The Outsiders - Supplemental Material
by Arania
Chapters
- FAQ and Explanations
- Chapter 6 Deleted Scene - Pinkie and the Jet Engine
- Chapter 8 Deleted Scene - Falls RW5
FAQ and Explanations
Due to the nature of this story, it was inevitable that certain questions or confusions were going to pop up more than once. Since worldbuilding is a thing that I quite enjoy, I have a quite-large text document detailing certain elements of the world, which has expanded over time to include explanations for questions that have cropped up frequently in the comments.
Certain sections will be redacted out due to spoilers for upcoming chapters.
Twilight's Origin Universe
During plot layout, Twilight's home universe was essentially described as 'FiM, but if none of the plot ever happened'. So, no Nightmare Moon (Luna and Celestia never had their fight), no Discord, no Sombra, Cadance is a normal pegasus from some backwater town (probably hollowshades), Twilight's 'incident' during her entrance exam never occured (she was still admitted, just not as Celestia's student. By extension, Spike doesn't exist), and so on.
The Ruins
The ruins are a physical 'crack' in the multiverse, caused by the expentidure of obscenely-high-energy magic, [REDACTED RE:CH26]. Historically, creatures capable of generating and utilising similarly extreme magical energy levels tended to occur in roughly the same physical location in the multiverse, and over time, these multiple cataclysmic Detachment Events created a large fissure in the large-scale structure of the multiverse.
The name 'Ruins' refers both to the fissure itself and to the worlds that reside within and immediately around it. Outsider Beacons and Interworld Teleport spells cannot function within the Ruins.
The Falls
'Falls' is a descriptor used for worlds that lie within a specific physical band of the multiverse, specifically those who are near the Ruins, or in danger of suffering a Detachment Event. In practice, the term is used to refer to any actively hostile world that could pose an existential threat to the Exterior or Outsiders (either due to local wildlife, hostile inhabitants, or high-level magic users).
The term is entirely literal, since worlds within the Falls are more prone to 'falling' into the Void.
What are the two-letter designations from Lunatic's teleport spell in Chapter 6?
Since Fall worlds tend to pop up more often in Outsider mission planning, they are given a simple two or three-letter designation for common use so Outsiders don't have to use the full navigational identifier. When originally written, some of the designations were intended as easter eggs (referring to other fic universes), others were arbitrary generic designations, and some were just random sets of letters with no real significance. The following is the list from Ch6, as well as their corresponding universes. Some (such as NV, UP, and RW) tend to have many individual worlds that fit under their descriptor, so they are followed by a single numeric identifer (eg. NV8, RW5)
RF - Arbitrary (Random)
FO - Fallout: Equestria
HR - Hard Reset (The Outsiders don't know it, but high-end time manipulation magic is very detachment-inducing, though it tends to cause very clean detachments)
NV - Nightmare Victory (Any world where Nightmare Moon succeeded against the forces of Harmony)
CI - Celestial Intelligence (High-tech worlds with hostile AI)
UP - Underclass Poison (Worlds with notable tyrannic caste systems)
OB - Arbitrary (Random)
RW - The Roaming Wastes (Environmental Calamity, Partially-Radioactive Wasteland)
EF - Eternals Forgotten (Anti-Alicorn world)
What was the creature in Chapter 6?
An Elk. Since that world tends to have a large turnover of hostile elements, a number of non-pony races have risen to give challenge for the post of 'Ruler of Equestria', some a bit more exotic than others. I briefly toyed with the idea of the current tyrant of that world being a giraffe, but I felt it would be a bit too silly and went with Twilight, instead.
It is not, as feared by some readers in the comments section, an FoE-inspired Caribou, though after exploring the background material, I can see why some readers would draw paralells between them (apart from the obvious misogynistic tyranny thing). The Elk's larger stature is mostly due to physical training (I pictured it as a bit mongol-esque, given Elk's typical areas of habitation), and the anti-magic armor is a technology native to that world, developed as a defensive measure when attempting to combat and capture Alicorns (see below for further details).
