2.) a.) Well time to get started with this task(Twilight)
Credit list:
Editors: Blond Blue Eyes
"We are approaching sector 42 ma'am. Which area would you want me to land the craft on?" The pilot spoke, while pressing a button on the dashboard. Immediately a hologram of the area came up on the front window. On it showed a live video of the sector with a grid layout on it. Numbers and letter on the side allowed her to call out each grid to individually assess which is a good spot.
"How about the data from the tectonic scanner? What has it revealed?" Twilight asked an engineer to her right. "The data is almost finished compiling. OK, displaying on the screen now." There was a slight flicker of the holographic map as it updated itself with the data picked up from the scanner. Little icons popped up in some of the grids showing where underground resources were. There were separate icons showing where volcanic activity was close to the ground and icons for metals in the ground. A resource called petroleum was located a few hexes off the coast of the sector. "Looks like Grid Coordinate 7-I is the most viable position to settle down. It has good proximity to the concentrations of geothermal activity and metals; however it would take a few years to set up more outposts to be able to start harvesting the petroleum." she said to herself. Years of study from the books the humans had showed that those resources were highly valuable for both their usefulness and value in trading, though she had no idea why would they need to trade for. "Oh well. Guess it be useful." she thought.
"Set for Coordinate 7-I pilot, make sure we land safely. The rest of you start preparations for procedure, Set Up. Team leaders, I expect the checklists I gave you to be fulfilled in 30 minutes time. Then head to landing stations. By the end of the week, I expect this landing ship to be able to be considered a small city before we start exploring the nearby fauna."...
……
Twilight's Log
Year 0, Week 1, Monday (7 days after landing)
It has been 7 days since I saw the others. I wonder how they are doing so far. This place has no magic field that I can sense at all; hence I am unable to communicate to them at all through telepathy. That's why I have ordered the engineers to launch our explorer drone that came with the ship to find some of the resource pods that the humans have sent ahead. So far it has not come up with anything yet. Our little city is starting out just fine, the cargo of laboratory material is proving to be so useful. Already we came up with a way to make a robot that we can pilot to a good city site and with the push of a button immediately transform areas into livable outposts that we can easily improve on within weeks to make a functioning city, talk about efficiency. However our original city is still too small to carry out projects like that so I would need to manage it for a while.
The local fauna is discovered to be edible but we need to train some ponies to make farms before our food yield increases. After a stable food supply, maybe we should concentrate on exploration of the world. There have been reports of alien life a few kilometers away. So it would be wise to have some form of military unit to protect our lands even though the human weapon, “Rocket Battery" that came with the ship seems capable of repelling occasional alien intrusions. It has a finite range and I worry it may not be able to protect workers outside of its effective range. Furthermore, I worry it may instigate aliens stronger than those 'Wolf Beetles' to attack us.
Our city suffers some occasional electricity shortages. Maybe that’s why Rarity chose to have a ready to deploy fusion reactor packed into her landing ship. Oh well, I'm sure I’ll be able to find a way to overcome it
Priority List:
Start improving our lands around our city
Solve the energy problem
Find resources pods to launch human communication technology 'Satellite' to make contact with the others
Create a military unit in case of future alien intrusions
Signed Twilight Sparkle (Personal student of Celestia), *Leader of The Sparkle Scientific Union
* It was a title the ponies under my charge asked me to adopt. Personally I would prefer if they didn't asked me to adopt such a title but hey, if there something that would keep them together it would be having a group name and a leader to respect I would do it. Their morale is kind of low after landing in this place
……
Day 9.
At the shared dining area, Twilight was having breakfast with the colony's chief scientist to discuss the latest discovery that was made in the lab. It was a breakthrough for a form of advanced engineering which allowed them to construct what the scientists called a Thorium Reactor. It is able to generate more energy than their current generators. The person in charge of operating the drone ran down the aisles to inform their leader on what the drone had found.
“Our leader Twilight, we found a resource pod. The explorer has found a 'Solar Collector' in it. Should I use the drone to bring it back?" the drone operator interrupted. Twilight was going throughout the list of constructions planned. With a rather irritated look she raised her head from her tablet and said "Well, did you consult the checklist of criteria before consulting me?"
"Err, yes." the now rather sheepish looking drone operator said. "But that’s not the only reason why I came to you. While on the way there, the drone passed through an area that may be of interest for you. I took some pictures of the area for you to look through ma'am." He then passed a tablet to her with the pictures in question already on the screen.
"This… this looks like the remains of another city… but it does not look like any of my friend's places. Is there another sentient species on this planet?" she paused for a while to consider. "How many exploration modules does the explorer have left?” The drone operator said: "Exactly 1 left but I sent it to investigate some fossils near the resource pod." the operator was about to say something but was cut short by Twilight telling him to stop going to the fossils and make a course to the ruins to instead explore it
2.) b.) This place is not as awesome as i expected it to be (Rainbow)
"Come on, you are the egghead. Give me a list of the best possible city spots around here and let me pick!" Rainbow Dash yelled at a poor flight engineer who was hunched over the console frantically summarizing the best spots that the craft was able to land on. "Darn Retrograde Trusters, they make my job harder having to identify so many potential spots. At lease it is for the survival of our kind" the engineer mumbled to himself.
Rainbow was looking throughout the window when she saw an good place at the top of a hill which was near an canyon. "Hey, hows the area over the hill near that canyon?".
