garbed myself in a rough approximation of how the scavengers dressed. Nothing could be left exposed to the elements, so I’d had to acquire boots, goggles, and an air filtration mask, as well as wrap my mane, horn, and tail. Whatever I couldn’t buy from shops in the city, the scavengers had been happy to sell to me for bills from the stack of Commonwealth guilders I’d gathered during my travels through the north Commonwealth. They were strangely picky about them, though, refusing any bills with more than minimal damage.
The need for my new protective gear became clear as soon as we’d set off. The dust kicked up by the wheels of the road-beasts quickly coated everything; if I hadn’t covered up, I’d have been blinking dirt from my eyes, spitting grit from my tongue, and washing my mane for weeks. There was a semi-fertile area along the coast, a little way away from Pleasure Coast and the range of the megaspell that had missed it, that would not have been so dusty; but that wasn’t where the scavengers liked to ride. They preferred the lifeless, gritty desert between the coast and the mountains as a track for their road-beasts, a wide-open expanse where anything could be a road (apart from the occasional ruin from back when the wastes hadn’t been quite so wasted).
A gunshot sounded nearby, and I looked around for the source and what was being shot at. Atop one of the other vehicles stood a griffin passenger who’d stepped out of their seat and was taking aim ahead with a long-scoped rifle. They fired again as their target came into view, lunging toward a road-beast that swerved out of its way. The assailant was nearly the size of an ordinary auto-carriage and covered in overlapping plates of organic armor. It landed heavily as its claws missed its target, but quickly recovered and swiped at the griffin who’d shot at it as they passed by. The griffin with the rifle leaned back, kept from falling off their vehicle by the cable strapped to their waist, and the beast’s claws sailed by harmlessly. I thought we’d left it behind, but it quickly reappeared, rolling forward in a ball and overtaking the road-beast the scavenger was perched upon.
“What is that thing?” I asked Quince, yelling to be heard over the swarm of engines.
“An armordillo!” he yelled back. “They often try to wound our road-beasts but usually give up once we leave their territory!”
It was with a mix of amazement and dread that I watched Quince pull out a paper map and point to some obscure markings on it, requiring him to let go of the steering wheel entirely.
“How good of a shot are you, Doc?” Quince asked.
“Well, I’ve never heard any complaints from all the things I’ve shot!” I yelled back.
“So, is that good or bad?” Quince asked, apparently not getting my joke.
“Uh, good!” I said simply. “Should I help take the armordillo down? I don’t have a very good shot from here!”
“No, leave the armordillo to Shanez!” Quince ordered. “She’s got it handled; it’s not a problem! Keep your eyes on the sky for skvaders! There’s a nest nearby and they’re sure to be stirred up at the sound of gunshots!”
Skvaders? I wondered, but I saw that passengers (and in some cases, drivers) on other road-beasts were preparing weapons and scanning the sky above, so I did the same. The armordillo tried one last attack before giving up and rolling away, but in the few brief seconds I’d watched it do so, the skvaders showed up. When I swung my battle rifle back around, there was a flock of half-rabbit, half-bird creatures swooping down upon the scavenger convoy. I’d never seen anything quite like them before, though I supposed it made sense that the Griffin Commonwealth was home to more than one hybrid species.
I fired my rifle into the underbelly of one as it flew past before turning my attention to another swooping down toward the exposed griffin who’d been firing on the armordillo. With ERSaTS to help, I couldn’t miss. As I perforated the beast’s torso, it shrieked, and I was able to get a good look at the rows of needlelike teeth within its mouth while time was still slow. As ERSaTS wore off and the skvader began to veer away, the repeated bursts from my rifle clipped its wing and it fell, plummeting to the ground ahead of the road-beast it had tried to attack. The vehicle bounced as it rolled over the now definitively dead skvader, the griffin standing atop it miraculously keeping her balance.
