9 reports and almost 4 years now.
In the and sunny beautiful day of the 10th of Granite (February) peace reigns in Lemon.
But we wont have peace for long.
A new Unity entity known as "The Stable Boot" is rising in the east, rumors say that the raiders and Steel Rangers are at war with the freaks, a war they are losing.
If the rumors are true then it is only a matter of time before the new Unity sets their eyes on Lemon.
Lapse:
(We pick off from where we left before, whatever that was.
Apparently I saved and quit right as I was about to breach the caverns and craft a Nurse Redheart upgrade potion in the RobronCo machine shop because shortly after I unpaused I was met with announcements from my miners)
It seems like we have settled on a cave of massive proportions that reaches all the way down into god knows what, they appear to split into three layers, all of which are just as alien and strange as the worser regions of the wasteland, and not only that, it appears that there is also magma from the core of the earth somewhere down in the third layer.
The magma gave our technicians ideas for various workshops and industries that draw their heat and power from the boiling substance, but with no easy way to get down there we had to shelf any such ideas until further notice.
The miners report that the air in the caves is breathable, but that it is thick with fungal spores which spread like crazy.
Not knowing how dangerous these spores or if they had any long term hazards I ordered my miners to seal the hole up.
But we were too late, and now the spores have spread up and through our spoil layer, growing across the dirt and through our farms faster than we can burn them.
We'll just have to hope that they wont put our food at risk, while our farms aren't as important to us as they were before, we still need them to grow extra surplus of food and to brew drinks to keep stable morale up.
Without alcohol and beverages our ponies tend to get easily depressed, and a depressed work force is a poor work force.
Cloud Frog, one of our unicorn clerics and self appointed robotics engineer, managed to figure out some of the old Nurse Redheart schematics we've found through our scavenging efforts.
Using some of the loose scrap components he has managed to upgrade a standard Mr Hooves into a Nurse Redheart medical droid, complete with medical tools and everything, she made the robot controllable through the Stable-Tec terminal we installed in the hospital a while back.
She warned us however that the software used for the droids program may be buggy and that we shouldn't be relying entirely on the droid to take care of our wounded, but that's alright, our medical staff is large and are always ready for work, so even if the robot wont be any good to us our injured will still be in good hooves, plus it doesn't hurt to upgrade our healthcare even further, there is only so much we can add onto the hospital at this point.
Lycaeon and his medical staff appreciated her efforts and bought her drinks all night, she was so hung over the next day that she couldn't figure out how to install ammo boxes to turrets anymore, I'll have to check on her later sometime and ask her if she can try again in a more sober state.
Corai uses her powers as the stable Overmare to make funny requests again.
She bans the export of sledgehammers, a weapon we use in very limited quantities, despite knowing that we don't ever export weapons anyway.
Not only this, but she "demanded" that we forged her a nickel silver (or just plain silver) statue of herself and that we put it in either her office or her dining room (she doesn't have either).
I think she does this out of spite to us, I believe she may be overqualified for her work and that she is just bored of not having anything to do.
While she is the Overmare, her title is mostly formal and as such she can't just order the workforce to
DO something.
I am, and have always been, in charge here, even when Lycaeon was our leader I decided on all the logistical and practical operations of the stable and nopony has complained of my way of ruling and doing things, and those who do quickly change their mind after I give them an in depth explanation of everything I have to keep track of and decide on.
Back to Corai however, I sat down and spoke with her about this, asked her what was going on, and she said everything was fine. When prompted about the sledgehammer export ban and the silver statue she gave in a bit and explained that she really just wanted to have her own office and dining room, she got all modest with me and said that it didn't have to be the best office and dining room, just someplace she could work and eat for herself.
Those seemed like reasonable requests for her position to me, and so I had our workers prepare an office and dining room for her.
To make her happy I also had them smooth and engrave both rooms and had a mussel shell studded armor and weapons rack moved to her office, just so that it wouldn't look so empty.