"You mean Grid Coordinate 2A? That's a rather poor choice for a starting city ma'am. There are not much visible resources there and the only value i see is that it offers an good defensive spot and a good airbase for aircrafts." he hesitated for a moment "Also the computer calculates that we may barely be able to land safely there."."I don't think so, I'm sure we will be able to land there if you maybe would stop trusting in your little screen so much and use your instincts for once. Just relax and be awesome." came the rather swift response as Rainbow casually walked back to her seat. Turning back she said:" I know that all of your training had taught you to trust this techonlogy but you need to trust your instincts more you know. What if your training has not prepare you for a certain situation . What will you do then? You need to go with your instincts sometimes". "Ok so right now what does your instincts tell you egghead?" Rainbow asked with her voice returning back to her usual teasing voice.
......
After a rather textbook landing in her opnion, Rainbow was the first one out of the doors. Behind her there now suprised and rather shocked engineers were behind her. Disbelief written over their faces, Rainbow would have found it funny if she wasn't their leader. "Must be all that royal ettiquet and leadership books Twilight made me read. It's rubbing off of on me." Strecting out her wings, she jumped into the air, only to end up falling on her face. "Hey what gives? Why can't i fly?"she tought as she tried ove4 and over again. Behind her, her crew saw what she was doing and after seeing her unsucessful attempt at flight also started to try their abilities only to fail as well. It was from seeing all of their attempts that Rainbow realised there wasn't going to be any magic possible while on this place. "Dammit! We came all the way here only to end up not being able to use our magic. I feel like those 'humans'. How do they even cope with it?" she tought. It took her a while to then notice that her crew was also looking at her after coming to the same conclusion that their magic here was useless. They were looking at her for a leader to guide them she tought. I need to lead them. Gaah, Twilight seem to do it so much better at it. I need to hit the books when i finally find her. Looking now at the crew, she said:" Ok guys listen up! We need to turn this landing ship of ours into a acceptable base of operations. We have no way to contact the others except for a human technology called a 'Radio' invented by them. Since our magic is useless here, we will need to set up an research area to learn new ways for us to regain some of our abilities. Those who are not supposed to help out with building or research are to first unpack the cargo of human 'Guns' that we packed before leaving. Form up as a unit and explore our surroundings. Once you scout out the nearby areas, i want you to head East from here. Twilight's group has went that way so i want you to gain contact with them as soon as possible!"
......
Rainbow Dash's journal
Day 4 (i guess?)
Dear Journal,
Our colony is going just fine. We had managed to set the whole thing up in 3 days despite not having our magic. I have decided to call this city 'Cloudsdale' as it has that occassional fog that comes along and i admit im a little homesick. Speaking about fog, there is this paticular green fog* that appears to stay in a paticular area that seems to be harmful to us as Derpy had found out the hard way yesterday when she decided to walk into it. She keeps saying that she smelt muffins from beyond the fog but i think it is more of the fog doing something to her head. I don't know if there is a way for us to remove it but untill then i made it clear to the citizens to stay cleae away from it unless absolutely necessary.
Scootaloo has taken it upon herself to be in charge of our first military unit. It is more of an group of ponies with guns but im not going to take any chances. This planet may seem to be ok to live in but i dread what may come out. She had left 2 days ago and i already miss her. She had grown up her entire life treating me as her big sister even tought we are not related in any way. She still try to impress me like she used to but i can see that the 'incident' had made her mature quick.Too quick for even my taste. I hope for her that there may not be more incidents like this again that could affect her life longterm.
She may have had to grow up quickly but with maturity came effinciency. Already she and her unit had maped out the area 16km(10miles) around our city and had came across several of the 'resource pods' that was sent beforehand. Things that had ranged from a fully charged 'flux capacator' (Which is still helping us solve our energy needs for now), a shipment of laboratory equiptment that we could not possibly make in these conditions on this planet to a shipment of construction tools. That was patucually helpful as we needed it to start improving the land to grow the seeds we brought along.
I need to check on the scientists.They have been trying to impress me too much but frankly i can see it is slowing their work down. The radio thing still does not work despite my best attempts to use it. Apprently, both the radios need to be tuned to the same frequency but i do not know what frequencies are my friend's radio system.
Rainbow out
......
3 days later
After a rather taxing treak throught a hill range, her group of soldiers has finally caught sight of a similar looking settlement in the middle of a plain. "It must be Fluttershy's city. Rainbiw said it was due east of us and we been travelling east the whole time i think." Turning to her group of soldiers she said:" Troops, we are about a 2 hours journey away from our target city. Note we are not attacking them, we are here to make contact with one of our fellow colonies. So keep your safeties on but if there is any hostile i repeat hostile wildlife. You are to shoot it if it attacks any of us. Understood?" When the synchronised reply of Yes ma'am came, she gave the order to move out.
1 and a half hours later, they can see the city right infront of them. The ground under them however started to rumble ominously . Scotaloo was immediately alert but was not sure what was it. When cracks started to appear underneath them, she gave the order to quickly move away. It was in the nick of time too as shortly after clearing away a huge worm like animal with 2 large slender jaws came up from the ground. It gave a loud roar before turning to look at the group."Sweet celestia, there is no way we are able to kill it with guns this small." she tought. Already she can hear the soldiers releasing the safeties on their guns awaiting orders. She was about to give the order to fire when she heard the familarly soft and yet stern voice of Fluttershy. "What have i told you about attacking other ponies Mr. Worm?" The worm in reply had turned to look at Fluttershy only for it's eye to meet Fluttershy using her stare on it. The worm backed away, already cowering under the stare before retreating back throught the tunnel it had made. Fluttershy then turned to look at Scotaloo, her eyes returing back to it's normal self. "Scotaloo, it's so nice to see you here. How's Rainbow Dash?"
