Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons/Characters

Protagonists

Blackjack, aka. 'The Security Mare' (Given name: Go Fish)

• Action Bomb: Following an encounter with Killing Joke. Not as awesome as you'd think, since it only goes off when it's "funny."
• The Alcoholic: Any alcohol Blackjack stumbles upon is usually consumed within minutes, particularly if it's Wild Pegasus whiskey. Drowning My Sorrows occasionally applies, but generally the presence of alcohol indicates that awesome is about to ensue.
• Anti-Hero: Typically Type I. She tries to play the traditional hero but often falls short. Occasionally drops into Type III, especially when riled. She drops even further into Type IV in chapter 42.
• Apocalypse Maiden: What the zebras believe her to be.
• Apologetic Attacker: If her hoof is forced she will beat and/or kill you. But then she'll feel bad and whine about it.
• Appropriated Appellation: Resents DJ PON-3's 'Security' label at first but eventually warms to it, to the point where she occasionally uses it to refer to herself in narration.
• Artificial Limbs: With a built-in PipBuck and retractable fingers!
• The Atoner: Bordering on Death Seeker.
• Back from the Dead: Following the total failure of her heart and respiratory system, Blackjack is clinically dead for several hours. Her brain and body only survive because Rampage is used as a willing life-support machine until BJ can be implanted with synthetic organs.
• Badass: Hardens into one over time.
  • Handicapped Badass: From Chapter 27 onwards, eventually escalating to an insane degree. As of Chapter 33, she's missing both eyes and all four legs, and still manages to kill one of her attackers while nailed to the floor.
  • Badass Abnormal: Following her augmentation.
    • Badass Transplant: Some of her cybernetics belonged to her old nemesis, Deus. Illustrated hilariously here.
• Bad Dreams: Frequently.
• Being Good Sucks
• Berserk Button: Blackjack tends to flip out if she sees innocents or her friends being harmed for any reason.
  • Following Chapter 33, being reminded of her rape becomes this.
• Bi the Way
• Body Horror: Taint and Enervation reduce her leg bones to the consistency of rubber and destroy her left eye. In Chapter 30, a tumorous growth fills the empty socket. Then in Chapter 32, her mutations get even worse.
• Book Dumb
• Came Back Strong: Lost use of her magic, but gained an enhanced cybernetic body.
• Catch Phrase: "Ante up."
• Character Blog: Here. (Unofficial, heavy spoilers.)
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Blackjack is a life-long sufferer, with an unfortunate tendency to act without considering the consequences. A likely candidate for BJ's Fatal Flaw. She's so focused on helping others that she ends up saddled with crippling guilt when things inevitably go wrong, to the point of almost completely disregarding her own health. She becomes overwhelmed with guilt whenever she is forced to harm noncombatants herself, and normally can't bring herself to kill in cold blood.
• Combat Pragmatist
• Cosmic Plaything: Blackjack has good intentions, but things rarely turn out as she hopes and her attempts to help often make things worse. This trope may be literal, if Big Daddy and/or the zebras are to be believed.
• Cyborg: As of Chapter 34.
• Determinator: To a fault. Her eagerness to act causes almost as many problems as it solves, but stopping to reflect often leaves her wallowing in guilt.
  • Lampshaded. Blackjack's Chapter 27 perk is Made of Stubbornium.
• The Dreaded: After she comes Back from the Dead, the Zebra Remnant refer to her as 'Maiden of the Stars', a title they previously reserved for Nightmare Moon.
• Dreadful Musician: Surprisingly averted. Her music with Octavia's contrabass is rough around the edges, but is apparently quite pleasant. Octavia's soul may be helping.
• Driven to Suicide: Attempts suicide twice after she's forced to gas Stable 99. In the first case, she attempts to stay behind as the stable floods with chlorine. The Goddess catches on and has Lacunae teleport her out. In the second, she fails to shoot herself because she forgot to turn off her gun's safety.
• Drunken Master
• Eat Dirt Cheap: Following her augmentation, BJ is able - and required - to eat scrap metal and gems to maintain her cybernetics.
• Embarrassing First Name: Go Fish, or 'Fishy'.
• Extreme Omnivore: The lesser variety. Blackjack's bizarre sense of taste says that the rancid-orange-juice flavor of Rad-Away is "tangy" and a raw-egg-and-chili-powder hangover cure is "not bad". She happily eats Glory's cooking. After upgrades, she adds metal and rocks to her diet and becomes the greater variety of Extreme Omnivore.
• Eyepatch of Power: After losing her left eye.
• First-Person Smartass
• Glowing Eyes: Gains a pair, but often hides them with a pair of Cool Shades.
  • Power Glows: The intensity of the glow correlates with how irradiated BJ is at the time.
  • Eventually replaced with Glowing Mechanical Eyes.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars/Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Blackjack becomes increasingly disfigured over time, accumulating significant laser scars and partly-healed bullet wounds on her face and torso, along with a large 'Y' shaped scar over her missing eye. Eventually, her taint contamination starts to manifest in the form of hideous tumors and does awful, unseen things to her legs.
  • Played Straight and Justified, at least in the long term, once she becomes a cyberpony - her healing talisman regenerates superficial wounds, so long as she's mostly intact.
• Hallucinations: What she believes Dealer to be, but also sees others while in strong magical fields or suffering from sleep deprivation.
• Healing Factor: Inbuilt healing and repair talismans grant her this following her augmentation, but she needs to fuel the repairs by eating raw materials.
• The Hero
• Heroic Sacrifice: Subverted in Chapter 22. Her friends think it's a heroic sacrifice, when it's actually more of a suicide attempt.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation
• Hero Worshipper: To the Stable Dweller.
• Hurting Hero
• Idiot Hero: BJ often misses things that other characters catch on to quickly, asks more verbose characters to explain things in simple terms, and berates herself for lacking intelligence.
  • Invoked! Somber stated he had trouble trying to figure out what kind of pony he wanted Blackjack to be. Then he found out this trope on This Very Wiki; at which point, 'click'.
• I Love Nuclear Power: Develops a relatively minor mutation early on.
• Made of Iron: Blackjack can soak up a ridiculous amount of punishment, and she knows it.

