The Storm Warby Mint_KeyphaseChaptersFirst Blood: Hoofer's MountainThe Lab: ConceptualizationThe Red Snow: Mount UmbraThe Lab II: MobilizationFighting the Swarm: The Second Battle of Mount UmbraThe Lab III: Rolling FortressReleasing the Beast: Clashing SteelCommand Centre Security CompromisedThe Lab IV: What's Left BehindPrologue - ContactFirst Blood: Hoofer's Mountain Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 21 When I saw Scout 394 vanish from the map, my stomach flipped. Will the Storm Empire reverse-engineer the PoniBots? But no, the follow-up investigation found the bot smashed, laying by the hillside. They didn't even bother to take the gun. Their best ranged weapon is bow and arrows, are they simply too... arrogant? I decided to put these concerns aside and give them a good beating, perhaps they will be deterred from starting a war if I cause enough losses. As I have the advantage of range and agility, I've decided that a guerilla tactic would be the most appropriate. I dispatched a squadron to attract attention, when the enemy starts to give chase, they will be led into a narrow winding valley. I've already stationed troops on either side to gun them down once they are in. As the bait entered the valley, it all seemed well, now I just need to wait until they are all in and seal the entrance with an avalanche. So I waited... And waited... And waited... How much troops do they have??! If it weren't for the battlefield being in the polar circle, it would've been already sunrise, and it was midnight when it started. Seeing that the bait is almost to the other side of the valley, I just settled on what I have now and set off the explosives. "Boom!" The sound of the explosion echoed across the mountains, followed by the rumbling of the ensuing avalanche. The army of storm creatures didn't seem to realize what happened, and tried to find the bait, which had escaped from the avalanche, barely avoiding the sliding mass of snow and ice. As the valley is sealed, so is the fate of those trapped inside. Bullets started to fly around the valley, knocking down the unlucky souls that happend to be in its path... Or shall I say, the dumb souls that are in its path, as anyone with a working brain would be scrambling to escape by now. Not only did they not do so, it appears that they didn't even try. The troops on the high ground started to whittle down down the trapped invaders, slowly but surely. I enjoyed a brief taste of victory as the sound of gunshots continued to fill the command room, as the war cries of the Storm Empire's army get more and more sparse. Date of creation: Nova Aetas Jan, 23 I was rudely woken up by the blaring noise of alarms mid-sleep. "AMY! What's the situation?" A calm, feminine robotic voice answered my query, "Hoofer's Mountain is currently sieged by enemy forces." I scrambled into the control room and saw the carnage on screen. Bodies, broken bots, burning debris scattering over the snowy ground. The bots are doing a brilliant job despite not being designed for combat. They are just normal PoniBots with an extra code to hold the (also improvised) rifles. Unfortunately, they aren't enough to push back the onslaught of Storm Kingdom soldiers. I routed several regiments to break through the encirclement, and tried my best to salvage the situation. First, I attempted a charge down the slope, the sudden attack caused a bit of confusion among the enemy, but they quickly started to surround my forces, and I had to pull them back up. That did almost nothing except delaying them a tiny bit, but I lost a non-insignificant amount of defenders. Next, I ordered the defenders to move up the hill, hoping that this would reduce the size of the defence perimeter and increase firepower density. This went slightly better than before as I can hit harder and fewer enemies can hit back at any given moment since they need every inch of the frontline to carry out their swarm tactics effectively. Still, that did not help a lot. Finally, I just gave in, returned to fighting defensive, and waited for reinforcements to arrive. This turned out to be the most effective tactic I tried so far, even though I changed almost nothing. The wait was gruelling and terrifying, I can see bots getting disconnected from the network, a indication of them being destroyed. These alerts pop up every several seconds, and they are getting more and more frequent as heavily damaged bots are smashed to pieces, simply giving out, or suffer a catastrophic resonance battery failure, exploding and releasing a wave containing the energy left in them, anypony using magic under the influence of that wave will not be having a good time, to say the least, but with no magic to disrupt, the wave simply faded in a deceivingly beautiful display of colours as its wavelength separated under the effect of magic scattering, showering the area in a bright light (and possibly some UV light or X-rays.) As the number of defenders dwindled down, reinforcements finally broke through. It was such a relief when I saw some storm creatures getting neutralized and shoved off by the assisting bots, revealing a path out. There isn't much I can do to salvage this, so I ordered a retreat through the path the reinforcements carved out. It was all red,and I knew the exact reason, but I'd rather believe that it's a red carpet to celebrate the return of the defenders. I know these improvised soldiers won't be enough to fend off the Storm Empire's forces any longer. I need a proper military as soon as possible. Author's Note AMY stands for Artificial Multifunctional Intelligence, Mint's digital assistant The Lab: Conceptualization Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 24 I trotted over to a computer, where several blueprints were shown. They are all firearms, just of different sizes: An automatic rifle, a mortar, and an artillery piece. I printed out the first one, took it in my wings, and pinned it in front of the workbench. Of course I could have just used another screen, but I just feel more comfortable with a physical one. I used some pipes as the barrel of the prototype, as those are the closest thing I can get without waiting for a shipment. Holding the pieces by hoof, and a welding torch by wing, I started putting the design together. I could have just used telekinesis and make this a million times easier, but for some reason I get a mild migraine after I use magic, probably because that I've never learned the "official" spells. As I put the pieces together, my mind started to wander. I was driven out of society because of my wings, a genetic fluke, some ponies who saw me ran away, but most started attacking me, throwing stones, garbage, even filth and in one case a blacksmithing hammer. I eventually settled down in the Everfree Forest, built my first outpost, and began expanding. The process was slow at first, but when I eventually invented a utility robot, PoniBots, progress took off. Each step previously requires its own specialized equipment, these equipment are now replaced by PoniBots which can assume one job, switch to another by just changing tools, and move when done. Before I knew it I've already built a network of secret bases throughout Equestria, outputting a huge amount of material for me to use to my heart's content. I snapped out of my flashbacks and looked down on the, now completed, gun. It wasn't elegant or intricate, but that doesn't matter as A) It's a prototype; B) Aesthetics does not impact performance; and C) I'm not putting them on display anyways, and those who see it aren't going to be talking much about it's ugliness. I went to the testing range and fired a few blanks, it worked as expected, and would hopefully remain so when mass-issued. Time to move on to the other blueprints. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 25 I am sick of this. I need to automate defense to at least some degree, I'm getting jumpscared by the alarms every few hours by some tiny little skirmish that just barely managed to trigger the autopanic. I need to get a system in place or I'm going to lose my mind. My first thought would be to just hardcode a response to common situations, it's the easiest to do, but I shot that down because it was too easy to outsmart once the enemy worked out the standard responses. If they have competent officers that can see the direct relation between their actions and the resulting counteraction, I would be toast if they found out an exploitable weakness. Instead, I need something that can adapt. Since I've already had an experience in AI, it isn't really too bad, all I needed to do was to put down a few thousand lines of code and "teach" it to fight. The coding is easy, but the training is much more annoying than I thought. Not only do I need to have it work consistently, but also tell it to work in less predictable way. I need to find a balance between these contradicting requirements that would (hopefully) work out the best. The first hundred sessions aren't that bad, it's even somewhat fun to see the unexpected actions of the AI; At the 200s you would be able to see the AI steadily improving over each sesion; But after 300 sessions it becomes more and more boring. At least the training after that can be done via real combat without too much risk. Even though it is still much dumber than an actual commander, it should hold its ground against smaller nuisance attacks. And alas, I can finally work in peace. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 26 The new artillery was finished, and this time, I can test it properly. I have thought of a new way to test new inventions: instead of building and testing it myself, I can simply send the schematics to the custom-construction factories and have them produce a few prototypes, then give instructions on test procedure and just look at the video and data gathered. This also allowed me to do multiple projects at once as I don't need to actually build the prototype myself, so I am free to move on once the schematic is done. The testing range has already been prepared, I watched the video feed and hoped for the best. The artillery roared and sent off a shell into the distance, I switched to the camera near the target and waited for the shell to land. A few anxious moments later, "Boom!", a fireball engulfed the camera, I flinched instinctively when the fireball filled up the screen. When the dust settled, the target painted on the ground is all but obliterated, leaving a charred crater on the ground. The results had lined up perfectly with my expectations, and even over delivered in some areas. I approved the artillery for production, and with a satisfying click on the keyboard, factories will be chugging out these new equipment to the frontline soon. I went on to review the footage of the mortar's testing, which has been completed yesterday. After seeing the performance and power of the huge artillery cannons, my feelings were numbed down slightly especially ad the mortar couldn't even make a decent-sized hole in the ground. But I had to remember that the entire mortar is small enough to be stuffed down an artillery cannon and fired off, so it is all but understandable that they are much weaker. THe test was conducted without any defects found, and mortars are sent off for production. The nuisance attacks seems to be increasing in frequency, just in time for the first batches of new rifles to be issued, they should be much better than what's in use right now, gotta like the efficiency of mass production. With all that settled, I started to design a new type of PoniBots, geared towards combat, and combat only. The Red Snow: Mount Umbra Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 29 "Seriously? Again?" I shouted over the siren. "The Northeastern side of Mount Umbra at altitude 400 meters was attacked 37 seconds ago, Automated Defense Command unable to deploy sufficient units, require administrator intervention." AMY's robotic voice is calm as always, as I didn't even code her with emotion emulation. I got to the control room, and the video feed on screen shocked me to the core. There are Storm Soldiers everywhere, where there was white snow is now a shuffling black swarm of enemies, trying to devour the defense force standing in its way a few hundred meters away. Their front is constantly cut down, but the next row will charge on, forming an eerie black wave. Despite the obviously mounting losses, they don't seem to be concerned about self-preservation, not at all, they just charged on. "Artillery open fire at section 12 to 15, range 300, standing barrage." I gave orders to start shelling the enemy. A wall of fire rolled across the battlefield, and the explosion was heard even in the control room, 30 kilometers away. I was briefly startled by the low thumping of the shockwave. The video shows a terrifying scene. The shells first punched through the snow layer, which wasn't solid enough to trigger the fuse, then they presumably hit the ground below, which is solid enough. The explosions they caused ripped up the snow and whatever debris caught in the blast, those include bodies, swords, armor, and whatever the Storm Creatures were bringing to battle before they met their demise, even though the shrapnel the shells were designed to fragment into were caught in the snow, they, combined with the debris, were still lethal enough as an area denial method. For the first time, I saw them panic. They helplessly run in circles and missing an arm or a leg, I couldn't see it clearly because of the darkness and smoke (where is the smoke from? I remember using smokeless powder, and I don't see my gun spew out smoke like that, and also what is burning in the craters making all that smoke?!) They were starting to turn back and run! I thought of letting them off, but if I leave them to run, they will surely come back for me in a few day, or even hours. I steeled myself and updated the firing order, "Artillery open fire at section 12 to 15, range 300, creeping barrage interval 10." I fully know what that would lead to, and I am willing to do so if it means that they will get scared and leave for good. But they didn't. A few hours later, a recon squad spotted them building an outpost on the slopes Hoofer's Mountain, a very advantageous spot as they can see the artillery below them if i were to strike. In addition, more of them are arriving, and most worryingly they are bringing airships to that outpost, which means only one thing, they want to drop bombs on my army. This needs to be countered immediately before they can use it on me. