Farrier Chemical Corporation (Confessions of a Wasteland Pony)

Farrier Chemical Corporation is a pre-war Agro-Chem business which appears in the audio drama series Confessions of a Wasteland Pony. It's story is told in the opening segment of the sixth episode, The Ice Mare.

History & Doctor Greenshift

The Great War

During the advancement of arcane science in the Great War, many small companies and business grew around leaders whom were leading their own discoveries and experiments. One such pony was a unicorn stallion named Versuch Farrier.

Farrier was interested in the idea of using the burgeoning magical sciences to improve the strength of food crops. The selling point for wartime funding and interest was in how chemicals might be able to help farms survive a blight of balefire radiation.

Farrier himself was ironically more optimistic about the war. He did not believe the bombs would fall as they eventually did. He simply used the war as a selling point while thinking his discoveries might strengthen crops in a wide variety of climates and conditions.

When the bombs did fall, Farrier and his employees were in their factory on the peninsula of a small lake. The location was chosen because the lake water made for a perfect heat sink and water source for the various experiments they carried out. The water also acted as a concentration basin for the balefire that did wash over the world.

The earthquakes and shockwaves of the zebra megaspells cracked the foundations and scientific equipment of the factory, mixing everything into a dark orange pool which flooded the lower basement levels. The interaction of these chemicals with the high energy balefire radiation turned many of the factory workers, including Farrier himself, into ghouls.

Unlike conventional ghouls, the FCC employees found themselves with stone grey skin, and bright glowing orange manes and tails.

Instead of providing farms with enhance crop fertility in harsh conditions, the chemicals had the same effect on the ghouls. So unlike ghouls, feral or sentient, the FCC employees retained their ability to reproduce. 

In the years following the war, several small wasteland communities sprang up on the outer shores of the horseshoe-shaped lake. They made for great real estate (even by wasteland standards), but began to notice a steady stream of feral ghouls appearing out of the lake. They correctly presumed they were coming from the factory in the middle, as the non-feral ghouls were not mysterious or unknown. Farrier and the others protected the factory as they had before the war, even more so considering they all lived there now.

The Legion

While initially properly referring to themselves as the "Farrier Factory Settlement," the ghouls found themselves called "The Legion" by the surrounding pony communities whom were growing ever angrier with the endless stream of bright orange glowing ferals.

This eventually took the notice of Dusselhoof, whom were in the process of reaching out and connecting the sentient ghoul communities scattered throughout the wasteland. After hearing enough stories, Doctor Greenshift himself set out on an expedition to make contact with the Farrier ghouls and find out what was going on.

Upon speaking with him, Greenshift was able to gain initial insights on their unique nature. Similar to other ghouls, the Legion ghouls are very skinny and gaunt. They metabolize balefire radiation same as any other ghouls, which means they have no need to store fats. Even in ghouls which retain "meat on their bones" these fat stores act as essentially vestigial organs providing more biomass to store absorbed radiation.

Legion ghouls have relatively unblemished skin. While grey and sickly thin looking, there were no patches or transparent scars revealing internal tissues. They also had mostly normal vocal chords, lacking the "ghoulish rasp" so common among others.

In the 200 years after the war, because of retaining their ability to reproduce, the few dozen ghouls which survived the war were now over a thousand ponies. When a foal is born, regardless if the ghouls is feral or not, the baby will act like a regular newborn. This will continue on until the period of brain development in the toddler years. Usually by age two the foal will continue developing a normal consciousness, or begin acting feral irreversibly.

Based on the records kept, Greenshift was able to determine that the fertility rates among the Legion was only 4% that of a normal population. Even still, the difficulty of keeping the ferals contained and separated meant the population continued to grow. Even things like gelding weren't a workable solution, because they would simply grow back.

After learning the details of how the ferals were escaping, Greenshift summoned a team of builders to create new containment cells for them. Once properly corralled, the Farrier ghouls were connected to Dusselhoof's network of ghoul communities. They now had new friends, allies, and means of trade.

Quotes

• "Plus… In all honesty… I am waiting to see what happens down the road when these Legion ghouls begin to take romantic interest in other ghouls, or even normal ponies, I didn’t know what exactly was affecting the pregnancy rate. If it was because of the mares, or stallions, or a combination. And based on the circumstances, I feel like I’m just the doctor that could look into these things." - Doctor Greenshift
• "Purely from a scientific standpoint!  It’s not like I’m running out of time or anything… Think of what could happen over the next decade… If I can gather enough data from their immortal exploits, I may be able to determine the exact mechanisms of their type of ghoulism, and how that could be applied in other ways. At the very least, the Legion may be able to provide us with a cure to ghoul infertility. Perhaps Tulip and I could start a family someday…" - Doctor Greenshift

Behind The Scenes

• The original conception (pun intended) of this segment was largely driven by the changing story structure of Confessions of a Wasteland Pony. The length of Episode 4: The Engineer was driven by SkyBolt's comfort as a writer to expand the length of the stories as the Overstory plotline was developed. While the format remained the same, the advent of the Offsite Broadcasting Station allowed for earlier Confessions guests to return as commentators. This would give them the opportunity to get more "air time," and put them more on par with the later guests, which had comparatively longer interviews.
• The first re-introduced guest was Battered Blade with the first Red Reaper segment. Before it was revealed that the Red Reaper would be a more important character, the Doctor Greenshift segment featuring this story was intended to act as misdirection. The audience was meant to interpret it as just another self-contained "opening segment" before the proper interviews. The concept was somewhat inspired by the Pixar Shorts before the proper films.
• The Battered Blade stories about the Red Reaper progressed story arcs for both of those characters and set up later episodes. The Farrier Chemical Corporation segment was meant to show the progression of Doctor Greenshift's character after his origin story, as well as create narrative setups that would play out for Freezie in The Ice Mare.
• The general concept of Farrier Chemical Corporation is inspired by real life Agro-Chem companies like Monsanto.
• The story concept for the segment itself was meant to explore what would happen to a somewhat isolated ghoul population if they were able to reproduce. How would immortality play out over successive generations.