Check out the manufactorum. 51%
“Alright, we'll check out what the ponies here used to be capable of building.” Fluttershy marked a path to a transportation hub, leaving the labs and it's contents alone once again. It took a while to find a transport train that was working but eventually they got on their way towards what was undoubtedly the largest of the underground facilities.
“So, why are you so interested in this anyway Applejack?” Rarity asked while Pinkie and Shy were making sure Cadence was comfortably laying on a seat.
“Ah don't know, Ah guess it's 'cause Ah like buildin' things,” Applejack shrugged. “Just sounded more interesting ta me than a buncha labs. Not saying findin' Cadence there wasn't remarkable.”
“Hmm, I guess it's an earthpony thing,” Rarity said, Cadence groaning behind them as she regained consciousness.
“Huh… wha-”
“You feeling well, Cadence? You dropped on us there.” Fluttershy helped the alicorn up, from the seat.
“Y-Yeah… where are we?”
“On our way to see another part of this underground base,” Fluttershy answered, “You okay with that?”
“Of course! I-I'm just… going to stay close to you three,” Cadence stuttered as she gave the three of them a sheepish smile.
“Don't worry darling, we'll just be taking a quick peek before getting out of this place,” Rarity smiled as she nudged Cadence's shoulder.
The train came to a halt at the start of the manufactorum, Fluttershy taking the lead as they explored the facility as if they were to run into trouble it'd at least be her who would have to deal with things first. The lighting, unlike the labs, were red emergency lights, nothing, not even the terminals seemingly active.
“Can we, Ah don't know, get this place running again?” Applejack asked as she checked some stored crates, finding various parts in them which she couldn't recognize.
“The map says there's a main control room next to the massive chamber that sits under the gorge,” Fluttershy answered after checking her omni-tool for directions. Walking through the dimly lit hallways for a while longer the five ponies found the control room shrouded in darkness. “Hopefully we can restore power from here, if the hardlines are cut we might never get this place running again.”
“Would it look something like this?” Pinkie asked pointing at a large row of switches on the wall.
Fluttershy opened her mouth to say something but closed it again. “Really only one way to find out.”
Fluttershy took one of the switches and pushed it up, a massive spark of electricity crashed into the pegasus the moment she did. Shy's shield dropped over halfway, static electricity jumping through her feathers. Lights jumped on as the pegasus stumbled back.
“You alright, sugarcube?” Applejack asked as she rushed forward to check on Fluttershy, the pegasus nodding.
“Just don't touch those swi-”
Another flash lit up the room, machinery starting to hum and bangs of metal sounding through the facility.
“That tickled,” Pinkie giggled as she proceeded to flip all the switches in rapid succession. Sparks and arcs of electricity jumped all around her as she did so.
“Pinkie Pie!” Rarity exclaimed bewildered as holograms jumped alive all over the control room. A large set of shutters that closed off the far end of the room adjacent to the big area under the gorge started to slide open. Fluttershy too was about to give Pinkie a piece of her mind but then saw the lights in the main chamber of the manufactorum blink on.
“Oh my...” Her breath got stuck in her throat as she looked straight into an array of engines, a vessel that pretty much ran the full span of the chamber powering up as a hologram jumped to life across the viewport.
Construction order completed 3193460 cycles ago.
> New vessel classification added to roster:
- Vindica class Titan
> Vessel Specifications:
- 1949m Length
- 845m Width
- Mass: 28 million metric tons
- Mk IV Antimatter thruster drives
-1 Exitium type spinal mass accelerator cannon.
...
Fluttershy remained completely frozen as she read the entire list of features that scrolled over the screen. Applejack whistled as she stared at the vessel as well. Pinkie just hopped around the room, looking at every console and tapping on some of them.
“This is one of ours, isn’t it?” Rarity gasped.
“Yes,” Fluttershy whispered. “Girls, this is one of the largest vessels in the galaxy.” Fluttershy tapped the screen in front of her, as she noticed an additional note attached to the ship’s specification.
Loading personal log…
Translating…
Done.
