Stories from the Front

I think Im at that awkward place

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:24:15 -0700

where people think Im popular-ish when I’m actually not so much, so they dont promote me cause they figure I dont need the help(which I do). I dont have a lot to back that statement up with honestly, other than seeing a lot of the blogs I watch on various “check out this cool blog” tumblrs lately without being on them myself, its just kinda a feeling. Like “check out this cool thing, and this cool thing! and look at this idea over here! and eh, dont worry about SFTF, hes going to keep doing his thing regardless”

WELL I AM! SO THERE! >:C

XD this message will self destruct. also, more animated stuff coming in the not too distant future.

They. Them. Plural. Moonlight filters down through a hole in...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:14:19 -0700

They. Them. Plural.

Moonlight filters down through a hole in the cave ceiling, perfectly round and lined in cut stone. One of Apple loosa’s wells. There are others, here and there, far off in the distance that bathe the underground in an unearthly glow, too dim to see detail, but so much brighter than one would expect. It softens all the hard stone edges and pools in the recesses like the water that no doubt once coated the bottom of this place. I don’t see any now, though. The dried ground has massive fissures in it; cracks that must have opened when the rains stopped and drained the well water into some lower chamber in the cave complex. It was no wonder the town ran dry so quickly. That must have been where they’d come up from. Sealed away in the dark by years of steady, controlled weather, until one major slip-up set them free.

They move like spiders in the dark. Slow, steady, deliberate movements, with shocking grace and dexterity. I can see them stringing cables from cut pillar to cut pillar like so much web. I’ve seen enchanted equipment before: they usually look like ponies. Built to fit in the same places we fit, and use the same tools we do, so they can build as we build. But these things haven’t seen a pony in who knows how long. They’ve forgotten what they once were, and found new creatures to model themselves on. Its bizarrely fascinating, to see them try and continue their ancient compulsions while mixed and warped with new methods and changed anatomy. The eery silhouette of magic, left to its own devices for so many long years with nopony to guide it.

Strung high in the middle of the chamber, just below the well which still drips water from the drizzle I dropped on the town when I arrived, is a massive structure of spun cabling and mineral. It hangs like some bloated cocoon, with views to the entire cave, and I can see the smallest glimpses of pastel fur and muted struggle from within. One of the tommyknockers is carrying the limp shape of Moonshine across the thin strands of wire like a hawk carries a mouse, hammocked in a constricting band of rusted, oil-slicked metal coil. I can see her trying to struggle, just a little, but there’s no power behind it. Shes tired, hungry, dehydrated. Sparks flicker from her horn here and there and warm up up the cold white light from the moon, but accomplish little else. Shes barely speaking. Now I know how she knew somepony had come: the rain had seeped through from the well above. They must have felt it in their cable prison. Merciful, that they had gotten something to drink. But not enough. The small motions I see from within the grotesque tangle that looms in the air betray the weariness of those within it. It must have taken all she had left to get out the first time. I’m almost five hundred feet away, and I can taste the despair in her sweat.

My head spins with all the things still left unknown. Why they’re here, what they’re after, whats possessing them to steal the inhabitants of the town and lock them up down here, suspended high above the ground. But the time for investigation has passed. I’ve found the Apple Loosian ponies, I’ve found the source of their assailants, and I have fifty miles of heavy rainclouds sitting low on the horizon waiting for use.

I don’t know if it will work. I don’t know if it will do anything more than clean their hard iron hides. But its all I have.

Something echos in my memory as I set my teeth. A little whisper, from a very, very long time ago.

“The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout…”

“down came the rain…”

There is a curious combination of apprehension and satisfaction...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:02:25 -0700

There is a curious combination of apprehension and satisfaction that comes with the discovery that something you’d accepted as fact has changed from its original state. The satisfaction comes from knowing you’ve hit upon something important you’d previously overlooked. The apprehension comes from the knowledge that this new discovery opens up a whole world of additional variables and unforeseen dangers.

