The Elements of Harmony are not a force of good. The ponies seem to have gotten extraordinarily lucky with the rainbow death ray not extracting any lethal tolls… that they know of anyways. As the rainbow laser of doom struck Nightmare Moon, the Ruler of the Night began to panic. With her immense grasp on magic, she could feel the power of the Elements invade her body… her soul. It sought to reshape her essence into something more… meek… compliant… docile. So it used her memories of her younger more uncertain self as a template. While it forged a new mind to occupy her body, the Elements began trying to erase her current consciousness. Obviously, the Nightmare wasn’t going to simply sit by and let this horrific act continue unopposed.
‘I refuse to lay down and die like this!’ She screamed to herself mentally as she cast a spell that she had learnt long ago, yet never saw herself needing to use. It was a rare spell used for the benefit of ponies with multi-personality disorder, rare due to the fact it took a level of power only the mightiest unicorns could muster - trivial for an Alicorn like herself. It would split their magic reserves in half and craft a new body for the new personality. However, in this case, she herself would take the copied body, as the power of the Elements was already too far entrenched in her body to remove. With a flash of darkness, two Alicorns sat within the maelstrom of the Element’s power. One was the Princess Luna that Celestia wanted so desperately. The other was the original personality, Nightmare Moon - albeit incredibly diminished in might. Sensing this complication, the Element’s decided on what was to be done.
Technically speaking, Nightmare Moon had made its job easier by vacating her body. Yet the Elements didn’t have the power to both revitalize the newly crafted Princess Luna persona and trap Nightmare again. So, the Elements took the path of least resistance so to speak. It ripped a hole in reality underneath Nightmare Moon and sealed it just as she fell through. Whatever fate awaited her, was unknown even to the Elements themselves as the rainbow light faded, revealing Princess Luna to the Mane Six. This would not be the last Equestria heard of Nightmare Moon but it would be some time before she reappeared.
For now, she would simply need to survive her frigid new environment.
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I sat in my small office, overlooking my thriving city. The isekai genre is almost entirely limited to anime protagonists. So rather than finding myself in a fantasy world of magic and dragons - being deposited in the frozen hellscape of FrostPunk should have killed me in less than an hour. It was only extraordinary luck that allowed me to survive. I happened to be a scientist with degrees in geology and engineering, on an expedition to Antarctica. This meant that when I was isekaid, I just so happened to be wearing as many layers as an onion and carrying rations for a week.
When I fell through a crack in the ice, I should have died. Yet against all reason, I woke up again, all my supplies intact and the temperature far colder than before. I began to trek through the wastes, my base gone, no radio signals anywhere. Until I happened upon a desolate crater with a hulking machine in the center. There I met a dying man named Oscar. He was supposed to be the leader of this settlement, which would be where the citizens of London settled. At that point I figured out where I was - FrostPunk was a rather distinctive universe to any familiar with it.
To those unfamiliar, FrostPunk is a survival city building game. It’s set in an alternate apocalyptic past. In the 1800’s a new ice age begins - a steampunk Britain nearly bankrupts itself creating survival cities in the far north, which will be least affected by the oncoming ice age. Every city is built around a massive Generator that provides heat and electricity. Yet these efforts come too late and most perish before they even arrive at these bastions. You get to be the leader of what is potentially the last city of humanity and it’s your job to make sure the city doesn’t die… and take mankind with it.
Despite the cold and weakness gnawing at his bones, Oscar showed me everything he knew about the Generator, where supplies should be in the surroundings and most importantly, when the survivors should show up. Whenever we had moments of rest, we would debate the book of law.
Then one day, he passed on quietly, handing down the mantle of Captain to me. I’m not ashamed to admit I cried at his passing. Despite the soil being frozen hard as bedrock, I spent a good 3 days digging a grave for the man. Afterwards, I knew I couldn’t just sit around and wait for potential citizens to show up. I immediately put myself to work, building the skeletal framework of the city for the people.
