John Doe (or Jane Doe, if you prefer) is a human lost in Equestria. Blaming the princesses and the elements for being torn from his home, he refuses an of their help, seeking his own solution. His efforts bring him into the criminal underbelly of the world, where he works his way up the ranks of Equestria's biggest organized crime syndicate. His Reason for doing this? To punish those he holds responsible for his displacement, and get sent home with enough treasure that he never needs to work again. Join him as he struggles in the dark, where every so-called friend is a potential traitor, where everyone he meets might backstab him, and his unique nature makes him extremely visible to the pony police

The human sat peacefully, looking over the barrels of contraband griffon whiskey, smuggled in by his contact. a small smile on his face as he cracked open a barrel, pretending not to notice the slight wince from the griffon.
"Come here Heinrich. Have a drink with me..celebrating our new partnership" the human said, pulling two glasses from a shelf. The griffon warily waltzed over, secure in th fact this creature wouldn't try anything while his guards watched him. He was wrong. The human, with surprising strength for his size, grabbed the griffon by the neck, shoving him headfirst in the barrel. The griffon struggled, talons giving numerous scratches to the human, and ripping his suit, but unfortunately, he'd filed them to be less intimidating to his pony contacts, and they did little damage as he squawked and screamed, muffled by the splashing liquid.

With a gasp, the griffon was pulled up for air and brought face to face with the human, John's face was twisted into a furious sneer. "You thought you'd get away with fucking me? Look at this cheap shit. I said they needed to be aged twenty years, not fucking five!" the human said, Dunking the sputtering bird again, this time holding him there until the bubbles stopped. Another griffon walked in as the one in the human's grasp stopped struggling.

"Your dad was a piece of work. I hope your better at keeping your word, Fritz. Unless you want to be deep fried and battered." The human growled, kicking the corpse to the corner, where his former guards dragged him off to be disposed of.

Looks good, I like the psychopath deep-fried bit.

The idea is good, the writing has the usual hollywood-esque sensationalism. Machiavellianism benefits the character, it is necessary for a mobster even, but other aspects of the „dark triad” would make him unsuitable for a classic godfather role.

6399622
to be fair, a bit of well placed brutality can go a long way. Like Al capone's famous St valentines massacre, and others

6399622
though, he could just cut his throat, or poison him without the anger fit, and THEN stuff his corpse into the barrel. with no one liners or angry shouting.

6399623
Using fear as a method of control only works until people hate you more than they fear you, because at that point, they want you dead more than they care about the consequences of trying and failing. Brutal punishments are one thing, but arbitrary and disproportionate violence is corrosive even to an organized crime group.

Otherwise, I suppose the story concept works. Not exactly a sympathetic character, but then, they don't always have to be.

6399626
Or he could negotiate a ridiculously low price with a semi-subtle threat for added effect,
like a „true businessman” he is.
Kill him or just simply beat him if he gets aggressive, and if he simply rejects, set his business on fire for trying to fool him.

6399630
I dunno, this may work against ponies, as they're naturally passive species.
Violence and hatred comes hard for them, so perpetual fear could work.

6399672
Ever tried to corner an animal? Even the most timid one will unleash hell on you when it has nowhere to go or it has reached its breaking point. There is a reason we have that expression.

6399675
Honestly, I can never quite decide where that idea comes from to begin with. Ponies have a history of violence, hatred and war to rival humans any day. We never froze an entire continent solid with the sheer power of our hate, if nothing else.

6399675
Last time I checked that mostly applies to predatory species, while I no doubt that prey species can fight back we can't exactly compare let's say a doe and a wolf.

6399684
I wouldn't say a continent, a medium size city at best, the Crystal "Empire" doesn't live up to its name.
As for ponykind history we know to little of it to compare, the worst they had it would be with the eternal night fiasco, which wasn't that bad from what we saw in an alternate future, I'd say Sombra slavery was way worse.

As for humanity history well, we nuked two cities, started 2 world wars which resulted in over 100 million dead, we gave birth to holocaust, and that's just the last century, and skipping few smaller events like civil wars, communist occupation etc.

While ponies had their share of tyrants, monsters and mad chaos gods at no point there is mentioned death tolls or casualties.

6399694
The original three tribes hated each so long and so hard, when it attracted a species of hate-eating ice spirits they became powerful enough to freeze their ancestral homeland solid. If not for a lucky fluke, it would've been the extinction of their species. They hated each other so much, it nearly wiped them all out by sheer accident, and they didn't even do anything.