Blackjack: I’ve had cyberponies blast me with artillery! I’ve been shot in the back by zebra snipers and taken an armor piercing round through my skull! I’ve had my face attacked by almost every single pony I call a close and personal friend! I’ve had boats dropped on me! Don’t you tell me what will and won’t kill me!

• Martyr Without a Cause
• Mighty Glacier
• Mind Over Matter: As standard for a unicorn. Her magical abilities are nothing special, but she sometimes uses her telekinesis to sabotage her opponents' weapons.
• Multicoloured Hair: Her coat colour is white, but her mane and tail are striped red and black.^[1]
• My Greatest Failure: The death of Scoodle -> The Fluttershy Medical Center -> the massacre of Stable 99, each lasting until she manages to top herself.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Or rather, Star-touched Mutant Cyborg Unicorn.
• Rasputinian Death: A combination of cancer, mutation, multiple limb amputation, blood loss, pneumonia and finally, heart failure.
• Primal Fear: Played for Laughs with her fear of heights.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her standard eye colour.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to P-21 and Glory. Blue to Glory in bed.
• Samaritan Syndrome
• Sanity Slippage: Has moments of this, particularly when the stress, guilt, chem abuse, brain damage and taint contamination start piling up on her. She suffers recurring hallucinations and nightmares involving a stallion she calls the Dealer, due to his association with cryptic playing card-related metaphors, and in one case threatens him only to find that she's actually pointing her gun at Glory's head.
  • At least, Blackjack assumes he's a hallucination...
  • Blackjack has a tea party with the ministry mare figurines in Chapter 41.
• Scars Are Forever
  • Covered in Scars
• Spin Offspring: Evidence seems to suggest that Blackjack is distantly descended from one of the Mane Six; Silver Stripe suspects Twilight Sparkle.
• Skilled but Naive: Being from a Stable leaves her with no wasteland experience. She quickly adapts.
• Stepford Smiler: Type A.
• Stoic Woobie: Invoked. She tries to keep this facade up for her friends' benefit.
• Survival Mantra: Several, most notably "Do better" and "I'm not an executioner".
• Unicorn
• Unreliable Narrator: Unintentionally. Blackjack's emotional instability often ends up influencing her narration of events.
• Walking Disaster Area
• Warrior Poet: Sort of. Blackjack has a tendency to break out in crude, often violent songs, including renditions of certain numbers from My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic. However, she quickly takes to a musical instrument and the narration of her Tranquil Fury in Chapter 22 is interspersed with an adapted version of William Blake's The Tyger.
• Weapon of Choice: Though she uses various weapons when nothing else is available, BJ prefers to use a combat shotgun.
  • While she prefers shotguns for most of the story, she tends to ruin them within days, or even hours. In recent chapters she mainly carries a 12.7mm pistol and a pair of .45-70 revolvers.
  • She also tends to carry an Absurdly Sharp Blade. First a dragon claw, then a starmetal katana.
• We Can Rebuild Her