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 29 With the unexpectedly successful use of artillery cannons, I wanted to make the most out of this time-dependant advantage. They will eventually get over this fear, so I must make every second count. Several brigades and an ample amount of artillery are already positioned on the surrounding high grounds. All of them are already loaded and aimed, once the clock ticks 19:30, D-Time! Several hundred shells fly off, trailing a chilling whistle as they cut through the air. The Storm Creatures seemed to have adapted to it slightly already, I no longer see them running away, but they are still terrified when the ground around them is ripped open by an explosion. The infantry opens fire as soon as the first shells land, showering the area with lead. The Storm Creatures haven't recovered from the initial shock yet, so not much stood in the way as the bots start breaking into their frontline. Still, no one is surrendering. As the infantry pushed through, those who fought back were shot, and those who were unable to fight back were knocked unconscious, bagged up, and dragged to the rear to be sent to P.O.W. Camps. With guns blazing, the raiders fought their way to the backlines. Sometimes an enemy will get close enough to deal actual damage to the bots, before getting captured or shot, but most are just panicking as they were still getting shelled, right before getting dealt with. Finally, I caught a glimpse of a small building which stood out from the shabby barracks around it, I know that's the one thing I'm looking for: Their officers. I can give them a big slap on their face if I can capture someone other than mere cannon fodder, and the loss of a commanding officer will most definitely send at least some repercussions up their hierarchy. Especially seeing that they've probably never expected a fight longer than a few weeks, judging by their lack of warm clothing, so they probably didn't expect someone competent enough to capture their officers. A squad immediately approached the doorway under the covering fire of the other raiders, they pulled the nails out of the door (the redeeming feature of these improvised combatants is that they can disassemble enemy constructions quite effectively), and barged into the building. Inside was a few Storm Creatures that looked quite different from the rest. They looked down on the bots arrogantly and started to monologue, trash talking about this being only a tiny portion of their full power and me not standing a chance even with "cheating". Assuming that they are just trying to buy time, I just had them bagged up and sent to a P.O.W camp as well. Author's Note As the infantry pushed through, those who fought back were shot, and those who were unable to fight back were knocked unconscious, bagged up, and dragged to the rear to be sent to ~~Gulag~~ . The Lab II: Mobilization Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 31 January drew to a close as the moon goes down a tiny bit, and back up again. It's easy to lose track of time in the long polar nights, especially when your sleep schedule is all but a mess. But for the past two (or three?) days, I've been putting together a design for a military PoniBot that satisfies my expectations. First, to make room for these modifications, I scaled them slightly bigger than a normal bot, it is a subtle difference, but it would hopefully provide enough room for upgrades, and, if I'm using space efficiently, some extra internal volume for a bigger resonance battery. Next, I had the outer platings switched from aluminium to manganese steel, which is stronger. This is an obvious method of improvement and needs no further documentation. Finally, and most importantly, their hydraulics systems are made with a parallel set, increasing output and redundancy. I finished off by adding some other minor modifications for its new military orientation, like electrodes on its hooves for takedowns and extra shock absorption in certain to reduce the impact of recoil. I kept some of the utilitarian features which I found many unexpected uses for, such as the built in electric screwdrivers, which turned out to be great at clearing out jammed guns and absolutely destroying locks in drill mode; and also the stronger than necessary electromagnet which makes them slightly better in hoof-to-hoof combat, as they can pull metal objects to where they shouldn't be, such as nails out of walls and swords out of hands. With that task done, I can move on to deal with the lack of air defense on my side. It was surprisingly easy to do so, all I had to do was to change out the impact fuse on the artillery shells for a timed fuse. It was a crude method, but it should work well with the makeshift radars I'm using... ...On second thoughts, I should try harder and make something that shoots faster than an artillery to deal with the all but expected swarms of airships. Since airships are most likely unarmored due to weight limits, I can use smaller shells that can be loaded faster and can shoot higher, they will bring the airship down in two or three shots anyways. Most other pieces can just be scaled down, but the biggest problem is trying to have the recoil operations work with the reduced force. I managed to get around it by having a small contraption that would use the escaping gas to supplement recoil. For something thought up in two hours, I felt quite impressed by myself. On second thoughts... No, nevermind, that will be for later, if I keep going on with this I will be up till next week, drawing out blueprints that are ahead of even my technological capability. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 1 And here I am, stepping into February. The moon is still hanging over the land, witnessing all the terrible things unfolding on the surface. Video records of battles are kept for 14 days, at which only videos marked as important will be kept to save on data encoding crystals. This means that after 14 days almost all the enemies that have fallen in combat will only remain a number, or even just an estimate. Not that I'm concerned too much though, and seeing how they pay no care about their injured, I doubt that they'd care either. The captured soldiers at the P.O.W. camps probably lived in better conditions than those in the Storm Empire's army, seeing that they did not even attempt a breakout once. Though the officers are acting the exact opposite, they probably enjoyed many privileges over the soldiers (and may be hated for it, as they now try to keep away from the crowd.) In any case, if I want to stay alive, these numbers should preferably stay as high as possible. Currently the daily kill count is around a few thousand from the nuisance raids, and sometimes a few ten-thousands when they carry out a proper attack. These numbers are nowhere near enough to repel them for long, and some lines are being forced to move back already. Since small arms fire worked well on them, I don't need to do too much about it, I just need to do it faster. A few hours went by and I've designed a effective killing equipment. How ironic is that for me to try to stop an enemy from killing by making something better at killing, guess that's how a war is fought. The weapon in question is a "machine gun", it's a gun with a machine to make it fire bullets continuously as long as bullets are supplied and trigger is held down. By using some of the gas produced during firing to reload, it can pour out hundreds of bullets in a matter of seconds. Any living being caught in the stream of metal would most likely be torn into pieces from the sheer amount of bullets cutting through them. I sent them to the production line directly, no testing needed. This is a relatively simple machine and I'd rather had it pushed into service immediately. I looked outside the window, a minor storm is bringing a large amount of snowfall to this area. It is great because I can lay down another avalanche trap... What have I become, I never thought I would say something like "It's nice to kill them with an avalanche." But they are invading me, and i'll make sure that they are NOT TAKING MY LAND, not even a chance without me putting up a fight. What am I supposed to do now though? I don't know how strong the Storm Empire actually is, and they aren't afraid to put everything on the table, then use all of them as cannon fodder to gain the upper hand. I can kill so many of them, but if they bring more, that number is instantly worthless. What am I supposed to do now? Fighting the Swarm: The Second Battle of Mount Umbra Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Fab 7 I was woken up by alarms again. "Grrr... Again?!" I shouted, more than slightly annoyed, "Why do they always disturb my sleep, the whole day is the night, does it even matter? I'm gonna have to change my sleep schedule." The screens in the control room were pitch black. When the spotlights were turned on, however, it revealed a black, squirming mass of Storm Creatures. "And here we are again." I muttered, this time they got even more cannon fodder they call "soldiers". While they are just medieval in my standards, they outnumber me at least 50 to 1. I have a fear that it's not even a fraction of their full power. Machine guns are not widely deployed yet, so I could only see a few of them firing, but there are way more artillery pieces than before. With this new material advantage, I started to pour artillery fire down on them. "Artillery open fire at section 7 to 19, range 280, creeping barrage interval 10." Unfortunately, they seemed to have become indifferent towards the artillery fire. Despite multiple barrages, they just didn't care at all and continued their attack. While most of them are cut down, eventually through sheer numbers they started to push back on the defense lines. Why are they willing to charge headfirst into a literal wall of death that kills 99% of those who go through it? Don't they see all the flying chunks of armor and explosions ripping up the ground around them? It's like they are just heartless, apathetic killing machines with no sense of self-preservation. I can only assume that they are extremely well-trained, but if that is the case they should be much more organised than what I see right now. These storm creatures just raises so many questions. As more storm creatures try to enter the battlefield, chaos took hold. I see them climbing over one another, pushing others over, even blocking the line of fire of cannons of their own and subsequently exploding into a red mist. With this kind of "strategy", they might as well as carry a bomb and run towards me. "Kaboom!" Jinxed it... That seemed to be an isolated incident though, as I don't see any more explosions. Still, I couldn't shake off the thought of forcing someone to blow himself up. The battlefield didn't change though, the bots won't get intimidated by a fanatical army of storm creature, which probably surprised their superiors. Looking at their aggressive and arrogant tactics(or rather, the lack of tactics), I won't be surprised if they've never lost any wars, and they built up such a reputation that they didn't need to fight. Thus after a while they just assumed that everyone is a pushover and will surrender immediately, and all that's left of their officers are just too incompetent to do anything but order a charge. With more and more storm creatures quite literally squirming towards the defenses, I had no choice but to start moving back. Inch by inch, the defenders start stepping back, their synchronized movements is in stark contrast with the disorganized scramble of Storm Empire soldiers. Without any hesitation, the Storm Army greedily takes the land, and their sorry bottoms were promptly blown up by makeshift landmines. "Wait, so they just fell for that?" I was surprised by how smoothly it went, even though it's an improvised plan, "I'm gonna be using it so much more!" Those storm creatures somehow aren't alarmed by the ground blowing them up, and continued to move forward, triggering every single landmine in the process. Suddenly, I saw some huge silhouettes in the sky, bombers! The anti-air cannons started to open fire on these airborne threats, shooting several of them out of the sky. The falling bombers went down on top of their forces, and a huge explosion shook the mountains, destabilizing the snow layer. I knew what's going to happen next, so I gave the order get off the mountainside as fast as possible. With the enemies' bombers are preparing to drop their bombs, and the anti-air cannons unable to fire during transport, I hoped for the best and watched as the bombers flew over the peak. But then a strange thing happened, they stopped right after passing over the peak, and started dropping bombs on their own soldiers. Bomb after bomb rained down and they still didn't notice their mistake. I realized that they must've been given an outdated flight plan, as my defense line was in fact there, but it had shifted back during the intense combat and now it was instead occupied by their own ground forces. With my spotlights off, and near zero visibility in the darkness, they most likely relied on compass and stars to navigate the area. Unfortunately for them, their bombers never received the order to cancel the operation or update the target location. When they've started bombing what's presumably my defense line, they ended up damaging their own force. As another avalanche rolled across the landscape, the battle had mostly ended. Almost all defenders escaped the avalanche undamaged, while the storm creature on that mountainside are most likely wiped out by their own reckless bombing. With enemy forces on the other side of the mountain taking control of the area, this is more or less a defeat for me both tactically and strategically, but I did gain some valuable knowledge in the enemy. Namely their lack of coordination and brute-force tendencies. While they will eventually get over these shortcomings, I don't see a problem with exploiting these a few times, just enough not to get too much of their attention and see how long I can keep it up until they fixed these issues. My defenders are now at the location of my command centre, I realized that the Northern Mountains are almost completely lost to those brutes. With a renewed sense of urgency, I prepared a retreat away from the mountains, and onto the tundras of the great north. The Lab III: Rolling Fortress Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 8 With a heavy heart, I went on board my RV and joined the convoy, heading off to the tundras. The fighting in the tundras is very from fighting in the mountains. First off, I can't trigger avalanches to clear up an entire area anymore. Moreover, the flat land makes guerilla warfare and keeping range a lot harder. On the flip side, this means that I can start using heavy vehicles, and the lack of avalanches also allows me to fire artillery without dangers of burying my own troops. WIth the new environment, I started thinking about new possibilities. Heavy vehicles, bigger cannons, maybe even take to the skies myself. With a tsunami of ideas, I pulled over, and assigned a bot to be my driver. After that I retreated to the comfort of the cabin. As this RV is built on the chassis of a 8x8 5-ton truck, it looked very spacious when the conversion started. However, as I fitted in the the necessities it quickly became apparent that the it wasn't enough.