Introduction
When Tinker got two tickets to the Poneighsian Islands for a week in paradise, he imagined he'd spend that time laying on a beach, trying the local cuisine, soaking up the sun with Slipstream, jet-skiing, sport fishing or, if he worked up the nerve, surfing. He couldn't have been more wrong. True, he did do many of those things, but he did so under very different circumstances than those he had imagined.
The Hoof Islands... Once, they were a tropical paradise, inhabited only by the indigenous flora and fauna. Later, a splinter group of the Poneighsian zebra tribe, with their distinctive blue stripes, settled here and called it home. That was many years ago. When explorers discovered gems, and -more importantly- coal on the islands, they sensed an opportunity ripe for the picking. The “Stinking Rich” trading company soon set up several mines in the hills and converted several beaches into tourist traps.
The company, however, underestimated the sheer stubbornness of the Poneighsian zebras, who have remained resolutely attached to their ancestral home. Eventually, the trading company's hoofhold here collapsed, the mines and resorts abandoned. Other groups, including the remnants of the changeling swarm came and went as well, all of them disappointed. But, where one pony sees trash, another sees a wealth of treasure...
The sad tale of the Hoof Islands only continues from there, but to really, truly understand the Hoof Islands and their dark and varied past, one must go there. That is, of course, if they survive.
“Is it recording? Ah yes, there's the light. Good.”
“This message may never see the light of day. I know I probably won't, but I feel it needs to be done. These last few months have been some of the craziest, most sick, twisted, and messed up moments of my entire life, yet I've never felt this alive before.... Would I go back, trade them for the life I lived before, if given the choice? No. You probably think I'm crazy for saying that, but you don't know. You haven't lived the life I never asked for. Maybe this recording will change your mind, or maybe not.
That's for you to decide. The day began like most others....”