Title:           TFN: Act 1, part 1
Author:          Bikes_
Pastebin link:   http://pastebin.com/9CP2BS5X
First Edit:      Wednesday 23rd of March 2016 11:54:16 PM CDT
Last Edit:       Last edit on: Thursday 24th of March 2016 12:00:00 AM CDT

Okay so it started way back over a year and a half ago real time and several months game time.  Several Equestrians were hand-picked to go on a voyage, on orders to explore and 'spread harmony', as deemed by a legal document possessed by one Captain Mast, the owner of The Adamantine, the ship that would sail to the lands of the North.  The ponies chosen to go were Volgarr Rraglov, a whaler and natural-born sailor, Northern Spring, a naturalist and outdoorsmare, Victoria Faraday, a diplomat and a scholar, and Wrought Iron, a muscular brute with an aptitude for smithing and alcohol of all kinds.  They met, greeted eachother, and set sail.
 
A few weeks into their voyage, they made first contact with outsiders.  A small fleer of caribou -- three ships, all with cannons.  There was a tense moment where the guns were pointed at eachother and the caribou demaded that the Equestrians give up their gunpowder on threat of them getting shot.  This was possible due to translations done by a prisoner on board one of the caribou ships -- Freyja, a very large pegasus (?) that was bound and chained to the ship floor.  Long story short, they were smart, the cannonballs flew, all three of the 'bou ships sank, Freyja was rescued, and they sailed on to the North under Freyja's reluctant direction.
 
On the way there they met a sobbing, seaward unicorn starving and covered in salt that kept crying about someone named Ori Tahdista.  She was given too much water and promptly died.
 
The ship landed in a town called Sunterhearth, on the southern edge of the continent.  It's hear that Captain Mast revealed he was not to stick around, and promptly left the adventurers marooned in this foreign land, with horses with wings called pterippi that were twice as large as any flaphorses they saw back home.  So, they went north, and spoke to the villagers, who didn't exactly roll out the red carpet with their choices of words.
 
After finally managing to overcome the racism of the bartender and the patrons that were actively violent (with the help of the young blacksmith's apprentice in the town), they rented a room.  It was in this inn that they made friends with Kolibri, a budding pterippi bard, that still travels with them to this day.  She's totally got a thing with Volgarr now.
 
They were then interrupted in the dead of the bloody night and were given a message from a guy named High Chief Garrag.
 
The letter basically said 'you come here or I'm going to deport you to caribou lands', so, naturally, they decided to listen to him!
 
After getting directions, they set north, for the Crossroads, but needed to stop by a small military camp first to get a much-needed chariot to haul everything.  In their efforts to get a chariot, they wound up fucking up the entire military camp so badly that the Captain there later died of heart failure from all of the stress incurred that day.  It's really hard to fucking explain.  Volgarr seduced a mare by digging a hole.  One of the trainees punched another and broke his neck.  It was a bad day.
 
So then they go on to the Crossroads, a large trading town that worked as a go-to place for anyone wishing to travel.  They met a stallion named Timber, a poor, cockney little shit that had nowhere else to turn.  With his help, they got directions to where they needed to go next -- Camp Marrowshire -- on the western edge of the continent.  But not before speaking to the 16-year-old mayor mare, who had an incredible stress case on her back.
 
She said she was too busy keeping the Crossroads from going bankrupt to do anything else, and she had came across a concerning artifact -- a book, larger than the average horse, that practically reeked of funky voodoo shit.  She said 'find an appraiser somewhere'.  So they took it and did.  They tried to read it, but, to their surprise, it was written in Old Equestrian.  They couldn't make heads or tails of anything.
 
Meanwhile, Cobbs, caught wind of this.  Cobbs was a businessmare; she owns most of the stone quarries and gem mines in the North, and has a reputation for being rich and greedy as all hell.  When she heard that this book came from one of the mines that had been abandoned due to some sort of toxic gas leak, she quickly wanted to cover it up.  So, she hired the new groupie, Timber, to sneak into the vault and plant some evidence that suggested this instead came from the caribou.  It worked, and everything was merry for her.
 
So, they go on their way.  They passed through forested land, and, on the way ran into a man named Klister.  They recognized him, since he was on a big 'WANTED' poster in both the Crossroads and Sunterhearth.  10,000 bit bounty on his head.
 
After some talking, they learned he was there in the woods to keep his son out of the war, since the draft was neverending and 95% of all stallions were out on the front.  So, after some talking, they convinced Klister to beat up his helmet and give it to them so they could convince the Chief he was dead.  They also took his legendary war polar bear, Krigansikte, upon his request to give him a new home and a new purpose.
 
In these same woods, they found a home that was ransacked by caribou.  In the back, in a giant ice chest, was a humongous metal pony thing.  After some magic, it woke up, and answered to the unicorn Northern Spring.  Her designated unit name was Aisha, and she was a war golem in the Sacred War.  Which...  None of the southerners knew about yet, but Freyja had an idea, and was fuckin' _horrified._
 
So they go on to Camp Marrowshire and meet this High Chief guy, who ends up being a big softie that heard of these southerners and saw opportunity rather than something to despise.  They talked, and it was _here_ that the _real_ mission began -- they clarified they were here to spread harmony, and Garrag told them just how daunting of a task it was.  But.  He said it was not impossible, and he would help them every step of the way.  Here, they learned about the neighbors in the North, and how nobody ever got along.  They also heard about the unicorns in the mountains with rumored hordes of undead.  It was, to this day, one of the turning points for the canon, and it's where I believe everything really began.
 
In this town, they ran into a familiar face -- the blacksmith's apprentice from Sunterhearth.  He said he was picked for the draft and would be going off to war.  This was acceptable to him, since he had always wanted to serve.
 
He, however, was very jealous when he learned that Wrought Iron was going to go to Eldigfjall, the capital, and speak to the most prestigious smith in the pterippi lands.  This fat fuck had done nothing, and here he'd been here for a week and already accomplished what he couldn't dream to do himself.
 
Victoria didn't like this.  So, she spoke to Garrag.
 
After a double crit and a bloody perfect choice of words, she convinced Garrag not only to not send Styrk to the front, but to send him to Eldigfjall instead.  She'd spoken highly of his craft.  He's now an apprentice with Sir Hammercrack himself in the Cauldron itself in the city of Eldigfjall.
 
Meanwhile, Garrag agreed to take his place.  But not without his own plans first.