(To be fair, trying to fit a workshop with drills, lathes, and a small garage isn't exactly standard) After a stretch, a second floor, and a bit of fumbling, I worked out something I am satisfied with. One thing it wasn't designed for though is the addition of a mobile command centre, so I just improvised by hooking a trailer with the necessary equipment for that, connected it to the computer room, and called it a day. While the truck is making its way through the terrain, I settled down on the sofa, buckled up the seatbelt, and started drawing schematics again, love it or hate it, it will probably be a routine for me to draw these whenever I have a break. I want to bring into action something I've been thinking about for the past few days: An Armoured Fighting Vehicle. It probably won't be useful in areas like the Northern Mountains, but in the tundras, that would be a different story. With the droning of the engine in the background, I lost track of time and worked on the schematic until I felt the truck stop, a few hours had passed. I set down the laptop and looked outside, the new command centre is already being assembled. I turned back to the screen and continued with my work, as I will be for most of my time in the rest of this war. For now though, I am ok with this change, I just hope I won't get bored of it, because this war won't be a short one. Well, I hope it isn't a short one ending in my defeat. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 10 I did a final check on the schematics, and sent it off for production. With the Storm Empire's full strength unknown, I've decided to take a risk and send off new invention directly into battle, and iron out the kinks afterwards. Since the inability of PoniBots to be powerful in hoof-to-hoof combat is an unavoidable weakness due to current technological limitations, I've designed a vehicle that can easily brush off spears and swords. The vehicle isn't exactly large, any it only has a fixed main cannon and a machine gun for offense. The gun is uglily off-center, but it will have to do. Treads were used instead of wheels for a better grip on terrain and improved traversability, and it is driven the most powerful diesel engine for vehicles I could get onto production immediately. The engine in question is actually same as the ones used in trucks, only tuned for power output instead of fuel efficiency. It works quite well even though I am using biodiesel. I know normal diesel is easier to produce and somewhat more powerful, but since I have so much excess crops (why did I have such a huge productivity of crops?), I find it better than trying to locate a new source of crude oil. As the tiny one I once harvested from in Equestria has dried out already and I can't be bothered with the fuss of finding another one especially now. Since it had worked well so far, I don't intend to change it out anytime soon, or ever. Of course, the AFVs won't be invincible, nothing is invincible, they can only going as close to it as possible. In this case, I just made it enough to resist them slamming their cold weapons at it. I did remember seeing them use cannons though, and those may pose a legitimate threat, so I decided to buffed up the frontal armour and shave some weight off the back. As much as I wanted to, I can't make the whole thing armoured enough to take a shot from a cannon at any angle because of mobility issues, I'll just have to make some compromises. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 10 Why are they having the same idea even though the AFVs aren't deployed yet? I'm very sure that they can't infiltrate and steal designs from a society where "individuals" access everything with their serial number and schematics shared through cloud network, and they can't hack anything because they don't even have anything close to computers as far as I am concerned. So the only possibility is that both sides just so happened to have the same idea at the same time. While they do carry a few cannons, capable of dealing considerable damage to my AFVs, the cannons I see them using are all front-loaded, and this one does not look like it will be an exception. Also, their choice of propulsion is quite interesting, to say the least. While they are using treads, they are connecting them to some sort of magic contraption, which looks quite flimsy to me, judging by how those brutes aren't allowed to handle it at all, and some other creatures (slaves, maybe? Perhaps I should see if I can get them out and ship them off somehow) are carefully mounting them while the Storm Creatures are standing behind them with a spear, looking threatening as always. Even stranger is how the cannons on board where mounted facing different directions, meaning that they can never fire all at once without collateral damage (though I doubt if they would even care about that). The only way this may be useful is looking very scary. Maybe this would scare some less advanced armies like the Equestrian Royal Guards into surrendering, but I'm not perturbed. I've seen it through, they can't make me surrender like they did to others. I'm sure they will eventually start putting up a real fight, but right now they don't seem too keen to do so. Afterall to them I'm just a pushover, and I'd prefer they think so until I can start punching back. Author's Note It is a Hetzer, if you haven't noticed yet. Releasing the Beast: Clashing Steel Date of creation: Nova Aetas, Feb 19 As I am staving off my drowsiness in my current attempt to flip my sleep schedule, the alarms sounded. Caught by surprise, I reflexively jumped and nearly hit the ceiling doing so. As my eyes drifted over the screens, I noticed something strange: The alert is from the old command centre, which has been empty since last week, in fact, there isn't even supposed to be an alarm unless they detonate a mine or two near the base of the mountain. In any case, they are now congregating around the bottom of mountain, and they are preparing to go up. First, they fired their field cannons, nearly all cannonballs failed to hit the command post which is uphill and upwind, and the iron spheres just rolled back down the steep slopes. They didn't seem to care though, as they just marched on. Behind the cannons, I noticed their infantry arranging themselves into a phalanx, I've never seen them in any sort of formation before, so this is definitely concerning. These phalanxes then overtook the cannons and started a charge, their organization is most likely still shabby, as the charge quickly devolved into a mad dash uphill. As there isn't anything can shoot back, they swiftly took over the facility. Now, that would have been an easy victory, but unluckily for them I rigged up a couple tons of explosives down in the basement, and I have the remote detonator. As the started to camp around the facility, I pressed the big red button. "Boom!" Another explosion echoed through the mountains, and another wave avalanches is triggered. That should teach them a lesson about taking "defenseless" targets without even trying to find any traps. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 21 The alarms went off again, but this time, I've already rescheduled my sleep to fit their attacks. Conflicts has been escalating for the past few days, and I'm expecting them to be showing off their version of AFVs, so I plan to give them a slap in the face by hiding all the armour forces behind mounds of snow, and have them face off each other. I transferred command of the armour regiments on scene to the automated defense system, and in a few seconds the vehicles burst out of their cover, with guns pointing at the enemy. I knew I would have an advantage despite lacking on numbers: They are fighting in an unstable valley, their attack is bound to trigger an avalanche that would cut them off, so whatever is on scene is stuck inside for at least 12 hours; And whatever's outside won't be getting in anytime soon either, so they can't just bring in more reinforcements and grind it out. And with the deafening rumble of the avalanche, the valley transformed into a coliseum in which two armies will fight for survival. I watched as the system starts trying to figure out how to make use of with the new units, I only take control of a few of them, and the system needs to try and achieve the same effect with everything else across the whole frontline. It can't just copy the movements, it needs to learn what actions correspond to what situation. This is why the losses of new units are usually abnormally high, but I don't have much of a choice right now lest I want to spend the next 24 hours coding non-stop. Guns roar to life as I got into my units into effective range, HE(High Explosive) shells start ripping into vehicles on the other side. Another round is already waiting to be loaded, ant the loader is just waiting for the breach to open. This is the neat part working with an automated system. Once it has learned the correct actions, you don't need to tell them to do anything, they are doing it as it has learned. After pushing another round into the enemy, I saw their cannons destroyed by zooming in, and declared a kill. The system is already following my previous actions, with a shell and a resounding "Boom!" of an ammo rack explosion, the enemy's cannons were pushed off the side by the force of the explosion. Penicullariy, the enemy AFVs made no attempts to move closer at all, I don't know the reason to that, but is most likely be related to their lack of a reliable engine. It is possible that their flimsy magical engines are just too prone to breaking down, and they just tried to go around the problem by using the engine at little as possible. After a couple of them got picked off by artillery though, they finally began to move. The first thing I noticed is how strange their movements are, it seems that they couldn't go in curves, so they had to stop, turn on spot, and start moving again. Out of curiosity, I fired at one of them which is on a ledge, the shot hit the edge and the turtle-like vehicle landed the wrong side up. Then I saw the reason for that quirk: they don't have any form of differential, they can only control the direction the wheel is spinning. Moreover, the distinctive "crack" of wood is heard, which means that they aren't even using metal for protection. Now I doubt if their AFVs are actually serious or just something to scare others. The battle is completely one-sided for the vehicles, but the infantry aren't having a good time. In this confined space, hoof-to-hoof combat situations are frequent, and this is exactly what the bots are bad at. The storm creatures are in no ways weak, even though they are somewhat dumb, they can break the steel body of bots without problem, and can even smash and break some components on my AFVs. Honestly, I'm quite impressed to see them breaking the driving sprocket on one vehicle, those are made of solid 5 cm hardened steel, yet they somehow had it snapped off. In hindsight, it may have been a manufacturing flaw in play as well, but it is scary nonetheless. Command Centre Security Compromised Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 14 [The following section contains censored sections.] I woke up to the sound of shuffling downstairs, the moment I walked out of my bedroom, I was knocked unconscious. When I opened my eyes, I was already inside one of their buildings, immediately they shouted curses at me and demanded for my surrender and betray my country to spy for them. With a blade over my throat, I found no other choice than to just bluff. "You'd better [CENSORED], [CENSORED]." "You ain't gonna be happy if the boss finds out." The reply came back so loud that I felt my eardrums stretching to their limits. "OH WE ARE GOING TO KILL THAT [CENSORED]" "If you kill me, the boss ain't gonna hold back any further, this whole mountain is gonna go sky high!" "YOU LITTLE [CENSORED], YOU'RE BLUFFING." My faux confidence smile fell for a split second, and I morphed my face into the darkest poker face I can manage to try write it off. "Maybe? But you won't live to find out, as you will be in a million pieces at that time." "OH YOU [CENSORED].""