Longma

by JeckParadox

What would've been. (Consider 18 the last chapter, this is merely all that I had planned for the future, plot-wise)

She finished her history book, though it did have some trouble being accepted nation-wide. After all, it wasn't as pretty a history as everypony expected. Discord was an excellent source of information, as were the princesses and her bodyguards.

As the weeks passed by Twilight became accustomed to the changes in her life. After all, she had spent her early childhood in a tiny apartment, her mother an author, her father a merchant who occasionally had to travel out of town, and a brother in a nearby pre-military academy. Then she spent the rest of her life til' adulthood as the protege of the Princess, having tests sprung on her, learning the magical arts, as well as anything else Celestia sprung on her. Then had come three years of living in a little hamlet next to a monstrous forest, running the little-used town library, hanging with her friends, and occasionally saving the nation and/or the world.

Those were significant lifestyle changes, and the newest one was really only a mix of the three. She once again had several other ponies living in close quarters with her, just as military-minded as Shiny was, she was living in a castle, under the supervision of princesses, and she was supposedly going to help save a nation.

Nothing too big. Just more friends along for the ride.

The biggest change happened after that, and once again Twilight had to move, after a final celebration with her friends and good-bye party on Nightmare Night. While the change wasn't too bad, the distance was something of an inconvenience. Moving into the far North, away from her best friends, was difficult, but promises to write and meet up at least weekly were made, and kept. It helps, of course, when one is an all-powerful alicorn with teleportation abilities and a sect of dark-magic wielding Shadhavar willing to open up a link to her castle-covered tree-library.

It wasn't too bad. The worst part was the culture shock. The eternal devotion, the deference, the immediate obedience, were shocking. It filled Twilight with a kind of dread, to be given so much power. She had never had the temptation to misuse her political power before, but the Longma would literally let her get away with anything she wanted, no whim was too unimportant. Twilight made a vow to herself that she would never misuse the power the Longma put in her.

Each of the pony races were expected to live in harmony, and as such, they followed the elements: the Longma, with their blood-bonds and devotion to the Night Empress, represented Loyalty. The Shadhavar, with their ancient tongues and mind-based enchantments, were Honesty. The Earth Ponies, who brought food from the ground for all the other races along with themselves, were Generosity. The Crystal Ponies, with their joy-powered defenses, represented the element of Laughter. The Pegasus, who used the rain and clouds to control the weather to protect the other ponies, and to aid the Earth Ponies in their farming, were Kindness. And the Unicorns, whose ancestral task was to keep the Sun and Moon spinning, and hold back all the other forces wishing to take the world, were the element of Magic.

Equestria, or rather, the Pony races, were finally as they should be, united in full. But conflicts came up with time, and Twilight couldn't just push them away. The root of the problem, of course, was that the Longma were warriors, and Equestria was the most peaceful nation on Earth. Her warlords (why she even had warlords were beyond her, but oh well) were constantly trying to advise her to "give a show of strength" this or "give them a warning they won't forget here" that, or, the one that irritated her the most, "assert your authority as the Empress over the sun-hag and the crystalline traitors".

Her new subjects were loyal to a fault, but they were itching for a war, while her main priority was preventing one. The Longma had come from a time when Solar Equestria was waging war on them. Thousands of her people cried out for blood to be avenged on the descendants of the ones who spilled it. Twilight had to forbid looking into the family records of Equestrians in order to curb the demands for revenge and duels. And with all their hatred of the Equestrians, that hatred was nothing to that they had for the Crystal Empire, as Sombra had demonstrated in the weeks before. The way it was "supposed" to be was with Equestria divided neatly in two; the Crystal, Shadhavar, and Longma under the alicorn of night, and the Earth, Pegasus, and Unicorns under the alicorn of day. But the Crystal Empire had broken off and formed their own nation, with their own alicorn, and the Night Empire ponies demanded that the Crystal Ponies return.

