"You find yourself in an orchard, with many unpicked apples all around you..."
The Rainbooms were nerds, pure and simple.
Each brought their own little end of things to the table, expanding and reinforcing each others’ nerdiness. Fluttershy was an avid manga collector, who lent her copies and made recommendations. Sunset adored stories of knights and wizards. Rainbow Dash had been a superhero fan all her life. Pinkie carefully maintained her ancient video games and introduced retro gaming to the gang. Rarity and Applejack were more along for the ride than anything, but osmosis and movies gradually lead them to share their friends’ passions.
‘Human’ Twilight brought her own brands of geekdom upon transferring to Canterlot. Her love of science was alas not something which could be easily shared, yet the reverse proved true when she nervously broached the subject of Dungeons and Dragons. The girls – creative, cooperative, and dramatic, one and all – took to it like fishes to water. Twilight ran a long campaign she had been toying with since grade school, at last with friends she could play with to the end.
And the end arrived. The heroic adventures came to a close, the six heroes saved all creation. The girls spent a final session acting out epilogues for the characters they spent over a year with, the underdogs who went from clearing rats in cellars to invading the palaces of demi-gods.
It was sad, but the Rainbooms never stayed sad for long. New adventures, new stories would await. No one wanted their Wednesday nights to suddenly become free. After a few months, Sunset ran a game. Not as polished as Twilight’s, but she made up the difference with passion, breathing life into her world. Nor was it as long. Rarity then ran a four-session campaign of court intrigue, but ended it after her little story resolved. She was the only full-time worker of the Rainbooms and couldn’t write for any more.
One couldn’t ‘dungeon master’ forever. Batteries had to be recharged, new worlds and stories needed time to develop. Sunset hadn’t recovered from her last game, and meticulous Twilight was nowhere near ready with her next epic adventure. The prospect loomed for a long hiatus of months or even years before they next played together, as the precious days of high school ticked away.
Until Applejack spoke up. “Heck, I’ll try it.”
The words were spoken in silent, anticipatory panic. Applejack was an extrovert at heart, relishing their games more than one might guess. Someone was always talking in D&D, and every word both expanded the story and was a new moment shared with her friends. She didn’t want it to stop.
Her socked foot gripped idly at the rungs of her chair. It was two weekends after she volunteered to be dungeon master, and she sat at her dining room table with the fresh notebook she bought proudly to host her masterpiece.
A notebook currently opened to a page with seven tic-tac-toe games she had played against herself, and a half-finished dragon she sketched ambitiously before conceding she was not a good artist at all. All the other pages were blank as her mind.
A rueful smile found her lips. “Well, AJ. You stepped in it this time, that’s for sure.”
She had no idea for a story when she volunteered. Honestly, she didn’t have much idea how to run games even after going to the other two ‘DMs’ for advice. Twilight said to plan everything in advance, Sunset said to have an outline and wing the rest. Twilight said to build a world the characters wanted to engage, Sunset said to reach out and engage them yourself. Fat lot of good, with all the best intentions.
Applejack abruptly tore out the doodled page and set it to the side.
“Alright, time to work on this for real,” she said for the fourth time today.
It was frustrating. A precious lazy weekend morning and she blew it on nothing at all.
“Just get something down,” she coached herself. “Like mending a fence. The most important thing is to start doing it.”
But this wasn’t like mending a fence. It wasn’t simply an investment of skill and time, but something she had to invent every step of the way. Creativity wasn’t Applejack’s strong suit, and this was nothing but.
“The story comes first.” Sunset and Twilight had agreed on that, at least, so it seemed a fair place to start. Both had told stories of dragons, prophecies, great empires, magic swords…
Another twenty minutes got Applejack nowhere. She just didn’t care to tell those same stories herself. It all felt too flashy, too unreal. She’d never been inside a great temple, or a fortress built on a star. It all worked well enough when she was a player, focusing on how she and her friends saw these things. Building the story for herself, it all seemed too silly.
Or was she the silly one? Magic was flashy and loud. Applejack personally had shot beams of rainbow light, wielded Elements of Harmony summoned from thin air. But it all seemed so alien, even now. Like a gun: something used if she had to, but not an immutable part of her identity. Not something that made Applejack, Applejack. She didn’t consider magic really a part of her life, didn’t ever care to learn more about it.
‘Passion,’ that was the word. No passion for wizard academies, glowing swords, magical princesses. So how could she write about them?
Her mind drifted to the old games, and a smile found her lips. It wasn’t all such magic nonsense. The party had journeyed through deserts and woods, and listening to Twilight’s descriptions of her own invented fruits and flowers had been a treat.
Heck, Applejack had even tempted the others to the fire pit one fine evening. No dice, just role-playing their characters around a real blaze while they munched ‘trail rations’ of hot dogs and marshmallows. Hearing the birds and insects chirp, smelling the wood burn… Applejack had closed her eyes during that and really pictured herself in a mysterious land. It felt so real, so natural. When a big frog began ribbiting, Twilight even gave a little description of the horned purple frogs of her fantasy land.
