The Airship Crash

[Chapien]

Hello and good morning, I had a brilliant idea for a roleplay and I wanted to share it all with you and gauge how many of you would be interested.

The general idea of the RP is that a bunch of ponies in an airship for various purposes (whatever you want, really) all crash land somewhere in Equestria. The ponies are then forced to work together in order to survive until they are found and sub sequentially rescued, which will take as long as the thread remains fun/fresh.

The idea I have for the thread is an airship transporting ponies from Manehatten all the way to Stalliongrad, with the crash occurring somewhere north of Trottingham, perhaps in the mountains in that region, on the way to Stalliongrad.

Please post if you are interested and your ideas for the thread here.

[RarityDash]

As I've already said, I'm definitely in for this. Sounds like a fun idea.

[Dunder]

I'm in on this!

[Snowshoe]

This sounds fun. I saw "Crash" and thought I could use my search and rescue OC, but he's too far out of range for this. However, I have others I could use :3

[Gorgutz]

I would Partake, although, if any of you are here on steam, message me when you start to RP, Id is, Rasputin. With the purple monster on.

[Chapien]

As I've already said, I'm definitely in for this. Sounds like a fun idea.

I'm in on this!

This sounds fun. I saw "Crash" and thought I could use my search and rescue OC, but he's too far out of range for this. However, I have others I could use :3

I would Partake, although, if any of you are here on steam, message me when you start to RP, Id is, Rasputin. With the purple monster on.

Fantastic! I will let you all know when the thread is up, which should be in about a day or so.

[Concord]

Well I may be late, and new to the party but I'd like to join in.

[Chapien]

Of course you can join!

[SteelEagle]

Valen is in.

[RarityDash]

Valen is in.

Oh, wow... Valen just has no luck ever...

[SteelEagle]

lol, well, I had to use his Manehattan roots for something eventually.

[WhiteSlash]

Im in XD If im not to late that is

[flutterscotch]

The Misfit crew of the Rocinante could be on the rescue teams... but I think they'd screw things up worse...which might also be fun.

[Chapien]

It is not yet too late for any of you to join and I am glad so many people are interested! The more the merrier, I say. The thread will either go up today or tomorrow, stay tuned.

[Chapien]

The thread is up! http://www.canterlot.com/topic/10817-the-airship-crashopen/

Feel free to go post! The first round or two of posting will take place before the crash occurs, in order to introduce the characters and describe exactly how the crash occurs, thus furthering character development/Role-play.

[TemplarFrost]

Sorry to intrude or anything. But am I to late to join?

[Chapien]

Not at all sir! Go ahead to the IC thread and post!

[TemplarFrost]

Not at all sir! Go ahead to the IC thread and post!

Great, thanks. I'll post my OC, Percival. He's an Army-Medic pony. But tomorrow. Right now I'm tired as heck.

[Xiee]

How far is the crash from Stalliongrad? I may be able to get Argenta into this since its on the North section of the RPs. I can make Argenta part of the rescue team coming from Stalliongrad since her unit was already out in the mountains doing military exercises with some recruits. A Pegasus messenger flies to her unit informing them that an airship failed to arrive at the designated time and that scouts reported seeing an airship going down in the area. I'll have to post a bit later until the actual crash though.

[RarityDash]

Just to clarify this for everyone since I've been talking to Chap a lot about this thread and a number of people have mentioned rescue teams now, but from what I understand, the focus of the thread is going to be on the ponies on the airship in the aftermath of the crash, at least at first. I am not sure any sort of external rescue effort will fall within the scope of the thread, and it certainly won't be central to it.

[Chapien]

If you look at the map in the World Lore section of the forums, the crash site will be north of Trotingham and south of Stalliongrad, in that mountain range. But as Phil said, though rescue forces may be integral towards the end of the thread, that may not be for a long, long time. The point of the thread is to develop characters who probably don't like each other by forcing them to work together in what is essentially an extended emergency.

[Xiee]

Well then, I'll be sitting this one out it seems.

[SteelEagle]

I hate to be a stick in the mud, but:

" Remembering his training about magical barriers, he closed his eyes shut, and with all his might, he conjured a huge force-field around the front of the Airship."

- Considering the only ones we've seen use barriers in such a way are the extremely skilled and gifted Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor, it seems a tad disconcerting that a combat medic pony can summon a barrier like he does. Just for future reference, being a unicorn does not automatically give you the ability, through training, to cast any spell at a high level.

* I did what I did in my post so you wouldn't have to edit, but Concord, you can't Godmod in the future. Forcing everypony using magic to duck and cover(basically) not only means you control other characters, but it also borders on Mary Sue territory. Remember Concord and Templar that while you play REA Unicorns, you are not Shining Armor or Twilight Sparkle clones or analogues. Your characters are interesting and good enough to not have to rely on magic spells that are highly specialized or not yet seen in use by even the most powerful unicorns of the day. If this comes off as mean, I apologize.

[TemplarFrost]

I hate to be a stick in the mud, but:

" Remembering his training about magical barriers, he closed his eyes shut, and with all his might, he conjured a huge force-field around the front of the Airship."