This made her happy and she eventually didn't even care that we didn't give her that silver statue of herself.
Chicks hatched in our breeding coop, the large amount of tiny fluffy birds chirping and being born more or less at the same time caused quite a commotion with the younger ponies of our stable, many parents took their little fillies and colt to play and cuddle with the yellow birdies.
When checking on the coop I was approached by a really excited little cream colored filly, couldn't have been more than four years old, who for whatever reason wanted to tell me all about how much she loved chickens and the color yellow (I don't even know honestly), in her words it was something along the lines of "Chickens are my favorite! Because they are yellow, and I like yellow most of all!", when her mother showed up (a completely yellow mare) the filly excitedly said that she also liked her mother, because she is yellow all over "like a baby chicken". Her mother introduced herself as Grass Waxlyric, one of our swordsponies, and her daughter as Cream Courage and then excused herself for her daughters conduct, and then two scurried off.
It was cute, and I didn't have the heart to tell her that most of the chicken in the breeding coop would most likely be taken to the chopping block when they grew up, it's okay to be innocent for the first few years of your life.
A group of migrants arrive to Lemon, it's been a while since we had new arrivals.
As usual I had them take the GOAT. I'm afraid that I don't have the results here right now, but I know by memory that it resulted mostly in builders and craftsponies (the former whom we need for construction duty and the later mainly for hauling stuff around).
I am pretty sure that there was also an unicorn who described herself as somepony with the "deep understanding of the living body as well as the magic and concentration needed to guide it". This sounded like a bunch of unicorn nonsense to me, but I interpreted this as her knowing something about magic, so I ditched her with our two clerics and asked them to keep an eye on her.
With the surface expansion being almost finished and with so much room to build things there I figured that I'd work a little on one of my pet projects. Bees.
I wouldn't really know much about it, and I don't just mean about bee keeping, I mean about the outside, what lies beyond the safety of our perimeter walls, so I don't really know what kind of wasteland resources might be out there.
But from what our scavengers, builders and soldiers tell me there are quite a few wild honey bee hives out there, the way they complain about being stung while on duty all the time makes me believe that there are at least a few dozen.
So my idea was, what if we were to collect some of these hives and keep them for ourselves?
Honey is sweet and nice, and I am sure the ponies of our stable would like to get their hooves on some.
I did a rough sketch and process of a bee farm and ordered a few bee hives to be made from stone in preparation.
We had a radiation storm sweep over our perimeter again, there always is, I stopped counting them after the first year we got here.
While everyone ran into the safety of the bunker a black radscorpion got a bit curious and followed one of our scavengers back, and over the bridges (who were still lowered), the turrets opened fire automatically in the thick of the storm, with so much dust and noxious clouds whirring about the turrets couldn't get a proper fix on it and it got through unschated.
Our militia was alarmed by one of the turrets sending damage reports and they rushed topside to see what was going on.
Turns out that the scorpion had cranked open the door protecting our turrets with it's large pincers and destroyed one of the security turrets. Clever girl.
The scorpion was chopped to pieces by one of our swordsponies.
Sucks that we lost a turret, they are a precious resource, especially now that we are getting more parts for upgrades. I'd rather not lose more like this.
Our dogs (literally, "our" as in mine and Crazy Cow's) are growing up.
The are still young, but they look really tough, just like their mother Worthymushroom.
Can't believe that old mutt is still alive after having suffered three storms, a bunch of injuries and a broken leg. I've tried to convince my love to put the poor dog out of her misery but she can't put herself to do it, she just loves the old dog too much to let it go.
Her pups however are now being trained into guard dogs.
We didn't have any proficent dog handlers or trainers in our stable so we put up a job announcement in case anypony would be interested, job was simple, train dogs for war, earn extra benefits. We had one applicant, Woody Forestseize, one of our smiths.
She is a pretty chubby young mare, I wasn't so sure if she'd be the right pony for the job (I had these horrible thoughts of the dogs viewing her as a walking slab of meat) but she is actually handling herself pretty well, the dogs love her and she doing a great job training them.
