Chapter 2 - New Worlds
Fallout Equestria: Pure Hearts
Chapter 2
New Worlds
“And that’s how Equestria was made.”
As my vision adjusted to the new light, I felt my jaw drop and my stomach churn. What our eyes were met with was nothing but awe-inspiring. A vast expanse with rock walls that seemed to rise for miles on either side of us. Real, natural plants populated the area, few as there were, and a little trickle of water flowed through the canyon’s center. But the most dizzying thing to behold was the great gray ceiling that seemed to stretch forever onward, enveloping the land. We had learned a lot about the old world in classes, but no amount of knowledge would ever compare to the actual experience of being... out here. As much as I dreamt of leaving the stable before, my imagination failed to come to terms with this new reality. I suddenly felt a fear of the immense size of this place grip me.
Choking down that fear, I turned to Lilybloom to see on her face that she was just as awestruck as I was. Then I noticed that, on the inside of the door, near the top, was a sign that read:
Stable-Tec® Stable
No. 61
Location: Galloping Gorge
“Lily, come here.”
She shook her head in order to return herself to reality and trotted over to where I was standing.
“What’s up?”
“Look at this. It says we’re in Galloping Gorge. Ring any bells? I don’t recall learning anything about it in class.”
“Galloping Gorge... Galloping Gorge...” She repeated this a number of times, running it through her mind. As she did so, she tapped her hoof on her chin. “Aha! I do remember reading something in the back archives about it.”
It didn’t honestly surprise me that she had been in the back archives – the classified archives. Probably hacked into them some day during her free time for the hay of it.
“Well, what did they say?”
“Not much.”
That was helpful, Lily, I thought to myself.
“They did say, though, that it was some kind of natural formation near an old city called Vanhoover. Could be that if we can get out of here, we may find something to point us in that direction.”
I nodded in agreement. Lily told me that Vanhoover should be to the west, and I checked my new pipbuck’s compass – a feature whose purpose I never understood in the stable – and oriented myself with the direction it indicated was west; straight up the cliff in front of us. I also noticed now that my pipbuck, to my surprise, had updated its map to reflect our immediate surroundings and two labels appeared near our location: one for Stable 61 and one for Galloping Gorge. I had no idea how it was capable of this, but I made sure to remember how useful this feature would be for later.
“Assuming you’re right, it should be this way.” I indicated forward with my hoof. “Shall we look for a way up the cliff?” Lily seemed to think about it for a moment before nodding her head in agreement. We began scanning the rock, looking for any potential way up.
“There!” she shouted after a few seconds.
I followed her view to a point in the wall until I spotted what she was looking at. A little way down the canyon was a small path that wound its way up the cliff-face, and we wasted no time deciding that that was where we were heading. We both took one last look at the wooden door we had emerged from as we closed it again. It sadly creaked shut, and I shed a tear. We were leaving our friends, our family, our home, and everything else we’ve ever known behind.
It was a longer walk to the path’s trailhead than we expected, though. When we did finally get there, we paused for a few minutes to rest.
“So far so good,” I said, pulling out my canteen and taking a drink. Lily bowed her head in agreement as she swallowed the water she had retrieved from her own bottle. The path here now looked a lot bigger, at least at this level, than it appeared before. We really needed to work on estimating scale in this much larger world.
“And now we climb up, and up, and up. Wanna race to the top?”
Typical Lily, she just had to make a game out of everything; even things she wasn’t good at – like physical trials. Of course, I wanted to take things a little more seriously, but before I could respond, she had already bolted off. I would have just ended up talking to a vaguely pony-shaped dust cloud. Sighing and rolling my eyes, I chased after her.
It wasn’t long before we realized that racing wasn’t actually going to be a smart idea. The path up the cliffside was rough going, rugged, and worn. It quickly narrowed to a point where we had to proceed with caution. Single file and one hoof at a time, we made our way along the rock wall.
The elevation from the floor of the gorge now was quite head-spinning, and we were only about halfway up. I didn’t think I was afraid of heights, but it was much, much, much higher than anything in the stable had been. And there was still more to go.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed onward, with Lily in tow. My vision was focused on the path ahead, looking neither up nor down the rock face. What I couldn’t see though, was what lay beneath me. As my hoof made what must’ve been its thousandth or two-thousandth contact with this new ground, I felt it shift more than it should have.