I'll admit, though, I find the essential idea of Viking Caribou to be interesting (and seriously, 'Viking Caribou'. It sounds cool), though i'm dissapointed that its most notorious execution is as part of an excuse-plot gorean fetish fantasy. Someone needs to take the Viking Caribou concept and actually work with it properly (though given my tendency to go 'Fuck it, I'll do it myself' in the past, I may indeed just do it myself).
Anti-Magic Armor?
For context, when writing and/or designing fics or stories for FiM, I tend to use the RPG system 'GURPS' as a sort of pseudo-headcanon, GURPS Magic specifically (with a few house-rules tacked on to help with balance and lend usefulness to spells I felt were a bit neglected, like Ward). The included spells (of which there are about eight hundred. Not even kidding) encompass practically every magic showing seen on the show thus far, so I have a fair bit of leeway in what I can throw together. Also, since it's ready-made, I don't have to come up with a suitable magic system myself (and, inevitably, if I tried to make something myself it would end up something like the magic from Sam Hughes' 'Ra', very mechanical and rigid).
The Elk's armor is inlaid with a decorative jewel. The jewel itself has the enchantment 'Magic Resistance' embedded into it, alongside a 20-Thaum 'Powerstone' enchantment (which provides the casting energy for the spell). When activated, the enchatment provides +20 resistance vs. magic to the wearer for 120 seconds before the powerstone charge is entirely depleted. The always-on 'Amulet' enchantment isn't used in this case since the magic resistance works both ways, mitigating not only inbound magical effects, but also impeding the casting of any spells.
It's worth noting that not only is the armor itself not subject to the resistance (So you could cast, say, 'Disintegrate' on the armor and it would work as normal), the resistance only works against direct magical effects. Attempting to cast 'Ignite Fire' on a Magic Resistant object (or person) would fail, but hitting them with a fire-enchanted sword would work fine (throwing a fireball would also work).
Would FoE exist within The Interior?
Just going to nip this one in the bud on the off chance that it pops up again (since quite a few people seemed to jump on the 'IT'S FoE! DWAMA!' bandwagon when Chapter 6 aired)
FoE does not exist within The Interior, for a very simple reason - Anthro worlds as a group do not exist within The Interior. Humans and humanoid creatures as a rule do not exist on Interior worlds (The crystal mirror to the human world DOES exist on many worlds, but it exists at right angles to this fic-verse and doesn't really ever come into play), with the exception of the obviously-fantastic (stuff like minotaurs, centaurs, and the like). This is primarily for simple stylistic reasons, but it also stems from the fact that I personally don't quite GET why people make anthro versions of FiM. Giving them humanoid stature but also retaining equinoid features like wings, tails, and horns smacks of trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Of course, given that the underlying structure of the Interior allows for quite a few possible permutations and variations, a non-anthro FoE equivelant could potentially exist somewhere in there. However, as I've mentioned before, FoE isn't something I intend to explore in my writing. Ever. EVER.
What is the structure of the Library?
The Library Index is a single spherical chamber, 1536 kilometres in diameter. The interior wall of the Index is divided into 92 sub-indices of varying area (Specifically, the pattern is that of a Snub Dodecahedron), each containing the complete Index for a given subchamber. These index shelves extend 12 kilometres downwards from the surface, and contain dedicated portal doorways to the area in the corresponding subchamber for which that subindex describes.
There are 92 subchambers. Subchambers linked to from the larger pentagonal subindices are structurally identical to the Index Chamber (1536km diameter, 92 delineated subsections for ease of navigation), with bookshelves extending to a depth of 192 kilometres. Subchambers linked from triangular subindices are smaller (768km diameter, 92 delineated subsections, 96 kilometre bookshelf depth)
The Index has a maximum book-storage volume somewhere in the range of 300 million cubic kilometres, and can contain at most 1.25e+20 volumes of index information.
Large Subchambers have a bookshelf volume of 6.4 billion cubic kilometres, and can contain at most 2.7e+21 volumes (There are 12 subchambers of this size, for a total of 3.2e+22 books)
Small Subchambers have a bookshelf volume of 800 million cubic kilometres, and can contain at most 8.3e+19 volumes (There are 80 subchambers of this size, for a total of 6.66e+21 books)
How big is the Exterior?