[CENSORED]." "Now if you don't let me go in five minutes, we will all die in the most spectacular way possible. Your choice." "[CENSORED],[CENSORED],[CENSORED]." "Now you stop your cursing, I-" My words were cut off by the sharp pain across my back, from what I just felt, I knew they just whipped me, and judging by the strange cold and wet feeling, they aren't just using normal whips, those are chain-blade whips, these whips slash through flesh like butter. The interrogators face suddenly turns wicked, "now, you will be going, but you're horn is OURS, the commander will surely like a horn that can ignore blackstone, he-he-he." "Cut that cliché laughter and make it quick, I don't need it anyways, it's flawed, and the blackstone bypass is just my amulet." There was a clean "Snap!", and a jolt of pain shot through my forehead, and I saw my horn rolling across the floor."[CENSORED]! This little [CENSORED] is right, her [CENSORED] horn is full of holes!" With them distracted, I capitalized on the split second when the blade is off my throat and channeled all the magic into the stub left of my horn, through all frequencies, at maximum strength, and no spell in mind. This released an uncontrolled blast of magic, sending everyone else in the room flying. As the flash of light subsided, I ripped a portal and leapt through, not even bothering to pick up the horn, it's flawed anyways. "That was so close, I really need a safer place to live, also how fast can I get a batch of advanced arcane materials delivered from the warehouse?" Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 16 I looked at the piece of resonium on my hoof, it's slightly warm to the touch, and hums lightly in a soothing way. Soon, it will join the rest of the arcane materials on my workbench to form a new prosthetic horn, one that does not lead to horn pain whenever I cast a spell. I find that I didn't suffer from the usual pain after that magic outburst, and I theorized that the pain might be due to residual magic buildup in the holes of my original horn. Now I can create one that is hopefully pain-free, and would even boost my magic strength. First, I created a casing with Living Metal, which is can only be created in tiny quantities by passing some special alloys through an overcharged point-critical magic forge. This lets the horn blend into my stub, and since my horn isn't at full size, I made this replacement oversized for now, so I don't need to replace it later. This casing also has the advantage of being at least 7 times stronger than anything that the Storm Empire can get, so no more breaking it off. Then, I used the hydraulic press to form a chunk of resonium into a cone-shaped shell, and slipped it into the casing. Resonium can amplify magic passing through it without any loss of detail, so it is a nice way of strengthening precision based spells. Finally, I filled it with molten celestium and dropped in a seed crystal. This is then kept at a temperature just below the melting point of celestium to let it set slowly and form a crystal hexagonal structure. Celestium with a crystal structure has been used in Equestrian replacement horns for extremely important and wealthy individuals, and shown to be able to enhance magic casting abilities of the user. Usually these horns use only a small amount, but since I had a lot of celestium in my stash, might as well as use it. Finally, I made a upside-down hexagonal pyramidal hole, slid in a mythril rod, and used a hydraulic press to make a passive lock. I grinded off the bumps on my stub and made the same hole, but this time I can use magic to deform the mythril rod as the horn is already in place when the rod is inserted. After all that work, the slightly oversized horn is now perched over my stub, I cast a few simple spells, I needed considerably less effort to cast spells and experienced no pain. I was quite satisfied with my work, but there is one last thing. The exterior is still just a metallic surface, even though this doesn't impact the functionality of the horn, it's still ugly, and I don't want to look at an eyesore every morning when I wash my face. So I grafted a sample of my coat onto the exterior, a bit of magic later my body accepted this transplant, when I grow up, there would hopefully only be a small colour difference that would reveal the true nature of my horn. Author's Note An older scrap, might fall out of line The Lab IV: What's Left Behind Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 23 Hours went by as I tweaked the design of my new monoplane. I originally planned to go with a biplane, but I pivoted when I my calculations showed that monoplanes are superior with the advancements in lightweight engines. The lines on the blue background converge and diverge with each other, tracing out the sleek shape of a fighter aircraft. As I attempted to fit the weapons into the wing, recollections of my past started to play out in my mind. I remembered the time I witnessed a sonic rainboom, an event that was only seen in ancient texts and mythology, or sometimes in calculation of extreme magic dynamics. I was just 5 at the time, and it completely blew my mind. I was hit with a sudden craving to reach the skies by the means of technology, and set out on building a flying machine with no airbags. Three months later, the process was complete, I was so excited that I threw out all my usual secrecy codes, and flew it over a group of hikers. However, instead of getting impressed, they immediately turned hostile at me. "What do you think you're doing in OUR sky, you greedy filthy unicorn!" The yellow pegasi yelled, "The sky belongs to US, the pegasi, you unicorns had better STICK TO THE GROUND!" The others cheered her on, "Look! She had wings as well, that's a bucking changeling!" "BEAT HER UP!" "Get your sluggish flying object on the ground so we can burn it as firewood, it would make it much more useful!" I put my aircraft in a series erratic movements to dodge the random objects hurled at me, but the aircraft couldn't make such violent turns. After ripping apart a few structs, I am concerned about the structural integrity of the wings and put a stop to the turning. Luckily, the spinning propellers are enough to deter them from actually going near the aircraft. They turned away as I flew over the Everfree Forest and into a valley of the Everfree Mountain Ranges, where I originally took off from. The aircraft was fairly damaged from the rocks and my reckless flying, but it was a piece of cake to repair it, since it's just in essence some planks and cloth. What couldn't be repaired though, was my trust. After that day, I told myself to never be seen again. The next day, I stealthily watched as Princess Celestia herself investigated the site. She and her guards waited for a few hours before leaving, but they left behind an envelope. I waited until they were completely out of the vicinity of the site and retrieved the letter. Of course, I scanned it and removed any tracking enchantments and spells first before picking it up. I brought it back to the base and extracted the contents. "Mr/Miss Inventor, We have received word of something unheard of in Equestria being showcased here, we cordially invite you to return tomorrow at noon to meet us. Equestria will greatly benefit from your ingenuity. Signed, Princess Celestia" Although the prospect of bringing Equestria a new era of technology is attractive, I'm too traumatized by that encounter, so I made my decision. "Equestria in not ready for the new era. The Inventor" I watched as the princess picked up the letter, and shook her head with a face of regret. I was tempted to head out, but my newfound fear took hold of me. I have nothing against these ponies, they don't know what they've done. I will not take down the princess and topple the regime. Yet they will pay, with the brilliant future they never knew would have happened. As the sun sets, the princess rode off in her carriage, while I tore a portal and stepped through, back to the place I call home. I opened the door to the hangar, and on the workbench was a blueprint of a monoplane, with guns, fuel tanks, hydraulic lines, and a pair of landing gear perfectly slotted inside her semi-elliptical wings. I snapped out of my trance, and looked closer at my final result. With no problems found, I sent it for production, and admired the night sky. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 24 I looked at my surroundings, everything seems to be just so slightly off. I know I am dreaming again, and steeled myself for what is to come. A black blob ripped open the ground, seizing me and shoved me its body. Plunged into complete darkness, I helplessly waited until my eventual awakening. Suddenly, everything started to brighten up, I realized what is happening. Princess Celestia has found me, as I am now synced with the sleep schedule of Equestria. This only made me more terrified as I don't want anyone finding me and my work. A silhouette formed in front of me, it was the princess herself. She smiled warmly, "Is there anything wrong?" "D-Don't worry, this is a normal night for me, I've went through this hundreds of times before." "Who are you? My little pony?" I gave her the reply by focusing my thoughts to materialize the invitation she sent me years ago, and gesture it to her. "Oh, I see," as she went through the lines, "So it was you who had done the impossible. Do you actually have wings and a horn?" "Yes and no, they are wings and horn, but technically I'm a hybrid, not an alicorn, so both of them are flawed. I have a nice replacement horn though, since they broke the real one." "They?" Darned it, I messed up... "Sigh, you may not like hearing this," I warned. "Go on, I've seen a lot through the years." "Alright then, they are the Storm Empire, which I'm currently trying to fend off. Also, they nearly took my life twice, but in both incidents I got out alive, somehow." Princess Celestia's face went from calm, to a near-spit take, to one of a mix of surprise and horror, "Are you sure they are the Storm Empire?" "Yeah, so what?" "They nearly took over Equestria three hundred years ago if not for me channelling the sun's power to scorch them all, and that created the badlands you see today." "Uhh, they are currently blocked by just a couple hundred thousand PoniBots, which is about similar in combat power to normal ponies. I did arm them with slightly more advanced equipment though." The princess continued questioning, "Are you sure they are the Storm Empire?" I just frowned, "They said they were, and they are huge bipeds with a turtle-shell-like exoskeleton." "I don't remember them being stopped by a couple hundred thousand soldiers?" "I have a better arsenal than you do, such as a thing that spits out metal chunks so flying fast it kills, and other things that rain explosives on a desired location, and another that is just a moving armored cannon." "You what?" "It doesn't matter, Princess. All I can say is that they were held back by the bots." "What are bots?" "Bots are like golems, but no magic and all science. Just get to the point, please." "Okay, would you like to have reinforcements?" "No." She was immediately intrigued, "Why? It isn't embarrassing to recieve help." "I raise you a question, how would you transfer your army across the entire planet, and fight with reduced magic of unicorns, reduced flight of pegasi, and reduced strength of earth ponies? The ambient magic is much weaker here in Newland." "I see where you are going with this, since the peace treaty signed ages ago forbid them from going into a war, we have a casus belli to declare war on them. As they will definitely move onto others after you go down, we will declare war to stop them now." "No. Are you out of your mind?" "Pardon me?" "They, fight like this", as I willed a screen into existence, showing some clips from the video feed, "And how do you plan to defeat them? You can't summon a sun plasma beam thing again because they can evade it as they've seen it before, you can't just scorch half of Equestria to eliminate them, right?" "You raise... some valid points... I'm going to just leave them be for now." "I'm glad to see that Equestria will not fall next week." "That's some sarcasm there." "It's a fact... One more thing, keep this between us for now." "Understood." Author's Note Why is Mint building stuff when she was a filly? Simple, her continued survival depends on it. Prologue - Contact Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 20 I went through the logs again. "Large amount of signatures detected..." "...unidentified airborne objects resembling airships..." "...bearing no resemblance to Equestrian architecture and technology..." "...phalanx formations..." "...Possible colonization..." "...diplomatic request..." "Threat Level: High, approach with caution. " I already felt my stomach flip as I approached the ominous swarm of airships. I was led into the largest one, escorted by guards pointing swords at me. The interior is filled with torture equipment, weapons, and even what appears to be severed, preserved heads. Nothing in the meeting room looks like something that would suggest a peaceful collaboration. In fact, they looked like something that would be used to coerce someone into surrendering. The first thing they said was that they were the Storm Empire, and, as I have guessed, demanded that I surrender my nation to them, of course, I refused. The air in the room froze for a brief moment. Next thing I knew, assassins jumped out from all around the room. I ripped open a portal, and fled the scene, but I knew that won't be the end of it. They aren't going to give up just because the diplomat ran away, they will just get it by force, a war has begun.
