Diminuendo
Ten Carriage Guns
“Resolved, that a swift sailing vessel to carry ten carriage guns, a proportionable number of swivels, and eighty men, be fitted with all possible despatch for a cruise of three months, that the commander be instructed to cruise eastward for intercepting such transports as may be laden with warlike stores and other supplies for our enemies, and for such other purposes as the Congress shall direct.
That a Committee of three be appointed to prepare an estimate of the expenses, lay the same before the Congress, and to contract with proper persons to outfit the vessel.
Resolved, that another vessel be fitted out for the same purposes and that said committee report their opinion of a proper vessel along with an estimate of the expense.”
“Resolution of the Continental Congress that marked the establishment of what is now the United States Navy.” - Source: Journal of the Continental Congress, 13 October 1775, in William Bell Clark, editor, Naval Documents of the American Revolution, Vol. 2, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966): 442.
(Reminder that I own nothing!)
‘Thought’
“Dialogue”
“Words in a foreign language.”
***
Twilight Sparkle dragged herself down the well-worn road towards her home of Ponyville. Canterlot, the place where she had been forced into servitude for the past several weeks, was slowly shrinking into the dust of the road behind her. The sky was filled with the same dust, and a bolt of unnatural lightning flickered across the sky. Maybe Equis herself was reflecting the sorrow brought down upon all of her children through the overcast sky and sporadic crackles of angry lightning.
Twilight’s eyes fell to the grey dust of the road beneath her hooves, and she suddenly took note of the state of her own appearance. Her hooves were covered in mud and dirt, as was her mane. She supposed that she looked pretty pathetic. Twilight shook her head and pushed the frivolous concerns out of her head. There were more important things to worry about than her own appearance. She took comfort in the familiar weight of the young dragon on her back, asleep and as dirty as she. Setting off again, she passed what once was one of the factory-like farms most of the earth ponies had been forced to work in. The ground was dry, cracked, grey, and spent like the rest of Equestria. She was too tired to feel the dark and conflicting emotions that she knew she was supposed to.
The road wound to the left. As Twilight rounded the bend, she encountered the burning wreckage of one of the quadrupedal war machines that she had seen in the past few days... She tore her eyes away from a relatively small corpse beneath the machine as the corpse’s hidden machinery sparked and sputtered. She had wondered what had happened to Lori. Twilight blinked the tears out of her eyes. She would mourn for the strange mare who, under better circumstances, might have been her friend, but she would do it once she was sure her friends were safe… once Ponyville was safe. Twilight had to force herself to start walking again. She wanted to rest, to lie down in the road and sleep, but she had to keep going.
A loud hum and a tremor that sent pebbles dancing across the ground drew Twilight’s eyes to the sky. There, crossing over the mountain behind her, was one of the human ships. Once proud and powerful like a dragon in their prime, now beaten and barely flying. It was distant in the sky despite being the size of one of the large buildings in Manehattan. It skirted the underside of a dust cloud, its once gleaming white hull blackened and melted to the point where she could clearly see the damage from where she had stopped on the road.
‘Survivors.’
There was a loud crack as the Butchers found the vessel, and she shut her eyes tight, not wishing to see. The sounds told her the story just as well as if she had seen it. The loud screech of shearing metal, the hum that invaded her horn every time she came close to one of the human ships faded to nothing, and a faint explosion reminded her of all the death that had visited Equis. Too emotionally drained to care, Twilight pressed on to the tiny village she could see emerging from the haze.
‘Not anymore.’
Twilight trudged over the creaking wooden bridge that led over a small stream and into the town, pausing as she reached the apex. The town almost looked the same as she remembered. If it hadn’t been for the omnipresent dusty haze that blew through the empty streets and choked the few ponies that had already moved back into town, she might have been able to pretend none of it ever happened.
She could see her destination from here, the little library she had called home for so long, back when her life was unmarred by the cruelty of the universe. Setting off once again, she didn't remain unnoticed for long. The residents of her little town murmured as she passed, quickly leaving what they were doing to follow her down the street. Muffled, reverent murmurs of “Princess Twilight” followed her down the street faster than the ponies who uttered them. She screwed her eyes closed again and moved faster. She didn't deserve her crown... or her wings. She could never be a leader to these ponies.
Finally crossing the threshold into her library, she slammed the door behind her with a quick spurt of magic. Almost single-mindedly, she ascended the stairs up to her room. She was too tired to even notice the disarray her books were in, or the broken windows letting the dusty haze inside. Finding the door to her room, she quickly entered and placed Spike in his basket. That done, she eyed her own bed. It was covered in dust from the broken window, but she couldn't bring herself to care about that or even her own filth as she slipped underneath the sheets.
