Temor is done. Epilogue posted, here are my thoughts. · 1:22pm Apr 27th, 2019
Well, Temor is done, almost took three years, 
was not meant to take almost three years (woops) 
but hey these things happen, got distracted with other things and real life can sometimes interfere.
Be warned that if you haven’t read the last chapters and Epilogue of Temor, there are spoilers behind the break.
So the concept of Temor was born from a line in Possession in the Crystal Empire, where King Sombra had considered keeping Private. From that line actually sprung the idea in my head; “Hey what if he did keep him?”
I realized quickly with Private’s Dark Pony ancestry that King Sombra would feel mild kinship with him and would adopt him, Private was basically his last link to his now long-gone race. However, he would not exactly be the father of the year, so naturally I knew this would in the end seriously mess Private up.
I then brainstormed names, because I knew King Sombra would rename him, wanting his son to have a proper Dark Pony name. I continued the naming theme introduced in the comics, the Siege of the Crystal Empire where the umbrum had Spanish words for names, Sombra is after all Spanish for Shadow, Rabia from the comics is Spanish for rage and Ira is Spanish for anger. I pondered a lot of names before settling on Temor, fear.
Then Wiggles of Ask King Sombra was doing uberization commission at the time where she basically drew people’s characters as evil corrupted versions of themselves. I decided to see how she would do with Private Iceland and after we discussed a lot of ideas, she wanting ideas of what Private would want to do if he was evil and I dropped in info that his favorite historical figures were Commander Hurricane and King Sombra (though he really just knew him as The Lost Son of Queen Rabia at the time) she drew what is now the cover image for Temor.
When I first saw it, I just went. “Yup, that’s Temor. She just drew Temor.”
Things spiraled from there and I realized what kind of story I wanted to write. Temor would be Sombra’s worst atrocity, changing a sweet little boy into his most obedient, loyal and devoted servant. Someone who would not stop until he saw his father return. This was not a guy angsting over who is father was, not angsting over a life he could have had. This guy hated what he used to be, he wanted to be what King Sombra was, he wanted to be a true Dark Pony, he wanted to be King Sombra’s son.
On the flip side, I wanted King Sombra to slowly start regretting the pain and suffering he caused Temor and deeply wish he had been a better father, but without him wanting to undo the damage he did, just wishing he had done things differently. He’s very proud of Temor and touched by his loyalty and devotion, just wishes he had earned some of it instead of enforcing it. I still wanted this King Sombra to be a bad guy, but someone who actually did deep down care for Temor.
When I finally began plotting the story, I knew it had to be at the beginning of season 3 because in many ways it was meant to be a darker counterpart to Possession in the Crystal Empire. I also realized, I could not have alicorn Twilight for this, I had to have unicorn Twilight, who was still a student of Celestia, who was still practicing magic and much more prone to try and prove herself. Because I needed her to fall, and fall hard and I just didn’t feel I could do that with Princess Twilight.
This was always meant to be a somewhat dark story (I still don’t know how the dark tag disappeared of it for a such a long time) yet not too depressing, but still meant to show that things were not going the way of the heroes. I always knew they would fail at the end.
The Order of Umbrum was conceived in an RP storyline as a part of a very old RP I’ve been part of for a long time, 14 years in fact and I decided to use them because they just fit so well as the ultimate obstacle and reason why the heroes ultimately fail, having infiltrated nearly every ladder of Equestria’s society, led by their mysterious leader, the High Shadow.
The High Shadow was always meant to be Ira, I wanted to use Sombra’s sister, who I had alluded to in Possession and at the time I was writing Temor, I had also already started writing the Last of the Dark Ponies and I knew very well who was going to appear at the end of that one (more on that in the Last of the Dark Ponies afterthought blog) so it was an obvious choice for me to use Sombra’s sister in this one.
However, I wanted something different from her, she wasn’t power hungry or necessarily evil. She got most of her followers by using love and compassion, she does deeply care for every single member of the order, most of which she’s personally recruited. However she is misguided and truly believes her brother is the best thing in the whole wide world, and as Sombra notes in the end, doesn’t fully understand her own powers or power in general, however she has clearly gone off the deep end, being brutally executed and spending time as a spirit and seeing all kind of weird things did a number on her mind. The whole time, she thinks she is doing a good thing.
Emerald has appeared in my other stories before, she is a soldier in Possession and a maid in the story Tyrant of Fear and Hate. Here I made her the personal slave of Prince Temor. I needed someone to get Temor away from his enemies, someone who accidentally got the ball rolling. Seriously, if Emerald hadn’t been there, Temor would have been found, thrown in the dungeon and then sent to Celestia who would have slowly began undoing all the corruption Sombra did. I didn’t want that to happen.
Of course, then I needed justifications for her devotion to Temor. I had them befriend each other when they were kids and had her still remember that friendship and wanting that back.
Not a whole lot was cut from this story or changed from its initial plans, a relatively big change was the village. I was originally just going to create a new village with original characters, until I glanced at the official map of Equestria and saw that Starlight’s village was actually within a reasonable distance. That made things a whole lot easier for me and gave me an excuse to use evil Starlight and on top of everything, a member of the Order.
This was never meant to be a long story, if anything it actually became a chapter or two longer than I intended. It was really just meant as a what-if for what would happen if Private was raised by Sombra. I always intended it to end with Sombra’s resurrection and the mane 6 failing at both stopping it and getting Temor to Celestia, ending with the Order of Umbrum now laying low and biding their time for later.
I did tone Twilight’s obsession down, I was going to have her far more obsessive in her goal, but felt that would have been too out of character, yet I kept having her insist on calling Temor by his old name and thinking she could talk him down instead of fighting him.
It was actually tricky to write this story with all of the Mane 6 and I tried my best to include them so it didn’t feel too forced. Didn’t help that Celestia kept butting in and I had to really restrain myself from using her too much.
The only thing I truly changed from my original intended plans was how Sombra was resurrected and how the mane six were convinced to let him and Temor be. Originally a big resurrection crystal was going to be used. Twilight tries one last time to convince Temor to turn away. Temor keeps declaring his loyalty to Sombra who hears it while he’s being resurrected and when he steps out of it, fully formed, steps in front of Temor as the Mane six prepare to use the elements of harmony to blast everything. Intending to protect Temor and take the full blast on himself.
At that point, Fluttershy would have refused to use her element, seeing King Sombra willingly step in front of Temor to take the bullet, realizing that the king really does love his son and thus Twilight is forced to accept that Temor will always be Sombra’s son.
I didn’t use that in the end, because one, it was basically a rehash of what happens in the season four opener when Fluttershy refuses to use her element to blast Discord. Second, I realized I didn’t need the resurrection crystal. I had already established in Possession how Sombra could be resurrected. Also, I just didn’t want to use the elements of harmony, at all. I still wanted Fluttershy to ultimately be the one to refuse to use the elements, but not in the way that basically mirrored what happened in the show.
Fluttershy turning out to have been corrupted into the Order, was something I added in afterwards. I wanted to darkly hint that Ira might be more aware of what she can do than even Sombra realizes. Just Ira thinks she is doing the right thing.
Well this blog got long. I had a lot to say and I really enjoyed writing this story, even if it took longer than planned. Have no fear, a sequel is on its way, it’s already being drafted, though it will take a while before it comes out.
We haven’t seen the last of Temor yet.
Thank you all for reading and hope you enjoyed it.
That’s all for now.
Hmm.
Interesting. Fluttershy is one of my favorite pony out of the Mane 6 besides Pinkie Pie.