Chapter Twenty: How to Live in a Post-Megaspell World
Looking down from a great height puts a new perspective on things, but it’s not, I think, the same for me as for other griffins. I had to climb to reach this point, whereas they could simply dart up to the heights, propelled by their wings. Maybe I’m just being conceited and want to be special, though—I can’t say with certainty. For all I know, what I see from on high is the same as for anyone else, flying or not. I know it’s true from a very real sense, but philosophically … ?
Looking down from a great height puts a new perspective on things. What would it be like to soar high enough to look down on the Commonwealth and see it in its entirety? To fly so high would mean death. No griffin can do it under their own power, least of all me. They say we had rockets capable of flying high enough once, before the megaspells fell. I’ve seen the photographs taken of the Commonwealth, but they lack something of what one can see with one’s own eyes. Or, you’ve just lost so much detail at that point that what you see is a simplified version of reality, merely blurs of color instead of mountains, forests, and river valleys.
Looking down from a great height puts a new perspective on things. It’s easy to miss the details, but they’re what’s important. I’ve traveled across the Griffin Commonwealth and seen so many things. Waterfalls that split and rejoin on their way to the ground, and mountains where a single tree clings defiantly to the peak; as well as radio relay stations for communicating with the zebra empire, and factories whose single purpose is to produce perfect ball bearings. I’ve met griffins who have looked at the Commonwealth and embraced the former while shunning the latter. They wish to live a simple life, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think they miss the point. They wish to turn back time to when not only were there no megaspells, but no war between the ponies and zebras, no influence from outside nations in the Commonwealth. But that world no longer exists, and trying to live in it will no longer work. There has to be a new way to live in this post-megaspell world we inhabit. I have ideas, of course, about what it means to do so (I’ve even written them down so I won’t forget, and shared them with others who seem to agree), but just that by itself can’t truly answer all the questions griffins will have. And if there’s anything else I’ve learned during my travels, it’s that everything in the Commonwealth has a price of some sort. We can’t ignore any part of this land, the good or the bad, and need to make use of what was left behind as best we can. All the things I’ve seen eventually converge on one point; there lies the means to save or destroy the Commonwealth. I could see everything I wish come to pass, but who’s to say I am the one to reshape this post-megaspell world? All I can think of is how to live in it.
***
When it came to reading the Book of Rok on stops while traveling through the Iron Valley, having Rael along was both a blessing and a curse. On the one hoof, he was plenty willing to talk about it with me. On the other, we were coming at the book from very different perspectives. To him, Rok was the prophet of his religion, a griffin whose advice for living had been so wise that his journal had become holy writ. To me, Rok was an interesting figure, a flightless griffin who’d traveled the Commonwealth, figured out a lot of very useful things when it came to surviving in it (especially for someone without flight, like me), and had some interesting ideas for “How to Live in a Post-Megaspell World,” as his Book was commonly also referred to. I’d seen a lot of religions in my travel that worshipped everything from the sun to a megaspell (twice for that one, actually), to the near-religious reverence Steel Rangers had for Wartime technology. I hadn’t, however, seen anything in the Book of Rok that explained the worship and reverence that Rokkists showed toward the religion’s founder. Maybe that was coming later, but it would be a turn for Rok, who so far had billed himself as nothing more than a humble traveler and been very clear about his own self-doubts, especially after obtaining a following, which he’d done prior to the latest passage I’d read.
I spoke with Rael about Rok and Rokkism as we traveled, but not exclusively. For one thing, Rael’s primary reason for traveling with me wasn’t to try converting me to his religion. Although that was the traditional purpose of an acolyte’s pilgrimage before they could advance from to priest, I’d led him off track, starting with the revolution in Moonraze. Now he had a new mission: to observe me and learn if my methods were compatible with the Rokkism he’d been taught. He hadn’t shared many of his thoughts on that so far, but he did ask me plenty of questions.
“Do you want revenge on these scientists, after what they did to your friend?” Rael asked as he walked alongside me, wings folded against his sides.