In her log, Moonshine had described the newly uncovered mine as being ‘filled in’ within the first few feet of its entrance. A dead end. But when I arrived there I was met with a much different scene. Freshly excavated dirt, disturbed rocks, and the telltale markings of metal tools on the walls. It was sloppy, in a disturbing sort of way. Like somepony who knew what they were doing had gone about the process but was distracted, or drunk, or sick. The knowledge was present, but the precision was lacking. It made the entire shaft just the slightest bit askew, with all the angles off by just enough to make you dizzy, and to cast long, sharp shadows from your headlamp that moved as you did, but in all the wrong directions. Beams were in the wrong places. Side shafts went off here and there and dead-ended without reason. Air vents were missing. It smelled of dirt and mud, and rusted metal.

I was beginning to piece together a broader idea of what had happened as I began my descent. Apple loosa is a new settlement, but this area has had ponies in it off and on for a long time. Never for mining, though, most of those are up in the mountains. Oh you get a few, here and there, but most of the subterranean tunnels around this area are for moving water, not digging for minerals. I was willing to bet that this ‘mine’ was actually part of a system that fed Apple loosa’s well, and it had recently dried out due to the weather problems during my absence. When the dust storm uncovered the entrance in Moonshine’s log, it must have woken up the waterlogged inhabitant along with it.

I don’t know how a Tommyknocker deals with water, but my guess would be its weight combined with deep mud would keep it pretty rooted in place, especially if it wasn’t aware of an exit. But if that water were to leave, and that mud were to dry, it would be no more difficult to break out of than the rocks it was originally intended to mine to begin with. The Tommyknocker could break free, and come out through the newly exposed entrance.

The theory works, but it doesn’t explain why it was here to begin with. Maybe it migrated, dug clear through from another mine in an ongoing search for whatever it was once enchanted to find. Or maybe there was a dig down here at one point and the records were lost. Or no pony recorded it to begin with.

I ran the scenarios through my head as I walked and tried to ignore the warped echos of my hooves bouncing off the asymmetrical surfaces of poorly cut stone. It kept me from whistling in the dark, and dwelling too hard on my previous moment of panic.

OOC artist commentary on the Tommyknockers

Fri, 31 May 2013 00:21:00 -0700

This is an OOC post, just as a little insight into my thought process, in case you were curious. there is no tl;dr, you can either read it or not, it doesn’t effect the story.

Folks rarely ask me about why I make things look the way they do. I just post these descriptions because it makes me feel like I’m contributing something more to the blog. MLP does a lovely job of re-envisioning classic mythology in a way that makes it work in their environment. The show tends to stick to Greek roots, but its deviated a few times (the Wendigo being a big one) and it often changes the nature of the legend itself, to allow it to mesh in Equestria. Sometimes the adaptations are small, like with the Hydra being a ‘thing that lives in a swamp’. other times, they completely re-write the myth, like they did with the Wendigo. Even Pegasus ponies are a deviation. Originally, there was only one winged horse, and its name was ‘Pegasus’.

The Tommyknocker is an old western legend of a spirit that lives in a mine and knocks on the walls to warn miners of impending cave-ins. Theyre generally considered helpful, but helpful in the sense that ‘if you avoid them, you’ll be safe’. you flee -from- the knocking, not toward it, but as I understand the original legend, its rarely the tommyknocker itself that’s blamed for the tunnel collapse.

The various stories of the tommyknocker have giving it a variety of different qualities ranging from friendly and helpful to malicious and murderous, and its often portrayed as having the personality of a dead comrade or previous inhabitant of the mine itself. When I was considering ways to use this legend in an equestria setting, I decided to forgo the ghost approach and turn instead to some of the previously established forms of magic that might produce a similar set of eccentric responses if conditions were less than ideal.

The idea of magical automation of equipment to make tasks easier has already been used in MLP:FIM in the form of Twilight’s snowplow, but the theme goes back much further, even in terms of animation. Mickey’s broomsticks, for instance, which resulted in a similarly catastrophic end. I’d always wondered what might happen to a living enchantment if it was never told to stop. Would it grow? change? or just slowly decay? The concept behind the tommyknockers I made was an attempt to depict what happens when one leaves magic to its own devices and abandons responsibility for it. much like Mickey’s brooms or Twilight’s plow, the coherency of the original set of instructions becomes inadequate when the conditions change. The magic attempts to compensate, and over time gains new qualities that are much more difficult to predict.