It has a functional volume several hundred billion times the size of the observable universe. The amount of that space that is actually utilised by the Outsiders is significantly smaller.
How big is the Interior?
Outsider short-form teleport addressing schemes allow for 68,719,476,736 (16^9) potential target worlds. Long-form addressing allows for (holy crap digits!) 4,722,366,482,869,645,213,696 (16^18) target worlds. Short-form addressing is considered sufficient for general operational use, with long-form used for greater precision when targetting worlds that are abnormally closely packed. However, much like how the size of the internet isn't equal to the number of possible IPv4 addresses, these numbers serve more as upper bounds for the number of worlds that are accessible.
In truth, I never really wrote down a number for how many worlds exist.
Structural Layout of the Exterior
The Exterior doesn't occupy a physical space as is conventionally understood. The best way to understand navigation in the Exterior is to do away with conventional grid-based visualisations, since the Exterior is actually configured as a set of interconnected nodes. Each node (functionally, a node is a single room) has one or more interconnecting portals (doors or openings), which are linked to another portal in a different node. This underlying characteristic gives rise to a number of unusual structural features, such as a room that is seemingly 'bigger on the inside', or a door that can lead back to the same room in a seemingly infinite loop.
Chapter 6 Deleted Scene - Pinkie and the Jet Engine
There are many words that can be used to describe the interior conditions of the Exterior, but by far the most accurate is 'clean'. Every surface of every room in the thousands upon thousands of miles that comprised the home of the Outsiders was kept in an immaculately spotless state by a mechanism that wasn't fully understood even after decades of study and research.
The Machinist's Shop, however, seemed oddly exempt to this rule. While the walls outside retained their perpetual off-blue sheen common to the rest of the Exterior, every surface inside the Shop hosted come sort of blemish or unseemly contamination, ranging from simple scorch marks to oil and lubricant spatters, dents, and large embedded fragments of metal.
The latter, Pinkie noticed, was a rather distressingly common feature as she looked around the room, trying her very best to avoid letting her gaze fall upon The Machinist's latest attempt at engineering for fear that the... whatever it was would sense her unease and attack.
"Mac, this is a bad idea"
"Eeeyup"
"You know this is a bad idea?"
"Eeeyup"
"And yet you're still doing it?"
"Eeeyup"
"...why?"
Mac turned and fixed his erstwhile 'assistant' with a flat gaze. Soot-covered goggles sat on his face, obscuring his eyes from her view, but she had a fair enough idea of what his expression was underneath.
"Fine, you want to blow yourself up, you can do it yourself. I'm getting food."
"Nope"
Pinkie stopped and groaned, rubbing her face with a hoof. Her eyes hurt. Her hooves hurt. Her flanks hurt. Her entire coat felt rigid and dry, owing to the fine layer of soot that covered every inch of her body, shifting her normally-vibrant pink coat to a more subdued off-grey. Her mane, normally poofy and in constant motion, had been cemented in place, solidifying into the shape it had occupied fifteen minutes ago when Mac's previous 'experiment' had self-destructed.
"Why did I volunteer for this?"
Mac simply shrugged, turning back his latest project. As far as Pinkie could tell, it was a cylindrical arrangement of piping and valves, roughly three feet long and half that around. A tapered bell marked an obvious 'business end', with the opposite end of the contraption filled with thin blades in a sophisticated mockery of a blender.
Pinkie's first instinct upon seeing it was to run. The front was unsafe, the rear was unsafe, and the rest of it was unsafe if only because it was Mac who had built it. It was imminent existential threat to anyone residing in the same city. She immediately understood why Mac's previous assistant had transferred to Operations, claiming that 'Getting shot at is less dangerous'.
"I swear to Celestia, you're going to be the death of me" She moaned, trotting back behind the woefully insufficient blast shield and lowering her goggles, bracing herself for the moment when it was all going to blow up in their faces. "Do it."
"Eeeyup" Mac obliged, depressing his hoof on the Big Red Button.
