Birthday Bios: Quasar Rune · 3:31pm Apr 11th, 2016
I swear, out of all the names that I’ve came up with for OCs, this guy’s name is among my favorites. Come on, it rolls off the tongue and is a freakin’ cool name (without going into overly edgy territory)!
Also, Baby Favor… just because.
Anyway, bio time!
Quasar Rune is the firstborn son of Indigo Rune and Glimmerdust, a pair of scholarly mages of the Canterlot gentry. He was given the name “Rune” as per the tradition of his forebearers for the oldest foal of the oldest foal throughout each generation (both colt and filly had borne the name). And sure enough, his magic surges as a baby demonstrated that he held the family’s natural magical capacity.
Growing up, his parents had certain standards on behavior. He was to mind his manners and not speak unless spoken to; he was not allowed to get dirty, touch precious family heirlooms, or get out of his room after a certain time. And he wasn’t to practice his magic without supervision, lest he lose control and cast a dangerous spell. If he broke any of those rules, he was punished.
His family entertained a lot of guests from his parents’ social circles. He had the task of keeping quiet and out of the way, as they didn’t want him doing things that would earn disapproval from their peers. It was usually up to the nanny to keep him—and later his sister Dreamspell—out of trouble. The nanny did so by reading stories, and teaching him how to read. He realized that putting his nose in a book was a hobby that kept him out of trouble, and took up the habit.
Sometimes, one of the guests, Sunlight Rose, would bring her daughter Merry Maykin along so that Quasar had someone to play with. Having already developed a reserved personality from his family’s rules on behavior, he wasn’t quite sure what to make of Merry’s bubbly personality. Sometimes, he had to keep her from breaking any of his home’s rules, fearing punishment coming upon him.
Still, they got along and liked to talk magic. Quasar held a desire to become a great wizard like Starswirl the Bearded, while Merry wanted to dazzle ponies with stage shows. She even invited him to come to her family’s trip to the Magic Expo in Las Pegasus. His parents did not allow him to go out of fear of him being corrupted by the city’s rather risqué lifestyle, however.
Once he earned his cutie mark after performing a difficult spell, he was enrolled in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. He was a smart colt, and passed his classes with ease. But while he was powerful, he wasn’t quite up to the Starswirl standard. In fact, there were some spells that he discovered that he just didn’t have the power to cast, even in his teenage years.
Desperate to achieve his dream, he snuck into his father’s library and pulled out some dark magic tomes, hoping it would grant him the power he desired. What happened was that he read the wrong spell, and was completely overcome with a hypnosis that made him go around and torture ponies in order to show them that he was capable of great magical feats. Luckily, Celestia happened to come across him, and broke the spell before he killed anypony, but not before he destroyed a few things in his path.
After the initial scolding, Indigo decided to tell a shaken Quasar the story about their ancestor, Wayer Rune, and how his turning to dark magic in desperation to win a war caused much suffering and death. It had turned him to irreversible evil that Celestia couldn’t cure, and he had to be banished to Tartarus for his crimes. After hearing the story, Quasar decided to take the more realistic option of being a magic teacher, which Celestia approved of.
His childhood friend Merry, who had been busy taking up the performance side of magic and travelling Equestria, visited him after his rampage to see if he was okay. Quasar was grateful for her concern, and they often visited each other, much to the delight of both his parents and hers. Love blossomed between the two over the course of a few years, and they soon wed.
A couple years passed before they had a son, and Quasar followed his family tradition in giving him the name “Rune”, though his wife had come up with a name of her own already. They combined the names, and they were proud to present Kazam Rune to their friends and family.
Parenthood could never be called easy, especially when Kazam had tantrums and powerful magic surges. They were bad enough that they had to use an inhibitor ring to keep him in check. Whenever his wife was out performing and he had to teach classes, Quasar had his old nanny keep an eye on Kaz, making sure that the baby wouldn’t hurt her. But even with those tantrums of his, Quasar was interested in seeing where his magical ability would take him.
When Kazam was four, Quasar and Merry had their daughter, Silk Shimmer. They had to keep their son from getting rid of her, and he eventually accepted his fate as a big brother. Little Silkie was much calmer than her brother, though she still had magic surges that frankly caused a bit of trouble for the family. Quasar had tried the general fatherly tradition of “tickling” on her, which always blew up in his face (literally). Still, she was a little doll, and he liked it when she fell asleep on him.
Three years later, he and Merry had their third foal, a son that his wife named Party Favor (Quasar couldn’t come up with anything to counter that, so he accepted it). Unlike his siblings before him, Party Favor had no magical surges, instead simply fiddling with items with his hooves and mouth. They chalked up the lack of surges to his easygoing personality, but he still gave them a bit of trouble with a tendency to wander off or sneak up on somepony with amazing silence. Quasar considered him the most like Merry, with a beautiful smile, a light in his eyes, and a desire to see everyone happy.
Quasar’s classes throughout the years had its ups and downs. He got to meet the personal students of Princess Celestia, such as Sunset Shimmer, and after she left, Twilight Sparkle. He figured they must have been exceptionally talented for an apprenticeship with Celestia (especially the latter after hearing about the incident involving her enrollment). There were some other students he took a liking to. One, Sunburst, was one that he liked, but was ultimately saddened to know that while he had an incredibly extensive knowledge of magic, he didn’t have the pool of magic necessary to perform them. Not even projects that Sunburst did with Kazam (they were the same age) at their home helped any. Still, he very much enjoyed being a magic teacher and seeing just what his students can do, and hoped to see as much talent in his own children as he did in his students.
