Fan art of Shadowbolt Tower by Marktwain
Shadowbolt Tower is a major location in Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons, and a pivotal part of the story line. It is an enormous pre-war MAw hub and one of the Enclave's most important bases in the East.
History[]
Background[]
Shadowbolt Tower served as the local MAw hub in Hoofington and housed many of the Core's staggeringly powerful defenses. The structure itself is a dark tower rising from the Hoofington Core up several miles into the sky and housed many R&D and fabrication facilities. The colossal torus-shaped pegasus cloud city of Thunderhead drifts nearby, above the cloud layer.
When the bombs fell at the end of the war, Shadowbolt Tower remained standing along with most of the Core, and the facilities and remaining MAw personnel in the upper floors survived. This proved to be a massive boon for both Thunderhead and the newly formed Grand Pegasus Enclave as it granted access to pre-war factories and unicorns who can produce new Talismans and enchantments, along with multiple platforms originally designed to help service and repair cloudships, which the Neighvarro branch cannot do on their own.
The continued presence of Shadowbolt Tower is also the reason why Thunderhead appears quite different from many other Enclave settlements. With the Tower, the civilian population enjoys a higher standard of living, free from famine that sometimes reaches more isolated Enclave settlements due to the constant storms blowing in from the ocean and being blocked by the range of mountains to the west of Hoofington, allowing them to grow crops easier. Newer equipment can be created and maintained (including the newer design of pegasi power armor used by Thunderhead security forces), it is the only known Enclave settlement to count unicorns as civilian adjuncts and the government as a whole appears far more liberal than the rest of the Enclave, especially with regards to surface interactions. Of particular note is that the historic association between the Tower and the MAw has resulted in Rainbow Dash being remembered more favorably than in other parts of the Enclave, while still condemned as a traitor to the pegasi. All of these factors, along with the immense strategic value of Shadowbolt Tower, has frequently been the source of considerable agitation between Thunderhead and the rest of the Enclave.
Recent History[]
200 years after the war, Shadowbolt tower continues to be garrisoned by the Thunderhead Enclave and their non-pegasi adjuncts. However, most information about the Tower, its personnel, resources and operations remain classified even to members of the Enclave. The Tower is managed by Enclave Intelligence, who receive oversight from Neighvarro.
During the team's attempt to stop a civil war between Neighvarro and Thunderhead, Blackjack infiltrates Shadowbolt Tower with the intention of destroying it to wipe out a bioweapon threat that could be used against both the Enclave and the surface.
Her hopes were to evacuate the supposed few-dozen unicorns to safety before confronting the recently, Project Steelpony, augmented Enclave Intelligence members, however this proves to be more difficulty than expected; unknown even to General Storm Chaser, Shadowbolt Tower also houses Stable 96, a dwelling that houses several hundred residents of all three pony races. In order to arrange for a mass extraction for the residents to the now near-empty Stable 99, Blackjack assists a neutral squad of Neighvarro Enclave soldiers in clearing a path to the production levels (the extreme difficulty of this requiring her to use the Towers facilities - and her copy of the original Project Steelpony designs - to undergo the "Eclipse" augmentation, essentially turning her into a cybernetic alicorn. The residents were then evacuated from one of the Tower's hangars by the Raptors of neutral captains opposed to the attack on Thunderhead.
After reaching the top of the Tower from the outside, Blackjack rendezvous with Mare Do Well and extracts the final routing location for EC-1101 from Rainbow Dash's office at the Tower's apex. Knowing that the bioweapon created by Lighthooves is ready to launch, and that the loyalist Neighvarro forces are attempting to seize both the Tower and the weapon, Blackjack contacts Councilor Sky Striker to request an immediate evacuation or relocation of Thunderhead. Blackjack successfully confronts, engages and defeats Lighthooves in the fabrication levels. As the loyalist forces attempt to capture the Tower, Blackjack (using knowledge gained from both the Dealer and Psalm) triggers the Implosion Megaspell she encountered in the tunnels under Hoofington more than a month ago to destroy the Tower.
The damage from the megaspell is catastrophic; the entire Tower is torn from the Core and compressed into a hyper-dense sphere that then falls, causing damage to the Tokomare chamber. All Neighvarro forces in the immediate area perish and a nearby loyalist Raptor (The Hurricane) is torn apart and falls into the Core area along with Blackjack and Boo. In the aftermath it is revealed that the implosion which utterly destroyed Shadowbolt Tower also caused severe damage to Thunderhead; after three months the city is noted to be repairable, yet currently uninhabitable.
Notes & Trivia[]
- The Tower is noted by an ex-MAw ghoul to be - literally - an impossibility, both in height and necessary resources to build.
- While the base of the Tower exits to the centre of The Core, no Enclave personnel venture to floors below the cloud layer, due to the extreme levels of Enervation.
- Rainbow Dash maintained an office on the top floor, used when she was operating in the region.
- Before the Last Day, platforms along the top floor allowed cloudships to dock with the Tower to be serviced.