It couldn’t all be that. Most days needed a table and map.
But it was something Applejack knew.
‘Write what you know,’ Sunset had offered. One of those well-intentioned platitudes that didn’t make any sense at all. Rainbow walked in on that one and they all had a laugh as she speculated what would come: the quest for the Golden Apples and the Divine County Music Guitar. Applejack knew Rainbow was just funnin’ around, not trying to actually insult her.
Applejack didn’t care for no golden apples, either. ‘Write what you know.’ Campfires, smell of wood...
...Right, she had to actually get started on the day’s chores.
She tried to keep thinking on it as she worked, but her mind had a way of drifting. The familiar, comfortable tasks embraced her, filled her with their old sensations.
Get the eggs. Smell of hay, feathers, and stool. Itching nose, clucked greetings from her little friends.
No milk today, but best to groom the cows now while there was time. The brush. Warmth beneath her hands, happy moos from the girls. Smell of… pretty much just stool. She’d be cleaning out the pens tomorrow, but that was tomorrow’s problem.
A check on the fences. Really they didn’t need someone to lay eyes on the whole perimeter every week, but for Applejack it was a pleasant routine. A two-hour walk around Sweet Apple Acres, done like clockwork unless there was rain or too much snow. A chance to settle her thoughts from the week and reconnect with the farm.
Little shortcuts, so well-traveled they had become dirt paths. No apples to speak of this early in spring, but white blossoms were creeping out slowly over the branches. Most folks would smell nothing but mud, yet Applejack found she could catch the first whiffs of their subtle perfume. Soon the trees would be covered in flowers, and the orchard would become a paradise.
Her orchard. Her parents’ orchard. Her children’s orchard. No children yet, of course, but it was already theirs. She shared it with kinfolk not yet born, had a responsibility to keep it safe for them.
“To protect it,” Applejack murmured, and her lips gave a twisty smile.
Protection. That was something she could understand, wasn’t it? For the game. Both campaigns had the party saving something worth saving. Lands and farms which fed the kingdom, but weren’t those so much more? Children running down familiar paths, orchards which only held their namesake fruit for a few months each year.
Applejack leaned against the fence, looking to the silver buildings of Canterlot beyond. Then deliberately, she turned around.
With the house out of sight, this place really could be one of the king’s orchards. Nothing modern to be seen: a wood fence without even nails, and trees just starting to bloom. There could be orcs on the horizon, a witch brewing a blight, or corrupt sheriffs prowling for bribes.
Of course, that sheriff would smile and bow to a shining hero with a bright sword. But for little folks – alchemists, farmers, smiths – he was their monster.
...She was on to something.
And she didn’t want to let it slip. Applejack strode to the house for her notebook. She sat in the dining room, then launched herself back up and out. The family kept a solid wooden table in the back orchard for picnics and working lunches, and that’s where she plunked herself down.
‘Something worth protecting.’
Those were her first words in the notebook. Others followed as she grasped the threads of inspiration before they disappeared. Sheriff, orcs, witches, taxes, blight. Jealous lovers, slavers seeking an easy mark, soldiers who think they’re owed whatever they want. Lots could happen while the hero is off crusading with the king, along with all their shining knights and great wizards.
She wrote that down too as it came to mind. The ‘hook’ the girls called it. Why is there an adventure? Because all the folks who usually handle adventures are away.
Where does the hook lead? She scribbled and crossed-out a few of the usuals. Find the sword to slay the dragon. Warn the king of treason or all will be lost. But those took them away from what they needed to protect. It would be enough to keep safe until things went back to normal.
‘Write what you know.’ Festivals, friendship, practical concerns. Battles – not because you lived to battle, but because you did not. Because you had to protect yourself, your kin.
She flipped a page and drew a big uneven circle for the kingdom. The shining castle, with barely enough guards to keep the place held. Certainly none to spare to help a small village, or investigate their corrupt sheriff. Elf woods nearby, a source of both trade and danger. Cruel fey stealing children, and wounded elf rangers arriving in the village, pursued by some ancient foe. A logging camp of foolish outsiders in a sacred grove, a nearby abandoned mine where they dug too deep. Months and months of adventures, all within walking distance.
A new page. A sketch of simple roads and square blocks for houses. Their village needed a church, a smithy, a silo. A little space where the traveling merchant parked his wagon each week, bringing salt and trinkets.
Maybe one day it would be a doppelganger instead. She wrote that down. But then what happened to the merchant?
Applejack kept scribbling, jotting, sketching. She barely noticed when the white pages turned shadowy, only reclaimed the present when Mac called her cell phone saying it was suppertime. She didn’t hear a word spoken around the table, and sped away right afterwards to her room to write some more.
Both Sunset and Twilight claimed the next part was the worst. With the fun creativity out of the way, now came stat-blocks, tactical maps, and balanced encounters.