P-21

• Dark and Troubled Past: Spent his entire life as 'breeding equipment' in Stable 99, desperately trying to educate himself and find a way to escape before his 'retirement'.
• Deadpan Snarker
• Death Seeker
• Doesn't Like Guns: P-21 outright refuses to use projectile weapons, even in desperate situations (though he takes to a Grenade Launcher after a little convincing). He restricts himself to weapons that require care and planning because he's afraid that his repressed hatred of Stable 99's mares might make him shoot Blackjack on impulse. Discovering that she once raped him and later beat his lover to death makes this a lot easier to understand.
• Driven to Suicide: P-21 takes Blackjack's suicide attempt very badly, and shares a measure of her guilt over Stable 99. Fortunately, she manages to avert this trope at the last minute.
• Face Heel Turn: Briefly.
• Foil: To Blackjack.
• Functional Addict: A lifelong Med-X addict. At least until he steals the Med-X slated for Scotch Tape's lung transplant and damages her stasis pod in the process, nearly leading to her death.
• Hates Being Touched: Justified.
• Sociopathic Hero: At times. Occasionally lapses into Comedic Sociopathy, such as when Rampage complains that she's getting caught in his grenade blasts.

P-21 laughed as he popped open Persuasion and loaded a new grenade. “Oh, this is very therapeutic.”

• The Lancer
• Master of Unlocking: P-21 is the only member of the party with significant lockpicking or computer skills.
• The Quiet One
• Rape as Backstory: As standard for a Stable 99 buck.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to Blackjack's red, red to Glory's blue.
• Scotch Tape, I Am Your Father
• The Stoic
  • Stoic Woobie
  • Just don't remind him about Stable 99.
• Invisible to Gaydar: Possibly Bi the Way. P-21's sexuality is complicated.
• Weapon of Choice: Grenades, plastic explosives, and later a Grenade Launcher.
• You Are Number Twenty-One: He actually wears his name as a point of pride. There are normally only 20 males of each type in Stable 99, so being number 21 and alive is an accomplishment.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair

Morning Glory, aka. Fallen Glory

• Baleful Polymorph: Congratulations, Glory! You are the new Rainbow Dash!
• Beware the Nice Ones: When Rampage attempts to kill Blackjack in Chapter 20, Glory has no qualms with outright vaporising her.
• Break the Cutie: Repeatedly. She loses her friends, her confidence, her innocence, her cutie mark, her family, her lover, the same lover again, her wing, her body^[2], and possibly a measure of her intelligence.
  • She gradually becomes a much stronger, more confident character despite (or perhaps due to) her various traumas.
• Broken Angel: After Enervation damage claims her wing.
  • Averted when an encounter with Killing Joke transforms her into a Rainbow Dash Expy. Of course, this comes with several problems of its own.
• The Chick
• Combat Medic: Once the Chapters get into the 20's, Glory develops the confidence to provide aerial fire support.
• The Conscience: Glory is often the voice of mercy and compassion, particularly when contrasted with P-21 and Rampage.
• Covert Pervert: In Chapter 30, Glory is quite happy to make use of the hoofcuffs, blindfold and ball gag she salvaged from the ruins of a lingerie shop.
  • Brains and Bondage
• Cursed with Awesome: Rainbow Glory.
• Does Not Understand Sarcasm
• The Exile/Mark of Shame: Thanks to Operative Lighthooves and Minty Fresh.
• Fragile Speedster
• Gatling Good: After accidentally breaking Leo's AER-14 rifle, Glory buys a gatling laser, and later uses its barrel assembly to repair and upgrade the AER-14. Cue Beam Spam.
• Lethal Chef: Only Blackjack can stand her cooking, due to BJ's bizarre sense of taste. After BJ's upgrades, Glory considers gemstones and metal to be valid ingredients.
• That Pony is Dead: Changes her name to Fallen Glory shortly after her branding, claiming that things will be better for everyone if the Enclave believe her old self is dead. The name doesn't stick for long though, and most characters simply refer to her as Glory.
• The Medic: Glory is an Enclave medical technician.
  • Hidden Depths: Glory is much more competent with medicine than she initially lets on, and performs a number of life-saving surgeries over the course of the story. This includes spinal surgery, skin grafts, lung and eye transplants, full-body cybernetic augmentation and jury-rigging a life support machine from Rampage's circulatory system^[3].
• Pegasus
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to P-21 and Blackjack. Though the roles are eventually reversed in Glory and Blackjack's sexual relationship.
• Weapon of Choice: Frickin' Laser Beams
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Wholeheartedly believes in the Enclave, even after Operative Lighthooves betrays her and has her branded as a dashite.

