Author's Notes:

Thanks to the editors: (who did most of the work, I Bendy didn't do that much) redskin122004, Kizuna Tallis, Jed R and Doctor Fluffy.

The HLF

Full Title: Human Liberation Front

Founder: Reverend James Thomas (No longer affiliated with group)
Group Creation Date: March 16, 2019
Current status: Fractured (assault of 'Human Only' shantytown and de facto capital Defiance on August 27, 2022, led by Colonel Marcus Renee and troops composed of US Marines/Army/PHL personnel, scattered chain of command)

“Attracting the HLF to a battle is like having a blizzard come to your firefight. It hurts the enemy, but it’s uncontrollable, both people are hurt, and it can’t be bargained with… it sure as hell can be stopped, but there’s just so many.”
Yael Ze’ev, Israeli-affiliated PHL soldier, speaking to a disguised Viktor Kraber in Bethlehem, NH.

Maximilian Yarrow once said that history would not be kind to the HLF.

As a man who attempted the sisyphean task of reforming the HLF, it’s hard not to understand his pessimism. In reports of their history, there’s far more records of them being a hindrance than a help, and when compared with the PHL, they come off as far less heroic. Yet, as Harry Wales once said to me, nothing was evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so.

In a sense, the HLF are pitiable. Not for what they are… but for what they once were. Consider the HLF what you will, but remember their roots - they were once a support group started by the well meaning and grieving father, Reverend James Thomas.

Not A Smile
A poem by Reverend James Thomas
Here stands my daughter Harriet, on four hooves
Her new form? Oh, she approves.
Joy etched on her new pony face,
How happy she is to have left the human race!
Listen to her, it’s the best thing she could have done,
to become a pony, and praise the Tyrant Sun
I once knew a man who found himself to be a girl,
Few like that one proselytize, they’re rare in this world,
Yet here she is, urging, pleading me
I don’t want to, can’t she see?
Nothing’s right with her, since she changed she has always grinned,
But her eyes, like glass orbs, are dead with no glint.
She claims to be full of joy, all the while,
Look into her eyes, glassy and dead! No, that is not a smile!
Something has been made from the remains of my daughter,
It wonders if I am to join it, or be sent to the slaughter,
She stares unthinking, no emotions to call her own,
No drive but to bow before that tyrant’s throne!
Something has taken all that made my daughter Harriet,
Given her hooves and reduced her to some grotesque marionette
In future’s time, she’ll trot at our machine guns, one in death-bound waves,
Just one among thousands of brainwashed slaves
She’s not the only one who’ll do it, there’s too many more,
It is for certain she isn’t, never will be, the daughter I cared for.”

Though this poem was written after the Three Weeks of Blood, with the timeframe somewhat compressed to amplify the tragedy, a fact that the poet admits to, its impact is undeniable. It perfectly encapsulates the horror of many parents who found their children ponified, be they Reverend Thomas, Viktor Marius Kraber, or even Michael Carter.

James Thomas was, as the title states, a Presbyterian reverend - though one thing he’s somewhat less known for is his keen interest in poetry. He wrote countless anti-Newfoal poems, collected in his book “Lost within Hoof’s Reach,” though ‘Not a Smile’ is perhaps his most famous, having become cherished among the ponies of the so-called ‘True Equestria’ for its presentation in the ‘Dispatches From a Dying World’ gallery of the Great Human Exhibition organized by the Crowe Labs personnel Isaac Acevedo, Isaac Dan Der Grimnebulin, and Button Mash.

While his poetry was unremarkable pre-Emergence, with a small yet dedicated base of readers, it skyrocketed in popularity as the number of Newfoals grew, and with it, suspicion of Equestria.

“What did you have in mind when you started the HTF?”

“This isn’t going to be another interview where I get blamed for the HLF, is it?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“I get those all the time. Find it rather tiring, actually.”

“Well, start from the beginning.”

“Harriet had Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The odds weren’t good for her survival, we didn’t think she’d live past twenty. I had people, some of the ones that almost make me regret starting the HTF, who called me a bastard for urging her to take i-”

“You suggested it to her?”

“Yes. I did. And I would tell those early radicals: ‘Have a child one day. Hold his or her lifeless body in your arms, and then tell me how wrong it was to want him or her to survive.’ It’d usually get them to quiet down. But now… now, I almost feel as if I should have let her die.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I promise you - you couldn’t have known what would happen to her.”

“I should've… I should’ve done something, anything!”

”It was not your fault. I promise you that.”

“It’s just… the thing that came back was not her. Nothing about her was right, it was like someone sent back an actor to imitate her. A bad actor with about all the understanding of human behavior as the G-man.”

“I’ve known people like that-”

“The one from Half-Life. With the weird enunciation, uncanny valley… things like that.”

"One way, or another something like the HLF would have risen. I don’t think anyone could stopped it from happening. They only see it not happening if the war hadn’t start in the first place."

"Yeah…. I guess… you’re right."

“How did you start the HTF, though?”

“The magic of Facebook. I was talking to an old friend, Xavier Peterson, whose son had gotten brain damage in a car crash and was undergoing physical therapy, and I was telling him not to do this. But then, Xave, he said a friend of his that was a doctor kept on telling him it was a good idea, and his friend’s son took the potion and Xave couldn’t stand him. I think Xave’s friend was a fledgling PER. He’s probably dead now.”

“I see.”

“But that got me thinking. I couldn’t be the only one, so I contacted a guy I’d met awhile back, and told him I wanted his help at making a forum on ponification experiences. Then, I started getting donations - enough that I could do something more. So, right as Harriet just left the house one day without even a goodbye, I had a nonprofit group on my hands. Donations were flowing in for my investigation, I was just drowning, delirious with support. I’d contacted a man from New Hampshire named John Heald-”

“Johnny C Heald? The guy from the Alaska Incident?

“The very same. He was good friends with a New Hampshire congresswoman, and he managed to convince her to help with the investigation. And for a while, things were good… but I started getting scary people there. America has weird people, Ms. Quill. I had extremists. Conspiracy theorists, like this one crazy man named Birch. Said he thought he saw a couple ponies kidnapping a man…. back in 2016, no less.”

“I’ve heard of Birch. How did Verity and Michael Carter enter, though?”

“I welcomed them with open arms, I’m sad to say. See, I’ve tried to be accepting of transgender issues. I didn’t understand them, but I didn’t have to be an ass about it. And seeing what happened to Jazmin… that was wrong. It was then I knew - that damn potion doesn’t turn people into better people. It just made whatever Celestia wanted. Got a lot of cheers for the actions I took, but…” (sighs) “I wanted to be Gandhi. I wanted to save us from the potion through nonviolence. I wanted to be Lyra. I wanted to be brave. But that vile horsefucking whore Reitman outplanned me. No matter what I said to anyone from the FDA, they’d fall back on circular reasoning! It was like a glitch in a dialogue tree. So, after one failure too many, things went critical.”

“What do you mean?

“I had people saying that if the government wouldn’t do anything useful here, then they would. There was talk about armed insurrection. One of the first signs that my group had gone crazy was when newer members had said ‘once the barrier is down, we shall nuke horse land to fucking ashes’. Well, actually before that when they started talking about war. I don’t know what’s happened to John Birch at this point, but… I’m glad he’s gone. The only thing worse than his paranoia was the paranoia he could stir up in other people.“

“When was the turning point?”