My other, slightly bigger, pet project is going great.
The kitchens are now almost completely done, we have everything set up and ready, everything except for the millstone.
I know that the millstone is basically an automatic quern (and we have one of those ready), but I don't want my farmers and cooks to use that thing, it's slow and stupid, it's much better if we just set up a millstone and have it grind wheat automatically, it will save our ponies a lot of time and effort.
So I took a look at the stable schematics and I had just the right idea for a way to power the millstone.
I noticed that our water channel that supplies one of our wells with water runs near the kitchens, and that the flow seems rather powerful (can mostly tell this by how harshly the bucket jerks when I am trying to get my water from the well).
So what if we were to dig out a room and install a water wheel to power the large millstones?
My plans resulted in this.
Working millstones. Now we wont have to use the quern by hoof anymore.
A trade caravan from our home stable arrived, with a new liason (I bet they wonder what happened to their last one).
Corai, having absolutely nothing to do, went to talk to him right away.
I have no idea what they said to each other, or what they wanted (I let Corai control the diplomatic and economical aspect of our stable) but I was sure to have Corai ask about the usual extra food, wood and whatnot.
While our workers hauled our prepared food and trap components to the trading depot one of our ponies got possessed by evil spirits again.
I have no idea what is causing this or why, but so far it has resulted in an incredibly well crafted insult to one of the greatest mares who ever lived, so I am not too happy about it.
The possessed one is Pudding Mobdrink, one of our rifleponies. He claimed one of our craftshops and immediately demanded glass.
I let Corai know about his request (seeing as we have no glass whatsoever) and she set about trading with the caravan.
I can't believe how incredibly stupid the traders must be or how insanely clever Corai is, but she managed to trade yet another spool of wire, a lawnmower blade and a single barrel of low quality meals in exchange for all their wood, all their drinks, all their food (including fish which we don't need) and various assorted goods, like the glass, some leather and yarn.
This time though the trader didn't even argue or question it, he shone up like a flashlight at the notion of obtaining a spool of "special" and "rare" steel barbed wire that he jumped the deal immediately.
And just like that when the trade was finished Corai just nonchalantly wandered off to her nice office with the liason in tow (I am now pretty sure she tricked me and manipulated my generosity into giving her the extra additions to her office).
They soon finalized their dealings and the liason left with the caravan.
Down in the training centre we build another Armory so we can train another pony into effective armor using, P(ony)SI (whom I judge to be our current best fighter) is assigned to the second Armory, I told her to train there whenever she had the spare time to do so and she was fine with that.
Speaking off, progress on the training sessions is going rather well.
Lycaeon is now level 2 in armor using and our two snipers are level 2 and 5 respectively.
The two snipers carry their large rifles around like they actually know what they are holding, I remember back when we gave them their AMR's, they had looked at the rifles as if they had been given some type of mysterious alien artifact to figure out.
As for the active militia, our professional soldiers, Melee Squad A's progress is good, all except for one pony are level 3 in their respective weapons and level 1 in dodging, fighting, armor using and shield using.
Our rifle squad is progressing at a varying rate, with half of them being level 3 and above and the remaining half being between 0-2, this is tied to their skittish use of the archery range (sometimes they train often, sometimes they leave it vacant for entire seasons).
Stable Security, Melee Squad B, Rifle Squad B and the rest of Bay 12 Modding have nothing to report.
We are running out of tools, mainly hammers, saws and wire cutters.
Ordered the smiths to construct 5 new full sets of tools and to deliver them to Procurement in toolboxes.
Pudding Mobdrink completed his strange little project and whatever malignant spirit that possessed him left his body.
He didn't crave for sugar however, he was really hungry for radscorpion meat and immediately went to eat a raw black radscorpion heart the moment he finished his work.
He created what he calls 'Earweirds the Tick of Hours'.
It is a small statuette (or figurine, whichever you fancy) of the black radscorpion Bow Mawdawned being sliced apart by the earth pony Rampart Chambershells, an artillery operator of the NCR way down south.