Rampage, aka. Arloste

• Anti-Hero: Type IV, with occasional lapses into Type V. Even at her most sane, she still displays some psychopathic tendencies.
• The Berserker
• Berserk Button: Several.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Rampage has barbed wire woven into her tail hair.
• The Big Guy
• Body Horror: Taint exposure causes Rampage to mutate - her hide turns scaly, and she spontaneously grows a single wing while a horn emerges from the side of her face. Fortunately, she 'gets better'.
• Broken Bird: Very much. Largely a result of killing her daughter.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Rampage's origin is a mystery even to her, but most of her known past is deeply unpleasant.
• Death Seeker
• Doesn't Like Guns: Rampage fights exclusively in melee, but the reason for this is never discussed.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Blackjack harshly learns that this is one of her Berserk Buttons.
• Enemy Within: The Angel of Death.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Angel of Death refuses to kill Blackjack in Chapter 33, asserting that she gives her victims the peace of death to end their suffering, not to assist in suicide.

“I give a gift to end suffering. You spurned that gift,” she purred in my ear. “Take your own damned life.”

• Feel No Pain: Averted, leaning her Healing Factor towards Blessed with Suck territory. Of course, that didn't stop her from jumping into a wood chipper on a bet.
• Fiery Redhead
• Friend to All Children: Rampage loves children, and helped start the Crusaders along with Priest. Seeing a foal suffer is probably her biggest Berserk Button. Unfortunately, one of her personalities is a foal-murdering serial killer.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Rampage practically embodies this trope.
• Healing Factor
  • From a Single Cell: A small talisman in Rampage's chest can regenerate her entire body, even after she's disintegrated.
• Immortality Hurts
• Immortal Life Is Cheap: To the point where Blackjack can be reasonably expected to shoot her in the head if she steps out of line.
• Implacable Mare: It takes massive damage just to slow her down.
• Lightning Bruiser
• Little Miss Badass/Cute Bruiser: If Rampage's body is completely destroyed, she regenerates as a small filly and takes several days to grow back to her adult weight.
• Mind Hive: See Split Personality.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Only Priest and the Crusaders call her Arloste. Everyone else calls her Rampage.
• Slasher Smile: Often a sign that the Angel of Death is taking over.
• Split Personality: Rampage appears to suffer from Dissociative identity disorder, leading to sudden changes in personality. She actually contains the souls of multiple seperate ponies, which constantly battle for dominance over her body. Discovering this leads her to question whether 'Rampage' even exists at all.
• Team Mom: Oddly enough, Rampage falls into this role a lot - when she's not dealing with her own problems, she's often on hand to offer emotional support and comic relief.
• Warrior Therapist: On occasion. One of the ponies inside her apparently had training a therapist, with their arrival marked by a teddy bear on her flank.
• Weaponized Headgear
• Weapon of Choice: Armed Legs/Bare Hooved Monk. She also has a ripper concealed in her armor, but rarely uses it.
• Would Hurt a Child: One of her personalities.

Lacunae

• Elephant in the Living Room: As with Fawkes in Fallout 3, nopony seems to pay much attention to the enormous, minigun-wielding alicorn following Blackjack around. Somewhat justified in that Lacunae makes an effort to conceal her wings.

Lacunae: One advantage to being a giant unicorn is that few bother you with why you are a giant unicorn.

