Outside, it was an abysmal day. The sun, once proud and radiant now sat obscured behind the thick columns of smoke that billowed from points all over Canterlot. Fires, rapidly spreading beyond the ability of local emergency-response ponies and fire-suppression spells to handle, whipped the formerly-pleasant easterly breeze into a hellish cyclone of ash and heat. Ponies the city over found themselves trapped by the expanding infernos and deteriorating structural integrity of the city’s housing.
Even the Princesses, normally quite capable of responding to the myriad of unexpected threats that befell Bastion Canterlot, found themselves overwhelmed by the scale and ferocity of the attack, and had been mostly driven back to the castle grounds, only barely protected by hastily-erected Utter Domes and teleport-denial shielding. Screams and cries of dismay, coupled with the occasional thundercrack of a collapsing building, echoed from all corners of Canterlot as what seemed like the entire population filled the streets, attempting to escape.
Twilight crawled, caked in an uncomfortable layer of dust and debris, from under the wreckage of the cornerside cafe, coughing from the burning ash that invaded her lungs, and took in the chaos.
“Why.. wha?” She stuttered. “The defenses… Why didn’t the defensive spells trigger?”
Above her, squadrons of black-clad pegasi fired volleys into any defenders that moved to challenge them, the tell-tale polychromatic beams identifying them as using Outsider weaponry, or at least something derived from it.
Above that, only barely visible through the smoke, but glowing like a small star in almost every thaumic spectra Twilight could care to name, a lone pink alicorn mare floated, casually flinging bolts of destructive energy into the city below, cackling in magically-amplified psychopathic glee as she did so.
“Oh.”
Almost unconsciously, she shrunk back, careful to avoid even thinking about casting a spell lest the emissions draw attention to her. Around her, the remainder of Team Fifteen excavated themselves from the wreckage, shaking off the after-effects of the blast that had thrown them a good hundred hooflengths and brought the building down on top of them.
“Everypony alive?” Walleye coughed. “Any injuries?”
“What in Celestia’s name?” Rarity cried as Pinkie pulled her clear of the rubble. “What was that? My ears are still ringing!”
“You may want to keep it down,” Walleye hissed back, “or you’re going to paint a target on us.”
“A what?” Rarity yelled back, before withering under Walleye’s glare. “Sorry.”
“She’s not going to paint a target for us in this chaos, boss,” Rainboom chipped in, picking splinters and chunks of plaster out of her wings. “Those pegasi are only firing on ponies that try to fight back. I bet they can’t see or hear anything this far down.”
“And what, there aren’t any of them on the ground?” Lyra countered. “Earth ponies or unicorns getting a little close-in action?”
“Why would they?” Walleye asked. “All they need to do to take us out is sit up there and shoot anypony that tries to fight or flee. Let the fire and smoke finish everypony off.”
“No,” Twilight said.
“No?”
“They have hooves on the ground. We can’t stay here.”
“And you know this how?”
“Can you honestly expect me to believe,” Twilight lectured, turning on Walleye. “That given the opportunity, if you were on the other side of this fight, wiping out a city full of enemy ponies, that you wouldn’t take the opportunity for a little sport?”
“Sport? What are you talking about?”
“Because the ponies, the Outsiders currently attacking this city are, compared to you, madam nukes-a-city-for-no-reason, orders of magnitude worse. They have hooves on the ground. Ponies, Insider and Outsider alike, are dying by the hundreds. We have maybe a minute or so before their hoofsoldiers find us.”
“I don’t have to take this horseapples from you!”
“Enough!” Rarity shouted, silencing them both. “This is disgraceful! I am not going to die in this city because you two foals were too busy bickering to come up with a plan to save us. You are both supposed to be professionals, yes? Act like it!”
Walleye glared at her, clearly torn between wanting to argue the point and accepting the obvious.
“We can go home now, right?” Pinkie asked, voice neutral.
Everypony turned to stare at her, incredulous. Twilight tilted her head in momentary confusion, before her face lit up from the realisation.
“Yes!” She cried. “Pinkie Pie, you are an absolute genius!”
“Oh, it’s the end times,” Rainboom muttered.
“I am?” Pinkie asked, confused.
“Yes!” Twilight confirmed, pointing at the pegasi above them. “How do you think they got here? And so quickly? The gates are active!”
“They’ve left themselves open,” Walleye stated, catching the realisation. “We can counterattack.”
