This story is a sequel to The Blueblood Papers: Royal Blood
The Heartlands Campaign has begun. As Equestria launches an all-out offensive to finally end the war in the Badlands, Commissar Prince Blueblood is captured by the enemy. Believing he has avoided the carnage, he awaits the end of the war in the safety of a Changeling prison camp. If only his fellow prisoners would stop trying to help him escape.
Soon, he finds himself drawn into a plot that could spell defeat for Equestria.
Proofread and edited by Setokaiva
Cover art by jamescorck
Chapters (22)
Great stuff as always!
How many minutes till this reaches the feature page I wonder? I’d probably hazard at most half the day (or when the feature page updates)
Poor Blueblood, never can get that quite desk job he desires. Oh well, to the Frontline with him! I eagerly await what happens next
As an avid 40k fan and Cain fan i must say i enjoy the blue blood version more.
Blueblood: "Nothing, now, could possibly go wrong."
Next time: how everything will go wrong!
And the good commissar makes his triumphant return. It is good to know that even as GW descends further into moral bankruptcy, this fandom continues to endure.
So I'm guessing that this guy is based on Ulysses S. Grant. AKA Damn near the only competent officer in the entire Union Army.
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It's already third in the feature box!
Thank you for the new story, I am sure they will be as fun as the others. Things are off to typical Blueblood disastrous start
very soon. Celestia perspective and explanation are great as always, I hope we see plenty of red ink in this story too.
When you mentioned Blueblood being captured in the author note of the last story, I frankly didn't picture the Changeling doing it. I know given the situation and location that were the most logical culprit but somehow I thought it wouldn't be the Changelings who would do it. Probably because I imagined that while they need live ponies for Love, they also hate Blueblood with a passion for all their failed plans and would kill him at the first occasion that would present itself. Them, putting him in a prison camp was just an impossibility in my mind.
I do wonder what they have planned however and what they want with a bunch of hostages.
I always pictures the Changelings as mindless horde of drones despite all the evidence to the contrary. It make sense that infiltrators would try to sway public opinion and sow discords but I still have trouble picturing how much they infiltrated Pony society.
That's something Blueblood have in common with Ciaphas Cain is that while they are remembered to have served with a certain regiment where they had most of their adventures, they are often moved around or attach to other regiments by some chance from time to time where things tend to go horribly wrong.
I hope we will see Blueblood with his old regiment in Night Guards soon.
That's one group I hope we will see some interaction with Blueblood for a mission or another. They are... the only somewhat equivalent group you can compare the WH40K Inquisition to in MLP.
Having Blueblood and Cannonfoder being dragged along to deal with some monsters or an ancient civilization superweapon is something I could perfectly see happen to him.
Good to hear about the kids again. I hope they get into a lot of trouble together in the future.
Humm, the Everfree is another interesting place for Blueblood to visit one day. It would a nice change from the desert for him. The Fauna is certainly fun to play with a writer.
Huh... that something you haven't really brushed upon in this story, the dangerous fauna and flora of the MLP world outside of the civilized zones
Yeeesh... talk about harsh... Humm, Cadance, Shining, Flurry and the Crystal Empire would seem like a good change of pace for the next time he is pulled from the front.
Agreed, oddly enough this name already is evoking one heck of an emotional response.
An excellent hook for the third entry in the series
ICR who said that in real life. They recommended:
Competent + lazy = field command
Competent + energetic = logistics
Incompetent + lazy = "...entrusted with the routine brutalities necessary for military success. "
Incompetent + energetic = "...dismissed at once because they will ruin you.)
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I'm from the Flashman series myself. The author has captured their flavor very well.
This was lucky, I somehow missed that Blueblood: Hero of Equestria was complete and had a sequel, and now that sequel has this sequel!
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The Union army had a good number of competent generals!
... Just not nearly as many as they should have. But enough to win them the war!
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A very low bar considering the ridiculous advantage the Union had in terms of manpower and resources. By all rights, the war should have been over within a month. The reason it lasted as long as it did was because Lee consistently made fools of his opponents. Up until Gettysburg, the Confederates were basically winning. The only theatre where they were facing serious setbacks was in the West. Which just happened to be where Grant was posted.
This Blueblood is one of my favorite characters. Glad to see this series continuing!
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Yup! Very well said. This bodes well for the Friendship Legions!
Is it bad that I desperately want to see a love triangle between Blueblood, Twilight, and Oodanta? This story has very little to do with what is happening outside of the war, bit seeing Blueblood help Oodanta become reformed appeals to me.
Yesssss, yessssss! Raleigh, the God Emperor is pleased with your work. Highlight of my week
That last sentence in the chapter makes me think Blueblood is a glutton for punishment.