Their physical appearance varies, and Ive only depicted one so far, but the idea behind it was to build a structure that might be physically appealing or attractive if it had some sort of ‘outer layer’ that had long since sloughed off. whats left is cold metal and empty lenses and emotionless features. the hope behind the metaphor is to show something that was once someones pride and joy, now long forgotten, cast aside, and continuing to trudge ever onward because it never knew how to stop.

Dear diary, Words cannot express the depth of my failure. I...

Wed, 29 May 2013 17:14:00 -0700

Dear diary,

Words cannot express the depth of my failure. I had thought that I’d left the ghosts of my experience in the north behind me, only to have them manifest right when action was needed most. I had Moonshine in arms reach, and I couldn’t get to her. I froze. Just for a moment, but it was the right moment. And it took her. I could have helped, but fear got the better of me. That she could show such courage over the past week only to have me fail when she most needed my help is a fault I may never forgive myself for.

But at least now, I can do something about it.

I have put a log entry in the North Wind log for Apple loosa, and I’ll summarize it here. As grim as things seem, Moonshine’s appearance has presented a silver lining. I recognized her assailant, and I now know what happened to Apple loosa, even if I’m not entirely sure why.

Its called a Tommyknocker. A long time ago, unicorn pony miners would enchant their mining equipment with come-to-life spells to help them dig through the night while the ponies slept. Problem was, the spells were often sloppy. Miners are miners, after all. If they were expert spellcasters, they’d probably be in a different line of work. But they knew how to animate the equipment, and it worked well enough for them.

Eventually, mines ran dry and the ponies moved on. The responsible ones disenchanted their equipment, but many of them just left it behind. Some of it got lost in the tunnels, others just decayed, but a few lingered on. Bits and pieces of animated mining gear joined together so as to better supplement the needs of each other, working as a single unit just like their pony masters used to. They’d form miss-mashed, haphazard bodies and their slipshod enchantments would mingle, mixing signals and altering their original directives to form a single, unpredictable consciousness that lurked in the dark caves of old abandoned mines and tried to continue its best guess at its original task. Some are friendly, others ignore living things entirely, as though we’re not present at all.

Some are violent.

When I used to spend time with Cashmere at the Canterlot magic academy, he studied these things as part of his training, so as to better understand his special talent. By general decree, tommyknockers are to be disenchanted when encountered provided its safe to do so. By their very nature, they’re broken, their spells don’t work properly anymore, and they’re a danger to things around them. If you’re a unicorn who knows how to do that sort of thing, the process isn’t terribly difficult. Cashmere is.

I am not.

Which leaves me alone facing an enemy made of steel and cog, centuries old, who was instilled with life and never taught how to die.

The silver lining is that Moonshine, before her re-capture, confirmed that the others are alive, and her very presence on the surface indicates that there’s hope for escape. By now the population of Apple loosa is going on four days with no fresh food or water that I know of, short of whatever is down in the mine with them. Now that I know the quarantine isn’t due to something infectious, I’d fly off and get help myself, but I don’t think they have the liberty of time.

So I’m grabbing what provisions I can and setting off to spring them myself, or at least get them some food, and I’m sending Malachite with this diary to find Cashmere and get help. Earth ponies believe in the power of objects to find their masters. My sister used it to find me, with the bag my father made. Cashmere gave me this book, and Malachite knows the way back to Ponyville. I have to trust that they’ll find each other, and shes better off away from here right now anyway.

They put the fires out again. I’m not going to light them this time. Not for the first time, this book is my lifeline to the outside world.

Photo

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:14:13 -0700

Photo

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:14:22 -0700

Photo

Mon, 06 May 2013 19:09:00 -0700

Photo

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 11:44:03 -0700

SPR/39 North Wind: Moonshine Province: Appleloosa I’m...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:14:00 -0700

SPR/39

North Wind: Moonshine

Province: Appleloosa

I’m about as worried as I can be for Stormfront. We’ve gone almost three whole weeks without rain now, our reservoirs are bottoming out. Braeburn is in here everyday, talking about his trees. I can sympathize with him, those things contribute to the vast majority of our economy over here. But if this doesn’t let up soon, our troubles are going to be a lot worse than dried up apples. I’ve stopped sending letters to Canterlot, I know they’re looking for her. We’ve started rationing.