Gunshots rang out among the convoy as scavengers defended themselves and their prized vehicles, but none of them ever seemed to slow down. If anything, the convoy picked up pace as it fought off the flying rabbits. Whether it was to gain some distance from the nest or for the thrill of it, I couldn’t tell. A skvader flew directly at Quince’s road-beast from ahead and I peppered it with shots, forcing it away. They were certainly hearty creatures, in spite of their deceptively cuddly appearance, but they were far from invincible.
As a skvader flew over the convoy, one of the scavengers fired an RPG at it, blowing it to bits and scattering it across the waste and nearby road-beasts. A few angry shouts came from the scavengers who owned the blood-splattered vehicles, but the attacker’s extreme measure seemed to succeed in convincing the skvaders to leave the convoy alone for the most part. Some of them nipped at the edges for a few minutes, but they were eventually driven off by the shots from the scavengers there.
“Is this … normal?” I asked Quince after a cry of victory went up from the griffins, loud enough to be heard over the engines, if only just barely.
“There are many beasts in the wastes, Doc!” Quince replied exuberantly. “None, however, can compete with our road-beasts and our might! You will see, the Drive is far from boring!”
***
Quince’s attestation had been accurate: it was far from a boring journey. There were plenty of beasts in the wastes besides just armordillos and skvaders, including post-War abominations spawned from megaspell fallout and grossly enlarged versions of creatures that had existed before. Most of them couldn’t keep up with the scavengers’ vehicles for long, which was these griffins’ greatest advantage. Could that explain why driving had become the primary staple of their culture, rather than the scavenging they were named for? I flipped through my old copy of the Book of Rok at the next stop, when I was no longer worried the pages would be torn out by the wind and left scattered for leagues behind us, searching for some notes the flightless griffin may have made long ago.
Rok had indeed met scavengers in has travels, and taken notes, but there were little similarities with the scavengers of today. One of the few things that had remained the same over the years was, fittingly, their scavenging. Though everything with the scavengers seemed to be couched in terms of driving, they’d never given up picking through the ruins that dotted the wastes in order to acquire items they could trade with others.
Another thing Rok had noted that still held true was the scavengers’ distinctive clothing. Even then, when they hadn’t had to contend with the dust kicked up by their vehicles or the breakneck speeds they traveled at, they’d covered themselves completely. It made sense when picking through dangerous ruins to have protection, but this was more than that. There was a sense of almost religious purity that accompanied it, and it could also be found in the terms they used for themselves, such as “Unsullied.” It was clear after a day riding with them that the scavengers saw themselves as better than other griffins in the Commonwealth, perhaps a holdover from the early days when they’d been better shielded from any megaspell fallout and were less affected, even if the effects on this side of the sea were far milder than in Equestria. That obsession with remaining clean had had unforeseen consequences, though. It would have been rude to aks outright, but I had a strong suspicion that the scavengers were no longer able to fly. With their wings bundled up as they were, they would be unable to do so, and I’d never seen them remove the coverings to do more than tend to injuries or clean themselves.
Cleaning for the scavengers was itself a ritual that strongly reinforced my observations on their obsession with purity. I held to no such beliefs, though I could see the appeal as I worked to clean my battle rifle during a stop to refuel. The dust kicked up by the scavengers’ vehicles got absolutely everywhere, and it was why they not only covered themselves completely, but also their weapons when they weren’t using them. My rifle was in a frightful state after several fights with beasts in the wastes, and I had to disassemble it and thoroughly clean it just to be sure it would function properly when needed again.
As I worked to reassemble my main firearm, I watched as the scavengers took turns refueling their road-beasts. When Pathfinder Chan of the Irradiated Pinions had told me months earlier that scavengers used guilders to purchase fuel for their road-beasts, what I’d pictured hadn’t been anything like this. There were no suppliers they traded guilders to that I could see—just an abandoned petrol station in the middle of nowhere. It was quite a large station, with eighteen pumps, but the Whirlwind Wranglers were a sizable clan and had to cycle through so everyone could fuel their vehicles. On each of the pumps was a slot into which the griffins fed the Commonwealth Guilder bills one by one, until the machine was satisfied and allowed them to begin transferring fuel to their vehicles and into containers for on-the-road refueling. It was all completely automated, and I was amazed it still worked after all this time. It made sense now why the scavengers wanted guilders instead of other forms of currency; it was the only thing these pumps would accept as payment.