“I was… I believe in nonviolence, and I wanted this to end peacefully. But I must admit I was at least somewhat happy with the May Day Attacks. I was happy that just for that day, there were people that wouldn’t go through what my Harriet did. But then, in the Three Weeks…” (sighs) “I saw all the reports of the people that flocked under the banner. Aeron Grant, Feng Gui Zhou, Burakgazi, Kraber, Janvier, Jelisaveta’s burnings, Joe Rither, Brendan McCartin, everyone that claimed they were Old Skinner, Valentin using fake PHL to lure ponies in, Cesar, Rutabiyiro, Lovikov… Bastards, every one of them.”

“What about Yarrow?”

“I’m happy at least about him. But the task of bringing order to that chaos? It’d be sisyphean, to say the least. In the first day they were heroes, in the third week the group had been mostly hijacked by fascists, rapists, cannibals, thieves and generally psychotic killers. And I cried for what I’d set in motion. They won’t go away, will they?”

A Humble Beginning

In its oft-forgotten, or rather overshadowed incarnation as a support group, the HLF was known as the HTF, or Harriet Thomas Foundation, named after Reverend Thomas’ now ponified daughter. Young Harriet had received a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and her chances of survival were slim. As the ponification potion was being pushed as a miracle cure, the family decided to take a chance and allow Harriet to undergo the process.

It must be said - Reverend Thomas was not a bad person. This cannot be stressed enough, lest history view him as the founder of the KKK. He reached out to Lyra, to the PHL, to back-alley doctors, to Dr. Erika Kraber, to anyone that could answer one simple question:

“What happened to my daughter?”

Few people, if any, could answer. The first trickle of supporters was comprised of family and friends of Newfoals, all with similar stories of their former loved ones simply not being themselves… before abandoning them altogether to live in Equestria.

And then the trickle became a torrential downpour that threatened to drown everyone. Thousands reported bizarre and unnerving experiences with newfoals, and some people claimed it was an outright attack. The end of the world.

One such example, picked from countless many, is Andrew Silas.

Name: Andrew Silas
Nationality: English
Crime: Tagging Her Majesty's Buckingham Palace (sentenced to a year of probation, but was let off early at the start of the war)
Status: Aiding refugees in Malaysia

“What were you thinking on that day?”

"What did I think at the time? I thought I was doing something that would grab the people’s attention.”

“It certainly did…”

“That’s beside the point.”

“So how did it begin for you?”

“Well, it all started with my friend, Henry. He was crippled by his own dad about a year before Equestria arrived, when the old man had one too many drinks at the local pub and came blazing home. Didn't even slow down when he ran the light; he just ran over his own son, called out 'bloody wanker' as he passed and kept on driving, too bloody wasted to know what had happened. Now along comes this cure-all potion and Henry, who always loved a good game of football, wanted to be able to just walk again. He sure as hell did love Hibs... I was Hearts myself."

"So after one game, tears in his eyes as he watches the footballers, this ad comes on: ‘A new life awaits as a pony!’ and a month after consulting, he signs up, fills out the form and away he goes. He comes back a week later as a dark orange unicorn pony. So what’s first thing I ask? 'Hey now, Henry. Now that you’re back on your feet, or hooves in this case, want to go try out for a quick game?' And the look he gave me... it was like he had no idea what I was talking about."

"It just got worse as time went on. I know what the Newfoals are like, we all do, but this was before the war. We expected them to just be our friends and family, but with hooves and fur, we expected… I don’t know what. The simplest way I can put it is that we expected them to still be the people we knew. I’m sure you’ve heard this description a million times, but it just wasn’t him in there. Every week, Henry just got more distant, hanging out with a bunch of other Newfoals I’d never seen. A month later, it was like he never knew me, and when we did talk, the subject always turned to ponification and how great it felt. Now I’ve known a few transwomen and transmen before, and sometimes, they ended up regretting it - a sad truth, that is - and sometimes the novelty wore off after a month and they started adjusting, but Henry just glowed as if it was the day after he’d been ponified, and never stopped. Plus, those people never proselytized about it. It was just... frightening.”

“So how did you come across the Harriet Thomas Foundation?”

“Well, for a while, I was feeling down, wondering about what’d happened to my friend… just wanted someone to talk to. And one day, as I was surfing on the internet, I see something on the news about this support group being started up by a preacher from America, and I decided to check it out. I read through the testimonials, and… the thing is, once you began to realize how many people were joining this little group because of their friends and loved ones becoming completely different people after getting transformed, and just how similar many of the stories were, it terrified you to the core that no one was doing anything about it.”

“So yeah... I jumped the wall and tagged the building. Could you imagine my surprise that it was Her Majesty herself who caught me when she decided to go for a walk and was looking at me the entire time through the window? Bless her soul, I hope she is in a better place.”

Jumping Off the Slippery Slope

As the Harriet Thomas Foundation gained more and more supporters online, Reverend Thomas had struck up correspondence with Ambassador Lyra Heartstrings. Lyra was not shy to voice her doubts about the potion, and both had also expressed interest in Dr. Erika Kraber's reports of the bizarre anomalies in the psychology of Newfoals.

The second stage of grief is anger, and for the families and friends that were abandoned by their now ponified loved ones, the emotion began to take over. They started demanding answers, and Reverend Thomas was at the front of it all.

On March 1, 2019, the HTF protested in Washington DC, demanding that the FDA investigate the potion. Heading this protest were airline pilot Michael Carter and his daughter Verity, galvanized by the ponification of Michael’s wife, Jazmin Carter, who renamed herself ‘New Bloom’. Reports of what exactly happened are often conflicting, but it was known that Jazmin had been suffering from the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s, and that the potion had transformed her into a stallion due to her being a transwoman, and thus, biologically male. Hospital employees and patients nearby reported hearing anguished screams of ‘THAT IS NOT MY MOTHER!’ from Verity, and her father was arrested for assaulting either Pinkie or Maud Pie. The father-daughter duo were two of the most passionate voices in the HTF, often spouting fiery rhetoric and taking control of any discussions on the official HTF forums online, no matter the subject.

They were also frequent critics of Reverend Thomas, feeling that his approach was too soft, as his efforts grew more and more fruitless and desperate. The FDA insisted that the potion was entirely harmless. Some would say too insistent in fact.

As organization after organization brushed him off, as investigations yielded no leads, no signs of abnormalities and as Equestria essentially laughed off his concerns, Reverend Thomas found himself increasingly at odds with his group. Michael Carter, who the Reverend had previously seen as a comrade-in-arms, was gaining more leverage.

At this time, the HTF was still a fairly moderate organization, and Lyra Heartstrings found herself in frequent communication with Reverend Thomas, with the two of them even starring as guests via videochat on the Kraber Reports. While it gave Lyra legitimacy, distrust of the ponies grew.

Finally, during a public rally in Philadelphia on March 18, boasting people from all over America, even some from other countries, Reverend Thomas was brushed away from the podium, as Michael Carter took control. With an impassioned speech describing a hunger to avenge their loved ones and a desire to make the Equestrians pay, Michael Carter gathered thunderous applause.

It was this day that the Harriet Thomas Foundation died, and the Human Liberation Front was born out of the ashes.

Their first action as HLF was to commence the Three Weeks of Blood.

May Day Attacks

“...The world didn’t go out with a bang or a whimper - it ended in an orgy of violence, of arson, of theft, and mass global riots. There was blood, course there was, right as everyone played into the Tyrant’s hooves. But I remember… there was this moment when my friend Johnny and I were listening to the radio, rebuilding a house, and we heard about how the Barrier expanded. We knew right then it was all over.’
Fiddlesticks Apple, interviewee in the article ‘The Day the World Ended’.