It was fortunate Cadance was so understanding. Over the course of several years, she and her sister-in-law managed to create a compromise between the three "lunar" races. Just as Luna and Celestia ruled over Solar Equestria as partners, Cadance and Twilight would together rule Lunar Equestria, and for a time, her subjects were appeased, no longer out for blood.

It would be the work of a lifetime, but Twilight and Cadance together began amending the laws of the Night Empire, and reintegrating them with modern Equestria. But the Longma were still restless and battle-hungry. Having an enemy they were not allowed to attack, the Crystal Empire and Celestia, seemed to sate their need for war, in some strange way, but now that they had no enemies, that they had made peace, even forgiven, the solar and crystal ponies, they had no target for their rage. It almost rose to a boiling point, when out of the blue Sombra returned, raising an army of windigoes, both the cold spirits of hatred, and ice-magic influenced Shadhavar like himself. He and his army conquered solar Equestria in days, but was driven out by the Longma, Crystal, and loyal Shadhavar ponies. He drew back to the West, forming his own nation, taking defectors and monsters in from all over the world, to create his own military. The Night Empire had its enemy.

One day in the early morning, Sombra appeared before Twilight in secret, drawing a deep bow.

---

---

"Well, my Mistress?"

Twilight was prepared to strike him, hold him back long enough to be put in chains and locked in somewhere worse than the Moon, but he was holding himself completely vulnerable. "...What are you doing here Sombra?"

"I have done my best to interpret your wishes," he began, "but I fear I may have angered you in my initiative."

"What are you talking about?"

"The Night Empire is the tool which Equestria uses to slam down its enemies. But in order for it to exist, Equestria requires enemies. In my meditations on the Moon, I realized finally, that that was the secret. The true cause of the war, rather than the Sun-Hag's aggravation. The Night Empire needed a war, and Equestria had no enemies. At least none that could stand the rage of an Alicorn or the Elements of Harmony... now though, you have me. Your MONSTER, my Empress. I am immune the Elements of Harmony, or close enough, I cannot be destroyed by them. I am immortal, like you! I am a monster that will return again and again from any prison you send me to! I will save the Empire!" He laughed maniacally. "It's the perfect way to serve you, my Empress, I realize that now."

"Wh-and terrorize Equestria?!" Twilight narrowed her eyes. "I order you to stop, to surrender, and to disband your armies!"

Sombra shook his head sadly. "My dear Empress, I know of your burden, believe me, I do." he said evilly. "But do not worry, your servant knows what you truly want-"

"For you to stop killing ponies!" She growled.

"You are glad that my new 'Windigo Empire' exists. You're deeply thankful for a constant, common enemy. You are most welcome my Empress, I have divined your needs, and I will meet them for the rest of eternity! I will protect Equestria, as you wish, by doing what I do best."

"Sombra." Twilight growled, charging a blast of magic that would hopefully knock him out with the first hit.

"BWAHAHAHAAHA!" He flew into the night, in the form of a black, shapeless smoke, that flew faster than the best of the Pegasi, content in his role for the future.

Empress Nightmare Twilight Sparkle protected Equestria from Sombra's threat, and ruled over the Longma fairly for thousands of years.

The End.

Author's Note:

Hey there. Sorry about such a quick ending, but this was everything I planned on doing with Longma. Wrapped in a little package. I regret not thinking of putting a conclusion in earlier. (It's been almost a year after all, since 18: Hearts and Hooves.)
A lot of people were pretty bummed that Longma had been cancelled. I didn't make a blog post really to explain it, to the best of my memory but essentially there were two reasons I stopped:
The first is that I lost interest in MLP and being a brony. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, and this site is actually pretty clean and well-behaved, but there's a huge amount of bronies who are utter A-holes, and there's a huge amount of disgusting stuff put out on the internet by bronies. Seriously, children watch this show, and when they're done watching it, they'll look it up. You look up "Rainbow Dash" on google, and not even halfway down the page you find a picture of her in fetish gear. It literally sickens me. Do whatever you want on your free time, but don't put it where children can reach, you know? After a while, it just gets distasteful, and I don't really want to be a part of it.
Second is that I was getting too invested in the backstory for the Longma, who were an original creation of mine. I liked the idea behind their powers and civilization, and I realized that later on, I might want to use the Longma, or something like them, in my own original stories. This brings up legal issues, if, at some point in the future, I write a story that contains dragon-like creatures who swear fealty to a Night Empress, and someone points out this fanfiction, it has to be different enough. So the two choices I have are deleting this when the time comes, or stopping it, and developing the Longma civilization in my head, rather than on fimfiction.
So, what happens now?:
Recently, a comment mentioned that I should find another author to continue the story, and to that I say: go ahead. Longma, as it's been set up, is now free for anyone's use. Anyone who feels like it is welcome to use the original characters, locations, backstory, and original races, such as the Shadhavar. Knock yourselves out. Send me a message sometime if you have any questions about characterization or backstory if you're interested, or if you want me officially to give permission to use them or anything like that.
So... yeah, Longma is done, thanks for all the comments and support, and I'm truly sorry that I couldn't bring all of you to its end in normal story format. So, in consolation, take the above conclusion, which wraps up all I had planned for the future of the story, and feel free to use anything inside the story that interests you. I'd like credit for them, though, if it's not a bother.

Comments

[captainmidwing]

its bad when its more about porn then stories so ik how u feel

[WannaBeDark]

Thank you for this beautiful piece you have written so far. This story is one of the clearest ones one remember. Just hearing the story name, other than fimfiction, reminded me of your fictional world. Characterization was superb and had depth that I could actually feel, while I ponder about them. Please go well on any endeavors you wish to undertake further. Would love to some-day hear the AU of this story from your mind.

All for the best, because you are the best!

[TheLastBrunnenG]

Many thanks for that Complete tag! It's been a fun ride.

[Scyphi]

I find the chapter title ironic, as that's not really a tidy conclusion when you get right down to it; it kind of leaves things hanging as the conflict is more prolonged indefinitely than resolved.

Little disappointed by the cop-out ending (sounds rude, I know, but I can't really call it anything else; that's the best term I can think of to describe it), but at the same time, I hear where you're coming from. I too have had to face the question of "wait...if I'm going to all the trouble to build such an OC-ish universe, then why am I wasting its potential on fan fiction when I could be legitimately publishing this stuff?" and it's always a hard one to face, but the answer's pretty much universally similar to yours. Can't blame you at all for that one.

And indeed, I secretly hope you can take the Longma/Shadhavar and use them in such a work, and if so, I wish you success. My big appeal in this fanfic was always the fascination in the Longma/Shadhavar and their culture, which really is lovely in it's conception and execution. I do hope you can find a new home for it somewhere where it can thrive even better still than it did here.

That said, probably my biggest disappointment is that we never get that in-depth exploration of Longma/Shadhavar culture in their own home country, which was only really ever explored vaguely from afar, or as a brief summary, like in this chapter. But...such is life.

Best of luck in your future endeavors, whatever they may be.

[RealityCheck]

so it STILL ends with Twilight stuck with a rulership she didn't want, the Six Elements disbanded, and the Friendship message of the entire show chucked out the window.

bleh.

[Mobytums]

So it seems we part ways here...

Well, then I wish you the best Jeck. I'm glad you stopped in long enough to finish one of my favorites before tossing in the hat. And if you ever get around to writing that story about your Longma, please do send me a link to rough drafts or musings. I'd love to see what more you can do with them.

All speed, Jeck.

[Alondro]

But Sombra doesn't know he's not immune to the new Super Rainbow Death Laser and so he gets blasted to... X-rays or something... and goes to Chinese Hell, with all its many creative layers of torments.

