Imagine a picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. A car drives off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out of the car carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Gas and oil spilled on the grass. Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around. Rags, burn out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind. Oil slicks on the pond. And of course, the usual mess — apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire cans, bottles, somebody's handkerchief, somebody's penknife, torn newspapers, comic, faded flowers picked in another meadow. A roadside picnic. On some road in the cosmos.
3 Years ago, Twilight Sparkle began work on a project with the intention to discover more about the magical properties of the Everfree forest, it was dubbed "Pillar Project". Unfortunately, a few months into the project, there was a disaster. A huge burst of magical energy engulfed the Everfree forest, the release leaving residual magical radiation around the laboratory and causing death or severe mutation in any living thing in the area. The area of the forest and some areas immediately around it were affected, strange anomalies, described as almost fractures in the fabric of the universe's logic, where gravity could be high enough to crush you against the ground instantly, or you could be struck with lightning with no source. Twilight had survived, having been away attending diplomatic meetings. She immediately vouched for sending scientific research teams to attempt to comb the ruins for research data and maybe some artifacts, to understand how they worked.
Of the 3 teams sent out, only one returned, the team that'd been told to collect artifacts and then leave. Whether the other two had finished their work or not is unknown - but they never returned. What was known, however, was that the Zone was dangerous. Votes on the Equestrian council were quickly gathered to take military action against whatever went on inside. The plan was to send in a recon team, have them find any trace of the former research teams, then report back to command. Again, the recon team was never heard from again after entering the Zone. Ponyville was evacuated, except for a few stubborn people who insisted nothing could go wrong.
Despite Celestia's insistence that tampering with the Zone could have potentially disastrous effects, she couldn't go against democracy. The scouting went ahead again. They almost reached the center point of the Everfree Forest, but another energy burst was released. The sky turned dark purple and low drones were heard over the radios as the zone encompassed Ponyville and it's surrounding areas with the burst.
Attempts at getting further into the zone were halted. The military set up checkpoints preventing anyone from getting past the designated research areas outside of Ponyville. Twilight, publicly, declared that no more research would go on past that safe area. Secretly, however, she'd realized that the usage of the artifacts in technology was simply too great to abandon them as a prospect. And the greater artifacts were all located past the checkpoint... And that's where you come in.
-------------------------------------------
This roleplay is exploration and action focused. For a good idea of what the Ponyville Exclusion Zone is like, think of the Exclusion Zone from the STALKER series, but with much less in the way of bandits and such. If you have any questions, put them below. This RP was created with the help of Seras Victoria. He's a bro.
To join, make an app here. https://www.brohoof....ication-thread/