He went ahead and taught the three about magic theory and how to channel it, though he started one at a time. The only time he had all three together to learn a lesson was when he caught Kazam with a book on dark magic. His flashbacks to his own dabbles in dark magic spurred him to pass down the Wayer Rune story, hoping to warn them before any disasters happened. With that out of the way, he continued to bounce between teaching students at school and his children at home.
Kazam certainly proved to be talented, lifting Quasar with relative ease at the age of eight and performing more complicated spells by the time he was a teenager. Silk Shimmer was taking after her mother’s talent, though she showed enough power to perform cloud-walking spells and glamour. But Party Favor? He couldn’t get a spark out of his horn and had frequent migraines. A trip to the doctor revealed that his magic was blocked by an anti-magic mineral concentration deep in his horn, and that there was no way to fix it. Even worse, Party Favor possessed a pool of magic that would have made him capable of powerful spells, which would never be seen without a working outlet.
Quasar was upset on finding out, and seethed about it for quite some time, thinking that his youngest would be an adult blank flank because he couldn’t reach his potential. He often avoided the colt out of shame, wondering what kind of cruel joke was being played on him. He ended up developing a stricter persona when teaching at school, which worried his students, but they kept quiet out of fear of him.
Party Favor started testing his patience with stunts he tried in order to compensate for his lack of magic, especially since the younger son noticed that Quasar had been giving more attention to the elder son. Quasar reasoned to himself that since Kazam had an impressive magic pool and a working horn, he needed his father’s guidance far more than Party Favor (or even Silk Shimmer) did. Plus, with Kazam’s penchant for trying dangerous magic, he had to be kept in check. Still, he couldn’t help but boast about Kazam, which got the younger siblings a little jealous.
Quasar was not impressed when Party Favor managed to earn a cutie mark in something he deemed as simple and useless as balloon modeling. He didn’t quite realize that it was the colt’s magical outlet.
Years passed, and an adult Kazam and Silk Shimmer left home to pursue careers in magic. Meanwhile, teenage Party Favor was still working on ways to improve his balloon modeling, snatching books on architecture and engineering in order to apply them to his talent. While Merry was impressed with his dedication, Quasar still scoffed at it, knowing that he wouldn’t get that far in Canterlot with that.
After being subjected to mockery at an art show, a discouraged Party Favor refused to be comforted by his mother, and didn’t even give a glance in his father’s direction. He didn’t even say goodbye when he left.
Quasar was concerned when they didn’t hear back from him after a few months, and he had to keep his wife from going into histrionics whenever a milestone of Party Favor leaving home popped up. He made sure that Kazam and Silk Shimmer kept an eye out for their little brother. All the while, he wondered what could have happened to him, and how this could have been prevented. Perhaps if he didn’t pursue that talent, he wouldn’t be in whatever mess he was in at the moment (or dead, which Quasar really hoped didn’t happen).
After a few more years and still no Party Favor in sight, he and Merry got another shocking set of news: Kazam had been secretly messing with dark magic, and had created a vampire spell, which he unleashed at the Las Pegasus Magic Expo and created an army of vampires. Quasar was so much in denial of this that he asked Princess Celestia to pardon him, which only brought a verbal smack in the face toward him and for him to see the princess angry enough to burn the carpet. After that, he went back home to rethink his life.
(Little did he know that he had been talking to somepony else; dream gremlins had caused a body swap between Celestia and Cheese Sandwich, who had been in Pegasus at the time, having seen his brother a vampire, having had to fight off vampires, and was nearly killed in the event; not surprising that he was angry at him.)
Hearing about Silk Shimmer getting tangled with conponies and nearly kidnapping somepony was surprising, but at least she had broken away from them and was making amends with the family of the pony she nearly kidnapped. Still, Quasar and Merry were shaken by Kazam’s crime, bemoaning that they had lost both sons now.
However, soon, Silk got a message about Party Favor’s whereabouts, and passed it on to her parents. It was a relief to know that he was alive and well, becoming essentially the head of a small town’s celebration and welcome committee and having made some good friends.
Of course, when Quasar learned about the whole debacle with the cutie markless cult and how Party Favor actually gave up his cutie mark, he was frustrated that one of his own children had done that. What gave him the idea that it would be better for him to give up his cutie mark? Merry had glared at him for completely missing that perhaps Party Favor’s insecurity with his talent came from his father dismissing it for years.
They reunited with him on Hearth’s Warming, and got to meet his friends. While he and Party Favor still had a rift between them, Quasar took a liking to Sugar Belle and thinks that perhaps she’d be good for his son. He also developed a friendship with the massive Powder Snow and the energetic Wingspan. He finds them odd, but they’re good ponies.
Perhaps he’ll realize that he had been focusing too much on Party Favor’s horn and not enough on his heart. After all, we all know he’s a fool for doing that to his youngest son for so long.
With that, the writer of this bio realizes that perhaps she should get along to writing the rest of that story. So many stories and ideas, so little time…
Aww, little baby Favor.
I can certainly see how Quasar fell into the trap he did. After growing up in an emotionally cool household and dedicating his life to magical scholarship, it's no wonder he focused on his children's magical capacity rather than the people attached to the horns. I can only imagine how he might react if he had a non-unicorn for a kid. Horror? Disgust? Shame? Pity? Accusing Merry of infidelity? Probably a mix of some or all of those possibilities.
Still, hopefully he's learned something from all of this. Hopefully. Merry must have the patience of a saint...
(Also, nice integration of Sunburst into his biography. I can definitely see how he would've contributed to Quasar's reaction to Party Favor's issues.)