Anonymous asked: Didn't anything in the Hoofington Core interest you? I know I would be interested. Of course I never had the caps to send mercs in there if I wanted.
I had the caps. I never got to spend them. None of these who went to the Core ever returned to claim them.
Anonymous asked: Are you even sure that was actually one of your soldiers? This is the Tumblrverse after all, and behind the wall of anonymity humans can be exceptionally cruel.
I distinctly remember little Peaches showing me a drawing of herself and a big stallion with a pair of battle saddle mounted guns. She said he was her brother, and that he was “in the forest.”
saintwisdom asked: I think those questions are better asked to Littlepip than me or any other person/pony.
Her? No. She has no clue. She’s never had it hard.
saintwisdom asked: Don't tell you me that your blaming yourself for their deaths. I know you cared for them but being depressed like that doesn't help their case, besides they wouldn't have wanted you to be all sad like this.
No, I’m blaming the Wastelands. It was me versus it, since I emerged from the Stable, always at war. And when I thought I dealt it a killing blow… it struck back. It has proven again, that no matter how prepared you are, how strong, how well you protect these most precious to you… it can get them, destroy them.
All my weapons, all my might couldn’t oppose the silent poison it kept seeping into hearts of these tasked with evacuation of the school, with protection of the little ones. When the time came, all technological and logistic measures were in place. It was the pony factor, the minds and the hearts of these who were to do the job, corrupted by the Wastes, that failed.
When the Wastes can’t just walk all over you and trample you into the ground, when they can’t bleed you dry as you keep opposing oncoming wave, when they throw all they have at you and you capture it and turn it against them - then they silently corrupt the ones that stand by you, and make them stab you in the back - not for their profit, not out of fear, not from greed, just - so that the Wastes could win.
How do you fight an enemy like that? How do you oppose such a threat?
Anonymous asked: Noticed things have been a little quiet in here, how is that squid body coming along? Getting better at that magic stuff? Any hilarious tales about your life you could share?
Since the news about the failure of evacuation of the school…
Sometimes I spend whole days in depressed stupor.
saintwisdom asked: Do you guys have something like St. Patrick's day or is that just a human thing?
The Games. Once a year, three days, two events a day in The Pit, and lots of free alcohol for all. That was held in what we believed to be the date of annual Equestrian Games from pre-war era.
Anonymous asked: Dear Red Eye; Have you ever heard of a blue unicorn named Spell Nexus?
Why, I even played him!
(…and only once an uncensored version of “Past Sins” was obtained by the Library in New Filly, I learned that no, the princesses didn’t turn Nyx into an earth pony in the end.)
Anonymous asked: I must ask what was the purpose of The Pit, I can see from a logical point of view for your actions most of the time, but The Pit I do not understand it just seems like cruel entertainment for its own sake.
This has been answered in the past.
So, I think I’ll use this opportunity to show a difference between me and Littlepip. It seems Littlepip is an avid Caravan player.
Anyways, Caravan is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it and assemble a deck;
Once you get a hang of it and assemble the deck, the game becomes quite boring. So, what Littlepip writes about the game is the basic set of rules. I can bet she just follows her hunch and assembles a deck of varied cards. She depends on luck and feel.
A key thing to remember is that you can use face cards (Jack, King, Queen) + Joker on your opponent’s cards, not just yours. Jack removes cards, King doubles the card’s value (and can stack), and Queen lets you go in a different order than what the rest of the stack has been. That is.. cards in a stack.. the titular caravan.. need to be in ascending or descending value.. OR they can be the same suit (Hearts, Clubs, Spades, Diamonds). Using a Queen lets you suddenly change that. And of course, the goal is to get 2 or 3 of your stacks of cards to 21 or higher (but not above 26) first.
A key thing to remember is that Caravan is a card collector game.
In particular, you need a good collection of 6’s, 8’s, 10’s, Kings and Jacks. Don’t hold any other number cards in your deck. You may add a joker for some flavor, or a Queen just in case but in essence base your deck on a whole bunch of these five cards: 6,8,10,J,K.
Why? Kings and jacks can rain over opponent’s parade. Jacks save you from opponent’s kings. Kings also can serve for simply doubling your card score.
Your goal is to get two caravans of 21-26 points.
6+6+10=22
6+8+8=22
6+8+10=24
8+8+8=24
6+6+6+6=24
6+10+10=26
8+8+10=26
6+6+6+8=26
6+K+K=24
10+K+6=26
10+6+K=22
10+8+K=26
That means you can finalize a caravan in 3, rarely 4 cards. If the opponent removes any of them, you can easily replace it. If the opponent doubles the value using the king, use the jack to repair it.
