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[syvarris]

I kinda dislike the whole "PCs are ponies" theory.  I mean, the theories I've seen seem to be looking for proof for the theory rather than the other way around.  Especially considering the Balmora butcher- murdering random people for fun seems entirely out of character for any of them.  Then again, I might just think that because I dislike MLP in general.  _{Everything I know about it has been gained from osmosis.  And I know a lot.  It's like a frikkin plauge...}


AS TO ACTUAL PLANS, I think we should try and convince Awesomicus that our quest chain requires spying on the other PCs.  Maybe say he needs to inform us of what they've been up to so we can figure out where the artifacts we need are.  If he says he could just ask them, we could act like a gamey NPC who is locked into needing the quest to be finished in a particular way.

Of course, that plan has a lot of potential problems in it.  It would be extremely useful if it worked, but would probably fail.  If so, we could just tell him the exact locations of Sunder/Keening/Wraithguard, and how to get everything ready, so he just does the main quest for us.  That would give us plenty of time to become a powerful archmage who rewrites reality on whim.


As far as actual actions, go look around the town for Awesomicus/the werewolf.  Ask the civvies and guards where they might have gone.  If that fails, well, continue training.  Maybe ask Draren to help us out by practising Restoration on us, in exchange for neat stories.

Does anyone else think fighting mudcrabs might be a better idea, because we could dart away when they attack, and run when we get beat up?  I've barely ever played MW, and it was years ago, so I don't remember well.

[GlyphGryph]

I think what we should tell him is that he has to gather a party of heroes, recover these artifacts, and then defeat Dagoth Ur to save the world (and recover the most epic loot of all time while being hailed as an incredibly hero for all of history).

What we need to do is give him a vague prophecy he won't bother to pay attention to, to make it seem serious forealz, give him the briefest overview of the overall plan, and then very specific next steps combined with a place to return to us to hand in "the quest". The next step of the plan is to gather the prophesied heroes together.

"The heroes of the prophecy must be gathered - the five who are beyond mortals, and the one that will guide them. The amazing warrior and the incredible intellect, the creature of the night and the creature of the north, and the one who will land the final blow - these will join under one banner to fight the evils of the heart. They will acquire the tools of victory, and march on the mountain, and though they suffer defeats they shall overcome to end the ancient evil, with power and wealth beyond their wildest dreams awaiting them in the new world they will help bring forth."

He hasn't heard of Dagoth Ur - that means he's not been introduced to the main quest. That, I think, should be our job in the near future. To introduce him to, well... our own version of that. We then tell him that we believe that he is the warrior from the prophecy, Clover is the great intellect, and Adorabella is the creature of the night, and the werewolf is the creature of the north. For now, bringing them to us is the next stage of the quest, but he can do it in any order. Then we should tell him some place we are going to be and when this should happen.

Reporting to our superiors in the blade might also not be a bad idea, but we've got to decide on where we want to make at least a semi-permanent dwelling for the time being so we can actually make some progress getting other people to do work for us (while we work on our magic skills).

[WillowLuman]

Take Caius's house perhaps? I mean, if we continue with the plan to direct the great adventurers, then we're kind of taking on Caius Cosades' roll.

Alternately, we could live in that smuggler's cave, or perhaps another dungeon that's been cleared out. Illunibi would be another choice, though a poor one since it's in the middle of nowhere. All we'd need is a way to keep squatters from coming in while we're away (which admittedly might be difficult).

I do like the idea of using the PCs to accomplish the main quest, and I believe they could, but there's one problem we've yet to solve: wraithguard. We either need Vivec's cooperation, or to betray and murder him. I'd prefer not to do the latter.

[GlyphGryph]

I do agree that talking to him next is a good thing for us to do, whether or not we manage to find our orc again, who is hopefully still interested enough in this epic quest to have stuck around.

[IronyOwl]

I thought Fluttershy was supposed to be that Nord who didn't particularly want to kill rats.