“Exactly!”
“And what about all the ponies here?” Rarity interrupted. “Like me? While you’re off on the Exterior, everypony here gets slaughtered!”
“I’ll stay,” Twilight said, shifting her gaze back to the sky.
“Twilight, no,” Lyra said. “You’d be outnumbered at least a hundred to one, not to mention the alicorn Pie up there!”
“That’s Theta,” Walleye observed. “Looks like they let her out.”
“Crazy, equicidal, alicorn Pie,” Lyra reiterated. “Staying here is suicide.”
“No. I’m not going to leave everypony here to die,” Twilight insisted. “It is time for the killing to end.”
“I give you all of thirty seconds before Theta swats you like a fly,” Rainboom quipped. “This isn’t a fight you can win, Twilight.”
“Look, the Exterior is open for you. Go get your home back, that’s your fight,” Twilight gestured at the ongoing destruction around them. “This is mine.”
“You sure?” Walleye asked, genuine concern leaking into her voice.
“Walleye,” Twilight said, fixing her with a flat stare as she ignited her horn, the aura almost instantly snapping to a deep black as she once again delved into the darkness. “I’ve got this.”
Walleye nodded grimly, tapping her beacon and vanishing. The remainder of Team 15 summarily followed suit, the light beeps of the beacons echoing through the square, only barely audible over the cacophony.
Abstract combat, like she had engaged the material-melded abomination with only a few hours previously, would be useless against Theta. It would be trivial for the alicorn to outright destroy any unicorn eye viewports Twilight could create to cast through, and although spells like Utter Dome rendered her practically immune to any attack, such protection went both ways.
Likewise, she couldn’t use a similar area-magic-denial spell to that had been used against her, since Theta’s alicorn biology included innate magic-amplification that would largely nullify the overt effects of such a spell. The amount of power she would need to sink into such a spell in order to produce a noticeable effect would likely completely null the effects of any magic in the field’s effect for the spell duration, reducing both of them to hand-to-hand combat. While it did technically remove Theta’s thaumic advantage, she did still have a pair of wings over Twilight.
No, the only acceptable course of action was a head-on attack using as much energy that Twilight could bring to bear without shattering reality into shards, again. Provided she could divert Theta’s attention towards herself, it would give Twilight enough time to enact a plan to defend the citizens of the city from the Rogues. After that came the relatively simple matter of surviving, since Theta would no doubt try to kill her.
Careful to hold the Void magic source in her mind in an iron vice grip, she probed the local magic field, searching for the remnants of the city defense spells that had failed to act against the Rogue’s attack.
To her surprise, the results popped back almost immediately, reference pointers for well over a hundred nested protective spells slotting neatly into her mental spell stack as the disowned and deactivated array of defenses popped back to life, ready to obey her commands.
She paused for a moment, sensing attention being diverted in her direction, as though a giant searchlight had wafted over her. Words, dripping with uncontained malevolent glee, followed.
“Oh, hello little one.”
Twilight didn’t have time for indecision or deliberation. The world dropped away from underneath her feet as she spammed commands through her frontal lobe and out into the universe, organ-flattening g-forces only barely held in check as she accelerated upwards, her own words echoing in her ears.
I’ve got this.
Almost as an afterthought, she pulled two of the spell pointers from her mental stack, casually rewriting the target parameters for the first, a teleport spell, to read ‘Threats to the city’ instead of ‘Inhabitants of the city’, before triggering the set, immediately discarding the pointers to lighten her mental load.
Next, she pushed her own combat spell complement forward, offensive spells immediately dropping into her spell stack as a plethora of defensive enchantments took hold, not the least of which was an array of shaped force field plates, angled to give her maximum defensive coverage against incoming threats, while still allowing her to return fire with impunity. Wings, constructed from the same force field plates, splayed out beside and behind her, stabilising trajectory as her acceleration pushed her clean through the sound barrier, while a set of secondary, autonomous spells pushed aural and visual white noise in a partially-collimated beam ahead of her, momentarily compromising Theta’s ability to aim.
The spells came to full effect an instant before Twilight slammed into Theta at a hair under Mach 5, approximately half a second after Theta had first noticed her. Behind her, shockwaves echoed throughout the city as the Rogues were teleported out of the city to random locations in the surrounding countryside, fires likewise snuffed out as the contingency teleport spell widened its scope to include flame, smoke, and collapsing masonwork as ‘threats’.