Before Twilight could slip away into the much sought after embrace of sleep, she heard a clunk from downstairs, causing her to groan to herself. She didn't want to deal with anypony right now. Reluctantly, she dragged herself from her now dirty sheets and opened the door to her room, so she could tell whoever was here to come back tomorrow. As she pulled the door open, a pair of ponies paused on the other side, both as filthy as she.
“Twilight? Is that you?” came a scratchy voice from the gloom of her hallway.
Rainbow Dash. It was Rainbow Dash. Twilight perked up a little, energy flowing back into her weary bones. She raised a hoof and placed it on Rainbow’s face, feeling, making certain she was actually there.
“Twilight, darling, you look terrible. It’s below the station of a princess to look so horrid,” the posh accent laced with a few giggles came from behind Rainbow Dash.
Twilight almost wanted to laugh at Rarity’s joke. Almost. Instead, she grabbed the two of them in a death grip. What was going to be a happy laugh instead emerged as a half sob. She tried to speak, but she just couldn't get the words out. Instead, all she could do was clutch her friends and vent her sorrow.
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technological supremancy?
.......... magic can turn gun to chocolate.
3741128 A gun can shoot you before you finish the incantation.
Also, transmutation seems to be a relatively high-level spell. I can't recall ever seeing it outside of the one time Twilight turns her parents into cactus, which occurred when she was undergoing a magical spike so fierce that it impressed Princess Celestia.
I want to like this fic...
But I have no idea what is going on.
Like, at all.
3741203
Your not really supposed to know what's going on yet.
I think you'll like it if you stick around.
3741145 ................... i was only giving the more humiliating variant.
alternatively magic can make all the ammo carried to combust, exploding the gunpower. even if it is like laser guns it can cause shorting out. best part of all is that need not even be present, they can literally set up a specialized bubble of magic that causes these specialized effects.
hell even bullets are useless. magic could be used to tkae away the very thing that makes bullets lethal; velocity. not to mention that magic could likely deflect such projectiles easily.
hell planes would be useless. planes are incredibly delicate things. all the ponies would require is to generate a magical bubble that would deter or affect the movement of a plane as it flies in, thus saving energy from needing a solid barrier. this would cause planes to completely lose control and crash. '
don't even get me started on the nightmares that they could do with nuclear arms and simply sending tornados at the enemy. what would is a nuclear missles if its uranium has been teleported out of it? what weapon can be devised that can deter are carefully crafted natural disaster aimed at your troops?
basically this is what owuld happen. they would kill a lot of ponies but be quickly massacred in the counterstrike. literally having the very devices of war turned against them in so many incomprehensible ways. guns blowing up and wounding soldiers, vehicles shutting down as subtle magic destroys their nner mechanisms. humans realizing that just because an earth pony is the size of a large dog does not make them less capable of snapping you in half with a single kick. not to mention the troops having to deal with semi intelligent Megafauna, demons, and god knows what else in the equistria wilderness.
also alicorns....................... nothing would utterly obliterate moral than having your mean annihilted by a pretty princess pony physically as large as a young woman.
turnign guns to chocolate would simply be to rub salt into the wound.
3741203
This, and the fact that this is just more generic "evil humans" bullcrap
3741229
That is of course assuming all unicorns could do everything that you just described
because, remember, every one of them is usually boiled down to one very specific kind of magic
3741229
3741203
Actually, not at all. This story isn't really about humans Vs ponies. It's about the depths someone will sink to in order to survive and the tragedy of their efforts not even mattering at the end.
Not exactly sunshine and rainbows but not humans randomly slaughtering ponies either.
3741255 ....................not really............ like at all. Lyra the unicorn, despite being a lyrist and musician, can teleport and went to Celestia magic school, which is made for unicorns with specific amounts of talent. if unicorns were truly limited only to magic related to their cutie marks, then that would mean that there would not be any magic books to the public.
rarity herself showed that she is far from limited to merely her gem finding spell and telekinesis. she has the power the repair objects as well, as well as teleport objects as needed.
and going by the logic of limited by cutie mark, celestia would have been incapable of using anything but abilities relted to the day. she was shown to be able to generate dark magic of all things too. her being an alicorn is secondary in this matter.
so yes, they would be able to do all of this. they would simply need the right spells.
.............alkso discord............. turning everything to chocolate............
3741229 You're forgetting that most unicorns are limited to very basic forms of magic plus whatever they're talent revolves around.
Not every unicorn is Twilight Sparkle or Celestia and not every pegasus is Rainbow Dash.
More over, if the size of the towns we see in Equestria is to scale, their population probably numbers in the millions in total, most of which probably have no concept of war.
3741234 This is the assumption I was worried the first chapter would cause.
I can assure you that this isn't the case. If it was, then I wouldn't put my name on it, it's just one of those stories that takes a little while to get rolling.
