| 4 |
| STR |
| 14 |
[Carrying] You roll a 14 (required 10). Success!
You thank the Kirin filly for her help, and share a farewell bow, before making your way back to the road by the portal.
As your hooves meet the wide dirt path once more, an idea crosses your mind. You turn to your friends, flap your wings, and suggest making the long walk into a short flight instead.
Honourshine: "Forgetting someone?"
At that, you put a reassuring hoof on Honourshine's shoulder, give her a confident look, and invitingly ask her if she would like to ride her big brother. Her words die in her mouth, but after an eternal few seconds, she shrugs without protest. You win this one!
Moonflower: "Heeheehee..."
You help your foalhood friend climb onto your back — and though you can feel her bare coat pressing against yours, and her legs hugging you tightly from behind, it admittedly does little to help with the heat.
Once everyone is ready, you and Moonflower gently take flight southward facing the blazing sun, while Tsu-Ko vanishes into a puff of sparkles.
Moonflower: "Whoa! Where'd Tsu-Ko go?"
Tsu-Ko: "I'm still here; you just can't see my physical form. It's easier for me to travel this way."
Moonflower: "Ohh, got'cha!"
You follow the road from not too far above ground, flying and gliding through the humid air. Both the shade of your bamboo hat and the wind brushing your hair make the trip far more tolerable. You look over your shoulder and ask Honourshine how she is faring.
Honourshine: "A little anxious, but I trust you. I suppose the wind is a welcome change."
Moonflower: "Yuh uh! And you get to hug Blazer the whole time!"
You feel Honourshine squeeze you a little tighter for just a moment.
Honourshine: "... Not like I have choice."
Moonflower: "Heehee! Maybe we should fly more often."
Vast fields of various greens and golds scroll by for the next few minutes until a shimmer brightens the horizon. Soon enough, the paddy fields emerge from the haze like mirrors; flooded lands where semiaquatic crops grow in calm, fresh waters.
After a smooth landing, you let Honourshine climb off your back, while Tsu-Ko wordlessly reappears next to your party. The sudden stillness of the air redoubles its weight, but you shake it off for now.
You take a quick look around, and aside from a house on stilts in the distance, you find little more than a few farmers at work. In the nearby fields, you are able to discern a massive Kirin stallion, a young unicorn mare, and what seems to be a dog-like creature.
Enter a comment
Seeing Honourshine's head from this angle only raises more questions from me about how her glasses work. They simply appear to be suspended. Perhaps there is a string we can't see that hooks around the ears or around the back of the head. Food for thought.
Also, that one double entendre hit me like a truck. I was not ready. Perhaps some sibling battles are not worth fighting 😂; I still remember Sapphire Kite's comeback from 2015-04-23.
The system is not perfect, but it is designed to offer some measure of consistency in the writing while also allowing for character growth. And while not everyone may agree with the current direction (which is inevitable), it is ultimately decided by the collective playerbase — and the roll of the dice.
Either way, it is safe to say that the story is "not mainly a sex thing," even if it is not completely censored out of the universe. At the very least, there are no plans to depict the love scenes in explicit detail!
In terms of starting from a blank slate, that does make sense to me when I read the earlier updates critically. Though I do remember one backward-facing piece of continuity, which is Honourshine's offhoof comment (don't remember which update) that we engaged in many flirting attempts when we were younger. So at least from a continuity standpoint, we always had that (flirty) dog in us, even if it wasn't decided until commands made it so.
As for a "hidden tracker", ooh that concept is intriguing! I wonder what others there may be. I remember you mentioning that Trailblazer is currently too altruistic to consider outright acting evilly, so that may be one. (Maybe it's too realistic for a fantasy setting, but something like modeling the Big 5 personality traits for the player character would be a wild amount of depth!)
As for making Blazer more "tasteful": The story is subtly - and not so subtly ;) - encouraging the readers to have Blazer be flirtatious. Judging by the commands most active readers are in favor of that or at least don't mind. Albeit there was at least one person who stopped following the story because he/she didn't like it. In a hypothetical scenario where people would stop adding flirtatious commands, the story and Blazer would become a lot tamer. But I doubt that there would be no double entendres or teasing.
Additionally, I have been working on a wiki for d20 Pony, though it's still very under construction and I'm not sure if I'll actually have the energy to work on it consistently. But you'd be welcome to contribute if you're interested. It can be found in said Discord server as well.
And yeah, in terms of the story broaching flirty topics, often it is because most players want it (for example, I can see all the narrative signs pointing towards Trailblazer x Honourshine happening at some point), but sometimes, even absent any flirty commands or actions by Trailblazer, it is just part of the lore of Equestria in this story. For example, there was the teasing Apple Basket had to endure at the hooves of his cousin, the poor colt 🥺. Though as you say, while the frequency wouldn't be down to zero, perhaps a hypothetically "colder" Trailblazer without an "affectionate" personality simply wouldn't pay attention to it most of the time, thus influencing the narrative. (Decoding the subtext in that type of situation would be a fun puzzle.)