I smiled with pride looking at how far we’d come. I can still remember when this city was nothing but despair and hopelessness, the people huddled around a barely functioning generator. However, in spite of the horrendous odds against us, we survived. Now we stand nearly 10,000 strong. A sobering number really, given how even in the early 1800s the human population had risen past a billion souls. Though it does make me give a sign of relief - I can remember an article of how a human population needed to be at least around 5,000 or so to avoid genetic defects from inbreeding.
As their Captain, I led the people through all the hardships we have faced… yet it continues to get worse. It turned out that ‘The Storm’ would only be the first of its kind. We have bi-annual storms of the same immense intensity. In the beginning the Great Storms were below -150 Celsius, cold enough for carbon dioxide rain. Now the average temperature outside New London is around -90 and continues to drop. Soon we might see liquid Co2 lakes form outside as the temperature constantly remains below -120. Worse, the last storm reached record low temperatures below -180 degrees Celsius… colder than any Storm we had before.
If the trend continues… we might see the nitrogen in the atmosphere begin to freeze in a decade. This steampunk city might be more advanced than anything the 1800s should be able to offer, but we can’t survive with the atmosphere freezing around us. I’ve discussed this issue with my top scientists and they agree that as the city is now, it couldn’t possibly survive such an event.
To that end I’ve ordered drastic expansions and overhauls in the city - most notably four shiny MK2 Generators. I’d long since held the belief in redundancies, only one Generator is a recipe for disaster is something fails. Plus according to my scientists, the original generator had been modified to the point we can’t do any more without the risk of something going very wrong. So I had them draw up a redesigned and hugely improved generator design for the new generators to be built.
At the same time as the MK2 Generators are being built, we will be building a massive, airtight dome over the city. Once the dome is finished, we’re dismantling the original generator to put a new MK2 one in its place. Though we’re not just going to scrap it, we’re going to reassemble it to serve as a memorial to our triumph.
We’ve also managed to scavenge the blueprints for steam cores as well as the Tesla field tech from Tesla city and are going to implement it… once we fix the whole electrocuting people issue. Thanks to being able to make our own steam cores, I’ve transferred essentially all of the city's industry over to the Automatons. No need to waste precious human lives in the mines when I can get our steampunk robots to do it for us. Thanks to that, I’ve had schools built for both our children and adults. We’ve got nearly 90% of the population with 18th century higher education, so research is progressing at a blazing pace.
In short we are preparing anything and everything we can while we’re still surviving comfortably. The people themselves are notably in favor of our preparations, the already looming shadows of the new Generators serving to comfort them, to show that THE CITY WILL SURVIVE the coming hardships.
And that only includes what I’m doing for my own city. I’ve begun to send out special long range exploration Automatons in search of other settlements, more survivors, to spread the word of the coming doom. From the lore I know from the game, New Manchester, Legacy City, Sanctuary and even New Liverpool might be out there somewhere. If I can make contact any of with them… well I don’t know. My own city of Cinder (New London in Canon) certainly isn’t in any shape to be trading with any of our neighbors. Though it would be comforting to the people to know that we aren’t the last of humanity. Hell it would be comforting to me to know that we aren’t the last city.
Though we have already figured out that we aren’t the only ones who survived The Storm. Shortly after The Storm passed, I sent up additional beacons so I could send out additional scout teams to scour the Frostlands for useful stuff. An unintended effect of this was that it boosted the signal strength of my city’s radio broadcasts massively. They radio waves were strengthened enough that it caught the attention of those aboard the Land Dreadnought ’Resolute’… the survivors of Winterhome. It was a shocker for me and my people when the massive transport pulled up in front of our city, with its people requesting help. We, by that I mean I, let them settle with nary a second though.
I had their Generator maintenance specialists set up shop around our own Generator right away, thankfully allowing them to spot the flaw that would have lead to part of the situation that occurs in the Outpost 11 scenario in the game. That also ingratiated them to my city’s original inhabitants.