They’ll send another Southwind back to us with a storm soon, but its not going to be as much as we need until somepony can find the actual clouds that were earmarked for us. You never really realize how much organizing those ponies do until they’re missing.

-Moonshine

—————————————————————————————————————————

SPR/40

North Wind: Moonshine

Province: Appleloosa

News came down, Lucky Stars has been canned from the Northwind chair in Manehattan. Not so lucky after all. I didn’t really know her, but the report says that her miss-allocation of resources combined with Stormfront’s absence has resulted in the majority of the local weather problems.

I got a letter from Rainbow today, too. Most of our clouds ended up en route to Ponyville. I’m doing my best to keep everypony’s tempers down, including my own. We need those HERE, and by the time anypony gets up there to tell the pegasus ponies that are driving them, its already going to cost us another day.

-Moonshine

————————————————————————————————————————————-

SPR/41

North Wind: Moonshine

Province: Appleloosa

Luck! Stormfront’s been found, I just got the letter from Canterlot today. Its scanty on the details, but there’s something about her ‘being held against her will by a malevolent native of the frozen north’. Its a story I’ll be wanting to hear in person, that’s for sure. I’m elated that shes alive, we were all pretty worried there for a while. The letter says she reported in a couple days ago and is almost to Ponyville. Should get there just a little ahead of our errant clouds.

Rain’s on the way.

-Moonshine

——————————————————————————————————————————

SPR/42

North Wind: Moonshine

Province: Appleloosa

Wind kicked up big around noon today. The dry spell has all the dust loose on the ground, caused a major dust storm. I’m still picking dirt out of the window-blinds. Town’s a mess, but I haven’t seen ponies this high spirited in a while. We’re tired, we’re wore out, but we’ve finally got some closure on the rain situation. Its still going to be a little bit, but its coming.

I know I’ll be dancing in it.

-Moonshine

————————————————————————————————————————-

SPR/43

North Wind: Moonshine

Province: Appleloosa

Derpy came by today with an emergency shipment from Ponyville. Its not the downpour we need, but its a damn-site better than what we had, and it’ll tide us over until the real thing arrives. I wish I could be happier about it. Last night, after the dust storm, Maybelle and Cracked Corn found an old mine outside of town that had been buried by dirt. They came back and told their folks, and were told not to go inside it.

I can only assume, based on the missing pony reports on my desk, that they snuck out at night and did exactly that. Nopony has seen them in 10 hours.

-Moonshine

—————————————————————————————————————————-

SPR/44

North Wind: Moonshine

Province: Appleloosa

I’m retracting my previous statement. We went and investigated the mine, it goes no where. Wind uncovered the top of it, but the interior is filled with sand withing 30 feet of the entrance. When I got back to town I had 6 more missing pony reports on my desk. Adults, foals, related, unrelated. No discernible pattern. Nopony has seen anypony coming or going, either. Were I a lesser mare, I might be scared right about now.

We’ve already done a town-wide search to no avail, tomorrow we’ll branch out in to the larger countryside.

-Moonshine

——————————————————————————————————————————

SPR/45

North Wind: Moonshine

Province: Appleloosa

Half my town is missing. I walked out of my home this morning to see ponies sobbing for absent loved ones in the streets, and business doors locked and bolted with no lights behind them. They don’t answer when I knock on the doors. Scared. Or missing. What can take a pony from inside a locked house is beyond me. No hoofprints coming or going, but ponies are starting to panic, and I’m getting worried about abandonment. We might have something really bad on our hooves here.

In the interests of the safety of greater Equestria, I’m issuing quarantine as of now. I’m not looking forward to the looks I’m going to get for that, but whatever this is, I cant let it leave.

-Moonshine

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

SPR/46

North Wind: Moonshine

Province: Appleloosa

I sent Humdinger to light the warning fires this morning. Ten minutes later I saw the smoke rising. Five minutes after that, it stopped. He didn’t come back. At first I thought he’d chickened out, put the fires back out so that help wouldn’t get scared away, but then others were gone too.

Coincidence, maybe.