I thought so too, then revised my opinion for a few reasons. The main one is gender/race issues- Adorabella's friends were described as an orc in daedric armor and "some elves," and the notion of Awesomeicus being Spike made me think they might be gender-matched after all. The discovery that yes, there are NPC (or at least not immediately PCish) adventurers running around also made me wonder.

It's certainly possible that Fluttershy couldn't/didn't want to make it to Adorabella's duel, or that "some elves" was a generalization, and now that we're thinking Awesomeicus is a genderswapped Rainbow Dash the genders not lining up makes more sense again (though Dash has an obvious excuse for it, while Fluttershy doesn't). I'm really not sure on that front, though.

I kinda dislike the whole "PCs are ponies" theory.  I mean, the theories I've seen seem to be looking for proof for the theory rather than the other way around.  Especially considering the Balmora butcher- murdering random people for fun seems entirely out of character for any of them.  Then again, I might just think that because I dislike MLP in general.  _{Everything I know about it has been gained from osmosis.  And I know a lot.  It's like a frikkin plauge...}

Well, that's how figuring things out works- you notice a pattern, then apply it elsewhere to fill in the blanks. The less you know or are certain of, the more haphazard your efforts to fill in the blanks are. If you think I'm grasping at straws, by all means say so, but you've got to admit there's an awful lot of ponyish behavior going on here. Plus we've been dreaming about them.

You're right about the Balmora Butcher- that one's been puzzling me/us for a while now. Part of the problem is that we don't know how serious/gamelike they're taking it as. Dash might totally get bored and start killing random things in a video game, for instance, but she'd never go around murdering people IRL. Even Fluttershy in berserk mode isn't murderous.

But then again, none of them are really the kind to run around killing things, but they probably couldn't function too well if they didn't. There may be some translation issues going on here, or maybe they do literally think they're playing a video game.

But speaking about the Balmora Butcher in particular, her (well, a Telvanni described as a lunatic by Yagrum who at least roughly matches her description) name is "SexyWithersXOXOXO." The withers is a ridge on the back of a horse. If she's not a pony, what exactly is her name supposed to mean?


I'm starting to like the notion that this is the same general idea as the movie, where some rogue pony flees to another dimension and must for some reason be stopped. But then, I guess you don't want to hear about that.

AS TO ACTUAL PLANS, I think we should try and convince Awesomicus that our quest chain requires spying on the other PCs.  Maybe say he needs to inform us of what they've been up to so we can figure out where the artifacts we need are.  If he says he could just ask them, we could act like a gamey NPC who is locked into needing the quest to be finished in a particular way.

Of course, that plan has a lot of potential problems in it.  It would be extremely useful if it worked, but would probably fail.  If so, we could just tell him the exact locations of Sunder/Keening/Wraithguard, and how to get everything ready, so he just does the main quest for us.  That would give us plenty of time to become a powerful archmage who rewrites reality on whim.

I'm not fond of this. Even if it works, if he's discovered for any reason (and let's be honest here- how subtle is he likely to be?) the others are going to want to know what we're up to. Which wouldn't necessarily be terrible, but probably not an ideal way to get to know everyone. At that point we might as well turn it into an escort quest or something.

And again, I'm wary of trying to cheat Awesomeicus, and we've certainly got nothing he'd consider a reward.

...

Unless a poorly-dried T-shirt of herself counts, which it probably totally would if she's Pony Rainbow Dash in an orc's body.

Does anyone else think fighting mudcrabs might be a better idea, because we could dart away when they attack, and run when we get beat up?  I've barely ever played MW, and it was years ago, so I don't remember well.

Mudcrabs are the ideal foe, yeah. We do need to be careful when hunting for them, though, because there are more dangerous things in the swamp.

I think what we should tell him is that he has to gather a party of heroes, recover these artifacts, and then defeat Dagoth Ur to save the world (and recover the most epic loot of all time while being hailed as an incredibly hero for all of history).

