Fallout Equestria: In Her Shadows

by Leo Collie

Chapter 1

The Equestrian Badlands was a misnomer for the place. It really was not that bad: sure, it was mainly a barren wasteland that was barely capable of supporting crops and life, but then it was largely avoided just that reason. It even had the fortune of not having perpetual cloud cover that was over a large portion of the rest of Equestria. But what singularly made the Badlands an ideal place for a settlement following the balefire apocalypse was its unique isolation from everything.

One such settlement in the badlands (and arguable the furthest pony settlement into the vast desert ever established) was the town of Derbyshire, which had come into existence about fifteen years after the Great War. A small number of ponies that had the dubious "luck" to have survived the apocalypse managed to form a close-knit group (in several cases they established families), and lived out of an abandoned Royal Equestrian Army Reserve depot on the rural outskirts of Baltimare for a number of years. Unfortunately, rivalling armed bands were drawn to the depot because the military nature of the premises seemingly promised advanced and powerful weapon systems, which motivated the attacking faction to ignore the overwhelming firepower of the defenders. This caused the raiding band to achieve an ironically futile pyrrhic victory by causing the defending group that was far less inclined to combat to hastily evacuate and withdraw: managing to escape without substantial casualties. The raiders, meanwhile, found no such advanced military weaponry that was accessible to them. The remainder of the group came to the shared realization that the breakdown of civilization that had been so awful and so cruel as so far, had not fully plunged into the deep, dark depths of depravity as of yet. The group scavenged resources, literature, tools, consumables and weapons - a heavily-loaded cart hitched to each pony - the two dozen ponies trekked a massive distance, leaving Equestria proper in the process, bound for the badlands.

Following a lengthy journey into the sweltering badlands, a site was finally chosen on the roadside of the cobblestone road leading even deeper into the badlands, and to the Equestrian border a few hundred miles further on. The position they chose was atop a gently and gradually sloped ridge, with which the settlement was given a sweeping view of the waste to all sides. The settlers unloaded their provisions, and broke all but a few of their carts down for material to build homes. Holes were excavated atop the ridge that was their new home; which the sheet metal bought with migrant ponies used to construct humble subterranean single-room homes in these holes, with dimensions of roughly 10 meters by 10, and a relatively average ceiling. They had compacted dirt floors, with walls and roof constructed from sheet metal, and a straight earthen staircase leading up the surface, with a metal door affixed horizontally to the ground. These homes were then buried with the previously unearthed dirt (which coincidently, mercifully provided insulation to what would be otherwise an intolerably hot hovel), accessible through the one surface-level door and down the stair case. In total, twenty of these homes were created in an oval shape - some claiming the layout only inadvertently ended up resembling a derby; which, in true Equestrian form, the town was christened the very clever and original name of "Derbyshire".

While a large percentage of the settlers had been hard at work creating homes for new community, the remainder had been at work, seeking out a means to provide water for the town. The settlers had bought a large supply of food and water, but the consumption of water in the sweltering heat had been significantly higher than anticipated. As such, the single geologist unicorn mare that was with the group (who had survived due to a fluke of a field excursion to a moderately distant location to take mineral samples) had her work cut out for her. She persevered through a week of hard surveying and conducting of soil samples, however, and her knowledge and expertise had resulted in a quick determination that there was an aquifer not far from the town. The excavation of a small deep well commenced, following the conclusion what was perhaps the first democratic vote the settlement had. The hole was nearing thirty metres in depth, with a pair of ponies digging through clay, and having the dug up clay bucketed out, before the water table below ground began to fill the hole up to the water table level: much to visible relief to the mare in charge of the operation. A Geiger counter radiation test still measured that the water had higher than background levels of radiation, but it was still far safer to drink than most water found in the Equestrian wastes.

Attainment of water complete, the last major task for the community to complete was to turn useless desert land into a viable patch for crops. This was recognized as the 'hard part' - a small team of ponies were outfitted with weapons and tools to return to Equestria for a few cartfuls of soil to start crops. The supplies of fertilizer, seeds, tools, and other necessities had already been transported, but the largest issue was the very poor soil of the badlands was unable to support the crops. With time, composting and magic, it would be possible to enhance the soil, but in the meantime, there was no alternative. It took two weeks for the team to return, wagons in tow, laden with soil and a few other miscellaneous goods obtained along the way. In that time, soil was shifted, and preparations made to plant. The soil was laid and ploughed, seeds were dropped, and the water from the well-used to hydrate the four acres of crops.

