Podcast / Fallout Is Dragons

Previously, in Dragon's Maw...

When the balefire bombs rained down, Equestria was not the only land to suffer. The badlands to the south, home of the ancient dragon race, were devastated beyond recognition and the dragons themselves all but wiped out. Nowadays the region is known as Dragon's Maw, rumored to be filled with the hoards of the dragons but well known to be cursed by their dying breaths. Life in the Maw has been harsh, with few settled towns and little contact with the outside world...

And into this setting stumbles a small ragtag group of adventurers, out to make their own fortune and destined to change the region forever.

Fallout Is Dragons is a semi-weekly podcast roleplay gamemastered by Newbiespud, the author of Friendship is Dragons. It takes place in the Fallout: Equestria setting, with the player characters being a completely original cast. They continuously blunder their way into the politics of the Four Horses Gang, the Cult of Tiamat, and the local Steel Rangers outposts as they quest for gold and glory, all the while their various backstories coming to light to haunt them. The system being used is the first version of PonyTalesAspirationsOfHarmony. The player characters are:

• Powder Keg, a country-accented unicorn explosives expert who seeks vengeance against raiders.
• Flotsam, a bomb-toting pegasus filly who ends up as the party's adorable moral center.
• Xencarn, a zebra novice necromancer with a snarky disposition and general disdain for his associates.
• Doctor Javolt, a cybernetic donkey scientist straddling the line between mad scientist and slightly less mad scientist.
• Firelight, a pyrokinetic unicorn healer and Follower of the Apocalypse.
• Tempered Steel, a justice-seeking Minotaur with a huge thunder hammer.
• Doctor Tibbs ^note short for Fractured Tibia, the drug-dealing earth pony medic with ties to the Four Horses gang.

Alongside these is an ever-expanding of NPCs who are 'adopted' at a whim by the player characters, some even becoming part of the core adventuring group. These include Craggy the baby cragodile, Aurelia the teenage dragon, Blinkie the stoic storekeeper, Smack Talk the young radio host, IGOR the spritebot, Chica the changeling, Star Paladin Lilypad of the Steel Rangers, Mayor Chase the griffon, Death himself... and a whole lot of others. Let's just say that if they get a name, they're sticking around for a while.

The series has its own tumblr blog, with fanart and a few fanfics, that serves as the main hub for keeping up with the show. The sessions are livestreamed from Newbiespud's hitbox.tv channel on Sundays at 7PM PST. You can also get the whole podcast on libsyn (new episodes go up the following Saturday from a session). Flotsam also has her own ask blog.

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Fallout is Dragons Tropes

Fallout is Dragons provides examples of:

• Acquired Poison Immunity: This seems to be Pestilence's MO, deliberately exposing himself to various poisons and diseases in order to overcome them.
  Pestilence: They say "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," and I've grown very strong.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: A computer virus infecting the Steel Rangers' mainframe starts granting various programs a limited form of sentience while driving them to sabotage the systems that the Steel Rangers need to survive. With Dr. Javolt's assistance, a helpful program merges all of the computer's systems with the virus in such a way that the end result is a fully self-aware Benevolent A.I..
• Amnesiac Hero: It's eventually revealed that Javolt's memory is fragmented. This is played mostly realistically; Javolt knows what caused his amnesia and does sometimes remember snips of his former life, but for the most part he's just who he is.
• Anti-Villain: Death, one of the leaders of the Four Horses gang, is an obscenely powerful necromancer and raider boss, but he's also the most friendly of the gang's leaders. He's also the one who came up with the idea of transforming the gangs into a more peaceful tribal structure.
  • By the time the Mawlers meet the dragon Nidhogg, he's long since given up on the spite that drove him and his fellow dragons to create the curses in the first place, and after a conversation with the Mawlers, lets them destroy his corpse and release his soul, ending the zombie curse in the process.
• Appeal to Audacity by way of Delivery Guy Infiltration: The Mawlers are trying to get close to a stone being guarded by cultists that will tell them where a dragon is hidden. Javolt plans to try to confuse the guards by having Tempered Steel fly him down ahead of the others on a cart and pretend to be delivering cupcakes. While a great deal of luck is involved through insane rolls at just the right time, the plan actually works against all odds by ultimately convincing the guards to abandon their post willingly under the belief that their replacements will be along shortly, allowing the stone to be activated without a fight.
• Arch-Enemy: The Executive is this for Powder Keg in particular.
• Ascended Extra: The players will often "adopt" NPCS they see as adorable or awesome, leading them to important positions or occasionally joining the group itself.
• The Atoner: Tempered Steel and Firelight, who are ex-raiders. Firelight was also a slaver for a time.
• Badass Adorable: Flotsam, natch.
• Becoming the Mask: After Apocalypse, Dr. Tibbs quits the Four Horses, for whom he'd been spying on the Dragon Mawlers, and officially becomes part of the team.
• Big Bad: The Executive.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Played with and partially subverted. The Executive is definitely the Big Bad, but he'll partner up with other leaders in the Maw... and just as easily dispose of them. So at any time, it's the Executive and X.
• Big Damn Heroes: Torque's sudden appearance in Apocalypse after Famine had successfully used Mind Control on Death and Pestilence.
• The Big Guy: Tempered Steel. Not only is he the teams designated Tank, he's also a minotaur who pretty much towers over everyone in the Maw who isn't a dragon or another minotaur. It turns out to be a pretty useful trait to have when he needs to keep someone away from others who would very much like them dead.
• Blood Knight: War, who lives for the honor and glory of combat. After Powder Keg kills him in a duel, he chooses not to let Death resurrect him, as he feels that he would never find such a satisfying battle again.
• Boxed Crook: After being outed as The Mole, Dr. Tibbs gets treated as this by the rest of the group as they can no longer fully trust him, but are eventually forced to acknowledge that his connections, especially with Pestilence, still make him a useful asset.
• Calvinball: Faceball, played with a pony head and two teams of three players, but the losers are only killed in the professional leagues.
• Character-Magnetic Team: There are seven players and a current roster of nine to eleven party members, depending on whether one counts the companions. There's also a B-team of six characters.
• Combat Medic: One of the team medics is a pyromancer, and the other is a psychopath.
• Cool Big Sis: In an odd and cute twist, Aurelia and Flotsam are both this to each other.
• Cuteness Overload: Flotsam-in-a-box is cute enough to cause heart troubles or act as a distraction.
• Dark and Troubled Past: It would be easier to name characters that don't have this.
• Deadly Doctor: Dr. Tibbs.
• Depending on the Artist: Aurelia - What's known for certain is that she's a lanky, winged, black and gold teenage dragon. Beyond that, she has no less than four wildly different artistic interpretations to date.
• Ditzy Genius: Doctor Javolt has shades of this.
