What is the DwellerVerse?
The “DwellerVerse” is a headcanon setting that plays more to the science-fiction side of the fluffy pony concept and the wider implications of a world where an (arguably) sentient designer organism is at least a semi-common aspect of daily life.
What Are Fluffies Made Of?
The original base organism for what would become the fluffy pony was the humble Göttingen minipig, with other gene donors including horses (hooves and general appearance), parrots (speech, pigmentation, and in the case of pegasi and alicorns, wings), alpacas (the fluff), and goats (unicorn and alicorn horns).
The iconic fluffy lisp, like in Gardel’s “Hubris” series and its follow-ups, is caused at least in part by the use of parrot genes and the fluffies lacking a beak.
How Did They Get Out?
Thanks to executive skullduggery at Hasbio, the first “release-ready” fluffies were birthed only a few weeks before the big launch, so corners were cut with sterilizing them, in turn resulting in a few dozen fertile mares getting shipped all across the country. Around the same time, the company suffered a hack which resulted in records of the base fluffy genome getting leaked. To make a long story short, various amateur bioengineers created their own fluffies in the lab, some didn’t bother fixing them, and that’s how Hasbio lost their monopoly.
Fluffy Biology
Much like their porcine progenitors, the average fluffy pony clocks in at about 10-20 inches high, and weighs about 60 pounds. Similarly, they reach sexual maturity around 6-7 months, though most serious breeders wait until around a year. Pregnancy lasts for roughly 6 weeks, with an average litter size of around 5 or 6. In terms of lifespan, the average fluffy can expect to live 15-20 years.
As for the infamous hatred/fear of alicorns, Dwellerverse fluffies tend to lean towards the “feared” side of the equation. To put it another way, while most fluffies won’t try to kill one on sight, they’ll generally give them a wide berth unless they’re the alicorn’s parents.
How Stupid are They?
Dwellerverse fluffies are intellectually on par with a 3-4 year old child. This can be attributed to a mixture of pigs’ natural intelligence with a boost provided by the inclusion of parrot genes.
Legal Status
The fluffy’s status as a “biotoy” is mostly a polite fiction— even if they aren’t technically animals, society at large tends to treat them like they are.
Fall of Cleveland
It didn’t happen.