In her book ‘A War In the Pocket,’ Dayoung Tengku, an amateur historian and iconoclast in the history of the HLF, has pointed out that the Three Weeks of Blood were a turning point in more ways than one. Seeing themselves as liberators, as men and women who had to do something because their governments and armies wouldn’t, the newly-formed HLF, and other groups under the banner that eventually folded themselves in took to attacking ten bureaus in a coordinated attack on May 1. Bureaus in Salem (MA), Sleepy Hollow (NY), South Padre Island (TX), Hong Kong (China), Sydney (Australia), Hiroshima (Japan), Mexico City (Mexico), Cape Town (South Africa), Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) and Brony (a tiny village in Poland) were all victims of the attack. While the Sleepy Hollow Bureau sustained only minor structural damage, many of them were utterly destroyed.

Despite the few old HTF standing by, begging others to keep things professional, it got violent quick, with numerous bureau personnel killed on the spot, or dragged out and tortured violently before getting killed.

PER sympathizers and others took up weaponry to defend themselves, and police were called to the scene all over the world.

Reaction was mixed. On the one hand, it was the first act of resistance against the Imperials, the first declaration of war, and to this day, nobody in polite company will call it an unprovoked attack. There had been plenty of provocation, too many Newfoals that were too radically different from the people they once were, too many disagreements, too many ponies that had been cold and indifferent to humans for it to be called ‘unprovoked’.

“They took our families! Our friends! Well, we’re taking the fight back to them!” Michael Carter had yelled, brandishing an assault rifle over a screaming pony nurse. “Think you can turn us into those abominations?! Well, we! SAY! NO!”

Unfortunately, the reaction was a lot more mixed the day after the attacks, as the destruction had only continued, gathering in their intensity.

The Three Weeks of Blood

Inspired and enraged, prospective HLF and others angered by the loss of their friends and family rose up, attacking the nearest representations of Equestria that they could - ponies and Bureaus. PER took advantage of the chaos to ponify as many as they could.

When PER abducted the daughter of a Portland Seadogs player named Patrick Saunders, he bludgeoned them to death with his baseball bat and rampaged through the city with an earth pony named Dust Kicker, attacking the construction site of the Conversion Bureau there in an armed uprising. One of the casualties was very nearly PHL pony Fiddlesticks Apple, who had been scheduled for a benefit concert at the Bureau’s opening, though Saunders has apologized for nearly killing her.

A Chinese factory worker named Feng Gui Zhou, a future warlord armed with a war surplus, led an assault on a Bureau in Xinjiang.

And in Eastern Europe, Viktor Marius Kraber and various others embarked through Austria on what has been referred to as ‘Kraber’s March’, a campaign of destruction with a high bodycount of Bureau personnel. It only intensified when Kraber met Kagan Burakgazi in a Turkish bureau, the two having planned separate lone-wolf bombings, attracting the attention of each other in the Bureau’s basement. And, of course, the attack that Viktor Kraber had been a part of had not been an isolated incident. Many similar attacks had happened, and slowly but surely, the HLF was being taken over by those who had been wrecked by the loss of their friends and family. Princess Luna, in a rare televised interview, had sworn that the PER were not part of some Equestrian offensive, and begged for them not to continue on their course.

‘Surely,’ Princess Luna had said, ‘Nopony in Equestria approves of this!’ She had sounded as much as if she was trying to convince herself as anyone else.

Many loyalist ponies claimed it was the Three Weeks of Blood that showed humanity’s true nature, all the while completely ignoring the attacks on humans by Newfoals.

It was the first real act of the HLF, and to this day it ensures some of the support they get. It gave the HLF a decisive reputation, of being quick to action and defend humanity. This was technically true. They were decisive, they helped mobilize humanity, but they did far more harm than good in the long run. Unfortunately, since the HLF targeted all ponies indiscriminately, they also alienated any ponies that were against ponification and did not support Equestria’s actions.

People were frightened and paranoid, a feeling not helped by the PER's increasingly radical misanthropic rhetoric.

One of the most infamous HLF attacks occurred near Paddington Station, in London, when a car bomber attempted to blow up a restaurant where Lyra Heartstrings was eating breakfast. In spite of the utter devastation and carnage, as testified by a PHL-affiliated eyewitness, Ambassador Heartstrings miraculously survived. To this day, nobody knows how the bomber had been found out, as various Newfoals in the vicinity had beaten him to death. Still, that had been an isolated incident.

Call to Arms

Following the Berne Declaration, the disastrous press conference during which several reporters from all over the world were forcibly ponified, the HLF threw its lot into the war wholeheartedly.

They were riding on their previous successes. As noted historian Dayoung Tengku has said, the May Day Attacks ‘showed the world the HLF had teeth’. Not helping was that they had officially been the ones to start the war before any other government. There was a distinct anti-government sentiment in those days, anger at governments for not doing anything sooner, anger at the healthcare industry for allowing for the potion to become available, anger at ponies, anger at anyone who was defending ponies, and seemingly defending ponification.

Anger drove the HLF, pure and simple. Millions over the world were swept up by the rhetoric that, with enough guns, molotov cocktails, and can-do spirit, anyone could fight off the invaders.

Though some, not least the PHL, took issue with the HLF’s methods, which were seen as unrestrained, and as much a threat to civilians and refugees as PER. As early as 2020, Yael Ze’ev had made a name for herself in anti-HLF actions, citing instances of them attacking pony members of the PHL and stealing from refugees.

And Americans had grown uneasy of their self-proclaimed saviors as well.

Name: Richard Stanley
Nationality: American
Crimes: Murder of PER, theft of weaponry and medicine
Status: Pardoned of crimes, currently performing different jobs aiding the PHL’s war effort in Dallas Fort Worth alongside his family

“You gotta understand, we were all scared. Some people reacted more… strongly than others, but it was all the same.”

“What was the first red flag for you?”

“Well, funnily enough, my wife Gail was the first to start suspecting that something wasn’t quite right. She was always a skeptical sort; kept up on the news and whatnot. She wasn’t shy to say it was a bit suspicious that this “miracle cure-all” serum just appeared randomly from creatures from an alternate dimension. I guess that’s what saved us.”

“And what about your son? Porter, correct?”

“Yeah, he was stationed in South Korea just a year before the Empire came. Even found a nice lady there. Eun-Hee Lee was her name.”

“Wait, as in…?”

“Yes. And I don’t think would never be able to forget the way she, and all those other reporters, screamed when they were being ponified. About an hour later, Porter called us on Skype. I’d never seen him so angry in my life. More than that, he was heartbroken. He wanted to make Celestia pay.”

“What kept him from that ‘slippery slope’ though?”

“Responsibility, or so he said.”

“And what about you and the rest of the family?”

“We were all running high on paranoia by that point. I remember my younger son, Charlie, saying that this was like a mix between Independence Day and X-Com, whatever that was. Not helping was the PER, the fucking bastards. We were all installing security systems and new locks in our houses, and I sometimes saw the neighbors were sleeping with their lights on. We were all scared to go outside without a hazmat suit and a gun. Families were all clinging to each other for dear life, not letting their kids out of sight… I mean, my family and I lived in a pretty small town, the kind where everyone knows each other. The whole world was going to hell in a handbasket, and the HLF in our area actually gave us a feeling of safety… at first anyway.”

“What kinds of things did you do with your group in those early days?”