“No, the scientists who built Ache, Mr. Bucke, and the other pondroids are probably all dead by now. I wouldn’t want revenge on them anyway; they’re not directly to blame for the treatment of Ache or her current condition,” I told him. “I’m just curious, is all. I only came to the Iron Valley in the first place because I heard that there were RoBronco factories here and wanted to know more about where the Dogs of War came from.”
“That’s not the only reason you came, though,” Rael objected. “You came because you heard the Dogs of War were attacking scavengers, and you’d seen them attack other griffins and wanted to stop that from happening.”
“Well, yes, I guess that’s true,” I admitted.
“Do you think the RoBronco scientists are a threat to the griffins and ponies of the Iron Valley?” Rael asked. “Do you think they are still making pondroids?”
“Are they a threat? Maybe, though I think there’d be more evidence of it if they actively were one,” I said. “I certainly don’t think they’re making pondroids again, not after it led to their downfall and exile in Equestria. But, they might be working on something else.”
“Something like a replacement for the Dogs of War?”
“That’s what worries me.”
We were on our way to RoBronco Site Dahlia, RoBronco’s other secret facility deep in the Iron Valley. I’d gotten the coordinates from the company HQ in Castoway and RoBronco Site Hibiscus, and it seemed a shame to leave it unexplored. This was also the place that the Equestrian RoBronco scientists had fled to, according to their notes in the Dog of War labs; I wanted to know how their story had ended. If they were wise, they’d given up on their experiments and found a peaceful life, but that wasn’t what I expected to find. It was far more likely that they’d either taken over the site and used its tools to continue experimenting with robotics or joined whatever remained of the original staff in their endeavors. Maybe it would turn out that Dahlia had suffered a similar fate as Hibiscus, and the scientists had simply moved on. Where they would go, though, I wasn’t sure; we were running out of Iron Valley.
As we approached a ruined factory that jutted above the surrounding landscape, I spotted griffins fluttering around and determined that it was a settlement. As we drew nearer, my PipBeak agreed, showing “New Location: The Stacks.” The Stacks was taller than it was wide, its height increased by a massive billboard atop the structure cut into the shape of a pack of cigarettes. Two exhaust towers behind the board were painted to appear as though they were sticking out of the massive pack. Badly faded paint on the brickwork could barely be made out to read “Marlburro Tobacco.” The tobacco fields around the factory were surrounded by a chain link fence patched with scrap. They had been planted with edible crops such as pomatos and grenadishes.
There were guards posted at the entrance to the compound, but the gates were open. A dinged, bullet hole-riddled sign that read “Open for Business” was displayed, and nobody stopped us from entering. A set of warehouses lining the path into the settlement, originally meant to store the factory’s product until it was ready to load on the train cars that would pull between them, had been turned into combined homes and shops by the residents. As I peeked at some of the wares, the griffins I’d seen flitting around in the air (youths, it turned out), knocked a ball down toward me, and Rael returned it with a strike of his wing. He understood the game better than I did, and they passed it back and forth a few times before the airborne griffins flew too far away for Rael to continue playing without following.
Off to one side of the factory was a square surrounded by food vendors. I munched on a sautéed grenadish while listening to the impacts as one across the square was heated in a pot and its spiny seeds shot out in all directions quite violently. Along the side of the building, I could see laundry hung out to dry, griffins lounging in hammocks while reading, and many layers of graffiti added after the War. Painted prominently on one section of the wall was the familiar symbol of Rok, a diamond with downturned wings.
“Think there’s a Rokkist church here?” I asked Rael as I pointed it out to him.
“Oh, most certainly,” he replied between bites of grilled psycarp and pomato. “Most of the griffins in The Stacks are probably Rokkists.”
I had noticed quite a few of them wearing Rok’s symbol around their necks as Rael did.
“Is Rokkism more popular in the Iron Valley than up north?” I asked Rael.
I’d only seen one Rokkist community there, but seeing two in the south didn’t necessarily make it the dominant religion. I hadn’t stopped at every single place griffin settlement, and I’d yet to see any southern roosts.
