I slung my crowbar across my back, fitting it into its specially kludged holster, which consisted of a leather knife sheath with one side cut off and a piece of rope, maneuvering it around the other items which were strapped onto my person. It no longer caught on my medical bag, which I was rather thankful for. In the Northern Wastes, a hellish landscape with a fifteen degree celsius high in the peak of summer and an average of -40, the hell in which I had so recently left behind, finding supplies that aren't made of manticore and/or bits of tree involves exploring millenia old ruins or killing someone new to the area who happened to be carrying more than the clothes on their back. The ones with only the clothes on their back, of course, were dead already.
I had, after three months in the Wastes, created an armored and camouflaged version of my original white winter jacket. I looked incredibly menacing, what with my lead soldered, steel reinforced boots, my gloves, knuckles studded with an unidentifiable dark blue metal, my jacket, reinforced with cloth covered leather and trimmed with the furs of several of the toughest creatures on the planet. Basilisk, dragon, northern manticore, wyvern, Northern wolf, you name it, and I've probably killed one.
I had my crowbar, a two handed, black and white behemoth of painted steel, the steel blackened over a fire where I had sharpened its edges to razors.
I wore on my belt in a black leather sheath my sword, its blade of the same blue alloy with which my gloves were reinforced, is a two foot long blade that is like, but not quite, a cavalry sabre.
Even my messenger bag looked downright menacing, having been repaired and expanded upon using the ages old remnants of armor which I had picked up on my journey.
Nothing that I carried reflected even the smallest amount of light.
"I woke up in the wasteland, stolen from my home, with only my jacket, my bag full of paper, my Leatherman core and crux multitools, a lighter, a flashlight, a set of bandages, a steel watch, my steel capped boots, white camo cargo pants, and, of course, my crowbar. Not exactly unprepared, was I?
I discovered and/or created, in the wasteland, all sorts of fun things. Mild antibiotics from manticore intestine, because they rely upon magic instead of symbiotic bacteria to prevent disease, which is a truly remarkable system, you must admit,
Non freezing ink, from ten parts charblack ink to one part dragon's blood to one half part starswirl's fluid, which is the fluid which contains the magic purified in the starswirl gland proper. The ink comes out a nice red-black color, you can never quite place it, though.
Heat packs, constructed of manticore hide covering a bladder full of incendiocirculatory fluid, which is the fluid contained within a dragon's third circulatory system, which provides a dragon the highly magical flame and legendary longevity, and also comprises a significant portion of the mechanism with which scales are grown. It's why they eat gemstones, primarily.
Where was I? Oh, yes, the fluid from the incendiocirculatory system mixed with a solution of crushed starswirl's gem, which is a magical crystal created within a magical creature's starswirl gland, like the pearl from an oyster, although sometimes useful it is nothing but a waste product. They're not found in dragons, because they are consumed in the routine operations of the fire bladder.
Right. And, to limit the heat to a less...Thermonuclear level, powdered, magically drained gemstone. Never quarts. The gemstone dust will limit the packs to about 80 degrees celsius, which is still dangerous, but not potentially lethal.
Explosives, from saltpeter, sulfur, charcoal, powdered starswirl's gem, and a very small quantity of catalytic material. Platinum, if you can get it, gold if you can't. The ratio, in that order, is one to two to five to five to one fifth. Very resource intensive, at least by wasteland standards, and about ten times as powerful as normal gunpowder. Contained within a hollowpine stick, a hollowpine being a confusing, bamboo like evergreen. Sprouts in the coldest months but grows only in the summer thanks to an extremely strange type of tuber, which is quite good, but should only ever be consumed boiled...Right. Place explosives in stick, coat stick in evaporated starswirl's fluid mixed with alcohol and a small amount of crushed bone, preferably from the most magical thing you can find. Not dragon. The bone soaks up the magic from the fluid and stops it from being flammable. Dragonbone is extremely magical, and won't work. To seal it, a membrane of manticore intestine is stretched and coated in the aforementioned solution. Another layer of manticore intestine goes on the other end to fully seal it, and another layer of the solution. A hole should be punched in one end of the membrane to encorporate a fuse of coiled fiber of lichengrass, which is more akin to cotton than grass, dipped in starswirl's fluid and dried. The burn rate is wildly unpredictable, but averages out to about an inch or so a second. The fuses, in my experience, don't like to catch fire anywhere but the end. I recommend dipping the end in tallow or wax.
A crossbow, using three very rudimentary attraction and repulsion gems to throw a spiersilk or lichengrass fiber rope along a barrel, snapping the two prongs out of the barrel and out along the weapon's side. This launches the bolt and opens the, for lack of a better term, chamber, which is then loaded and closed, cocking the action. Lichengrass strings tend to fail rather spectacularly, and are very much not recommended, as stringing the weapon is an involved process. The bow has a stock which extends out from the barrel, acting as a safety. Lots of recoil, no noise but the thus of the prongs slamming home against the barrel. This noise can be reduced through use of a soft leather patch in the joint. My crossbow has an actual optic, which is a folding telescope ring. Very rudimentary, not very reliable.
A weapon which, when combined with a bolt for the aforementioned bow, causes the starswirl's gland in the target's body to decay into pure magical energy, which will, of course, expand, still carrying the enchantment, causing a chain reaction in other nearby magical creatures. Not dragons. The bolt is primed by travelling through the repulsion gems, so as to avoid any unfortunate accidents. Lessons were learned.
A firestarter, made of sawdust and crushed, not powdered, starswirl's gem mixed and formed into a bar, with a small strip of magnesium or a bit of dry, frayed stick. Burns pretty well.
