Unicorn Wingnut[Final]

[Stainless Steel Fox]

Quotes

"You can't keep a good unicorn down!"

"Okay, so that last invention didn't work quite as expected, but I think I know what went wrong!"

"Uh oh!"

"Up up and away!"

[sharp intake of breath] "Hmmm... You need more than just a patch job to get that thing flying again."

"This should work with no problems!"

"You see this is why I always carry a parachute."

"Any sufficiently analysed magic is indistinguishable from science!"

"My will is strong, my cause is just, and my spanner is very, very large!"

Roleplay Type: World of Equestria RP

Name: Wingnut (aka Flight of Fancy)

Sex: Female

Age: Mare

Species: Unicorn

Eye Colour: Red/Purple

Coat Colour: Pibald Blue and Light Grey

Mane/Tail/Markings: Hair and mane are cut short and inexpertly, and follow the same two colour pattern as the body with the mane a slightly darker blue.

Physique: Fairly average proportions but slightly chubby (too many donuts).

Cutie Mark: Grey hex nut with a pair of white wings.

Origin/Residence: Her workshop dirigible.

Occupation: Airship and chariot/cart repair specialist and builder and fixer up of flying devices of all sorts. Inventor of flying devices when she can get the money together to fund her latest brainstorm.

Motivations: She wishes she had born a pegasi, like her parents. Since she wasn't she invents cool devices to make up for her lack of wings. She is also fascinated with the application of magic to technology.

Likes: Flying. Inventing stuff. Inventing stuff while flying... you get the idea. Oh, and donuts. And her favourite spanner.

Dislikes: The idea that any problem is not soluble by some application of a combination magic and technology, or failing that hitting it with a big spanner. When one of her inventions performs less than spectacularly.

Character Summary:

Wingnut was born under the name Flight of Fancy. Flight of Eagles and Misty Winter were a pair of pegasi who both worked in the great weather factories of Cloudsdale, Flight full time, Misty doing seasonal work in snowflake manufacture. Unfortunately, some where in the genetic dice-roll, someone rolled a double one. Their foal was a girl, and she had a sky coloured coat, but she was a unicorn.

Fortunately Clousdale General Hospital could care for her. Just as some earth pony couples produced pegasi or unicorns, pegasi couples occasionally produced earth ponies or unicorns. Her parents might have not gotten what they hoped for, but they did their best to care for their new child. But it wasn’t easy. They were not rich, especially as Misty Winter had to give up her part time job to care for Flight of Fancy full time and items like an enchanted romper suit that would let Fancy walk around on clouds without falling through them were very expensive.

Fortunately her mother had a cousin, Heat Haze, who worked for a pegsaus cargo company in Ponyville, who offered to take care of the young foal. So she grew up in her uncle’s household, and went through her school years in Ponyville, a contemporary of Cheerilee and Boxxy Brown. She grew up around flying carts and pegasus powered vehicles, and helped out in the workshop, fetching and carrying for the mechanics. It soon became clear she needed corrective glasses for reading and close up work.

She only got to see her real parents and the younger pegasus sister they had after her, Dawn Dew, when they could manage time away to visit, or in later years, when she could cadge a flight to Cloudsdale and back, and more importantly, a Cloud Hoof spell to let her walk around once there. Her visits were treats, and she always used some of her allowance to bring cakes from Ponyville for her family. She got teased, or rather bullied by a couple of the other students, for her glasses, her unusual colour pattern, being an outsider and the fact that she was a unicorn born to a pegasus family.

She quickly learned how to give as good as she got, and better, being quite smart, but the teasing, and her background in general did have one effect. She really wished he had been born a pegasus or rather felt that she should have been born a pegasus, and something went wrong. Being both smart and practical rather than whining about it, she set herself to overcoming the minor fact that she didn't have wings. One other thing stuck, the appelation 'Wingnut', which rather than treating it as the slur it was meant to be, she adopted as a nick-name. She started building gliders and balloons, toy ones at first, when she was still in school. She was average in most classes, but she started reading beyond her level in applied sciences, maths and magical theory.

Her raw power level wasn't enough to get her a scholarship to Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, and her family didn't have enough money to pay her fees, but she didn't really mind. She had a vocation, and got her training and tutoring in the cargo company workshop, and by doing it for herself. With her burgeoning interest in engineering, and her uncle's contacts she got a chance to help out at the rail depot. This meant she even managed to get some experience with the magical steam engines, fixing and helping to maintain them. She also read up on the burgeoning electrical technology, but had little chance to experiment with it.

When her magic came in, it wasn't surprising that the first spell she gained beyond basic light and telekinesis was the Cloud Hoof spell. It wasn't as if she hadn't studied the theory till she wore the print of the pages of the grimoire. Her other spells were also focussed on either flight, levitating things or making things, and she could even manifest small objects.

