Wasted Honor

Second verse, same as the first. Right here you’ll find the following items in the order listed: Character Listing and Description, Equestrian Military Rank System and Insignia, a setlist of the music I listened to while writing the story, and my final author’s note. For a full list of material for this universe, please see the story ‘It’s Not You They Fear.’

Characters:

Timberwolves and Guard Related: (Without later promotions)

Captain Dive Skyward, 'Dad', Male, Pegasus, Light Gray/Blue/Yellow-Gold/-
Lieutenant Shadow Wing, 'Hunter', Male, Pegasus, Pale Green/Navy/Gray/Matte Black
Stable Sergeant Storm Crasher, 'Crash', Male, Pegasus, White/Gray/Blue/-
Sergeant Wild Wind, 'Chaff', Male, Pegasus, Black/Navy/Blue/-
Corpral Razor Wings, 'Savage', Male, Pegasus, Red/Gray/White/-
Colonel Argent Fire, Male, Earth Pony, Red/Orange+Gray/Blue/-
Refract Ray, ‘Ray’, Male, Unicorn, Beige/Red/?/-
Sure Splint, ‘Mama Wolf’, Female, Unicorn, Gray/Brown/Yellow/-

Equestrian Military Rank System and Insignia

In case you missed it from the previous one, here are the rank insignia again.

Enlisted Grade:

(Buck) Private: One Star
Senior Private: Two Stars
Sergeant: Three Stars
Stable Sergeant: Four Stars
Senior Sergeant: Five Stars
Command Sergeant: Six Stars

Officer Grade:

Lieutenant: New Moon
Captain: Crescent Moon
Commander: Half Moon
Colonel: Full Moon
Branch General: Half Rising Sun
General: Full Sun

Extended Setlist:

Format: Song Title, Artist, section of story applied to.
Just like the first story, this is other stuff I listened to while writing the story, in case you’re a musical brony and want more soundtrack to it.

Chapter One
‘A Meeting Place and Time’, Woods of Ypres, up until the ice lake
‘Ice Queen’, Within Temptation, near the Wendigo
‘Seasons’, Dragonforce, on the ice lake
Chapter Two
Carolus Rex (Swedish side of the album), Sabaton, from armory scene on
Chapter Three
‘ULTAnumb’, Blue Stahli, the flight out of base
‘It’s Time’, John Dreamer, gear up and fight
Chapter Four (all for various parts of the space climb scene)
‘Lands Beyond Equestria (Instrumental)’, Plunder Steed (The climb)
‘Through the Gates’, Celldweller (The climb)
‘The Wings of Icarus’, Celldweller (Looking around up top)
‘Origins’, Eluveitie (The dive)
Chapter Five
N/A, was handwritten
Chapter Six
‘Time to Say Goodbye’, Jeff Williams
‘Crawl Through Knives’, In Flames

Author’s Note:

First of all, I want to lend my complete gratitude to Dizziestbeef of FOB Equestria for his constant editing, soundboarding, and general troubleshooting for this story. He’s always been there to help fix my style, my grammar, my typos, and my storyline, as well as lend a technical hand with guns for the story. Half the stuff in there that was specific about weapons either came from his advance knowledge, or research he did just for this story. The constant reality checks have been perhaps the most important thing for this story, preventing a horrible long string of cheesy scenes and crappy dialogue. I’d also like to thank my buddy Swift for going back through after the fact, and nuking the typos out of my story. It was always somewhat embarrassing to realize how much I’d fucked up, but comforting to know that the chapters were much prettier after he’d checked them.

I’m pretty sure at some point back in the past when I finished ‘It’s Not You They Fear’ and started writing Wasted Honor, I told myself something along the lines of ‘Oh, Sage, Wasted Honor is going to be short and easy. Five chapters, shouldn’t be more than 25k words, and you’ll have it done in two months.’ Ha ha...ha…each chapter became a game of ‘Oh I can add this, it will be neat!’ and ‘This will advance character development’ and ‘This will be foreshadowing for the sequel...’ and at some point, each chapter ended up longer than I planned. IRL only made it worse. If you followed my blog while I wrote this story, I finished my senior year in electrical engineering, got engaged, and commissioned during that time.

I suppose this story didn’t have a lot of direction to it. Save for chapters two and three, each chapter is a standalone mini-story, in the background of Timberwolf Team and Shadow Wing. Each one was fun for me to write, often in a somewhat personal way. The first chapter was slated to be published a few days after I nearly froze to death out on a long distance run in the mountains. After I got home, and making sure I was stable (half an hour in a burning shower, a gallon of boiling tea, and wearing three layers of coats) I went ahead to check it for accuracy. It was very interesting to see what I got wrong without ever having experienced late stage hypothermia, but downright scary to figure out what I got right. And no, that wasn’t an intentional experience (my fiance is still mad at me about it). Chapter four, on the other hand, was two years in the making; ever since I conceived Shadow as a character, I’d always wanted to write it. At first it was for funzies, but I realized it would be a good way to explain the whole sonic boom thing back in INYTF. Chapter five was the only chapter on here that was completely handwritten to start (over the course of a few months of senior design class and fraternity meetings). Oh, and I finally got to apply some real-life experience as an LT to my character.

All of this of course, is setting up my...what the hell am I calling this universe? The Timberverse? I do have two...three more stories to write in it, but if no one uses it other than me, does it merit the term? Hell if I know. The two one-shots will probably live to be published at some point, but the the novel-ish story I had planned? Well...I don’t want to be a jerk, but I’m having to wonder if it sounds better in my head than it is, and if the readership really cares enough for me to put in a few hundred hours making it a reality. The competing interest is the Fallout: Equestria story I’m working on. While it still has just as little appeal to the masses, at least I can get my old college buddies together to work on it, which is always a good time. In short, if you want me to forge ahead and write the sequel to INYTF, be vocal about it--let me know. Tell your friends about the story so they can let me know too. Otherwise it’s going to to get buried under a career, a (soon to be) family, and everything else that comes with life.

Either way, I will have to rework large swaths of INTYF for the graphic novel process. That was put off most of the summer, but is picking back up here soon. For those folks who actually liked chapters six and seven, I will be leaving them as a bonus chapter at the end. For me though, they’re just too cheesy to keep (especially because I promised my high school literature teacher that I’d give her a copy of my first novel...and I want it to be not entirely laughable for her).

Still, if you’ve made it this far (finishing both stories and reading through my wordy author’s notes) I don’t know what to say other than ‘thank you.’ I can’t be anything other than grateful that you’ve taken hours out of your life to read the story I’ve pulled out of daydreams to put down on paper and pixels. Farewell for now, and may the wind rise to meet your wings.

‘red Sage

Dominic Allen Everson