Looks like we’re starting with the classic ‘War, war never changes’. This pleases me, I’m not that big of a Fallout junkie, granted I have played the important ones, 1, 2, 3 and New Vegas but I didn't really enjoy the first two. Fun fact I read through the majority of Fallout Equestria without having played any Fallout other than a little of 3, didn't even know the Goddess was based on anything. Anywho, next is the introduction to our protagonist Blackjack who has made me laugh from her third paragraph.
So that’s a good start. Next we learn that this Stable’s punishment for public displays of affection is flogging. I think that this Stable may be somewhat draconian. Since Blackjack doesn't report this it seems that despite being a Security Pony her alignment won’t be Lawful whatever (presumably good). Good, dislike protagonists who give over the top punishments. I'm looking at you Daenerys Targaryen.
From the exposition it seems that this Stable’s gimmick is that the population needs to be 500. I'm guessing not exactly five hundred cause that seems hard to enforce. Unless I guess whenever someone’s born they kill somebody, though this Stable does seem to be awful so I'm not ruling it out. And given that four hundred odd have to be female there must be a lot of dead colts. I pity the pony with that job.
Anywho enough about the horror that may or may not be brought to the foreground. Seems Blackjack isn't well liked among the security ponies since she’s taken down by Daisy and Marmalade for running while Midnight appears to get off scot free. And she only knows telekinesis. Like another famous Stable Dweller. I wonder if the similarities end there. Now begins the quest of how to get her handcuffs off, there was some stuff about Blackjack but I’ll discuss that at the end of this.
Unfortunately she fails the speech check and without Cherchez La Filly her advances are somewhat lacking in tact. And apparently Midnight is on the queue. No idea what that is but from Blackjack’s reaction I'm guessing it’s bad. In this conversation we also confirm that the Overmare is a tyrant and that nobody likes Blackjack. And that our first quest is still uncompleted.
And Stable 99 is officially awful. Just had to get that out of the way. There are forty male ponies and five hundred total ponies, so assuming that the birth rate is 1:1 for males and female ponies and after some quick calculations 84% of colts aren't allowed to exist, whether that's forced abortions or straight up murdering of babies, I don't know. And of course the 16% that are allowed to are basically slaves. Oh and Blackjack’s mother is the head of Security. But the awfulness of Stable 99 kinda drew my attention. Also there’s an old encrypted file the Overmare’s very interested in, considering her reaction to it being prepared to be moved to a Pipbuck and the fact that the pony who found it is now dead I'm guessing she doesn't want anyone else to be able to read it. I'm predicting that Blackjack will get it in her inevitable flight from the Stable.
And now cards. We learn some important stuff, well guessing important, the maintenance ponies are not very fond of the Overmare, the Incident that’s been mentioned fairly often was a rebellion of bucks. Following this we meet the missing stallion. The name P-21 sounds familiar, so I assume he’ll be a main character. He’s claiming she’s a murderer and Blackjack disagrees. While I'm obviously not 100% sure of the details of retirement I'm inclined to agree with P-21, while she’s not pulling the trigger she’s bringing him to the noose. May have mixed up my metaphors there. Then our old friends Marmalade and Daisy arrive to beat him to death.
No.
Security saves ponies.
I definitely like Blackjack. Even if after she is still going to allow P-21 to be killed, though presumably in a humane manner.
Plot’s really kicking in now. Overmare is proving that she’s somewhat unhinged, locks Blackjack away and another Incident looks like it’ll occur. And the Overmare has been claiming that Stabletech sent a message to them. Guessing this is akin to the Enclave’s message to the Vault in Fallout 2. P-21 then proves to be a useful guy with his lockpicking and computer skills and Blackjack goes to warn her mother, who is missing. I'm guessing she’s dead. So the next best pony to go to is obviously Midnight. Because why not?
Ah, the queue is for breeding. Blackjack manages to pass this Speech check and we learn the message is from something or someone called Deus. This name also sounds familiar. And kinda arrogant. Then bam, Raiders in the Stable, stakes are raised, dead stallion, fight scene, dead raider. And we get this description.
