A myth of ancient Equestria. When the God of Breaking Rules loses his love, a mortal mare, he goes on a quest to break the most sacred rule of the gods, the law of life and death, and return her to the world of the living. Whatever it takes.
And it's going to take everything.
(Note: the gore tag doesn't apply to the whole thing, mostly just to chapter 3, and it's written like a myth, not with a lot of detail or realism, but I thought I'd best include the tag to be safe. There's also actually sex, but it's *so* non-explicit that I actually thought adding the tag would be misleading. If folks think it belongs, I can add it on.)
Chapters (9)
My guess is his love won't recognise him or see him as a monster
It's a bit obvious
3465708
Oh, no. Everyone does that one. It's worse.
(Technically, I suppose that does happen, but not when you'd expect it to or why you'd expect it to.)
oh my goodness! this story is amazingly written! its amazing. this seems like a novel writers doing.
omagurddisisagoodstory
nonononononononononononononononononononononononononononononono i needs chapter five!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nice fable. I can just imagine ponies reading this to their foals before they tuck them in of a night.
Wow
Moar plz
its wonderful
3465842 I shiver to think of what you would do that would be worse than the usual "I gave up my body and who I was to live with you again but you don't love me for some reason" route.
5250730
You may find out. I missed my self-imposed deadline; I hadn't wanted to leave any story un-updated for a year, and I didn't make it. But I intend to finish this thing sometime in the next two months. It's my oldest un-updated story.
Curse you Lord of the Dead!! Why won't you let Discord's ship sail?
This is really, really neat. I love how it's written like a myth, it flows very well. :D Reading it, I couldn't help but think of Mythology by Edith Hamilton, which I had to read for mythology class. The writing style is similar, but yours has funny quips, which I like.
(spoilers because I don't know if this counts as a spoiler) Are of the figures like meant to represent canon characters? I know the god of breaking rules is obviously Discord, and The Goddess of Wisdom is obviously Twilight, and the sun and moon are Celestia and Luna. But the Spinner, Weaver and Sealer could fit as the Apple family, and the sky's personality reminds me of Rarity, though it would make more sense if she were Rainbow Dash, because pegasi. I can't figure anyone else out, though. It may just be me being dense.
5663509
No, nobody is literally anybody except for Discord, Celestia and Luna (and Philomena), though obviously the Goddess of Wisdom is based on Twilight. :-) But no, the Mane 6 aren't in this; most of the characters are original, more or less.
And yes, it's intended to read like a myth -- one of my hobbies is world mythology, so I have read tons and tons of this stuff. The snarky quips wouldn't really be there in most myths, though; I'm throwing those in because it's Discord, so I really can't help myself. :-)
5663614 Ah, okay. I remember thinking some of the others kinda sorta fit some of the mane 6, but not as much as the ones you said.
Mythology is super fascinating to me. I need to read some more outside of Greek and Norse. And yeah, it just wouldn't be Discord without him making smartass comments :)
Oh good, I was hoping you hadn't abandoned this one! I love Trickster myths and was a bit worried this one was going to be forgotten as I didn't see it on here.
*Goes to read new chapter*
5666653
No... it's the least popular story in my portfolio so I wasn't putting a high priority on updating it, but I have the whole thing outlined line by line, and each chapter is really short. I'd wanted to get it done before Nov 9 last year so I wouldn't have stories sitting un-updated for a year, but that didn't happen.
But yeah, trickster myths are my absolute favorite, and the opportunity to write a myth that steals shamelessly from so many other mythologies and includes subtle callbacks to stuff in the series (my favorite part is still the scene where the god of breaking rules defeats Rock with water, and Rock says "Someday I will have you," and the god says "You just keep telling yourself that", and we all know Rock is right)... oh, I'm definitely going to finish this.
5666808
Trickster tales are the BEST.
Have you read "Trickster Makes This World" by Lewis Hyde?
Apart from some parts where he I think he pushes the artist/trickster link a bit tenuously (probably in his choice of artists) it's brilliant. I love the chapters on why Tricksters are attracted to dirt and trouble. Ahhh...they're so much more interesting than the standard head gods like Apollo et al.