First Blood: Hoofer's Mountain Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 21 When I saw Scout 394 vanish from the map, my stomach flipped. Will the Storm Empire reverse-engineer the PoniBots? But no, the follow-up investigation found the bot smashed, laying by the hillside. They didn't even bother to take the gun. Their best ranged weapon is bow and arrows, are they simply too... arrogant? I decided to put these concerns aside and give them a good beating, perhaps they will be deterred from starting a war if I cause enough losses. As I have the advantage of range and agility, I've decided that a guerilla tactic would be the most appropriate. I dispatched a squadron to attract attention, when the enemy starts to give chase, they will be led into a narrow winding valley. I've already stationed troops on either side to gun them down once they are in. As the bait entered the valley, it all seemed well, now I just need to wait until they are all in and seal the entrance with an avalanche. So I waited... And waited... And waited... How much troops do they have??! If it weren't for the battlefield being in the polar circle, it would've been already sunrise, and it was midnight when it started. Seeing that the bait is almost to the other side of the valley, I just settled on what I have now and set off the explosives. "Boom!" The sound of the explosion echoed across the mountains, followed by the rumbling of the ensuing avalanche. The army of storm creatures didn't seem to realize what happened, and tried to find the bait, which had escaped from the avalanche, barely avoiding the sliding mass of snow and ice. As the valley is sealed, so is the fate of those trapped inside. Bullets started to fly around the valley, knocking down the unlucky souls that happend to be in its path... Or shall I say, the dumb souls that are in its path, as anyone with a working brain would be scrambling to escape by now. Not only did they not do so, it appears that they didn't even try. The troops on the high ground started to whittle down down the trapped invaders, slowly but surely. I enjoyed a brief taste of victory as the sound of gunshots continued to fill the command room, as the war cries of the Storm Empire's army get more and more sparse. Date of creation: Nova Aetas Jan, 23 I was rudely woken up by the blaring noise of alarms mid-sleep. "AMY! What's the situation?" A calm, feminine robotic voice answered my query, "Hoofer's Mountain is currently sieged by enemy forces." I scrambled into the control room and saw the carnage on screen. Bodies, broken bots, burning debris scattering over the snowy ground. The bots are doing a brilliant job despite not being designed for combat. They are just normal PoniBots with an extra code to hold the (also improvised) rifles. Unfortunately, they aren't enough to push back the onslaught of Storm Kingdom soldiers. I routed several regiments to break through the encirclement, and tried my best to salvage the situation. First, I attempted a charge down the slope, the sudden attack caused a bit of confusion among the enemy, but they quickly started to surround my forces, and I had to pull them back up. That did almost nothing except delaying them a tiny bit, but I lost a non-insignificant amount of defenders. Next, I ordered the defenders to move up the hill, hoping that this would reduce the size of the defence perimeter and increase firepower density. This went slightly better than before as I can hit harder and fewer enemies can hit back at any given moment since they need every inch of the frontline to carry out their swarm tactics effectively. Still, that did not help a lot. Finally, I just gave in, returned to fighting defensive, and waited for reinforcements to arrive. This turned out to be the most effective tactic I tried so far, even though I changed almost nothing. The wait was gruelling and terrifying, I can see bots getting disconnected from the network, a indication of them being destroyed. These alerts pop up every several seconds, and they are getting more and more frequent as heavily damaged bots are smashed to pieces, simply giving out, or suffer a catastrophic resonance battery failure, exploding and releasing a wave containing the energy left in them, anypony using magic under the influence of that wave will not be having a good time, to say the least, but with no magic to disrupt, the wave simply faded in a deceivingly beautiful display of colours as its wavelength separated under the effect of magic scattering, showering the area in a bright light (and possibly some UV light or X-rays.) As the number of defenders dwindled down, reinforcements finally broke through. It was such a relief when I saw some storm creatures getting neutralized and shoved off by the assisting bots, revealing a path out. There isn't much I can do to salvage this, so I ordered a retreat through the path the reinforcements carved out. It was all red,and I knew the exact reason, but I'd rather believe that it's a red carpet to celebrate the return of the defenders. I know these improvised soldiers won't be enough to fend off the Storm Empire's forces any longer. I need a proper military as soon as possible. Author's Note AMY stands for Artificial Multifunctional Intelligence, Mint's digital assistant
The Lab: Conceptualization Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 24 I trotted over to a computer, where several blueprints were shown. They are all firearms, just of different sizes: An automatic rifle, a mortar, and an artillery piece. I printed out the first one, took it in my wings, and pinned it in front of the workbench. Of course I could have just used another screen, but I just feel more comfortable with a physical one. I used some pipes as the barrel of the prototype, as those are the closest thing I can get without waiting for a shipment. Holding the pieces by hoof, and a welding torch by wing, I started putting the design together. I could have just used telekinesis and make this a million times easier, but for some reason I get a mild migraine after I use magic, probably because that I've never learned the "official" spells. As I put the pieces together, my mind started to wander. I was driven out of society because of my wings, a genetic fluke, some ponies who saw me ran away, but most started attacking me, throwing stones, garbage, even filth and in one case a blacksmithing hammer. I eventually settled down in the Everfree Forest, built my first outpost, and began expanding. The process was slow at first, but when I eventually invented a utility robot, PoniBots, progress took off. Each step previously requires its own specialized equipment, these equipment are now replaced by PoniBots which can assume one job, switch to another by just changing tools, and move when done. Before I knew it I've already built a network of secret bases throughout Equestria, outputting a huge amount of material for me to use to my heart's content. I snapped out of my flashbacks and looked down on the, now completed, gun. It wasn't elegant or intricate, but that doesn't matter as A) It's a prototype; B) Aesthetics does not impact performance; and C) I'm not putting them on display anyways, and those who see it aren't going to be talking much about it's ugliness. I went to the testing range and fired a few blanks, it worked as expected, and would hopefully remain so when mass-issued. Time to move on to the other blueprints. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 25 I am sick of this. I need to automate defense to at least some degree, I'm getting jumpscared by the alarms every few hours by some tiny little skirmish that just barely managed to trigger the autopanic. I need to get a system in place or I'm going to lose my mind. My first thought would be to just hardcode a response to common situations, it's the easiest to do, but I shot that down because it was too easy to outsmart once the enemy worked out the standard responses. If they have competent officers that can see the direct relation between their actions and the resulting counteraction, I would be toast if they found out an exploitable weakness. Instead, I need something that can adapt. Since I've already had an experience in AI, it isn't really too bad, all I needed to do was to put down a few thousand lines of code and "teach" it to fight. The coding is easy, but the training is much more annoying than I thought. Not only do I need to have it work consistently, but also tell it to work in less predictable way. I need to find a balance between these contradicting requirements that would (hopefully) work out the best. The first hundred sessions aren't that bad, it's even somewhat fun to see the unexpected actions of the AI; At the 200s you would be able to see the AI steadily improving over each sesion; But after 300 sessions it becomes more and more boring. At least the training after that can be done via real combat without too much risk. Even though it is still much dumber than an actual commander, it should hold its ground against smaller nuisance attacks. And alas, I can finally work in peace. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 26 The new artillery was finished, and this time, I can test it properly. I have thought of a new way to test new inventions: instead of building and testing it myself, I can simply send the schematics to the custom-construction factories and have them produce a few prototypes, then give instructions on test procedure and just look at the video and data gathered. This also allowed me to do multiple projects at once as I don't need to actually build the prototype myself, so I am free to move on once the schematic is done. The testing range has already been prepared, I watched the video feed and hoped for the best. The artillery roared and sent off a shell into the distance, I switched to the camera near the target and waited for the shell to land. A few anxious moments later, "Boom!", a fireball engulfed the camera, I flinched instinctively when the fireball filled up the screen. When the dust settled, the target painted on the ground is all but obliterated, leaving a charred crater on the ground. The results had lined up perfectly with my expectations, and even over delivered in some areas. I approved the artillery for production, and with a satisfying click on the keyboard, factories will be chugging out these new equipment to the frontline soon. I went on to review the footage of the mortar's testing, which has been completed yesterday. After seeing the performance and power of the huge artillery cannons, my feelings were numbed down slightly especially ad the mortar couldn't even make a decent-sized hole in the ground. But I had to remember that the entire mortar is small enough to be stuffed down an artillery cannon and fired off, so it is all but understandable that they are much weaker. THe test was conducted without any defects found, and mortars are sent off for production. The nuisance attacks seems to be increasing in frequency, just in time for the first batches of new rifles to be issued, they should be much better than what's in use right now, gotta like the efficiency of mass production. With all that settled, I started to design a new type of PoniBots, geared towards combat, and combat only.