I had stepped on what must have been an overhang, where the ground beneath its non-threatening surface had eroded down the steep slopes. The earth gave way around me and it took me down with it. I thought I was surely done for, but my freefall was brought to a halt. Watching the dirt crumble on the ground below me, I felt a pain in my rear quarters as I dangled down in the new gap. Lily had my tail in her mouth, and despite using her magic to assist in her endeavor, she was struggling against the odds to hold me there.
Orienting myself to face away from the rock behind me, I put my hooves to the vertical face and backpedaled upward. Assisted by Lily, I finally felt the soft dirt of the path beneath my hooves again. Breathing a sigh of relief, I was glad to be back on that narrow trail. Even more so, I was glad Lily was quick enough to act. Turning to her, I saw she was doing her best to catch her breath.
“Thanks,” I said. “I thought I was going to be a pancake right out of the stable.”
“Don’t...” Her words were slow and intermixed with deep breathing as she tried to catch her breath. “Don’t mention... it. That’s what... what friends are for.”
I smiled. “I’m really glad that it was you that got picked to come with me.”
As her breathing finally returned to normal, she smiled back at me.
“Now, how are we gonna get across this gap?” I shifted around to face our new dilemma. The open fall between where we stood and the other side was too wide to jump across confidently, but there was also no other way up to the top of the gorge that I could see. Then I caught sight of something that might have saved our efforts. “Lily, I’ve got a question for you.” Getting back on her hooves, she trotted over to me.
“How far can you reach with your magic?” I asked.
“I would imagine that if I’ve see it clearly once, I can reach it. Why?” Her confusion was evident in her voice, but it subsided when I explained my idea.
“The wooden door to the stable entrance; if you can use your magic from here to unhinge it and float it up to us, we could use it as a bridge.”
“I don’t know, Dovetail. I’m better with small things.”
“It’s worth a shot though, right? Consider it a challenge.” I knew Lily was the type who liked a challenge, and she proved me right. Her air of over confidence returned almost immediately.
“Challenge accepted!” Her horn began to glow green with her magic, and after a moment, so did the door far below.
At first, nothing happened; The door didn’t budge. I could hear Lily straining to manipulate its weight, her horn now beginning to spark as she continued to focus on it. The amount of concentration and effort she put into it was admirable though. I was about to tell her to stop, but I held my words as I saw the door begin to shift.
The movement was minimal at first – just little jitters back and forth – but slowly it escalated. Then we heard the first rusted hinge give way, breaking under the pressure. And then the other one. The door was now loose from its hold, suspended by my friend’s magic glow. I heard her exhale as the hardest part was over and she could focus on moving the thing through the air towards us.
The closer it got to us, the easier it seemed to be for her. I wasn’t sure if it was because of its proximity or if it was just her confidence increasing, but either way I was proud of her.
Once the door was finally in place, I tested its integrity by putting my hoof on it gently at first. This time I wasn’t going to take any chances of falling to my death. As I slowly applied pressure to it, I felt it give a little under me, but despite its age and the rot in the wood, it held strong. I put another hoof on it, and then another.
Though it groaned with the entirety of my weight now on it, I did eventually manage to fully stand on it. Once I was certain it wasn’t going to break, I quickly scurried across to the other side. Lily then followed suit. At one point she did put her hoof through a bad spot in the wood, but she caught herself and kept going like nothing happened.
As her last hoofstep on the door came down, however, the wood finally resigned itself and broke apart. Lily scrambled a bit to keep from slipping down the cliff face with it, but she was safe. As we watched it crash down the slope I mentally thanked it for holding on long enough for us to cross. When it hit bottom, we both turned without a second glance and pushed onwards – and upwards.
The rest of the trek was relatively peaceful. The trail may have been just as rough, but somehow it didn’t bother me as much after nearly plummeting to my death.
Eventually, we reached the top. Cresting over to the flat ground above, something new took hold of my senses. Disgust, fear, wonder, shock, and a disturbing confusion all rolled into one big jumble of emotion.
The scene that stretched out across the landscape was like something out of a horror film. Directly in front of us were what appeared to be some form of housing – what Lily called cabins – and scattered about were what I assumed were fire pits. My pipbuck registered it as a pre-war campground named after the gorge; it was a place where families once came for fun and recreation. Now it was silent and desolate. Beyond the remains, however, it got worse.