A hologram of a new pony appeared on the window
“Hello to the future generation who might be watching this, I am Star Aura. I am the main designer of the vessel I presume you are currently observing. As it stands now our base does not have the capability to build my designs, so the automated systems will expand our shipyard and manufacturing facility until it’s large enough to create them… I do not expect to see its completion. I have compiled every scrap of data about what the Protheans have classified as ‘Reapers’ and stored it on the base’s databanks, this data will be copied onto the ship’s databanks after completion.” The pony searched for her next words for a moment. “We are abandoning this base and sealing it within the next twenty cycles. Our population is too small right now, we have decided to head to the surface and focus on repopulating the planet. The techs downstairs assure us they have created a way to keep us safe from what lurks above… I hope they’re right. May your generation fare better than ours, Star Aura out.”
The ground suddenly shuddered and the ground above the massive ship started to split apart, the blue sky visible above. Everyone turned to look at Pinkie who had her hoof still plastered on one of the control panels.
“Whaaattt, it was flashing!”
The hologram on the main window changed as it gave a new announcement.
Launching Vessel.
“Oh fuck,” Fluttershy cursed, “We need to get on that thing, right now! If the heretics have a secondary hub… They cannot get control of that ship!”
“I-I can help!” Cadence exclaimed. “I think I know this ship, the voice spoke about it... Do you trust me?” Fluttershy nodded. "Alright, hang on then," Cadence’s horn lit up and enveloped all of them in magic. Moments later the magic flared and in a flash, they were gone.
So...the Ponies have a ship. Right. ...also, while this isn't ME...getting strong Nora from RWBY vibes off of Pinkie shrugging off electrical charges.
It looks like Celestia has been hiding information, I think.
Wheeee. Grab a hold guys, we goin for a Ride.
Suprised at how light it is though. Im a bit biased, I like to design things that can at least float on water, so restricts the density, and so given size, the overall mass.
I hope the automated systems close the observation shutters again and the hanger doors, its a nice production facility, be a shame to have to totally slag it with the engines to trash the heretics.
I wonder how many million production cycles it shouldve taken for teh automated systems, after expanding the base and production the first time, to expand and produce a second facility for all the other designs, to keep the production system itself duplicated, backed up and secured?
The log and this entire situation reminded me a lot of Horizon Zero Dawn. Starting to build something that you know won't be even close to finished even if you could triple your lifespan, and entrusting it to future generations with the hope that it serves them.
10393261
I pulled the tonnage from a similarly sized Halo vessel, I'm no expert in ship tonnage
Right! So the ponies now have a ship that not only is bigger than anything in the known Galaxy, but i presume it is also way more advanced! And quite possibly Element zero free....which if the Council find out about, they will finally have to see that Element Zero isn't be all end all they think it is.
Was the Titan class inspired by Stellaris?
10393256
2 things you need to think about!
#1 - Celestia is always withholding information. Just look at when she told Twilight about the Shield.
#2 - What makes you think Celestia knew about the ship? If she knew about it, i think she would have had destroyed it to keep ponies from trying to travel to the stars.
10393277
Trouble is, at 100 million g acceleration of a ton shell, giving 4 g recoil on teh whole ship for fractions of a milisecond, if theres no Element Zero recoil damping, the shell will only be doing a thousand kilometers a second on exit, A third of a percent light. Should go through pretty much anything it hits, the big problem is hitting. You have a reasonable chance of missing the ISS from the ground, with a laser poointer, due to its displacement at orbital speed, if you aim where you See it.
Still, be intresting to see just how good the AI predictor is. Given Alpha Pi is so deadly.
Well that happened!
It does seem like bringing Cadance along was the right decision -- at least there's someone who would likely be familiar with the design and systems of the Pony Predecessors. Though without an AI I don't know if five ponies total is enough to operate such a massive ship.
I wonder if this means there will be plenty of future missions that will be done without Shepherd and his crew.
Did I read that right? M A C gun!!!
At this point ponies should be cursing Celestia to Tartarus. Ponies could have been having an interstellar empire by now and kicking Reapers to the next galaxy.