Teasing Murphy like that... Oooy vey.
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Given Blueblood is writting his diary in retrospective, I believe it was thinly veiled sarcasm.
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Not me. I like to think Odonata herself cannot explain her relationship with Blueblood, the pony who both had her disgraced and saved her life and the life of her daughter.
"Frienemy" is a funny concept, and Odonata probably had difficulties grasping the "friend" part.
Twi and Blue are not a good match, something the later acknowledges to his regret.
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I believe that would be this chap:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord
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I had originally planned for a romance between Blueblood and Twilight, but I just could not make it work. I like to think I managed to make that failure work in the story.
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And thank you for the customary lengthy comment - lots to think about, but I can't give it all away just yet.
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My first reading, it seemed like you were setting up a romance between Blueblood and Gliding Moth. Suffice to say, her death tore my heart out.
Great start to the new book.
I look forward to seeing how everything goes disastrously wrong
Been a while sense I read this story, decided to skip what I missed and read what's happening in there and get a glimpse of what happened sense then. From the looks of it I missed a lot of fun stuff ,and is putting me into the mood of reading everything an gain and what I missed. I can't wait to see how PBB is going to deal with being a POW. Keep it up.
Mmrm.
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Yes. One of them was George Armstrong Custer. Had a fairly good combat record. Only made one really serious mistake his entire career.
The Union's biggest mistake was Lincoln kept appointing poor head generals + it took them a year to listen to Winfield Scott.
It didn’t help that the Union gave military rank to anyone that recruited enough soldiers & Jefferson Davis only appointed those with military experience.
ICR who was urging Lincoln to dismiss Grant
Lincoln "I cannot spare him. He fights."
Something to the effect that Grant was a drunk.
Lincoln "Then find out what he drinks and have a barrel of it sent to my other generals."
I can’t wait for Blueblood to perform a rendition of “Chrysalis has Syphilis” with an audience of the Bug Queen herself.
I’d imagine she wouldn’t know the lyrics, as it’d be considered suicide give her that specific piece of intelligence
man how did i miss this release! woo! thought this would take longer to come out. so excited to read more. also do you plan to commission any more art for certain scenes in the story?
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you and me both
This is great!
New Chapters!
derpicdn.net/img/view/2015/3/7/844837.jpg
I wonder if we will hear more from them in the future...
Great stuff.
Finished reading everything I missed, it was awesome, loved Second Fiddle, and it's sad the Red Coat died, I wished he had a little more character development. Looking forward to see what come next.
Once more unto the breach. At least he still has his
unreasonably-durable carapace armorstar spider silk armor, and the ever-reliable Slab to take a bullet for him.I want to punch Market Garden and make her march alongside the soldiers she’s seems willing to throw away for her ego.
Wood, meet chipper.
Considering that the changelings have been learning from and adapting to everything the Equestrian Army has been doing, I have a sneaking suspicion that digging a mine under the walls of Virion Hive for sappers to load with charges is going to become relevant quite shortly. The bugs love their tunnels after all, and now they know tunnels can be made into traps.
Yeah, this is the sort of command structure that finds itself hit by friendly fire at some point during the war, and usually not leaving enough for a state funeral back in the homeland. Seriously, this commander failed hard at most of her objectives, and was saved mainly by circumstance. Giving her command again like this is negligence of the highest degree, and something the Commissariat was designed specifically to deal with...I may not like 40K, but I've seen enough of the offshoot stuff to know how their structure works.
That said, proper procedure would have been fly overs and the like to ascertain specific positions, with maybe an Earth Pony specialist to see about the terrain around them, similar to Maud's part in the events of Viron Hive just a few months earlier. That said, this has been a war lacking in air support for a lot of it. While flying troops are normally known by one word 'skeet' in these situations, high fly overs would seem to be a general info gathering technique. That being admitted, Changeling abilities would make that a rather interesting conundrum, as they could hide, or even inflate numbers. Still, basic is basic for a reason.
I suppose it was inevitable that someone named after one of the worst disasters in military history would f*** up eventually.
Any plan that relies on the enemy doing nothing is a daydream nothing more.
And thinking about what the enemy could do to you while acting decisivly is a generals job.
I wonder if this was a trap just to capture Blueblood
Thank you for the chapter, each month it's a delight to read the new one.
Market Garden is way too entrapped into the idea of a proper "battle" and they are marching into kill zone. The change with the new general in the Changelings army, one that was successful enough to push back a theater should concern the top brass more.
Oh this I would like to see.