• Dope Slap: Most frequently targeted at Doctor Javolt.
• Dysfunction Junction: Just... just look at the tropes on this list.
• Easily Forgiven: Averted in the case of Dr. Tibbs. After he's outed as The Mole, a few of the Mawlers have to be talked down from executing him then and there, and even the ones who were more lenient treated him as a Boxed Crook. It took the events of Apocalypse and the restoration of Powder Keg's damaged eye before he could really earn their trust.
• Enfant Terrible: While in Ribcage, Tempered Steel is the target of an attempted mugging by Golden Crown, a young filly who runs half the town by virtue of her special talent of "being a crimelord."
• Ensemble Dark Horse: No pun intended, but the huge cast of NPCs is full of them, thanks to the players' tendency to become interested in throwaway characters that they find quirky or charming, forcing Newbiespud to develop their personalities and roles in the Maw further.
• Expy: Blinkie, to Pinkie Pie's sister Maud.
• Fate Worse than Death: The ultimate fate of Famine.
• Game Within A Game: At one point, Flotsam finds an old tabletop RPG and invites some of the other Mawlers to join her in a brief Breather Episode campaign where the players are playing their characters playing other characters.
• GMPC: Two! Aurelia and Chica, both nonplayer characters, are considered as much adventurers as the rest of the group and consequently try (and fail) to be the voice of reason.
  • Later, Chica is replaced by Jin, a cybernetically enhanced changeling soldier.
  • The Dynamic Duo prequel story has Xencarn and Flotsam teaming up with "The Nighstalker," a post-Unity alicorn who patterns herself after old-world superhero comics. Her bombastic mannerisms and self-narration instantly made her a fan-favorite.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Astaroth, the original leader of the seven dracolichs who created the curse, and who is the source of the Gunsmith curse.
• Happily Adopted: Flotsam is a pegasus filly who was found and raised by a loving earth pony family. She's even happier to have been raised by her ground-bound family after discovering her biological parents' connection to the Enclave.
• The Heart: Flotsam.
• Heel–Face Turn: A major story arc within the campaign revolves around the Four Horses gang trying to decide whether they should continue to live the raider lifestyle, or go legit. Naturally, the Mawlers try to convince them to take the latter route.
• Hero of Another Story: The "B-Team" that the Mawlers end up assembling become this, going off to address issues around the Maw that the Mawlers themselves aren't available for.
• Honor Before Reason: Tempered Steel, full stop. This includes - but is not limited to - trying to tell a dragon they didn't have to fight while the dragon was preparing to attack him, objecting to the sale of drugs even when it prevented a large-scale conflict, and not taking a dangerous mystical object from someone's home because he objects to just flat-out stealing from them.
• I Choose to Stay: By the end of their adventure in Stable 998, Chica decides to stay behind, having finally found a nest of changelings who will eventually need her to become their queen.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: When the group is being formed, Filly mentions zombies, which Xencarn prefers to keep under wraps:
  Xencarn: Ignore her, she's hyperactive and crary.
  Flotsam: I'm only one of these two things!
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Golden Crown actively cultivates her reputation as a vicious little mob princess, but in actuality she's also very much a little girl who likes having tea parties with her love cat friends in Stable 998, and genuinely cares about keeping them safe from the horrors of the wasteland.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Powder Keg... although he does eventually admit the world isn't completely terrible.
• Knight Templar: Powder Keg started off wanting to kill all raiders. He's gotten better, though.
• The Loonie: Masterweaver, who made a cybernetic mad scientist donkey that frequently does things which provoke face palms from the rest of the group.
• Mad Scientist: In a post apocalyptic world of magic and magitech, one donkey seeks to spread nonmagical technology across the wastes!
• Mind Control: Famine has this ability, thanks to his dealings with The Executive. He uses it to bring Death and Pestilence under his command during Apocalypse.
• The Mole: Dr. Tibbs had been spying on the Dragon Mawlers the whole time he was with them on behalf of the Four Horses gang, at Pestilence's request.
• Monster Is a Mommy: The first full group session had the players fight a cragodile who was soon joined by her babies. The group adopted the sole survivor, which soon turned into an informal tradition of leaving one of their enemies alive every battle.
