from the discord is star swirl the bearded files:

which have sadly now been all but obliterated by canon, but its still fun to dream.

Back in ye olden days of pony history: the royal unicorn family (parents of princess platinum) orders Clover the Clever to be StarSwirl’s assistant.

“You are to make sure he eats regularly....and bathes...and makes his royal appointments...but MOST of all, you must make him sleep! he gets up to some of the craziest antics when he hasnt had enough sleep! and of course you’ll have to take notes and decipher his horrid handwriting on the spells he’s already invented.”

“You were chosen due to not only your excellent bookkeeping skills, but also your prowess with counterspells! You see he has the bad habit of testing out some of his newest work on himself...and often times he gets stuck in a form that can't do magic. Now, I know it will be quite difficult at times...but for your troubles we are prepared to offer you quite a generous stipend... and the appointment of, let me see now, what’s a good title...Magus Royale et Spell Companione! and of course this could be a stepping stone to even greater things....”

“Oh, and do try to keep him sober...he’s a bit of a pervy old man when he’s drunk. I daresay it’s partly from not getting out of that tower enough. But that's the price for having genius at your beck and call, I suppose. Oh! That reminds me, your predecessor left some notes.”

*gulp*

“Predecessor?”

*opens notebook*

run while you still can
while you still have all your limbs attached

Dont trust a word he says! WHAT IS REAL I DONT EVEN KNOW ANYMORE

and at the very bottom in tiny script: Ginger is his favorite tea.

Sleep deprivation is his worst enemy, that's when you really see the spirit of chaos come out. That, and when he’s excited about a new volatile spell, or when he’s trying to avoid work, which usually leads to him escaping and going binge drinking. However, when he gets his hands on a new magical artifact or resurrecting some ancient source of power he changes almost completely. He becomes obsessively focused, snappish and deeply possessive of his projects. He’s kicked quite a few students out on the accusation that they were trying to steal the secrets of his finest achievements. (turns out that in his youth he often got homework stolen or his papers plagiarized. he has quite a few trust issues.) One reason he experiments on himself is to have the least amount of people involved in his research, lest they reverse-engineer his progress.

However he eventually realizes that Clover could be one of the greatest minds...after himself of course. If HE manages to get his name always said in the same breath as hers, he could become famous for not only his spells, but receiving partial credit for any of her successes as her mentor. After that, he is much more open to grooming her in magic and even encourages her to be the next Magic Adviser to the unicorn throne. Clover somewhat misreads his interest in her and feels incredibly proud and flattered at his attention.

Clover begins falling in love with him, despite their 10 year age gap. She falls for his wit, his genius, his quirky little charms, his attention. She believes he needs her, truly NEEDS her, and believes that perhaps he could even love her back.

DRAMA AHEAD

The night before the element backlash, Clover begs StarSwirl to stop trying to do it all alone. Sleep deprived and half-mad with obsession over the Elements, he seduces Clover and takes her as his lover for the first and only time. Clover accepts his advances heartily, as she believes them to be the payoff for all her years of yearning and love. She is also grateful to have broken him out of his trance concerning the Elements. She looks forward to years spent teaching StarSwirl the power of love, and finally to take her place as his equal by his side.

But StarSwirl has no room in his heart for an equal. Only for himself.

Then, as Clover is sleeping, StarSwirl tries to complete his masterpiece. Clover wakes to the sounds of glass smashing.

Before her is a large, hideous chimera! He fills the room, his dragon tail smashing furniture and his cruel claws tearing at the carpet. his insidious laughter fills the air. It’s StarSwirl, huge and beastly with red, jaundiced eyes.

“Clover, dearest! I’ve figured it out! Harmony, magic, the threads of the universe! It’s all an illusion! Fragile strings of structure, straining against the unfathomable might of entropy! From Chaos the universe was made, and to utter chaos it shall return! Harmony...peace...stability...it’s all a lie! The real power-” and he ground the word between his teeth, part a hiss, and part an insidious growl- “lies beyond the looking glass!”

Discord attempts to smash the Elements, but Clover snatches them away. Clover decides to fight for the side of harmony, rejecting the monster-magician’s new philosophy. An epic fight ensues, spilling out into the night sky. The other royal mages get involved, having no clue of the monster’s identity. Discord escapes, and the general consensus is that the monster had eaten StarSwirl, finding his bloody cloak back in the tower. Clover goes along with the lie, even reinforcing it in the retelling. Soon enough, she herself more than half believes it to be true. she constructs a picture of StarSwirl in her mind; that of a gentle lover and misguided genius.

She officiates his funeral herself, tossing the blood-tarnished bells onto a pyre, where they jingle faintly for the last time.

*As time goes by, Discord himself starts to forget who he was. He especially doesn't remember about becoming Clover’s lover. He remembers some of his drunken exploits, funnily enough, enough to remember (or think he remembers) being quite the ladies' man at parties. He remembers flashes of Clover as a young student, although now he only associates them with young Celestia. He remembers her scolding, her exactitude, and one or two times when she dragged him in front of his majesty.

He does remember the harassment of his youth, the dark powers he’d fought to harness, the marvelous (and nasty) pranks he’d pull on commoners. He remembers vividly his powers backlashing and resulting vision of the cracking, chaotic cauldron at the heart of time and space, and the futility of peace and order. But it’s very difficult for him to remember having once been all pony...his memories somehow always seem to include claws and paws and antlers.

He really has no memory of the heart he so cruelly broke.

Occasionally, Celestia will have nightmares of the genius she once loved.