I've also devised, as the last thing which I will actually explain right now, is a large recoiless rifle which fires what can only be called a javelin by technicality, because it was, in fact, a wrought iron staff with a fire ruby mounted n its head, terminating about an inch from the top of the staff. The gemstone was converted into a very powerful repulsion gem and was coated in an explosive putty created by dissolving the aforementioned explosive in alcohol. It is only a putty for a short while before it hardens like rock. Splinters of dragonscale were peppered across its surface. On the front, or bottom, of the staff was mounted a shield generator set to randomly generate very thin shields, to act as a breaching warhead. The staff had flights of wyvern feather, cradling the conical shaped charge of explosive soldered to the top of the staff, which acted as the propellant for the weapon. This monstrosity was then packed inside of a metal tube and soldered to a circular plate mounted behind it. It was fired by applying current to the endcap, which was done with the remains of my flashlight's battery. I only constructed one, of course, because of its massive resource consumption, unit weight, and because it didn't leave enough of the target, a massive black dragon, remaining to salvage. It was incredibly loud and incredibly bright. If I had missed, I would have been slaughtered before I could recover. If I had gotten the backplate wrong, the recoil would have removed my shoulder and delivered it with upmost haste to the horizon. Unpleasant." I said, stroking my, although recently trimmed, thick blond beard.
I took a sip of water and checked my watch, which I still had not set. "Moving on. To answer the question of why I had not gone to the Crystal Empire to receive aid, I actually did. I was turned around at the shieldwall because of Sombra's presence in the region. I remedied the problem of Sombra's army, striking down the undead with a single arrow, because the magical undead are comically vulnerable to chain reaction weaponry, located Sombra and the crystal heart, but was unable to retrieve either. I returned to the guard, but was denied entry because he did not believe me, and I could offer no proof of my deed. I have heard, through a letter sent to me via dragonfire by a pony in the Empire, that the guard was strung up for that, for forbidding a wandered from the Wastes shelter. Unfortunately, he didn't meet his maker to have a brief talk about kindness, or, in fact, justice, and survived. The reason why I speak of the guard in this manner is because my people have a similar law, and it is one of the most unacceptable crimes one can commit, because it is either murder or forcing someone brave the winter once more. I had walked three and a half thousand miles to get there. I should point out, before anyone else decides to, that the train was down with broken tracks, and I had nowhere to stay in the area. Vagrancy is all well and good with no guardsmen about, of course, but I'll be damned if I'm going to be killed in my sleep for not having a home when I've already survived so much. I also hold no ill will towards the Crystal Empire or Equestria's leadership, as the entire situation was fubar. Could have at least given me some damned coffee, though." I explained, a hint of anger creeping into my tone.
"Now, to answer the question of 'what are you going to do now', I am unsure. I will, quite certainly, find a fireplace and a very large kettle, and drink tea in front of a fire for a good couple of days, then transcribe my journals to type and publish them, and hopefully make enough of a profit from them to let me practice some good old fashioned capitalism. Trim up my armor to make it look pretty, refine my equipment with the bountiful resources of civilization, publish my discoveries, patent what I can patent, oh, by the way, if any of what I said is patented by anyone other than myself, if it has not already been patented, the patent holder will find that I do not take kindly to thieves. Right. Then, I suppose I will occupy a library somewhere and read every history book that I can find. Then, I suppose, I'll get bored of the whole ordeal and go wandering in some new and exciting hell, and see what happens. Better equipped, of course. Maybe I'll check on a friend in Gryphonia, whom I helped back to health a few months ago. Her name, or at least the one she gave me, is Swift Talon. Dark blue plumage which is obviously dyed, probably in the capital of der Reich, if anybody wants to track her down for me. Tell her she still owes me a drink and that I want my knife back, I forgot to get the thing off of her before she left." I said, scratching my head contemplatively.
"To the question of if I am of royal blood, no, I am not. I am descend from the stock of engineers, farmers, and berserkers. We, as a family, are very, very good at being persistent. It's how we survived the Catholics, the Holocaust, and the Soviet Union as European Jews. I am a son of the snow and kin to the night, as they say, and I much prefer both to the tedium of the warmer lands and the most terrifying of creatures, those beasts which haunt the dreams of even the strongest among us, politicians, who dwell within the light. I am not in any way a noble. My parents were self-made middle class. Although we never had much money to spend, thanks to two separate economic crashes, which is a pretty good reason for why I was able to do what I did." I explained, taking a sip of my water.
"And now, my favorite question, and the last one which I shall answer today, is my age. I am, and have been since July the Twelfth, sixteen years of age." I said, pausing for a moment to enjoy the stunned shock of the audience, princesses included. "That is correct. I am, in fact, still technically a minor. I will be honest, as I have been since my arrival in this world, and admit that I am still slightly lost in this strange thing called 'civilization', which forbids me from simply hitting my problems with a crowbar until they go away or stop twitching, and that I also require an education in higher mathematics, if only to make it possible for me to mathematically express those theories which I come up with." I explained, a small smile on my face. The reporters, assembled to hear my tale an those of several other humans, began shouting questions.
"As previously stated, no further questions. I will, however state one more thing: If my sleep or reading is interrupted by a reporter, I will kick the offender in the face, confiscate their valuables, burn their notes, and dump them in an alleyway. Than you." I said, nodding to a grey stallion holding a camera.
I walked, unmolested, to my temporary castle suite, and took a seat at its desk, where I began to type my story. What follows is a heavily cut down rendition of my tale.