“Patrolling, guarding, that kind of thing. There were some ex-military I personally knew helping train civilians how to shoot and defend themselves, survival skills, all that sort. And for a while, we had a pretty good run. We kept out the PER pretty well too. We really did do good for the neighborhood...”

“So what made you leave?”

“As soon as the loony bin began to take over. Don’t get me wrong, I can understand Mike Carter’s pain; if I lost my wife like that… I don’t even want to imagine what I would do. But believe me when I say this - nothing in this world can ever justify what that man has done. Murdering kids and civilians…(spits in disgust)”

Crossing the Line

By early 2022, the HLF had gained a reputation for being one of the biggest dangers to the public, as much of a danger as the PER and the Solar Empire’s forces. Their indiscriminate targeting of all ponies, regardless of their status (natural-born or Newfoal) or allegiances, made it no surprise they set their sights on the PHL.

They were quick to call the PHL an affront to all humanity, the pony members spies working for the Empire, and the human members traitors. That died down quickly however, as the PHL gained more approval from both the government and the general public, with more and more ponies joining the fight against their mad leader. Horror stories from Equestrian defectors from all over the globe detailed the oppressive and orwellian atmosphere of Equestria, with disgraced doctors officially blacklisted confirming the worst suspicions about the potion.

Worse was when Ambassador Lyra Heartstrings tried to reach out to the HLF with an offer to join forces. Her request was not only denied, but she was also nearly assassinated in the process by an HLF sniper. Miraculously, the bullet only grazed her flank, allowing her to pull up a shield spell. Still, the HLF maintained a decent amount of support in the public eye. The PHL couldn’t be everywhere, after all, and the HLF seemed to offer a simple narrative of “two legs good, four legs bad”.

It was summer 2022, however, that things turned around.

On July 22, 2022, members of the “Menschabwehrfraktion” and “Glanzon’s Gluemakers” HLF units and several other unaffiliated HLF soldiers attacked a PHL medical convoy on its way to Salem, Massachusetts. The ambush was short but brutal, and all but one were killed.

PHL medic, Nurse Sutra Cross, was dragged from the humvee she sat in and was taken prisoner. The HLF intended to make an example of her on what to do to a PHL pony. For two weeks, Sutra Cross was beaten and tortured extensively, while videos were released on the Internet depicting the atrocities committed against her.

Sutra Cross’ body washed up on the Boston harbor, and she was given a proper burial. Wracked with anger and disgust, the PHL called for putting an end to the HLF’s reign of terror.

Compounding this atrocity was an incident on July 25th, not long after Sutra Cross’ kidnapping, in which the HLF attacked the PHL oil-drilling platform Sorghum and bombarded Portland with its artillery, sparking off massive riots in the city that did far more damage than the rig.

In the month following this, the HLF of the eastern seaboard, including infamous divisions such as Taskforce Paris, the Sons of Macha, and Menschabwehrfraktion, soon gained access to a mysterious force known as ‘The Hotline’, allowing them to track down PER operations. However, this soon proved problematic, as it led to them growing arrogant and asking for protection money from nearby communities.

On August 25, the FBI and CIA were able to track down the site where Sutra Cross was held and murdered at. It was at the ‘humans only’ settlement of Defiance, located north of Berlin, around New Hampshire’s Great North Woods.

On August 26, President Jack Davis gave the order for the destruction of Defiance.

On August 27, a joint force consisting of PHL, the US Army and US Marines led by Colonel Renee ambushed the settlement and laid waste to it.

"We respond to threats, both from afar and within our own borders. The HLF has proven itself not only a threat to the general safety of the public, but to our military operations as well.

From this day forward, the HLF is considered a terrorist organization and needs to be stamped out before we lose the only thing that makes us who we are.

Our humanity."
Declaration from President Jack Davis giving the order for the assault on Defiance

Name: Fergus Farnowitz
Nationality: American
Crimes: Murder, abduction, torture, illegal forestry, cannibalism
Status: Incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay.

“I’ll never forget that night.

We were sitting around the fire, laughing, drinking, listening to the screams of the prisoners, to our music, to the various rumormongers who would tell anyone any crazy damn story about Equestria, or about the newfoals. Lovikov - that's the bastard that ran the place, I think we can all agree we're better without him - had been planning something, and we were ready to head up to Montreal.”

Your 'Hotline' told him to?"

“Yup. We were a bit worried about Kraber, though. Lovikov had kept him in the town brig for awhile. And he'd... There were rumors he'd gone even crazier. Something about mnemosurgery from those ponies he hadn't killed, that he was going horsefucker... It was hard to say.

Everything was simply perfect. Almost unnervingly so; we hadn’t been found by any police, we’d actually heard good things about us on the radio, and the prison had… don’t look at me like that. I won’t tell you if you don’t need to know.

And then everything goes wrong. Somebody is going to the tent with his wife, then he runs back, saying she has a bullet in her head.

We panic, of course. We grab all of our guns, sighting them in, and then I hear a scream.

Somebody next to me crumpled down, gurgling their last from a bullet to the chest. It went to shit almost immediately. We ran across the camp, putting everyone on alert, and I heard somebody firing. Could have been any one of our guys, from what I heard, they were just panic-firing.

But that wasn’t the worst part. Suddenly there were ponies and military people with guns everywhere, coming out of every bolt-hole, dropping out of the air, and they all had huge guns and armor that could shrug off insane amount of firepower.

Some people are going to call Defiance a battle. No, that wasn’t a battle; that was a straight up massacre.

I still have nightmares about it, damn near constantly. I remember my friends cut down by the dozen, I remember reloading my rifle only to watch the 7.62mm round from that fucking kalashnikov obliterate my wrist. I remember watching a pony standing over me and stomping on me till I was smart enough to play dead.

But that’s not the worst part.

The worst part is him. He has a particular presence that you never quite forget, a big guy who isn’t just tall, but solid.

Marcus Renee. Call him a horsefucking traitor, call him a hero - I lean towards the former - but we can all agree now that you should never piss him off. He strode through the campsite, a Remington ACR with an extended magazine in hand, firing semi-automatically whenever someone came in view.

A bullet and they were dead.

It was like the carnage couldn’t even touch him. This one woman ran out of a tent, carrying a knife, and he just buttstocks her across the face, knocking her to the ground and shattering her jaw and shot her when she tried to get back up. That man didn't even pause to do it, he just shot her as she was fumbling around with her knife and then turned to shoot someone else.

The massacre parted before him like the water before some fucked up Moses. It was unreal; any of our guys that moved in front of him just dropped like flies, and the snipers that tried to take him down all got a bullet in their head.

We didn’t think a man or a pony could have caused such a bloodbath. Like he was some sort of fucking action hero or some hell demon cutting a swath through everyone. It's one thing to see it in a movie or in a video games, it’s another to see a guy pulling it off in real life. And let me tell you, that is fucking terrifying to see that shit go down.

I cried when I saw him advancing down the main drag through the tents, past the small shops that we had. I screamed into my radio for backup, hoping that someone could come, praying to God, that I’d live through that day.

Nobody came, though, and when I loaded up my rifle, this punkass from New Hampshire named Johnny C blows off my hand with one of those big Kalashnikovs chambered for rounds that can destroy cinderblocks, and yells “There’s another one over here!” For all I cared, my hand could still be in that forest, holding a magazine. I just ran away from that camp screaming, and I never looked back.

I don’t know how I got to civilization, how fast I must have run. I got to a hospital - this small place off in the middle of nowhere - to believe I was innocent by telling them that I was a hiker who’d gotten shot by crazy HLF woodsmen.