I might get to see actually!! Yes, other nations getting in on the action, this story was missing that. Just picturing Yaks as paratroopers...
getting launched out of a zeppelin 
"SMAAAAAAAASH!!!"
Seeing how the Yaks will modernize their military after experiencing the campaign up close will be interesting.
Oh this is raising alarm in my mind. Virion Hive was seemingly normal too after all and turned out to be full of surprises.
The city itself could hide plenty of Changelings ready to flank them and with the drones coordination, it wouldn't be hard for them to get out of the houses and organize themselves into a proper formation for a hit and run from the city. If they pursue it will become urban warfare. If the army advance and leave the artillery behind for the charge, they would be in a position to attack the artillery and reserve in the back.
It's a "Hive" isn't it? And there is Changelings structure? There is something fishy going on, you don't call a place a Hive where you don't "live". Of course the city could house all of that but since aerial reconnaissance didn't pick anything is more than worrying. They didn't even scout the town or gather intel about what is in it. So if there are no obvious Changelings structures, where are they hiding them?
Then there is those hills. If the Changelings where in the sector for generations, they have the terrain advantages so no way they didn't prepare those hill for battle and camouflage their efforts. I don't think the Changelings actually live under them, it would be stupid to bring the fight to their living space. No I think they chose the hills partially to divert the attention to the actual Hive.
They had the high ground but installed no artillery of their own, no defenses, no trenches, no bunkers,nothing... perhaps they don't have enough firearms and canon to spare and decided to allocate them to another theater or another Hive in preparation for the rest of the war but nothing else? Changelings are really industrious when they want to and capable of accomplishing a lot of work in a short time with their coordination and blind devotion to their queen.
-The place could be riddled with tunnel full of reinforcements for when they don't expect it.
- the slopes could have been mined to explode in a gigantic explosion when the ennemy is halfway up the hill.
- the slopes could be rigged to collapse in a landslide.
- the othe hills could be hiding the artillery ready to pound the troops once they are on the hill and exposed.
- the hills are full of a dangerous type of Badlands monsters that comes out at night.
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I would be surprised if this mistake doesn´t cost Market her career.
Wait, I thought of something else, let's go simpler. What if the other hills are full of camouflaged Changelings and the visible one on the hills getting shot at are bait drawing their fire? They are afterall master shape-shifters.
I have a real bad thought here if the route is going by 'mines' of something like the Battle of the Crater. Wait for the Equestrians to be fully engaged and held back by the defenses, then detonate the explosives beneath them. If there are tunnels hidden then the Changelings could launch an attack to the rear with the main army engaged in the heights and take over the artillery.. Then the ponies will be caught in a crossfire.
This has a -real- nasty possibility for infiltration and a hammer and anvil attack. Particularly with Market Garden's seeming total willingness to go on a frontal attack with minimal reconaissance and knowing the enemy has a trap and to win purely by force of arms.
Also presuming the Changelings -have- excellent intelligence on the Pony movements, the makeup of their forces, transit, etc just by virtue of infiltrators or spies then they should have a very good picture of waht's going on. Market Garden is -not- showing any real particular creativity here, and just a massed frontal assault assisted by artillery with knowledge of Pony doctrine sounds.. Really, really bad. A creative general is going to cut them to pieces.
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Especially if everybody learns that she basically handed their most famous war hero so far to the enemy to basically do whatever they want with him? She’ll be lucky to not die due to a very unfortunate “accident” with a particularly sharp butter knife.
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Ironically, what's largely saving Market Garden's worthless skin is that she has Blueblood assigned to her as her resident Commissar; despite being, by his own admission, an emotionally maladjusted hedonist, Blueblood is not, at heart, a malevolent pony. He just wants his creature comforts and to be left alone, he doesn't want to HURT anypony else; for all his rationalizations about efficiency and cowardice, in the end, he ultimately goes with the "father to his men" approach to leadership over the "scare them into obedience" approach because he dislikes the latter. It hasn't really sunk into Blueblood's head that, as a Commissar, he technically has the authority to forcibly relieve Market Garden of her position or even have her shot because that's really not his way. He thinks like a pre-war aristocrat; in terms of subtle manipulation and bloodless power plays. That he can just stand up in the meeting and shout her down as a blithering incompetent or threaten to have her shot for her ineptitude wouldn't really occur to him unless somepony spelled it out.
Mind you, that's presuming that Commissars in this universe even have that level of authority; it has been a while since I read the backlog, but it could be that Equestrian Commissars only have the authority to bully around regular soldiers, and lack the legal and official authority to contradict incompetency amongst the leadership. Let's face it, Luna isn't exactly shown to be the most competent of commanding figures in this universe herself...