Deer me. That ending.
Since this is a trickster god story, how much of Discord's torment is inspired by Loki's imprisonment?
Anyway, nice to see ever more tricks from Discord. At this point I can't think of a single feature of his that hasn't been shaped by the story, except maybe for the way one of his horns is curved all funny.
6545310
Only the venom in the eyes thing, really. A lot of the story is actually based on the Descent of Inanna/Ishtar, which isn't a trickster tale at all (that is where the seven gates came from, though Inanna only had to give up clothes, jewelry and her powers, not most of her body), and various Just So stories play into it also, obviously.
6545553 I really got to expand my mythology knowledge beyond Greeks and Norse pantheons.
I'm very glad to see this continuing! No one else writes Discord quite as well as you I fell.
Cool, the Regal Sisters are getting in on the mythology character-creation process!
I love this so much.
Such an interesting fable, and I can see how this still might not end well, yes in deed.
Love this fic. You've really nailed the ancient legend-type of narration. Hope this continues!
This is the sort of clever, thoughtful mythology I would hope to find in a more serious version of MLP.
What a cunning little bit of foreshadowing there. Delightful, preserving the tidbits of canon within this new framework of a traditional creation myth.
I could see Zecora reciting this to zebra foals around the firepit at night.
This really is a magnificent myth. I do hope the final tragedy is as perfectly keeping with the themes built up as has been the case thus far. My suspicion is that his own nature will cause the ruin of his love in the end, as the other gods realize his tricks.
Indeed, those who seek true justice do not take pleasure from punishments, but administer them impartially as the law states. Enjoyment in doling out punishment is vengeance and wrath, not justice. Justice feels less than Death, for it does not become angry when laws are broken; it concerns itself only that the punishments fit the crimes, with all the feeling of a stone tablet carved with The Law.
The god of breaking rules whispered, "Well, I heard it rumored that Titanium is spreading the word around the Periodic Table that you're a pussy."
Iron grew red hot with rage.... which burned the god of breaking rules like the dickens... "Ok, maybe I should have gone with that other plan..."
Gosh, this is good, and gripped me from the moment I read the title. Like others have said, the voice is spot on, it sounds like oral history and creator-myths and the grimmer types of old fairytales all rolled into one.
It's very clever, and I like it a lot.
It is admirable what some would give and do for those they love, like the God of Breaking Rules do here. Though, sometimes, it is terrifying, and I fear what he end of this will bring.
I do wonder, do you believe the God could be considered either good or evil for doing this? Or this goes beyond such concepts?
So, the God of Breaking Rules broke the world. Didn't see that coming.
You can notice the change in your style when comparing this chapter with your previous ones.
This story deserves so much more attention! More thought has gone into its creation than a thousand repetitive crossovers!
I shall break the rules of fanboys and make them love quality writing instead of Mary Sue vampire crap!
This is criminally underrated.
Also, I can't help but wonder why the sirens weren't involved.
7766895
Story was plotted long before Rainbow Rocks. Also, sirens are water creatures; you don't find them on land so much.
I was not expecting to see the idea of steel in this myth. Though, there are other ferromagnetic metals other than ferrum…but that's not commonly known enough to make it into myth, is it?
Still, your ability to surprise me in ways I do not expect to be surprised is a part of what makes you a Good Writer. (And especially one of Discord. :discord:)
or of horseshoes hung above doors preventing them, bringing good luck…
6892499
7081760
What they said.
"Sometimes" doesn't really cut it as a principle, and when gods or the universe set rules without that reason being apparent, they deserve what they get.
Oh, Discord. Even when you do something noble things go wonky.
Great chapter, as always.
So I've read through this before (though not the last few updates). I'll be going through it again and leaving comments this time. I'll spoil for the first few chapters even though it should be decently obvious who the characters are in this mythology.