Jazzy ran in here around noon, tears in her eyes, slapping missing pony reports on my desk. Tried to calm her down, but she ran back out. Just for a second, she said, to check the building next door. Didn’t come back. I lit the fires again myself, and ran back to the office as fast as I could. I don’t know why I feel safe in here, but its all I have. I kicked the windows in on one of the houses that had been bolted shut from the inside. Nopony there.

I think I’m a little scared, at this point. Trying to get over that.

I cant trust the reports to be accurate anymore, things are happening too fast. I’ve told who I can to bunker in and wait for rescue. By my best guess, over ¾ of the population of Appleloosa is now missing.

-Moonshine

In appreciation of 3k followers

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 02:46:01 -0700

I am not going to draw a picture that highlights some small section of you, because you’ve all seen that before. Im not going to distribute gift art, because i do that all the time with this blog, and i see no reason why that pattern should change. Im not going to thank you for your support, because it goes unsaid. i dont get paid for this, there are no commissions, this blogs very existence is due to the community for which it serves, and every post i make is another thank you to those who read it. What im going to do instead, is outline a few promises.

I promise to do my best to maintain or improve the stories I write for you here for as long as this blog continues. I cant promise perfection, but i can promise effort.

I promise to never settle for mediocrity. Some pictures will be better than others, some posts will shine a little brighter than the rest. Thats life, and life occasionally demands that we divide our attention. But for the time i have available to me, i will try my best with, because i want to deliver nothing less than that.

I promise to care about my product, and to let it end gracefully should ever i find that care waning. And while there are always ups and downs out here in real world land, they should not effect my character, and i will not burden her with problems not of her world. Eventually this, like all things, will end, but i will see to it that it ends on its terms.

I promise to make mistakes. Likely pretty often. And i promise to learn what I can from them.

I promise to stay as true as i can to the source material within the context of my canon, and not lie through my character’s mouth just because someone may listen to it

I promise to keep writing too much, because I feel like you’re worth it.

I promise to never ask you to care about something without doing my best to give you a reason to.

And lastly, i promise to keep ignoring every damned rule about mixing porn and plot, text and pictures, exposition and action, narration and dialog ive ever seen at the cost of my success for no other reason than to say “This too can work, if only on a small scale.”

So here’s to 3k, and the hopes of many more. Keep on flying.

Dear diary, When I was younger, my father had a friend named...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:14:24 -0700

Dear diary,

When I was younger, my father had a friend named Pine Box.

He was an undertaker in Trottingham and used to stay with our caravan when it passed through, and at night my sister and I would sit around and listen with rapt attention as he spun tales of ghosts and grizzly deeds, and the eccentricities of his profession.

I remember one night I’d asked him how many nails it took to build a coffin, out of some idle curiosity. For the life of me I cant recall the number he provided. Ten, twenty, something like that.

But I remember following it up by asking how many nails it would take to build coffins for all of Trottingham, no doubt determined to make some silly point about him being woefully understocked for such an eventuality.

He’d replied with “one”.

I’d asked him how that was possible, and he gave me the strangest look. This sort of far off, sad smile. As though he was pained by some ancient memory, and at the same time glad that I had never experienced it.

And he told me it only took one nail to hang the quarantine sign.

I don’t know what happened to the population of Appleloosa. Nothing here is broken. Nothing here is missing. Nopony is injured. They’re just gone. Everypony is just gone.

The fires Moonshine wrote about in her log are the signal pyres. They have to be lit in the event of a town crisis, as a way to ward off approaching ponies and warn other towns of distress in the event that mail can’t safely be sent, like in a quarantine situation. They’re the only way anypony with the means to help can find out if a town needs it when no pony is allowed to leave. That somepony would extinguish them, repeatedly, is unthinkable.

But it happened. No fires were lit when I flew in today. No lights at all. No warnings. And now, by Equestrian law and in the interests of the protection of the greater country, I cant leave. I’m trapped in an empty town with an unknown threat out of the fear that, should I leave, it will follow.

And like an idiot, I’ve trapped Malachite along with me.

My primary concern at this point is discovering the fate of the Appleloosian ponies. There are whole stacks of well-kept logbooks for me to look through back in the office. Maybe examining the accumulated evidence objectively, instead of through the haze of terror poor Moonshine must have felt as her friends and loved ones vanished all around her over the course of several days, I might be able to pick up something she missed.