I signed a form requesting an increase to the production of medical supplies and found myself dumfounded when I reached for the next form, only to come up empty. It appears that I have somehow managed to finish all of my paperwork, a monumental achievement. I smiled and jumped up from my desk. I was pretty much married to my job, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t have a hobby. I grabbed an old bolt action rifle from a mount behind my desk and walked out the door to my office with a smile on my face.
“So you managed to finish your paperwork then?” A coy voice calls out from behind me. I nearly jump in shock at my secretary Harriet. She’s a terrifying woman. Jet black hair and cold green eyes on a slim frame made her a severe sort of beauty. She also has the power to completely hide her presence when she wants, no idea how she does it but she always manages to make me jump.
“I sure did Harriet, you always complain about how unhealthy my work, life balance is… so I’m going to take advantage of this precious free time to go hunting!” I say with my best smile, in spite of her unamused expression. It’s rather well known around the city that she vehemently disapproves of my hobby. I can see where she’s coming from too, if I managed to bite it in some undignified way outside, then the city could well fall apart. I’m literally the only person who commands enough respect to keep this ramshackle city running. But at the same time my hobby also makes me more relatable to the citizenry. Seeing what is essentially the mayor bringing in a caribou or reindeer evokes the image that I’m right out there with everyone else, doing my part to keep the city running.
It isn’t a false image either. I make sure to make regular tours of the city sectors, talking to the people and seeing if they need help with anything. I find more fulfillment in helping people than in any luxury pursuit, especially since video games are a pipe dream in this time period. I also made sure that the citizens respect paperwork. I deliberately put up job postings that made paperwork sound easy - then give new recruits fake paperwork that’s really high difficulty level. Anyone who just wanted a cushy job in an office left with their brain buzzing from the horrible math and calculations - then they spread the word. At this point paperwork is regarded as worse than being a mining canary. I also have incredibly competent paper pushers, since they were the ones who made it past the trials presented.
‘Heh… suckers.’ I thought evilly to myself. Running a city in the apocalypse is a stressful, if rewarding thing. I walked out of the administration building that served as the closest thing Cinder has to a government. I muse to myself how ironic it is that I, an American born and raised, is running a British colony with communistic principles - since we don’t have a large enough population yet to justify capitalism. Plus the working man loves the idea of institutionalized health care.
As I walked towards the edge of the city, people walking alongs stopped and waved to me as I walked past. I beamed with happiness at seeing my people happy. Eventually as I passed through the residential and then industrial sectors, I found myself at the edge of our excavation of our crater. In order to expand the city, we need to expand the crater it sits within. This posed some logistical issues as the elevators going up the side of the crater were stationary at the time. We have since managed to make mobile elevators to cope with the moving edge of the city limits.
“Going up Captain?” I hear a cheerful voice ask from the lift.
“Sure am Jack, not like I get free time too often! Can’t waste a moment!” I say with pep to Jack, the guard manning the elevator. Jack’s a rather fortunate fellow we managed to rescue from Winterhome. Since I knew about their problems and the general direction - I managed to rescue a sizable amount of their city population before they descended into cannibalism and barbarism. This nearly destroyed us with the increased need for resources for a larger population, but was worth all the pain it caused in the short term. We didn’t manage to save nearly as many from Tesla City. However, cleverly placed scouting units saw to it that we managed to recruit most of those Tesla exiled before he managed to instantly destroy his own city with faulty tech.
I figured out what went so badly there as well. He banished the chief engineer for his Tesla Field, a rather rough and tumble lady named Marie, when she spoke out against his rule. According to Marie, he publicly appointed someone incompetent as her replacement to spite her. Joke's on him though, Marie managed to bring both the blueprints for the field and steam cores with her when she was exiled - an unbelievable boon for Cinder. With her and other Tesla city surviver’s help - we managed to get working prosthetics for our population as well. With mass Automaton production, human lives have been removed from potentially lethal avenues of work. Life in the Frostlands is as good as it’s ever been - nearly on the level as normal life before the onset of the Great Winter. And my people are determined to make sure things stay that way. I’m broken from my thoughts as the lift reaches the top of the crater.
