art by Pims1978

A few weeks ago, I suggested the possibility of posting what will amount to an unfinished story in my blogs:

From my blog entry Looking Forwards and Backwards:

On the topic of future blog posts, I have something that I would like to do. Some time ago, I had the idea for a new fanfiction -- a short (no, really) piece unrelated to Fallout: Equestria. Even though I decided against writing that story, the idea wouldn't leave me alone. So instead, I took the idea, reworked it to fit within the Fallout: Equestria universe, and have been writing up small portions of the story and giving them to my players in the Fallout: Beyond Equestria game. Having written four such chapter-segments, I think it would be fun to share them with you on my blog. This isn't going to be a full story, so it won't be viable as a story submission, but each part will be nearly as lengthy as the Fallout: New York City blog posts. How does that sound to everyone?

That begins today.

"Origin Story" is both the name of the story and the name of the adventure in my Fallout: Beyond Equestria roleplaying game that features it. In the game, the characters are on a sort of treasure hunt, putting clues together from fragments of a rough draft of a lost, unfinished Daring Do novel. In this adventure, the characters have discovered that, sometime in the last months of the war, Daring Do was called on to once again brave the jungles of the Tenochtitlan Basin on a vital mission.

The adventure's design, and thus the framing device around which "Origin Story" is told, centers around Daring Do's mission reports, and the methods used to keep those reports from falling into enemy hooves.

Overmare Studios Pipbuck 3000 Concept by Jeffk38uk

"Oh, and a feature not to be forgotten: it can keep track of the location of tagged objects or people, including the wearers of other PipBucks. So if a pony somehow got lost -- don’t ask me how you could get lost in a Stable, but it does happen on occasion -- then anypony who knew the lost pony’s tag could find them instantly."

-- Littlepip, "On PipBucks and Cutie Marks"

While Daring Do was in the Tenochtitlan Basin, she left mission reports hidden within tags that she scattered about the Basin. Should she have been successful and able to return on her own, she would have regathered the tags and delivered them herself to the military base at Tragedy's End -- a small town beyond the mountains of the Frozen North at the edge of the zebra lands. If she could not, somepony (presumably a Shadowbolt) who was equipped with a PipBuck possessing the decryption key could do a flying sweep over the basin. Whenever the PipBuck got within range of one of the hidden tags, the mission report would be automatically downloaded into the PipBuck and decrypted. (In the Fallout: Beyond Equestria game, the characters acquired the decryption key and are now searching the jungle for the hidden mission reports.)

Once the mission reports were delivered to Tragedy's End, they were to be converted using a "one time pad" into a code which could be openly broadcast without fear of decryption. The mission reports would then be transmitted back to central Equestria via the Final Echo numbers station on Shattered Hoof Ridge. (The pad itself would be delivered by another avenue.)

from Wikipedia:

In cryptography, a one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that cannot be cracked if used correctly. In this technique, a plaintext is paired with random, secret key (or pad). Then, each bit or character of the plaintext is encrypted by combining it with the corresponding bit or character from the pad using modular addition. If the key is truly random, and at least as long as the plaintext, and never reused in whole or in part, and kept completely secret, then the resulting ciphertext will be impossible to decrypt or break

Thus, Daring Do was instructed to provide not only mission reports, but to write up a unique "pad" to couple with each report. Those reports, and the writings that were paired with them, begin with the one below:

vector by Piranhaplant1

First mission report.

I’m at Yearling Manor. The locals haven’t given me any trouble, but they’re keeping a close eye on me. They don’t trust me, but it’s more than that. They all know that the zebra military has started up operations deep in the basin, and they know that their treaty with Tragedy’s End and all their neutrality won’t be worth a donkey’s fart if the Legion decides they aren’t.

Or, worse, if the Legion takes offense.

By Scorcherro’s claws, this place brings back memories. Most of them bad. I never wanted to return here. But Equestria calls and all that. They’ve boarded the place up so tight I think they put Wonderglue on the nails. Fortunately, I know how to think outside the box. I have what I came here for, safe and sound, and so on to the next objective. This is where it gets tricky.

Reminds me, though, that I still have one more story left in me. Since I’m supposed to add a “pad” with each of these for Final Echo, I might as well flesh out one last book.

This one will be different, though. I’ll need a different sort of opener. Not the big jump into action like the stories I used to write. Maybe an entirely different tone. Something formal. Like how she would sound.

Ahem… rough draft, author’s notes, take one…

First Pad Begins

First Pad -- a rough draft of Origin Story: Prologue What you have in your hooves, dear reader, is the first and, by all intentions, final story in a long series of adventures that began in my youth. For long-term fans, the generalities of most of these stories are exceedingly familiar, as I was driven to tell the tales of my own adventures, for reasons both obvious and heretofore obscured. The true details are, however, unknown except by a small few. (I will admit taking more than my fair share of artistic license in my writings.) Fans may find themselves jarred by the tone and vocabulary used within this book, for it does not match my earlier writings. In younger years, I was quite a prolific writer. I chose intentionally to mimic the style of the pulp adventure novels that had so shaped my earliest years, and which lent itself so well to not only the stories which I wished to tell but the conceit which I was constructing in their telling. This book, however, I intend to write in a style more comfortable to the narrative of a confession… for that, in truth, is what this tale is. It has been twenty-five years since I have lifted quill or tape recorder, much less put hoof to typewriter (or, rather, these new machines that have replaced them in the interim). I was content to sit back in my home and allow the world to go by without me, satisfied that I had done my part and the world was better for it. And, moreso, that the era of my adventures had come and gone, and that the torch had been passed to another generation. Sadly, the word “retirement” is not sacrosanct to many a pony, not the least of whom being an old, one-time companion whose insistent knock on my door propelled me out of my comfortable solitude. Nor is it to the specters of the past. The visit left me thinking of the words of one of my favorite professors: history is like a chain, each link following the last, irrevocably connected to it – no deed or event stands alone, without causes or consequences. As of late, I have been taken with a different analogy. History is alive – a monstrous mother, constantly spawning new generations of repercussions, each already pregnant and yearning to give birth to the next. You cannot hope to cut the chain; you can only hope to corral the swarm.

First Pad Ends

Okay, that was awful. If I tried to do the whole story like that, I’d probably go nuts.

Origin Story:

Origin Story (Prologue & Framing)

Origin Story (Part One)

Origin Story (Part Two)

Origin Story (Part Three)

Origin Story (Part Four)

Origin Story (Part Five)

Origin Story (Part Six)

Origin Story (Part Seven)

Origin Story (Part Eight)

Origin Story (Epilogue)