Nothing happened.
"Uh... Mac?"
Mac held out a hoof, silencing her.
The machine began to whine, quietly at first, but quickly gaining pitch and volume. Mac flipped a pair of switches marked 'fuel flow' and 'igniters', causing it to click ominously. Pinkie backed away, interspersing Mac between herself and the device as a measure of extra protection.
She opened her mouth to ask another question, only to have it snatched from her mouth as the machine let out an almighty roar, a gout of flame spewing from the exhaust. Mac flipped the igniter switch back off and grinned contentedly as the roar grew progressively louder.
Pinkie gaped at the noise, entirely awestruck.
"..." Mac said, his words snatched away by the phenomenal noise of the machine, reaching his hoof towards a guarded switch marked 'reheat'.
"WHAT?" Pinkie screamed, barely able to her own words over the noise, let alone Mac's.
He flicked the switch.
The world became nothing but noise as the roar intensified to an almost painful level. A single solid flame formed, stretching away from the exhaust. Pinkie smirked despite herself, marvelling that the machine hadn't yet managed to explode.
Mac leaned back onto his haunches, grinning. "..."
"..." Pinkie replied, the noise having grown to such a level that she could no longer hear herself talk.
He gestured to a fourth, much smaller switch on the control panel, surrounded by hazard tape. Pinkie's pupils contracted as he moved to toggle the switch from its current position, marked simply as 'Magic', to its opposite extent marked similarly with 'More Magic'.
Her brain had barely enough time to process what was going on before Mac toggled the switch. The giant flame currently held in place by the machine instantly tripled in length, its previous muted red colour shifting to a dangerous blue-purple hue. The screech of tearing metal was barely audible over the all-encompassing roar of the machine.
She turned to run a second too late. Overstressed by the absurd levels of thrust, the machine tore free of its mountings and accelerated forward. The fuel line quickly snapped taught, swinging it around in a wide arc. It too soon failed, sending the errant machine hurtling towards them, trailing kerosene and flames.
It sailed over their heads, still accelerating. Pinkie felt a rough tug at the back of her head as her mane caught on an exposed pipeline, dragging her along as the freed engine sped towards the access door for the Machinist's Shop.
Pinkie Pie screamed in abject terror as she became the first pony to break the sound barrier indoors.
Chapter 8 Deleted Scene - Falls RW5
"What did you say to them?" Vinyl yelled as a bullets whipped past her.
"Look, obviously it didn't go so well!" Octavia screamed back, tumbling forward over the embankment her teammates had taken cover behind, dust spraying everywhere.
"I said as much, I may remind," Zercora muttered, her rifle kicking painfully into her shoulder as she fired a round at the approaching ponies. "These raiders would see through your disguise. They are not blind."
"Can we please just fall back to the beacon and get out of here?" Octavia implored, dropping the primitive submachine gun she had been carrying into the dirt.
"Remind me again why we couldn't have beacon bands on this mission?" Time Turner asked, running for a pile of stones not far from the embankment, bullets passing inches from his face. "We'd be gone by now with those!"
"Too much radiation interference, Doc," Vinyl explained, pulling an oversized Outsider Thaumic Rifle from her back and passing it to Octavia. "This environment makes the effects unpredictable."
Octavia grabbed the rifle, popping over the embankment and sweeping her aim across the line of approaching raiders, the weapon's fifteen-kilothaum continuous-wave beam kicking up a cloud of dirt and eliciting a collection of all-too-satisfying screams.
Zecora fired again, a wet thud and a moan signifying another hit on target. "Much as I enjoy this taking these scum apart, I feel it would be best for us to hastily depart."
"Agreed." Octavia jumped behind cover as a shotgun blast impacted the space her head had just occupied. "Doc! Time is of the essence!"
"Oh, I don't know..." Vinyl contemplated, pulling another, much larger weapon from the pack and priming it, a satisfyingly ominous hum emanating from its interior. "It's not that bad out here."
Octavia stared at the weapon, momentarily forgetting that she was in the middle of a firefight. "Vinyl, what is that?"