I look back and see the billowing flag of our city - it depicts a winter landscape, with a smoldering fire, hovering on the brink, yet stubbornly refusing to be extinguished. I look to the right to see the massive figure of the Land Dreadnought ‘Resolute.’ I refused to let the thing be dismantled… to useful for that. I then turn out into the blinding landscape of the Frostlands and begin to walk south.
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Nightmare Moon had experience with the cold. She had pioneered spells and enchantments for resisting cold weather during the campaign against Sombra’s crystal empire. These spell allowed her and Celestia’s armies to march unhindered by the cold, although deep snow still remained an issue. She and her sister knew that without those spells, they would have lost more soldiers to the frost than the enemy.
But this place she had found herself in… it surpassed anything she could possibly dream of. It hadn't taken long to realize the weather her worked like in the Everfree, after all what mad pony would make weather like this on purpose!
Colder than the wendigos… colder than the worst of the frozen wastes of the Crystal Empire… colder than her eternal night. In her strongest form, she just might have been able to make do with her cold resistance spells, albeit with difficulty. In her weakened state however, it simply wasn’t enough. It took her less than a day to resort to humiliating herself and attempting some of her sister’s spells. Yet to her shock, when she attempted to call on the power of the sun to warm herself, she found that the light of the sun was being blocked. Further investigations revealed a choking layer of dust in the atmosphere of this world, blocking light and warmth from reaching the surface… as well as reducing the effectiveness of her sister’s brand of magic to nearly nothing. While filing away that potential method to weaken Celestia for later, NM tried other methods.
As her desperation began to grow, Nightmare Moon reached out with her magic to try and connect with the leylines of the world. Yet to her utter terror, she found the leylines themselves, the rivers of magic that sustained worlds, to be frozen solid. Not even magic itself escaped the bitter cold. That meant she would have to solely rely on what ambient magic remained to regain her strength… and there wasn’t much.
So, with little else to do, she trudged on. Hoping beyond hope that she might find salvation in these icy wastes. Time passed… she slowly felt her wingtips begin to freeze… she lost sensation in her hooves… her horn grew colder and colder. Finally… clouds set in and it began to snow. Eventually the deluge of ice began to threaten to consume her - and she collapsed. As the snow began to bury her, she could have sworn she saw a pinprick of light heading towards her.
I smile as I trek back to Cinder. My trip had been cut short by the oncoming storm, but I know these wastes like the back of my hand, I won’t get lost. I was happy with the plump seal I was dragging on a sled behind me. I hadn’t eaten seal in years! I’m sure that whoever gets a share back in town will appreciate the rare meal. I was broken from my musings by a rather unusual sight in the light of my lantern - a dark spot. The Frostlands have exactly two colors, white and ice blue. Anything that doesn’t fall in that color scheme is not normal. It could be something as mundane as an outcropping rock, a rare if mundane sight - or something huge like a buried land dreadnought.
I immediately turn towards the object, any kind of discover could potentially be good for Cinder. Though if it’s a buried dreadnought or something I’m going to rag on the scout teams for missing it.
“Something that big should be impossible to miss…” I mumble to myself absentmindedly as I trudge forwards. I look down at my feet and smile.
“Heh, what I would do without snowshoes. Hell, no-one knew what a snowshoe was when they arrived.” I’m pretty sure talking to myself isn’t a good habit, but out here there’s nothing much else to do. As I get closer I could swear that whatever the object is begins to look less like uniform black and more like a field of stars, much to my confusion.
“A mirror? No it’s a freaking blizzard, no way to reflect the starlight through clouds.” I mutter confused to myself. At this point I’m within 2 meters of the object, enough to just make out what it is in a snowstorm.