10393267
And just like H:ZD, someone else came along after she passed away and bungled the plan. Have we been given a name for `Tia and Luna's "mother" yet? That unknown promise `Tia gave her gives me nightmares about how far the Sun Princess will go to enforce it.
* exasperated sigh* Piiiinkyyyy!
Oh, Shepard is gonna s*** a brick when he sees this. So will Luna and Celestia. The council too. Just to round it off, Joker as well. Actually, Joker would probably s*** a full house...screw it. They ALL will.
10393557
More than someone coming and screwing everything up, it looks like its just time and the fight for survival consuming their understanding of their technology to the point they could no longer understand it.
In H:ZD, the entire project was sabotaged, so the ones supposed to maintain it couldn't do it anymore.
In this story, it looks like the Alicorn project took so much time to be completed that, by the time Celestia and Luna came out, there was no-one with enough knowledge of it to continue. The order that they got is inoffensive enough by itself, keep the array that is keeping ponies alive in one piece.
Considering that Celestia and Luna seem to not have the same level of knowledge about their technology that Cadance is showing right now, probably the last researcher alive woke up the sisters before they died of old age and send them to keep order while Candance finished baking with all the extra information needed to restart Pony technology, but in the meantime something happened that screwed over Cadance completion. It probably is associated to the missing AI of the place, and the reason why THAT is missing is the real mystery.
10393492
And why the hell would they do that? Celestia AND Luna are acting on the same order of keeping ponies safe, and that is all they are doing. They have showed no real understanding about this technology (unless you want to say that Luna has been acting her ignorance all the time she has been on Citadel space), and there is also no proof that they have stopped the technological development of Ponies.
It is getting annoying to see so many comments blaming Celestia or saying she is a dictator or Indoctrinated when BOTH sisters are following the same orders and, considering how far they allowed Twilight to act when her own research and experiments to recover Fluttershy was damaging the irreplaceable array that they were made to protect and, as far as they know, is keeping all of Equestria alive, Celestia has been really, REALLY understanding and lenient with the EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TO ALL EQUESTRIA actions that Twilight has been doing.
10393261
10393277
The biggest limiter on starships that don't use gravity drives, and maybe even then, is the Thrust to Mass Ratio, the TMR, not the density of the ship. Too high a TMR and your ship will break up at full acceleration, too low and you're a mobile platform, not a ship.
10393637
Hmm. Here's a thought. What if Celestia and Luna knew they were missing large chunks of vital information, and tried to come up with a stopgap solution that would allow them to fill in the blanks?
Celestia starts choosing proteges. When they prove themselves of a certain power and maturity, they get "modified" without their knowledge, giving them a lot of buried ancestral knowledge and the potential to become alicorns. Either Sunset never made it to that point before they both had their idiot moment and Sunset stormed off... or she did, and stormed through a magic mirror to another world with a copy of the missing data in her head, and the power to move suns in her hands. (oh dear...)
Twilight comes along, and seems better adjusted... but has real trouble making friends. She gets the same treatment, and is intentionally isolated from the Princess to accelerate her ability to make and keep friends. So far, it's working. But she also has all the missing information Celestia didn't have, buried in a corner of her subconscious. It also explains why Celestia is tearing Equestria apart looking for her. She could ascend at any moment at this point, and has a world's worth of ancient knowledge in her head she still doesn't really understand, and Celestia can't find her...
This brings to mind Flight of the Navigator. "We filled your head all the way up with star charts to see what would happen."
"So what happened?"
"You leaked."
10393637
Don't be a simpleton. Of course the princess Luna wouldn't act ignorant on the citadel. By all evidence that bitch Celestia kept her ponies in ignorance by keeping their past and history hidden from them It's not like she is sending them a message that We are in trouble so we need to hide. So, please, whatever you do don't forget your own legacy So yeah, her precious ponies have a right to be angry at their ruler.
You know what? Nevermind. I am not even mad at her that she brainwashed them into believing that she has complete control of their Sun
Okay, so that ship is about the size of a reaper... Any way we can get an idea of what this ship looks like?