• Foregone Conclusion: The Goddess is going to die. How this will affect Lacunae remains to be seen.
• Gatling Good: Spends several chapters carrying a minigun, but is eventually forced to leave it behind.
• Healing Horn
• Hive Mind: Part of one by virtue of being an alicorn, though more independent than most.
• I Love Nuclear Power: Lacunae is healed and strengthened by radiation exposure.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Lacunae apparently finds radiation exposure pleasurable, and responds accordingly.

There was something fundamentally disturbing about the way she splashed it all over herself. Nopony should have that much fun in magical waste.

• • Later on, when Blackjack accidentally triggers a powerful flash of radiation,

I stared at the rad readout as I watched the needle visibly rise! Lacunae groaned, her eyes closed with an expression of bliss and a blush on her cheeks.

• Lady of Black Magic
• Meaningful Name: Discussed and Invoked. 'Lacunae' typically refers to something that is missing or omitted. Lacunae herself is a living repository for all the regretful memories that the rest of the Hive Mind would rather not dwell on.
• Mind Over Matter
• Only Sane Mare: Lacunae is the only member of the party not to suffer from long term physical, psychological or sexual trauma. Naturally, this is often Lampshaded but is, most likely, a temporary state.
• The Smart Guy: While P-21 and Glory are also contenders for this one, Lacunae has by far the greatest magical ability.
• Telepathy
• Teleporters and Transporters: Comes with being a purple alicorn.
• Token Evil Teammate: While Lacunae herself isn't evil, per se, she's part of something that most certainly is.
• Villain Override: Occasionally, though it's often Played for Laughs.

Lacunae: But perhaps you possess a means to obtain {{[spoiler|a copy of the Black Book}}] from the O.I.A. Hub, yes?
Blackjack: Funny. What kind of Goddess wouldn’t know?

Lacunae: WE DO NOT NEED TO DIVULGE EVERY–

Blackjack: Gotcha.

• Voice of the Legion/Large Ham: Whenever the Goddess performs a Villain Override.
• Weapon of Choice: Magic Missile
• What Is This Thing You Call Love?: Lacunae is left speechless when Paladin Stronghoof displays affection for her.
• Winged Unicorn
• Woman in Black: Typically wears a mourners' gown to conceal her wings.

Scotch Tape

• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Thanks to Blackjack. She's not happy when she finds out.
• Morality Pet: Serves as this for most of the protagonists, particularly Rampage and Lacunae.
• Parental Abandonment: In part. While they travel and work together, P-21 resents the idea of developing an emotional bond with Scotch and remains distant. Eventually averted.
• Ill Girl: Following the killing joke encounter.
• Sixth Ranger/Tagalong Kid
• Sole Survivor: Of Stable 99 (Not counting BJ and P-21, as they left voluntarily some time beforehand).
• Took a Level in Badass: During the melee in Chapter 31, Blackjack asks her for help rebooting some Steel Rangers' disabled power armor. All Scotch can do is cower in fear inside a wagon. Shortly afterwards, just as Blackjack and Lacunae are about to be overwhelmed, the Rangers come to their rescue. Turns out that Scotch^[4] managed to overcome her fear of the Rangers and assist them - right in the middle of a chaotic and bloody battlefield.
• Wrench Wench
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair

Boo

• Blank Slate: A rather extreme example, having no ability to do anything except eat food that's offered to her, sleep when she's tired, and hide from danger. She may be smarter than she appears, however, as she briefly manages to use a gun to protect (and shoot) Blackjack during a battle.
• Character Blog: Boo has her own unofficial character blog here.
• Spider Sense: Apparently. She hides from danger before Blackjack can perceive it, but didn't show any qualms about walking right up to Blackjack and her friends.
• The Soulless: According to Goldenblood, anyway.
• The Speechless

