Buried With Ponies is an interactive story. The plot will change based on the choices you make.
The story is broken into 5 chapters. Play straight through or at your own pace. There’s no waiting and no pauses.
Enjoy, and choose wisly.
Chapter 1 : Part 1
I open my eyes and the first thing I want to do is scream.
I’m flat on my back and everything seems to hurt.
The trees overhead look familiar... It’s a clear night sky, almost beautiful.
Expect for the fact that this means I’ve been out cold for at least six hours.
I have this felling in the bottom of my stomach that there’s something wrong… I don’t remember what, but I know something happened and then…
My head… my God, my head hurts.It feels like I got hit by I truck. And a ringing in my ears. Was there an accident?
There was an explosion, I think. I remember Dennis screaming… but after that I... I can’t remember…
As I sit up, I notice that my hard hat has been thrown off of my head. I look around the area, but it’s not here. Must've been thrown pretty far.
It feels strange to go anywhere without my hard hat, but I’ve got to find the other members of my crew. They could be in danger.
-(Search For Hard Hat)-
(Search For Crew)
Looking for a bright yellow hard hat in the middle of a bunch of green woods shouldn't be that hard. It'll only take a second for me to look around. I get up on shaky legs and look around for a moment. A few nearby trees look to have been splintered and broken recently.
They certainly weren’t like this earlier, that much I know for sure…
Searching for the hard hat feels normal… it makes me feel like maybe there ISN’T something wrong here. Even though there clearly is.
There it is. I see it behind a fallen log, about ten feet away from me. How it was thrown so far is beyond me.
Driven by nothing more than habit, I walk over to it, pick it up, and place it on my head.
Then I notice the figure laying next to it. It's Timber.One of the two ponies that came to help us from Equestria. He's a brown earth pony with a short cut darker brown mane. It's cutie mark is a simple piece of a log cut in half, and comes about to my chest in height. He appears to be out cold, probably from whatever happened here.
I can't leave him here, so I pick him and carry him over my shoulder. It still amazes me how these ponies can be so light despite their size.
Next, with Timber on my shoulder, I walk over to the center of the logging site and don’t like what I see.
The logging site looks like a bomb was detonated right in the center. There's a lot of damage, I don’t know where to start.
The one load we had managed to stack on a truck for the day is overturned, the trailer bent and the logs hanging off the back.
The crew isn't here. If there not here then where the hell is everyone?
My head is killing me, and this ringing in my ears… I can’t hear anything. Not birds, not my footsteps… nothing.
It makes me wonder if I hit my head a little to hard after my hard hat flew off. I run though a quick mental checklist to make sure my brain is still working the way it should.
My name is Roger Hastings. I’m 41 years old. The year is 2017.
I own a small logging company with my crew, and we’ve been logging in this strip of Kentucky woodland for almost a month now.
Ok… yeah, that's alright, so my brain works. That’s a relief, but it also makes me fearful… because SOMETHING is certainly not right here.
I look around the rest of the logging site, my mind trying to figure out what has happened to the place.
Just about every piece of equipment has been overturned or tilted, and some of the tree close by have also been taken down by something.
-(Look At Debris)-
(Look At Truck)
Setting down Timber against a tree, I move to see if the debris can give me a clue to what happened. There are bit of debris everywhere. There are fragments of the 5 gallon bucket I keep our work rags in, a loose saw chain, and an overturned gas canister. That's just a few of the items.
Had there been an explosion, all of the fuel on site would have started a fire. But there’s no charring, no burning… It doesn't make any sense. What could've caused all of this?
I walk through the area where Dennis and Timber had been working. From the looks of it, they’ve been moving slowly: They’ve only taken down four trees today, and some progress on a fifth a little further down.
Dennis’ metal lunch box is open, an indicator that he’d been taking an early break before Timber could.
But Dennis isn't here. No one is here.
WHERE THE HELL IS EVERYONE?!
I have my phone on me. I could try to make a call on my cell phone, but its battery is already running really low. Not that it matters… the reception is carp out here. But if I use it now... what if I need it later...?
-(Yell Out)-
(Use Phone)
“Hey, guys! Can you hear me?! Where is everyone?!”
…
“Tony?! Dennis?! Frank?! Joe?! Axel?!”
But their names fall flat among the wreckage. I get nothing back other than scaring away a few birds overhead. I don’t really think my friend Fluttershy would be to happy at me for that one. She's an animal caretaker in Equestria, which is also where Timber and Axel come from.
But besides that, I'm getting off topic. If no one can hear me, I might as well start walking and try to find some answers.
The highway is almost a mile back through the woods, down the gravel road we use to reach the site. Maybe the crew ran that way for help?
But why would they have left me? Were they scared? Out of sorts?
Maybe I can catch up to them. But with my truck turned over on its side, it looks like I’ll be walking.
My god, I can't even remember what I was doing before waking up on my back.
Wait, what’s that… underneath the bulldozer…?
Oh my god… it’s a hoof. It has to be Timber's friend, Axel.
The dozer looks unstable know that I'm looking at it from a closer spot, like it might roll some more. It might not be safe to get close, but at the same time, I can’t just leave him there.
(Go Look)
(Stay Back)