The land was scorched and almost completely lifeless. The hills rolled like waves across the terrain and look to have once been part of a lively forest, probably teeming with animals and plants. The sight before us was a different story. What had once been a bountiful woodland was now an arid grassland. The soil still seemed to be very fertile and dry grass barely struggled to survive all across the plains. Dead trees littered the area, stumps and fallen logs strewn throughout, though a few still clung to life here and there. The war had not been kind to nature here, but it hadn’t killed everything off either. The only thing that seemed to be keeping life here from returning to its former glory was the ever-present cloud cover that blocked out much of the light from above.
I felt my stomach turn again. I wanted so badly to have been able to save it all; I wanted to see it the way it was before. Now I could only picture it in my mind, much like I had done so many times in my imagination, and it was beautiful. But the harsh reality of the matter was that Equestria had become a wasteland.
“What happened while we were were locked away in safety?” I asked aloud even though I knew neither of us could even begin to imagine what took place here after the stable doors sealed. Then, in the distance, something caught my eye.
It looked to be another pony, silhouetted on the horizon. I pointed Lily’s head in its direction with my hoof just before it moved, disappearing over the hills.
“You saw that, right?” I asked her.
“Yeah. What was it?”
“It looked like another pony. Maybe it's somepony from a different stable?”
“Maybe. Should we go find out?”
My stomach answered that question for me. A loud growl emanated from my gut. Lily must’ve heard it too, because she giggled at me playfully. We had eaten a couple hours before we left, but our physical exertion had used up a lot of the energy our meal had provided.
“Oh hush,” I told her. “Don’t tell me you’re not hungry as well.” She didn’t even respond before her stomach echoed mine.
“I guess I am,” she chuckled.
“Let’s get something to eat, then I think we should investigate that figure in the distance,” I suggested. Sliding my saddlebags off my back and opening them up, I realized something was dreadfully wrong; there was no food in my bags.
The protocol for scouting parties that Stable-Tec had provided us made no mention of food. I guess they figured those in the party would be smart enough to pack their own sustenance, and I must’ve just overlooked its necessity in my nervousness of leaving. Lily informed me she had made the same error as she rooted around in her packs mumbling to herself. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could you have forgotten something so important?”
I began running things through my mind, trying to find a solution. We could go back to the stable to get some. No, there was that gap in the path now; we weren’t getting back that way. The land, even with the plants that still clung to life, was too barren to even consider harvesting anything, so that wasn’t going to be an option either. Then Lily’s voice cut in.
“We could search the cabins for food,” she suggested. “They don’t look like they’ve been touched in ages. I’m sure there’s something in there to eat.”
“No.” My response was more swift and resolute than even I thought it would be. I hadn’t considered it a possibility until now, but the cabins did probably contain some form of food. Still, something didn’t feel right about it. “I won’t defile this property, even it its residents are long dead. Besides, the food is probably so old that it’s no longer any good.”
“Oh come on, Dove. I know you hold your moral standards high, but you also need to eat. You said it yourself though: Any of the residents are probably long dead; who’s gonna miss it? And some of the food we had in the stable is just as old and still good. Sure it may be a little more deteriorated but it should still have fared decently. I mean they did pack their boxes with more preservatives than food it seems.”
I sighed, knowing that she was right. My stomach rumbled once more and I felt the pain in it this time. Swallowing my pride, I walked over to one of the old buildings, Lilly trotting up beside me.
The cabin’s walls were put together using nothing more than logs, arranged on top of each other, interlocking at the corners. It was rotten, much like the door to the tunnel that lead to the stable, but it was still entirely solid. The glass was mostly still intact too. This place really hadn’t been touched since the war. I only assumed it was due to the sheer remoteness of this locale.
“Fine, Lily, you win.”
Attempting to turn the handle, the door lock refused me entry. I would have tried to pick it, but neither Lily nor I had the skill. That didn’t matter though. A pale green blur and resounding thud later and the door broke free of its rusted hinges, falling to the floor with a crash. Lily had turned around and bucked the door as hard as she could, knocking it free.
“Ever heard of subtlety?” I joked.
She scoffed a little and rolled her eyes a bit, then made her way into the open doorway. I hesitated a moment before following her in, still wrestling with my objections to this whole situation.