Couple problems here. For one thing, we don't ourselves fully understand what's going on. We know the vanilla main quest line, but we don't understand how ponies factor into any of it, who or what the Nerevarine is or has to be, and so forth. Rushing for the three artifacts and a heart gank could end exceedingly poorly (or just stall) if anything's different. I think we should talk with the ponies (particularly Clover) and hear some more of what Dagoth Ur has to say before trying to solve a problem that might be radically different from what we're expecting.

For another, if we're going to try to get him to assemble his more serious, levelheaded friends to do stuff for us anyway, wouldn't it be more productive and direct to just talk to them? I suppose we could go for manipulating Awesomeicus to rope his pals into following him on a quest they don't really understand the importance of, but unless they're for some reason averse to saving the world, I'm not sure I see the benefit.


I think our medium-term goal should be to ask Clover some pointed questions. Any of the ponies might or might not be very insightful, but if Clover really is Twilight Sparkle, she ought to know a great deal about the current situation.

[WillowLuman]

I don't think we should try to use Awesomicus to spy on them, he just seems like our best chance of getting in touch with the others. In the long run, they're probably our best shot at stopping Vvardenfell from being consumed by the Blight, though.

[IronyOwl]

Uhhhhhh...

: "Ok, g'bye! Oh, and tell Eddie I said hello."

Imare goes back to dancing with Runa and you make your way to the guild guide. Her cheeks are flushed and she has a bottle in her hand.

Werewoof is most definitely probably Party Elf. Folms claimed her name was Imare...

...who is also a canon high elf Nightblade NPC spell vendor, normally located in Hlaalu Council Manor in Balmora.

I have no idea what to make of that.

[WillowLuman]

I knew it had to be someone we met! It was written like it was obvious to Michael. She hasn't really done anything PC-ish, but she is an odd one.

[Araph]

...who is also a canon high elf Nightblade NPC spell vendor, normally located in Hlaalu Council Manor in Balmora.

...Well isn't that interesting.

I'm really not sure how the PC/NPC dynamics are working here anymore.

And again, I'm wary of trying to cheat Awesomeicus, and we've certainly got nothing he'd consider a reward.

This. Very much this. Whatever we do, we should absolutely not try to fool the PCs (or people who resemble PCs, though it seems pretty apparent they're definitely PCs). It's too dangerous for too little reward.

Acting as an NPC works well just because players almost ALWAYS do whatever Urist the random chump on the street tells them to. For more intelligent PCs (Clover, Adorabella, even Werewoof), talking to them like normal people is probably the best course of action.

That said, we need to actually get in contact with them before any of this matters.

I kinda dislike the whole "PCs are ponies" theory.  I mean, the theories I've seen seem to be looking for proof for the theory rather than the other way around.

There's actually a whole lotta evidence for the theory, and it's mostly not tenuous maybes and what-ifs.

Spoiler: CONSPIRASEE THEORAHS (click to show/hide)

Names: Clover's name is a direct reference to the show (Clover the Clever). SexyWithers references horse anatomy. Rainbow Dash is focused on awesomeness (hence Awesomicus' name). Adorabella (Rarity) fits the pattern, though not directly referencing anything in particular.

Actions: Here is where it's less explicit and more based on what we would expect from the characters if the theory is accurate. There is an elf in pink who throws parties and a werewoof (technically not necessarily the same people, but probably) who's cheerful and can break the fourth wall (all (except for being a werewolf) traits that define Pinkie). Awesomicus plays to win, not to actually play Morrowind the best way (I'm biased, I know) and hates dialogue and long-windedness (both fitting Rainbow Dash's personality). Adorabella joined the most commercial house, aimed for a prominent and respected position in the Mages' Guild, lectured someone for 'cheating' in a duel, and then accepted the loss graciously (fits Rarity pretty darn well). Clover... I can't actually remember what she's done and I don't want to go back and look, but the only character her name fits is Twilight. Whatsername the barbarian is pacifistic and shy (or should I say FLUTTERSHY AH HA HA yeah that pun is terrible).

Only one left is Applejack, and the plantation seems like a good bet for her.