“Definitely; Rok’s teachings have taken more of a root here,” Rael said. “You’ll only see it becoming more prevalent as we continue east.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“We are approaching where Rok established the Blessed Town of Dawn,” Rael said as he wiped his beak. “It was the first settlement of Rokkists, built upon his teachings.”
“So, we’re headed to the heart of your religion,” I surmised as I finished off my grenadish.
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Rael said. “There’s not really a location that can be called the ‘heart,’ but it’s where it started to spread from and is more or less the center.”
“Well, once we see what’s up with RoBronco Site Dahlia, I should like to see this ‘Blessed Town of Dawn.’”
“I’m afraid you can’t,” Rael said turning somber. “New Pegasus stands where it once was.”
“Oh; I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be,” Rael said as he forced himself to perk up. “Rok’s town may be gone, but his teachings live on and continue to spread. And I can still show you where it once was, if you wish.”
“Sure,” I replied, “I’d like that.”
***
My town. It’s so strange even to write the words down. What I’ve written, what I’ve said; enough griffins agree that they want to try my ideas out, to see if I’ve got it right. I’m not sure I do (not all the way, at least), but we’re going to give it a go. I’ve got just the spot, the point where this all started to seem possible, and the perfect name. The town will be called Dawn, for that’s where we looked to find our way. I hope it doesn’t all go wrong, as projects of this sort, propped up in this way, tend to do. They all want me to lead. I have experience, I guess, but only in leading a group, not a settlement. It’ll be new for all of us. New responsibilities. A new home. A new way to live in a new world. A post-megaspell world.
***
Rael and I kept traveling east, and the day after stopping at The Stacks, we arrived at the town of Kirkwell. Kirkwell had been a real honest-to-goddesses town before the megaspells had fallen, and it seemed to have carried through more or less unchanged since then. Even though it was near the rail lines that transported Equestrian goods and seemed to cater to a certain experience, it was still a real town that hadn’t been built from scrap or on the foundation of something else. The buildings were quaint, much like some of the architecture in and around Heritage Park in what was now Laketown. It was meant to evoke an “authentic” griffin experience, but both its location at the bottom of the valley and its style (far behind what was found in the roosts) betrayed that. Ponies could visit and convince themselves they were experiencing griffin culture, but for the griffins, it was merely a way to separate ponies from their Bits, and they’d go to great lengths to accomplish it.
Since the end of the War, the griffins in the town seemed to have dropped the act and all behaved similarly to other griffins I’d met in the Commonwealth. Kirkwell was a town that existed in a very different world from the one in which it had been built. A makeshift fence for keeping out wildlife had been erected around the town and griffins walked around visibly armed, in case of raider attacks, though none seemed particularly concerned about that. The guards that flew the perimeter of the town did so leisurely or walked along the ground, despite the reduced line-of-sight. No, the griffins of Kirkwell didn’t seem terribly concerned about what was outside the town, but what was within it was another matter.
At the center of the town was a square with an old-fashioned windmill at one end and a hotel turned into a Rokkist church on the other. At the center of the square, near a flagpole, were two groups of griffins. One had the rough-and-ready look of settlers, accoutered with random bits of armor and clothing for protection, some with battle saddles under their wings. An older griffin with gray and black feathers (and an unfortunate balding patch atop his head that was sometimes revealed when he gesticulated with his cap) seemed to be their leader. The other group were dressed uniformly in brown combat armor similar to what I’d seen Grand Marshal Gideon’s personal kill team wearing, though not quite as high in quality. On their armor was the eleven-striped flag of the Griffin Commonwealth overlaid with a “V” and their leader, a griffin whose white feathers turned a pale blue at the end, had a set of lightning bolts over her flags.
“Bodies, caps, or food, it’s your choice,” the griffin commander was demanding of the townsgriffins as Rael and I approached, joining the growing crowd. “Whether you think so or not, your town falls under the jurisdiction of the Land Corps, and supporting it is not a choice.”
“And what’s the Land Corps ever done for us, hmm?” the leader of the townsgriffins croaked. “You haven’t cleared out the night stalker nest to the north, nor raiders on the railway.”
“We provide protection,” the griffin commander said definitively.