• Mugging the Monster: A pigtailed unicorn filly tries to lead Tempered Steel down an alley so her earth pony friends can rob him. It doesn't work.
• The Necrocracy: The Death raider gang consists of necromancers ruled by a lich named Death. Interestingly, they're also the friendliest raider gang to the player group, and Xencarn sees Death as a mentor figure.
• Necromancer: Xencarn, in an interesting take on the trope, is a novice necromancer looking to perfect his craft.
  • The Death gang is an entire faction of these led by a lich. There are also seven undead dragons, one of whom actively raises the dead.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Occasionally, the Mawlers will find that their heroics have unintended consequences (Such as the removal of some of the curses creating free zones for the backstab curse to flow into when they anger Tanis by challenging her) and their highest priority will shift to cleaning up the fallout.
• No Indoor Voice: TORQUE!
• Non-Player Character: A lot. A whole lot of them.
• Perpetual Smiler: Javolt, by virtue of nerve damage.
• Playing with Fire: Firelight's signature ability. Being a dragon, Aurelia can do it, too.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: The hat of the War section of the Four Horses gang.
• Psychic Link: Between Flotsam and Xencarn.
• Psychopathic Manchild: In contrast to Death and Pestilence and Conquest, after War is killed, Famine has an extremely immature and selfish attitude. Powder Keg outright compares him to a comic book villain.
• Put on a Bus: Firelight, when his player spent several weeks at a location without a suitable internet connection, leaving an opening for Dr. Tibbs to fill.
  • The Bus Came Back: He eventually rejoined the group around the same time that Tibbs was outed as a raider spy, though this did not result in Tibbs leaving the party.
  • Toward the end of the campaign, this happened to Powder Keg as well when his player decided to quit the game before reaching the conclusion of his character arc.
• Pyromaniac: Firelight, though he's good at keeping it under control.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The party members are really a random assortment, who on occasion even try to kill each other.
• Ramming Always Works: The finishing move on the near-defeated resurrected form of Tiamat involves Tempered Steel 'running her over' with the flying city of Skyfall.
• Rasputinian Death: Everyone gets to take a shot at Famine, which eventually leaves nothing but a smoking crater where he had been standing. And because Death is just that good, he still gets brought back so that Death can subject him to a Fate Worse than Death.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Xencarn's player is Australian, but his accent sounds very different from the more stereotypical Australian accent used by Dr. Tibbs.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Mayor Chase of Skyfall is a reasonable, practical leader who truly cares about the welfare of his constituents. This doesn't stop the Dragon Mawlers from giving him all of the headaches with the sort of chaos that just seems to follow them around, but they do tend to acknowledge it and try to arrange a workable compromise with him more often than not
• Reformed Criminal: Tempered Steel and Firelight are both former Raiders.
• Robot Buddy: IGOR, for Dr. Javolt.
• The Roleplayer: Pretty much everyone.
• Running Gag: "It was very X, and it was very offscreen."
  • Dr. Tibbs never taking part in combat, either due to his player not being around or because someone else in the party bypasses it. The streak was finally broken in session 42.
  • Tempered Steel: "Tiiiiibbs, are you selling drugs!?"
• Schmuck Bait: The dragon Glaurung's horde, which instills a manic greed in anyone who touches it. Naturally, once the Mawlers kill Glaurung and end his curse, it turns out that there was almost no actual treasure.
• Shipper on Deck: Doctor Javolt, who rarely hesitates to try to pair people up for whatever reason he feels like at a given moment.
• Sympathetic Murderer:
  • Powder Keg's hatred for the Executive began when he was forced to kill his own brother as part of a Sadistic Choice.
  • Chica the changeling was living a nice, stable life in Skyfall with a loving husband. When the backstab curse temporarily spread and revealed her true nature to her husband, he flew into a panicked rage and tried to kill her, forcing her to kill him in self-defense.
  • Firelight when he became a slaver was forced to kill Bloody Grin in The Pit who was his only and closest friend at the time in order to join the slavers.
• Team Pet: Craggy.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Torque, one of the Steel Rangers, who is very enthusiastic about AWESOME STUFF like EXPLOSIONS and FIGHTING RAIDERS and EXPLODING RAIDERS!!!
