24's World Building Double Extravaganza: Griffons and the Post-Compact Lands · 7:12am May 19th, 2014
You didn't think I'd be back, did you?
I admit, life got a little ahead of me these past few weeks. There was a party one week, I was in Chicago the next, and now we're finally here again. Oh well, it didn't seem like I missed too much. There were only two questions asked to me in the last post that I couldn't answer in a comment, so I'm going to answer both of them tonight as some sort of make-up for leaving you all out to dry these past weeks.
So, with the apology out of the way, let's get to it, shall we?
Today's questions are brought to you by Sigur024 and answered by yours truly:
How and when did the griffon lands and Equestria make contact again?
Also, how did things go for the ponies who stayed behind in the compact lands?
Well, rest easy there, Sigur, because I'm going to answer both of 'em for you right now.
Today's Spoiler Forecast:
Dangerous: hints and references to future material and events in Summer Lands and Wind and Stone, and other events in the rest of the A Song of Storms trilogy
With that out of the way, let's tackle the first question, well, first. You want to know when the griffons made contact with Equestria again, now? Well there's a short, official answer to that: roughly two thousand years after the death of Magnus and his subsequent return, as mentioned in my earlier blog post on the subject of Dioda. But you know me and how I love toying with history; it isn't as plainly written as that! If we really want to know when the griffons made any first, tenuous contact with Equestria, we only have to look fifty-three years after the pegasi fled Dioda.
The Talon Expedition
Now I know you read the title, otherwise you wouldn't be this far, and you're asking me, "24, just what is the Talon Expedition?" Well, that's a story, ain't it. If you recall in my blog post about Dioda, I mentioned that after the death of Magnus, Gryphus split into several different states that fought with each other for the ultimate crown jewel of Gryphus, its capital, Angenholt. One of those factions was the kingdom Der Unüberwindlich, or "The Invincible", which eventually formed close ties with the neighboring Cirran survivors in the kingdom of Pileus. For years, the pegasi of Pileus spoke of how the survivors from Stratopolis fled across the west, but talks of joining them were always silenced. After all, Pileus had a comfortable and powerful alliance with Der Unüberwindlich, and by working together the two factions were carving territory out of their neighbors and annexing it with ease. Yet almost ninety years after the Red Cloud War came to its abrupt end, Der Unüberwindlich was nearing the apex of its power and was making a decisive push towards Angenholt. Securing Angenholt would lay truth to the claims of Der Unüberwindlich's king that he was the one true king of Dioda, and if taken, the other griffon kingdoms would flock to his side. However, the kingdoms of die Frühe Heimat, or the Dawn Homeland, were assembling an equally as great kingdom---and they controlled Angenholt. The king of Der Unüberwindlich, King Endgültig, knew that he needed some extra aid to take Angenholt. The rest of the griffon kingdoms remained neutral in the conflict, biding their time to join whomever they thought was winning. The pegasi of Pileus were already giving as much support as they could; they knew that if Endgültig lost, they'd be stomped out in retaliation by the other griffon nations. But it wasn't enough; something more needed to be done.
There had been news circulating the griffon kingdom at this time of a small band of pegasi that had landed on the west coast and had lingered in Dioda long enough to be noticed. Interested, the King organized an expedition with the aid of his Pilean allies to cross the sea and see what they could find. Thus, the Talon Expedition was formed. Half pegasus and half griffon, the expedition's crew numbered twenty brave adventurers. The party knew they could be flying toward sudden death, even if they managed to cross the ocean and find what they were looking for; the griffons knew the Cirrans hadn't forgotten what Gryphus had done to them, and the pegasi knew that they'd be considered traitors for aiding griffons if the old mindset really was still present. Still, there was one bargaining chip that the griffons had on their plate that they knew the Cirrans wouldn't be able to resist; if they aided Der Unüberwindlich in their fight, Endgültig would give them the rights to the final resting place of Stratopolis. It would likely be the only thing that could convince the Cirrans to back him, or at the very least give him a legion or two to aid in his fight.
With their bags packed and plenty of food, provisions, and weapons to last a long and likely dangerous journey, the members of the Talon Expedition set off one early summer's morning with the sun at their backs and their wings pointed westward. It would be some time before they would return.
"Clover the Clever, Clover the Weary" by Ruirik
The Post-Compact Lands and the Rise of Stalliongrad
I'm actually really glad you mentioned those two questions, Sigur, as they tie in nicely with each other. Let's think about this for a second: what's the first landmass an expedition from Dioda would run into? That's right, the Compact Lands. But by this point, the Compact's already dissolved and Equestria is going strong on the mainland. But we know that there are still ponies remaining in the area around River Rock and everything. Now, the blizzard didn't end there; it's still going to this day, in the area that now makes up the Domain of Stalliongrad. But somehow ponies continued to survive. That's in large part thanks to two ponies in particular: Commander Cyclone and Clover the Clever, pictured above.
