Starfall Post Mortum 1: Silver Veil exposé

Well, I guess I’m doing this now. These characters seem to mean something to people other than just me and my partner so... Anyway, I’m not doing this in any particular order, just whatever I feel like talking about at any given time. It was no question though that I needed to start things off with one of the most important characters in the narrative who, sadly, was also the character who got the least amount of character development. And since you can’t talk about any of them individually without discussing the Star family as a whole, this will also shed some light on some of the inner workings and family secrets as well. Settle in 'cause there's a lot to talk about with this mare. Ready? Here we go...!

So I suppose we should start with what is known about Silver Veil as of the story proper. The grey mare is from a relatively unknown unicorn family, nowhere near as affluent as the Star family. She is a brilliant and well-read woman who makes a point not to be seen in the forefront of family affairs. And most importantly, she loves her daughters before anypony else in the world including her husband and is willing to go to any length to ensure their safety and happiness. She is the only pony in the whole of the Star family other than Starsong who fully accepted Starshadow in spite of her, you know, not being a unicorn.

Not a lot to work from, but that’s actually fairly accurate to who Silver Veil actually is. She is the hoof that guides the hooves that move the world around her.

Of course she wasn’t always so influential. Before meeting Polaris, Silver Veil was an aspiring scholar. Her talent was for healing magic, specifically old-style healing magic not too dissimilar to that practiced by the zebra tribes. While modern technology has made such magic (mostly) obsolete, a practitioner of the old arts with enough skill and precision can easily keep pace with advances in medicine. And in the present time, there was no more talented healer than Silver Veil.

In spite of her natural talent, Silver Veil’s passion was for research, particularly into the nature and practice of magic across the world. Due to her analytical mindset combined with heightened precision inherent to her style of magic, the then teenaged filly began to turn heads among the elite magicians and even the royalty. Given the resources, she would likely know more about the base nature of certain types of unicorn magic than those that actually practice them despite being somewhat limited in her own. So it was that Princess Celestia made the unprecedented move to invite the filly to join her graduate program, no examination necessary.

It was while she was studying combat magic that she first met Starlette (who was only allowed into the school due to her family’s name). The filly was very friendly, if not very talented, and convinced the older mare to help her study (an effort that would prove ultimately pointless). Despite being near polar opposites in terms of both talent and goals the two became fast friends and eventually she introduced Silver Veil to Polaris.

It should be said that when they were younger that Polaris was a much different stallion than the one he would become once he ascended to patriarch of the Star family. He was still ambitious and totally committed to maintaining the legacy of the family, but he was also much more adventurous and open-minded. These were the traits (along with his raw talent for magic) that attracted the young mare to her future husband.

It was Polaris's mother who could be said to have changed the stallion so drastically, something that became clear to Silver Veil the instant she met her. The widowed mare grilled the younger one mercilessly. It was not enough that she was a gifted magician and scholar, she also needed to prove the “purity” of her family’s bloodline before she could even be considered as a potential partner for her son. That same level of intensity was placed on the stallion constantly until his mother finally passed away, leaving him in charge of the family.

It has been mentioned that the Star family claims to be directly descendant from Starswirl and this is the reason that their line has always produced powerful unicorns. This is a large part of their affluence, but not the main piece. The Star family is also a business empire, focusing mostly on magic-based technologies and research. Most of the companies under their umbrella are managed by the heads of branch families but they all answer to Polaris in the end. The tech that they have produced has become invaluable to modern pony society and as such they have become almost untouchable due to the disastrous potential consequences of destabilizing these industries.

Being the head of such a grand scale operation on top of managing his role as head trainer of the Royal Guard and keeping the rest of the family in line quickly took its toll on Polaris and he quickly became the cold, calculating tyrant we know, just like his mother before him. It pained Silver Veil to watch this happen to her husband, but there was little she could do, at least at first. With her unique skillset, Silver Veil began her own wing of their company’s firm, focusing on medical research, an area once untouched by the company. Her success in this area took much of the strain off her husband and the two were able to maintain a happy life... at least until Starshadow was born.

The birth of a pegasus in the prestigious family was seen as a catastrophe and as such all knowledge of the foal was kept quiet. Silver Veil became a pariah in the family at large and only her status as spouse of the patriarch saved her and Starshadow from banishment. Ultimately she stepped down from her position as lead of her subdivision of the research center in order to provide as much of a shield against the others for Starshadow as she could.