Oh, and Spike, but who cares about him. (Calling it now: he'll either be with Clover or not be here at all.)

My vote for what we do is keep practicing magic and head for WAIT JUST A GOSH DARNED SECOND

We're forgetting something.

House Redoran.

Who's just risen through their ranks like a rocket shot out of a railgun?

TIME TO INVESTIGATE but first:

Keep practicing magic and head for Pelagiad, which I'm pretty sure Dren Plantation is right by. After that, whether or not it pans out, practice more magic and head towards the newly built Hlaalu Manor overlooking the River Odai. Adorabella will probably either be there or stop by now and again. Whichever the case, it's a lead on the PCs.

[syvarris]

What we need to do is give him a vague prophecy he won't bother to pay attention to, to make it seem serious forealz, give him the briefest overview of the overall plan, and then very specific next steps combined with a place to return to us to hand in "the quest". The next step of the plan is to gather the prophesied heroes together.

"The heroes of the prophecy must be gathered - the five who are beyond mortals, and the one that will guide them. The amazing warrior and the incredible intellect, the creature of the night and the creature of the north, and the one who will land the final blow - these will join under one banner to fight the evils of the heart. They will acquire the tools of victory, and march on the mountain, and though they suffer defeats they shall overcome to end the ancient evil, with power and wealth beyond their wildest dreams awaiting them in the new world they will help bring forth."

He hasn't heard of Dagoth Ur - that means he's not been introduced to the main quest. That, I think, should be our job in the near future. To introduce him to, well... our own version of that. We then tell him that we believe that he is the warrior from the prophecy, Clover is the great intellect, and Adorabella is the creature of the night, and the werewolf is the creature of the north. For now, bringing them to us is the next stage of the quest, but he can do it in any order. Then we should tell him some place we are going to be and when this should happen.

+1 to everything above.

Reporting to our superiors in the blade might also not be a bad idea, but we've got to decide on where we want to make at least a semi-permanent dwelling for the time being so we can actually make some progress getting other people to do work for us (while we work on our magic skills).

I thought that we have no superiors; Caius left, and we don't really know anyone else.  Except perhaps for that argonian, but I don't think he's our superior.  Or even very willing to cooperate with us.

Well, that's how figuring things out works- you notice a pattern, then apply it elsewhere to fill in the blanks. The less you know or are certain of, the more haphazard your efforts to fill in the blanks are. If you think I'm grasping at straws, by all means say so, but you've got to admit there's an awful lot of ponyish behavior going on here. Plus we've been dreaming about them.

Yes, that's how patterns work, but once a pattern stops working, it's usually time to find a different pattern rather than trying to find ways it could work.

Also, we've only got like three characters that fit MLP, but that's all.  Where's the rest of the cast?  Why would TS, RD, PP, and Rarity be the only characters included? 

You're right about the Balmora Butcher- that one's been puzzling me/us for a while now. Part of the problem is that we don't know how serious/gamelike they're taking it as. Dash might totally get bored and start killing random things in a video game, for instance, but she'd never go around murdering people IRL. Even Fluttershy in berserk mode isn't murderous.

But then again, none of them are really the kind to run around killing things, but they probably couldn't function too well if they didn't. There may be some translation issues going on here, or maybe they do literally think they're playing a video game.

But speaking about the Balmora Butcher in particular, her (well, a Telvanni described as a lunatic by Yagrum who at least roughly matches her description) name is "SexyWithersXOXOXO." The withers is a ridge on the back of a horse. If she's not a pony, what exactly is her name supposed to mean?

True, Withers is probably the most compelling evidence for MLP.  But she also doesn't fit any of the possible characters.  FS would at least sometimes be less sociopathic, RD can't be SW because that would mean Awesomicus is Spike, and that doesn't fit because then Adorabella can't be Rarity.  Which means Spike is the closest to SW, but that seems odd to me.  I guess I don't have compelling evidence against that one though.  And SW did have her bed covered with rare dwemer artifacts, which seems kinda dragonish.  *shrug*

I'm not fond of this. Even if it works, if he's discovered for any reason (and let's be honest here- how subtle is he likely to be?) the others are going to want to know what we're up to. Which wouldn't necessarily be terrible, but probably not an ideal way to get to know everyone. At that point we might as well turn it into an escort quest or something.