"Nothin' special." Vinyl smirked, hefting herself over the embankment and aiming the weapon at the approaching mob. "EAT BASS!"
Octavia felt her eardrums pop as the overpressure washed over her, a slight ringing in her ears warning of the fact that she had come very close to sustaining permanent hearing damage from Vinyl's 'weapon'. As her hearing returned, a chorus of screams became audible, the approaching raiders having been thrown through the air from the weapon's impact.
"You built a bass cannon," Octavia deadpanned, staring at the weapon in question as Vinyl ducked back behind cover, a manic grin on her face.
"Yes I did." Vinyl admitted, patting the cannon. "Mac helped a bit, but it was mostly my idea."
"This. This!" Octavia pointed at the cannon, emphatically. "Is why I have you on this team!"
Vinyl's smile only grew as she ejected the cannon's spent magic storage cell, inserting a replacement in its place. "I thought you'd like it."
"We've got a problem!" Time Turner yelled, hidden behind the rocks.
"Yes!" Octavia agreed. "Bad ponies are shooting at us! Can you hurry up and trigger the beacon and get us out of here?"
"I would if it was still here!"
"It's gone?"
"No. I'm just trying to ramp up the tension a little bit before saving the day." Time turner popped his head over the rocks, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Yes it's gone!"
"Somepony stole our beacon?"
"No." Vinyl interrupted. "It was held in place by fifty-foot cables anchored into bedrock, and covered with a perceptive filtering spell. We're the only ones who can even see it, let alone use it or move it!"
"Then where is it?" Octavia implored. "Did somepony already trigger it?"
"Ops would have sent a replacement and radioed us."
"Might I suggest we reposition? I am running short of ammunition."
"Noted. Vinyl! How long do you need to open a portal?"
"Twenty seconds, give or take."
“Get on it! Doc! Get up here and cover us!” Octavia turned, compulsively checking the weapon’s cell charge as she did so. “Stripes! How many of them are there?”
Zecora jerked back behind the embankment as a particularly vicious impact knocked more dirt from the lip. “Many.”
Octavia popped her head up for a moment, her eyes widening at the horde of raiders closing on their position, a small group of them at the rear towing what appeared to be a small artillery piece.
“Yea, that’s a few,” She remarked, leaning over to tap Vinyl on the shoulder. “Portal, now. Or we’re shellbait”
Vinyl nodded, a sphere of space distorting inwards above them as she ignited her horn. The portal rapidly took shape as Vinyl poured energy into the distortion, attempting to open a semi-traversable gateway. Patches of unlight flickered over the portal aperture as sections of spacetime intruded into the Void.
“Quickly, Vinyl,” Octavia implored, popping up to take a potshot at one of the artillery gunners. “Time is of the essence!”
“The more you talk,” Vinyl replied, voice strained. “The longer this will take.”
“How many are there?” Time Turner asked, scrambling over and flopping beside Octavia, popping the spent magazine from the rusty submachine gun he had stolen from the natives.
“About three dozen, I think,” Octavia answered, passing a replacement magazine. “Plus four at the back with a howitzer. It looked like a howitzer.”
“It is indeed a howitzer gun.” Zecora confirmed, firing another deafening shot with her rifle. “A sign, perhaps, that we should run?”
“Point bucking taken, alright?” Vinyl groaned. “Ten seconds!”
“We’ll be dead in ten seconds!” Time Turner yelled, firing the submachine gun blindly over the lip of the embankment. “We don’t have the bullets to hold them off any longer!”
“I get it!” Vinyl shot back, bolts of volatile energy arcing through the portal as her concentration wavered. “Now, shut up!”
“No time!” Octavia yelled, scooting even further into the dirt as bullet impacts tore away at their meagre cover. “Open it, or we’re all dead!”
“Got it!” Vinyl yelled in satisfaction as the portal stabilised, sweat dripping down her face. “Move! Go, go, g-”
A phenomenal crack cut her off in mid-word as the raiders’ howitzer fired, the shell missing her exposed head by mere inches before hitting the now-open portal square in the centre and vanishing.
“Did they-?”
“They did.”
“Fantastic”