After they’d filled their road-beasts, the scavengers didn’t depart immediately. The petrol station was more than just a place to refuel for them. It was a safe place, perhaps even a sacred place. Some of the scavengers offered additional thanks to the pumps for their provision, while others swept away the dust covering the asphalt around them. Some took a more practical direction, using the air compressors by each pump to blow dust from the crevices of their road-beasts, or climbing onto the awning above them to peer out at the wasteland with binoculars and telescopes.
Some time had passed, and I was beginning to wonder if the scavengers intended to stop for the night. Suddenly, a shout went up from one of the griffins above, drawing the others to her.
“We ride!” Pathfinder Paran called down a few seconds later. “The Metal Ones are on their way!”
Every griffin hopped to to pack up anything they’d taken down and piled into their road-beasts. I hurried back to Quince’s vehicle and quickly strapped myself in as the engines around me roared to life. The Metal Ones were what the Whirlwind Wranglers had dubbed Dogs of War, and I tried to keep my eyes on the petrol station as we pulled away. It was difficult to tell through the dust and from such a distance, but I thought I could see them lope up to the petrol station and stop to stare after the road-beasts. Though none pursued us, more continued to arrive, and I lost count at seven after they became too indistinct to continue. It wasn’t many, but for Dogs of War, it was more than enough to take out the entire convoy. Why then, weren’t they following us?
***
I hunkered down as far as I could within Quince’s road-beast the next day, trying to avoid the blowing grit that engulfed everything. A dust storm had sprung up in our path and the Whirlwind Wranglers had—of course—driven directly into it. The entire world turned orange within the cloud of dust as the sun lit up the particles, making it impossible to see anything. All I could see through my goggles, when I wiped them clear, was Quince’s road-beast, and even then it became hard to make out details beyond a certain point. Every few seconds, a device at the vehicle’s front let out a sharp chirp, and I could hear others coming from the other road-beasts in the convoy, even over the wind and engines, albeit faintly. It was how the scavengers stayed together and kept from colliding with each other in the storm, but it sure was eerie and annoying.
They had plenty of practice, but I kept FITS cast anyway and watched the movement of the other scavengers around us. The spell was not impeded by the blowing sand, and I was able to see the friendly pips shuffle around as the scavengers steered their way through the storm. I also, briefly, saw a hostile pip appear before vanishing just as quickly. In the dust storm with next to no visibility, there was no telling what creature of the wastes it could have been. A few minutes later, I spotted a hostile pip again, which also came and went, and began to wonder if FITS was being unreliable. Then another hostile pip appeared, off to the left, and didn’t go away. From that direction also came a soft thud, and one of the chirps that had been very faint went completely silent.
“Quince, did you hear …” I yelled, but stopped when one of the nearer chirps to the left became more rapid.
Quickly, others from the left did the same and Quince switched his as well. The hostile pip remained on FITS as Quince began to steer to the left, closing with the rapid chirps while those to our right began to spread the message. I saw the hostile collide with a friendly and our ally blinked out, followed a moment later by another thud and end to the chirping from that direction.
“Get ready to fight!” Quince called as he reached down for a weapon.
“What would attack us in this storm?” I yelled back, baffled.