And again, I'm wary of trying to cheat Awesomeicus, and we've certainly got nothing he'd consider a reward.

True, but Awesomicus seems gullible enough to go for it.  Plus if we just play a stupid game NPC he's unlikely to hurt us or anything, 'cause that would fail the quest.

...

Unless a poorly-dried T-shirt of herself counts, which it probably totally would if she's Pony Rainbow Dash in an orc's body.

Oh god, thisthisthis!

Next time we see Awesomeicus any of the suspected PCs, remember to pull out our old Rainbow Dash shirt and show them.  Ask them if it seems familiar.  If they ask why, say it's related to The Big Bad.

That would be quite decisive.

Mudcrabs are the ideal foe, yeah. We do need to be careful when hunting for them, though, because there are more dangerous things in the swamp.

Well, that's good enough for me.  When we go back to combat training, hunt for mudcrabs instead.

[WillowLuman]

Honestly, I don't know where Michael got the idea to go after slaughterfish. We mentioned mudcrabs, not them, and as we all know slaughterfish are just the racers of the sea.

[Descan]

I don't know why y'all think that Fluttershy wouldn't not care about the denizens of Morrowind. To her, they're just pixels on a screen. S'not like I feel any compunction about slaughtering thousands of babby Scouts in TF2. At most, I might feel a little bit bad about the player if I'm particularly slaughtering him repeatedly, but I don't think that the little Boston bastard himself is getting hurt/exists meaningfully.

Granted, she might, because she cares about every damn thing, but to computer characters? Hell, I can see her going into it slaughtering everything as a game with "points", to let off steam so that she DOESN'T go into one of her horror-rages.

[IronyOwl]

We're forgetting something.

House Redoran.

Who's just risen through their ranks like a rocket shot out of a railgun?

I had to look this up, but it's a good thing I did so because:

: "Just humor me for a moment. There's a new Telvanni tower being built at Uvirith's Grave in Molag Amur. Tel Uvirith."
: "Yes,  Bella Manor just outside of Balmora and Castle Awesome at Bal Isra."

Adorabella and Awesomeicus clearly named their strongholds. Sexy didn't bother. That doesn't mean anything conclusive on its own, but it's another suggestion that Sexy may be different from the rest of the ponies.

Well, that's how figuring things out works- you notice a pattern, then apply it elsewhere to fill in the blanks. The less you know or are certain of, the more haphazard your efforts to fill in the blanks are. If you think I'm grasping at straws, by all means say so, but you've got to admit there's an awful lot of ponyish behavior going on here. Plus we've been dreaming about them.

Yes, that's how patterns work, but once a pattern stops working, it's usually time to find a different pattern rather than trying to find ways it could work.

Also, we've only got like three characters that fit MLP, but that's all.  Where's the rest of the cast?  Why would TS, RD, PP, and Rarity be the only characters included?

Hence the constant "wait no maybe it's this one that's Rarity?" we've (well, mostly I've) been doing every time we get a bit more information. If you have a completely different pattern that better explains everything we've seen so far, feel free to bring it up.

As for where the rest are, I'd love to know too. We skipped the only event we suspect they were all together at, and haven't had much luck tracking them individually. Hell, three of the four you mentioned we only met because we were in the same faction spot as they were when they came around or were mentioned.

True, Withers is probably the most compelling evidence for MLP.  But she also doesn't fit any of the possible characters.  FS would at least sometimes be less sociopathic, RD can't be SW because that would mean Awesomicus is Spike, and that doesn't fit because then Adorabella can't be Rarity.  Which means Spike is the closest to SW, but that seems odd to me.  I guess I don't have compelling evidence against that one though.  And SW did have her bed covered with rare dwemer artifacts, which seems kinda dragonish.  *shrug*

Which is why I'm starting to suspect she may be the transdimensional "villain" the ponies are after. Of course, Imare's existence in vanilla seems to make that a lot less likely, so we're kind of back to stuck on that one.