10393753
Maybe both interpretations are valid. In theory, with enough mass control technology, combined with the fact that Equestrian magic is real, and visibly confuses people in Citadel space as to how they do the things they do, maybe what is happening here is that Celestia is using the planet's magic-enhanced mass control capability to move the sun and moon. It's clearly established that Element Zero is mined from dead stars that have gone supernova. So that means a star is loaded with eezo. Enter a powerful alicorn with reality-altering magic on an unprecedented scale, and a built-in affinity for mass-based energy fields. Point that at the sun.
And when the Reapers show up? Sit back with hot buttered popcorn and enjoy the show. An alicorn with the ability to manipulate a star's eezo-based mass core would be the stuff of nightmares for Harbinger...
Another detail that occurred to me after that post. The assumption that they aren't actually moving the sun and moon is because there seems to be a Dyson Sphere-like shell around everything. Well, what if the sun and moon in question were closer? They'd have to be smaller to compensate for the closer distance. The moon not so much, actually. But the sun would be fractionally tiny by comparison to a standard star. You could have this tiny star inside the shell, manipulated by the alicorn who is affecting it's eezo mass shell. Even a tiny star would burn for at least a million years, which is more than the average Earthlike planet probably has, anyway. And it still makes a dandy anti-Reaper weapon if they show up.
.... so.... i wonder whats gonna happen now once we get off planet, will we still be on the Normandy or on the new ship or will both travel together or will the ship be taken to the citidel to be examined or.. or ahhhh so much wonder...
10393694
They are clearly aware that they are missing information. They tell Twilight outright that the have no idea how to repair the array because that knowledge died with their parents.
Also, Celestia is looking for Twilight because she has the knowledge to send ponies out of Equestria from her studies of the mini mass relay and has already shown that she is willing to use that knowledge even after being explicitly denied by the princesses. Each attempt has also blown up a good chunk of the irreparable array so that would technically make her damn close to a bloody terrorist, since the array is so important for the life of Equestria.
Celestia already has more than enough motivation to get Twilight, and I can't really see why would they attempt to give anyone else the information they are missing, considering that they are the ones who need it the most.
Having said that, if your idea is true then yeah, getting Twilight would be a priority one mission, but that also would make the fact that Celestia can't get her because of the laws concerning her sister authority completely stupid.
If Twilight was such a time bomb then letting her get away because of bureaucracy would be the height of idiocy.
A last point. Celestia is not actually moving a sun. She is controlling the "sun" in the array, so a runaway Sunset Shimmer would not have the power to actually move the sun.
10393813
If the "sun in the array" is smaller than a star, but still a ball of hot stellar fusion at 10,000 degrees with greater mass than ten thousand Jupiters... then it still classifies as a sun in my books.
As for what would be motivating Celestia to not be more direct, if this guess were accurate... consider the panic it would cause if she took the time to tell everypony why she has to be direct and just seize Twilight? That unless she gets her way, everyone on Equis is utterly doomed? No... Not the kind of panic you want to cause. Far better to be circumspect for as long as you can. The alternative is mass chaos and uncontrollable panic.
10393829
From chapter Research log #590
It's not a sun, it is a big lamp in the array, and the array itself is only a bit bigger than the planet, nowhere near the size of a real sun.
The idea of not telling the ponies exactly why Celestia needs Twilight captured right now makes sense. I assume that similar fears are the reason the array itself its not common knowledge.
10393794
I can't 3d model even if my life depended on it. Will try to design something by hand
10393862
10393829
Luna and Celestia have different goals.
10393316
Actually, the Rayya and the other quarian liveships are still larger but other than that it's about the size of the collector vessel and reapers
10394250
Hmm...if at some point the sisters learn that their own thought patterns were forged externally by looking at that screen, they're going to have the mother of all existential crises.
PINKIE!! ... Seriously!
[Binges story from start to current chapter in 3 days...]
[ ...reaches the most current chapter.]
Oh no! I've reached the lastest chapter! Damm I was really enjoying this story, very much immersed into this epic adventure.
Sorry for not commenting, hope you didn't get too hungry with my lack of comments, been focusing on just reading to catch up with the voting. (Excuses, I know.) I know I'm going to write a follow up to this comment, hopefully it'll a little more satisfying to read CommanderApplejack.