I could hear muffled gunshots in the storm and see flashes of light now in the direction of the hostile pip, so I drew my rifle without further questions. Normally, the blowing dust would have done some serious harm to the weapon, but that was before earlier that day when I’d helped the scavengers pick through a convenience store. It had certainly been aptly named, for only hours before we rode into the dust storm, one of the griffins had found an old grimoire that contained instructions on how to cast protective spells. One of them was able to repel dust, dirt, and mud from mechanisms, and had proved perfect for protecting my firearms from the ever-present dust of the wastes. After I’d enchanted my own weapons to keep them safe from external pollutants, I’d lent my unique talents as a unicorn to some of the scavengers, to protect their weapons and exposed portions of their road-beasts. It was far from the entire clan, but hopefully it would prove useful in the fight that awaited us.
Another road-beast came into sight through the blowing dust, and Quince pulled alongside until they were nearly touching. Others piled in slowly, creating an island of vehicles within the storm, close together for protection. The fight was closer now, and the convoy edged toward it. There were enough road-beasts together that I couldn’t see when we finally reached it, but I could tell because the nearest scavengers lit up the storm with their weapons. Among the gunshots, I also spotted energy beams slicing through the dust clouds, and came to a sinking realization of what was attacking the convoy.
A thud and flash marked the explosion as another road-beast was destroyed, and a Dog of War ran across the tops of the assembled vehicles, griffins struggling to turn quickly enough to fire upon it as it loped along on four legs. It shifted into its bipedal form as it reached a road-beast with a tower sticking up from its back. Using its foreclaws, it grabbed the supporting beams of the tower and twisted, unsettling it, and causing the structure to come tumbling down, along with the griffin atop it who’d barely had a chance to use their machine gun on the robo-hound. The Dog of War sank its hindclaws into the body of the road-beast to maintain balance and rotated its upper torso to fire at the scavengers in a wide arc using the weapons in its wrists and mouth.
I started firing on Dog of War as soon as I’d seen it, but my shots, as expected, made little difference. The mechanical hound was just too well armored for my battle rifle to put a dent in it. Even using ERSaTS, the parts that were exposed were too small to hit with anything other than luck. Once the Dog had anchored itself in place, I tried throwing a grenade its way. The explosive tore a hole in the road-beast it was standing on and pulled one of its hindclaws free, but it seemed equally capable of balancing with only one leg; all I’d accomplished was to draw its attention to me.
Did it recognize me from the other Dogs of War? I didn’t know, but it moved toward me as if it did. Clambering over other road-beasts, tearing chunks from them as it went, it leapt toward Quince’s vehicle. Quince yelled out something in a rapid cant I’d never heard before, and the drivers to our right gave us some space, allowing Quince to swerve. It wasn’t much, but it was enough that the Dog of War came short of tearing my head off, its shining claws instead tearing through Quince’s cargo. Packages containing spare parts and fuel canisters went tumbling away as the Dog of War sliced through the straps holding them to the road-beast and the metal below.
The Dog fell into the gap but quickly recovered before it could be run over by the road-beasts behind us. It jumped onto a vehicle to our rear, and I ducked down into my seat as it fired at Quince and me. Shouting came from ahead of us, and I watched the pips on FITS shuffle around. Casting ERSaTS, I ducked my head up and looked back; the Dog of War grasped the driver of the road-beast it stood upon in one hindclaw, dragging her from her vehicle in slow motion. I drew Big Iron and fired the overpowered revolver at the automaton, ERSaTS guiding my shots toward the robot’s ankle. They mostly just struck the armored plates and did nothing, but one got through to the machinery between them. The Dog of War’s claws relaxed, allowing the griffin to slip free.
The Dog of War’s head swiveled so that its eyes fixed upon me and I was staring into its open jaw. A series of loud, spaced-apart shots came from behind me, aimed at the Dog of War. Wherever they struck the armor plates protecting the Dog’s body, they punched holes right through it, and the robot reeled. One of them went straight into its snout, destroying the magical energy weapons embedded within. The Dog’s attention turned toward its new attacker, and so did mine. Directly ahead of Quince’s road-beast was now the personal vehicle of Pathfinder Paran. Paran himself stood on the back, an anti-machine rifle in his claws.