Antagonists

Sanguine, aka. Doctor Trueblood

• Affably Evil: Dresses smartly, conducts himself politely. When he's not sending monsterponies to harass Blackjack, of course. Or flipping out and feeding entire settlements to industrial equipment.
• Breath Weapon: Pink cloud.
• Deal with the Devil: Repeatedly offered, always denied. He doesn't take rejection well.
• Despair Event Horizon
• Evilutionary Biologist: Strongly implied. It's an act to hide his true motivation, which he's ashamed to admit to.
• I Have a Family
• Kick the Dog: When Sanguine clones Blackjack for tissue to replace the skin damaged by pink cloud, he doesn't even bother to euthanise or (implicitly) sedate the clone first - essentially, he flays 'Blackjack' alive.
• Mad Scientist: As the head of Project Chimera. Revealed to be deliberately Invoking this trope post-war, but he may have Become the Mask.
• Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Sanguine is a Canterlot ghoul.
• Pet the Dog: According to Psychoshy, Sanguine is her adoptive father and the only pony to ever treat her well. Cruelly Subverted when he reveals that he was simply using her to gain access to Project Chimera.
• Smug Snake: At first.
• Villainous Breakdown: Degenerates into a ranting, desperate mess as his attempts to get EC-1101 are foiled. He finally snaps and wipes out several towns just to get Blackjack's attention, then kills Priest when the negotiations turn ugly.
  • When Blackjack finally confronts him, she notes that he looks to be on the verge of going feral. The death of his family pushes him over the edge.
• Would Hurt a Child: Holds the town of Chapel hostage and shoots Charity in the gut to speed up negotiations.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Planned to do this to Psychoshy.

Psychoshy

• Combat Pragmatist: Psychoshy fights dirty by default.
• Dark Chick
• Expy: Of Fluttershy, during her malicious moments. Justified.
• Heel Face Turn
• I Love the Dead: Towards Sanguine. It's unclear whether or not he reciprocates. Her love turns out to be genuine, but not in the way Blackjack and co. expect. Psychoshy is Sanguine's adopted daughter.
  • Considering the amount of tongue she slipped him in Ch. 25, it may very well be exactly what they thought anyway.
• Jerkass
• Spin Offspring: Of Fluttershy and Goldenblood.
• Token Evil Teammate
• Villainous BSOD: Psychoshy breaks down in tears during P-21 and Scotch Tape's father-daughter moment in Chapter 40, and gets a hug from Rampage.
• Well Done, Daughter Girl
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: For Sanguine, after she is unable to unlock Project Chimera with EC-1101.

The Reapers

• Affably Evil: Some of them.
• Asskicking Equals Authority
• Badass: Required for membership.
• Badass Grandpa: Big Daddy Reaper.
• The Brute: Deus and Gorgon.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Gorgon is pulped by an industrial rock-crusher. Tail first.
• Cyborg: Deus.
• Eyepatch of Power: Big Daddy Reaper apparently gets hold of Blackjack's eyepatch, following the events of Chapter 32.
• Fallen Hero: Both Deus and Gorgon.
• Half Pony Hybrid: Gorgon is part pegasus, part cockatrice.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Deus is blown in half when his guns backfire, setting off their ammo reserves.
• Immune to Bullets: Gorgon. Immune to lasers and explosives as well. But not rock crushers.
• Really 200 Years Old: Deus and Gorgon were alive during the war.
• Sir Swearsalot: Deus, to the point where it's practically a Verbal Tic.
• The Speechless: Gorgon never speaks, though it's unclear whether or not he can. Speechless or not, he can certainly scream.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: The fastest way to become a reaper is to kill one and take their place.

Operative Lighthooves

• Affably Evil: YMMV, but Lighthooves remains polite and well-composed most of the time and is quite willing to negotiate when convenient.
• Enemy Mine: He rescues Blackjack and Glory from Chapter 29's Literal Cliff Hanger and establishes a mutually beneficial arrangement to preserve Thunderhead against the Enclave proper.
• Motive Rant: Lampshaded in Chapter 30.

May I rant a little? I think that, since you’ve seen fit to give me the role of a villain, I’m entitled to give a little explanation?

• Playing with Syringes: Afraid that the Enclave military at large is planning to attack Thunderhead, his goal is to adapt the raider virus to infect pegasi, presenting a more direct threat for them to focus their attention on. Chapter 42 reveals that he has succeeded, and that his agents used Neighvarro pegasi as test subjects.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: In Chapter 30, he explains in his Motive Rant that everything he's done has been to protect Thunderhead in hopes of sustainable surface contact in the future. Granted, the details include a fair amount of genocide, but still, it's enough to convince Blackjack to call a truce.