Might just be me but nightmarish mare sounds off. After killing another Raider there’s some chatter Blackjack overhears. Just going to go off on a tangent here but the misuse of the term buck is bothering me so much, I'm sure it didn't before back in the mane fic but whatever I’ll muscle through and not mention it again. They don’t like Raiders, don’t work directly for Deus but probably with him and apparently the Reapers, so be prepared for husk ponies to show up. Blackjack can’t bring herself to shoot at first because they’re not insane like the Raiders, I’d argue the Raiders weren’t necessarily insane but the fact that Blackjack saw them killing members of the Stable that made them easier to kill. She proves that she can kill them as she kills the mare, but her gun breaks after single shot. Again. And gets saved by her mother. Guess she's not dead. I predict she dies later.
Except you since you just killed a pony. And your daughter who killed a pony seconds ago. And in fact two other ponies who had in turned killed many other ponies. So yeah, lots of ponies kill ponies in your stable. But regardless of her quip Blackjack is saved and now we've got four ponies. This is quickly whittled down to three. The dead one isn't Gin Rummy though. She'll die eventually.
I'm guessing that this is Deus and that he will be our antagonist for the first volume of the fic. He seems pretty cool if incredibly vulgar but he’s a colossal cyber pony so I’ll let it slide. Definitely displayed why he’s a threat. From his dialogue, he doesn't seem like the sharpest tool of the shed, but since it’s his name on the broadcast, I’ll guess he’s smarter than he seems if he’s organised this. Might not have though since there’s also the Reapers and whoever those non Raiders were working for.
Blackjack comes up with the plan of dressing like one of the Raiders, pretending to be one, get the data they want and then take off into the Wasteland forcing them to chase her rather than attack the Stable. It’s a pretty decent plan and seems to work. Until Deus threatens to rape her. While there’s some raping of the Overmare going on in the background. Moving on. She convinces Deus to not rape her (I am very glad of this and am in favour of Blackjack and in fact anyone not being raped) and goes to get the code with a stallion who used to be in her Stable and mentions a Sanguine, assuming this is the party that the non raiders are working for. Eventually he recognises her and she knocks him unconscious.
She gets to the Overmare’s office and fights the Raiders outside it, finding it hard to start the fight with murder since all the other times she’s killed today has been in self-defence, as she should feel. She gets over it though and kills the Raiders. Then Daisy is a jerk and attacks her and Marmalade is really nice, she’s great.
I rose to my hooves, my backside really complaining as I limped to the door. “Really? Why?”
“‘Cause you’re my friend,”
Somewhat confused in what a friend is, but really adorable regardless. P-21 is there as well, the others didn't know so I'm guessing he’s got a good Sneak skill as well. And they all take turns trashing Blackjack. At least P-21 and Daisy have some common ground. Regardless of this P-21 is convinced to go with the plan and will then immediately leave Blackjack. I doubt this. And we get the file, looks fairly useless to Blackjack right now. Don’t have a prediction for when we learn why it’s so important. Now all she has to do is get Deus' attention.
While I can't argue that got his attention, there may have been safer ways to do it. And that's pretty much the chapter. Longer than I expected the first one to be, though I did have a few breaks reading it.
On Blackjack, first thing is that I like her. She seems pretty self depreciative, many mentions of either being stupid or that a smarter mare would do better than her. She seems smarter than she thinks, obviously running off a fairly small window of her character right now, but she is the one to come up with the plan to save the Stable. Under the circumstances it's a pretty good plan and obviously a better one isn't presented. It does make sense that she doesn't think much of herself, it seems that at most ponies in the Stable tolerate her, with a few exceptions, and at worst hate her. As I quoted before I quite like that she's tempted to just let P-21 be beaten to death but ultimately does step in, and does save him. It makes me like her a lot more that she hesitated than if instantly stepped in. On another note I find her quite funny.
On the chapter as a whole. I enjoyed it. Definitely a good opener, I'm interested in the fic, there's a lot of things mentioned here that I wanna know more about, the top of which are; Deus, Reapers, Sanguine, why that program is so wanted. So, looking forward to whenever I can get time to read the next chapter.
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