The police didn’t buy that, and well, here I am.”

Downfall

The downfall of the HLF as a serious force, the ‘loss of their conscience’ as historian Dayoung Tengku put it, came from an unexpected source. Not long after the destruction of Defiance, an HLF man came to the PHL, hospitalized in Montreal after taking down an experimental skyliner from the inside, and covered in the blood of invading PER bent on ponifying every patient of the hospital.

"THERE'S NO FOKKIN CURING THE HLF! IT'S SO FOKKIN CLOSE TO TERMINALLY ILL I'D RECOMMEND FOKKIN EUTHANASIA, IF NOT FOR THE FACT THE HLF IS ITS OWN FOKKIN SICKNESS! MEDICINE CAN'T CURE BEING A FOKKIN TRILLKOP!!"

Name: Viktor Kraber (Aliases: Ivan Bliss, Francis Strang, Hassan Dagdelen)
Nationality: Afrikaner, born in Cape Town, currently holds German citizenship.
Crimes: Murder, mass murder, conspiracy to commit murder, illegal possession of firearms, multiple assault charges, theft of a motorcycle, breaking and entering, torture, impersonating a police officer, illegally crossing borders between countries, impersonating a child protective services officer, torture, smuggling firearms, practicing medicine without a license, arson, forgery, vandalism, kidnapping, robbery, theft of military property, impersonating PHL personnel, and public drunkenness (Captured and arrested during one of the various target sites linked directly to Defiance, immediately surrendered himself alongside Kagan Burakgazi and was given an option to join the Task Force under the command of Colonel Renee, much to Kraber and Yael Ze’ev’s protests. Citing an inability to get along, Kraber was transferred to the Bundeswehr.)
Status: In service with the Bundeswehr

When telling a story to various foals and PHL ponies, Viktor Marius Kraber once joked that “[his] ass is everywhere”. This is hard to dispute, as he has managed to fight in Germany, Turkey, the Middle East, and northern Africa, and made appearances in numerous fronts of the war, more than most would assume possible.

“Why did you join the HLF?”

“Revenge. That fokking mank genaaide bergbok Pinkie Pie did something absofokkinlutely unforgivable.”

“Ponifying your family. Everyone knows what happened.”

“Yeah. But the thing you have to understand here is… I would’ve done anything for my family, no matter what’s been said about me. I mean, here I was, a wake and bake college kid that suddenly finds himself with a pregnant high-school age stekie, two kids on the way… Kate wanted to be a mom, I loved her, so I did my best. But then, around early 2019, Peter and Anka got it into their heads that they loved Equestria.”

“What happened to do that?”
"My parents surprised me. Plane tickets to South Africa! It was like a dream. I’d spent so much time there as a kid, and I had a virtual death grip on most of the slang because the place was just so wonderful. I couldn’t wait to see all my connections down there. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought to do it yet! So anyway, when we get to Cape Town, heading from the hotel to my cousin’s pozzy, I don’t find Cousin Richard Pretorius. No, there’s a red earth pony cleaning the dishes, whistling a jaunty tune. I was surprised as fok when it turned out it was him. I couldn’t believe he’d gone through with it!”
“How’d that make them like Equestria?”
"Far as they were concerned, he was the best uncle ever, and he just… the kids fell in love. They thought he was the best uncle a child could have. They petted his fur, he gave them rides... They even wanted to be ponies too, but I told ‘em what I did this transman I knew back in college. Changing your body like that is a life-making decision, don’t do it on a whim, I said. But still they persisted! Kate even made Anka a horse costume out of a unitard, and she… she just pranced all over the house, and… I need another moment. Or to drink another dop.”
"Now, as a doctor, I came into a lot of money. Enough that, through certain channels and the Newfoal community in town - I didn’t like them, but they knew me through my daughter, so the mank genaaide bergboks were civil enough - I managed to get Pinkie Pie to throw a party for them, in person no less. She said she’d even bring a clown too, and that she’d make it a party they’d remember for the rest of their lives. And I feel physically FOKKING SICK to admit this, but she… she sounded nice. Trustworthy. I’d immediately thought of an adult who dressed like a child when I first heard her voice. Ah… I’m gonna need more bourbon.”
“What happened when you got to the house?”
"It was all quiet, except for someone laughing. It wasn’t any of the kids, or Kate, or Pinkie; I’d never heard this person in my life. I reached for my scalpel, walked into the dining room, and found that fokking clown Pinkie had hired, and some purple goop all over the room. I didn’t touch it; it just… it felt wrong. I didn’t know if he was human or pony to begin with, but I was so fokkin’ woedend. I don’t even remember how it happened, but I tied that fokking clown up to a chair, even as his laughter turned into screams, and I worked over him for hours with a smile on my face. I drove knives into him, I injected him with chemicals I found lying around the house, I used everything in my grandfather’s medical bag, I broke his legs and cut him open and eviscerated him till there was barely anything left to hurt. I remember that there was blood all over the room, seeping into the carpet, on the ceiling… it was seeping into my shoes."
"I don’t even remember what I wanted to know. Their location? The cure? Where Pinkie was? Why they did this? I just wanted to hurt something. I wasn’t in a trusting mood, so I found the HLF, or Menschabwehrfraktion, as they’re known back in Germany. They wanted another soldier to save earth from the pony menace. Personally, I thought they were conspiracy-nut chops. They weren’t expecting me to like it, but -"
“Did you enjoy it?”
"It’s not a proud moment anymore, but back then… I jumped at the chance. Every day, I woke up and killed. Then, one day… after Innsbruck… I struck out on my own, and headed off for Istanbul’s Bureau. Basic lone-wolf bombing. And right here, here’s the hilarious thing - Burakgazi, this other guy, he’d been planning a lone-wolf bombing the same fokkin day! And then, we just… We blew up so many fokkin bureaus! It was hilarious, the fokkin’ zombies and PER just exploded, there was blood everywhere… I was so happy, KILLING ALL THE BLIKSEMS TILL THERE WAS NOBODY LEFT!”
"Kraber, keep your shit together before I go in there and make you."
"Fine, ‘Commander!’ It’s only what happened."
"Just get on with it, Kraber, you’re making True Quill nervous enough as it is. And stop drinking all that bourbon, it’s only a matter of time till you’re incoherent!"
“Like anyone could tell the fokkin’ difference!”

“Damn. How did you… what did…. made you change?”

“Well, one day… after we killed a bunch of PER in Vermont, I just did a fokkin’ awful thing to some PHL they’d captured, and my commanding officer decided that an illegal checkpoint would help us. So, I found these two ponies…. And I just decided to let them ponies go. I couldn’t explain it - I just couldn’t.”

“Did she try mnemosurgery?”

“That question's a real fokking sore point for me, but I asked her, she said no. It was my fault I couldn’t pull the trigger. And, well… that had so many fokkin’ consequences. My commanding officer, he tried to kill me on the next mission, the one on the Sorghum.”

“How do you go from that to destroying the HLF as we knew it?!”

“It’s a long story - I’m writing a movie bout it, actually, but I made a big enough target that Defiance was the first place the PHL looked for Sutra Cross. And I may have also sent some letters to certain people more amenable to ponies…” (a sly, bloodthirsty smirk creeps onto Kraber’s face)

“...You sold out Defiance.”

“And embezzled from it, and revealed all the hidden weapon stashes. But it wasn’t intentionally… at first, anyway. But I don’t like saying I sold it out.”

“Why not?”