[Xanderfox]

Well Sombra's logic does make a kind of Twisted sense, he's using his natural skills to serve his mistress, it's just said skills are being a psychotic dictator. Like many comic book villains he fight for the sake of the fight, his plans will always have blatant flaws, his generals will always have some flaw that makes them unable to win for very long, it's a chess game were he just has to play to cause a stalemate not to win.

[Marig The Dragon]

This was a nice story and world you had here, I wish you the best of luck with you future endeavors

[Kingofthecouch]

i wish their could have been a fight scene between twi and sombra it would have been awesome

[Legiondude]

While I understand your feelings and support your move to greener pastures, this ending feels almost bad as a cancellation tag

[JeckParadox]

5723146 Well, the Six elements aren't disbanded, they're all still friends, but I suppose the friendship message of the show is kind of overlooked by having it end with an outcome of perpetual conflict with a, for all that's been seen, unrepentant and irredeemable villain, so, yeah, I can see your issues with it, and I never showed Twilight really accepting the Longma. Once again, my apologies for cutting it all short, the story definitely has problems as-is, but I don't want to invest any more of myself into this than I already have.
Thanks for checking in though with your opinion. I love Tales of the Questor.

5721909
5721941
5725546 Thanks for your support, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

5726990 Sorry. I suppose it came off darker than it should have.
5723928 Yep. 100%
5723591 I'll think about that. So far, I've incorporated a human-based version of them to another story of mine, but I've only really gotten three chapters done, and I'm not proud of it yet. But I'll keep you in mind if I ever want a second perspective on it.

[JeckParadox]

5722994 Well, thanks for sticking with me all this way besides. As for being a "cop-out" ending, I just put down everything I conceivably had in mind for the story plot-wise, and that was it.
The story never had a true ending in mind, more just me writing whatever I felt like, having my OCs interact with Twilight and the others, creating a history, the idea of Celestia and Luna leading armies... it was a chapter-by-chapter work. All the stuff in "a tidy conclusion" was just what i was thinking about in regards to what I wanted to happen later on. Twilight goes to the Night Empire, slowly changes them, gets them to forgive the Crystal and Solar ponies, and their aggression is dealt with by Sombra creating a new threat for them to perpetually defend Equestria from.
As its presented, it doesn't come off as satisfying, but I was just hoping that anyone who had cared for this story, and wanted to know how it ends, would at least get an ending for their troubles. Even if it's not a particularly good end.

[Scyphi]

5734914 Well, I'm glad you at least went to the trouble of giving us that much. Rather have that than nothing at all.

[Rakaziel]

Very well thought through. I wish you the best of luck with your novel.

[CasperSantiq]

That is not A way to end something. Facehoove to you my friend.

[StormyVenture]

I'm not sure what you could lose interest in, except that you defined "brony" as something external (rather than internal) and then found it was bigger than you and wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. While I am sure there are those who are inveterate trolls and bullies, the vast majority of the fandom is made of human beings. Every last one is an imperfect creature with their own problems. Also, the distance provided by internet can make the vehement and those with strong beliefs seem to be things that they are not.

On another note all children grow up someday and not a one is neat, tidy, and "perfect". Even if we could shield children from everything we didn't want them to see, the desires that drive people to seek such things out and/or make them come from within not from without. I really doubt that a few pictures of questionable nature will make that much of a difference. Children will probably think little of some things until their biology is at a certain point and they will feel about things as they will. Just because something "sickens" you does not mean that everyone feels the same way. -- I'll point out that "don't put X where children can reach" is a very tall order. People, especially children, are curious. If they really want to find something then they'll find it. Also, people who make art can't do much about popularity or lack thereof or about how well Google helps people find things related to their search.

Sorry that you were invested in said back story. Also, sorry that you're so attached to the thought of it that you couldn't just write a story with it and move on. I d fail to see these legal issues that you speak of, rhough. Last I checked, your ideas are still your ideas and the fact that you wrote a fanfic changes nothing.

