Archmage spoilers · 6:10pm Sep 23rd, 2014
So, here they are. The spoilers for Archmage.
Note: This is technically the end for both Square One and Beyond the Crystal Mirror. Both stories were tied together, in a fashion, so I'll swap back and forth between them where the points are congruent. It's a little complicated, and I'm kind of exhausted, so I'll try my best to make it all come together in the end.
Warning: These are spoilers, so if you want to hold out hope that I'll finish both stories in the future, please exit this page and don't return.
That in mind, here's how this will go. Archmage: Square One developments will take place in bold SO text like this:
SO-
And inversely, Archmage: Beyond the Crystal Mirror points will look like this:
CM-
The Spoiler:
SO- From where we are in the story, Star goes past the barriers and into the sequestered Timberwolf Territories with Basil by her side. Together, the two of them begin surveying and researching the magic that Twilight could not decipher. Sadly, none of it comes to fruition. Upon confronting the apex of this ancient magic, Star is coerced into releasing her true potential, laying waste to the Timberwolf Territories and a fair portion of both the Crystal Kingdom and the Griffon Territories. Basil escapes before the blast and helps shield Trottingham. Star passes out.
CM- Twilight visits a few worlds, but soon grows bored of the Crystal Mirror, having seen many of the horrors and wonders it has. She begins neglecting her trips through the mirror in favor of spending more time with Luna and Celestia, but there are things happening in the other worlds. The Night from the Saddle Arabian Nights arc discovers a way to visit, not the root world, but other worlds. She begins sharing the story of Twilight's betrayal in her own world, and the respective nights in their worlds begin taking vengeance on their own Twilights for the root world's error. Amassing an army of several deities, the Saddle Arabian night begins to look for a way through to the root world. Twilight visits one world on a whim, only to discover her counterpart had been murdered by her own deity, spurring Luna and Celestia into a vengeful fury. Destroying that world, Twilight flees through the mirror to warn the others of what has happened. At that time, the collective nights break through the mirror.
SO- Star awakes in Canterlot, under strict watch in the dungeons. Her act of destruction sparked war with the Griffons, who are plowing through Equestrian defenses on their way to Canterlot. Celestia, Twilight, and Luna begin torturing Star (mentally and physically) in an attempt to get answers about her destructive capability. On the verge of breaking, Star is broken out by none other than Spike. Spike shares the story of a war long, long ago that planted a seed of madness in Twilight and the other princesses, and he takes Star and her friends to the library from the original Archmage, to show them Equestria's true past.
CM- The coalition of nights (along with several other prominent villains) break through the mirror and lay siege to the Crystal Empire. Twilight and everyone else escapes with the help of Shining Armor, who sacrifices himself to save the crystal ponies and his loved ones. With the help of Spike, the princesses steal the mirror back, but not until the nights have roused an army large enough to destroy the root world. As a resolution, Twilight, Celestia, Cadance, and Luna go through the mirror themselves to recruit their very own army of Equestrian heroes and counterparts. Leading a force of multiple clones of themselves, Twilight begins the war for the root world.
SO- Spike possesses the Crystal Mirror and the Elements of Harmony in the desert library, and has kept watch over them for thousands of years, since this war detailed in the last spoiler. He hints at a dark history for Equestria, and begins showing Star and her counterparts what happened by taking them back in time to the massive inter-world war.
CM- The war rages in Saddle Arabia, where the collective 'evil' forces have gathered. Twilight and her 'good' forces engage them fiercely, but a madness begins to grip the princesses by way of the hundreds of deities corrupting their minds. Using brutal tactics and showing no mercy for forces, friend or foe, Twilight and the other princesses eventually destroy the other world's nights, along with their gathered forces. But the madness has taken hold of them. Spike intervenes by stealing both the mirror and the Elements of Harmony, and retreating to the nearby library. Activating the invocation of force that Bolt had maintained from the original Archmage, Spike 'locks' the mirror, freezing everything and everyone who had travelled to the root world. Twilight and the other princesses level Saddle Arabia and everything that had come through the mirror,reducing the entire desert to sand and ash. Erecting a barrier to lock the rest of the world away from Saddle Arabia, Cadance takes up solitary watch of the library, in an attempt to steal the mirror and the Elements of Harmony back from Spike. Celestia, Twilight, and Luna return to Canterlot, their madness in-check, but still present and ready to burst forth at any moment.
SO- Star and her friends go back in time with Spike to witness the war in it's entirety, and are briefly spotted by the root world Twilight. She thinks nothing of it, thanks to the intense battles everywhere, but that is enough to frighten Star. They remain only long enough to see the princess' madness and the careless tactics they use against their own friends and the enemies before returning to the present. Spike informs Star and her friends that the Elements of Harmony are, indeed, a failsafe for immortal beings. Using them, the six bearers can steal immortality from anything and anyone, effectively destroying them or making them vulnerable. Spike recommends using the elements against Twilight and the other Princesses, to free them from the madness that threatens all of Equestria.
