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georashi · 5 years ago

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Gaaah, a lot lighter than Synthetic Bottled Sunlight, but that also makes it a lot more believable. Breaking up a megacorp like that should be possible, but it'd first require tackling the head.

Previous: The Discord Timeline

The Industrial Devolution Timeline:

The road to economic domination was creeping and insidious.

First, Nightmare Moon returned. Celestia and Cadance were able to subdue her, locking her in a (very comfortable) prison while Celestia sought a way to free her sister of the evil influence warping her mind. With the monarch so distracted and Princess Cadance struggling to take up the slack, a few opportunistic entrepreneurs began getting their roots into the market.

Then the Crystal War began, dividing Celestia’s and Cadance’s attention even further. The Changelings attacked, sowing destruction and distrust until Cadance defeated their queen. Tirek cut a swath through the countryside before being stopped, increasing the economic struggles. It was as if a domino of assaults on the Equestrian daily life had started, with none able to stop the ever-larger dominoes from toppling.

Celestia was terribly injured during the final fight that destroyed King Sombra. Luna finally overcame her rage and the parasitic magic fueling it, but went into seclusion out of shame and a desire to tend to her wounded sister. Cadance’s focus was split between post-war rebuilding in Equestria, assisting the confused, freed, and much-distrusted crystal ponies with stabilizing their crippled city, and tending to her own first child. With their leaders so distracted and the country still reeling from so many attacks, ponies desperately reached out for any kind of financial and necessities stability.

Perfectly fertile soil for the country’s most hostile economic takeover in its history.

Flim and Flam’s tactics were simple yet effective: move in wherever large numbers of companies had collapsed and fill the void with simple, cheap necessities that anypony could afford. As their finances grew, they began to expand, beating out surrounding competition with their rock-bottom prices until they could either buy out or crush their competitors. They continued this strategy further and further out, their influence spreading like hives across Equestria until hardly any retailers of food, drinks, household goods, small machine parts, and pretty much every other goods reseller below industrial level still operated. (Although who knew what the future might hold for FlimFlam Industries?) Once competition decreased to almost nill, they raised their prices to just barely affordable, swelling their already full pockets.

By the end of the Crystal War, they had such a grip, so much financial and political power, that even if the princesses should realize the toxic hold this company has on the market, it will be a long road back to rebalancing the economy. The country has, regrettably, come to rely on Flim Flam Industries, and their stranglehold would not be easily broken.

Sales always dreamed of being a traveling salespony. He’d even gotten a taste of it before the war. But now… well, there was no one to sell for. Companies kept dying out from under him. And if it weren’t bad enough that FFI already sold cheap, unexciting product options, the further lack of competition gave them even less incentive to TRY. They could cut costs on everything from packaging to flavor to color options; there was absolutely no consideration for variety or improvement or innovation. Soon everything in those blasted pop-up depots came in bland, uniformly labeled containers, with names like FLOUR and SOAP and TOWELS. There was no ART to it, and worst of all, no heart. And certainly no need for a door-to-door sales technique - not when F&F Depots were on every corner and people already had little choice but to get their goods from them.

So that’s how Sales ended up here, running one of those blasted depots. It is barely salesponyship, but it was still the closest thing he could find to his special talent. Meanwhile pollution and unchecked labor laws are creeping out from the cities, and farms are being consumed for their timber and factory locations. Quills & Sofas went under, leaving Sales’ father without a job and one more worry for Salespitch. Everypony prays that Celestia would heal, that Cadance would realize the depths of what was happening and make some move to stop it, that even the once-evil Princess Luna rumored to be tending her sister in the castle would take a stand. But for now, FFI is taking full advantage of the rulers’ distraction and obliviousness to tighten their hold on the country’s economy. Sales works and keeps his head down; it’s too great an issue for one pony to tackle, especially a pony whose only real talent is talking.

He tries to remind himself that things could be worse. Despite crummy wages and the soul-deadening monotony of just grabbing standard crap off a shelf when asked, Sales IS making a living. He makes an effort to keep his depot looking like the pony who works there actually cares (a façade FFI has long since abandoned.) Black took up work as a stocker in the store, so at least they get to hang out. Pollution isn’t as bad in Featherhorn (yet), although the deforestation and smog have been spreading nearer. But Sales just can’t get around the fact that there’s a briefcase-shaped hole in his soul where good, honest, smart salesponyship was meant to be. It’s hard not to be bitter and miserable when your purpose has been almost completely taken away from you. Still… if Sales can find a way to get a new company going without being ground under Flim and Flam’s hooves… maybe he can go back to doing what he loves, and the world will feel a little more right again. Fun Facts About The Flim Flam Timeline:

- I got my idea for a total economic takeover from a book 6 of the Pendragon series, “The Quillen Games” by D.J. MacHale. Its setting is a world where a single corporation has such control that they even own the people to an extent, but I didn’t want to go THAT dark (although this is still darker than my initial draft), so I stopped at just owning all of the selling outlets. Lack of competition in capitalism breeds complacency, leading to high prices with minimal improvement or variety. (That book may have also stuck in my mind because it was the first time an author so thoroughly pulled the rug out from under me that I was too depressed to finish the series. I can’t HANDLE that kind of catastrophic reversal, MacHale!!!)