As I entered, the stale air touched my nose. All the odors of the abode came to me at once, and it proved overwhelming to my mind. I grew lightheaded for a moment and stumbled backwards a little bit. One of the smells was stronger than the rest, and much more vile. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew I didn’t care for it.
The inside of the cabin was dark and dreary, with the only source of illumination being the gloomy light that entered through the dingy windows; it wasn’t that different from the metal walls, dim bulbs, and sterile environment of the stable, come to think of it. The log walls continued from the outside, the decorations were very much old world, and the appliances were of a lower quality – definitely not the high-tech gadgets back home. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture however, but I dismissed it as only being a recreational retreat instead of some pony’s permanent home. No need for unnecessary clutter when one was only intended to stay here for a couple days. Then I saw the most disturbing thing in here, and the source of that abhorrent smell. Lying on one of the beds, all curled up in a sleeping position, was a pony. Only it wasn’t a pony anymore.
Wrapped in the blankets, the decaying skeleton of a now nameless soul slept peacefully. The sight made me heave, but I held my bile down and quickly turned away from it in disgust and back to Lily. She obviously hadn’t noticed the cabin’s third occupant as she was still hard at work going through the cabinets, pulling out any food she found and organizing it all on the counter. There were things I recognized from the stable, though the packages were deteriorated and covered in dust. I still wasn’t sure what their two-centuries-old contents would be like, but if they were at least tolerable, they would keep us alive.
So far she had found just a meager amount of things, but it would be enough to last for at least a day; maybe more if we rationed it well. When she finished, we packed it all into our saddle bags and started to walk back out the door. Before I stepped fully out though, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye.
“One second Lily, I’ll be right there,” I called to her, and went back into the cabin.
Over by the dead pony’s bed, standing up against the corner of the wall, was an old pump-action shotgun – probably belonging to the sleeping skeleton. It still looked to be in working order, and a box of 25 shells sat on the floor next to it. I wasn’t one for resolving conflict with weapons, and would much rather solve things with diplomacy, if possible, but I figured it would be nice to have something more than my security pistol in case we needed it. I picked it up and slung it around my neck, slipping the box of shells into my bag.
I then stepped up next to the bed, still slightly disgusted. The pony’s bones weren’t the same shade of white that I had always seen in pictures and books. They seemed to be well preserved, though, thanks to the relative safety the cabin provided from the elements. I couldn’t tell whether it had been a male or female, nor did I really care to know. I simply closed my eyes and pulled the covers over it both as a sign of respect and simply to hide it from view.
“Thank you. I’ll take care of it,” I said softly, even though I knew the pony couldn’t hear my words.
Exiting the cabin, Lily took one look at my new acquisition and immediately asked where I got it. When I explained, she seem appalled at the idea of the dead pony laying there without her even noticing. She did agree with my reasoning behind taking it though. I still felt wrong about looting from these ponies’ centuries old belongings, but it was evident to me now that we were going to have to if we wanted to last the week the Overmare gave us out here.
We continued to loot the remaining few cabins until our saddle bags were full. I continued to silently protest to myself how wrong it was, but I couldn’t come up with a good reason to stop, beyond my own moral views. Now we had a couple of bandages, two healing potions, and enough food to last us almost the entire week. When we finished packing everything away, we sat down by one of the fire pits and pulled out some of our new food to eat.
Looking over the box that I grabbed, the red parcel was decorated with an image of the contents inside and fancy text that read “Dandy Colt Apples – Uh-oh, Better Get Some Apples!” I chuckled a bit at the thought of ponies scrambling to the store before the war turned nasty and the megaspells dropped in a frantic effort just to get apples.
Opening the box, I found its contents to be a little less appealing than the packaging made it look. The bite-size apples inside appeared to be badly rotted after these 200 years of sitting around, even with the amount of preservatives they were in. Their skins were brown and revolting, and the smell was horribly rancid. The very idea of putting something that disgusting into my body just made me cringe. I suddenly wished we had thought to eat a bigger meal before we left the stable.
However, I doubted that any of what we found would be much better, so I ponied up and swallowed a couple as quickly as I could. It wasn’t quick enough though. The intense flavor still made my tastebuds cry out in delight. It tasted exactly like I imagined it would have right off the shelf, so I kept eating until the box was empty. I noticed Lily having the same issues with the food’s age, but I imagine she also had the same shocking experience as I did when she tried them. She continued eating until there was nothing but air in her box as well.