The statuette is made with the finest attention to detail I have ever seen, every scratch and tiny feature on the two figures has been added with a borderline insane precision and that is what surprises me, you see, Pudding Mobdrink is an earth pony, and all we got are our hooves and mouths to work with, the sheer thought that he crafted this amazing statuette using just that is mind blowing.
I am going to ask Pudding if I can borrow it so I can rub my earth pony pride in Crazy Cow's face, that will teach her about that "unicorn superiority" crap she is always on about.
I feel like we have collected enough scrap now, the stuff lies in up in the storage.
I ordered our mechanics to begin sorting it out and they got right on it.
The militia second-in-command Shark Boarworship and Sat Nourishling (command of Melee Squad A and Rifle Squad A) came to me and Corai while we were in the meeting hall sharing some dimple cups over a couple of brahmin steaks, they said that the militia absolutely needed to be equipped and that the situation was becoming really desperate.
I asked them what was up and they argued that if the militia was to be prepared for combat they would at least need some armor, they were really worried and concerned about the safety of the ponies under their command. Corai agreed with them. I said I'd look into it.
Later when discussing our current stocks with Pine Cactus of Procurement he assured me that we had more than enough fuel and iron bars to craft armor for our soldiers, in fact, he told me that we had
exactly 105 bars of fuel and
442 bars of iron.
I believed him obviously with him being the pony in charge of keeping track of all our crap, so I went on and ordered 30 sets of iron security bardings, helmets and boots for our soldiers.
They practically hailed me as a hero when the first bits of gear were delivered to their armory.
As a continuation of the kitchen project and groundwork for our baking industry I have ordered our miners to dig out another area in the soil layer, about one floor above the farms and most of everything, this area (and areas after it) will grow cave wheat which we will process at the millstone into flour, which we need to make dough obviously.
Flour is only the first step though, we need more ingredients, fat and tallow for example, and we can only get those from butchering.
For that we'll need the brahmin herd which provide ample amounts of both in addition to meat and milk.
Actually... now that I think about it... the brahmin which ate some of that purple mush, the moss which has been growing everywhere since we breached those caves, is still okay.
Maybe we could run some more experiments with it and see if they can eat the moss, if so, we could pasture our brahmin underground in the safety of the stable instead of outside with the irradiated storms.
Speaking of brahmin, the surface expansion was completed, we now have a nice little walled little field of dry grass.
We pastured the brahmin there for now, we still don't know if the moss is safe for them to eat, and even if it is there wouldn't be enough to go around for now.
I used a small part of the field to place out the claystone beehives, I asked some of our outdoor workers to keep an eye out for beehives and to get them installed in our own hives.
2 days and 8 angry bee stung ponies later I got my hives set up.
At least 4 hives will be left to grow and split into new hives, all new hives will be harvested as soon as they are ready.
Buzz buzz my little bees, you are mine now, your lives and the lives of all your children and children's children belong to us.
The mechanics report that all the salvage has been processed.
They uncovered a whole load of sealed ministry crates among many things.
I told them to just go ahead and open them all up with crowbars and hacksaws.
Ponies complain (because that's what they fucking do when they are too happy) about the state of the meeting hall and kitchens.
Naturally I ask them what was wrong this time, and they said that the meeting hall is dull and rocky and that the kitchen conditions are unsanitary.
Apparently the miners did a poor job mining the kitchen out, because they report dust, rock falling apart and into the food and all sorts of other stupid shit.
Fortunately this is easily fixed, many of those who complained were builders, and it is the builders who are responsible for smoothing and engraving the surfaces of our stable.
'told them to smooth the entire meeting hall and kitchen (I was going to have it all smoothed eventually anyway).
They immediately stopped complaining, everything was really great and perfect all of a sudden.
But that's their new job, and that is what they will be doing for quite some time.
We placed some cabinets in some of the bedrooms.
