Pennsy Description

 

Coal mining was a short-lived Equestrian business. In a world with ponies that can fly and countless forms of magic, mining coal to burn for energy just wasn't worth it once Celestia really got good at beaming her sunlight at solar panels or into powerplants to boil water into steam faster than any fire could.

 

Deep in the forest, a few miles from Ponyville, a long abandoned coal mining town sat underneath the Everfree canopy. With the trees to shelter it from storms and the odd magic of the Everfree flowing through the town, things were surprisingly intact for having been abandoned for 80 or so years.

 

An S-2 steam turbine had been abandoned at the town, parked atop the fuel source that it was built to operate on. The big hulking engine was too complicated to adapt to run on magic, and being a one-off, it was easier to just park it at the old town and leave it there to rust.

 

But it didn't rust for very long. As soon as the Everfree engulfed the town, it took an interest with the immense slumbering machine, and during one of the forest's intense magical thunderstorms, its whimsical power was sent down to the engine through a bolt of magic, and with a blinding white flash that lit up the town one last time, Pennsy was... formed.

 

Pennsy is an enchanted mechanical pony much like Doom, but created through different means. She still sticks with the rule of being pony-shaped and somewhat malleable, and any part removed from her returns to solid metal in the process, but the magic that drives her is different, and also a lot more literal.

 

Pennsy's chest is also her firebox, inside of which burns a magical bluish flame. It's very similar to the fire inside of an everflame orb, but somehow different, because pennsy's fire is exposed to the air which is what always extinguishes orbs.

 

Pennsy's fire can't be extinguished, even if she goes underwater, however without fire, she loses almost all of her strength. Pennsy's strength comes from how strongly her fire is burning, and her flexibility comes from how warm she is. The warmer her body, the better it moves.

 

During a blizzard, she'll be clumsy and uncoordinated, but on a hot summer day in the sunshine, she's at her best. It goes the other way for anyone who wants to spend time with her; it may be possible to cuddle her without getting burnt if her fire and the temperature are both very low, but if her fire is running hot and her body is properly warmed up, only a dragon would be able to hug her without getting burnt.

 

Pennsy doesn't exactly run on steam in the mechanical sense, but she still needs to breathe fresh air, and she needs to drink large quantities of water. If she runs out of water, she has no choice but to dump her fire, because without water she's going to lose her strength anyway, and it's severely painful for her too. She does puff smoke under certain conditions, in a manner somewhat consistent with the way dragons do. Her normal breathing exhales a smoke that's basically just heated air, but the more active she is, the darker the smoke will get.

 

Strong emotion will have the same effect, even to the point of huffing out cinders if she's at a full sprint or properly enraged at something. Neither of which, however, are things she ever really experiences. Pennsy doesn't even leave her little hometown, actually. She's somewhat knowledgable about her construction and the mines, as she's read all of the books she could find throughout town, but she knows little about the outside world. Not only that, but armed with the knowledge that she was nothing but a one-off failed prototype, well, what conclusion could she come to besides that ponykind wants nothing to do with her?

 

She spends some of her days underground in the old mine, digging up chunks of coal to fuel herself. During the summer one hoof-sized chunk of coal is all she needs for a full day, but in the winter she spends just as much time below ground as she does above ground. In emergencies she might use wood or really anything that will burn, but she prefers coal.

 

Despite how she looks- a heavy, black, troubleshoes-sized mare with a fire burning in her chest, Pennsy is a gentle and slow-moving type of pony. She has to be, to keep from destroying things designed for smaller, normal ponies. She's even friends with many of the other magical creatures in the everfree, however the one exception to that are Timberwolves.

 

Among the timberwolves, Pennsy is known as a monster of flame and smoke, one to be avoided at all costs lest they be broken into firewood and thrown into her firebox like the others. She tries not to think about that one winter too much; the one where the wolves attempted to attack her when the entrance to the mine flooded and she had no choice but to use the wood that walked right up to her.

 

Her voice ranges from soft and gentle to boisterous and booming, and at times ponies might even catch wind of her distant singing when the wind blows just right. She has an old pre-electric record player in one of the town buildings that she uses, very carefully, to listen to old records every now and again, so her taste in music is accordingly dated. Pennsy has some small wheels embedded in her hooves, resembling more the bogey wheels than actual drive wheels, and she can use them to ride along a set of rails if she wishes, though she fits better on the smaller tracks in the coal mine than she does on the actual railroad.

 

Her body is mostly black paint, though with tons of scuff marks and some old numbering and a few bits of dirty metal, though it seems she's incapable of rusting so long as she keeps her magic at hand. The faded railway badge on her flanks, formerly placed on the front of the boiler, functions as her version of a cutie mark, and also as a splotch of (admittedly faded) red on her dark body.

 

Pennsy's eyes seem to be somewhat clear, her eyes resembling incandescant lightbulbs somewhat while also resembling pony eyes. She can light them up to illuminate her surroundings if she desires, but it saps some energy from her fire to do so. Pennsy has a mane and a tail, the strands of hair coarse and thicker than they would be on a pony. To take away from her black exterior, her hair is a pretty mix of white and gray, resembling smoke or perhaps ash, and she allows her tail to drag along the ground a bit while her mane hangs down around her front legs. The hair doesn't seem to be flammable, as it isn't bothered by hanging near her firebox, and it isn't even damaged if it happens to get inside of it.

 

Obviously, Pennsy's weight comes from her metal construction, much like Doom, but even then the mare still has a curvy figure, which just barely manages to hide her strong muscles. That includes her bits, but a stallion would have to be pretty brave (and ideally fireproof, somehow) to successfully have any sort of relations with her. Lastly, in the event she ever leaves her home, the easiest way to improve Pennsy's self confidence would be to introduce her to the Mareonel 671, or 681, or 2020. Sure, Pennsy herself may not have been successful as a steam engine, however she'd be quite proud to discover just how many tiny little electric descendants she has running along little metal tracks all over Equestria.

 

She might be a bit blown away by the current price to buy a new one, though.

 

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And here, if this link works, it means I finished her fic and you can finally read it, yippie; https://www.fimfiction.net/story/573348/pennsy-equestrias-forgotten-steam-turbine