Our pipbucks began to click a little bit. Looking down at mine, it indicated a slight increase in the radiation level of my body. The food must have been irradiated, either from the war or from being dosed with a small amount from the factory to help preserve it. It was only a negligible amount, however, but we would have to be careful with how much of this stuff we ate; small amounts of anything can add up quickly if you aren’t careful.
My stomach was no longer hurting now. Finally feeling full again, or at least significantly less hungry than before – I couldn’t tell which it was – I brought the pipbuck up to my eyes. it was still only about 2:00PM. The soft, diffused light above had moved along in the sky from East to West, and I made a mental note of this to help with directions in the future. Then I remembered a feature of the device I had read about, and an idea came to me.
The Eyes Forward Sparkle (or E.F.S. for short) was a function of the pipbuck meant to detect the locations of other creatures, even through walls. It also was able to determine the level of hostility presented by those it detected. We had no real use for it before with our stable being so small, so I had always left it off. I turned the feature on to see if perhaps the shadow on the horizon was anywhere close to us, and a little red mark appeared to the West. Even though I never had seen it before in the stable, I knew exactly what it meant; there was a hostile... something nearby. I couldn’t be certain if it was the mysterious figure or not. However, when I turned to face in its direction, I saw nothing but the deserted hills.
“What’s up?” asked Lily.
“Hmm? Oh, nothing.” I said, telling her about the red indicator. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Well, we should still be cautious. Who knows what’s out there.”
“Agreed. Well, shall we go investate that mysterious figure we saw?”
Lily nodded and stood up. I did the same, gathered my saddle bags, and we headed off. My bags felt a good deal heavier than before with the food that had been packed into them, and the shotgun added just that much more to the load, but I was an earth pony, so I was naturally a little stronger and heartier than my unicorn friend. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.
The land we traversed was just as interesting as our first impressions made it out to be. The hills rolled gently, yet slowly grew higher. The dry grass blew softly in the wind, and made a strangely soothing sound as it rustled about. While it was not the smell of fresh daisies, the breeze carried with it the smells of nature. As we pressed onward, large peaks rose in the distance. It still wasn’t my dream world, but it was definitely proving to be better than the same monotonous walls of the stable.
I had intermittently been watching the red tick mark that my E.F.S. displayed. It grew brighter and brighter, indicating that whatever it was had gotten closer to us, or us closer to it, depending on how you looked at it. This must’ve been a new, handy feature of this 4000 model; the manual to my old one only ever mentioned indicators that flashed faster or slower to specify distance. We rounded the top of a hill and there it was – probably the ugliest thing I had ever seen, and the source of the mark we were following.
It looked like an insect of some form, vaguely like the parasprites we had learned about, but it was also vastly different. The body seemed to be bloated and long, sharp spines encompassed the creature’s body. It didn’t seem to notice us yet as it flew about, wings buzzing. Then I accidentally kicked a rock, and it quickly turned, shooting one of its spines at us. Fortunately it missed, but only barely. I didn’t think I could ever pull a gun on another pony, but this thing was not a pony at all; it was far from it. Plus, it had attacked us first.
I drew my pistol out as quickly as I could, cocking it and taking aim at the monstrosity. Being an earth pony, I had to manage all of this with my mouth, so I was a little slower than say, a unicorn would be; and I suffered for it. Before I could fire off a shot, another spine came flying through the air, forcing its way straight into my front right leg.
I howled in pain, dropping the gun in the process. Somehow I was still standing though, and was fighting back the tears that I felt welling up. I was livid now, and picked the pistol back up, putting my tongue to the trigger.
Bang! Bang!
Two shots exploded from the barrel of the weapon. The first one missed, kicking up a dust cloud as it dug into the ground somewhere in the distance. The second bullet found home. As the round made contact with the creature, it popped like a balloon, bits and pieces of it going everywhere. I couldn’t take it anymore; I lost it.
Between the pain in my leg, what I just witnessed, and all the events that led up to this point, I couldn’t hold anything back now. I found the nearest bush – dead or alive, it didn’t matter – and chucked up the little food that was in my stomach. Lily turned away from me in disgust. I was honestly surprised she didn’t lose her stomach too, but I’m guessing she had her eyes closed when I shot the thing.