The Red Snow: Mount Umbra Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 29 "Seriously? Again?" I shouted over the siren. "The Northeastern side of Mount Umbra at altitude 400 meters was attacked 37 seconds ago, Automated Defense Command unable to deploy sufficient units, require administrator intervention." AMY's robotic voice is calm as always, as I didn't even code her with emotion emulation. I got to the control room, and the video feed on screen shocked me to the core. There are Storm Soldiers everywhere, where there was white snow is now a shuffling black swarm of enemies, trying to devour the defense force standing in its way a few hundred meters away. Their front is constantly cut down, but the next row will charge on, forming an eerie black wave. Despite the obviously mounting losses, they don't seem to be concerned about self-preservation, not at all, they just charged on. "Artillery open fire at section 12 to 15, range 300, standing barrage." I gave orders to start shelling the enemy. A wall of fire rolled across the battlefield, and the explosion was heard even in the control room, 30 kilometers away. I was briefly startled by the low thumping of the shockwave. The video shows a terrifying scene. The shells first punched through the snow layer, which wasn't solid enough to trigger the fuse, then they presumably hit the ground below, which is solid enough. The explosions they caused ripped up the snow and whatever debris caught in the blast, those include bodies, swords, armor, and whatever the Storm Creatures were bringing to battle before they met their demise, even though the shrapnel the shells were designed to fragment into were caught in the snow, they, combined with the debris, were still lethal enough as an area denial method. For the first time, I saw them panic. They helplessly run in circles and missing an arm or a leg, I couldn't see it clearly because of the darkness and smoke (where is the smoke from? I remember using smokeless powder, and I don't see my gun spew out smoke like that, and also what is burning in the craters making all that smoke?!) They were starting to turn back and run! I thought of letting them off, but if I leave them to run, they will surely come back for me in a few day, or even hours. I steeled myself and updated the firing order, "Artillery open fire at section 12 to 15, range 300, creeping barrage interval 10." I fully know what that would lead to, and I am willing to do so if it means that they will get scared and leave for good. But they didn't. A few hours later, a recon squad spotted them building an outpost on the slopes Hoofer's Mountain, a very advantageous spot as they can see the artillery below them if i were to strike. In addition, more of them are arriving, and most worryingly they are bringing airships to that outpost, which means only one thing, they want to drop bombs on my army. This needs to be countered immediately before they can use it on me. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 29 With the unexpectedly successful use of artillery cannons, I wanted to make the most out of this time-dependant advantage. They will eventually get over this fear, so I must make every second count. Several brigades and an ample amount of artillery are already positioned on the surrounding high grounds. All of them are already loaded and aimed, once the clock ticks 19:30, D-Time! Several hundred shells fly off, trailing a chilling whistle as they cut through the air. The Storm Creatures seemed to have adapted to it slightly already, I no longer see them running away, but they are still terrified when the ground around them is ripped open by an explosion. The infantry opens fire as soon as the first shells land, showering the area with lead. The Storm Creatures haven't recovered from the initial shock yet, so not much stood in the way as the bots start breaking into their frontline. Still, no one is surrendering. As the infantry pushed through, those who fought back were shot, and those who were unable to fight back were knocked unconscious, bagged up, and dragged to the rear to be sent to P.O.W. Camps. With guns blazing, the raiders fought their way to the backlines. Sometimes an enemy will get close enough to deal actual damage to the bots, before getting captured or shot, but most are just panicking as they were still getting shelled, right before getting dealt with. Finally, I caught a glimpse of a small building which stood out from the shabby barracks around it, I know that's the one thing I'm looking for: Their officers. I can give them a big slap on their face if I can capture someone other than mere cannon fodder, and the loss of a commanding officer will most definitely send at least some repercussions up their hierarchy. Especially seeing that they've probably never expected a fight longer than a few weeks, judging by their lack of warm clothing, so they probably didn't expect someone competent enough to capture their officers. A squad immediately approached the doorway under the covering fire of the other raiders, they pulled the nails out of the door (the redeeming feature of these improvised combatants is that they can disassemble enemy constructions quite effectively), and barged into the building. Inside was a few Storm Creatures that looked quite different from the rest. They looked down on the bots arrogantly and started to monologue, trash talking about this being only a tiny portion of their full power and me not standing a chance even with "cheating". Assuming that they are just trying to buy time, I just had them bagged up and sent to a P.O.W camp as well. Author's Note As the infantry pushed through, those who fought back were shot, and those who were unable to fight back were knocked unconscious, bagged up, and dragged to the rear to be sent to ~~Gulag~~ .
The Lab II: Mobilization Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 31 January drew to a close as the moon goes down a tiny bit, and back up again. It's easy to lose track of time in the long polar nights, especially when your sleep schedule is all but a mess. But for the past two (or three?) days, I've been putting together a design for a military PoniBot that satisfies my expectations. First, to make room for these modifications, I scaled them slightly bigger than a normal bot, it is a subtle difference, but it would hopefully provide enough room for upgrades, and, if I'm using space efficiently, some extra internal volume for a bigger resonance battery. Next, I had the outer platings switched from aluminium to manganese steel, which is stronger. This is an obvious method of improvement and needs no further documentation. Finally, and most importantly, their hydraulics systems are made with a parallel set, increasing output and redundancy. I finished off by adding some other minor modifications for its new military orientation, like electrodes on its hooves for takedowns and extra shock absorption in certain to reduce the impact of recoil. I kept some of the utilitarian features which I found many unexpected uses for, such as the built in electric screwdrivers, which turned out to be great at clearing out jammed guns and absolutely destroying locks in drill mode; and also the stronger than necessary electromagnet which makes them slightly better in hoof-to-hoof combat, as they can pull metal objects to where they shouldn't be, such as nails out of walls and swords out of hands. With that task done, I can move on to deal with the lack of air defense on my side. It was surprisingly easy to do so, all I had to do was to change out the impact fuse on the artillery shells for a timed fuse. It was a crude method, but it should work well with the makeshift radars I'm using... ...On second thoughts, I should try harder and make something that shoots faster than an artillery to deal with the all but expected swarms of airships. Since airships are most likely unarmored due to weight limits, I can use smaller shells that can be loaded faster and can shoot higher, they will bring the airship down in two or three shots anyways. Most other pieces can just be scaled down, but the biggest problem is trying to have the recoil operations work with the reduced force. I managed to get around it by having a small contraption that would use the escaping gas to supplement recoil. For something thought up in two hours, I felt quite impressed by myself. On second thoughts... No, nevermind, that will be for later, if I keep going on with this I will be up till next week, drawing out blueprints that are ahead of even my technological capability. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 1 And here I am, stepping into February. The moon is still hanging over the land, witnessing all the terrible things unfolding on the surface. Video records of battles are kept for 14 days, at which only videos marked as important will be kept to save on data encoding crystals. This means that after 14 days almost all the enemies that have fallen in combat will only remain a number, or even just an estimate. Not that I'm concerned too much though, and seeing how they pay no care about their injured, I doubt that they'd care either. The captured soldiers at the P.O.W. camps probably lived in better conditions than those in the Storm Empire's army, seeing that they did not even attempt a breakout once. Though the officers are acting the exact opposite, they probably enjoyed many privileges over the soldiers (and may be hated for it, as they now try to keep away from the crowd.) In any case, if I want to stay alive, these numbers should preferably stay as high as possible. Currently the daily kill count is around a few thousand from the nuisance raids, and sometimes a few ten-thousands when they carry out a proper attack. These numbers are nowhere near enough to repel them for long, and some lines are being forced to move back already. Since small arms fire worked well on them, I don't need to do too much about it, I just need to do it faster. A few hours went by and I've designed a effective killing equipment. How ironic is that for me to try to stop an enemy from killing by making something better at killing, guess that's how a war is fought. The weapon in question is a "machine gun", it's a gun with a machine to make it fire bullets continuously as long as bullets are supplied and trigger is held down. By using some of the gas produced during firing to reload, it can pour out hundreds of bullets in a matter of seconds. Any living being caught in the stream of metal would most likely be torn into pieces from the sheer amount of bullets cutting through them. I sent them to the production line directly, no testing needed. This is a relatively simple machine and I'd rather had it pushed into service immediately. I looked outside the window, a minor storm is bringing a large amount of snowfall to this area. It is great because I can lay down another avalanche trap... What have I become, I never thought I would say something like "It's nice to kill them with an avalanche." But they are invading me, and i'll make sure that they are NOT TAKING MY LAND, not even a chance without me putting up a fight. What am I supposed to do now though? I don't know how strong the Storm Empire actually is, and they aren't afraid to put everything on the table, then use all of them as cannon fodder to gain the upper hand. I can kill so many of them, but if they bring more, that number is instantly worthless. What am I supposed to do now?
Fighting the Swarm: The Second Battle of Mount Umbra Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Fab 7 I was woken up by alarms again. "Grrr... Again?!" I shouted, more than slightly annoyed, "Why do they always disturb my sleep, the whole day is the night, does it even matter? I'm gonna have to change my sleep schedule." The screens in the control room were pitch black. When the spotlights were turned on, however, it revealed a black, squirming mass of Storm Creatures. "And here we are again." I muttered, this time they got even more cannon fodder they call "soldiers". While they are just medieval in my standards, they outnumber me at least 50 to 1. I have a fear that it's not even a fraction of their full power. Machine guns are not widely deployed yet, so I could only see a few of them firing, but there are way more artillery pieces than before. With this new material advantage, I started to pour artillery fire down on them. "Artillery open fire at section 7 to 19, range 280, creeping barrage interval 10." Unfortunately, they seemed to have become indifferent towards the artillery fire. Despite multiple barrages, they just didn't care at all and continued their attack. While most of them are cut down, eventually through sheer numbers they started to push back on the defense lines. Why are they willing to charge headfirst into a literal wall of death that kills 99% of those who go through it? Don't they see all the flying chunks of armor and explosions ripping up the ground around them? It's like they are just heartless, apathetic killing machines with no sense of self-preservation. I can only assume that they are extremely well-trained, but if that is the case they should be much more organised than what I see right now. These storm creatures just raises so many questions. As more storm creatures try to enter the battlefield, chaos took hold. I see them climbing over one another, pushing others over, even blocking the line of fire of cannons of their own and subsequently exploding into a red mist. With this kind of "strategy", they might as well as carry a bomb and run towards me. "Kaboom!" Jinxed it... That seemed to be an isolated incident though, as I don't see any more explosions. Still, I couldn't shake off the thought of forcing someone to blow himself up. The battlefield didn't change though, the bots won't get intimidated by a fanatical army of storm creature, which probably surprised their superiors. Looking at their aggressive and arrogant tactics(or rather, the lack of tactics), I won't be surprised if they've never lost any wars, and they built up such a reputation that they didn't need to fight. Thus after a while they just assumed that everyone is a pushover and will surrender immediately, and all that's left of their officers are just too incompetent to do anything but order a charge. With more and more storm creatures quite literally squirming towards the defenses, I had no choice but to start moving back. Inch by inch, the defenders start stepping back, their synchronized movements is in stark contrast with the disorganized scramble of Storm Empire soldiers. Without any hesitation, the Storm Army greedily takes the land, and their sorry bottoms were promptly blown up by makeshift landmines. "Wait, so they just fell for that?" I was surprised by how smoothly it went, even though it's an improvised plan, "I'm gonna be using it so much more!" Those storm creatures somehow aren't alarmed by the ground blowing them up, and continued to move forward, triggering every single landmine in the process. Suddenly, I saw some huge silhouettes in the sky, bombers! The anti-air cannons started to open fire on these airborne threats, shooting several of them out of the sky. The falling bombers went down on top of their forces, and a huge explosion shook the mountains, destabilizing the snow layer. I knew what's going to happen next, so I gave the order get off the mountainside as fast as possible. With the enemies' bombers are preparing to drop their bombs, and the anti-air cannons unable to fire during transport, I hoped for the best and watched as the bombers flew over the peak. But then a strange thing happened, they stopped right after passing over the peak, and started dropping bombs on their own soldiers. Bomb after bomb rained down and they still didn't notice their mistake. I realized that they must've been given an outdated flight plan, as my defense line was in fact there, but it had shifted back during the intense combat and now it was instead occupied by their own ground forces. With my spotlights off, and near zero visibility in the darkness, they most likely relied on compass and stars to navigate the area. Unfortunately for them, their bombers never received the order to cancel the operation or update the target location. When they've started bombing what's presumably my defense line, they ended up damaging their own force. As another avalanche rolled across the landscape, the battle had mostly ended. Almost all defenders escaped the avalanche undamaged, while the storm creature on that mountainside are most likely wiped out by their own reckless bombing. With enemy forces on the other side of the mountain taking control of the area, this is more or less a defeat for me both tactically and strategically, but I did gain some valuable knowledge in the enemy. Namely their lack of coordination and brute-force tendencies. While they will eventually get over these shortcomings, I don't see a problem with exploiting these a few times, just enough not to get too much of their attention and see how long I can keep it up until they fixed these issues. My defenders are now at the location of my command centre, I realized that the Northern Mountains are almost completely lost to those brutes. With a renewed sense of urgency, I prepared a retreat away from the mountains, and onto the tundras of the great north.
