Fallout Equestria: New Trottingham

Equestria; in the past it was a land full of companionship, love and magic. The world was peaceful until the Great War started. Ponies turned on Zebras and vice versa, a war full of the blood of families lost and friendships dead. Once the megaspells came; ponies, zebras and griffons across Equestria fled to Stables. It was these Stables that kept everyone safe from the deadly balefire bombs and clandestine megaspells that the zebras dropped across Equestria, bringing the Great War and, subsequently, life in Equestria to a fiery end.

After a couple decades had passed, the tainted land cleaned up allowing for ponies from the Stables to leave and thus the Equestrian Wasteland was born. It only took a few years after the first Stables opened their doors for small communities and towns to appear across Equestria, nestled in the ruins of the past. A couple hundred years after and these small communities had developed trading routes between one another, a harbour for life to take solace in. Groups of militarised political factions surfaced, each claimed they knew how to bring back order to the world. Life seemed to have found a way, society had started to rebuild and, at the centre of the Griffish Wasteland, New Trottingham stood in the once lush desert of the Griffish Isles like a sparkling jewel.

On mainland Equestria, to the west, 200 years after the bombs dropped, there was a relatively widespread altercation amongst the ponies there, but one mare and her friends helped bring about amity and twenty years later ponies lived in harmony again. In the Griffish Wasteland, in the east of Equestria, however, life wasn’t so peaceful. War broke out between The Zebra Legion and the New Equestrian Society ten years ago and ever since then the two sides have been in an eternal power struggle.

The NES currently stands above the Zebra Legion after forcing them to a small island just east of the Trottingham coastline. Beyond it is the Celestial Sea which dried up in the scorching heat of the balefire, now it’s nothing more than a dried up seafloor with extreme levels of radiation. The NES retook the Beaston Hydropower Plant over the River Trot, which flows into the southern portion of the Celestial Sea, which, thanks to the protective magic of the Hydropower plant, remained untouched by the balefire bomb the Zebras dropped off the coast of the Griffish Isles. On top of protecting the southern Celestial Sea, it produces all the necessary electricity that is required to keep all the settlements across the Griffish Wasteland in working order, though some ponies theorised that during its production one of the wartime ministries had plans to create a megaspell chamber deep under the river bed and used the power plant as access, those are just wasteland tales though, the truth of the matter is whoever controls the river, controls the ponies in the land.

Now the New Equestrian Society is one of those militarised political groups that I mentioned. They hold democracy as a basis of their ideology to return the land of Equestria back to its former glory. They are a well-organised group and the towns that fall under their jurisdiction become prosperous and adopt basic laws to uphold. The Zebra Legion on the other hoof are the opposite. They are an autocratic, totalitarian society of Zebras (and any pony who is unlucky enough to live anywhere that falls under their authority). Crime, under the Zebra Emperor, is punishable by death in any way he deemed suitable, any pony who speaks against the legion is sent to work to death. Any captives of war are enslaved, and the generals and the emperor hoof pick mares from the captives to use as their personal playthings. I’d only ever heard rumours of the kind of atrocities the zebra leaders force the mares to commit, but if they’re true then I never hope to find myself at their mercy. They are a horrible group of savages who represent a war that was fought between ponies and zebras long ago, but that’s just how war is. It hides behind good vs evil but war never changes, it will always mean death and pain for every pony engulfed in its eternal flame.

***

My name is Express and I am a courier, an over-glorified word for a mailmare basically, but the caps are good. I’m an eighth generation Stabledweller, which means I’m the great-great-great-great etc granddaughter of the original stabledwellers of Stable 83. My parents named me Express because, in their words, I was always ‘quick’. I grew faster than other ponies as a yearling; I was a quick learner as a filly and I was a quick thinker as a teen, Express, as a name, was better than having a name like ‘Smart Ass’. Everything I know is down to an education that was passed down from the first ponies who stepped out of Stable 83, 210 years ago. Over the generations my family have always passed down their pipbucks and Stable-Tec supplies. When I was fifteen, six years ago, my mother passed away from being terminally ill - or she took her life because she was terminally ill is more accurate - and so I inherited her pipbuck. On my twentieth birthday, my father disappeared with no explanation as to why. He was always a traveller after my mother died. A month after he left, he was found dead in the wasteland. He left me his 9mm Pistol and his Stable-Tec Stable 83 cannister.