Until then just know this story is awesome and I love it.
10394250
Exactly. And while not mutually exclusive normally, we are approaching a situation that may or may not pit the two sisters against each other. Keep their Little Ponies safe but let the rest of the Galaxy burn for a second time, or go out to end the Reaper Cycles once and for all but risk extinction. Without a third party *cough* Cadence *cough* to mediate, this impasse could mean coming to blows.
10393813
Im pretty sure that if Twilight knew about the reapers, then she would have had second thoughts about firing the relay the first time, let alone the second.
The princesses did warn her, but they didn't do a great job and didn't know about the reapers. Twilight lost one of her friends and one of the elements. Then she figures out a way to go after her.
She's told not only that she can't go, but Rainbow Dash does her idiotic stunt.
Twilight might have come out of hiding if Celestia didn't go all guards ablazing. It sounded like months past. She could have easily posted requests to meet peacefuly. Force obviously wasn't working.
Then Luna finds her, and insists that she go instead.
This totally breaks Twilight. She feels betrayed by both princesses and is furious about what rainbow did. Not only that, but she is worried about Luna, Fluttershy, Rainbow, Shining, and feels guilty about the Griffin kid too.
Maybe Twilight has become a little terrorist, but the princesses and Rainbow have treated her like shit. At this point it's a wonder she hasn't gone full psycho. Bit by bit everyone she knows has painted her into a corner, from her perspective.
Also the her insatiable need to know about the greater galaxy has got to be killing her too!
...Ok, this is a first for me. I've never had such a negative reaction to a portrayl of Pinkie Pie outside of insanity/horror Pink fics.
PINKIE PIE IS NOT DEE DEE FROM DEXTER'S LABORATORY! SHE IS NOT STUPID, SHE IS NOT CARELESS OF OTHERS FEELINGS, AND SHE DOES NOT DO SUCH THINGS WITHOUT REASON! EVEN IF THE ONLY REASON IS MY PINKIE SENSE GUIDED ME!
(hard breathing)
...like I said, this has never happened to me before. I didn't know what would happen.
It was that part where she said,
That is not Pinkie, that is Dee Dee and she is not Pinkie!
The moment I read that Pinkie was replaced with Dee Dee and my mind went, "Noooooooope, nope, no, nuh-uh, HELL NO! THAT DOES NOT PASS!"
I feel a bit better for venting, but... there's still anger down there. What have I not-
Whooop! Ulp, uhhh. Wait, here it comes...
I guess Cadance corrupted inprint is the Facilitys A.I. made a copy of itself?
This big ass ship better has some seriouse maintenance drone crew to keep it running...
10393261
All this was made by at least a very complex a V.I. but more likely a A.I. so i wonder... How to restore it...
10393267
Isn't that was Civilisation is doing?
10393316
Celestia is a liability at this point...
10393333
To bad they don't have a A.I. to control the ship
10393348
Automatic systems can only do so mutch...
Hope they have maintenance drones somewhere...
10393389
Most likely, Shepard isn't the universe core only the window for the player to experience it.
10393412
Big Mac gun
10393492
Yep...
10393578
Pinkie is a curse and a blessing in one pony...
10393590
That a lot of shit to drop...
10393794
Space vibrator with guns?
10393808
Author might reveal it in time...
10393811
Equis has one high tech ship at that is it... I would not risk it without a full crew knowing what they do...
10394362
Meh... Don't we all get one imprinted by our parents?
10395080
That mare...
10395216
Might want to re-read it and leave a comment or two behind
10395721
Only problem is Celestia protection get them killed eventually. Remember the Dragon Homeworld? No planet lasts forever...
10401737
Celestia uses ponys like tools, but forget that her tools are sapient beings...
Also her definition of protection is literally killing everyone over time. No planet last forever... Especially with Reapers around...
10570874
Eat a Snickers, you are not yourself if you'r hungry
Ponies are forced into rapid evolution, let's hope Fidelis can make a few copies of herself and start getting Equis on track.