• Therapy Is for the Weak: Averted, the party attempts to avoid a session but ends up going anyway due to Aurelia's prodding.
• Token Evil Teammate:
  • Nobody trusts Tibbs. Even after getting officially recognized as part of the team, he still continues to work on expanding his drug-dealing network and remains just one bad conversation away from going into a psychotic rage.
  • Famine is this for the Four Horses, and considering that they're a group of extremely powerful raider bosses, that's really saying something.
• Tough Act to Follow: The original leaders of the Four Horses had been pretty much revered as demi-gods for so long that when War gets killed, his successor, Conquest, is fully aware that he has some extremely big horseshoes to fill. Later, Locust has to accept the same pressures as Famine's replacement, though most members of the gang/tribe are much less uncertain about Famine's removal being a good thing.
• Tyke-Bomb: Aurelia was intended to be this. If things had gone as planned, she would have been hatched while being supercharged with so much tainted magic that the result would have been a nigh-unstoppable avatar of the dragons' rage and vengeance.
  • Defusing The Tykebomb: Thanks to the Mawlers killing Glaurung, and Firelight handling the task of hatching her instead, the end result is a snarky teenager with a fondness for energy weapons.
• Underestimating Badassery: Famine thought of Conquest (War's replacement) as little more than New Meat, and so didn't even bother to try and control him. This came back to bite him when Conquest joined Torque and the Mawlers in taking him down.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Played with regarding Flotsam in Skyfall. It's discovered that she is the daughter of high-ranking figures in the Enclave who were responsible for the creation of the crashed ship. This means that her DNA is one of the keys to unlocking the ship's computer systems, but also triggers an automatic safeguard that threatens to detonate the nuclear warheads on board if it should ever end up in the hooves of ground-bound ponies. Though this causes her a great deal of grief, she and the rest of the Mawlers are able to disarm the bomb, ultimately leaving Skyfall in a better position than the town had been before.
• Walking Techbane: Inverted in the case of Aurelia and the Cult of Tiamat's dragon-pony hybrids. The gunsmith curse, which is the only curse that covers the entirety of the Dragon's Maw, causes all manner of firearms to malfunction or break down upon use. As Aurelia is immune to the curses, she can (and does) use a plasma caster with impunity.
• We Help the Helpless: Well, they try. And there is a positive net effect.
• We Need a Distraction: The sole purpose of the Distractagon, a flying disco ball that either plays music or various novels as read by Morgan Freeman while occasionally exploding.
• Weapon Specialization: The chosen weapon of one Tempered Steel is a hammer.
• Weather Manipulation: Being a standard-issue power for Pegasus, Flotsam gets this naturally. More unusual is Tempered Steel having this power thanks to his signature weapon, and using it more often to boot.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • After Dr. Tibbs' status as a raider is revealed, Powder Keg tries to blow him up with a grenade, ignoring who else might get caught in the explosion during their efforts to keep Powder Keg from killing Tibbs. This trope promptly follows.
  • Tempered Steel when his player tries to have him uncharacteristically carry a captured prisoner into an irradiated building as part of a rescue mission. Since he gets called out on it before it happens, however, he gets a chance to recognize how bad an idea it is and change his mind.
• Worth Living For: Blinkie becomes this for Powder Keg. In the earlier episodes, he seemed set on spending the rest of his life killing as many raiders as possible before inevitably meeting a violent end, himself. After dating her for a while, he comes to realize that he doesn't want to die that way, and promises that once he's finished things with The Executive, he'll settle down with her.
• Wretched Hive: It's the Wasteland, but the town of Ribcage takes it up to eleven, considering that the Mawlers are in more danger of being attacked while walking down the street than they were in Apocalypse.
• You All Meet in an Inn: Which Powder Keg promptly blew up. Slightly subverted, as Javolt didn't meet the group until the next day and Tibbs didn't join until Firelight was forced to leave...
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Seems to be a recurring thing with The Executive. According to Powder Keg, in all of his encounters with the stallion, he's never been seen using the same underlings twice, and is quick to dispose of anyone he "allies" with once he's gotten what he wants out of them.