And I’m going to light those fires again.

(page1 bottom background edited from http://whiteeyedcat.deviantart.com/art/Appleloosa-257607878 , all others edited from showclips)

Photo

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 20:27:14 -0700

Photo

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:14:52 -0700

Log Entry:Spr/47 North Wind: Moonshine Province:...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:18:18 -0700

Log Entry:Spr/47

North Wind: Moonshine

Province: Appleloosa

The fires are out again. Three times now. I cant call it coincidence anymore, something is snuffing them. Or somepony. Not that theres anypony left to blame. This marks the first day in four days a missing pony report hasn’t been filed by somepony. Not because nopony’s missing. Theres just nopony left to file them, except me.

So I guess this is me, filing the last report.

Breaburn didn’t come back from the orchard last night. He’d planned to. Said he would. He’s not the lying sort of pony, and he wouldn’t leave me all alone out here. Something got him like it got the rest. Didn’t hear anything. Didn’t see anything. Nothing broken. He just didn’t come back.

Pretty scared now. Been pretty scared for a while, I guess. Hasn’t gotten better.

Protocol dictates I light the fires again. They have to stay burning no matter what. But I have a feeling when I leave this office this time I’m not going to make it back. So Im leaving this here with the sign on the table and Im going to go outside and do my duty and walk up to the orchard and hope I find that stallion with his hoof caught in a log or something, even though I know thats not whats going to happen.

And Im going to light the fires again.

And if I make it back here, I’m going to hammer that sign to the post on the ridge for all the good it will do and bunker down and wait for rescue. Because its whats the manual says, and its the smart thing choice. Thats what I told everypony else to do. Some of them listened. Some didn’t. Didn’t really matter, in the end.

If you find this, whoever you are, and those fires aren’t lit, and you didn’t have any warning, Im sorry. Im so very sorry.

-Moonshine

Photo

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:14:23 -0700

Rain does tend to keep ponies indoors, but not every pony. Not...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:14:19 -0700

Rain does tend to keep ponies indoors, but not every pony. Not ALL the ponies. When Kite and I walked into Appleloosa after I fetched her from the orchard, the only sound I could hear was the echo of raindrops in the gutters, and the lonely creak of hanging signs.

(top right background edited from http://whiteeyedcat.deviantart.com/art/Appleloosa-257607878 , all others edited from showclips)

no-text version

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 19:45:00 -0700

no-text version

APPLE LOOSA One of these days I’ll remember how to...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:14:15 -0700

APPLE LOOSA

One of these days I’ll remember how to spell this town. According to my new map, they’ve tossed a space in it. Guess they were bored.

Working with weather has its ups and its downs, but the ups are awfully fun. I love cloud reinforcement trips to frontier towns like this one. I get to to roll in with a biiiiig head of clouds and bring rain to the desert while all the folk below cheer. Apple Loosa depends on its orchards for most of its income, they appreciate a good rainfall. And it gives me a chance to show off a bit, if only for the giggles. Sliding down storm clouds and digging your hooves into the rough is flashy stuff, and ponies love a good show.

I dropped Malachite off at the orchard outside town so she could explore the trees and I wouldn’t have to worry about dropping her while I went through the somewhat tricky process of dispersing clouds to their holding patterns. This place is definitely dryer than it should be for this time a year, likely a result of Lucky’s slip ups while I was away. I’ve managed to resist grumbling over that lately though, now that shes not calling shots in Manehattan anymore. She’s probably still on the train to Las Pegasus right now. I still don’t think that’s a really great idea, what with her trying to lay low and avoid her old managers, but whats done is done. She’ll be fine.

In the meantime, the dry spell and winds have kicked up more loose sand and dirt than usual, and the landscape looks different than the last time I was here. Once I grab Kite, we can head into town and see if anything new and exciting has turned up.

ok, NOW we can start the next story arc XD. Sorry for the repost...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:56:57 -0700

ok, NOW we can start the next story arc XD. Sorry for the repost for those of you who’ve seen this one already, but I took it down so I could do the little dream sequence miniseries.