Star Paladin Steel Rain

• BFG: Carries a pair of anti-dragon autocannons on his armor. Apparently they can vaporize a pony from two miles with near-perfect accuracy. See Gun Porn.
• Evil Gloating: At the climax of Chapter 32.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: When Blackjack sees his face, she notes that he looks "surprisingly gentle". It's the last thing she ever sees without prosthetic eyes.
• General Ripper
• Gun Porn: Goes into exquisite detail explaining the capabilities of his BFGs.

Steel Rain: Do you really think a gun like this should be left in a weapons locker to collect dust?

• Hero-Killer: From his first appearance, Blackjack is noticeably intimidated by him. After cornering her on the HMS Celestia, he cripples her with a single shot and comes very close to killing her outright.
• Power Armor

Lancer

• Cold Sniper: Lancer is apparently emotionless, even when gunning down harmless zebra slaves and shooting his allies (ie. Blackjack) In the Back.
• Combat Pragmatist
• Hidden Agenda Villain
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: The reason he refuses to kill Blackjack despite many opportunities; only the Legate can kill Blackjack.

Stable 99 Antagonists

• Dying as Yourself: Daisy.
• Face Heel Turn: Rivets and Midnight are well on their way to one of these by the time Blackjack gasses Stable 99, thanks to The Virus.
• For the Evulz: Daisy is a blatant sadist, and admits as much in the first chapter.
• Freudian Excuse: Daisy and the Overmare both had awful childhoods.
• It Got Worse: Stable 99 is an unpleasant place to begin with, as are many of the residents. Much more so when the raider virus infects the stable.
• Kick the Dog: Daisy breaks P-21's leg for no particular reason in the first chapter. Later, Daisy makes Blackjack eat Rampage's heart to maintain her raider disguise despite knowing who she is, and the Overmare rapes P-21.
• Rasputinian Death: Daisy gets shot by Glory and Lacunae, has her back legs shredded by a grenade, wrestles with Rampage long enough to get shot several more times, and has enough life left in her for a Dying as Yourself moment.

Other Characters

Goldenblood

• Bastard Bastard: Both a literal bastard and a Manipulative Bastard.
• Break the Haughty: At least twice. His messy breakup with Fluttershy and his eventual arrest are the clearest examples so far.
• Covered in Scars: Following Littlehorn.
• Freak-Out: According to Sanguine, Goldenblood completely lost it after being arrested for treason.
• Ill Guy: Following Littlehorn, though it doesn't seem to inconvenience him too much.
• Incurable Cough of Death
• Insufferable Genius
• Manipulative Bastard: Oh yes. For reasons not yet known, Goldenblood had a significant influence on Luna's government reforms and the formation of the ministries. He is also known to have wiped Twilight's memories of creating the Gardens of Equestria, and blackmailed Rarity over her posession of the Black Book.
• Offing the Offspring: Subverted. Calling out another mare's name while intimate with a pregnant Fluttershy caused her to go into premature labor. Both Goldenblood and Fluttershy were lead to believe that the resulting birth was a miscarriage, and mourned as such. In fact, Trueblood (later Sanguine) actually kept the infant Whisper (later Psychoshy) in secret to further his own ends.
• Posthumous Character: Maybe. So far all we've seen of him has been in pre-apocalypse memory orbs and recordings.
• Sole Survivor: Of the Littlehorn Massacre.
• Spin Offspring: Of Prince Blueblood.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist Chancellor: Appears to have been this to Luna.
• Workaholic

Dealer

• Dem Bones: At first.
• Hallucination: Possibly. It's strongly implied that he's actually some kind of AI or Soul Jar attached to EC-1101.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives these to Blackjack whenever she's in high spirits.
• Rousing Speech: Gives these to Blackjack whenever she's in low spirits. His flip-flopping between the two confounds Blackjack to no end.
• The Watcher

The Zodiac Family

• Baleful Polymorph: Pisces and Capri were transformed into seaponies by killing joke.
• Bounty Hunter
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Taurus' rifle.
• Cyborg: Professor Zodiac.
  • Brain In a Jar
• Genius Ditz: Virgo.
• Heel Face Turn
• Heroic Sacrifice: Professor Zodiac sacrifices her cybernetic organs, and any chance of being mobile in the near future, in order to save Blackjack's life.
• Intangible Mare: Gem and Mini, at will. Unless they get telefragged, that is.
• Kill It with Fire: Aries' power armor is equipped with a flamer and napalm grenades.
• Mission Control: Aquarius.
• Power Armor: Aries.
• Redemption Equals Death: Gem and Taurus.
• Shot in the Ass: Blackjack scares Virgo off by grazing her rump.
• Spank the Cutie: Blackjack to Aquarius.
• Taking You with Me: Gem to Deus.