I can elaborate if you want, but that has the possibility of being a little spoiler heavy, so I'm going to hold off on that for now.
3741295
...Ok I'm just going to guess you didn't look much into military equipment and training....or much into the show, so I'm just going to stop here
3741296 .........large trained military presence.......... constant attacks by varios mosnters............ documents of ponies ACTUALLY giong to war.................. argument invalid.
3741304
Alright if you say so
still keeping that dislike on, but I'll watch this to see where this goes
3741316 sighs. the show only shows us normal circumstances. jsut because it is not shown does not mean it does not exist. makes more damn sense, with all those damn spell books, that unicorns can learn spells beyond their own cutie marks. just as it makes far more sense that celestia has had to fight many enemies over the years considering how many dangers equistria actually holds.
military training would be useless when your equipment has been destroyed through incomprehensible means. no matter how well you shoot, it will not help if your own bullets break your gun. no matter how well you have been taught to fight hand to hand, it is useless against an enemy with not onyl superior strength but animal charateristics. and it does not matter how advanced your machines of war are if something beyond your aiblity to stop creeps into them and breaks the fragile pieces within.
3741318 Just because an ancestor went to war does not mean their descendant has any real understanding of the event. It's just text in a history book.
And Equestria certainly does not have a sizable military. The most soldiers we've ever seen on screen numbered just over a dozen, and they were all armed with little more than spears. The most violent act any of the mane six have ever been exposed to before the Changeling Invasion was a bunch of ponies throwing pies at buffalo, and even during the Changeling Invasion there wasn't any actual loss of life.
Driving off a bear is not the same as having combat experience, especially when you can ward them off by rocking them to sleep and giving them warm milk, as was the case with the Ursa Minor. Not to mention the fact that a grand total of three things have ever come out of the Everfree forest. One of which posed no direct threat to the ponies themselves and two who were deliberately lured out of the forest.
3741394 And if anything else doesn't make sense, you could always throw in the Alternative Universe tag, amirite?
3741362 Except most unicorns can't do that. If the show is trustworthy, not even Celestia can do that, or she would have turned the changeling army into harmless puppies a long time ago.
Perhaps if Equestria had time to prepare for invasion you would have a point, but that isn't what happened. Space aliens appeared in orbit and invaded, for whatever reason.
3741405
Fair enough.
3741318 Yo magic is something that takes a very long time to master. As we know, even Twilight hasn't fully mastered it. Teleportations are limited to a few feet, transmutations are extremely difficult(remember the orange with frog legs), mind altering spells are incredibly difficult to control, levitation seems to be the peak of an average unicorn's power(and they can't lift boulders, that's only for someone at Twilight's level), shields can be taken out by bugs body slamming it(Chrysalis ate Shining's love, not his magic), and time spells are useless. Only someone with Twilight's expertise would even know of the existence of these spells, much less be able to cast them themselves. Equestria isn't full of Twilights.
3741229
You OP magic is only good for one thing, giving reasonable people headaches with its stupidity.
"what would is a nuclear missles if its uranium has been teleported out of it?"
What 'would is' a unicorn's power be able to stop a nuclear missile's ballistic, near-orbital velocity.
A nuke isn't a big missile that flies to the target, it's a rocket that goes into space at thousands of meters-per-second and slams down a tiny, hardened entry capsule so fast is creates a wave of superheated plasma simply with air friction. Then it splits an atom, then it creates nuclear fusion.
3741362
I feel like I'm being ignored...
Anyway your assuming the ponies are going to try and fight back. Have you read the chapter yet? If you haven't I suggest you take a really close look.
3741394 .............. really? yo uare focusing on the factors of kid show? not trying to comprehend the situation being that they are in a freaking would where faar too many things have inc long fangs?
................that is a weak example to use.
3741362 Lol what kind of argument is that? Do you watch the news expecting one of the news anchors to just start floating?
3741432 You're the person ignoring source material and making up your own proof, not me.
3741417 ..........that is why i gave SIMPLE magical reaction. and no one in the show has said, or shown, that unicorns are completely limited to their magic taught.
and she ate his damn energy for god's sake. and it is likely the bugs were doing more than simply slamming into it.
3741229
Oh, look, we have another imbecile ponywanker who clearly gives too much of a fuck.
You need eyes.
3741418 .........having a large part of the missles mechanism suddenly removed would likely cause the missle to malfunction if not immediately destroy it.
forget it. i am not arguing about this anymore. the lot of you focus on, oh we never seen it in the show, isntead of using your heads and realizing that they have a lot more capabilities if you read the signs, and that EVERYTHING we have made depends on things not spontaneously breaking as we use it.
Hello, can anyone hear me?