CM- Twilight and the other Princesses try to live normally, but the weight of their crimes are wearing on them. As the millenniums pass, they make attempts on the library and Spike, but are foiled by the invocation of force alongside Spike's formidable powers.
SO- Star and her friends become the 'new' elements of harmony, but they are not their respective elements. Star, while powerful, isn't a very good unicorn in the long-run. Breeze lied about her lineage to get into the weather team, and has been cheating on Lotus for years. Lotus turns out to be rather greedy with her business. Golden Nugget has a secret 'mean streak' against anypony opposing the Apple Family's agenda. Basil isn't actually Basil, but a refugee from the Apple Family for having murdered his ex-husband and those responsible for lying to him. Cobalt has never had much reason to laugh since losing his Cutie Mark. Thus, their connection to the Elements of Harmony is flawed, and ultimately breaks the elements. The resulting rupture of the only failsafe against immortal beings ends up destroying everything BUT those immortal beings.
The corruption from the alternate world's nights was part of the magic that had been destroyed by the fallout of the Elements of Harmony, restoring the princesses to their rightful state of mind, albeit alone in a barren space of nothingness. The day and night leave to try their hands at creating a new, better world with what they had learned from this endeavor. The rest of the immortals go with them, save Cadance, Twilight, Luna, and Celestia. Alone, the four princesses pool their power to try their own hand at making another world.
A literal 'Square One' reset.
TL;DR-
-The night from Saddle Arabian Nights arc fucks shit up for everypony.
-Twilight recruits alternates of herself and the other princesses from hundreds of different worlds to combat them
-During the war, the corruption of the hundreds of deities drives Twilight and the princesses insane, causing them to harm their own forces, and destroy otherwise innocent parties
-Spike notices the insanity and steals the Crystal Mirror along with the Elements of Harmony. He locks the mirror with his magic, freezing all projections of the other worlds in the Root World. Twilight and the princesses, in their madness, destroy all the alternates and all of Saddle Arabia, locking it away from the world
-Spike keeps the mirror and the elements in the Valley of Knowledge, using Bolt's invocation of force along with his own magic to defend them from Cadance
-Thousands of years later, through his magic, Spike notices Star and her friends, and decides they're as best as any candidates for the Elements of Harmony. He shows all six of them (Star, Breeze, Lotus, Gold, Basil, Cobalt) the TRUE history of Equestria, which had been re-written in the thousands of years since the war.
-Trying to use the elements ends up destroying them, and in turn, the world. Only immortal beings are left alive. All of them aside from the princesses leave to try creation elsewhere, while Celestia and her counterparts create their own world. Which, coincidentally, was supposed to be our earth.
Sorry I dropped the ball here. But look at that. Writing that would have quadrupled the length of the Archmage-verse. I couldn't possibly have written all that out satisfactorily. I doubt anyone could have.
Still, there it is. That was the proposed end to the Archmage-verse.
Note: I'm creating two blog entries, one to tag each of the cancelled sequels. Dunno if this violates TOS or not, but I can't tag multiple stories anymore.
Stop that! Haven't read it yet.
2477412
What part of 'spoilers' did you not get?
Hey would you look at that I called it. Archmage was gonna be shit from start to finish.
2477413 I am busy reading another story of yours. Archmage is next on my "to do" list.
2477413 Hey don't you yell at him you talentless hack.
2477427
*looks at Moonstone, Roar, Intimate Details*
*looks at Dragon's Might*
Talentless.
Right.
2477432 Roar was garbage and ID was shit. Moonstone is your only decent work. Which you then fucked up with the ending.
2477436
And DM isn't even your own work.
2477439 It's like 30% mine. Thats plenty.
I am glad that i got that spoiled instead of having to read the ending, i would have been salty as a mother fucker, regardless how well done it was.
I love happy endings, i can do bitter sweet ones, but i can never stand 'the world has blow up' endings, shits just to heavy for me after all the struggle.
Okay, now I'm curious: what did Star's prophecy say? Was it the 'she'll blow up most of Equestria and start a major war', or was it 'she'll break the elements' or what? I can't see a prophecy that would encourage Twilight to teach Star so much combat magic...
Should untold horsewords be forgot
though never penned to page?
Should untold horsewords by forgot
in this, the IT age
Well take my hand, my author friend
The whole world is your stage
And write of epics best untold
and our curious minds assuage
Seriously, though.
That's... well, that was seriously epic.
It's a shame you'll never follow through with it, but on the other hand, wow, that would have been hard to do justice, wouldn't it?
Wow.
K, so... I'm not really sure what to say here.
On the one hand, I actually really enjoyed the Archmage stories. I thought they were pretty good as far as stories go and I'd have loved to see how they'd have turned out, even if they turned out horrible. I'm not fond of how you were going to end the stories, but, it would have been nice to read it all.