Say what you want, but that old "horses eat grass, sheep eat grass, therefore ponies are pathetic sheeple" chestnut really doesn't apply here and it's obvious as soon as you take a moment and really look.

6399694
You do understand that the offensive capabilities a species has offers no impact on this, right? It has nothing to do with how well a prey species can fight back (and trust me, most every prey species can fight back well enough to kick a human's ass) but with the fact that it will. The point is that there is no way that 'perpetual fear' can last forever to let this guy's methods work in this way as described or long enough with the excuse that they are ponies and thus it works.

The idea of an organized crime gang or anything that works under the orders of a sadistic, quick to punish, overlord is completely fictioutous and while it MAY work briefly in various works for minor or brief antagonists, it will fall under its own premise in a work that follows such a character as the prime protagonist. It would make every other individual seem completely spineless, cowardly, and with a complete absence of self-preservation.

6399699

and trust me, most every prey species can fight back well enough to kick a human's ass

Or well enough to not be worth fighting. Seriously, there is absloutely no cause or reason to wrestle with a frightened animal.
If we are already talking about self-defense, the deer would be the one more likely to attack directly.

Back on track:
Going overboard with violence would not be considered justifiable Vendetta.

6399696
As far as canon goes, when they actually fought, it was not exactly violent. In canon, pony wars range from food battles through moshpits to endangering the world through kinky magical domination.
That is how they are represented anyways.

I imagine they would shed each others blood as gently as possible.

6399696
Ah you meant that freezing, three words my friend the black plague.
As for the windigo incident, we do not know the scale of this incident or if it was even real, the only thing we've seen of it was a child play.
So we can't exactly use this to judge the nature of ponies.

To compare that would be like comparing my hate for work and the hate that the Nazi had for Jews.

6399699
And you do understand that I wasn't comparing military strength and destruction, but the length that humans go when threatened.
So to give a shorter example.
Piss of a pony and he'll bite you.
Piss of a human and he'll wipe your race from the face of existence itself.

As I said earlier, you can't exactly compare a doe and a wolf, both will fight back but only one will succeed.

6399729

Piss of a pony and he'll bite you.
Piss of a human and he'll wipe your race from the face of existence itself.

Man, meet some actual animals someday, dude. You clearly have no clue what you're talking about. You know which single Africal animal kills more humans every year than any other, to the tune of hundreds of people annually? Hippopotamuses. They'll charge right out of their rivers to stomp you into mush and they're faster than you.

6399735
Well duh, they're easily twice the mass then the average human, no shit Sherlock they're gonna waste us, in one on one fight.
Again dumb compare, you may as well compare a trex or a full grow dragon against a dog or a cat.
No shit who wins.

6399729

Piss of a pony and he'll bite you.
Piss of a human and he'll wipe your race from the face of existence itself.

Experience and law of averages says that it actually is 'Piss off a human and he'll grump on the internet about it.' I'll take that over fucking with an animal any day.

But seriously, the whole argument relies on the idea that because ponies are not a prey species are complete pushovers, which a) nature shows that this is not the case (even the most well-armed natural predator in nature will turn tail and run rather than fuck with a couple of prey animals of close enough size to itself) and b) we are talking about sentient species here.

6399743

Again dumb compare,

Then why did you compare specifically a doe that has no antlers against a wolf rather than a male deer that can more appropriately defend itself?

And again, the point is NOT how well it's natural defenses/weapons will allow it to fight but the fact that it WILL.

6399743
They also kill more people than lions, cheetahs and hyenas added together. At this point, you're just being stupid about it. Just admit that you were wrong and herbivores can be a whole lot more dangerous and aggressive than you thought they were and let's be done with this.

6399633

6399716

6399729

6399744
the more I think about it, I have to say I agree more with Wlam and dubble bubble. He should really try to be more subtle, businesslike. Saving the brutality for a desperate moment or a particularly ugly betrayal. Less of a psycho killer, more of the squeaky clean on the surface, charismatic bad guy everyone KNOWS is a criminal, but no one can prove it, as he manipulates and commands others to do his dirty work. MAybe he starts out as an enforcer, but he gets his point across using an old Idea of mine, that I only remembered this morning. Quietly breaking into a house, and cooking and consuming meat in front of them as he amicably drives the conversation towards his goals.