- Sales’s dad, Sales Patter, lost his job as Head of Sales at Quills & Sofas after the company was eaten by FlimFlam Industries. He currently lives at home taking care of Pitch Perfect while Pitch Forward does her best to bring in funding through her competitive high-diving sponsorships. Sales and Black contribute money as well, although Black has a surprisingly well-stocked savings account that he refuses to explain to anyone.

- Flim and Flam offered Sales a job as their company spokespony, mainly because they loved the idea of having an ‘alicorn’ as their mascot. Obviously he turned them down, but he did still grudgingly accept a position at the Featherhorn depot since it’s the closest thing he can find to what he’s good at. (Flim and Flam do still like to give people a show, especially when it comes to the smoke and mirrors they must use to keep the wealthier populace and government from paying too much attention to some of the ways FFI cuts their spending - at the expense of their workers, mostly.)

- I’ve seen others do this timeline harsher; there’s a fimfiction that had an interesting take on Celestia being injured in her fight with Nightmare Moon and then IMPRISONED by Flim and Flam’s company so it could take over, which led to an ever-rising problem with pollution, underage workers, poor labor laws, and backhoof politics. Some of that does exist in this timeline, but I went with a severe injury and seclusion in the palace. The Princesses are still AROUND, but being carefully shielded from the truly dark nature of some of Flim and Flam’s machinations. It may just take someone getting their attention drawn to the right things to start the ball rolling…

- Sales and Patter do team up to create a small startup company, selling goods made by Featherhorn’s citizens to the local area. Black uses his connections as a Royal Service agent to sneak them into the palace, where they get an uber-rare meeting with Princess Celestia, who is blessedly awake enough to recognize the little AI and hear their plight. She convinces Luna, who has been taking care of her this whole time, that something needs to be done. Luna is grossly undereducated about modern economics and business practices, but she pulls Cadance in, and while Cadance works on investigating these horrible labor practices they’ve reported, Luna begins brushing up on her education and offers some protection to Sales’ little company. She does, in fact, find some obscure ancient laws that give them a leg up in the fight against FFI when they inevitably try to buy out, sue, and/or bankrupt Sales’ and Patter’s company into the ground. But they start making some headway.

- It’s a long road back to a balanced market, and much of the work will be done by the Princesses. But the inspiration ponies draw from the changes they see starts the dominoes again - this time, in the direction of positive change.

Next Week: The Wasteland Timeline (finale!)

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georashi · 5 years ago

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Dang, this is good stuff. I wonder where that lets us place those Ethereals we know? Aun'shi sounds like a spiritualist. He has no love for Orks or Dark Eldar, but at the same time does not seem to treat others as beneath him. So does Aun'el, who tried persuading even armies on his doorstep not to fight, and under whose guidance O'Kais tried negotiating with even Space Marines on the battlefield.

Aun'va, on the other hand, has been more of a Supremacist, always judging things by their strength, and caring little how many died as long as the survivors joined the Greater Good.

T’au Ethereal Caste Ideologies:

Ethereals in 40k are currently treated like a monolith, where every individual has the same set of beliefs and morals. I believe they should be treated more like Inquisitors, where there is a whole spectrum of beliefs and multiple different sub-factions within the wider organisation. Tech Priests have this also, even Haemonculi, so why not Ethereals? They should have different interpretations on what the “Greater Good” means. It would help add more depth and complexity to their characters, it adds internal conflict, and it allows players to better customise “their dudes”.

I have therefore come up with a grid of two spectrums, where the x-axis represents what “good” means, and the y-axis represents who the “greater” are. The very right represents “good” = survival of the species and nothing more, further left means physical wellbeing, and further more means mental/spiritual wellbeing. The very top is “greater” = Ethereal Caste only, further down is all T’au Castes, further down is other alien races, and the very bottom represents all lifeforms.

Names of groups are placeholders, and these aren’t rigid groups either. Many Ethereals are independent, many fall in between, many have conflicting views, many Ethereals don’t like titles and see the Ethereal Caste splintering into sub-factions as a bad thing. Anyway here’s what the groups mean.

Keep reading

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