Well, we all know how that worked out...

With her newfound free time though, Silver Veil went back to research, now having access to both the royal library and the Star family’s personal files. Her knowledge of the mechanics of magic became peerless save for the princess herself and she became well-versed in the inner workings of both the family and in corporate society in general. She chose to keep this weaponized knowledge to herself though in order to focus on her daughters.

But then fate forced her daughters away from her protection.

With Starsong leaving for Las Pegasus, unable to bear the weight of being perceived as a disappointment to her family for being unfit to become matriarch one day and the shock of Starshadow’s cutie mark and subsequently running away from home, Silver Veil’s hoof was forced. Keeping Starsong out of trouble proved simple enough with the connections her position in the family afforded her, but Starshadow had completely disappeared. Her desperation to find and ensure her daughter’s safety forced her to delve into the darker aspects of the family’s position.

Owing to her ability to “clone” her husband’s magic, Silver Veil had the whole of her husband’s covert operatives at her disposal. And while her initial trail had gone cold by the time she was able to mobilize her efforts, they eventually tracked the filly to one of Celestia's royal cartographers South Pole. Reports showed that she, along with another filly around the same age had been kept by him and his brother as sex slaves; they were also quick to point out that despite this fact both the fillies seemed happy in their lives.

Silver Veil, understandably horrified at this news, ordered this fact covertly leaked to certain members of the nobility in the castle. She had decided not to simply have the two arrested out of a sense of relief that at least the two had apparently treated their slaves well. And more importantly, she reasoned they would eventually lead her to the bigger prize of whoever had supplied them with the fillies in the first place...

What she found when South Pole was forced to sell Starshadow was a whole hive of depravity beyond even her ability to control. Every pony involved, from the suppliers to the buyers, had connections in Canterlot and abroad; even with her own connections, bringing such a group down without catastrophic consequences would be impossible. Her sources in the castle told her that the princess was likely also aware of them and had come to the same conclusion.

Unfortunately, her mole in the auction was unable to secure Starshadow as the price for such an apparently hot commodity quickly soared beyond their expectations. The winner, it turned out, was a business rival of the family’s. It’s very likely that they recognized her cutie mark, even as scarred as it was. Moreover, Silver Veil knew the stallion's wife well; she was notoriously cruel and vindictive. Of course in her diminished role she couldn’t act directly against the stallion or his company, but she wouldn’t have to.

The rival company sought to gain a foothold in the outer territories to match those enjoyed by the Star family. Of course to do so would require supply lines that could be relied upon. Seeing this weakness in their plans, the Star family began a series of hostile takeovers of the prominent transportation companies, effectively blocking their means of expansion and forcing them to drive up their prices for goods. It took nearly two years but finally their share of the market had crumbled to the point that the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. Desperate to save their own livelihood, the stallion sold off all their assets, including Starshadow.

Not willing to take a chance on losing her daughter again, Silver Veil and Starsong entered the auction themselves to secure Starshadow’s freedom. It would be the last time the woman would see her daughters before the current crisis. This was a sacrifice she willingly made though, as she had come to understand that, were she to leave the Star family, she would powerless to save anypony else.

As a side note, it was that couple that later hired Specter to kill Polaris. Which of course ended in the former Blackguard turning on them and offing them instead.

With her daughters relatively safe, Silver Veil turned her attention back inward, hoping to curtail the dirty dealings of the family’s businesses (including those she had set in motion herself). Her hope was that if she could get things running smoothly enough that some part of the stallion she had fallen for years ago, the stallion that had been crushed under the weight of his family’s legacy, might be revived. She never believed that he truly hated his daughters but that his position demanded the impossible from all facets of his life.

Sadly, that hope was crushed when her husband had her daughters foalnapped and Starshadow taken off to some unknown location.

Her mission from that moment forward was just as she told Starsong: Silver Veil would not allow anypony, especially her own family, to harm or threaten her daughters ever again. To that end, she began to research her husband’s personal files and dealings, a threshold that to that point she had refused to cross out of respect for him. Now though he had proven himself as a danger to the ponies most important to her and had to be removed from the equation... somehow.

Which brings us to where the narrative drops. Which is a shame because it was right before the point where Silver Veil’s influence would likely start becoming more overt.

