Captain Rainy Cicada’s wingpony of the CRW 48th Tactical Fighter, “The Black Licorice”
DECLASSIFIED BIOGRAPHY
Milk was a Pinkie Pie clone that had wandered off during the incident where she was kidnapped by a mentally unstable criminal scientist. His experiments, unethical as they were, had unique effects on her unnatural biology. Unintentionally, he had turned her into a normal being, at least as normal as it can be considered*. He was eventually caught but the raid on his lab ended up destabilizing the premise, forcing the police unit to evacuate with only him, as the facility would collapse and be buried by soil and unstable magic.
*She is still unsure how to reconcile with the circumstances of her “birth”, knowing the alternative
Years later, as it became safe again and erosion revealed the site, an excavation effort was made where the test subjects, frozen in magical cryogenic chambers, were formerly discovered. While recovering in the field hospital, Milk found a copy of The Friendship Journal, where she learned of the fate of most of the other clones. For the interviewer, she quickly made up a name, the years frozen and past experiments had made her hair a mess, but she could not avoid her cutie mark being recorded. Fortunately, Princess Twilight was not around and despite similarities, no one was interested enough to formerly cross compare.
Fleeing as soon as she could nevertheless, she kept a low profile working on farms that don’t ask for formal information to make a living while also keeping a fake cutie mark tattoo when she wasn’t wearing clothes. At one point, she had been employed and informally trained to be a crop duster pilot where she discovered she had a ion for (mechanical) flying.
At one point, she would meet Rainy, a frequent customer and the two would become friends, eventually close enough he trusted her with her secret. After the formation of the CRW, Rainy would help sponsor her entry taking her as his formal student, and being a new international organization, bureaucracy was more primitive and had plenty of loopholes to exploit to avoid accessing Equestrian records as much as possible (including a real flying license).
Success unfortunately, would be as much of a bane as it was a blessing, as their fame would see them invited to many high profile gatherings and PR events. One day, at an increasingly hedonistic party, Milk would be victim to a punch bowl prank, revealing her true cutie mark, while Princess Twilight herself happened to be close by. Rainy immediately rushed to defend his wingpony, and fortunately Twilight was more stunned by reminiscence than combative. A conversation, including also visiting Rainbow Dash who confirmed Milk had a normal soul*, would finally resolve the issue and Twilight would formalize her legal status so there would be no more issues in of citizenship privileges.
*Which would distress Twilight a bit as she questioned if the other clones were also actually “alive” or not. Rainbow is still today, “too busy” to check the thousands of deaths that year in the record.
Luck however, would continue to be a double edged sword for her, as Twilight would often visit both to study and try to socialize as though she was Pinkie, it would only get worse when Pinkie herself, an ascended spirit of celebration capable of crossing the realms of the living and dead as well, would in on occasion. This causes a certain degree of annoyance to her as she is an incompetent baker and hates balloons.
@Draco Dei
They don’t have infinite stockpile of magic to visit anytime or as long as they want, they need to spend time recharging after a while, but yes as long as they do their jobs, primoridals don’t care what they do off-duty with remaining stamina and are ok giving priority to mortals. There’s no reason to lay anyone off, whether death rates from nameless creatures are high or low just depends entirely on other circumstances, same with wild animal attacks.
The CMC have never only just found marks, but also what to make of marks like Zipporwhil and Trouble Shoes. The two of them have hobbies anyway when there’s nothing to do.
@applepieofdeath
Hmm… so death rates continue to be elevated due to the nameless creatures, or are the Primordials just not into laying people off? Perhaps because they don’t bore easily, and (as you mentioned) don’t have an economy reall, wo why not allow the death reapers etc to continue visit the mortal world and/or venting their combative urges, or whatever?
Also, to frame a question at the Crusaders, rather than at you:
You talk about helping people understand their lives, but do any sorts of Marks have a hard time finding a place in the Afterlife, or do Marks vanish on Death (if so, that must have given Starlight and/or yourselves a nasty turn…)?
@Draco Dei
Intelligent enemies are too varied to classify, just like evil wizards in a variety of fantasies, you have your typical world domination types, tragic villains who just need a friend, greedy black markets, etc.
Nameless creatures as the name implies, are related to the Nameless One crisis, mindless creatures skirting the line between death and life with the intent to destroy all, the only balance is that since they can touch the living and the dead, they can be touched (killed) back. In all honesty though, while I will properly describe them at some point, I deliberately made them kind of bland and generic, they’re more placeholder macguffin like villains. The whole Nameless One in the intro video was kinda supposed to be a joke set up, like a “oh this is grimdark world that has seen hell on earth, with countless miseries and tragedies with the only light being that it’s over” but followed with “yeah that’s bad and all but the real problem is that death is understaffed”.
@applepieofdeath
Perhaps make a thread to post on the forums here, and link from the comments on pictures to that thread each time, and use the pictures in-line as appropriate, and maybe alsp have an alert post i. The thread if you post something that doesn’t merit a long post in the forum thread it would be a good in-lime illustration for?