Macintosh's Marauders

• All Love Is Unrequited: Jetstream towards Stonewing, Twist towards Apple Bloom.
• Apologetic Attacker: Psalm prays to Celestia and Luna for forgiveness whenever she takes a life.
• Bare Hooved Monk: Twist is adept at zebra martial arts.
• Cold Sniper: Psalm.
• Dumb Muscle: Doof.
• Fallen Hero: Most of them eventually become examples of this.
• The Heart: Big Macintosh.
• In the Back: Vanity's fate, thanks to his brother.
• Posthumous Character: As Macintosh's Marauders existed during the Great War, all of Blackjack's encounters with them are through memory orbs and apocalyptic logs. Though many of them are actually still alive, the intervening time has changed them to a point where they are no longer recognisable.
• The Quiet One: Psalm.
• The Speechless: Stonewing, thanks to a throat injury.
• The Squad
• Strapped to An Operating Table: The fate of Doof and Stonewing (possibly Jetstream and/or Twist, too). After disgracing himself by raping Twist, Doof was 'volunteered' for Project Steelpony and used as a guinea pig for cybernetic enhancement technology. Stonewing, after being paralysed in combat, was used as a test subject in Project Chimera and merged with a cockatrice.
• We Were Your Team: The squad rapidly fell apart after Big Macintosh's Heroic Sacrifice.

The FiM Cast

• And I Must Scream: Discord is at the heart of Project Chimera, being used as the source for the Bio-Magical Flux.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: While in Lacunae's mind, Blackjack encounters personified representations of Trixie's self-loathing and Twilight Sparkle's remorse. Trixie is an Extreme Doormat prostitute, while Twilight drinks heavily and rants about her mistakes in the ruins of Ponyville Library.
• Break the Cutie: Fluttershy. A moment of indiscretion from Goldenblood destroyed their relationship and cost them their unborn daughter.
• Cyborg: Rover, the red-vested diamond dog leader who once kidnapped Rarity, has survived the apocalypse and two centuries in the wasteland thanks to his augments. He's pretty much the only surviving Friendship is Magic character seen in either the main story or Project Horizons to be more or less still himself, instead of becoming a ghoul, alicorn drone, computer program, tree, or Rampage.
  • Turns out he's also become a skilled augmentation surgeon.
• Facial Horror: Silver Spoon and Prince Blueblood have both become ghouls. Silver Spoon is a Glowing One whose glasses have been melted onto her face. Blueblood's facial decay has left him with a permanent, ear-to-ear Glasgow Grin.
• Fate Worse Than Death: Silver Spoon is apparently unaware of her condition, and wanders Boneyard pining for her best friend. Readers of Fallout Equestria will realise that Diamond Tiara was Driven to Suicide shortly after the megaspell exchange.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: Fluttershy apparently had a close relationship with Goldenblood, to the point of bearing his child. It ended badly.
• Not Quite Dead: Very likely Octavia. While Blackjack finds her skeleton, her bulletproof contrabass and a cryptic letter from Rarity suggest that the instrument is probably her Soul Jar.
• Posthumous Character: As in Fallout Equestria, most appearances of FiM characters are either through memory orbs or as monsters.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Big Macintosh.
  • Twist, of all ponies, was a member of Macintosh's Marauders before the bombs fell. Her soul - or at least, some vestige of it - lives on as part of Rampage.
  • Prince Blueblood - now a ghoul - has had two hundred years to practice his swordplay and stew over his psychopathic obsession with Rarity.

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1. ↑ Like a playing card.
2. ↑ (though the transformation restores her wing, at least)
3. ↑ Though in the latter two cases she had help from Rover and Silver Stripe, both experts who were alive during the war and at several points access to a restored version of the medical centers "priceless" main surgical robot
4. ↑ Who, notably, is a relatively small child with almost no combat experience