Fallout: Equestria - Uriel

Everypony knows about death in the wasteland. It’s every day. Everything leads to death eventually, except possibly for ghouls. What happens after death is a slightly separate matter.

Of course, it starts with the music and the lights and the out-of-body floating. Then comes The Light, which is the make-or-break bit. Some ponies fight it and leave so they can come back another time. Some accept the light.

Only sentient beings can make it to the light. So no animals, no monsters, no diseased cannibal ponies. Only those who can think freely can walk into the light. Then nopony knows what happens. The common theory is that you can be with Her.

Sadly, my little ponies, you get me instead. I am Death.

Fallout Equestria: Uriel

First things first, I hold the keys to Hell. So you’d probably better listen to what I have to say. Unlike Her Majesty, I am not omnibenevolent, and I do not hesitate to send you to eternal damnation.

I wasn’t always Death. I was born in Fillydelphia, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to being the birthplace of Death. All of those manicured lawns and traditional buildings. But I grew up there, under the watchful eyes of my parents. My father had a job in one of the ministries, I don’t know which. I was born before the war began, so he must have had a different job then, but I can’t remember. Nothing remains of him, or of my mother, so I don’t know anything more about them.

We were exceptionally religious. Not in that religious-nutter kind of way, like the ones who rejected the existence of magic, but I said prayers ten times a day and always obeyed my parents and Celestia’s teachings. The proudest day of my life was the ceremony on the steps of Harmony Hall, when I was sworn into the Equestrian Army to fight the striped threat. Better wiped than striped. I hadn’t got my cutie mark that day, and I was hoping that army service would do the trick.

Like so many young bucks of that time, I didn’t get my cutie mark that way. I was lucky; I personally saw hundreds of bucks walking to their deaths without ever finding their special talents. I suppose that means that they never really had a special talent. Their destiny was to be killed by zebra war machines and that didn’t take any talent. I was lucky because I lived, and because I had an exceptionally shrewd captain at the head of my company.

I think he was somehow related to one of the Ministry mares, but probably in a very extended way. He took one look at me holding a rifle and told me it was no good, so I was reassigned for dragonslaying training. I was hopeless with the giant machine guns, so they gave me a sniper rifle and told me to aim for the eyes. And just like that, I had found my niche. All-time top-scorer in the academy sharpshooting Hall of Fame, and personally credited with two dragon kills. After that, they realised that I was far more useful in an elite unit killing scores of zebras.

It’s been a source of eternal irritation to me that I was not the top-scorer in the Equestrian Army. I met my rival once at a medal ceremony. I’d picked up my two hundredth confirmed zebra, and she’d just got three hundred. I was extremely jealous of the beautiful and talented mare who bettered me in every way. Her name was Psalm, and I knew she was every bit as religious as me. There’s just something about religion and sniper rifles that clicks so well.

It’s probably because the sniper rifle is the greatest killing machine ever invented. Oh yes, balefire bombs and machine guns are all very well, but those are indiscriminate. A general who pushes the button doesn’t know every victim of the bomb. But a sniper has seen every one of theirs, focused the crosshairs, and deliberately pulled the trigger. What a wonderful feeling it is. The Equestrian Army gave me the opportunity to free the souls of so many zebra from their cursed bodies. But I was never as good as Psalm. We both both high on the most-wanted lists published by the zebra high command. I was briefly above Fluttershy.

That captain who knew so much eventually broke the bad news to our unit. The war was imminently over. The high-ups were panicking and going to their stables. Time to go home. I deserted, leaving everything except my rifle. The masses didn’t know yet, but they seemed to have their suspicions. I hitched a ride to Manehatten and then got a boat to Fillydelphia. The sirens sounded before I reached my parents house, but I did see them again. They were praying in our family chapel when I arrived, and I’d had time for the first two lines of Celestia’s Prayer when the bomb hit.

I don’t need to tell you that I was instantly killed. My Dad’s job meant we had a house near the centre, which was merciful. Anything was better than being irradiated and turned into a ghoul. And because of that, Death was killed in Fillydelphia when the bomb hit. Fun story, huh. I went into the light just like everypony else. It was irresistible; there really was no way of going back. But that’s where my story deviates from the path of normalcy. In case you’re interested, my final score was 242 confirmed zebra and 2 confirmed dragon. That might be important later.

She came out of the light and stopped me. Her wings flew us to somewhere I don’t think anypony had seen before, at least no ponies who weren’t immortal beings. It was away from the music and the lights, and it looked like it was somewhere She had been living. A kind of ghostly copy of the Royal Canterlot Palace. That’s when she broke the news about me being Death. This was ancient magic, older than anything She had encountered before. When the Tribulation occurred, an imbalance was created. The divine power of the Goddesses was broken and faith became false. So nopony who survived the bombs could join Her.

The balance had to be restored to Equestria, which meant that something more terrible and powerful than the Tribulation had to occur, as a result of Her divine power. So Death needed to return to Equestria, and Death had chosen the pony who was best at bringing it forth. That would be me. The six Elements of Harmony had failed, and so it rested with the Four Elements of Suffering to restore Her power.

My job was simple; I merely had to kill everypony who had lost their faith and find the other three Elements. My sniper rifle was given Her blessing and the name B’ruch, and She bestowed the virtue of immortality on me. Then I had to go back to Equestria to carry out my divine task. Now, I don’t know about you, but this really was a lot for me to handle in one go. In fact, I went and hid in our family chapel for three days. Being immune to radiation meant that I only bumped into ghouls in the first few weeks, and since they weren’t yet insane it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

So then I got my act together and stopped crying over my family and endlessly praying to Her, and decided that I had to do as She wished. I spent the first week or so patrolling Fillydelphia and killing the ghouls who had gone bad. I had no way of telling who had lost their faith and who had not. I couldn’t kill just anypony, so I could only kill targets who were clearly insane. I kept a separate tally of ghouls killed with B’ruch because they weren’t like real kills.

Eventually it was a Steel Ranger who showed me the way forward. Of course I’d known about Eyes-Forward Sparkle before the bombs fell, but I’d abandoned mine at the battlefield and had no idea how to get one. The Steel Ranger, who said he was one of the only survivors in Canterlot, pointed me towards the pink city and told me I’d find some inside the ministries. We travelled together for a while, but neither of us spoke much. I think the idea of a pony made immortal by divine influence conflicted with his oath to technology.

Canterlot was suffering under the pink cloud, but it didn’t bother me. I cleaned up more ghouls, and eventually found EFS in the form of a discarded PipBuck. It fitted just fine and now I could differentiate between blue and red bars. But I still had no way to tell which of the red and blue bars were those who had lost faith. I couldn’t do anything against Her wishes. And amongst the pink clouds of Canterlot is where the story of my friendship really begins.

Total Score

242 Zebra

2 Dragon

77 Ghoul