The city’s shield began to form shortly after, the lip of purple light slowly rising from the city’s edge.
Twilight wheeled around, keeping her field wings as backswept as possible to minimise wave drag from her supersonic speed, before fixing Theta in her sights again. The crazed alicorn had been punted clear into the upper atmosphere, and was clearly having difficulties bringing her trajectory under control.
Taking advantage of the clear moment, Twilight reached into her pack, pulling her hammer out of the compressed space. Although the weapon would be largely useless at the ranges this fight was shaping up to be fought at, it provided a convenient focusing point for any offensive spells she wished to cast, allowing them to be fired off-axis or at a separate target to her primary threat, in the event that Theta summoned reinforcements.
It took all of a few seconds before Theta’s flight path stabilised. Immense columns of light materialised around her, sweeping towards Twilight and forcing her to bleed airspeed in an effort to keep them from impacting her.
“Dead pony says what?”
Twilight’s eyes went wide in surprise, searching for the source of the noise. Threat-awareness spells screeched in her peripheral consciousness as an object rapidly closed the distance with her.
“Wha-”
Consciousness returned too late for Twilight to pull herself out of her near-hypersonic earthward dive, forcing her to consider the phrase ‘lithobraking’ from an all-too-personal distance as she punched clean through Mount Canter and slowed to more manageable subsonic velocities.
She wheeled around again, foregoing visual acquisition in favor of tracking Theta’s thaumic emissions, in light of the city-sized cloud of dust that had been kicked up by the impact, and loosed a flurry of offensive spells in her general direction. Thundercracks echoed over her as her purely-thaumic targeting failed to take the intervening mountain into account, further adding to the dust and smoke.
Groaning, she vectored sideways, trying to keep her range to Theta constant while circling the mountain far enough to get a clean shot. Threat-awareness screeched in her periphery again, this time with enough forewarning for her to loose a single arcane bolt at the incoming object before blinking sideways out of the line of fire.
The dust abruptly cleared, the blue-black Exterior metal flashing momentarily through Twilight’s peripheral vision as Harmony’s Shard lanced through the cloud, the slipstream clearing it in an instant. Seconds later and far behind her, Twilight was vaguely aware of the sound of the Shard embedding itself into the ground, almost the entire width of Equestria away from her.
Without anything between them, Twilight fixed Theta with a calculating glare, almost able to feel Theta’s smug grin despite the thousands of hooflengths between them. A dull warning echoed through her mind, alerting her to the fact that Theta was accelerating towards her and charging an offensive spell.
Twilight reacted, accelerating forwards and charging an offensive beam spell of her own. With a screech not unlike shearing metal, the two beam spells met, neither gaining any ground against the other as their casters closed rapidly towards the point of intersection, playing a game of chicken with each other at velocities normally associated with re-entering meteorites, trails of superheated air trailing in their wake.
It took all of a fraction of a second for the distance to close, the two combatants meeting at a combined velocity somewhere in the region of Mach 30. Theta impacted Twilight’s force field array slightly off-centre, her flight abruptly shunted sideways towards the earth.
Twilight didn’t register either impact until she had rocketed clear to the edge of space, her flight fields having a hard time slowing her down to a manageable speed in the rarefied atmosphere, even oriented flat to the oncoming air.
“ENOUGH!”
Theta’s voice rang in her ears, magically-amplified words inserting themselves directly into her auditory cortex. Twilight, sensing the strain she was putting on the world around her as the burning, almost stabbing sensation in her horn intensified, swung her hammer back, locking a motion-mirroring spell on an appropriate nearby object.
“You are BENEATH ME!” Theta bellowed, her voice dripping with unrestrained malice. “I am a GOD compared to you, you tiny creature! And I will NOT be bullied by-”
Twilight swung.
The moon dropped clean out of its orbit as the spell forced it along a sympathetic trajectory, wheeling around and dropping onto Theta’s head. Atmosphere superheated under the compression as the air failed to get out of the way of the falling celestial body, while Earth fractured and Moon shattered as they were subjected to forces firmly outside their ability to withstand.
Twilight registered the barest hint of a confused whimper in her ears before the world lurched sideways, the universe finally yielding to the strain she was putting it under as its moorings snapped, flinging the world into the Void.
------
The world went sideways and reformed.