“Implies there was some kinda payoff, that I got a large amount of tom. It wasn’t bout the tom, it was cause someone had to stop them. What with staying with a bunch of ponies, volunteering as a merc the IDF, not going on a murder spree, they weren’t exactly… happy to see me.”

“What did they do?

“Let’s say… (Kraber winces slightly) I got a taste of my own medicine. Besides, the only one that got any tom out of that was Aegis.”

“Wait, what?”

“I negotiated it so Aegis got the bounty for capturing me and Burakgazi. Plenty of money and food to support his foals that way.”

“Which reminds me, how did you and Aegis become so close? It’s unusual to see ponies and humans share as deep a friendship as yours…”

"Heh… you said deep friendship. We got videos on the Internet of ponies and humans fokking each other."

"Right... so why are you and him in particular such good friends?"

“He helped me out when I was homeless, let me sleep in his living room… I can’t hate a stallion like that, and for awhile, it was like we were family. Aegis has saved my life so many times I’ve lost count, and I’ve saved his just as many. Plus, we smaak a lot of the same things... Booze, movies, video games, big guns… I love the guy. You’ll interview him later, right?”

“Certainly.”

“And… I’m sorry. For being drunk the whole time. I’m a mess, I know I am.”

Seeing a member as prominent as Viktor Kraber leave, especially as stories of his exploits under the assumed names Ivan Bliss and Francis Strang surfaced, caused far more people to question the aim and effectiveness of the organization than any PHL supporters had thought possible. Making this worse, Kraber brought infamous HLF chemical bomber Kagan Burakgazi to the side of the PHL with him, having convinced even him that the HLF had gone too far.

The two of them would soon broadcast a speech over radio with the assistance of Vinyl Scratch and Photo Finish, asking HLF dissatisfied with the state of the cause to join the PHL.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn't believe. I've seen the PHL fight the Empire and win with overwhelming casualties… on the other side. I’ve seen that soon, the Barrier will hit America and I’ve seen how the PHL has been a key force in the evacuation, and I’ve seen that they have the power to stop the Barrier. Most of all, I’ve seen them allow me in... And I don't feel like this should all disappear like tears in the rain. I start basic tomorrow, showing them as a hell of a lot more accepting than the HLF they can be. Galt once said that the key to winning the war is to adapt and be fluid. Well, this is me adapting. This is me picking the side that knows how to stop the Barrier, can give me a bigger gun, and treat me as a friend and want me to get better instead of treating me like a mad dog on a leash. I’ve seen that they’re as willing to nurture as defend.

This is me choosing life. Joining something better.”

Tensions had been simmering ever since the Salt Caramel riots in Philadelphia, which were sparked off when a PHL mare named Salt Caramel died from an HLF man’s glass bottle to the throat. In response, PHL soldier Helena Zandt avenged Salt Caramel with a shotgun aimed at a rather delicate place, causing a bar brawl that threw the city into chaos. Seeing the defection of two intensely prominent members to work with Yael Ze’ev, the infamous enemy of the HLF, reopened these wounds and threw the HLF into chaos. This sparked the now-famous Reid Rebuke given by Angus Reid of the HLF unit Taskforce Paris:

“Shut your fucking face, old man! We haven't been worth shit for years! How goddamn delusional do you have to be to think the public actually like us?! The PHL have evacuated civilians. The PHL can use 5.56 rifles while we have to use these stupid fucking .50 Beowulf rounds! The PHL saved Boston! The PHL have secret superweapons when all we have are homebrewed cannons and pipe guns! The PHL help power America, and we've probably used something from them! What in the fuck are we compared to that?! They're calling us terrorists and murderers, rapists and torturers, bandits that... I swear to God I'm not kidding, bandits that are destroying civilization! Crazy, right? EXCEPT DAMN NEAR NONE OF YOU HAVE DONE ANYTHING TO PROVE THEM WRONG! I'm not asking any of you to have sex with the merry-go-round toys, but at least the PHL is doing something. We're all yammer and no hammer now, the war's passed us by! We're a laughingstock, and if the PHL wins the war, we're not gonna be heroes. We'll be the guys that everyone laughs at. We're not heroic partisans like in Poland, or anything of the sort, we're just a bunch of paranoid assholes with guns pointed at everything that isn't us, because fuck you, it's the apocalypse, we've got ours! We're outlaws! We're... you! MacPherson! Is this what you signed up for? Stealing from people that don't have anything left to steal? And you, Clancy?! Killing people that I'm convinced just wanted a better life because their home is a despotic shithole?! Morhaim, did you sign up to oversee gang-rapes and eat people?! Anyone in this HLF brigade that wants to do something good... Follow me, we're going to the PHL! If Viktor Kraber can quit and do the right thing, we can outdo that bastard!"

Entire units of HLF found themselves gutted, or simply disappeared overnight, folding themselves into local armies or the PHL-UN taskforce. While it was rare to find someone that didn’t appreciate the glut of new recruits, it was hard not to notice one thing:

Virtually all of the HLF members that left were more moderate types with few serious crimes to their name. The mass defection had, as Dayoung Tengku said in her book "A War In The Pocket", ripped out what conscience they had left.

Kraber, Burakgazi, and Reid's exodus had brought the left-leaning, essentially insulted the more humanitarian units into leaving, and taken some of the better fighters hungry for bigger guns. HLF officers were soon put to use by both Yael Ze'ev and Kraber alike, smoking out HLF weapon stashes and hideouts alike. The only people that could have consoled the HLF and kept them from intensifying their raiding activities were a small minority convinced they could become something better. They were ignored.

And from that, a new form of HLF arose towards the beginning of 2023 as Barrierfall inched closer. A far more desperate breed, ready to steal whatever was necessary to their goals, and hoping to save anyone that resisted the Solar Empire and defend from the Barrier…

Whether they liked it or not.

There were people who protested against both HLF action and PHL, hoping to unify HLF to fight alongside PHL in Barrierfall. These were Maximillian Yarrow's forces, the Reavers. While many have disagreed on the actions of the Reavers and the nobleness of their cause, one thing cannot be denied: they were brave. Unfortunately, it also cannot be denied that their task, regardless of any chances of success it might have had before, was all-but sisyphean afterward.

The Few Good Men

The Reavers are an oddity to those who study the HLF: though the actual percentages of psychopaths and cold-blooded killers in the organization cannot be accurately estimated (though it was easily in the nineties by the end), it is clear that the HLF will be remembered more for men like Lovikov, Zhou and Galt than it will Maximilian Yarrow. Nonetheless, Yarrow's forces were present almost from the beginning of the conflict, a quiet corner of the HLF dedicated to, as Yarrow would have put it, 'fighting the good fight'.

Name: Erin Hansen.
Nationality: British.
Crimes: HLF Membership, aiding and abetting HLF actions, assaulting police officers, graffiti.

Note: Miss Hansen was captured in late October 2023, spraying a tag reading 'Yarrow for Valhalla' on a wall in New York. Such tags continue to be proliferant as a sort of underbelly in larger cities.

"You never met Maxi Yarrow, so don't tell me the man didn't have a chance."

"You think he did?"

"I was a teenager on the Purity. Whole thing was this ramshackle pile of shit, bunch of big guns bolted to the deck. By rights it should've been ponified. We should have been ponified. But he saved us."

"I'd heard of the Purity. Didn't realise it was attacked."