P.S.
That was a lame ending. Better to leave it without a definite conclusion, even if you might get complaints for it, if that's your idea of a good ending. Just my two cents, though. I guess I should be happy that you chose to wrap it up, but it doesn't do it justice.

[JeckParadox]

6306788 Eh, I always thought the show was 'just okay' really, and I was more involved in the fun part of the fandom, enjoying the videos and fanfiction and all that stuff. So, I lost interest in being a brony, in involving myself in that community.
I didn't mean to say that all bronies are terrible, or that humans should be perfect, I mean, compared with a lot of other fandoms, and this might just be due to the size of the mlp fanbase, there's a lot of self-proclaimed bronies that are asses. On tumblr, a person I follow mentioned they didn't like bronies, (Bronies, not MLP) and received nothing but hatemail and people trying to justify to them how great bronies are while also calling her a massive number of irrelevant insults. She was actually a fan of the show, and she just didn't want to be associated with the brony culture, and for that, she was being insulted for weeks.
I know that's not reflective of the entire fanbase, or even most of the fanbase, but I've seen stuff like that happen way too many times.
Also, I completely disagree with you in regards to the children thing. There's a difference between letting children go through self-discovery and being exposed to the world, to leaving massive amounts of porn involving nonhuman children's show characters lying out in the open. "If they're curious, they'll find it" is okay, that's something up to them. It should not mean that fetish gear like that should appear in the first few pages of a google image results of just the name of a character from a children's show, with safe search on.
About the legal issues thing, you're probably right. I could have continued Longma without really worrying if someone connects it with my original work.
As for the PS, you're absolutely right. This isn't a good ending, or a good conclusion. I put my heart and soul into this story, and the conclusion does not do it justice. A few people asked me what I had planned for the rest of the story, and this was all I had. What was listed in the above chapter were all the ideas I had planned for the story, my plan for its ending, and my plan for what would happen to all the characters. If you want, consider chapter 18 the last chapter, and this as more of a 'what might have happened.' In fact, I'm changing the name of the chapter to reflect that.

I really don't mean to sound angry, or to have led you on with this 'conclusion'. I just... yeah, I didn't want to be a part of the fandom any more, and I wanted to shape the Longma characters and species into something else, non-pony related. If I continued the story, the Longma would have forever, in my head, been "a my little pony thing". You're right about the legal issues being non-existant, but for me, I can't divide the same species, the same feeling behind it, into two different cultures for two different stories. If I continued writing Longma the fanfic, when I wrote my own stories it wouldn't feel right.
I apologize for sounding rude above, but I do mean what I say.
I really hope you don't hold this against me, and that you'll at least remember the story fondly despite a crappy conclusion.
I'd like to thank you for leaving comments throughout it's run, to giving me ideas and making me think about what I'm doing with it. You, and a bunch of other commentors all invested yourselves into the story, and you deserved a finished story, but I don't want to finish it. And that's selfish of me. So...
Honestly, honest-to-God, thank you for caring this much about my fanfic, it does me a great service to know you loved it to the point where a bad ending will make you furious. I'll try to write something in the future that's also worthy of that kind of love. Just from other people, and not about ponies.

[RealityCheck]

7681238 "Their."

Seeing as the Elements have defeated threats that could SQUASH dragons, the stupid is undiluted.

[hive vs machine]

[Commander Joe]

6332524
Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I get it. For a really long time I was put off from the show not only because the fact that it was technically a little girls show, but also because I knew several people who were absolutely obsessed with it. About a year and a half ago I found an MLP fanfic and read it without realizing what I was reading until about halfway through the chapter. Eventually I decided to finish that story and even watch the show itself. It's people like you who got me into this. And in the end it's people like you that keep me here. So thanks for the story :)

[Nineveh Orion]

Just to say it now. I'm totally using some of the stuff in the story. Not everything, because a lot of it is just plain dumb with how the show progressed from when this was first written.

But a lot of it will be :D

[Ray MorningLight]

Tq for the amazing story!

[Fintushamy]

Damn, that was good.