So her plan for dealing with her husband in the end hinged on Starlette. Removing Polaris would cause massive upheaval in the companies run by the family which would have a catastrophic domino effect on modern pony cities. However, she could install Starlette as the new matriarch of the family while guiding the hapless mare from the sideline to keep everything running smoothly. The question of how to take down Polaris, a national war hero, business titan and friend of the royalty, that she had yet to puzzle out. But in his personal records, she would eventually come across his studies on the Blackguard and their unique stealth magic.

At the point where we had stopped, Specter and Nightshade were out of the equation, taken to Canterlot by Princess Luna while she tries to puzzle out why the two of them were so familiar to her. But eventually they would have been released back into the world, again under the guidance of Luna and given new purpose.

This is actually the point where the narrative would split, with one half following Starshadow, Sunset and company in Ponyville and the other following Specter and Nightshade’s crusade under Luna's plan. The Blackguard’s new role would be much the same as their original purpose, acting as the princess’s agents in the fight against evils that they can’t afford to confront directly. And in this pursuit they would eventually come into contact with Silver Veil and her vast knowledge of the ills of the capital city.

The final conclusion of her fight against her husband was never actually determined, but if anypony could force the stallion to concede it would be the secret final boss of the family, his brilliant, deceptively cunning and calculating wife. Doubly so since she is likely the only pony he wouldn’t have had a contingency plan against. Despite everything, the two still hold some spark of love for one another.

So I think that covers the major plot points Silver Veil is involved in, but there’s still a few tidbits worth talking about. If it wasn’t obvious already, I love this character; it’s no coincidence that she was one of the four OCs from the story to actually receive artwork. In fairness, I love all my characters, even the habitable ones, but the ladies of the Star family hold a special significance for me.

Anyway, first off, Silver Veil wasn’t a perfectly innocent mother even before she was forced into playing god from behind the scenes. She does have a secret fetish for unique pony parts (wings, horns, and an earth pony's teats which are especially sensitive compared to unicorns and pegasi’s). This stems from her own horn being hypersensitive due to the precise, intricate nature of her magic. You may have noticed a few throwaway lines of text when she was interacting with Starsong talking about how mommy would always stroke her horn to calm her down. She of course would do the same with Starshadow’s wings, not enough to evoke any sexual stimulation in them (probably) but enough to satisfy her secret kink and further the bonds between mother and daughters. Naughty naughty indeed...

There was a side story that would have involved Silver Veil helping to heal Sunset's wing. The groundwork for that actually did make it into the story in Starsong's chapter. The flower necklace that Starshadow made for her big sister is one-of-a-kind, made from a magic-infused flower that was once used in potions. The flower no longer grows in the natural world, but because the necklace was itself preserved they would still harvest seeds from it to grow back at the family estate. Of course, the actual job wouldn’t be able to be done until Polaris was out of the picture, but they would have the means to heal Sunset.

To that end, there was a flashback sequence I started writing about the day Starshadow gave it to her sister for her birthday but I don’t think I ever finished that to any point of readability.

Anyway, Silver Veil is also the probably the pony closest to unraveling the truth of the McGuffin, err, the Star Tome. She had studied it quite thoroughly, interested in the magic that emanates from it. I won’t give away exactly what the secret inside that book is here, that will have to wait for if I decide to do a full lore exposé, but what is known to the mare is that it is almost certainly an artifact of the legendary magister. The tome is protected by a series of spells so much more intricate than anything she had encountered even in the castle that even she has no idea how to unravel one without the others going off. Legend among the family suggests that anypony other than the one destined to take the tome as their own trying to open it would result in said pony being disintegrated by the protection spells cast upon it. There would be little point in taking such a risk to determine the tome's contents so she resolved to leave it be.

Research into whether Starshadow is in fact the destined one has been inconclusive...

Okay I think that’s enough for now. I feel like I'm forgetting something but whatever, if it comes to me later I'll put out an addendum. Anyway, next time I get the urge to do this will probably go smoother since most of the rest of the cast wasn’t quite as shrouded in secrecy as Silver Veil (even those two secret ponies running around in the background got more character development). I’ll probably just go over the principle cast and what was going to happen after the point where we stopped. Until then, I hope you all can follow Starshadow’s example and keep on fighting to live your best lives. And, y’know, maybe have some kinky fun along the way.

Comments

[Ikujekon]

Good to get to read what was coming and was planned