After Cyclone was left behind in River Rock, he took what soldiers remained loyal to him and consolidated his hold over the city. This was no longer due to his ambitions to conquer the Diamond Kingdom; now they were purely as a means of survival. All the nobility of River Rock had left on the march west, and there really wasn't anypony left who could take control of the government. Cyclone at the least had an eye for military law, and that's what it took to make sure that the survivors in River Rock simply didn't succumb to the weather. Careful management of remaining food was organized, and entire agricultural teams were organized to try and keep the land warm enough to grow food. Enormous greenhouses were constructed along the ridges of the valley around River Rock, where they could get as much sunlight as possible with the dreary cloud cover. Teams were organized to keep the greenhouses free of snow and make sure they were heated at all times. Cyclone's personal legion grew in strength as he needed a police force to keep the town secure against the hungry monsters that wandered into the valley in search of something, anything, to eat. In just three months, Cyclone had stabilized River Rock and was beginning to stockpile food to help the city grow again.
That doesn't mean there weren't any hard feelings towards his rule; after all, he was the one who tried to burn Castle Burning Hearth to the ground, and was the one who succeeded in killing King Lapis IV. But there wasn't much the ponies of River Rock could do other than accept his rule. One time, a mob of ponies demanded that Cyclone cede the throne to a democracy of sorts that they'd establish. Cyclone acquiesced, on the condition that if things hadn't improved in one month, he'd return to his position. Well, when the democracy took over and sought how best to keep River Rock afloat, they frequently turned to Cyclone for advice. Despite this, River Rock began to falter, and by the end of the first week they were begging Cyclone to retake the throne and keep his hold on everything. That was because Cyclone was the only one who knew how the different functions of life in River Rock needed to work together to keep the city afloat; in doing so, he made himself indispensable to the ponies of River Rock and secured his position for the remainder of his life. In time, the ponies of River Rock began to trust him, and he became more accepted among their community. Hell, he was accepted enough that he went through multiple wives and had fathered 13 children by the time of his death, ninety-seven years after the Cirran Exodus.
Clover the Clever was equally important to River Rock's continued success. Twenty-two years after Equestria was founded, she travelled back to River Rock with a special mission (one I won't reveal now because it's very, very spoiler heavy for the second half of Summer Lands). When she arrived, she saw how the ponies there were struggling to survive with the greenhouses that barely kept their stomachs fed going. She knew that one catastrophic failure in any of the greenhouses would starve a large portion of the city. A better solution had to be had; she found it in the dragons to the north.
The Birth of Stol'nograd
That's a funny little word up there, ain't it? Don't worry, I'm getting to that. Anyways, Clover knew that the dragon homeland was a fiery, flaming mountain, surrounded by plains of scorched earth and pits of lava. Somehow, it'd remained completely unaffected by the Eternal Blizzard that'd consumed the Compact Lands, even though it shared a rather large land-border with the Compact Lands. Clover realized that the dragons had some kind of inherent natural magic of their own that had kept the Blizzard at bay. So, she set off on an expedition with Cyclone to meet their leader and try to broker some sort of deal that would bring the same warmth back to River Rock.
It was a difficult journey, even with the aid of skychariots, as the weather made flying impossible on all but the clearest of days, but eventually Cyclone's envoy met with dragons just past the northern border of the old Compact Lands. After explaining their intentions with the aid of Clover's magic to communicate their language, the dragons escorted Cyclone, Clover, and their party to Lord Krenn, the dragon god-king and equivalent of the Princesses. In Chapter 5 of Summer Lands, Princess Luna and Hurricane discuss his power:
“Yes, well, our dragon friend claimed earth,” Luna continued. “He goes by Krenn. It only makes sense that he would want it; all dragons are immune to fire and lava, and the ability to manipulate volcanoes and lava to create a blistering haven for his race would be too much for Krenn to pass up.”
Hurricane angled his head to the side. “Volcanoes aren’t natural?” Immediately his mind conjured pictures of Feathertop, the skies filled with fire and raining molten rock. Rivers choked with thick, black soot. A scorched limb sticking through the scalding ash, its flesh seared off of the bone. But that would mean... No, it couldn’t be. “Are you sure they can’t go off on their own?”
Luna laughed, a clear and proud sound. “Of course they aren’t! The world wouldn’t survive if they weren’t regulated by someone. They would simply detonate at random, and soon the earth would be covered in fire and ash. No, volcanoes are controlled by Krenn, and they only go off by his command.”
Krenn controls the tectonic plates of the earth, and as such has the ability to bring heat and magma wherever he so pleases. In their negotiations, Cyclone and Clover pleaded with him to thin the crust underneath River Rock and thus bring some of the earth's heat to the surface. Eventually, after promising Krenn all the gems River Rock dug up over the next century, the dragon agreed. It was a huge breakthrough for Cyclone, and when the accords were signed, life soon filled the soil around the river city.