That first season was the hardest, with poor crop turnout and fears of starvation; but lessons were learned, irrigation prepared in advance and composting had been done in earnest to provide soil for the next season, allowing the expedition to instead focus on attaining products and materials to raise the standard of living for those in Derbyshire. Each successive season from that point on became progressively more fruitful. Teams returning to Equestria for materials and goods occasionally returned with a few more ponies, and, years later, a trader; who returned to his town with fresh produce for the first time. This placed Derbyshire on the post-apocalyptic map, and made the town quite prosperous for what it was. The infrastructure was improved as the years progressed: more subterranean houses were built; a modestly-sized town hall was constructed, as was a school. By the one hundred and seventy four year-mark after the Great Balefire Armageddon, the population of Derbyshire had blossomed to a hundred and twenty ponies.

---

"And that concludes today's lesson on the history of Derbyshire. Don't forget your speeches on who is a role model to you and why, which we're doing next Monday. Have a good weekend, and class dismissed."

The collection of fillies in the ramshackle room that constituted the schoolhouse looked up, dazed at the seemingly abrupt conclusion of their teacher’s never ending oration (though the brief summarization near the end should have alerted them had they been paying any attention), before collectively cheering, taking to their hooves, and frantically fought each other to escape out the door of the schoolhouse, to the chagrin of the blue-maned grey pegasus stallion with a cutie mark of a globe standing at the front of the room. The teacher hastily called out a few reminders, and watched with morbid fascination as the last filly cleared out of the room in less than a minute flat.

Emerald Dawn sighed, and cast his gaze over the now deserted classroom, and collected his notes and books strewn somewhat haphazardly about his desk; placing them into his saddlebag which he then donned. Not many of his students had particularly given a care about today's lecture, he dully thought as he nudged his pupil's chairs under their desk in their absence. Not that he could blame them for their disinterest: Derbyshire was a dreadfully old, dull town with an equally long and dull history. Even he shared that sentiment. But this collection of fillies were too young at the ages of about six to ten, to learn about Equestrian history and the fate of this once-paradise; which left only Derbyshire as a history topic.

The town had about twenty five foals, with a fairly balanced ratio of colts to fillies, who had lessons in the schoolhouse four days a week. A handful of older ponies and ponies who had graduated the basic curriculum that the school had showed up for lengthy in-depth lectures on Saturday and Sunday afternoons about varied topics such as history and theory in regards to the physical and arcane sciences. Unfortunately, this was a small minority: as a school teacher in an agricultural-centric town, he had the unfortunate knowledge that most of his pupils had more interest in practical matters, such as the most time-effective way to raise corn, than the socio-economic policies from almost two hundred years ago.

Perhaps worse, only just in the latter half of his first year of teaching, he was only just beginning to recognize just how prominent the town's unfortunate anti-intellectual attitude was, and how disheartening it was for him; what with a disturbingly large proportion of colts and mares leaving his class before they had even graduated basic education to work on the family farm due to negative pressure from family. Large amounts of money were earned from exports of grown goods, and families had their foals out doing farm chores from early in their lives. Over time, education became secondary to the maximization of time to do more work to make more. Emerald could understand why foals left school too early on, but disagreed with it due to professional opinion.

The young grey pegasus had escaped the anti-intellectual pull easily as a foal: his mother, Stardust, had been Derbyshire's schoolteacher. This equated to mean that there was no chance at all he would have been allowed to escape his mother’s classes, as long as he was under his parent’s roof. Not that he would have anywhere to go had he fled, unless he joined up with a caravan to see the world, or went to work with one of the farms. Fiery Dawn, his father, was a bookkeeper for several of the larger farms, and had managed to encourage his interest into the field of mathematics; though this interest had waned fairly quickly, it had cemented in place his curiosity and desire to learn.

There were also social reasons for why: he was already considered different because of his wings, and inadvertently ostracised simply because he was the only pegasi in the town – or to be approximate, the only in the one and a three-quarter centuries of existence. Both Stardust and Fiery Dawn had been dumbfounded when the delivering doctor held up the new-born foal – with a pair of fledgling wings; the offspring of a unicorn mother and an earth pony father should have resulted in him being either an earth pony or a unicorn, as per the usual Punnett Square. In Emerald’s case, the doctor had explained, deeply recessive traits that could have only been anticipated on a pedigree chart had resulted, and as such, he had been born a pegasi.

According to the roving traders that came to the town biweekly to exchange goods for produce, he was one of just a few pegasi around; apparently, they were exceedingly rare to come across in the modern Equestrian wasteland; especially the ones that were not of Enclave origin. There were rumours that defectors from the Enclave who came down to the surface had their cutie marks burnt off, and replaced with a seared-on Rainbow Dash's iconic cloud and thunderbolt. Emerald had sincerely doubted the rumours, and dismissed them as simple idle hearsay.

