The Twin Monarchies of Equestria is flourishing, growing strong economically and ideologically. They have allies and puppet states strung all about the world, and their enemies lay defeated or dead.

But a new opponent, crossing dimensional borders, shall arise. The Prussians, having conquered almost their entire planet, grow hungry for more rivals. Through the sacrifice of many howitzers, a portal opened in the North Sea, permitting the travel of ships to a strange new world…

I got the idea for this following a campaign of Empire Total War, playing as Prussia and abusing Howitzers to take almost everywhere by 1787.

Co-Written by 'CPL, Colourfulpony' of the Manechat discord server

THIS WAS PLANNED AND PARTLY WRITTEN BEFORE CHAPTER 4 OF MAKE YOUR MARK!

A year after Unity was restored among ponykind, Sunny and her friends finally defeated Opaline Arcana.
Who is this she that Opaline refers to? And what's a human, and why do they want to go to the Crystal Empire?

15/03/2023: Violence tag added due to references of torture and blood.

03/04/2023: Sex tag added due to references of sex in the most recent chapter (Chapter 19).

This story is a sequel to Message in a Bottle

For numberless eons, Equus hosted primitive civilizations, ignorant of the proud achievements of their ancient race. In their simple lives, ponies and other creatures could grow without fear of alerting any of the terrible forces that grew in the galaxy beyond. All civilization had been extinguished by forces beyond comprehension. If they made too much noise, Equestria would be next.

Then came James Irwin, with the truth the Harmony superintelligence that maintained the vast Niven Ring had already known: the galaxy was safe again, and probably had been for many centuries.

Once the truth was revealed, Equestria again longed for the stars. Surely they could not be the only survivors of that galactic Red Tide that had swallowed all intelligent life. Their searching bore fruit: radio signals from a nearby system.

Felicity was the Alicorn chosen to captain that mission of discovery. She would bring the pony gift of friendship to a fellow survivor somewhere out there. That was the plan, anyway.

Unfortunately for Equestria, intelligence does not imply friendliness.

A tale of understanding and discovery set in the world of Message in a Bottle. Reading that story first is highly recommended.

This story was written as a Patreon commission for Lithl over the course of over two years now. It comes to fimfiction now that it is nearly finished.

Editing by Two Bit, cover by Zutcha.

Updates Weekly on Wednesdays.