“Not from what I’ve seen,” the elder griffin scoffed. “You never show up here unless you want recruits, money, or a free meal. I thought you’d gotten the message that we’re not paying into your racket anymore.”
“Two weeks ago—” the commander said as she pulled a notepad from a pouch on her armor and flipped through it.
“We paid the Weather Corps for some rain, but what business is that of yours?” the townsgriffin interrupted.
“You’re part of the Griffin Commonwealth, and you don’t get to pick and choose what you do or don’t want to pay into or take advantage of,” the commander said irately.
“Sure, that’s what his royal highness Gideon wants, but somegriffin outta tell him that ain’t how the Commonwealth’s worked in the past. Grand Marshals can go around making up rules and making up new worthless corps so that there’s more infighting and they can get more power for themselves,” the elder griffin said and the commander turned red at the implication that her corps was worthless, grinding her beak, “But that’s not gonna change anything if we all just say no to him. So here, let me say it to your face, missy. No. We don’t want anything to do with the Land Corps.”
“You’ll regret this,” the commander seethed.
“What, are you going to launch an attack with the army of the recruits we won’t give you, paid for with the caps we won’t give you, and fed with the food we won’t give you?” the elder griffin mocked. “Fly on back home and bother somegriffin else.”
“This isn’t the end,” the commander promised, but her words were clearly hollow. “And take that disgrace down!”
She pointed up to the flag atop the pole before she and her soldiers did as they were told and left. The flag was not the striped banner of the Griffin Commonwealth, but something I hadn’t seen before. The flag’s field was solid cerulean with the outline of a cloud and lightning bolt in black upon it. Kirkwell’s town flag, or some other faction?
“New Pegasus,” Rael said when I asked him. “The city has a wide reach.”
“Like Rokkism,” I offered, though Rael didn’t seem to like the comparison, judging by his expression.
“Yes, but far more concrete, centralized, and militaristic,” Rael said. “The eastern end of the Iron Valley is the de facto territory of New Pegasus, and most settlements within it are protected by the Dashite Enclave. There are a couple even outside of it that look to them for protection rather than the Commonwealth, like Kirkwell.”
“Wait, you’re going to have to back up,” I told Rael as I led us toward a place to sit down where he could explain things to me. “What’s the Dashite Enclave?”
“They’re the rulers and main population of New Pegasus,” Rael said. “You know Los Pegasus?”
“I’ve heard of it,” I said, surprised that it seemed Rael knew more about an Equestrian city than I did. Granted, my knowledge on Los Pegasus was incredibly slim. I knew that the Vanhoover Steel Rangers had come from there originally and later been exiled by the Los Pegasus Steel Rangers for sharing technology with Wastelanders, but that was about it.
“Well, New Pegasus is named after it, though it’s a bit on the nose if you ask me, given that members of the Dashite Enclave are, well, pegasi. Specifically, they’re pegasi who fled the Grand Pegasus Enclave during the Enclave Civil War about fifty years ago.”
“I’ve never heard of an Enclave Civil War,” I said, “Though I doubt I would have, since the Enclave tends to stay above the cloud layer and not really do anything.”
“I don’t know the specifics,” Rael said, scratching the feathers on the back of his head with a claw. “All I know is there were some rebels who weren’t satisfied with staying above the clouds doing nothing, and they got in a big fight that eventually ended with a battle between cloudships over the Iron Valley. In the end, the rebels took down the Enclave ship sent to take them out or capture them and settled New Pegasus in its wreckage. Unfortunately, the battle was what destroyed the Blessed Town of Dawn.”
Rael had gotten quite excited and animated in describing the history of New Pegasus but grew melancholy as he got to the part where Rok’s town had been destroyed.
“So, that means we’re going to see some pegasi soon?” I asked, trying to take his mind off it.
“If we keep heading east, definitely,” Rael said, perking up a bit. “If we don’t find them, they’re sure to find us.”