Emerald did a visual once over of the classroom, before pushing the door open, and stepping out into the sunlight. He squinted for a moment as his eyes readjusted to the dazzlingly bright mid-afternoon sunlight in the baby blue sky, letting the door slam shut behind him from the hot dry breeze. He yawned, stretched his legs and neck, and spread his wings for the first time in hours now free of the confines and responsibility of a classroom. Endorphins flooded the pegasus’ mind in response; and in a state of momentary bliss, bought his wings down to propel himself skyward. He changed the aspect of his wings to propel himself upwards and forward, gracefully soaring into the clear sky.

Stabilizing his flight at a moderate altitude with hardly a pant, and entered a gentle banking circle, the grey pegasus peered down at the town below him: a dreary and rough two acres of flat dusty land that made up the town ‘center’ of Derbyshire; a well-worn, hoofbeaten elliptical path, ringed with dilapidated horizontally-lying doors in the ground leading to moderately sized, if rudimentary, homes. In the middle of the oval, there were the two-story town hall, a handful of single story buildings, and the schoolhouse packed closely together in a grid plan. Visible in the distance were a half dozen or so farmhouses, and acres of lush healthy crops, that were decentralized from the town.

The pegasus began a gradual spiralling glide down to the street, killing off forward velocity immediately prior touching down at a walking gait, taking barely a second to catch his footing. He proceeded to trod through the main street down the centre of town, politely nodding to shopkeepers and ponies passing him, pausing at a produce stall with a bored purple unicorn mare sitting behind it in the shade, reading a worn magazine. The unicorn looked up, noticed Emerald before her stand, rummaging through his saddlebags for his small satchel of bottle caps: prompting her to get to her feet eagerly. It had been a slow day of business.

“Afternoon, Emerald. How did today’s class go?” the mare inquired politely.

“Hey, Lula,” he replied, immediately slightly exasperated at the topic of conversation; however understandable a topic it was, given his career as a schoolteacher. “The foals had absolutely no interest about Derbyshire history, and probably absorbed more from the desks they dozed on than my class.” He abruptly changed the topic, as he took stock of the selection of apples on the counter before him.

“How’s business today?”

The pegasus selected two apples and gingerly placed them in his bag, and chose one more that he chose to crunch on with some gusto, as Lula levitated out a number of bottle caps from the satchel, tightened the drawstrings and replaced it back in Emerald’s saddlebag.

“Oh, it was a fairly boring day, not many sales. And that was nine caps, and I’ll see you tomorrow, Emerald. Have a good day.”

The pegasus gave a polite nod, still crunching on the apple as he resumed his walk home.

---

Emerald Dawn allowed the door to the subterranean family home that he and his father occupied slam shut behind him, and trotted down the earthen stairs.

“Hey dad, I’m home. I come bearing apples,” he called out in greeting, as he entered the compact living area, illuminated by a dim light swaying gently from the ceiling. The pegasus turned to see his father sitting in the cramped kitchen, at the little plastic table they had bought from a trader a few years back. Two platefuls of vegetables sat on the table. He dropped his saddlebags on the floor to be moved to his room at a later point in time, and approached his father to give him an affectionate embrace.

“Welcome home, Emerald,” the blue maned white furred earth pony said, as he pulled from the the clasp to allow his son to sit at the table. The grey pegasus promptly dug into his meal, with idle small talk occurring over how their days went, before deteriorating to silence to eat for a few.

“How did the lessons go?” Fiery started, having previously consumed a portion of his meal prior to Emerald’s arrival.

Emerald made a decidedly unpleasant noise midchew, and swallowed to elaborate.

“It went alright, mostly: mathematics was a touch and go topic as the foals are having difficulty understanding the concept of multiplication. Given this, it is not boding well that we will get to division on schedule. The class is progressing nicely in regards to understanding written language: we’ve reached solid basic foundational reading skills and even more basic writing. I expect that they will attain a modest level of literacy comprehension within the school year. Furthermore, the foals were mostly well behaved, despite several minor verbal altercations. As for my history lesson...”

The teacher trailed off pointedly, before continuing his explanation.

“I presented the material in the most interesting fashion I could possibly do, but I think that presenting what even I admit is dull historic material to foals that are too young to fully comprehend was a mistake. It was a waste of valuable lesson time, which I already lack enough of to teach what I feel they need to know to make it here. I should have taught the adult class that next Saturday.”

As the young pony took another mouthful of vegetables, Fiery saw the opportunity to interject and console his son, and utilized it immediately.