“Come on!” he taunted the Dog of War, and it succumbed to his bait.
The hulking machine charged forward, climbing over Quince’s vehicle, while Paran fired at it. That put it directly in the sights of Paran’s daughter, standing beside him. A harpoon gun was mounted at the back of the road-beast, and its barbed lance shot through a gap in the Dog of War’s chest armor created by Paran’s shots. The Dog nearly stumbled from the impact, then truly stumbled when the cable affixed to the harpoon was suddenly drawn tight. The robo-hound loomed directly over me, and I took the opportunity to fire up into its face before it pulled itself upright again.
Another harpoon fired from behind us shot through the Dog of War and yanked it in the opposite direction. Giving a metallic roar, the Dog of War swung its claws through the cable ahead of it, only to be yanked off-balance and fall backwards. Paran’s daughter fired her harpoon gun again; this time, the harpoon pinned the cyberwolf to Quince’s road-beast. It began to reconfigure the plates on its body to break free, but before it could succeed, Paran leapt across to Quince’s vehicle and charged the Dog of War. Getting as near as he dared, he pointed his anti-machine rifle at its head and fired until the automaton stopped moving and its internal lights flickered out.
In the midst of the dust storm raging around us, Paran examined the lifeless Dog of War, giving a whoop of victory when he was satisfied that it had truly been brought down. The cheers spread throughout the convoy, quickly becoming too faint to be heard over the wind and engines. The Whirlwind Wranglers had been gored twice now by Dogs of War, but this time, they’d managed to strike back.
***
It wasn’t all celebration after bringing down the Dog of War. Eighteen road-beasts had been lost during the fight, along with their drivers. Seven more had taken damage, including Quince’s, and five other scavengers had been injured without losing their road-beasts. Once the clan made it through the dust storm, they’d taken a moment to heal, repair, and remember the lost. Pathfinder Paran had designs to take the Dog of War’s “corpse” as a trophy, but that would require some modifications to his road-beast to keep from displacing the younger members of his family that rode with him. For the moment, it stayed strapped to Quince’s machine.
The day after the fateful encounter in the dust storm, the scavengers stopped at another station to refuel their road-beasts. To their horror, however, they found that the pumps would not accept their guilders. While the scavengers bemoaned their fate and some cried that the Time of Great Thirst had come, I broke into the shed near the pumps under which the maneframes were buried. Hacking into them, I found RoBronco code, just as I had at Stalwart Steelworks and Greenbush Agriculturium: the Dogs of War had been here and taken control of the station. Whether they had done so to cut the scavengers off from their fuel or were hunting them because they had taken fuel from here, I didn’t know, but hopefully I could resolve the catastrophe facing the griffins. It was difficult, but I managed to undo enough of the Dogs’ code that the pumps allowed them to get the fuel they needed so desperately.
They were very grateful, but Pathfinder Paran was also concerned when I told him what I had found. Without fuel, they would eventually be stranded in the wastes, unless they gave up their vehicle-based lifestyle. Even if it was inevitable that someday they would be forced to abandon driving once all the petrol stations in the wastes dried up, it wasn’t something they were willing to do. Driving had become part of their culture, and not even Dog of War attacks would convince them to cease their travels through the wastes.
I spent the remainder of the journey trying to find some way to protect the scavengers from being wiped out or stranded. By the time we reached Castoway, I had a solution. With the remains of the Dog of War (within easy reach on the back of Quince’s road-beast), I’d manage to rig up a simple signal. With luck, it would convince other Dogs of War to view the scavengers as friendly and stay away, as well as trick any fuel stations they came across to still sell to them.
Like with Pleasure Coast, the scavengers were not permitted (nor desired) to enter Castoway, and I stayed with them the night after we arrived at a camp on the city’s outskirts. I was treated to what I took to be a typical scavenger party. Food was passed around, inventive dishes created entirely from scavenged Wartime victuals, griffins danced and sang, and, most surprising of all, some removed their masks and hoods in my presence. Apparently my contributions to the clan had earned me that, or my disclosure that I’d been born in a Stable convinced them they did not need to worry about me sullying them.