The Lab III: Rolling Fortress Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 8 With a heavy heart, I went on board my RV and joined the convoy, heading off to the tundras. The fighting in the tundras is very from fighting in the mountains. First off, I can't trigger avalanches to clear up an entire area anymore. Moreover, the flat land makes guerilla warfare and keeping range a lot harder. On the flip side, this means that I can start using heavy vehicles, and the lack of avalanches also allows me to fire artillery without dangers of burying my own troops. WIth the new environment, I started thinking about new possibilities. Heavy vehicles, bigger cannons, maybe even take to the skies myself. With a tsunami of ideas, I pulled over, and assigned a bot to be my driver. After that I retreated to the comfort of the cabin. As this RV is built on the chassis of a 8x8 5-ton truck, it looked very spacious when the conversion started. However, as I fitted in the the necessities it quickly became apparent that the it wasn't enough.(To be fair, trying to fit a workshop with drills, lathes, and a small garage isn't exactly standard) After a stretch, a second floor, and a bit of fumbling, I worked out something I am satisfied with. One thing it wasn't designed for though is the addition of a mobile command centre, so I just improvised by hooking a trailer with the necessary equipment for that, connected it to the computer room, and called it a day. While the truck is making its way through the terrain, I settled down on the sofa, buckled up the seatbelt, and started drawing schematics again, love it or hate it, it will probably be a routine for me to draw these whenever I have a break. I want to bring into action something I've been thinking about for the past few days: An Armoured Fighting Vehicle. It probably won't be useful in areas like the Northern Mountains, but in the tundras, that would be a different story. With the droning of the engine in the background, I lost track of time and worked on the schematic until I felt the truck stop, a few hours had passed. I set down the laptop and looked outside, the new command centre is already being assembled. I turned back to the screen and continued with my work, as I will be for most of my time in the rest of this war. For now though, I am ok with this change, I just hope I won't get bored of it, because this war won't be a short one. Well, I hope it isn't a short one ending in my defeat. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 10 I did a final check on the schematics, and sent it off for production. With the Storm Empire's full strength unknown, I've decided to take a risk and send off new invention directly into battle, and iron out the kinks afterwards. Since the inability of PoniBots to be powerful in hoof-to-hoof combat is an unavoidable weakness due to current technological limitations, I've designed a vehicle that can easily brush off spears and swords. The vehicle isn't exactly large, any it only has a fixed main cannon and a machine gun for offense. The gun is uglily off-center, but it will have to do. Treads were used instead of wheels for a better grip on terrain and improved traversability, and it is driven the most powerful diesel engine for vehicles I could get onto production immediately. The engine in question is actually same as the ones used in trucks, only tuned for power output instead of fuel efficiency. It works quite well even though I am using biodiesel. I know normal diesel is easier to produce and somewhat more powerful, but since I have so much excess crops (why did I have such a huge productivity of crops?), I find it better than trying to locate a new source of crude oil. As the tiny one I once harvested from in Equestria has dried out already and I can't be bothered with the fuss of finding another one especially now. Since it had worked well so far, I don't intend to change it out anytime soon, or ever. Of course, the AFVs won't be invincible, nothing is invincible, they can only going as close to it as possible. In this case, I just made it enough to resist them slamming their cold weapons at it. I did remember seeing them use cannons though, and those may pose a legitimate threat, so I decided to buffed up the frontal armour and shave some weight off the back. As much as I wanted to, I can't make the whole thing armoured enough to take a shot from a cannon at any angle because of mobility issues, I'll just have to make some compromises. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 10 Why are they having the same idea even though the AFVs aren't deployed yet? I'm very sure that they can't infiltrate and steal designs from a society where "individuals" access everything with their serial number and schematics shared through cloud network, and they can't hack anything because they don't even have anything close to computers as far as I am concerned. So the only possibility is that both sides just so happened to have the same idea at the same time. While they do carry a few cannons, capable of dealing considerable damage to my AFVs, the cannons I see them using are all front-loaded, and this one does not look like it will be an exception. Also, their choice of propulsion is quite interesting, to say the least. While they are using treads, they are connecting them to some sort of magic contraption, which looks quite flimsy to me, judging by how those brutes aren't allowed to handle it at all, and some other creatures (slaves, maybe? Perhaps I should see if I can get them out and ship them off somehow) are carefully mounting them while the Storm Creatures are standing behind them with a spear, looking threatening as always. Even stranger is how the cannons on board where mounted facing different directions, meaning that they can never fire all at once without collateral damage (though I doubt if they would even care about that). The only way this may be useful is looking very scary. Maybe this would scare some less advanced armies like the Equestrian Royal Guards into surrendering, but I'm not perturbed. I've seen it through, they can't make me surrender like they did to others. I'm sure they will eventually start putting up a real fight, but right now they don't seem too keen to do so. Afterall to them I'm just a pushover, and I'd prefer they think so until I can start punching back. Author's Note It is a Hetzer, if you haven't noticed yet.
Releasing the Beast: Clashing Steel Date of creation: Nova Aetas, Feb 19 As I am staving off my drowsiness in my current attempt to flip my sleep schedule, the alarms sounded. Caught by surprise, I reflexively jumped and nearly hit the ceiling doing so. As my eyes drifted over the screens, I noticed something strange: The alert is from the old command centre, which has been empty since last week, in fact, there isn't even supposed to be an alarm unless they detonate a mine or two near the base of the mountain. In any case, they are now congregating around the bottom of mountain, and they are preparing to go up. First, they fired their field cannons, nearly all cannonballs failed to hit the command post which is uphill and upwind, and the iron spheres just rolled back down the steep slopes. They didn't seem to care though, as they just marched on. Behind the cannons, I noticed their infantry arranging themselves into a phalanx, I've never seen them in any sort of formation before, so this is definitely concerning. These phalanxes then overtook the cannons and started a charge, their organization is most likely still shabby, as the charge quickly devolved into a mad dash uphill. As there isn't anything can shoot back, they swiftly took over the facility. Now, that would have been an easy victory, but unluckily for them I rigged up a couple tons of explosives down in the basement, and I have the remote detonator. As the started to camp around the facility, I pressed the big red button. "Boom!" Another explosion echoed through the mountains, and another wave avalanches is triggered. That should teach them a lesson about taking "defenseless" targets without even trying to find any traps. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 21 The alarms went off again, but this time, I've already rescheduled my sleep to fit their attacks. Conflicts has been escalating for the past few days, and I'm expecting them to be showing off their version of AFVs, so I plan to give them a slap in the face by hiding all the armour forces behind mounds of snow, and have them face off each other. I transferred command of the armour regiments on scene to the automated defense system, and in a few seconds the vehicles burst out of their cover, with guns pointing at the enemy. I knew I would have an advantage despite lacking on numbers: They are fighting in an unstable valley, their attack is bound to trigger an avalanche that would cut them off, so whatever is on scene is stuck inside for at least 12 hours; And whatever's outside won't be getting in anytime soon either, so they can't just bring in more reinforcements and grind it out. And with the deafening rumble of the avalanche, the valley transformed into a coliseum in which two armies will fight for survival. I watched as the system starts trying to figure out how to make use of with the new units, I only take control of a few of them, and the system needs to try and achieve the same effect with everything else across the whole frontline. It can't just copy the movements, it needs to learn what actions correspond to what situation. This is why the losses of new units are usually abnormally high, but I don't have much of a choice right now lest I want to spend the next 24 hours coding non-stop. Guns roar to life as I got into my units into effective range, HE(High Explosive) shells start ripping into vehicles on the other side. Another round is already waiting to be loaded, ant the loader is just waiting for the breach to open. This is the neat part working with an automated system. Once it has learned the correct actions, you don't need to tell them to do anything, they are doing it as it has learned. After pushing another round into the enemy, I saw their cannons destroyed by zooming in, and declared a kill. The system is already following my previous actions, with a shell and a resounding "Boom!" of an ammo rack explosion, the enemy's cannons were pushed off the side by the force of the explosion. Penicullariy, the enemy AFVs made no attempts to move closer at all, I don't know the reason to that, but is most likely be related to their lack of a reliable engine. It is possible that their flimsy magical engines are just too prone to breaking down, and they just tried to go around the problem by using the engine at little as possible. After a couple of them got picked off by artillery though, they finally began to move. The first thing I noticed is how strange their movements are, it seems that they couldn't go in curves, so they had to stop, turn on spot, and start moving again. Out of curiosity, I fired at one of them which is on a ledge, the shot hit the edge and the turtle-like vehicle landed the wrong side up. Then I saw the reason for that quirk: they don't have any form of differential, they can only control the direction the wheel is spinning. Moreover, the distinctive "crack" of wood is heard, which means that they aren't even using metal for protection. Now I doubt if their AFVs are actually serious or just something to scare others. The battle is completely one-sided for the vehicles, but the infantry aren't having a good time. In this confined space, hoof-to-hoof combat situations are frequent, and this is exactly what the bots are bad at. The storm creatures are in no ways weak, even though they are somewhat dumb, they can break the steel body of bots without problem, and can even smash and break some components on my AFVs. Honestly, I'm quite impressed to see them breaking the driving sprocket on one vehicle, those are made of solid 5 cm hardened steel, yet they somehow had it snapped off. In hindsight, it may have been a manufacturing flaw in play as well, but it is scary nonetheless.