I quickly pulled out another box of food – Fancy Buck Snack Cakes this time – and ate them without giving the appearance, or the radiation, a second thought. I would have liked to savor it more but I just needed something to settle my stomach again, it didn’t really matter what it tasted like.
When I finished, I wiped my mouth clean, holstered my gun which had once again found the ground, and sat down to look at my wound. The spine was still stuck there like a growth, embedded in the skin. I had began to bleed lightly around it, though I knew the only reason it wasn’t seeping out faster because of the spine itself plugging the hole.
Lily, who had the healing potions, came over to me with one held in her teeth. Even though my training told me not to, I began to slowly and painfully remove the spine. The only reason I went against education was because we had a healing potion handy that would magically fix me up good as new. I had never actually been shot before, so I didn’t know what to expect beyond what my manuals had said. As I had guessed, the blood flow increased the more I pulled it out. Unfortunately, so did the pain. I whinnied and screamed the entire time, cringing with each millimeter that it moved. Once the barb was free, I hastily wrapped a bandage around the wound and drank the healing potion Lily had brought to me.
I felt its magic begin to work, filling my body with a happy, healing feeling, and in short order I was fixed up. Soon enough, we were on our way again. It was, however, beginning to get dark as the sun began to set behind the mountains and the clouds. We decided that it was probably going to be much more hazardous at night, and considering how bad it was proving to be during the day, we hurried as fast as we physically could.
Eventually we came across another new sight. Stretching along perpendicular to our path, from horizon to horizon, were two lengths of metal rails running in parallel with each other. Wooden beams crossed beneath them, tying them together. I knew what this was though: It was an old world railroad.
My eyes tracked along it in the fading light, first to the south, then back north. That’s when I saw it. There was a series of lights maybe a mile or two up the tracks; they were well within walking distance. Lights meant ponies, and ponies meant shelter. The night was only a few minutes behind us, so we were eager to take our chances. We pushed onward toward the welcoming glow of civilization, hoping our assumptions would be right.
The dark finally set in, and it was just as awe-inspiring as our initial venture outside. The gray blanket above had torn in several places; portals to what lay above, through which we could see even further beyond. The holes were deep, and dotted with lights, some that flicked and others that didn’t. But there was no time to stop and admire them. The lights on the ground had drawn near enough for us to tell what they were. Sure enough it was a town that lay nestled between the railroad tracks and the mountains. And it was full of ponies – real ponies – living out here in the wastes.
My thoughts turned back to the figure on the horizon. I only assumed it was one of the ponies from this town. And then a hoof on my shoulder stopped me in my stride. Looking up, I jumped back a little in surprise. I had found myself face to face with a flat, metal surface. Lily had stopped me before I ran into it, unlike back in the stable atrium.
Stepping back from it, I could see it in full detail. It was nothing more than a rusty piece of sheet metal fashioned into a sign and attached to two stakes that had been crudely driven into the ground. The spray painted writing on it read:
Welcome to Crossroads Junction
Elevation: Here
Population: Us
Footnote: Level up!
New Perk: Hunter - In combat, you do 75% more critical damage against animals and mutated animals.
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As one of the admins of the Fo:E group on the site have I one thing to say to you... Welcome to the herd.
2226313
Thanks! I'm looking forward to being a part of it!
You know... if you are quick and have more ideas than what you can put into this story do I know that there is a writing contest where you can win fame and glory*
*Yes maybe a little over exaggerated but you get the point
2226409
Cool, I'll check it out! Thanks again.
I have never read a FOE fic before, but for some reason, this one caught my eye. I enjoyed it quite a bit and am eagerly awaiting more. Good work!
2226680
Thanks! Chapter 3 should follow sometime this week. With any luck tonight or tomorrow.
2226723
Splendiferous news! Not only will I be following this story, I will be following you, as well. Completely consensual, seeing as the little eye next to your name was telling me to follow you.
...Is dovetail a Pegasus by any chance? The feathers on the image kind of allude to her species but i'd appreciate some confirmation.
2226757
Awesome!
2226782
Nope, she's an earth pony. The official cover art will better reflect that.
2226963 Thank god shes an earth pony
I shall follow this story. Something about seem... different (haven't read any of it yet, but I'll get around to it).
2227290
Cool! Hope you enjoy it.