Following StarSwirl’s ‘death’, Clover becomes the new castle magician and is told to tutor princess platinum in the magical arts. she also takes his place in leading the unicorns in raising and lowering the sun. Clover had earned her cutie mark in sun magic, after all, the first time she was allowed into The Gestalt. (the 'gestalt' is a term i unashamedly stole from famous sci-fi and fantasy author Anne McCaffery. The Gestalt in her Rowan series involved telekinesis/telepathy being used to propel future spacecraft where psychically gifted individuals combine brainpower to lift huge ships and communicate between planets. I might change the name when i think of something better.)

It is during this time that the snows come. Food starts getting scare. Political tensions run high. The blizzards seem to get worse everytime foreign diplomats come to the unicorn city, rousing suspicions. But of course, it is actually caused by the windigos feeding on their disharmony. Clover begins to suspect that the snows are in fact magical in nature, and when she tries to tell the royals they see it as proof that the other nations are at fault. but Clover, knowing that StarSwirl is still out there, doubts their involvement. After all, the snows seem to be hurting the pegasi and earth ponies too.

The events of hearths warming eve take place, with Clover ascending to Celestia to defeat the windigos. Turns out, Discord did send the windigos, to weaken ponykind and sow chaos. His plan backfired and he had to build up strength again, and train himself to use chaos more consciously.

The First Bearers of the Elements of Harmony are the founding members of Equestria. The goddess fausticorn is the one who guides celestia through her ascension. (now that we know about the tree of harmony, the cave they hid inside during hearths warming could be the tree's location)

He continues his dark experiments in secret, creating poison joke, parasprites and a myriad of hybrid monsters. He summons the Nightmare, using it to trap Celestia in a dreamscape. Luna temporarily takes Celestia’s place as the Element of Magic, banishing the Nightmare and earning her own ascension. But a small part, unknown to the sisters, burrows itself into Luna’s dreams and lies in wait.

Discord then waits until the other Elements parish from old age, lulling Equestria into a false sense of security. Once the last dies, he reveals himself and takes over as the fully fledged spirit of chaos, all memory of who he was all but forgotten. Luna and Celestia manage to use the Elements with just two of them, partially by drawing on the love they still remember for their fallen friends. Somewhere in there Sombra is defeated.

In the early years, Celestia visited his statue and ranted to it, cried to it, taunted it. During this time the nightmare spirit is poisoning luna’s mind, driving her to jealousy and spite. Sooner or later, Luna makes her debut as nightmare moon. Celestia uses the Elements against Luna, but instead they explode, ruining the palace of the pony sisters. Celestia is instead forced to banish her sister on the moon, and the Elements are thought to be lost forever. In fact, they are merely recrystallizing from the ether, waiting to be summoned once again.

maybe she’s telling twilight all this on her “deathbed”? for when twilight is to take celestia’s place?

pre-discording timeline:

- Clover is summoned to the king and given her new title and assignment
-Clover meets StarSwirl for the first time, who ignore her as much as possible. she takes on the role of housekeeper
-StarSwirl finally learns her name when she offers a valuable piece of insight to one of his projects
-StarSwirl gives her magic related tasks to do (and she hires a housekeeper? an apprentice? luna?), including transcribing his research and getting it published.
-StarSwirl lets her in on more and more of his projects, and she feels comfortable enough to do her own.
-Clover starts tutoring the princess platnium and gets a better title
-StarSwirl delivers useful inventions (see twilight’s description of his achievements) (alicorn amulet?) (time spells)
-StarSwirl escapes and goes on a drunken rampage when his research isnt going well (i need a list of things he might be researching, and things Clover would research as well. )
-Clover takes StarSwirl’s place at the head of the gestalt one day when StarSwirl is incapacitated.
-maybe somewhere in here is a good place for that magical plague to occur? or the first cutie pox epidemic! if magic plague, then StarSwirl and Clover invent synthetic dragon scales to provide magic resistant lotions to cure the sick.
-perhaps the changlings first appear? which would explain why they were researching the Elements of harmony.

maybe in the winter it is hardest to raise the sun so they have their most powerful lead it. that being StarSwirl, the queen, and eventually Clover herself. in the summer they let their newer recruits serve, which is when Clover herself got her cutie mark? or maybe her cutie mark changed when she ascended?

StarSwirls’s personal history:

Half earth pony, half unicorn; from a time when crossbreeding was highly unusual. Typically, only earth ponys grow beards and generally have more fur and build than unicorns. (ignoring the image of the classical bearded unicorn...and fancypants >.< ) mother a prostitute? or an adulteress? something with some aaaaangst.

StarSwirl is typically a girl’s name, in fact there was a female StarSwirl in his class, and once in puberty they called him ‘the bearded’ to at first mock his stubble, and then even teachers called him that to differentiate between the two students. his peers tormented him for his mixed heritage, his magic, and his refusal to conform.

He eventually migrated to the unicorn capitol, enrolling in a magic academy, where he met many ambitious other unicorns. in his high magic program, treachery and backstabbing were par for the course, (disc-world fans might well be reminded of a similar magical university). They competed to be invited to the royal college of spellcasters, who controlled the sun and moon and stars. In isolation StarSwirl won his place there, and in isolation he was employed as a royal magician. He proven to have extreme raw power in the gestalt.

he was the first unicorn to apply “earth pony” and ‘pegasus’ science to the field of magic. thus changed the unicorn understanding of magic and was at the forefront of the unicorn renaissance. irony in that he harmonized several schools of previously foreign thought; logic, scientific method, application of magic and knowledge of the natural world but became the avatar of disharmony.