The ponies who got them were cheered up.
The ponies who still didn't have rooms and
who were forced to move these cabinets to rooms who weren't theirs were angered.
The basis for the surface "airlock" is completed.
But there is still much to do, such as actually covering the "airlock" to protect our trading partners from irradiated storms.
That isn't a priority though, right now we'll want to pave the inner courtyard so that we can bring the flamethrower turret back up to protect the entrance again, if we don't pave the courtyard the damn turret is going to fry us all.
The barracks need expanding, a quarters for the sniper team and the new rifle squad needs to be built, so those have now been dug out, the furnishing will have to wait for a while however.
Between militia leaders it was also decided that the sniper team would cap at 3 ponies each for convenience and effective management, and with such a small squad they wont need a big training room, instead they get their own decently sized rooms down at the barracks.
Three new foals were born.
I can't even bear to hear about it anymore...
The announcements make me feel sad that things aren't progressing between me and Crazy Cow.
We have been here since the founding of Lemon and we still haven't had any children... in fact, we haven't even married.
I know we are busy and all and she promises that we'll do it eventually and make time for children later, but that "later" only gets farther and farther away the more we get done in the stable, there is always something new to do, some new project or pressing matter to attend to, "later" might as well be "never" for all I know.
It just feels like she doesn't want to have kids with me, and I don't even know why.
Does she still love me? Is she seeing anypony else?
What is going on with our relationship, where did it all go wrong?
But the foals... yeah....
Three foals, two earth ponies (boy and girl) and one unicorn boy.
There is nothing to note about the two boys, they are just... foals, what is there even to tell about them?
The earth pony girl however was a bit special, not by much but still kinda worth mentioning.
The mother is named Helpvelvet, she named her kid "Remedy" in honor of a wasteland heroine named Velvet Remedy who ventured throughout the wastelands up north of central Equestria with another heroine many years ago.
I have no idea who the other mare was, but there are stories of Velvet Remedy which have been passed on throughout the wastes, they say she was some type of medic who helped everyone regardless of their affiliation, she is considered a saint by those who know about her.
Presumably she was also named after Velvet Remedy (with a name like Helpvelvet) and that she wants to pass down the name, a noble and sweet gesture I think.
Can't say I approve of her daughters second name however, it is best if it is not mentioned or it would spoil her gesture.
The kitchen industry runs for a bit, we prepare new meals, we milk the brahmin, churn butter, mill plants and make some dough using tallow.
With that little dough I figured we'd make some muffins just to test the bakery oven, the ponies who had worked all day with me in the kitchen became cheered at the idea.
But to my big surprise (and great disappointment) I find that none of our cooks know how to bake muffins, we ask the rest of the stable for somepony who knows how to make muffins and nothing, nopony knows.
Can you believe it? Out of 124 ponies not a single one of them knows how to bake muffins. Not one.
And we were really craving for muffins.
The last thing I can report for now is that the crate opening operations yielded some interesting assorted items.
Still no second rocket box or anything, but we did get tech we could use to build Arcane and MAS Terminals, so our mechanics are working on those at the moment, they weren't so sure if they could get them running but they said they would at least try.
Other post end-session crap:
Looks like I almost have enough steel combat armor to outfit 10 soldiers now, Melee Squad A is soon going to have combat armor.
Salvaging is really paying of for me.
I am considering on digging out a large area and store all the skeletons laying about the surface there, in part because I'd like to clean it up and in part because I want those sweet bone pellets Maklak speaks so highly of, my rifleponies are burning through them pretty fast despite the channel recovery trick.
Thing is, there is a lot of corpses up there. That's a lot of hauling to do. A lot of risks.
Also got to remember to open up those 56 broken civilian crates.
Just figured out how to get my salvage yards to detect them (had to "give" the stockpile they were in to the yard, it was
that easy and I bonked that solution pretty hard for the last 9 sessions).
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Topic: Fallout: Equestria (v0.30c) Pinkie Pie is Watching (Read 507992 times)