Honestly, Applejack didn’t find that bad at all. A few afternoons at the orchard table, enjoying the cool air and smell of blossoms as she paged through references for monsters and traps.
The part after, though, put her heart in her throat. The planned campaign made perfect sense to her. What about the others?
Applejack had charisma, and a surprising knack for the show. She invited the girls over to talk on her campaign, sitting them around the fire as she spoke with the smell of wood, the chirping crickets all lending support for her pitch.
The party would be leaders from a small village – the alchemist, the local lord, the blacksmith or hermit druid. They would find no piles of gold, and what there was would have to fund repairs and new buildings. Their adventure would be to protect what they have in a land of growing evil, with all the knights and wizards off to a faraway war.
Fluttershy and Sunset loved the idea. Rainbow needed more convincing, saying at first the examples seemed boring. But ideas flowed as they discussed, some which even Applejack hadn’t considered. They could be a retired veteran, a thief starting afresh, a child of prophecy. Twilight immediately declared she wanted to be an astronomer, and Applejack picked a spot on her map for a little two-story observatory.
Rainbow did finally have an idea cool enough for her: a ninja spy from a foreign land, blending in with the locals but coming to love them. Excitement grew as they explored their relationships, homes, and places in the village. Fluttershy found she could vicariously own four dogs, and Twilight asked if her observatory could also be the village library. Pinkie was the jolly innkeeper with draconic blood, and Rarity would be the darling noblewoman who batted eyes at the sheriff and tried to keep him off their backs. Sunset (always a fan of oddball characters) hemmed for a bit before settling on the village beggar – secretly a disgraced paladin. Applejack promised a list of fellow villagers and their stories, for it would be a small place where everyone knew everyone.
They all were sold. Twilight and Fluttershy sketched out their own abodes in town during the weeks before the first session. So did Rainbow after a little coaxing, pointing out the neat hidden compartments for her throwing stars and ninja suit. Sunset and Rarity drew their characters. Twilight pressed for more details on the kingdom and culture, forcing Applejack to give answers she had never planned.
And then at last, they gathered at Twilight’s house. Applejack sat behind her borrowed DM’s screen, with a large map of the village laid out before them.
She was nervous. But she had always been good at keeping it from her voice.
“Things have been a little rougher than normal in Taneybrook for the last few years, what with the war and all. There ain’t no soldiers to help a small village like yours, nor is there money to hire mercenaries. You all got two choices: pack up and head to the capital as penniless refugees, or do all you can to hang on to what’s yours. With word of Mad Clak’s goblin raiders hitting the talk at Pinkie’s tavern, near half the town is asking if they got no choice but the former...”
A slow start. Twilight and Sunset had made a point to get the heroes in a fight during the first session of their games. It was the second before the party ambushed Clak’s advance scouts and rolled initiative. Then they raided his camp on the fourth, and fought the climactic defense of the village on the sixth. The adventure plodded a bit, but that suited Applejack just fine and it seemed the same for the others. After Clak came the witch coven, then a corrupt tax collector for a more social battle of intrigue and influence. Then with a few levels under their belt, coincidentally stronger challenges came their way: fey creatures from the woods, and a necromancer (secretly the old tanner) churning their muddy graveyard.
Nothing too strange for a role-playing adventure. But in between those adventures, that’s what brought it to life for Applejack. Fluttershy making a point to befriend their elf neighbors. Twilight clearing a room in her library for Sunset’s character to sleep in. An actual windfall of gold liberated by Rainbow’s sharp-eyed ninja from the sheriff, then a spirited debate for what to do with it. Their various antics during the village solstice festival, in a session done outside around a fire. Little moments of life that didn’t just give breaks between combats, but showcased what they all fought for. Home, friends, community. Returns to peace were the objective, making them feel like an accomplishment instead of mere downtime.
It couldn’t go on forever, and Applejack never meant it to. But she had her climax ready in mind from the very first days: a plague sweeping the village, yet the necromancer’s books let them piece together the cure. A mystic fruit on the highest temple in the land. Perhaps not the most imaginative of quests, but the fact they were going on a capital-A Adventure drove home the stakes. Each described their packing and final arrangements carefully. Each got a chance to describe their last night at home.
No ‘final boss,’ but a last push. Yetis and harpy nests were nearly as dangerous as the steep climbs with small chances for rest.
And then at last, bright and glittering, they found the mystic fruit.
The Golden Apples.
It took everyone a while to stop laughing. Great note to end the game on. Everyone gave a few lines from there: Applejack on the king’s return, the others’ on their own calm epilogues. The humble villagers had saved their humble lives, and so went back to them. A pleasant, calm way to bring things out on the final session.
She thanked her friends. This all… felt real good. They thanked her right back.
Other games would come and go. College arrived, but with the magic of the internet they all kept playing together.
Indeed, this was only the fourth of their many adventures to come. Applejack wasn’t all that much for being a dungeon master, and it was only some years later that she decided to step up for it again.
But that is another story, for another day.
Author's Note
Thank you for reading!
