Retirement of a King - Afterthought blog

Warning. - Major spoilers if you haven't finished reading Retirement of a King.

See you after the break.

Well, this story was a nice change of pace to write after all the others in the Dark Pony saga. Granted it got severely-delayed and only this year I finally went and finished writing it.

Retirement of a king was always meant to be short, more of a follow-up to the events that happened in Rage of a Queen. It was never really meant to be a focused reform story, there are so many out there already and I just wanted to do something slightly more different.

That did of course mean I had to imply a great time pass, but Queen Rabia exchanging letters with Emir Horsefar helped with that.

Queen Rabia, I confess now, didn’t end up as I initially was planning to do with her. It’s one of the reasons I had to rewrite the second half of Rage of a Queen. I found, in the end, I just wasn’t interested in having her to be bigger and badder than Sombra, yes she is still dangerous and yes Sombra still fears her, but having her be the next big bad villain, just didn’t work for me.

So that’s why we start so late in her rehabilitation program, having calmed down after her rage and grief-induced madness from the last story and realizing more fully that she had gone a little too far. One of my aim for this story was no real antagonist.

I have had in my head the idea of King Sombra just knocking on Private’s door, inviting himself in and telling him and his friends to convince him to retire for a long time. So far back, I was just finishing writing Possession in the Crystal Empire when I had that idea. Mid 2016 to be more precise. Just kept it in the back of my head while writing other stories, always knowing it would eventually lead up to that.

But like all ideas they evolve and by the time I finally got to write it, I had shifted gears a bit. Already at the end of Rage I was hinting that Sombra was changing and not just because of the fear he had for his mother. (It certainly helped though.) So, by the time I got to write this story, I knew Sombra was already retired and there was a different reason he was knocking on Private’s door. Discord served very well to provide the first hint that there was something else going on.

The Dark Pony connection being important to the Dark Ponies, to a point that they need to be in the presence of one another, is also an old idea, I just never really got a good chance to fully explore it. I managed to drop some hints, Celestia being a little puzzled why Sombra was so obsessed with Private and his family, how quickly Private could calm Sombra down slightly just by reminiscing about Dark Ponies and their empire. Though that one didn’t work out as well as intended. Well, I finally got to be more blatant this time around.

Yes, the connection they feel is that important, it’s a non-issue for the descendants of the refugees because it’s gotten so diluted but a pure-bred Dark Pony, they do not do so well in isolation.

Even Prince Sombra and his two boys are an old idea of mine, they have been mucking around since 2016 as well and I even attempted to make a pixel comic featuring them, but it fell to the wayside but used them in private RPs with a few friends.

Now the reason I brought him in is that I was kind of stuck with the story. I intended to have a foreshadowing of a sort to alternate universes, or at least make the prime universe of Equestria Tales become more aware that alternate pony universes existed. Not just the human Equestria Girls universe. I just couldn’t figure out how to do it.

Another part I was stuck in was the map mission. Yes, there was supposed to be an actual map mission in the story. Coal and Private would have been summoned and the problem would be in Fillydelphia. My problem was that the ponies sent on those missions don’t always know who it is they need to help and have to figure it out. The problem was of course that King Sombra was not being honest about the reasons he was in the house and the Tree of Harmony knew he was no longer an enemy and he did consider Private as a friend. I had a real problem working out how they would figure out this was their mission.

So once I started toying with bringing Prince Sombra in and how I would bring him in, I was just struck with the idea “hey, what if Coal and Private never even know they are on a map mission?” The aftershock vortex was thus used to not only pull Prince Sombra and his boys into the Prime universe but glitch out the map. There is still a mission, they just don’t know that they have a mission.

That meant of course I needed a different reason for Coal to come back to the house. Thankfully I sent her to Sky Dive, who is a model agent, so it was pretty easy to think that she would have some models she needed to assist at some point. Sky Dive would then take her to Private’s parents, but Coal finally argued that she may just as well go home since King Sombra doesn’t seem to be actually doing anything.

And we finally get to meet Sky Dive more properly this time around. Wanted to use her more last story but her role got cut.

Now I have intentionally been using Doctor Whooves sparingly, first appearing in the extra epilogue in The Time Keeper of Ponyville, and popping up here and there in other stories. Yes, he is a blatant Doctor Who rip-off, he just uses a special kind of magic instead of a blue box. It’s basically the same reason I barely use Discord, it’s just too easy to fall into the trap to use him to solve everything. They are both great for expositions though.

Private and Dew Doe finally have their son Blue Axe. That little colt has existed since 2013, just been waiting for his mom and dad to finally hook up. I always intended for their relationship to end up producing him and now Dew’s little blue hellion is finally here. Only took nine years, jeez. Now watch me take another nine just to get the next kids out. What? I have had Blue Axe’s siblings created a long time ago as well.

And my edgy dark lord prince makes a cameo to tell us that Doctor Whooves story will continue in the sequel to Temor, Temor’s hunt.

So, if you have been counting there are four Sombras in this story. Two cameos and two in a more central role. If you don’t know who the Sombra was who had Whooves spooked in chapter 6, I direct you to Tyrant of Fear and Hate. Yup, that guy is up to no good, not telling anything more at this point.

Well, anyway. I enjoyed writing this story and am much happier with how it came out. Didn’t need to rewrite anything, although I did have to add a little more to chapter 13, but nothing compared to what happened to Rage.

So, hope you all enjoyed it. See you in the next story.