Remember, you can both double and remove a card from the inside of the caravan too. That way, say, you had 6+6+10=22 and the opponent doubled the 10, 6+6+10+K=32. Instead of removing the doubled 10 and then replacing it, remove one of the 6’s. Your caravan is valid again.
One more thing to remember: the game ends when there are three complete caravans, no matter whose. A victory of 2:1 is equivalent to victory of 3:0 in all respects. So you have two caravans ready and one mangled beyond recognition, and the opponent has none? Don’t try to repair your broken one as the opponent will use the time to destroy your remaining caravans and then build their own. Instead, see where your king or jack can help the opponent in completing one of their caravans. There’s a little bit of cynical beauty in it: in your generous move to aid the opponent you seal their fate and assure your victory. I think I could draw some parallels with my army…
Anonymous asked: Dear Red Eye, I would like to ask you one question that might have been already answered, but still. You once said that the save of ponykind does not lie within Unity. Why do you think it is like that? Is it because Unity ideology of worshiping false-Godess? Or is it other?
It’s because the Unity is a monoculture, and thus vulnerable.
This theory has been proven by history over and again. In case of Unity too.
The key to survival is variety - I’ve mentioned that before. New Filly had requirements for variety built into its laws. And just see: I’m out of the picture, and despite odds, the city thrives. Changed, wounded, different - but alive. Meanwhile, Unity is no more. There are the alicorns, absorbed into the society - in major part through efforts of citizens of New Filly, contributing to the variety.
If you start a society based upon a single rule, single restriction of the population, there will be one shared weakness everyone in your society will have. And someone will exploit it.
I did.
ask-nightmother-moon asked: I would like to ask two questions of you, if I may. From what transmissions I have read, it sounds that you have been physically altered or disabled in some way. Might I ask how? As for my second question, would you ever consider taking leave of your world, or would you choose to remain in it?
It’s been told in the past but let me recap here.
Taint, or Impelled Metamorphosis Potion, or IMP - a substance based on Discord’s blood, is capable of morphing everything into everything else. The idea that it’s a mutagen is wrong - mutation implies a live subject while Taint can morph a rock into a piece of meat or a toaster into a soldering iron.
There are many caveats as to what transforms into what under which influence. Apply the right chemicals and you can coerce taint into a particular transformation. Give it a small sample of the target substance with specific additions, give it enough mostly similar substance, possibly a few pieces, and you may get what you desire.
In our case, we desired a new alicorn to rule the ponies after death of the two princesses. With a small sample of tissue from Princess Luna’s body, three ponies - a unicorn, an Earth pony, and a pegasus, two males and a female, or two females and a male, would be bodily combined into an alicorn of gender of the majority.
We had that part covered to perfection. What was missing was a part about joining their souls.
Taint can do that too, but it’s not nearly as subtle or easy as with physical entities. We got to a point where it rips souls off the bodies, shatters them and combines whatever’s left into one to take residence in the new body.
Usually, whatever’s left is very little. Souls usually don’t take being shattered kindly. They evaporate, escape, pass away. We’ve got a whole bunch of blank, empty, entirely black alicorns, mindless, soulless, motionless.
But what we discovered is that if a soul suffered enough in life, got wounded badly, shattered then healed through bad, dire experiences, it will survive getting shattered and put together again. And the mix can be incredibly powerful - possibly more powerful than the Princesses.
We had to find three such ponies.
I happened to be one.
Then, in the endgame, everything went horribly bad.
My body is one third of the way through the transformation, and not really resembling a pony. There’s the pony head yet, though terribly distorted, and two long whip-like tentacles instead of front hooves. From waist down I look more like a squid with multiple tentacles. I can wield some rather weak magic, and I retained my sanity… for now.
I haven’t really considered leaving this world, except that one rather obvious way. Should I?
ask-gb asked: Why red?
Coat? born that way.
Eye? part of image, Coin Toss said I’d look more badass that way and Doc needed a minute to change the EFS backlight color. Took some getting used to, but it’s really an arbitrary choice guided by “style” - if I were to be the boss of the Wastes, I’d need to look the part. The name change followed shortly.
Anonymous asked: What do you think of Twilight Society's Sun-based super weapon?
It had incredible potential given the right support: SPP and pegasi warriors to keep the sky clean, Princess Celestia to have the sun available on demand. It seems some ponies forgot all the “shortcomings” of the system could be circumvented with what they had at their disposal.
Considering Manehattan was heavily infiltrated by Zebras, I’d say… “very conveniently forgot”.
Anonymous asked: Do you ever worry that the information you're giving away here might be used against an alternate universe version of you somewhere?
I don’t. I’ve noticed whatever could be used that way gets censored and I believe the censorship acts on all. If you learn something you feel like might benefit you in affecting the events that already took place, you will fail one way or another. Besides, I didn’t really reveal anything overly harmful.