"Fucking geldo bastards - no offence - probably thought they could get the drop on her. Isolated, poorly armed… way I heard Idle tell it, the thing would have gone to hell, but Yarrow strode out onto the deck and took charge. Seven or eight concentrated rockets on an early Potioneer - boom. Too much for the shield to take. Never stood a fucking chance. Turned a massacre into a win. That was Yarrow - that was what he could do."

“Plenty of HLF won early battles.”

“But not many of them were Maxi Yarrow. You - ah, hell, you'd have to have met him yourself. Though he’d have said you wouldn't have believed it anyway: you'd have seen what you wanted to see.”

“What does that mean?”

“Does it matter?”

The Reavers, formed in the aftermath of the battle of the Purity, were a force of vehicles and fighting men and women of various sub-units, all under the command of Maximilian Yarrow himself. Considered by some to be weak willed traitors and others to be exemplar HLF, the Reavers have frequently been on the frontline of anti-PER and anti-Empire conflict, notably the Imperial Creed campaign. They also - to the disgust of some partisans - categorically refused to fight PHL, under Yarrrow's specific instruction that "the runaways and horsefuckers aren't the enemy".

This caused great friction with other units, such as the Thenardier Guards. Michael Carter was known to be disapproving of this policy, and led to the Reavers being seen as pariahs by many other more prestigious units that favored a growingly radical approach. Despite this, the Reavers enjoyed some surprising success - helped by the fact that, somehow, they managed to become equipped with top-of-the-line weaponry, including ATC experimental tech just shy of PHL newtech in terms of effectiveness (though entirely free of runic or other magical enhancement). What's more, Yarrow's ideas - especially the pseudo-Norse cult - created a subculture that found believers in slums and cities, among the dispossessed and the desperate.

That was one thing that separated the Reavers from many of their cohorts, more than anything else. The existence amongst their ranks of a pseudo-Norse cult that preached the existence of Valhalla and the virtue of death in battle. Though few records exist, one tape was smuggled out of what can only be described as a pre-battle prayer, spoken by Maxi Yarrow himself.

Yarrow: "Listen up, brothers and sisters. Today we go into battle once more - battle against the enemy that would claim our lives without doing us the dignity of death. We go into battle to lay down our lives for others, to win ourselves the last… maybe the only victory left to us. We go into battle to fight the good fight, to be the Human Liberation Front - not the dogs and sadists that others define us by, but the truth of us! We will get no thanks in life for our deeds, but in death we will live forever! In the fabric of reality, our actions are recorded and remembered - and ours will echo through eternity!"

Assembled Reavers: "YARROW FOR VALHALLA! YARROW FOR VALHALLA!"

Name: Tom "Preacher" Richardson.
Nationality: British.
Crimes: HLF membership, graffiti, aiding and abetting HLF.

"I'd like to understand the Norse element to the Reavers, if I can."

"It isn't exactly difficult, Miss Quill. Yarrow was already fascinated with Norse mythology as a younger man: he told me he had always harboured a desire to be like Thor."

"Not the Chris Hemsworth version, I take it?"

"… unlikely. In any case - he introduced the concept of fighting for a reward beyond the physical after the Purity. Actually, he spoke about it in an entirely personal manner. He believed that his reward for fighting the good fight would be Valhalla. The rest of us… simply followed his lead."

"Why?"

"Even in the beginning, the HLF were not altogether popular. I understand why, of course, but still - think about these fighters, unwilling to simply abandon the HLF because they don't trust the PHL, or the ponies, but wanting to feel like they won't be fighting for nothing. Yarrow gave them - gave us - the chance to feel like we were fighting for something. Besides. At the worst of times, people need something to believe in. People, religion, themselves…”

"It sounds like Yarrow gave them all three."

"You might say that - Yarrow for Valhalla, after all. And the notion of humanity - we are human: our blood spills for the defence of the innocent and the knowledge of reward beyond the immediate. Without that…"

"Do the Reavers still believe it?"

"The Reavers will never stop believing. No one seems to understand that - but then again, our beliefs don't require understanding from others."

“I want to understand.”

“Do you?”

“I wouldn't ask if I didn't.”

“Then I’ll begin. I suggest you listen - and take notes.”

The Reavers believed - believe, one should say - that their deeds were meaningless in life. Yarrow, well aware of the HLF’s reputation, knew that those who followed him might never be recognised for their deeds. It would seem he constructed a cult that allowed for his soldiers to feel a sense of accomplishment without requiring outside validation.

Yarrow constructed a strict code of conduct for combat: this code called (though perhaps ‘calls’ might be more appropriate) for no mercy to those deemed one’s enemies, but crucially - and differently from most HLF - it was also strict about the definition of ‘enemy’. No civilian casualties unless absolutely unavoidable, and a strict ban on engaging the PHL in any manner. The enemy are defined as ‘Imperial Ponies, PER and traitors’. Interestingly, this definition seemed to cover HLF Yarrow deemed ‘mediocre dogs’ more than it meant other humans or ponies.

When the HLF exodus began, many might have expected the Reavers to jump ship and join the PHL. Not one member of that group did - only Viktor Kraber, alone amongst the defectors, could ever claim to have worked with them in any length.

In the immediate aftermath of the PHL's destruction of Defiance, the Reavers - who up until that point had been strictly focused on PER and Empire - simply disappeared. There were no actions, no attacks, no nothing. Only a handful of members of the group ever resurfaced. Yarrow himself was rumoured to have been killed, though the circumstances are classified.

Name: Peter McReady.
Nationality: British.
Crimes: HLF Membership, assault, resisting arrest.

Peter McReady was captured at the head of a group including noted Reavers Erin Hansen, Jenny Jameson and Heinrich Brennan.

"Rither and Idle didn't send me. I came of my own accord. I want that clear before we start."

"Why?"

"Because he'd be ashamed."

"Idle?"

"Yarrow."

"That matters to you - even now?"

"Of course it does. Yarrow gave me purpose again - I haven't had that since I left the SAS. Me, Preston, Carlisle - we had something to follow again."

"Then why leave?"

"I'm an Odinson. Our job was to protect Yarrow. We failed. Preston's content staying put, following Idle and Rither, and that's fair. Me? I needed to make sure."

"Make sure of what?"

"It's kind really - that he died how he did, that he didn't live to see what he was afraid of most. He was broken. He thought that he'd failed us - Gods bless that man, he brought us to safety, bled for us, but he was so ashamed that he couldn't… that he couldn't…"

"That he couldn't what?"

"Do me a favour, PHL. I had a camera with a recording. He made it before the end but he couldn't send it. He wanted it to be known."

"I'll see what I can do - now tell me. Why did you…?"

"Come out here? Because Yarrow wanted us to be remembered. If we have to come out here, put down PER dogs and spray paint a wall… if that's all we can do… then we owed him it. Rither followed the letter of his last orders. I'm following the spirit."

The video in question is of Maximilian Yarrow himself, sat in his room. The location is unknown. This is the transcript: it provides the only clue to the circumstances of his death.

"My name is Maxi Yarrow. I am the head of the Reavers. It has been my privilege - my honour - to lead the finest men and women the Gods could ever have provided me into battle. It has been my solemn duty to try to keep them safe, and to make sure their sacrifices are remembered. I regret to say that I have failed in that duty.

"You'll forget us when the histories are written. Don't lie and say otherwise - you will. You'll decide we were all evil. You'll decide that the only men who stayed true to the name were the mad-dogs and the psychopaths. Worst thing is I don't know if I blame you. I should have been faster, or more decisive. I should have made a stand sooner, or… hell, truth is I don't know. There are days where I don't believe it matters anymore - I was doomed from the start and I led these good people to hell with me. I hate saying it but it's true.