The very premise has tickled my imagination since I read this the first time, and it still does. A mythology revolving around Discord that starts with his love Celestia dying is intriguing and the way you write makes it sound exactly like a lot of real-world mythologies, as already, in the space of the first chapter we see how the pegasi are born, and how Celestia and Luna will eventually come to be physical embodiments of the sun and moon. 'God of Breaking Rules' is a fitting title for Discord in mythology. I don't think it's been shown yet in later chapters, but would the fabris the God of Breaking Rules gets from the sky happen to be Celestia and Luna's manes and tails?
I had to look up the air date for Princess Twilight Sparkle 1/2, and it was two weeks after you released this first chapter. I'm not sure if you saw something in a preview somewhere or if you just lucked out, since while we knew the sun could be prevented from rising from the series premier, it was the Season 4 premiere that I believe was the first time we saw sun and moon in the sky at the same time (don't think Discord did such a thing in Return of Harmony).
It's pretty neat that you borrow a bit from real-world mythologies, like the part at the start about the Fates Three of Greek mythology. I've read Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, so I'm a little bit biased towards very strong personifications of the forces of nature such as Death, Time and Nature, and Discord is doing a good time wheedling his way through each and every one of these. Here, we begin to see the first of the tales as to how Discord got his mismatched body parts, and it's a little bit clever for him to steal a book that causes mares and stallions to have a difficult time understanding one another, a rather cute reference to the real world cliche.
I would wonder if the God of Breaking Rules holds a grudge against the God of Love, for if gods can interfere with the domain of other gods, then the God of Love is the one who set up the God of Breaking Rules for heartbreak in the first place by loving a mortal mare.
I remember realising what rock meant on my first read-through. Even now, it's still such a profound set of lines that I have to quote it, because it's just that good.
The second half of the chapter is really interesting otherwise, as Discord loses most of his body parts, so of course he has to go get new ones, but it also sets-up for how he'll get a mish-mash of animal body parts instead of having a set of limbs and torso from a single species, as well as his forked tongue.
Of course, there's also the fact the God of Breaking Rules already earned passage through the seven gates, so if the Lord of the Dead didn't think to revoke his passage thus far...
An amazing chapter that builds up just how Discord's chimera-like nature came to be, both simultaneously building upon his body parts and also on the nature of the other animals as he breaks rules for them to help them better adapt to the world, especially the first phoenix. Given the life and rebirth of phoenixes and how Celestia is his lost love, I wonder if the bird at the end is Philomena. If bat ponies are a thing you write at all, I wonder how Discord creating bats will eventually come into play.
I'm a little bit baffled as to what eventually happens to the horn of the goat Discord takes, unless the non-antler horn is meant to be the goat horn and something happens to his own real horn.
I feel like Futile Ambition, your Sisyphus expy, is a little too on the nose in his name. Short Grasp is far better by that criteria.
Discord here feels more like a God of Deals, though of course in some cases his personality as a trickster begins to shine through, such as giving the hydra the ability to grow back heads, only for them to be discordant with one another. It's rather interesting to see just how many creatures he has created however, and one begins to wonder just how much of creation hasn't been affected by the God of Breaking Rules. I suppose even ponies have been affected in some way (perhaps with their Cutie Marks?).
The Lord of the Dead doesn't quite seem to understand that nothing can stop the God of Breaking Rules, in any event.
It's a little bit odd to see iron talking about being able to break any other metal, and then later talk only about being able to marry with the ash of life. Pure iron is fragile and pretty soft and would snap against a lot of other metals. It's only with a little bit of carbon that it actually gains any strength. Iron isn't the only magnetic metal, but considering it's being written from a mythological basis I can assume the precursors who came up with the mythology had no idea of nickel and cobalt, especially since they didn't form naturally magnetic lodes like iron did with lodestone.
Still, that was a very gruesome middle part of the chapter, and gives Discord's current form further shape with his more elongated head and damaged-looking eyes.
That said, I feel like you missed an opportunity with Luna's deal with Discord. I could see a very strong ironic echo if Discord made a deal with Luna that she would be free so long as he was also free, and then when it comes to the Elements of Harmony, Luna gets banished into the moon some time after Discord is turned into a statue, and once she's freed he's freed shortly thereafter as well.