In the morning, I bid farewell to the scavengers. While they did their trading with merchants from Castoway, I made my way into the city. Before I’d left Pleasure Coast, Summer Sunrise had give me his take on how Castoway had been during the War. When the Griffin Commonwealth, under Grand Marshal Galilea, had opened Iron Valley to Equestrian companies, it had also provided a way for them to get their products back to Equestria. Railroads—absent in the north Griffin Commonwealth—were the backbone of Iron Valley, and all led to Castoway. This city on the coast had been built solely for the purpose of shipping and was dominated by docks, warehouses, and company offices.
On the Last Day, Castoway had been spared a direct or indirect megaspell attack, but it hadn’t fared well in the aftermath of Equestria’s destruction. With the loss of their homeland, the Equestrian companies controlling the city collapsed immediately, and nopony had any idea what to do. Castoway became a raider city nearly overnight as desperate ponies turned to any means at their disposal in order to survive. In the sixteen decades since then, Castoway still hadn’t recovered. From what I’d been given to understand, it was far from as bad as Equestrian cities—outright raiding had gone away—but conflict was still a way of life here. A collection of warlords controlled the city, but the balance was far more precarious than between the Three Families of Pleasure Coast. The Commonwealth Crooner claimed that the most recent bout of fighting had ceased so the warlords and their followers could lick their wounds, but that didn’t mean peace; it just meant they were preparing for the next round of conflict.
I kept my eyes sharp and weapons at the ready as I trotted through the streets of Castoway. Shifty-looking ponies eyed me from posts at the entrances of buildings or from rooftops. I doubted they would kill me for no reason, but I still didn’t want to take any chances. For all I knew, I was trespassing in their territory and that would be reason enough. Fortunately, so long as I kept to the middle of the street, avoiding the burnt-out husks of auto-carriages and trucks when they hadn’t been pulled to the side, they seemed content to let me pass.
I had no idea where anything was in Castoway, so I wandered. My PipBeak kept updating my map as I traveled along, and I eventually found my way to the piers that made up the city’s western border. Dozens of them stretched out into Castoway’s bay, many trailing off into the water at their far ends. In fact, the whole city seemed to dip to the south, sinking into the sea, and I noticed that water stretched up some of the streets, creating canals between buildings. Masts of ships also poked up out of the bay, though sometimes the ship was still mostly visible. Those that were near docks had machine gun nests atop them, and I avoided them lest some warlord think I was intending to board uninvited.
“Looking for something?” a mare’s voice asked after I’d stood gazing out at the piers for several minutes.
I turned cautiously to see a unicorn standing behind me, fortunately not pointing a weapon in my direction. She had a submachine gun, but it was holstered at the moment. Her coat was yellow and her mane the purest white, her forelock long and hanging down over one eye. She didn’t look at me threateningly; rather, she seemed curious.
“Yes, actually,” I replied. “I’m looking for the RoBronco offices. I assumed they had some in this city.”
“Ha, you’re in luck,” the mare said as she cracked a smile. “RoBronco’s offices have been turned into The Workshop, lair of the Artificer. I know him well and can get you in—for a fee.”
“That would be great; I’ll give you your caps after you take me there,” I said.
“Smart request,” the mare said approvingly. “Let’s get going, Mister ...?”
“Doc,” I answered, and we set off. “What’s your name?”
“Daff,” the mare responded.
“That’s an odd name,” I commented.
“Short for Daffodil,” Daff explained. “My parents were a bit peculiar for Castowayans.”
“I’m a bit new to Castoway.”
“That much is obvious,” Daff snorted.
“Who is this Artificer?”
“One of the city’s warlords; surely you’ve heard of them. He’s set up nice and pretty in The Workshop with his mechanical army.”