Over the next few years, dragon culture and ideas became more and more prevalent in River Rock due to the accords that brought the city life. Dragon words began to slip into the common Equiish that the ponies there spoke; in a few decades, the entire dragon language would blend with life in River Rock, to the point where nowadays the city and its Domain speak primarily Draconic instead of Equiish. Additionally, River Rock eventually lost its Equiish name and was replaced with a Draconic word: Stol'nograd, or "Capital". Cyclone lived long enough to see all these changes; even as the old world fell apart around him, condemned to the annals of time, he stood proud and resilient at the head of River Rock's changes and progress until he drew his last breath. It may not have been Cirra, but River Rock, later Stol'nograd, was his primary project and care, and he did all he could to maintain it and leave it successful after he died. That it's still around today, eight thousand years after the Blizzard drove almost everypony else away, is a testament to his skill. It's little surprise that he has his own holiday in the city, "Tsyklon Day", which is Stalliongrad's largest and most important festival.
But what about the Talon Expedition?
Cyclone and the Talon Expedition
A little more than a year after Cyclone shepherded a group of soldiers east that were making an expedition to Dioda, griffons were spotted in the Compact Lands for the first time. This alarmed the pegasi who were in Stol'nograd; even if they weren't alive for the war, every pegasus knew exactly what the griffons had done to Cirra. The expedition was being tracked by the time the news reached Cyclone; they probably would have been killed immediately were it not for the pegasi accompanying them that brought pause into the patrol that found them. They were brought back to the capital and put before Cyclone for him to decide what to do with them. Cyclone took one look at the expedition, and his face twisted with a mixture of rage and curiosity. He split the group by race and talked to both sides about what they were doing here before realizing that the pegasi had travelled willingly with the griffons across the ocean to seek Cirran aid in the war. When negotiations finally did happen, they were bitter and brutal. The Expedition had been expecting a larger and more impressive Cirran nation instead of the straggling remnants of one that existed before. Cyclone refused to let them know about Equestria, fearing that he'd simply bring down griffon rage and war against his sister and the ponies that were there. At the end of three days of stalemate, negotiations finally broke down when Cyclone threatened to kill the griffons if they didn't leave and never come back. Even when the expedition played its trump card, Cyclone swatted it aside and cursed them out; he simply wasn't going to risk more ponies and the survival his race had worked so hard to buy on a pile of ruins, no matter how significant they were. Ultimately, the Talon Expedition left empty-hoofed/clawed and was forced to return across the ocean to Dioda. There, they discovered that while they were gone, King Endgültig's army was ambushed and destroyed outside of Angenholt, and the king himself had perished in the fight, leaving his heir to try and pick up the pieces. The heir was competent, but he wasn't his father, and soon Der Unüberwindlich and Pileus had lost much of the ground they'd made up in the constant warring. The two nations were forced to retreat and lick their wounds as other factions came and entered the fray, and soon enough the entire war had fallen back to the state it was in before; numerous different factions fighting over the same piece of land. The Talon Expedition was written off as a failure and condemned to the annals of Diodan history. That history would ultimately be destroyed when Magnus returned and crushed the kingdoms back into a single, unified state.
-----
Well, that covers most of it, I say, and it's awfully late where I'm at, and I'm tired. No more writing on this for now, but hopefully the Talon Expedition was interesting to you all. Now, for next time, leave your comments below, and I'll answer any questions that look interesting. You know the drill, people! Chop chop!
In other news, I've got some story update news for you all. Remember that other story I wrote a while back, A Rainbow of a Different Color? Yeah, well that's back now! I've decided on a system I'm going to run from here on out; every two chapters of Summer Lands I post, I'll be posting a RoaDC chapter. I know some of you have been waiting quite a while for that to update; well now you don't have to worry, it won't be sitting at the bottom of the pile, forgotten. In fact, the next chapter that gets posted is going to be a RoaDC chapter. So you can all look forward to having your huge cliffhanger resolved for you.
Until next time!
Ante Legionem nihil erat, et nihil erit post Legionem
24
Yeah, that was pretty interesting.
And more RoaDC? Awesome.
Is there any specific PoL canon of the world of Equestrea or Dioda about 15 years or so after Luna's return from the moon?
I ask in order to see if I'm gonna need to dump a few thousand words or make them completely about an alternate universe.
It mostly is at this point just so I can dick around with it a bit more.And don't worry, the "words" I'm talking about are more akin to a B-movie than an epic the likes of which Homer could be proud of.
Its basically a Vietnam-like journal thing that takes place on a certain continent farfaraway. Just something I had a thought about and wanted to see what it would look like.And I may not even finish the thing. If the other three projects I'm currently at war with have anything to say about it.Excellent. Thank you for answering my questions!
Guess that explains that.