“Your mother said the same thing countless times about her lectures; that she felt it was a waste of time and effort for both her and her pupils. She was amazed when, time and time again, they showed they learned more than they let on. Don’t be disheartened by what you feel is a failure of a lesson plan: if nothing else, you learned as much as they did-”

The earth pony caught his misspeak too late, and maintained a steady look at his half eaten plate of food as he noticed a bemused smirk emanate from Emerald.

“You know what I mean,” Fiery shot back with a hint of mock defensiveness, a grin growing on his face.

“Mhm,” came the feigned and disbelieving reply to the gaffe. “So, with that, how was your day, dad?”

Fiery Dawn happily seized the new conversational topic and ran with the conventional post-work mealtime ritual of talking about what he knew best: accountancy. He was the most numerically competent pony in the area, and was widely sought after by the large farms exporting the literal fruits of their labour and their corresponding influx of wares.

"It was largely unexciting; I just went into the town hall for an hour at about midday to do the daily expenditures. Not one of the six ponies in the place seems to be able to do basic assets and liabilities! Its not that I haven’t shown them what to do, its that they are simply lax, sloppy and imprecise about it."

Emerald finished the last of the meal from his plate, listening to Fiery’s more detailed recount of his dull day digress into an elaborate on the various incompetencies of Derbyshire officials and their staff. He stood and took the plate in his teeth and carried it to another table with kitchen provisions and utensils neatly stacked on one side, and a bucket of soapy water on the other. He dunked his plate into the tepid water with a twist of his head, and swirled water around the plate to collect the microfragment remains of his meal, before tipping the plate to the side to allow the water to run off it and back into the bucket.

The pegasus noticed his father grinning at him, as his intonations began to imply he was concluding his long winded tirade.

"...and I guess thats why they pay me the big bucks."

The stallion returned the direct look with a glare of mock disapproval, with an accompanied groan at the poor pun. Fiery maintained an expression of amusement at the reaction to his atrocious word play.

“Oh, and sorry to be the bearer of bad news: Ivory Spring stopped by this morning to ask me to remind you that you have the rostered guard duty for the night.”

Another audible moan emanated from Emerald around the dishcloth in his mouth before the sentence was completed: he had been rostered for a few night postings a week to patrol the town at the nagging insistence of the chief of the guard, Ivory Spring. She had been so insistent because of the distinct advantages that a pegasus would have in the event of a gunfight - something she was quick to reassure that would not happen.

He quickly and efficiently dried the plate and gingerly placed it atop a small pile of other plate, and turned to Fiery to continue the discussion.

"Ugh, I had hoped it was next week. I resent that Ivory pressured me into making a commitment. I told her I am a teacher, not a soldier: her reply was simply that ‘it isn’t a dangerous duty and all I need to do is fly about with light armour with a gun and act tough in the unlikely event something happens’."

Fiery shrugged.

"From what I can see, this isn’t a bad thing to have going: it is a night shift, twice a week, and you get paid at a premium because of your...”

He gestured at the stallion’s folded wings with a hoof.

“..unique skillsets. You may have to teach a class tired, and if you are so adamantly against it, then why not tell Ivory you don't want to do it?"

Emerald Dawn tilted his head from side to side, weighing up potential replies and potential courses of action with a building grimace on his face, before giving a resigned sigh upon reaching a conclusion.

“You have a good point there, dad. I’ll stick with it for the mean time.”

The pegasus looked up at the clock against the tin wall, and counted a few short hours of sleep before his shift was to begin. He made to exfiltrate the paternally-dominated conversation.

“Hey dad? I would love to stay up and talk, but I unfortunately need to be up in a few hours, and I have had rather a long day...”

Fiery Dawn nodded politely, recognizing the logic in the statement.

“Of course. I’ll be awake until you go, see you later.”

He nuzzled his son.

“Good night, Emerald. Sleep well; I love you.”

Author's Note:

Stuff kept coming up, I blew my schedule between the discovery of the need to plan things out, university exams and the untimely occurance natural disasters (flooding of river in front of paddock and moving lifestock during the freak South Island cold snap). Massive apologies are due, and I am truly sorry. (Also, I'm mildly curious about reader opinions as so far: in an attempt to incentive it, an opinion means a cameo in one of the next few chapters in one form or another!)

Comments

[KarlB591]

I must say, you have the dull history lecture thing down pat. I was even starting to nod off.

[Leo Collie]

2758868 It had to be that way to provide backstory, and this seemed to be the best way to present the information. I will admit it took me a while to justify and figure how ponies came to be out that far, and sustain themselves.