“And you work for him?” I asked.
“No, I’m a Freelancer. I work with him,” Daff said, though the distinction was lost on me.
The building Daff brought me to wasn’t far from the port, and where it lay to the south was just far enough inland to avoid becoming completely cut off from land. Water lapped at its southwestern corner, and the streets to the south and west of the tower were damp from when the tide had been in. The RoBronco logo hung prominently from the twenty-first floor, although the neon lights that had once illuminated it were long dead. Guards waited at the entrance but let me through without complaint, led as I was by Daff. They did, however, search me for weapons and confiscate everything I had, in case I’d come here to assassinate their boss. The building’s lobby had been turned into a bunker with concentric rings of defenses. They were empty at the moment, and after handing over a hundred caps to Daff for her services, she led me through them easily.
We climbed into a service elevator, and to my surprise, we headed downward rather than upward. The lair of the Artificer was turning out to be more lair-like than I’d anticipated. When the elevator doors opened, we stepped out into a vast underground warehouse that had been turned into a throne room of sorts. Pony-shaped robots stood in rows before a raised dais constructed from cut-up cargo containers, and the dais itself was covered with workbenches cluttered with mechanical parts and terminals. Behind the workbenches moved a figure I assumed was the Artificer.
“Artificer!” Daff called out as we trotted between the rows of robots staring at us eerily with their blank faceplates, “I’ve got a pony here who wants to speak to you.”
The Artificer emerged from behind his projects, trotting out onto the forward part of his dais, which looked more like a stage now that we were up close. The Artificer was an earth pony, from what I could see. It was difficult to tell if he had or used to have a horn, given that his head was completely encased in a conical helmet that had once been the head of a RoBronco automaton. His forelegs had been replaced with mechanical prosthetics far beefier than mine, with large grasping claws extending from oversized hooves. Over his body I could see other robotic alterations with varying degrees of success, including a set of dragonfly-like wings upon his back that I doubted would be able to lift his unbalanced body.
“Ah, a fellow augmented equine!” the Artificer said upon recognizing my prosthetic. “What brings you to the Workshop of the Artificer!?”
His question coincided with coils mounted upon the walls arcing with electricity. The Artificer clearly had a bent toward the theatrical.
“I was hoping to find where RoBronco had facilities in the Iron Valley during the War,” I told the Artificer as he loomed over me.
Based off of what Summer Sunrise had told me, I suspected the Dogs of War had originated from a factory somewhere in the Iron Valley, but I couldn’t scour every inch of it, not when Dogs of War were attacking scavengers.
“Alas, you’ll find none of that here!” the Artificer said overdramatically. “If only I could be of more aid, but such knowledge is lost to me! You must go to the land deed office to find what you seek! Daff can give you direction, but before you go, would you consider joining my army? As you can see, my metal troops make my victory against my nemeses inevitable, and one day all Castoway shall bow before the Artificer’s might!”
“Thanks, but … I have other business to attend to,” I told the Artificer.
“If you find these other RoBronco factories, you will let us know of them, yes?” the Artificer asked as I tried to leave before he got any weirder.
“Sure, why not,” I told him, which seemed to satisfy him.
The Artificer happily returned to his work, and Daff and I left back between the rows of lifeless automatons.
***
The land deed office was on the eastern fringe of Castoway, out past the ordered streets and corporate offices. The building was low and unassuming, surrounded by a chain-link fence with barbed wire atop it. There was some combat damage to the concrete sign out front bearing the Commonwealth flag and the name of the building, but otherwise it looked like the place had remained unoccupied since the War. It wasn’t a particularly valuable piece of real estate for any warlord and it was far from everything else, so they seemed to have left it to the griffins who’d eventually abandoned it. Maybe one day a Grand Marshal would order it reoccupied, but I was far from Shearpoint and Gideon’s power here in the south, so that day seemed far off.