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"Mawlers Take Manehattan" is a Filler Arc which takes place in an alternate Equestria that was never destroyed by war, allowing the players to explore their characters with regular lives and jobs. The player characters are:

• Powder Keg, a country-accented unicorn demolitions expert. His son, Pop Rocks, is a member of the Manehattan branch of the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
• Sweet Cake,^note Flotsam's birth name in Fallout is Dragons a pegasus filly from a wealthy family, and a member of the Manehattan CMC.
• Xencarn, a zebra literary agent with a snarky disposition and general disdain for everyone.
• Aurelia, a baby dragon who works with Xencarn as a literary agent, but is required to attend school as well against her will.
• Doctor Javolt, a donkey scientist straddling the line between mad scientist and moderately successful edutainment star. His adopted daughter, Monitor, is a classmate of Sweet Cake's.
• Brass Knuckles,^note Tempered Steel's birth name in Fallout is Dragons a Minotaur detective for the Manehattan police department.
• Cuppa Sunshine, who is the teacher for most of the child-age player characters.^note Has no relation to Dr. Tibbs despite being the replacement character for Dr. Tibb's player, used since Dr. Tibb's player didn't think there was a good way to incorporate Dr. Tibbs as a Player character into Pre-War Equestria.

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Mawlers Take Manehattan

Mawlers Take Manehattan contains the following tropes:

• Bizarrchitecture: The condemned building in the second episode features rooms that were built without any doors, which a few of the CMC find themselves trapped in after falling through the ceiling.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Despite being a baby dragon in this setting, Aurelia manages to be even more of a sullen and aloof teen than she is in the Maw.
• By-the-Book Cop: Brass Knuckles is very straight-laced.
• Catchphrase: "Remember meeeeeee!" for Sweet Cake whenever she gets caught by an adult while getting into trouble.
• Cool Teacher: Cuppa Sunshine, especially when she goes out of her way to buy ingredients and supplies to help Aurelia with her lemonade stand.
• Cuteness Proximity: A de-aged Xencarn deliberately invokes this to steal cake, And That's Terrible.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The players frequently catch themselves accidentally referring to Sweet Cake and Brass Knuckles by their Mawler names.
• Demolitions Expert: Powder Keg's job, using his knack for explosives to bring down condemned buildings.
• Electronic Speech Impediment: Monitor occasionally, when her "music box"^note A voice synthesizer Javolt gave her after her vocal chords were irrepairably damaged in a fire doesn't say words correctly.
• Expy:
  • Dr. Javolt is one for Bill Nye the Science Guy.
  • Dundee Whinnier, the head zookeeper at the Manehatten City Zoo, to Steve Irwin. Notably, he's also stated to have a brother named Steve Whinnier who's even more so in spite of never actually being seen.
• Happily Adopted: Monitor
• Honest John's Dealership: Silver Tongue, who manages Dr. Javolt's infotainment show among other things, is entirely built on this trope.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Cuppa Sunshine, though her drink of choice is coffee.
• I'm Taking Him Home with Me!: Xencarn's reaction to the many feline creatures at the zoo.
• I'm Not Here to Make Friends: Aurelia. Mostly because she doesn't want to go to school with foals in the first place.

• No Sense of Personal Space:
  • Monitor. She learned it from Javolt.
  • This apparently extends to every character played by Masterweaver, as Sweet Cake's friend Mort exhibited the same behavior when Masterweaver briefly took charge of him.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Sweet Cake's player attempts to give her a Manehattan accent with limited (but adorable) success.
• Parental Neglect: Sweet Cake's parents are usually too busy to spend time with her.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Aurelia has one in Frida, another young dragon who pettily harasses her at every opportunity over some sort of clan feud.
• Slice of Life: A given, as the characters aren't wasteland-roaming, bandit-exploding adventurers this time around.

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Tempered Steel: This...has been Fallout Is Dragons.
Powder Keg: Join us next week when we insert more useless tropes into our roleplay in order to needlessly buff up this page!

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