Prologue or Beginning to the End
Fallout Equestria: Serenity.
Prologue or Beginning to the End.
The chapter where it all begins, or did it all end?
May whoever finds this journal have more joy with it than I ever had. May you learn from what I have learned, and may you at least find the peace that I haven´t.
There is an old pony and zebra saying, ‘war never changes’. And never in have I heard a lie bigger than that.
War has changed, and will continue to do so as long that there is life on this planet. War has evolved, and even our old megaspells could not kill or slow down that evolution.
In the dawn of time was war simple. Dragons fought over gold and gemstones with fire and claws, wings and spikes. Nothing hidden, no tricks in the sleeves and the strongest won each time. But is that what we do today?
In the time before an actual Equestria fought the pegasi with swords in their mouths, plates of steel to protect their hide and fake manes on their helmets to show their ranks. But now do the last of the proud pegasi, the hated Enclave empire, fight their last war. Hiding in old magical pre-war armour and with magical energy weapons on their backs, strong enough to kill almost any monster in the Wasteland, if they wanted to leave their private little world.
In the time before the megaspell, before the Great Hibernation, before the Everlasting Hunger, before the Flames scourged the world and birthed the Wasteland we know today, there was plenty. There was room to live and learn, what were the limits of yesterday became the the basis for the next leap of magic and science, jumping longer day for day. Tools that once were built to defend, to save the lives of the weak or sick, were turned into weapons of genocide overnight, used to reap in the treasures of the neighbouring countries, the friends, lovers and partners of yesterday.
War evolved from being the what stupid animals did, to an art. Growing more and more stylish and deadly as it went on and on, each day using new tricks to gain the upperhoof. We began to learn what espionage was, how we no longer could trust on those we called friends. All learned how to use a gun, how to kill without even looking your victim in the eyes, learning that doing so was the norm.
It is hard to understand for you young ones, but once the world held more colours that you even can imagine. Not just the grey of the heavy clouds, the black of down burned buildings and the everlasting brown, coming from dirt that stretches so far as the eye can see, and over the horizon after that. No... once the sky was filled with blues and the ground was covered in greens. Red was not something that you feared, but something that you sought, the colour of the ripe apples. A blue sky that never ended, kept in order by the pegasi at day and the alicorns at night; there was food wherever you walked, all to the praise of the earth ponies guarding over nature. Even the water was clean, no one feared sickness, radiation or taint if they were thirsty and drank from a river, instead of glass bottles.
I can see how war has changed. From when megaspells was your solution to wars in 'the good old days', to the everyday war we all fight in the Wasteland. The war that starts when you open your eyes in the morning, happy that no one slit your throat while you slept, to take what little you have. To when you dare to close your eyes in what you hope is the safety of sleep, happy over what remains from before the war you have found and eaten. If that is the same war as the ponies and zebras fought, then I no longer know the difference between right and wrong.
No if there is one thing that is everlasting, never changing, is it stories.
We have always told our tales to others so they could learn from them, be it either our opinions, our wisdom, or just our petty view on morality. From when we sat around the fire with stone tools on hoof, until the day that the rainbows will return again, will we tell stories to each other. The same goal in mind through all ages.
You have by now probably figured out that I am no ordinary pony, that I actually have seen the world that was. Have seen the beautiful world that all of our races was born into. Yes, I was born before the Great War, before megaspells, before guns were in every mouth, in a time when the hardest choice of the day was what you wanted to eat. That also means that I saw it burn, I saw the easy life rot before my eyes, becoming the hardships we live in today. I remember the fear... Oh All Mother, the fear...
I have tried many times to begin my tale, to write it down so when I am dead and gone, will the few things that I did right be remembered. But where do you actually begin an tale?
Some would say start at the beginning. An logical choice, but in the beginning was I newly born. Too frail to do anything that you could tell a tale about, unless you want to hear about crying, pooping, eating and sleeping, sometimes even doing some of the many things at the same time I tell you! But that would be just as fun as to talk with a Wasteland skull, and just as informative.
Should I start my story from where I am now? Looking back from where am sitting and writing this. Having learned so many of the lessons that the Wasteland and life in general have to give, trying to share the knowledge that I poses with you, dear reader, so you don´t make some of the same mistakes I did. But where would the fun be in that. An good story make the reader guess and wonder what there happens on the next side, and it is so easy to figure out the route that I have walked when you know my destination.
I could also start with Her... well it is hard for you to have an opinion about that since you don’t even know Her yet, may She rest in peace. But She is the one that started my real journey, a journey that even started before the war began, before Discord walked the earth again, and before Luna sat on Her golden throne.
I think She is a good beginning. But that will be explained in due time, or at least I hope it will. She explained so much to me, more than both of my mothers. But they are an explanation for another time, a time when you won't set this journal aside over reading such a revelation, because you will have already read darker secrets than that. But we are in the wasteland so who dosn’t have those en masse.
But where have my manners been, you have read so much by now and I have not even presented myself. My name is Dust, trader of the Wasteland, or that is what I am being called. And this is the beginning to my story, a story that first began an ungodly warm day right outside a towns border, an town whose name is forgotten to the sand of time, even to me.
Author's Note
So does the adventure begin. I hope that I did my job and that you are hooked by this.
I does I sadly not know when the next chapter will come out,or what state it will come out in, because I have no permanent pre-reader/editor yet. Beside that do I have to about plan half of my story. My setting, my characters and my theme is planned to fine details, I do just need my plot. But I am sure that it will come, it does just take time
A big thanks to does to this chapters editors: Honey Mead and HighOctaneWildebeest without the two of you would this be ten times more unreadable than it is now. I did only have to mention to these two guys what I was doing, and they came to help. An writer could not wish for better friends than that.
Lastly will I say that I hope that you have had fun reading this, at least as much fun that I have writing it, because then would it be a job well done.