Also, I wasn’t looking for a list of crimes, so much as I was a “beastiary” (including intelligent creatures if that was obvious). What are “nameless creatures”, and how do they move, think, fight, etc. Is there just one sort with various degrees of power, or do they divide well in other ways? What are their motives, or does that vary as greatly as it does for mortal police? Which, if any, targets can be negotiated with? Is their any sentence other than destruction for incorporeal creatures, such as jail (and if so, does any sentence less than ‘eternity’ make any sense?)?
Don’t feel lile you need to answer these questions HERE and/or NOW, but “eventually” and “somewhere” would be nice…[Fluttershy]if you don’t mind.[/Fluttershy]
@Draco Dei
Reapers bring any soul back to the spirit realm, some end up being recycled/reincarnated due to how mentally broken, underdeveloped, or other reasons, but they ferry them all the same. I need to explain how spirits and the material world relate in my AU at some point, would need to think of how though, judging by the reception of my last lore dump, huge blocks of texts don’t go as well here. Understandable as there aren’t titles on Derpi for context preview.
Twilight questioned it though, because Frosting has been physically modified, and she has no idea if the clones were alive, mindless magical automatons simply emulating taught behavior*, or is Frosting the only unique result of said experiments. Rainbow has been too lazy to look at the records because if the other clones had died and whatever was sent back to the pool wasn’t their whole being and their spirits been sent to an afterlife, she arguably committed mass murder against a group just for being frauds and dumbasses. Equestria has made peace with far worse communities without violence.
*Yes, yes, I know this sounds like an argument from AI sapience debates, I can assure that is coincidence.
Red Wardens are primarily about rescuing souls, they cannot detect a threat until a soul has been stolen, and only started going on patrols because of the rise of nameless creatures, they cannot kill or even touch anything besides creatures that are of more spectral nature, and can only incapacitate living abs under certain circumstances (will go into that later). That’s why ever since the Nameless One crisis had blurred the boundary of the mortal and immaterial realm to an extent and allowed interactions, sight, and by extension abuse of spirits, the living cooperate with the reapers even before the CRW was formed, to handle what reapers cannot care about.
It’s not really possible to answer everything they fight, that’s like asking who are the enemies of the police. Ignoring cases of political oppression, the only consistent answer is lawbreakers, which is beyond inconsistent.
I chose not to tag Rainy as such because I use him as my avatar, if I ever play, or make a video and self-insert myself, I’m likely just going to recreate him in some capacity, I already do so in my livestream thumbnails so he’s not exclusively for my AU.
“Smoking chocolate” got a laugh out of me. Also, I’m not sure the reapers would be involved in that incident, even if the clones had souls, or if they were they would have had an alternate destination from their usual one… Unless I am mising, and the specification WASN’T “send them back to the pool”?
My personal fanon is that souls in the pool aren’t so much ‘dead’, as ‘not quite conceived(1)’, and are happy enough while they wait for the next time the pool gets used. Perhaps they will have learned from experience and behave better the next time and/or
(1)I use this word rather than ‘born’, because I am Pro-Life.
Interesting bit about Pinkie. I thought, at the time, that there wasn’t anything that deep behind her differences at the meet-up. Clearly I was mistaken!
What I am especially interested in: OTHER than necromancers and their ilk what are the natures, origins, tactics, organization (if any), etc of the enemies the guys in red fight?
Also: should this have the Friendship Afterlife tag?
They don’t have infinite stockpile of magic to visit anytime or as long as they want, they need to spend time recharging after a while, but yes as long as they do their jobs, primoridals don’t care what they do off-duty with remaining stamina and are ok giving priority to mortals. There’s no reason to lay anyone off, whether death rates from nameless creatures are high or low just depends entirely on other circumstances, same with wild animal attacks.
Edited
Hmm… so death rates continue to be elevated due to the nameless creatures, or are the Primordials just not into laying people off? Perhaps because they don’t bore easily, and (as you mentioned) don’t have an economy reall, wo why not allow the death reapers etc to continue visit the mortal world and/or venting their combative urges, or whatever?
You talk about helping people understand their lives, but do any sorts of Marks have a hard time finding a place in the Afterlife, or do Marks vanish on Death (if so, that must have given Starlight and/or yourselves a nasty turn…)?
Intelligent enemies are too varied to classify, just like evil wizards in a variety of fantasies, you have your typical world domination types, tragic villains who just need a friend, greedy black markets, etc.
Perhaps make a thread to post on the forums here, and link from the comments on pictures to that thread each time, and use the pictures in-line as appropriate, and maybe alsp have an alert post i. The thread if you post something that doesn’t merit a long post in the forum thread it would be a good in-lime illustration for?
Reapers bring any soul back to the spirit realm, some end up being recycled/reincarnated due to how mentally broken, underdeveloped, or other reasons, but they ferry them all the same. I need to explain how spirits and the material world relate in my AU at some point, would need to think of how though, judging by the reception of my last lore dump, huge blocks of texts don’t go as well here. Understandable as there aren’t titles on Derpi for context preview.
(1)I use this word rather than ‘born’, because I am Pro-Life.
Edited because: Added two last paragraphs.