Walleye’s eyes went wide as the scope of the invasion she had just escaped stared back at her, easily two dozen armed and black-suited ponies scattered throughout the twenty-five metre rotunda of Gate Eight, frozen in surprise with the appearance of the interlopers. For a beat, no-pony moved, both sides lacking any sensible contingencies for dealing with the situation they now found themselves in.
“Uh… Hi?” Pinkie offered, hesitantly.
The moment broke. Everypony moved simultaneously, the Rogues going for their weapons, Team Fifteen going for the floor.
“Hose the room!” Walleye shouted.
Rainboom and Lyra complied, the former flipping her weapon over to continuous-wave mode and holding the trigger down, the latter firing a crude explosive fireball spell at the Gate’s doorway, eliciting a prompt eruption of screams as the Rogues were cut down by the polychromatic beam of Rainboom’s weapon, woefully unable to reciprocate from the combination of surprise and spell shockwave.
The smell of burning and burnt flesh diffused through the room, prompting a disgusted nose-wrinkle from Walleye as she picked herself up off the floor and levelled her rifle at the door.
“That went well,” Lyra quipped, grabbing a pair of carbines from the fallen Rogues in the grip of her magic. “What’s next?”
“We get somewhere safe,” Walleye stated, poking her head into the hallway to check for further targets. “You got any spells that can keep us away from danger?”
“Kinda, yeah…”
“Do it. This Gate isn’t going to remain empty for long.”
Lyra complied, her horn glowing for a moment before flashing out with a satisfying pop. Immediately, her pupils narrowed to pinpricks.
“We need to move.”
“How many are coming?”
“Many.”
“Okay,” Walleye said, bracing herself for a sprint. Pinkie and Rainboom did the same, the latter stretching her wings in anticipation. “Is there somewhere we can go? A clear path?”
“Right, Then left. Straight down that hallway is clear, I think.”
Walleye nodded, and shot forward, leading the team down the path Lyra had marked for them. Lyra and Pinkie went next, forced to gallop at full tilt to keep up with Walleye and not fall behind, lest they receive a sharp kick in the hindquarters from Rainboom, who brought up the rear.
The walls started to blur together as they ran, featureless blue corridor after featureless blue corridor merging together into a single endless hallway, punctuated every second or third intersection by Lyra re-casting her spell and shouting another set of directions.
By the time they reached open air, Lyra was barely standing, her stamina almost completely exhausted by the combination of non-stop running and spellcasting. High overhead, a brilliant white miniature star bathed the entire chamber in light, affording a welcome change from the endless blue hallways.
“I… No more,” She gasped, taking the opportunity to collapse against a nearby dividing wall, panting. “That's it, I’m done.”
“Rainboom, move her!” Walleye commanded, jumping over the wall. “Get her in cover! Pinkie! Get behind me!”
Pinkie, still bright-eyed and enthusiastically energetic, despite the flat-out chase, complied, bouncing behind Walleye as Rainboom half-lifted, half-dragged Lyra over the wall they were using as impromptu cover.
“How far off are they, do you think?” Walleye asked, flipping her rifle’s bipod out and sighting it on the doorway they had just come through.
“About a minute?” Lyra guessed, trying to catch her breath. “No more than that.”
“How many of them?”
“Four or five dozen within range of the spell, last I cast it…”
“Are there any Sparkles?”
“What?”
“Do they have any Sparkles with them?”
“Sparkles? I don’t think so, Why?”
“Oh good. For a moment there I thought we were in trouble.”
And to pre-empt the inevitable, yes, that is indeed a reference to what you think it is.
This was planned at least as far back as the editing of chapter 15.
No, I have no shame. That was an awesome scene.
THE FINAL DAY.
Wait, wrong reference.
I did not catch the foreshadowing (not like I ready it recently), but the fight scene was still hilarious.
Welp. Now twilight, you do the impossible and escape to another world, you wield rogue-alicorn levels of power as a FREAKING UNICORN, escaping a detachment event should be in you card tricks ? XD
Damn. Badass Twilight is badass.
I'm getting a bit of Deja Vu here. Did you ever have this chapter open for prereading/editing?
>reads further
Yep, I've definitely read this already. The battle feels shorter, too. Did you cut something out?
Oh believe me, I caught it. As soon as Twilight learned to swing that hammer, I caught it.
provided a convenient focussing point
Threat-awareness spells screeched in per peripheral
Thats it, I’m done
1. Focusing.
2. Her.
3. That's.
Nope,I didn't get that foreshadowing. That was hilarious though.