I don't normally read a lot of fanfiction, but when I do, it's written by this magnificent fellow.
2227371
Haha, thanks.
Maybe I'll actually read a fallout equestria fic for once
2228106
I highly recommend it. Whether it's mine or not.
Damn boy
This story have gotten itself a nice cover. I am envious dude!
2230675
Oh the things that can happen when the person you actually want to do cover art opens commission the day you start looking for artists.
Thanks though!
That cover art
:
Always good to see another FO:E fic!
not much I can say, you're just starting out, the beginning was rather uninteresting, guess the plot hook will be coming in this town...
no spelling or grammar errors that I could find in my normal read, so good job there
2230952
Indeed my good sir!
2231040
Yep, the first two chapters were where I have my least amount of ideas so far. This is honestly the first thing I've written more than a couple pages of in 5-6 years, so I'll be a tad rusty in the beginning. I may come back and rewrite them at some point after I get further in. The next chapters get much more interesting though, and I'm gonna do my best to make it better as time goes on.
totes going on my read later list brah. looks awesome.
2231406
Cool! Hope you enjoy it!
2231076
At least you have previous writing experience. This past summer I decided "I'm going to write Fallout Equestria story, even though I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing!"
2231580
Haha, not as much as I make it sound, but yes, some is better than none. Well, I'll have to check yours out sometime! Good luck with it!
2231647 Same to you! The first few chapters on mine are kinda bad. I didn't have an editor and I've been too lazy to go back and fix them.
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Haha, alright. I'm sure they can't be as bad as some of the things I've read in the past.
So, what's Dovetail's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes?
What time is it? Apparently time for Doomande to make a line about REVIEW TIME!
So first of all to get it out of the way and my system... Twilight if you would be so kind to deliver my line
Finally is there some ponies that can open a locked door in the wasteland without hair pins! That was about time would I dare to say. I have only seen one pony do this trick before, and one non pony hellhound, but those are also cheating with their big claws, being smart enough to open things like this. A golden medal to Lilybloom for that trick, and now to the serious stuff of the review.
One thing that I am certain about now is that you can write, and have some skills for it, but does still have a lot to learn, especially in your missing descriptions and how you often tell instead of show us things.
A good example on the missing descriptions is how we don´t know anything about how the stable looked like. Yes I know that they look like all other stables, but with how your cover is drawing in new readers from deviantart that don´t know anything about Fo:E are that not enough. Another thing is your wasteland, you say that it is dry and dusty, but how so? I know that this is a nitpick, but are it dessert like, as we see in Fo NW or more just burned ground as of Fo3? You could add so many details to draw the reader into the picture you have in the head, but right now do I just know that it is dry, so the setting are not laying right beside the ocean.
We know that the cabins are old, and that the door is in a bad shape, but what about the inside? You tried to make a special mood about the rather deeply sleeping pony, but it did fall a little bit flat to me because it was missing details. As a reader do I want to be able to feel the sand under my foot when I read about a desert, smell the old and stale air in those cabins that haven´t been opened to the outside world for Celestia knows how long, I want to want to scrap the icky feeling of a rotten apple of my tongue when our protagonist eat something 200 year old. I does really want to be drawn into your story, and at times am I, but most often can I only see the silhouette of what you want to show.
I know that I am hard right now, I know that I am demanding. But if you want to give this story the place that it deserves in FO:E, a place worthy of the time and energy that you put into this, do you need to fix those small things. I can feel that you enjoy your story. I can feel it in the way that you write, so let me also feel that I am right beside your characters, draw me into your world just as much as you are.
BREAKING A DOOR TO GET IN?! What is this, logic? Insanity I say.
And I have to say, I rather like that Dove is a security mare who doesn't think she could pull a gun on a pony, even a hostile one. One would think that would come with the job, but then again living in a stable where everyone is nice and friendly probably didn't result in her being forced to even threaten violence against someone.
Not sure what I think of how quickly Dove changed her mind about looting, but at least she isn't suddenly 100% comfortable with it. Seems like she's just accepting that she'll have to do it, even though she really wishes she didn't.
And it seems we have a special pony on our hooves here, always bonking her head on things that are right in front of her. Silly daydreamers.
Nice chapter, shall continue!
May I ask what the bug thing was? Was it a parasprite affected by the megaspells?