In the age before Hearth’s Warming, the equine tribes of old are in crisis. With dwindling resources and starving ponies, tensions are growing between the civilizations as they all start to realize that to survive in this new, chilling world, they’re going to have to fight for it.

Pre-Hearth’s Warming stories are always interesting to read So little canon information, so many worldbuilding opportunities....

Setting and Plot

KarmaPolice’s pre-Equestria land is one that is seeing a lot of change in its ponies; the warrior pegasi of Cloudwatch are becoming desperate for food, the Earth Tribe is struggling to grow larger yields of harvest, and the unicorns stay reclusive within their magical walls. This sets the scene for the story, which presumably will detail a chain of events that will bring the windigos to the equine race and was hinted at in the last scene in The March. It’s an interesting setting and one that has a lot of potential to be an epic battle of armies and politics We’re already getting some of that with Cloudwatch raiding one of the earth pony keeps and the dukes of the unicorn kingdom seem to already be butting heads!

KarmaPolice decided to tell the story from three unique perspectives: the inexperienced pegasus commander Gale, the enslaved earth pony Butternut, and the young unicorn attendant Marvel. Honestly, I don’t have much to say on the plot of the story; as far as I can tell, we’re in for the long game here, and we’ve only just started, so there’s not much material to work off of in 9.9k words.

Rating: 7.5/10

Character Exploration

KarmaPolice did a fairly decent job at portraying the POV characters in 6 chapters they have written. Personally, I feel like there could’ve been more shared about the characters through their thoughts as opposed to a description of their thoughts. Take this example from The New Mission:

Gale reflected on their mutual adversary. He had been full of vitriol then, in the battle, but in the grand scheme of things Gale almost regretted destroying such a legendary opponent. Rockjaw had been ruler of the forestlands for nearly thirty years, and had a fearsome reputation for it.

And yet he had been dragged from his castle keep alongside his sons and put to the blade. He had spat insults at Gale until his last breath.

While it gets the point across, it’s possible to go deeper into how Gale feels about Rockjaw and his attitude through his thoughts. Just as how it’s important in dialogue, the way that a character thinks, (ie. the wording), can really share that character’s personality, mentality, morals, etc. The last lines could’ve been in Gale’s thoughts, sharing a sliver of a more personal perspective than the third-person limited

Rating: 7.5

Grammar, Formatting, and Consistency

So, this is the section that I’m expecting to make the final rating take a few hits The formatting is a little strange, with some paragraphs getting a space in-between them and others not. Take this from the prologue:

“It’s time, Milord.”

The unwelcome intrusion woke Lord Commander Gale from his shallow sleep. He sat up sharply, waving off the soldier who had the unenviable task of waking him.
He moved briskly, donning his armor and inspecting his warfeathers for appropriate sharpness. Finding them satisfactory, he stepped outside. The cold air bit into his face as he took in the white expanse before him.
Soldiers moved around, preparing for a coming battle. Large cumulonimbus were being amassed- and with them, he would lay waste to Storm's Break, a major earth tribe bastion.

If, He thought. The parlay does not go according to plan.

Those he passed bowed low to him and he would typically acknowledge them with a nod- but on this morning his mind was preoccupied. Their fighting strength was diminishing, not through battle losses, but through a much more vicious killer- starvation. Lack of food was bleeding his fighters dry.

The paragraphs after the last one in that excerpt don’t have spaces between them, so why does the first and the second last line get that special treatment? There’s seemingly no rhyme or reason for the inconsistency. If you add spaces in-between paragraphs, great; if not, then indent your paragraphs! Paragraph formatting etiquette is very important

The grammar, on the other hand, has some more comments from me. There are several points during the story where KarmaPolice uses a hyphen in places where other punctuation would normally be used. Take this excerpt from The New Mission:

He watched the rough scrub bushes below him streak by. Eventually, they gave way to signs of civilization- ramshackle huts and rough dirt paths. The town beneath Cloudwatch was home to most of the lower-class citizens- those too poor, old, or wounded to live in the massive floating keep resided here. Gale knew that life was a constant struggle there- hunger and raids by roaming Griffon war parties were nearly a part of daily life.

In that excerpt, there are for hyphens with only one of them being used in a term. The other three could be replaced by other punctuation or connection words, such as:

He watched the rough scrub bushes below him streak by. Eventually, they gave way to signs of civilization: ramshackle huts and rough dirt paths. The town beneath Cloudwatch was home to most of the lower-class citizens; those too poor, old, or wounded to live in the massive floating keep resided here. Gale knew that life was a constant struggle there; hunger and raids by roaming Griffon war parties were nearly a part of daily life.

There’s also been some misuse of “it’s” throughout the story so far, where “it’s” is being used instead of “its”; “it’s” is the contraction of “it is,” and “its” is used to show possession, including object traits! Brushing up on some punctuation and going over the text with a fine-toothed comb will do a writer a whole lot of good

Grammar: 5/10
Formatting: 3/10
Consistency: 4.5/10
Overall rating: 4.2/10

My Little Nitpicks

It always starts with war
Here we go So many opportunities for drama!

Numbers
Wow, they sure counted all that food fast I wish I could be that efficient in my work!

Cloudwatch
Is Cloudwatch different from Pegasopolis? (Yep, the name’s canon )

Final Thoughts

A story with a lot of potential, but does need a good round of editing. Good luck with your writing, KarmaPolice!

Final rating: ((7.5+7.5+4.2)/3)/10 = (19.2/3)/10 = 6.4/10