Changelings in a world without love.
Fallout: Equestria - War Does Change
is a crossover fanfic between My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the Fallout universe. It is a Recursive Fanfiction to Kkat's Fallout: Equestria.
It has been nearly two hundred years since the megaspells rained fire down on the world, reducing it to a tainted wasteland. The ponies of Equestria get on by, but only just. A lucky few survived in great underground shelters, the stables. Among these is the lost, and almost mythical, Stable 84. It was said that the stable in question was home to not ponies, but creatures who could change their faces with but a thought. But that was just a myth, there was no way that the Equestrian Hive was real. Right?
It has a page on the Fallout Equestria wiki.
The story started on the 28th of January 2018, and was completed on April 14th of 2019.
Fallout: Equestria — War Does Change contains the following tropes:
- After the End: As with all Fallout: Equestria fics, this story is set after Equestria's annihilation in the magical equivalent of an all-out nuclear war.
- Ascended Extra: The final chapter is from Stripe's perspective, even the footnote.
- Ax-Crazy: The Stable 77 Dweller, who has spent two hundred years with only a puppet for company.
- Big Bad: Kronos, although he's still a servant of Red Eye.
- Born Lucky: Subverted. A stallion named Lucky was named that for overcoming what should have been a stillbirth when he was born, only to die in Chapter 4 to a Mr Gutsy.
- Clarke's Third Law: Fallout and MLP mixed, technology and magic are mixed frequently.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Eyes Forward Sparkle. Red is bad. Green is good.
- Cult: The Prophet, really Starlight Glimmer, and her anti-cutie mark village.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: After being away from her for some time, Altrix returns to the hive to find her mother, to whom she was close with, murdered by Red Eye's slavers in defence of the hive.
- Didn't Think This Through: Scrap Heap sets out to find a Stable, bunkers that unfortunately tend to brutally kill its residents and those who explore them, packing but a small albeit well-maintained 9mm pistol.
- Dream Sequence: After being knocked out by Stripe, Scrap Heap dreams of the last day and the destruction of Manehatten.
- Evil Is Deathly Cold: After being stuck in the tunnel to the Crystal Empire for two hundred years, a large horde of feral ghouls are noticeably frozen over, and yet no less dangerous than a normal ghoul.
- Expy:
- Tenpony Tower is Tenpenny Tower from Fallout 3
- New Appleoosa is a mix of Megaton and Junktown.
- The MAS facility beneath Donut Joe's is an expy of The Switchboard beneath a Slocum Joe's in Fallout 4.
- Stable 84's failing water talisman is an expy of the water chip of Vault 13 in the original Fallout.
- The Outcasts from Operation: Anchorage. Protector Mcgraw is now Star Paladin Mcroar, and Specialist Olin is now Scribe Roll In.
- Foreshadowing: Scrap Heap certainly hopes that Stable 84 is empty and ripe for the picking. That, and the Pipbuck with its location belonged to a person named Chrysalis. Two guesses how this one's going to turn out.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Altrix gives her life so that the changelings can escape, turning into a manticore to hold the slavers off as they gun her down. She is promptly avenged by the hive.
- This was quickly followed up by both Scrap Heap and Moon Blossom.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: A secret MAS bunker is beneath a simple Donut Joe's.
- Indy Ploy: Sneaking into the factory in Buckingham, they're just making it up as they go.
- Interspecies Romance: Scrap Heap and Stripe, one being a unicorn and the other a zebra.
- Meaningful Name: Scrap Heap is a scavenger who spends his time digging through scrap. He hates this fact.
- Mysterious Benefactor: The Twilight Society have an interest in Stable 84.
- Noodle Incident: Something to do with a pack of dogs, a drugged up raider, and a fridge.
- Not What I Signed on For: Scrap Heap wanted to find Stable 84 for the caps, and ended up finding MAS secrets behind it all.
- Orphan's Ordeal: Scrap Heap's parents were killed by raiders long before the story begins. Not that he has particularly fond memories of them, and he considers himself cursed from birth with a name like Scrap Heap.
- Punny Name: War Does Change. In a fic about changelings. It's also a play on the infamous 'War Never Changes' line.
- Quest Giver: Ditzy Doo provides Scrap Heap the Pipbuck that leads to his adventure.
- Ridiculously Average Guy: Scrap Heap is a stallion with a brown coat and mane who spends his time scavenging in scrap piles. He's one of the guys Littlepip would have seen milling about the wasteland not doing much with their lives.
- Scavengers Are Scum: Both subverted and lampshaded by Scrap Heap. He notes how some scavengers shoot anyone who happen to get too close to their claimed salvage, and wonders why in Equestria anypony would do something so stupid.
- Shout-Out: Ditzy Doo says to Scrap Heap that she is heading into the Ponyville area the next day. This is where she will be captured by raiders and meet Littlepip for the first time.
- Suicide Mission: The group heading into Site B for the final confrontation with Kronos.
- The Cameo:
- In Chapter 3, Scrap Heap is saved from raiders by a patrolling Deadshot Calamity.
- The initial DJ Pon-3 radio transmissions about both the Stable Dweller and Security.
- You Are Too Late: The second half of the story is spent trying to oppose Kronos and save the changelings. Just as they get what they need to put the cyborg griffon in the ground for good, the changeling hive is attacked and subdued.