A chain and padlock held the compound gate shut, and I picked it and let myself in. The same was true of the doors to the land deed office, which also proved no barrier. Inside, the building was dark, and I had to use the flashlight on my PipBeak to navigate. With no power, I knew finding what I sought wouldn’t be as simple as searching through a maneframe. On further examination of the building, I discovered it had no maneframes or terminals at all; instead, everything was stored on paper in vast arrays of filing cabinets.
It was tedious work to pick through them and cross-reference with indices, but eventually I found what I was looking for. According to the land deed record, the Griffin Commonwealth had granted two plots of land to RoBronco in the Iron Valley upon which to build factories. With some additional cross-referencing, I turned the locations into coordinates and added them to my PipBeak’s map. Now I knew exactly where to search for the origin of the Dogs of War.
I’d no sooner finished my search than I heard movement elsewhere in the building. Casting FITS, I spotted several hostile pips moving through the building. I drew my shotgun and carefully made my way back, keeping an eye on FITS. When I reached the large central record room filled with rows of shelves and filing cabinets, I spotted the hostiles, who also spotted me. Several ponies with flashlights mounted to their backs faced me down, illuminating the space enough that I could also see the pony commanding them. A mare stood at their center with a blindfold over her eyes, a battle saddle on her back in a peculiar configuration. It appeared to be a set of scales, with a rifle on one side and a grenade launcher on the other. Pyrotechnics went off behind her as she began to speak.
“Foul trespasser who would break into that which is mine, I know not which of my rivals and nemeses sent you, but I judge thee guilty and sentence thee to death!” she cried out.
I cast ERSaTS as her followers began firing upon me and sprinted to a side hallway. The beam from my PipBeak bounced wildly as I ran, making it difficult to see where I was going. The light from an enemy nearly blinded me as I turned the corner and came face-to-face with them, but I was quicker on the trigger and fired my shotgun in their direction, shattering their flashlight and dropping them with one shot.
I tried to figure out the layout of the land deed office as I ran, firing into ponies whenever they barred my path. The light from the exit came into sight, but fire from an enemy combatant pinned me down, and I jumped into a cart that didn’t have nearly enough files in the bottom to cushion my fall. It provided protection as I drew my battle rifle and fired it over the top of the cart until the hostile pip on FITS disappeared.
There were still a couple of hostile pips in the direction I was headed, waiting outside the doors to get me, so I threw a grenade through the open doorway and waited for the ponies there to be blown back before galloping out. The lot outside was undefended now, and I ran for it, ignoring the pulped ponies just outside the doors. The ponies who’d tried to kill me pursued me out, but I’d already made it past the fence by the time they exited the building; any of their shots that did find me glanced off my doctor’s coat rather than causing harm. As I ran along the fence, headed west, I spotted their leader exit the building.
“Rue this day!” she yelled imperiously. “Know this! Blind Judgement has judged you, and you shall forever remain judged!”
I’d thought that the Artificer had been odd, but apparently he wasn’t the only crazy pony with power in Castoway. If this was another warlord, then Castoway was far wackier than I’d realized. I suspected that the Artificer was a rival of Blind Judgement and had sent me here knowing I’d thin out her ranks. However, the thought didn’t bother me as much as it would have if I hadn’t accomplished my purpose. I had the locations of the Iron Valley RoBronco factories; I had a path forward. With luck, I’d never need to worry about returning to Castoway and facing the Artificer, Blind Justice, or any other bizarre personas that ran the city.
Level Up
New Quest: The Doghouse – Find the origin of the Dogs of War.
New Perk: Inside Information – As a pony yourself, you know best how to do damage to your own kind. +10% damage to all types of ponies (unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi).
Athletics +2 (37)
Barter +1 (114)
Electronics +1 (51)
Enchanting +6* [Skill Book] +3 (31)
Explosives +2 (114)
Lockpick +3 (111)
Science +2 (112)
Small Guns +5 (129)
Survival +1 (58)
*Crash Course