“A horse?” I ask myself incredulously - shocked that all of them hadn’t died off from the cold yet. However as I get closer, I realize that the ‘horse’ isn’t what I think it is. The first thing to tip me off is the spiral horn jutting from its forehead. I was about to hesitantly write it off as a mutated caribou or something when I noticed feathers sticking out of the snow. I dug through a little bit, before being shocked by the sight of black feathery wings jutting from the abdomen of the ‘horse’. Somewhat recognizing this being - I hastily start digging out its rear, and am greeted with a butt tattoo in the shape of a crescent moon.
“Well hello there… little pony.” I mutter to myself. Or rather Alicorn. There aren’t very many of them in MLP… and even given my rather basic knowledge of the show from an enthusiastic little sister, I can recognize the first big bad of the show, Nightmare Moon. In all seriousness, she’s not the worst villain who could have popped up at my door.
I ponder for a moment how exactly she wound up here, before ruthlessly cramming that thought into the ‘don’t even bother’ section of my brain. The only thing I would get from following that train of thought is a headache and a few dead brain cells. I still don’t know how I wound up in the world of Frostpunk after all. No sense trying to figure out why a starter villain from a TV show about magic, ponies and friendship, is in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world.
I have two choices here really… leave her to freeze to death or take her in. If I remember correctly she was born from a desire for love and acceptance from her people… well she can't be that bad. Besides, it's obvious she cant survive out here on her own. My mind made up I yank her shivering body from the snow and throw her over my shoulders.
My heart and mind are in agreement in my choice to save her. Both from the perspective of not letting an unfortunate soul die out here in the Frostlands… and from the logical perspective, her magic potentially being what my city needs to survive the endless winter. Still I can’t carry her all the way back to Cinder, so I yank my personal radio off my pack and signal for an Automaton to pick me up.
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Nightmare Moon awoke slowly to a rhythmic thumping and incredible warmth. She blearily opened her eyes to behold an incredibly bizarre sight. She had a coat of some sort laying on top of her to shield her body from the biting winds she could feel on her muzzle. The ground below her was made of solid metal, yet it was warm on her fur, rather than freezing cold, much to her confusion. As she began to look around, she noticed the main attraction so to speak. A broad shouldered being sitting mere feet away from her. The being appeared to be bipedal, like minotaurs, yet without fur or a muzzle. It was noticeably shivering, given the lack of fur she reckoned it would likely be far worse off than her in this environment. Yet it appeared it had surrendered its coat for her recovery.
This definitely earned the creature brownie points in Nightmare Moon’s book. It also showed that this sort of creature was capable of compassion and kindness. Given the still rather frozen state of her body, she reached out with her magic to further determine her surroundings. She was shocked to find she was riding atop a mechanical contraption of some sorts, moving without the slightest aid of magic. Speaking of magic however, the bipedal being seemed to hold a very impressive reserve - though from its slightly chaotic nature, it would be rather poisonous to her if she tried to take it to replenish herself. Interestingly enough… its magic also held a somewhat unrefined feeling to it. This shocked her somewhat, as only untrained unicorns, mostly fillies, had the same sort of feel to their magic. Meaning this being, despite holding as much magic as some of the strongest unicorns she had seen, didn’t use its magic at all. Why exactly was a mystery to her.
As her magic reserves had recovered somewhat in her bout of unconsciousness, she decided it would be prudent to cast a few healing spells to ensure she didn’t loose any limbs to frostbite. With a grunt of exertion and a dim flare of light, much of the pain that plagued her eased and Nightmare Moon breathed a sigh of relief. This sigh however gained the attention of her rescuer.
The being turned around and she was greeted with a rather flat faced being, with rather expressive brown eyes. It looked at her and gave her a big smile, shockingly similar to what she would see from fellow ponies before speaking in plain, if accented common tongue.