- Considering the only ones we've seen use barriers in such a way are the extremely skilled and gifted Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor, it seems a tad disconcerting that a combat medic pony can summon a barrier like he does. Just for future reference, being a unicorn does not automatically give you the ability, through training, to cast any spell at a high level.

Well, -with all due respect, mind you- Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor are just two ponies. I bet Equestria has at least hundreds of thousands of them, and please, correct me if i'm wrong, but I never see that Shining Armor was extremely skilled and gifted. Well, just Shining Armor, because I admit that Twi is pretty boss. Well, I know what you're thinking...

"But Temp, Shining Armor is a high-ranking Captain in the Royal Guard!"

Well, here is my case number 1. Shining Armor is only a Captain, because he got there first. Basically, he started off as a Warrant Officer, then made his way up to Captain due to experience. (Well, due to board canon. They never really touched up upon it on the show.) And on the other hand, Percival is just a Private First Class, yes, but he's new, and he will make his way up the ranks sooner or later, just like shining. So magical capability based on military rank is not necessarily true. Other than Shining being a Captain and all, I really don't see how you could say that he is "extremely skilled and talented." Again, please inform me if I'm wrong or missing something. Oh yes, I almost forgot, Shining and Candace put up a huge barrier over all of Canterlot, but we will never know how much of that magic Shining put into the spell. Who knows? They could have been a perfect couple, and each contributed to half of the spell, or on the other hand, he could just be putting in a small portion. Like those guys who put a finger on a particular object being lifted, and say he's "helping." We'd never know.

And if somehow I missed something about my first case, and it's completely irrelevant. He're is my case number 2.

I personally believe that force fields are not set in stone, and I believe that they are three factors that define the quality of a force-field. Thickness, size and encasement. Thickness is how thick and dense the barrier is, size is how large the barrier is, and encasement is how much it practically covers. For instance, perfect encasement is a full circle, perhaps in mid-air. Semi circles are for the ground, and anything lower, like a quadrant, or even an octant, is for weaker-class unicorns, or for smaller targets. What i'm basically saying, is that even thought Twi could do it, Percy could do it too, but possibly weaker. And also, they're are many, many different types of magic, from Alteration, Conjuration, Illusion, to even Restoration or Destruction. (Totally ripped of of Skyrim, lol). So basically, even if Twi is great at barriers, she might stink at restoration, which my OC is actually good at. Just like savants, IRL. There is some dude, that could barely walk, or speak. But when he went on a helicopter on a flyover of Rome. He was able to re-draw the entire city on a huge canvas. Building for building. And I ain't done yet. We all know that Twilight is pretty boss at magic, that part we agree on. But who said that force fields are so, "hard to cast" in the first place, after all, we only saw a few ponies cast them. They could be one of the most simplistic, and basic spells in the book. And even if Barriers really are hard to do, doesn't means that other ponies can't pick it up as well. For instance, Chuck Norris could do a perfect roundhouse, which is very hard to do. But a bum on the street could pick it up, and do it as well.

Case number 3!

On top of the huge case I built, I still have one more thing to say.

Panic.

Yes, Panic. you have to remember, Percy was in the middle of an airship crash. And even IRL, whenever you are under extreme stress or pressure, your body will kick into overdrive, and your speed and strength increases. Like the whenever a mother's child get's stuck under a car, the mother would suddenly get super-strength and lift the car to her son/daughters' safety. I'm sure you've heard that, our similar versions of that story countless times before. what i'm trying to say is that Percival was experiencing the exact same thing, and his power was amplified due to extreme stress and danger.

Were not friends yet? BS. I'll fix that injustice.

[RarityDash]

Consider this direct quote I just lifted from the transcripts:

Twilight Sparkle: Okay, okay, I get it. You've got a really important job protecting all of Canterlot with a force field only you can conjure up.

The language is pretty clear there. Shining Armor is the only one capable of generating a barrier big enough to cover the entire city of Canterlot. Twilight doesn't even know Cadance is involved at this point, so this indicates that the power to protect Canterlot like this is his alone. I think that makes it pretty clear that he is in fact incredibly skilled and gifted at defensive magic, and probably indeed the best at it. The fact that his cutie mark is a shield surrounded by magical sparkles supports the idea that barriers and other defensive magic are in fact his special talent.

Percival's cutie mark is a cross which makes me think his magical talent would be in healing ponies or something of the sort. I do kind of thus agree with Steel that Percival would not be able to create a barrier as big as Shining Armor can. Pretty much only Twilight, who's talent is for magic itself, has more than one area of magic where she absolutely excels.

That said, from what I gather, the shield being generated here isn't on anywhere near the same level as Shining Armor's. The scope of a city and big castle is much different from that of a single airship. I think a well trained unicorn creating a smaller, perhaps weaker barrier to cover just the front of the ship and absorb some of the ship's momentum is not out of the range of feasibility. Of course, Steel is right that people RPing unicorns should always use caution; it is very easy to go too far and make your character seem overpowered.