She build her first full sized glider and flew it in her last year of school, and that gained her her cutie mark. She was still considered a bit odd, but avoided the know-it-all label because she wasn't learining to show it off, but for her own purposes, and she was perfectly willing to help out other foals when asked. Her obsession was something of a running joke, but since she was once again always willing to let other foals play with the things she made, not a nasty one.

Once again, her family didn't have the money to put her through any university, so she went to work for the cargo company full time, and studied on her own. Her designs and ideas became more complex, and some were even worthwhile enough to patent, which gave her a bit of extra money to spend on inventing. She also became the 'go-to girl' for any problem which flumoxed the other techies. After a couple of years, she managed to wangle an interview for a job at one of the airship manufacturing corporations in Las Pegasus. She hoped to get into one of the R & D teams, working on the cutting edge of air vessel design.

Her lack of formal further education let her down, though she impressed enough people that she did manage to get into their enginerering division. She was sorry to leave Ponyville and her friends, but this was a chance to do bigger, better things. She took to the work like a duck to orange sauce. She got to play with bigger, shinier toys, and work on more complex and interesting problems, actually building and occasionally repairing the beasts. Once again she ended up being the one who they sent to fix problems no-pony else could. Of course, that didn't stop her trying to move over to R & D, and getting knocked back each time. She also made contacts among Las Pegasus' Cloud surfing community, and once again started messing around with ideas and designs in her home workshop.

Some of the other ponies at work were cloud surfers, and got to test out her boards, which proved to be very good. Building pro Cloudsurfing boards, and bringing the cost of making one for a non-pegasus down to something reasonable, ultimately made her quite a bit of money. She could have quit her job and gone into it full time, except she liked working on airships. Plus she had access to gear that could let her test out some of her wilder designs (on her own time). However, what she didn't like was working as part of a big company, especially one that kept ignoring her wishes to move into original design.

Ultimately she found a way around it. Airships and trains were complex pieces of machinery, and occasionally broke down beyond the capability of the on-board engineers to fix in situ, usually in the most inconvenient places. The shipping lines who owned them then had to divert another vehicle to tow them to a ship yard in Las Pegasus, Canterlot or Manehatten where they had the tools to repair them. Add to that the cost of transhipping cargio and annoyed passengers, and you had a big expensive mess. It would be so much easier and faster if some-pony could take the repair yard to the vehicle, but no single shipping line could afford to have a dedicated repair vessel.

No shipping line, but all of them together... Through talking to the various air-crews who brought in air-ships for repair, and collected new ones, she knew some ponies, who knew ofther ponies, who could ask very important ponies if they would be willing to pay a smaller fee, effectively insurance, to hire an independent contractor to do the job. There were enoiough yeses that she could take her idea to a bank, and with her savings and a mortgage buy up a a light cargo airship second hand and refit it as a travelling workshop. It helped that the bank president's son was a keen cloud surfer and used one of her boards.

It was left with practically no cargo capacity, but it had the machine tools and supplies to fix almost any problem, and a set of souped up engines that could get her across the Heartlands in a few hours. If a ship went down, or a train got stuck, they could send a pegasus, and she would come and fix it. She had living quarters on board, and the rest of her time was free, and she had all the equipment she could ask for to pursue her own ideas. The nearest thing she had to a permanent adress was the air-ship dock at Cloudsdale which was registered as her ship's home port.

Which brings us to the present day. Between her repair contracts, her patent royalties and doing various custom engineering jobs which get sent her way, she makes enough to live on, mantain her airship, the 'Equestria Spanner' and to buy materials for her own inventions. While she can often be found at the dock in Cloudsdale, she could appear anywhere in Equestria, either on her way to or from a job, or just because. While she has few close friends, and lives alone in fairly spartan accomodations (a cabin bunk on board ship) she's close to her family, both in Cloudsdale and Ponyville, and her wandering history has left her with hundreds of close acquaintances.

Personality-wise, she's an enthusiast. Part of her still wishes she'd been born a pegasus, but she's mostly at peace with her race, and more. She's quite aware that she wouldn't be able to build stuff half as cool without magic. She is firmly of the opinion that there is no problem that can't be solved by a suitable application of technology, or failing that whanging it with a big spanner until it works. She's quite willing to share that opinion with every-pony as well, though she doesn't push into every conversation. As in school, she's doing the things she does because she wants to, and to help ponies, not to show off.

She's friendly and tries to see the best in any-pony she meets, but she doesn't need company the way some ponies do. She does appreciate it when she has it though. One thing that helps to prevent her monomania being annoying is that she's also learned to listen, and is quite good at getting other ponies to talk to her. She enjoys solving problems, technical or otherwise, and will often jump in to help some-pony who needs it.

Of course she's not without... foibles. She will occasionally let her enthusiasm get the better of her, and try to solve a problem where it would be better to let the ponies involved sort it out for themselves. She's literal minded to a fault, and like a lot of smart ponies, enjoys wordplay and logic-chopping. And while her repairs and construction of existing technology are robust and meticulous, some of her own ideas scrape the edge of the envelope so hard, they make the stamp squeak in pain, and this sometimes means some of her more extreme inventions may fail fairly spectacularly. But in such cases she generally picks up the pieces and starts over.