Huh, so that's what happened to the spare horn, which happened to be Discord's original horn. Sometime around when he was remaking Celestia's body I was thinking 'wait, wasn't she an ordinary pony with no magic or anything?', and sure enough my suspicions came through. I'm guessing you had a lot of this planned out in your head to bring home a moment like that. Since he gave the feathers of his one wing to Celestia which also transferred over to Luna's form, I suppose he'll use his bat wing as the basis for batponies, if they ever come into play in this story.
There's an interesting bit of logic in Discord creating Cerberus by transferring the remaining head from one dog to the two heads of another Orthrus: by the rules of their agreement, Discord can't be locked away in Tartarus since he can just walk by Cerberus. He literally had to be trapped into stone because that may have indeed been the only available option.
Poor Celestia. Of course, it's mythology so it might not be true to the actual canon of the world that this mythology exists in, but unless stated otherwise she would seem to be sterile.
Huh, that brings a lot of things full circle.
Technically Luna was Loyalty, Honesty and Laughter and Celestia Generosity, Kindness and Magic, but once more's something easily chalked up to being mythology. It's not like anypony in the modern era would know what elements they were outside of the two themselves, anyone else remaining from a thousand years ago and Twilight herself thanks to her vision, so the stories that got told could easily have morphed to whatever fit best. That and of course Love instead of Friendship or Magic.
Of course, this being mythology, it also has an odious element with the unicorns. Not so much how they were formed but that they have horns because love and friendship is magic and they use magic with their horns, which implies a bit of superiority to the other tribes. I still find it a little bit interesting to wonder who or rather which tribe came up with a lot of this mythology. That line sort of makes me think the unicorns. I have to admit, I thought for a few minutes that Luna and Celestia merely chased off the Windigos, a sort of subtle blame on them for causing the Windigos to appear out in the real world (because they had been chased away from the Underworld), but looking at it again it says they turned the Windigos into nothingness.
I see at the end that Discord finally broke the world itself by bringing Celestia and Luna with him back into the land of the living, with orbital dynamics shattered and even the sky broken.
Anyways, that's the end of my chain of comments until you publish again. Hopefully this inspires you to write some more!
7987812
Heh, you caught that. It is absolutely being written by unicorns, and by Celestia-worshippers at that (notice that while the god of breaking rules and Luna are both gods to start with, Celestia is a mortal mare who dies and is reborn as a god, and in the process redeems the dead and brings harmony and paradise to any who seek forgiveness... she's a Christ figure. The writers of this myth have literally cast Celestia as a Messiah. They've also made Luna lesser than she is, despite having been a goddess first, because she's given life through Celestia's intervention.) The Elements are deliberately wrong, because ordinary ponies, and even court ponies, generally were not allowed into Element business to know exactly which ones were which... that being said, this may be written by someone who is so close to Celestia, they actually knew that Discord was once offered two Elements and one of them was Laughter. They certainly seem to know that Celestia and Discord were once lovers.
I am assuming this was written post-Fall of Discord, but long enough that the writer may never have met Discord (I think it would have been hard to have the kind of compassion for him the writer clearly has if the writer had had to suffer under his rule), and probably pre-Nightmare Moon (which is why foreshadowing Discord and Luna's freedom being linked wouldn't really have worked.) That being said, since prophecy is in fact a feature of the MLP world, I'm going to throw something into the last chapter that the writer of the myth couldn't possibly have known about except by glimpsing the future. Actually, more than one thing. So yeah, maybe I could have done the foreshadowing. Didn't think of it, honestly.
I do not think batponies will be brought into it. Maybe, but it seems unlikely. There's only one more chapter to go.
7988273 Oh, cool, one more chapter then? Hopefully it comes out soon, then.
And yeah, I had just sort of assumed batponies might come into play at some point since you did go so far as to mention that Celestia and Luna's wings at least come from Discord's feathery wing, so since he has a bat wing as well that got me to thinking.
But yeah, don't be too afraid to revise a chapter to include any neat plot points if you think it would be a good idea.