6399753
I know which one I would be more worried about. The typical career criminal is into it for the money, not emotional satisfaction of hurting. Mr. Brutalo types like that tend to get taken out of the picture one way or the other before they can ever really establish themselves, because that kind of bodycount tends to bring down the wrong kind of attention of everyone.

6399744
Well answer for b is well exactly when did that fact stopped as humans from terrorism or organized crime, if b was true neighter would be an option.

As for a, yes both types of species if given a choice most often will decide to fuck off.
We're dealing here with a scenario where you can only either fight or do as told, in this case by the crime lord.

6399747
I dunno about that but I can see how it can be true, as I said, pit me against a lion with no options but to fight and I stand a small chance of winning, pit me against a 1 ton behemoth and I can only hope it will be quick.

It's all about size and numbers.
I don't say that ponies are wimps but they're far less prone to violence and fighting.
And are easily scared when in mass, if we go by the bunny stampede.

6399763
You seem to miss the point there, because the difference certainly does not come from people actually fighting off a comparable amount of big cat attacks on regular basis. You wouldn't have even a tiny chance of surviving that. It is not the fact that they're big and strong that makes them dangerous, it's that they're ludicrously aggressive. Neither lions nor hyenas nor cheetas will typically go after humans on their own initiative, we're not part of their regular prey scheme. You can pass by them fairly closely and they mostly won't care. A hippo may start attacking you simply for being in its line of sight. They are far more dangerous than rhinos or elephants, who are equally large or massively larger respectively.

6399769
On this I don't disagree, some animals are just crazy, I had this one guinea pig that would always bite the fuck out of anyone who would try to touch it.

My main point is that no sane creature be sapient or not will pick a fight with something twice its mass and if it has history of violence.

If that weren't a fact, things like slavery, terrorism or organized crime wouldn't as effective as they are, and ponies seem to be easily frightened.

6399753
I would like to point your attention to the movie Spider-Man: Homecoming. While it was so-so as a movie for me, it is a great way to show the massive difference and how much more impact the charismatic bad guy can make vs the brutal one; in this movie especially where we have both being the same character. The Vulture, as a costumed villain, is pretty much a failure as to eluding any kind of threat or making the viewer wary of him. However, the scene where Michael Keaton is in his car and quietly figures out that Peter Parker is Spiderman and he threatens him in a very calm manner is extremely disconcerting and makes me wish the villain had been just him with no super suit or gimmicks.

6399777

My main point is that no sane creature be sapient or not will pick a fight with something twice its mass and if it has history of violence.
If that weren't a fact, things like slavery, terrorism or organized crime wouldn't as effective as they are, and ponies seem to be easily frightened.

If that was so then there would be no rebellions, no people fighting back against criminals, etc. etc.

As for ponies easily being frightened.

They don't seem that frightened to me.

And that goes without all the guards who charged, however ineffectually, characters like Nightmare Moon or Tirek and all that.

6399784
And prey tell where were those rebellions and criminal fighting in pony history?
For us humans it's natural to fight to kill, we were hunters predators, ponies aren't.

As for those six, they're special, they have plot armor, if I had plot armor I would waltz straight into North Korea and punch its leader.
Better question yet where are the rest of the townsfolk? They're princess been kidnapped and they did nothing.

And do remind me what exactly happened when a zebra entered their town?

6399777
Now that there is a semi-agreement, let's look at this:
Terrorism is not effective. Never achieved anything either.

For us humans it's natural to fight to kill, we were hunters predators, ponies aren't.

Honestly, humans were as much predators as boars and bears are.

people actually fighting off a comparable amount of big cat attacks on regular basis. You wouldn't have even a tiny chance of surviving that.

You would be surprized. They change their minds very quickly. A single lion or smaller, that is. If they manage to pounce on you when you are not looking it's not technically a fight.

6399805
I'd say we were more like wolfs, nearly always hunting in packs with occasional lone wolf.

As for terrorism it is effective in what it does, sometimes, and that is to cause fear and terror among the populace.

6399811
Well, there were two options: Attrition or surprize. Hunting always has a low success rate, even among natural predators. Foraging was the major food source.

Terrorist attacks never achieved their goals. They helped politicians they consider enemies achieve theirs. It's the saddest joke ever, they both attack the same people...