“Ah, I’m glad to see you’re awake. When I found you nearly buried in a snowdrift I feared you wouldn’t make it.” The being, now clearly a male of its kind spoke conversationally to her, yet with an undertone of concern. It sent a spike of warmth through her heart, how long had it been since she had been shown simple kindness and concern from a fellow being?
“Tis somewhat of a shock to us that we have awoken at all. Thou hast our thanks Sir…” She begins before realizing that she doesn’t actually know the name of her savior. Thankfully she is saved from the awkwardness rather quickly.
“Oh, where are my manners. My name is William Deepstone miss...?” The now named William asked her. Very well, she shall oblige his curiosity.
“We art Nightmare Moon, Future Ruler of Equestria and Mistress of the Night.” She finished with dramatic flair befitting one of her station.
“Ah my condolences then.” Her rescuer said simply, much to her confusion.
“Pardon?” She said in return, conveying her confusion at his statement.
“Well… there are no nations left in this hellscape. The Great Winter came and froze all but the luckiest few. The City of Cinder from which I hail is the only known city left in the world… and we barely have a population of 10,000 souls. That’s out of more than a billion humans who walked this good Earth before the cold.” To say that she was shocked at his answer was an understatement.
“This… cold is truly horrendous. Yet surely it could not destroy so many?” She asked, somewhat scared of her rescuer’s answer.
“You’re not from around here are you? This right now is positively balmy! It’s -45 degrees right now! It hasn’t been this warm in months!” He cheerfully chirped in spite of his shivering.
“… but… if this is warm then what’s cold!” She asked somewhat more frantically than befitting one of her royal stature.
“Well… it gets truly cold during the bi-annual storms. Even the most gentle of those storms have temperatures drop below -150 degrees… cold enough for the carbon dioxide in the air to freeze. Cold enough for the atmosphere itself to fall down on us as snow. And those storms are years past. The latest one was below -180 degrees… we’re not sure how far below though, that’s as low as out thermometers can measure.” The male biped said with resignation and fear in his tone. The latest information caused something of a blue screen of death moment for the Nightmare.
‘…-180 degrees! That should be impossible! I haven’t seen anything that cold since…’ Nightmare Moon had indeed seen temperatures that cold once… only once. In the final battle against Sombra, his strongest spell froze the air itself. It nearly killed Celestia and herself… yet here the weather seemed to prominently feature temperatures as cold as Sombra’s darkest spell…
“Well that’s enough of that depressing subject. Look alive! We’re should be able to see the city… just… about… now!” The friendly biped said with gusto, pointing at a warm glow appearing on the horizon. As they got closer, that warm glow seemed to fade somewhat as the beginnings of a huge dome of metal began to become visible. As they got closer, more details were revealed. She could see more of the mechanical contraptions crawling over the skeletal framework of the dome, seemingly welding and doing the construction for the bipeds. Through the framework she could see the ground continue as normal for a time, before it dropped off into a massive crater.
Within the crater, was a work of defiance against the horrific wintery landscape. It was a sprawling city, with many well insulated homes… and a fiery core at its heart. She inwardly marveled at the tower of flame, she could feel it banishing the terrible cold even from the distance she now stood. That wasn’t all, if her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her, she could see the nearly completed framework of four more towers of fire being constructed at the edges of the city.
It wasn’t the most spectacular city she had ever seen. The sparkling visage of the Crystal Empire and even the opulence she witnessed briefly in the new capitol of Equestria, Canterlot - however, this city lacked something those kingdoms held… magic. There was not the slightest speck of magic being used to protect this city from the weather, rather it was seemingly being done entirely with the novel contraptions she had witnessed.
It was a sobering thought, it brought her back to the uniting of the tribes and how the fires of friendship banished the wendigos. These bipeds… they had this horrible cold set upon them… but there was no enemy pulling the strings, no magic to save them. Instead… it seemed that they simply had to prepare and hope it would be enough.
"Well then Nightmare Moon, welcome to the City of Cinder."