"You're going to forget that we fought for you. You're going to forget our names. When the war graves are dug and the statues get erected, none of the names of the good folk I let die fighting the good fight will ever get on there.

"And so, because you're going to forget, I must make you remember. If you're watching this tape… if you give even the slightest shit about the truth, as opposed to just whitewashing your history to make it easy for you… then that's what you can do. You can listen to me. You can remember.

"I am Maximilian Yarrow. These are the names of the men and women who've died, not just for me, but for humanity.

(He proceeds to read over seven hundred and forty names. For the sake of brevity, I list only a few.)

Richard Thompson - died on the Purity.
Sandra Bennett - died on the Purity.
Will Bryant - ponified and killed on the Purity.
Kim Dillinger - died on the Cain run.
Alexander West - died on the Cain run.
Fred Iverson - died on the Cain run.
Rex Mayhew - killed fighting Imperial Creed.
Soren Bergstrom - killed fighting Imperial Creed.
Carl Greene - killed fighting Imperial Creed.
Wolfgang Brennan - killed while on a scouting run by PHL, innocent of any crime.
Jacques Dupont - killed defending civilians in the First Battle of Montreal.
David Thames - saved from Ponification by a bullet to the head, First Battle of Montreal.
Andrew Reichs - ponified at First Battle of Montreal, location unknown.
Eric Grey - killed defending civilians in the First Battle of Montreal.
Andrea MacMurdo - Shot down by Fillydelphia at First Battle of Montreal while hijacking a potioneer ship, all hands lost.
Edward Stark - died on the Fillydelphia.

(Eventually the list finishes)

"These people… my friends… have given up everything to follow me. I tried to lead them. They would say I succeeded but, if I had, this would not be necessary.

(There is a pause)

"Now the PHL have come to ask for my help. Once again they want to use me and mine as tools, once again the mediocre will beg the brave to lay down their lives for no reward. Part of me wishes I could tell them to fuck off, that I could keep my people safe… but safety is an illusion. A watchword for cowards and dogs. They sneer at my brave children, this Yael Ze'ev and her invisible friend, Vicky Kraber the rabid attack dog, all the ones he ripped out of the HLF and even these boys that came with them who think all we are is nothing. They sneer at the sacrifices we made. They think we're fools or cowards or worse. They say, 'the joke is that the HLF could be reformed' - as though all the HLF were like Lovikov, as though me and mine do not exist. That me and mine have bled for them does not enter their calculations - they see only what they want to see. Three letters tainted by a mad dog.

"Let them think what they want.

"We will ride to war one last time. We will fight their battles for them. We will win their battles for them. We will show them our fire and they will tremble in fear and awe as they see how good men and women choose to end. We are the ones who ride the storm that carries us to the gates of glory. We are the ones who will blot out the sun with the clouds of thunder. We are the ones whose deeds will echo beyond the mortal coil until dust and ashes are all that is left of the edifices of child killers and whitewashers and liars. We are the Reavers. We are HLF. We are human - and it is time for us to ride to Valhalla!"

Never Could Have Been Worse

As the war became harsher, the HLF, like a cornered animal, snapped at anyone and everything that crossed its path. At least as early as summer of 2021, attacks on civilians were rare enough that the HLF had plausible deniability.

Towards early winter, however, things began to change. Thaumometeorologists such as Thunderwing, the second-in-command of famed Stampede Fleet captain Rebecca Kleiner, refer to an event in winter of 2020-21, the Cloudsdale Cold Snap. Said ‘Snap’ was a supernaturally cold winter designed in Cloudsdale to freeze out humanity and make them more amenable to potion. In a time of limited resources, confusion, violence, and listlessness among expats all over the world, it was devastating.

According to leaked Equestrian Resistance documents, the Snap was abandoned for harming Equestrian colonies in what was once Europe, but the damage had been done. Travel had been nearly halted due to the below-freezing temperatures, and there was a near-complete communication breakdown in the Americas.

Thankfully, all was not lost. The Snap made local human governments much more willing to use PHL-improved infrastructure in spite of the now-disproven Imperial propaganda stating magic was harmful to human tissue. As such, distribution of watered-down PHL tech to cities within reach, such as improvements to power plants made by the famed pegasus Macroburst with improvements by Heliotrope, improved heating systems, and a rationing program augmented by PHL-engineered high-yield crops made the winter survivable to anyone under the PHL’s umbrella, clustered in the overpopulated and overbuilt cities and towns that had become their refuge. There were complaints about lowered effectiveness of the generators, turbines, solar panels, and other devices distributed, but few complained about their inclusion.

Most HLF, however, had sequestered themselves away from cities and placed themselves on the frontline near the Barrier, avoiding ponies. The winter, however, proved this a spectacularly bad idea, especially with the introduction of more durable newfoal strains, thaumic shields, and their choices to inhabit areas far away from civilization.

These tendencies were amplified in the winter of 2022-23, widely regarded as the first sign that things weren't going to get any better.

Name: Ronald Noland
Nationality: English
Crimes: Armed robbery, murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, torture, vandalism, theft of a PHL weapon
Status: Incarcerated in China

(Note: Interview given July 25, 2023, and later incorporated into the article ‘Many Faces of Mankind’ as part of Project Samizdat)

“Even in prison, you can’t get any fuckin’ rest. Say… is there a way I can get sent into the military, Ms. Quill?”

“That was outlawed. During your Korean War, almost seventy years ago.”

“Not for long it won’t be.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“They tried to use newfoals as slave labor last year in America. If we’re desperate enough to use the fuckin’ zombies as labor, and with how it worked out last time, the government will conscript me into something.”

“What made you keep stealing from trains and cars?”

“That winter was hellish. Our leaders kept saying we’d be fine where we were as vanguards against the invasion, and we’d been prohibited from taking residence in town or else we’d be considered an invading enemy. That winter might have been a monster, but the PHL, the government, they made a bad situation worse. We had to steal from people to survive, we had to! We needed food, and we couldn’t buy enough! We needed ammo, fuel…”

“We all did things during that winter that we weren’t proud of. What made you continue?”

“We were well aware of how outgunned we were. We didn’t have enough of anything! But soon… even into summer, the raids got to be almost an addiction. Maybe it was necessary, but we kept doing bigger and bigger raids.”

Final Say

Currently the Human Liberation Front is fractured, with a majority of the group's leaders and members either killed, ponified, or incarcerated, while a number have defected to the PHL, or just destroying itself by poor planning, overconfidence, and internal power struggles with each other. The group is a shadow of its former self, one that many hope dies in the near future.

With the major world leaders backing the PHL for their continued advancement of military technology and doctrine, success in both the field of battle and behind enemy lines, the HLF has all but been forgotten as a group needed to win the war. Soldiers from Marcus Renee’s taskforce and the world over have been near unanimous in their agreement that the HLF is a greater threat to itself and humanity than those they claim to fight, even in their weakened state. One anonymous soldier even claimed that their purpose was to soak up ponification potion so the real warriors could go in for the kill.

The once sought out position that the HLF so desperately wanted to prove their merit to the world fell out their reach before it even had a chance. And if they had any fragment of a chance, they took every possible opportunity to sabotage it, to the point that it became near-memetic to claim that they were the biggest threat to human-pony cooperation.

And yet, even for all their depravities and the lows to which they sunk, even the worst HLF members weren’t hated as much as another group, far more terrifying in their unfamiliarity and capacity for underhanded tactics.

The PER.