My pipbuck is handy at keeping track of my jobs and it has been a great help on the rare occasions I’ve had to use force during my deliveries. The water cannister keeps me hydrated and the gun keeps me alive. Pretty basic stuff.

Now, for the sake of clarity, I should explain what a pipbuck is. First off, a pipbuck is what ponies receive in the Stables when they come of age and earn their cutie mark, it’s essentially a computer for your foreleg. It’s completely portable and it was one of the greatest feats of technology that the ponies of the past achieved.

On its interface there’s a compass that uses a detection spell that marks ‘friends’ in amber and ‘enemies’ in red. It also notes all locations I visit on a map; it’s called the Eyes Forward Sparkle, also known as the EFS. Alongside that there’s a targeting spell named the Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell, or SATS for short. The Pipbuck display also features small things like a geiger counter, real-time tracking of the wearer’s inventory and the wearer’s general health. On my last delivery, however, it was useless to help me fight against a pony who had it out for me.

This is where my story starts. Tied up, a gun pointed at my head and a shallow grave behind me. Some would think that this is where my story would end but they’d be wrong. It happened on a delivery request I received from New Trottingham. I was told to deliver a small Platinum bit. I was never told why but it clearly meant a lot to the pony who was aiming a gun at me.

My eyes opened and the sky had been bleached of light as the sun barely sunk below the horizon, painting the sand red. I struggled to get the restraints off my hooves but I had no luck. My pipbuck was flashing as it displayed three enemies around me, I could make out the silhouettes of two Draconequi, to the left of the pony in front of me. My pipbuck also said that my head was slightly injured, though I didn’t need a piece of tech to feel the contusion on the back of my head from the gun butt they used to knock me out. I looked up at my killer, he was smoking and wearing a brown tweed jacket. The smell of the smoke burned my throat as he blew the thick, black vapour into my face, his eyes were those of a madpony hellbent on controlling everyone around him. They were bloodshot, green and dilated, he smiled as he saw me struggle to get free. It made me sick thinking that he was possibly getting off to my restrained position beneath his hooves.

“Good evening sweetheart”. He spoke with a dumb smirk on his face and a gun strapped to his hoof. Of course he was wearing a gun saddle, how else would an earth pony be confident enough to use a gun. All he needs to do is bite that bridle and that gun tied to his combat-saddle would, with the aid of the small intricate wires and mechanisms connected to it, orchestrate my demise in less time it takes for my heart to beat, making sure, with no prejudice, that it shall never beat again. I couldn’t help but allow a panic to flood me, I wasn’t quite ready to die. I only just turned twenty-one! He aimed the gun at my head and spoke once more, I clenched my teeth, tightened my eyes shut and tensed up every muscle in my body awaiting the shot that would tear every last thought that ever was and never could be from my mind.

“It’s just business sunshine”. These were the last menacing words I heard before his gun fired twice. No matter how much I had wanted this to be a nightmare, it turned out that this shallow grave would be my unmarked tomb and the tobacco scented sociopath and his sycophant companions were my undertakers.

Or so I thought at the time. I didn’t die that night. I was rescued by the good grace of biology and a small caliber bullet that didn’t have enough force to pierce through the thickest part of my skull and into my brain. It did however, bring me close enough to death that, if I didn’t get the help I did, I would have died in that grave. I was surrounded by blackness, I didn’t remember the dirt that was sifted over my body nor did I remember ever passing out, but I do remember waking up. That’s when I heard a new voice that was soft on my senses.