***
At Kirkwell, we’d met up with the main rail line through the Iron Valley, and we followed it the next day. We were nearing the point I’d planned for us to leave the tracks and head south when we came upon the ruins of the Minty-Fresh Toothpaste Factory. Unlike other ruins in the Commonwealth, where time and abandonment had left a place far less than it had been, Minty-Fresh had been truly ruined. Several buildings had been leveled and those that still stood were barely intact, with only some of the walls remaining and few fully enclosed spaces. The ground was cratered nearby, and ruts had been torn in it in places by something gigantic. I suspected a battle between cloudships in the Enclave Civil War; and some of the scorched earth in the surrounding area, exuding low levels of radiation, supported that theory.
Before we moved on, I decided to pick through the ruins, looking for ingredients used to make the toothpaste shilled by the blue-and-white-maned unicorn on the mostly intact billboard peeling away from one wall. My experimenting with alchemistry had burned through my supplies, and I’d been led to believe by the Book of Rok that plants such as this often held useful ingredients. Rael helped me as we searched the ruins, and I managed to find a few containers before FITS alerted me to the presence of a stranger.
“Rael,” I whispered, drawing his attention to rejoin me.
Once he had, I advanced toward the contact on FITS, my battle rifle drawn. As I swung around a collapsed warehouse, they came in sight: an earth pony mare with a dark blue coat and a long salmon-colored mane. Upon her back was a battle saddle that balanced a hunting rifle on one side with heavy-laden saddlebags on the other. She froze as she saw me, but her mark on FITS didn’t turn hostile.
“You scavenging here as well?” the mare asked, her eyes flicking back and forth between me and Rael as he flew into view.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“You have a problem with sharing the scavenge?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Good,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief, and the tension went out of her body as I lowered my rifle. “A unicorn and a griffin together, huh? You from New Pegasus?”
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m from Equestria originally.”
“Nor am I,” Rael said, “From New Pegasus, that is.”
“Well, me neither, in case you were wondering,” the mare said as she picked her way across the rubble toward us. “I’m Seltzer.”
“You live around here?” I asked after Rael and I had introduced ourselves.
“Yeah, nearby. I travel all throughout the eastern end of the valley looking for scrap,” Seltzer said. “What about you? What brings you out here?”
I opened my mouth to tell her about my travels in the Griffin Commonwealth, but before any words came out, a beam of magical energy shot through Seltzer’s head. She too opened her mouth, to scream, but nothing came out before she was disintegrated into glowing ash that drifted down into a pile. Shocked at what had just happened, I was instantly on alert, searching for whoever had shot her. I drew my battle rifle and scanned the area, spotting hostile pips on EFS all around.
“Drop your weapons! Comply now or we will fire!” an augmented voice demanded, and I looked up.
Hovering in the air around Rael and I, gradually descending while keeping the weapons mounted on their armor pointed at us, were six pegasi. I assumed they were pegasi, given their body shapes and wings, but they were completely encased in armor. It was clearly power armor, but far less bulky than what I’d seen Steel Rangers wear, more like what Roaring Thunder had possessed. It was power armor designed to be worn by pegasi, light and aerodynamic, with an articulated scorpion tail sporting a magical energy weapon at the end for an additional arm. The armor was painted the same cerulean as the New Pegasus flag, and upon the flanks, over each pony’s cutie-mark, was the cloud and lightning bolt. We were surrounded and outgunned, but they hadn’t fired on us yet, so I held out hope. I dropped my battle rifle to the ground, and two of the armored pegasi dropped to the ground to frisk Rael and me.
“Captain, what do we do with these?” the pegasus in front of me asked of her commander still in the air after she’d relieved me of the rest of my weapons and my saddlebags.
“Subject 33 was a known template. These two are unknown, but it is unlikely they are new templates,” the captain replied. “We’ll take them back to New Pegasus for examination.”
“You are hereby under arrest,” the pegasus in front of me said while her compatriot told Rael the same, even though it was painfully obvious.
Level Up
New Quest: Imprisoned by Pegasi – Deal with the pegasi in New Pegasus.
New Perk: Silent Running – You can now move at any speed when sneaking without penalty; just don’t bump into anything.
Alchemistry +6 (61)
Barter +2 (119)
Manipulation Magic +2 (46)
Small Guns +2 (141)
Survival +8 (75)