Hm... I can't track it all down now, but do we know the timetable on Sexy being a psychopath? Certainly she was skill grinding and I believe hoarding well before Clover contracted Corprus, but could it be that he took it really badly when Clover got in incurable disease and/or locked herself away studying it or something?

Spoiler: ... (click to show/hide)

: "CITIZENS OF BALMORA BEWARE!!!!"

You duck back into the door and crane your head into the air just in time to catch what appears to be a female dunmer carrying a massive sword leaping from the roof of the building.

She hits the ground running. No armor, looks like. Just clothes and a big sword.

: "THE DOOMPOCALYPSE IS UPON YOU!"

A couple guards are trying to chase her. With great difficulty, as she seems to be wearing the Boots of Blinding Speed.

: "HAVE AT THEE, VILE VILLAINS!"

Which she uses to dart in circles around them before promptly one-shotting each of them.

: "HA HA! THIRTY POINTS!!!"

You know what? I don't even know. This doesn't seem particularly angry or psychopathic or playful or anything. "Have at thee, vile villains" could be a Spike line, maybe the stuff about Doompocalypse if he was being particularly dragonish... I have no idea where points would come from for either theory, though. Maybe if somebody had convinced him it was a game, but who would do that and why, and there's still the issue of it being a game about murdering guards.

Irrelevant thought of the day: What did Withers do to aggro the guards in the first place? They normally don't react to jumping on rooftops or... maybe CITIZENS OF BALMORA BEWARE counted as an earshot-range taunt or something, but otherwise she should have had to do something to earn their ire in the first place. I think someone mentioned killing three guards, and we saw all three, so it shouldn't have been murdering a different guard elsewhere unless I'm misremembering.

...maybe he grabbed and ate an emerald, then couldn't figure out why the guards were after him? Still does nothing for points, though. Or threatening all of Balmora with the Doompocalypse. Eugh.

Spoiler: Sexy Mugshots (click to show/hide)

: "HA HA! THIRTY POINTS!!!"

Though as long as I'm here, I may as well resolve a longstanding assumption- yes, the Balmora Butcher does look a lot like SexyWithers. We did confirm that it was Sexy we met coming out of the Census Office, and not just assume that from hearing her description later at the Mages Guild, right? Right?

Damn it. Oh well, it's probably a good assumption.

I don't know why y'all think that Fluttershy wouldn't not care about the denizens of Morrowind. To her, they're just pixels on a screen. S'not like I feel any compunction about slaughtering thousands of babby Scouts in TF2. At most, I might feel a little bit bad about the player if I'm particularly slaughtering him repeatedly, but I don't think that the little Boston bastard himself is getting hurt/exists meaningfully.

Granted, she might, because she cares about every damn thing, but to computer characters? Hell, I can see her going into it slaughtering everything as a game with "points", to let off steam so that she DOESN'T go into one of her horror-rages.

That's the thing, though- we don't know how they view this world. Are they players in a game? Plane travelers morphed into different forms? Alternate incarnations? Dopplegangers?

It's one of the main reasons we really need a chance to talk to at least one of them in more depth.

[Araph]

I had to look this up, but it's a good thing I did so because:

My bad; I'd forgotten about Caius mentioning that.

Awesomicus joined House Redoran. Well, they certainly do prize honor and loyalty HUE HUE HUE

Ahem.

Also, we've only got like three characters that fit MLP, but that's all.  Where's the rest of the cast?  Why would TS, RD, PP, and Rarity and FS be the only characters included? 

Don't we have five out of the six? :/




I'm really curious if LordBucket reads these theories and cackles to himself as his plans come together or if he reads them and facepalms at the absurdity.

[Xanmyral]

Or the third option: reads them and starts jotting down notes for the future.