On the other hand, I understand where you're coming from with what you're saying. I'm actually kinda going through something similar with one of my stories.
to finish this off, I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel or side story set in the Moonstone storyline... I absolutely LOVED that story
As much as I liked the already published Archmage stories and wanting you to continue, after reading this spoiler I agree with dropping it. Sorry, but this seems like a disappointing ending.
I have to say that while that didn't answer all of my questions I had for the Archmage universe, I would have been really sad at that ending. (Whether that is a good thing or not is not withstanding). I can see that you would have felt that all to be really daunting and a bit tough to pull off and do justice to it all in the grand scheme of it. Thank you for this tho Loyal.
I understand and support your decision to stop writing these stories, but god damn would that have been an amazing story. Thank you Loyal for the stories leading up to this and the endings. I really anticipate more fics from you.
So, theres probably something that I'm missing here, but Why did you stop writing them?
2482300
Too large scope, not enough motivation, a crippling doubt I'd have done the ending any good...
being an insufferable little bitchTake your pick.
2483445 Roger that. Well, good luck in real life then, I guess. Are you going to keep writing? Just... other stories, I mean...
2485059
Check my previous blog. I have plans.
2486299 Rog.
At least we got closure... that's better than we got with 80% of most TV franchises!
Oh wow. . . Why haven't I noticed this before? Eh, anyway. Well what matters is that I found it.
Hm. . . honestly, the ending of both stories are really underwhelming. To put it bluntly and bare to the bones it's pretty much:
Big war, shit hits the fan, repercussions, everything goes boom, and they try to build things up from zero.
Even like this the endings don't feel like they have any sort of overall closure, no matter how epic and huge the build up and climax are. Spike and the Elements form some kind of contrived mix of deus ex machina and a McGuffin which is near impossible to do well anyway. By my best guess, the War Between Worlds arc alone would go on for close to a million words and way too many chapters and sub arcs for it to be done with any justice.
I'm actually pretty glad that you decided to cancel both before you went and gotten way over your head even with a team of other authors helping the scope and scale of what you originally planned is just too big. So many factors to count in with the "Root World" alone, and since we're dealing with a multiverse that pretty much brings up the number of factors to near infinity.
The whole thing is really ambitious, too ambitious in fact. For CM I was kind of expecting a kind of mini-series of Twilight's adventures through the other worlds, short stories for when your muse is being exceptionally stubborn in writing your current story. As for SO I honestly didn't know where it was going at all. The world is so open that anything could happen in it. You could have done it as a "coming of age" type of story, but I get the feeling that it would've been criticized as being another Archmage which I'm sure you've already thought about.
While I'm sad to see my predictions for both stories were totally wrong, I'm glad that one big fuck-up mess of a story had been cut at the bud before it could grow into the ugly weed it could have been.
p.s. Hey Loyal, do I still have permission to write that "continuation" of Saddle Arabian Nights I talked about several months back?
2730355
There's constructive criticism...
Then there's pissing on someone.
Do whatever the fuck you want.
2730439
I didn't mean for it to sound like that. I haven't been reading your blogs so I'm sorry if I don't completely understand your situation since the last time we've contacted. Look, if I sounded like a total asshole, then I'm sorry. It's been a long couple of days and they were pretty rough as well.
To summarize everything in my other comment, I just state what I can see as the many problems that could arise if you did go through with the rest of the story as you originally planned. I love Archmage, it's a great story. What I meant before was that not going through with the rest of it probably saved you a lot of frustration while writing the entire thing and possibly have done more harm than good.
And as for this:
I should have picked a different description for what the story could have been.
Again, I'm sorry for sounding like an asshole and I really didn't mean any of that in any sort of mean spirited way. You're not the first I've accidentally insulted with my running mouth and I doubt you'd be the last.
2730452
At least you apologized. The sad thing is everything you said was spot-on, if delivered less-than-tactfully. It's the chief reason I cancelled, was the clusterfuck it would have evolved into.
To clarify: what you said was one hundred percent true. You just said it very rudely.
2730521
Less-than-tactfully is putting it a bit mildly. Again, I'm really sorry that I sounded rude. Like I said, it's been a rough couple of days for me; at one point I was pretty much ready to stab someone, it also didn't help that we were out in the mountains, away from civilization, and I had my hunting knife on me the entire time, but I did throw a cat in their face though. . . anyway, getting off topic. My mouth really runs away with me when it's about something I really like and. . . yeah, you read the results. I'm always working on how I talk to people so I don't sound as rude, but it's a slow process.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to getting into Moonstone. It's been on my read later list for a while, I just haven't had the time to get to it yet. I'm also looking forward to your newer works. Hopefully once I have more time I'll get onto that SAN continuation and that it'll have your blessing when I do finally get to it.
2730552
I openly condone any and all works Inside the Archmage-verse, and would even be willing to review them as far as what could be called 'Archmage Canon.'
I will not hand over ownership of any stories I have written, completed, canceled, or otherwise. I had another reader who wanted just that recently.
2730570
Thanks man.
Wow, how presumptuous of that person.
2730594
Innit just?