Helloooo? This is your author speaking, I think comments might be broken or something.
3741487
Eh, there's a flamewar going on
I doubt it
3741434 its called observation and speculation. being creative. my answer is the creatures figuring out how our devices work and destroying them with minimalistic effort by breaking the right parts. your answer is, oh we got bomb and nuke, which re said devices with tiny parts tht are pretty fragile.
and that is only if they do nto feel like humiliating the enemyto the opint of them killing themselves in shame.
Well, I feel like i should really add, that if humanity is at such a point where it needs to invade a random planet and commit genocide, they happen to have things like Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons which they will have no quarrels using considering their current situation. Even humans needed to send in ground troops for whatever reason, they would more than likely have air support and almost guaranteed aerial superiority. Even without any of that, humanity's arsenal would FAR outclass the ponies, assuming ponies only have spears and the humans are still using firearms (albeit very advanced firearms) from the simple fact that a lead projectile hitting a pony in the head at 940 meters a second would more than likely lead to a casualty.
3741496
I kind felt like I was standing in a room filled with people with their fingers in their ears all going, "LA LA LA LA LA!"
I suppose I had to expect at least one flame war.
3741479 Yea, but how would ponies even know about this? If I was a legitimate alien hoping to invade a planet. I wouldn't just run in all gung-ho. I would gather as much intel as I can to completely obliterate them in the quickest and most efficient way possible. Ponies would never be able to retaliate in the ways you say they would.
3741526 It should be noted that the humans aren't the ones committing genocide in this case. Something else I was worried about...
3741548 Oh, is that so? Well even if I'm wrong, if the attacker on the ponies is whatever the heck is forcing humanity to go on the run, them I'm damn sure the ponies have even less of a chance at even fighting back.
3741464 ........really? i am the only person realizing we rely far too much on things with breakable parts inside of them? really? i am the only one realizing that said ponies have the aiblity to reach inside of the devices and break those parts?
.............you lot lack creativity and vision........... and think too highly of our measly, skinny species. down to the last muscle we are one of the weakest things on earth. take any other animal make us their size and we are sitll outcomepted. we rely on devices................. thing with superntural powers could break thsoe devices.
3741555 This is another one of those things I want to elaborate on, but doing so would be spoiler heavy.
I'm going to put a hint in spoiler blocks. Anyone interested can read, but it may spoil parts of the story.
No one is actually attacking the ponies in this chapter. The ponies are mostly acting as observers and unfortunate victims in this story.
There's also a reason the only two things dying in this chapter are a human escape shuttle and someone with a conspicuously non-pony name
3741567
You forget that Homo Sapiens have survived a super-volcano exploding once already
"weak" is one word I would not use to describe us
3741567 Ehh, I'm pretty sure that most of our military equipment is quite reliable (>inb4 AK series) and since this fic takes place far into the future i would imagine the equipment would be even more reliable.
3741526
Ok I'm going to just go ahead and clear this up right now.
1. Never did I say humans committed genocide. In fact if you read the summary and chapter closely you will realize it's talking about the end of humanity, not ponies.
2. Ask yourself why an advanced space fairing civilization would bother to invade a civilization barely at the industrial level.
3. If you read closely Twilight is actually upset when she sees humans dying. That's kind of odd don't you think?
3741567 You can't break a tank with Rainbow lasers!
3741580 Well, if you at the very least implied that in the story or flat out said that there would not be a flame war in these comments.
3741594 It's very heavily implied.
I was worried making it even more obvious would cause problems...
Alright, I find myself attempting to do something I've never done before - be the voice of reason. It's quite a frightening proposition, but I'll give it a go.
Mebbe, just mebbe, we should hold off on coming up with the first headcanon to explain the events of the chapter and running with it, and instead wait until we have more information to fill the gaps. It's only chapter one so far. Trying to draw up hard and fast conclusions based on 1242 words isn't very logical.
3741567
I love how you chose to completely disregard the canon, imagining things instead. 
WATCH OUT, EVERYONE. WE HAVE A MAGIC EXPERT OVER HERE. How old are you, kid? The only part that's broken here is your brain.
3741601 Well, from what i picked up from the stories description and the story itself, it doesn't seem like that at all.
3741589 ................. now you are blatantly ignoring what i said. i am not talking about blasting the stupid things directly. there is no need. using magic to ignite the fuel will cause the bastard machien to explode. magic is the only thing that can do that.
the biggest threat to our weaponry is subtle sabatoge. and even the weakest unicorn can reach into a device and tear out its wires.
3741612 I want to come up with a snarky comment, but I've been part of the problem.
Damn you and your logic, JBL.
Hmm... downvoters may be about today...
3741632 It's very strange, this "logic" and "sensible" business.