9.17.13 - Chapter 5: Arrivals · 3:15am Sep 18th, 2013
Woo, boy. I tell you what, everypony, it's starting to get nuts up in the Crystal Empire, eh what? This is the beginning, everypony. This is the beginning of the craziness. We are finally, FINALLY, after nearly 45,000 words, starting to approach the reason I decided to write this story. I know it's been a lot of setup, but I tell you that I am so insanely excited about what's to come next that I can't even stand it. My excitement cannot be contained, and the thought that I have the opportunity to finally write Chapter 6 (sneak peak, it's called "Depatures") is so palpable I'm not even sure if I want to write it, because it means I can only do it once. (Okay, so that's a lie. I totally want to write it.)
This one took a little bit longer than usual, not only because by word count it's the longest chapter yet, but because I was playing around with the chronology of the events a little bit. At one point the Sharpsight section happened in between the ponies reaching the palace and them meeting Cadence, and it was going to jump ahead a little bit into the future and bypass some of the conversation with Cadence. I toyed with that for some time, struggling like mad to get it to work since there was a transition I really liked a lot, but I just couldn't make it make sense. So I had to write some unexpected things to account for things that I was originally going to exclude. Oh well. I'm still really happy with how it worked out in the end.
And hey! We finally got to see Cadence and Shining Armor! Gee, I hope the decisions they make in this chapter don't come back to haunt them, huh?
One thing that I was a little worried about, and spent a long time on was the naming of Sombra's dark unicorn army. I know they're my own creation anyway, so I'm free to do as I please, but I wanted to get it sounding right. And I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I like they way they're described, I think they sound scary, and I think The Morkhast is a pretty badass name. Sounds Tolkienesque, like Uruk-Hai or Nazgul. I guess butchering Swedish is a good way to get cool sounding names. Anypony have any thoughts on the name? Let me know.
And at the very least I've got a name in case I ever want to start up a death metal band. And it literally means "dark horse." That would be brutal.
Speaking of brutal, I hope you're looking forward to the next chapter, you guys. I swear, it's going to be awesome.
Brohoofs /)*(\
PJ