Also, although she doesn't brag about it, she's quietly proud of what she's achieved, and is likely to get annoyed at someone dismissive of her talents or ambitions, or the fact that her skills come from practical work and self tutoring, rather than the right university. If that someone is a university edcucated themselves, they are likely to get a face full of angry unicorn.

Her magic is slightly above average in power due to constant use, but is focussed into specific fields. Her telekineis is unusually strong, a result of magical weight training when she was still gaining her magic. Her idea was to fly by levitating herself, and while she eventually got her lift capacity up above her own weight, she found trying to lift herself for more than a few moments made her exhausted, and trying to move herself about at more than a slow walk made her nauseous. She later found that that she wasn't the first to try it, and the reasons were inherent. However the experience wasn't without value, she can lift fairly large components, and when focussed on a small area, she can shape sections of sheet metal.

Spells working with clouds, lightning or air come easily to her, either from her pegasus background or her relentless focus on that area of spell-craft. The Cloud Hoof spell is one such example, but she can raise wind, cast weight reduction charms and even condense small amounts of water. She's tried to learn the Flutterwings spell, but so far with no success. One other spell effect she makes frequent use of is generating a controllable spark of lightning. While she can't generate a full fledged thunderbolt, she can sustain a spark for some time. One of her personal inventions is a pair of welding goggles, but with prisms built in so her line of sight was directed upwards, along the length of her horn. This basically means she can use her horn to solder, braze and even spark weld metals. However, on her first attempt to use it (after her mane grew back) she made the goggles a full face guard.

Her only other notable magic talent is manifestation. While she can't do living organisms, she can manifest small inamnimate objects, which can last for a couple of hours. An extremely useful talent for when she needs some specialist tool, or for rapid prototyping of a design by manifesting a component or scale model. It is however a talent she uses sparingly, as it is tiring.

While she's learned to invest objects with magic spells, that is more of a set of techiques rather than a spell. Her other skills are knowledge and practical skills in steam and mechanical engineering, a fair grasp of magical theory, varying to good in the area of item creation. She also understands business, though it's more of a necessity than a passion. And obviously she's studied meteorology and holds an air-ship masters licence.

Her outfit is practical. She wears a pair of glasses, to correct her vision, though she's not exactly blind without them. Her short, multi-pocketed jacket is fille with all sorts of tools and devices she might need, including a notebook and pen. She wears a set of cloud shoes she crafted which run off her own magic rather than stored power, giving them unlimited duration. She also wears a parachute almost all the time, a compact design of her own. While she could slow herself with telekinesis, judging it while falling would be difficult.

[Paradox]

I like how you addded quots. Very creative of you.

[MyLittlePonyTales]

You can remove [unicorn] from the title since the topic tag is there.

[MyLittlePonyTales]

How is this Application coming along?

[Stainless Steel Fox]

I still have to do a personality piece, and detail some of the tools she'll be using on a regular basis.

[Stainless Steel Fox]

Alrighty then. It's finally beaten into shape. Unleash the Cerberuseseses of war!

[MyLittlePonyTales]

Alrighty then. It's finally beaten into shape. Unleash the Cerberuseseses of war!

...once the app has been marked as [Final].

[brianblackberry]

For Great Justice!

[Skye]

Okay, this has gone above and beyond reasonable limits for application lengths. While applications are supposed to be good and descriptive, there is a limit on how reasonably long they should be. So please chop about 95% of this out and present only the parts that are crucial to defining the character as the character, not telling her entire story. That part, you should save and attach later as a separate response to your app here.

In addition, there are components that deal with hard numbers in here. These components are things that we cannot verify in the show directly, because it is of course a cartoon. So please remove these components for your application itself. The rest of it might be helpful for things like HoE when we get that rolled out, but otherwise try to be vague and merely colorful in your descriptions.

[Stainless Steel Fox]

Right. I've done my best to slim it down. I couldn't remove 95% and still have a a meaningful character history, but I've done my best to remove the excess and any specific figures. I only included them to show I was thinking about the limitations of the setting.

History to explain how she got here. Since she is an unusual character, I need detail to show how she came to be. One paragraph to show her present circumstances. Four paragraphs to show her personality. Another three for magic, which is critical to any unicorn, and something I want to get okayed. One paragraph to skills, and one paragraph to physical description.

I'm an engineer, I love designing things. I wanted to do this right have people be able to see the Equestria Spanner in their heads. So I may have gotten a bit carried away. I specifically wanted to show that although she has designed a pair of mechanical wings, they are inferior to a natural pair, and wing-power is canon. In fact the main reason I went into detail is so that I don't get jumped on if I get this character passed, and then some-one decides they don't like one of my inventions.

[Skye]