Command Centre Security Compromised Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 14 [The following section contains censored sections.] I woke up to the sound of shuffling downstairs, the moment I walked out of my bedroom, I was knocked unconscious. When I opened my eyes, I was already inside one of their buildings, immediately they shouted curses at me and demanded for my surrender and betray my country to spy for them. With a blade over my throat, I found no other choice than to just bluff. "You'd better [CENSORED], [CENSORED]." "You ain't gonna be happy if the boss finds out." The reply came back so loud that I felt my eardrums stretching to their limits. "OH WE ARE GOING TO KILL THAT [CENSORED]" "If you kill me, the boss ain't gonna hold back any further, this whole mountain is gonna go sky high!" "YOU LITTLE [CENSORED], YOU'RE BLUFFING." My faux confidence smile fell for a split second, and I morphed my face into the darkest poker face I can manage to try write it off. "Maybe? But you won't live to find out, as you will be in a million pieces at that time." "OH YOU [CENSORED].""[CENSORED]." "Now if you don't let me go in five minutes, we will all die in the most spectacular way possible. Your choice." "[CENSORED],[CENSORED],[CENSORED]." "Now you stop your cursing, I-" My words were cut off by the sharp pain across my back, from what I just felt, I knew they just whipped me, and judging by the strange cold and wet feeling, they aren't just using normal whips, those are chain-blade whips, these whips slash through flesh like butter. The interrogators face suddenly turns wicked, "now, you will be going, but you're horn is OURS, the commander will surely like a horn that can ignore blackstone, he-he-he." "Cut that cliché laughter and make it quick, I don't need it anyways, it's flawed, and the blackstone bypass is just my amulet." There was a clean "Snap!", and a jolt of pain shot through my forehead, and I saw my horn rolling across the floor."[CENSORED]! This little [CENSORED] is right, her [CENSORED] horn is full of holes!" With them distracted, I capitalized on the split second when the blade is off my throat and channeled all the magic into the stub left of my horn, through all frequencies, at maximum strength, and no spell in mind. This released an uncontrolled blast of magic, sending everyone else in the room flying. As the flash of light subsided, I ripped a portal and leapt through, not even bothering to pick up the horn, it's flawed anyways. "That was so close, I really need a safer place to live, also how fast can I get a batch of advanced arcane materials delivered from the warehouse?" Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 16 I looked at the piece of resonium on my hoof, it's slightly warm to the touch, and hums lightly in a soothing way. Soon, it will join the rest of the arcane materials on my workbench to form a new prosthetic horn, one that does not lead to horn pain whenever I cast a spell. I find that I didn't suffer from the usual pain after that magic outburst, and I theorized that the pain might be due to residual magic buildup in the holes of my original horn. Now I can create one that is hopefully pain-free, and would even boost my magic strength. First, I created a casing with Living Metal, which is can only be created in tiny quantities by passing some special alloys through an overcharged point-critical magic forge. This lets the horn blend into my stub, and since my horn isn't at full size, I made this replacement oversized for now, so I don't need to replace it later. This casing also has the advantage of being at least 7 times stronger than anything that the Storm Empire can get, so no more breaking it off. Then, I used the hydraulic press to form a chunk of resonium into a cone-shaped shell, and slipped it into the casing. Resonium can amplify magic passing through it without any loss of detail, so it is a nice way of strengthening precision based spells. Finally, I filled it with molten celestium and dropped in a seed crystal. This is then kept at a temperature just below the melting point of celestium to let it set slowly and form a crystal hexagonal structure. Celestium with a crystal structure has been used in Equestrian replacement horns for extremely important and wealthy individuals, and shown to be able to enhance magic casting abilities of the user. Usually these horns use only a small amount, but since I had a lot of celestium in my stash, might as well as use it. Finally, I made a upside-down hexagonal pyramidal hole, slid in a mythril rod, and used a hydraulic press to make a passive lock. I grinded off the bumps on my stub and made the same hole, but this time I can use magic to deform the mythril rod as the horn is already in place when the rod is inserted. After all that work, the slightly oversized horn is now perched over my stub, I cast a few simple spells, I needed considerably less effort to cast spells and experienced no pain. I was quite satisfied with my work, but there is one last thing. The exterior is still just a metallic surface, even though this doesn't impact the functionality of the horn, it's still ugly, and I don't want to look at an eyesore every morning when I wash my face. So I grafted a sample of my coat onto the exterior, a bit of magic later my body accepted this transplant, when I grow up, there would hopefully only be a small colour difference that would reveal the true nature of my horn. Author's Note An older scrap, might fall out of line
The Lab IV: What's Left Behind Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 23 Hours went by as I tweaked the design of my new monoplane. I originally planned to go with a biplane, but I pivoted when I my calculations showed that monoplanes are superior with the advancements in lightweight engines. The lines on the blue background converge and diverge with each other, tracing out the sleek shape of a fighter aircraft. As I attempted to fit the weapons into the wing, recollections of my past started to play out in my mind. I remembered the time I witnessed a sonic rainboom, an event that was only seen in ancient texts and mythology, or sometimes in calculation of extreme magic dynamics. I was just 5 at the time, and it completely blew my mind. I was hit with a sudden craving to reach the skies by the means of technology, and set out on building a flying machine with no airbags. Three months later, the process was complete, I was so excited that I threw out all my usual secrecy codes, and flew it over a group of hikers. However, instead of getting impressed, they immediately turned hostile at me. "What do you think you're doing in OUR sky, you greedy filthy unicorn!" The yellow pegasi yelled, "The sky belongs to US, the pegasi, you unicorns had better STICK TO THE GROUND!" The others cheered her on, "Look! She had wings as well, that's a bucking changeling!" "BEAT HER UP!" "Get your sluggish flying object on the ground so we can burn it as firewood, it would make it much more useful!" I put my aircraft in a series erratic movements to dodge the random objects hurled at me, but the aircraft couldn't make such violent turns. After ripping apart a few structs, I am concerned about the structural integrity of the wings and put a stop to the turning. Luckily, the spinning propellers are enough to deter them from actually going near the aircraft. They turned away as I flew over the Everfree Forest and into a valley of the Everfree Mountain Ranges, where I originally took off from. The aircraft was fairly damaged from the rocks and my reckless flying, but it was a piece of cake to repair it, since it's just in essence some planks and cloth. What couldn't be repaired though, was my trust. After that day, I told myself to never be seen again. The next day, I stealthily watched as Princess Celestia herself investigated the site. She and her guards waited for a few hours before leaving, but they left behind an envelope. I waited until they were completely out of the vicinity of the site and retrieved the letter. Of course, I scanned it and removed any tracking enchantments and spells first before picking it up. I brought it back to the base and extracted the contents. "Mr/Miss Inventor, We have received word of something unheard of in Equestria being showcased here, we cordially invite you to return tomorrow at noon to meet us. Equestria will greatly benefit from your ingenuity. Signed, Princess Celestia" Although the prospect of bringing Equestria a new era of technology is attractive, I'm too traumatized by that encounter, so I made my decision. "Equestria in not ready for the new era. The Inventor" I watched as the princess picked up the letter, and shook her head with a face of regret. I was tempted to head out, but my newfound fear took hold of me. I have nothing against these ponies, they don't know what they've done. I will not take down the princess and topple the regime. Yet they will pay, with the brilliant future they never knew would have happened. As the sun sets, the princess rode off in her carriage, while I tore a portal and stepped through, back to the place I call home. I opened the door to the hangar, and on the workbench was a blueprint of a monoplane, with guns, fuel tanks, hydraulic lines, and a pair of landing gear perfectly slotted inside her semi-elliptical wings. I snapped out of my trance, and looked closer at my final result. With no problems found, I sent it for production, and admired the night sky. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 24 I looked at my surroundings, everything seems to be just so slightly off. I know I am dreaming again, and steeled myself for what is to come. A black blob ripped open the ground, seizing me and shoved me its body. Plunged into complete darkness, I helplessly waited until my eventual awakening. Suddenly, everything started to brighten up, I realized what is happening. Princess Celestia has found me, as I am now synced with the sleep schedule of Equestria. This only made me more terrified as I don't want anyone finding me and my work. A silhouette formed in front of me, it was the princess herself. She smiled warmly, "Is there anything wrong?" "D-Don't worry, this is a normal night for me, I've went through this hundreds of times before." "Who are you? My little pony?" I gave her the reply by focusing my thoughts to materialize the invitation she sent me years ago, and gesture it to her. "Oh, I see," as she went through the lines, "So it was you who had done the impossible. Do you actually have wings and a horn?" "Yes and no, they are wings and horn, but technically I'm a hybrid, not an alicorn, so both of them are flawed. I have a nice replacement horn though, since they broke the real one." "They?" Darned it, I messed up... "Sigh, you may not like hearing this," I warned. "Go on, I've seen a lot through the years." "Alright then, they are the Storm Empire, which I'm currently trying to fend off. Also, they nearly took my life twice, but in both incidents I got out alive, somehow." Princess Celestia's face went from calm, to a near-spit take, to one of a mix of surprise and horror, "Are you sure they are the Storm Empire?" "Yeah, so what?" "They nearly took over Equestria three hundred years ago if not for me channelling the sun's power to scorch them all, and that created the badlands you see today." "Uhh, they are currently blocked by just a couple hundred thousand PoniBots, which is about similar in combat power to normal ponies. I did arm them with slightly more advanced equipment though." The princess continued questioning, "Are you sure they are the Storm Empire?" I just frowned, "They said they were, and they are huge bipeds with a turtle-shell-like exoskeleton." "I don't remember them being stopped by a couple hundred thousand soldiers?" "I have a better arsenal than you do, such as a thing that spits out metal chunks so flying fast it kills, and other things that rain explosives on a desired location, and another that is just a moving armored cannon." "You what?" "It doesn't matter, Princess. All I can say is that they were held back by the bots." "What are bots?" "Bots are like golems, but no magic and all science. Just get to the point, please." "Okay, would you like to have reinforcements?" "No." She was immediately intrigued, "Why? It isn't embarrassing to recieve help." "I raise you a question, how would you transfer your army across the entire planet, and fight with reduced magic of unicorns, reduced flight of pegasi, and reduced strength of earth ponies? The ambient magic is much weaker here in Newland." "I see where you are going with this, since the peace treaty signed ages ago forbid them from going into a war, we have a casus belli to declare war on them. As they will definitely move onto others after you go down, we will declare war to stop them now." "No. Are you out of your mind?" "Pardon me?" "They, fight like this", as I willed a screen into existence, showing some clips from the video feed, "And how do you plan to defeat them? You can't summon a sun plasma beam thing again because they can evade it as they've seen it before, you can't just scorch half of Equestria to eliminate them, right?" "You raise... some valid points... I'm going to just leave them be for now." "I'm glad to see that Equestria will not fall next week." "That's some sarcasm there." "It's a fact... One more thing, keep this between us for now." "Understood." Author's Note Why is Mint building stuff when she was a filly? Simple, her continued survival depends on it.
Prologue - Contact Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 20 I went through the logs again. "Large amount of signatures detected..." "...unidentified airborne objects resembling airships..." "...bearing no resemblance to Equestrian architecture and technology..." "...phalanx formations..." "...Possible colonization..." "...diplomatic request..." "Threat Level: High, approach with caution. " I already felt my stomach flip as I approached the ominous swarm of airships. I was led into the largest one, escorted by guards pointing swords at me. The interior is filled with torture equipment, weapons, and even what appears to be severed, preserved heads. Nothing in the meeting room looks like something that would suggest a peaceful collaboration. In fact, they looked like something that would be used to coerce someone into surrendering. The first thing they said was that they were the Storm Empire, and, as I have guessed, demanded that I surrender my nation to them, of course, I refused. The air in the room froze for a brief moment. Next thing I knew, assassins jumped out from all around the room. I ripped open a portal, and fled the scene, but I knew that won't be the end of it. They aren't going to give up just because the diplomat ran away, they will just get it by force, a war has begun.