Did the element bearers in that equestria just get obliterated along with everyone else? What about the outsider Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie that were shown as being there ? And why didn't that world's princesses and element bearers stop Theta?
7297134 Well, it could very well be that the bearers of that world just aren't in Canterlot. Imagine this going down within the past hour-alone? If that happened, and teleport suppressors are up, then it's possible they don't even fully know what's happening in Canterlot other than "horrible".
Now, if Theta isn't dead, I'm not entirely sure what can actually kill. her.
Anyway, I have a little theory-more of a hope really-that Twilight is, somehow, going to deliver a concentrated dose of empathy and logic to everyone fighting and force them to realize what they're doing is both incredibly stupid and wrong.
At least, that's what seems to be going down, with her goal of stopping all the killing.
Edit:
A quick question...
Where the hell do the Outsiders come from? I mean, insiders are obviously born and function much like in real life, but outsiders are doppelgangers of the insiders (or the other way around), and while relationships appear to exist, everyone is a duplicate: there's a sparkle, there's a pinkie, there's a Big Mag, etc. Are outsiders infertile? Can they create new individuals as in typical sexual reproduction? Because, unless I'm mistaken, there's been zero mention of this in the chapters so far (sorry if I missed it). If they are fertile, are offspring essentially clones of a template, such as purely a sparkle, rarity, etc? How the hell would that work?
If they aren't being born, do they just appear? Just wander in at some point? If so, where from? How?
I would say maybe they're born on the inside, but considering insider Twilight is so odd in this series, it seems unlikely that they're born in the inside and then pulled into the outside?
This question has been bugging me for a while, and I can't seem to find an answer that I would think would have popped up at some point-at a minimum, before everything went to hell and Insider Twilight was adjusting.
7297208 I hope that Twilight does stop all the killing.
7296856
Odd, If anything, this version should be longer than the proofreading version, though I'll admit I've moved stuff around and streamlined it a bit and that may have made it seem shorter.
7296964
Thanks. Fixed those.
7297134
Not every world in the Interior has a set of Elements of Harmony, for one of three reasons-
The elements were never found, or the tree of harmony never existed on that particular world (The latter is the case on this Twilight's homeworld of Slateform)
The elements were destroyed or lost (exceedingly common on Falls and Ruins worlds, for obvious reasons)
The elements were moved, stolen, or 'appropriated' by offworlders or Outsiders.
Bastion Equestria falls into a unique fourth category in that the elements exist, and have been used historically, but since Bastion is a major hub of Outsider activity and movement, have been largely relegated to a museum in favour of more advanced and powerful defences and enchantments, mostly because threats to Bastion will arise over seconds to minutes, rather than the minutes to hours that would be required to gather and deploy the element bearers to respond to a threat.
This has the (obvious in hindsight) disadvantage that somepony familiar with said defences will be able to subvert them and lay the world bare to attack, but until now, such an eventuality was deemed impossible.
7297208
'Outsiderism' is, in the most basic terms, an aberration in a pony's innate thaumic field that produces a variety of different effects. It can be simplified as nothing more complex than a genetic mutation, and so can arise in two different situations-
Natural Random Mutation, where the offspring of two Insiders will gain the Outsider mutation at the moment of conception. The likelihood of such a mutation is vanishingly small, but with the number of creatures in play over all the various alternate Equestrias, this produces a significant number of Outsiders.
Inheritance. The offspring of two Outsiders, or an Insider and an Outsider, will almost always be an Outsider themselves.
Also note that Outsiderism isn't solely restricted to Ponies (note the comments made by Aleph in 'Paradise Found' about Dragon and Griffin variants). Anything with a biological thaumic field (which is to say, anything that evolved on Equestria, to varying degrees) can inherit that mutation. Though since Ponies are the most populous race by far, they are likewise the predominant representation among Outsiders.
Well i think that was the best fight scene i have ever read.
Chills man. Chills.
7297384 So, Bastion is on good terms with the Outsiders?
hoof-to-hoof
The question is, does Theta have a cartoon-physics hack based on a Chewbacca joke available?
I thought Twilight was gonna save the citizens?
7298699
She might very well have. None of the characters know what happens to a detached universe, because the nature of the event severs all communication between the outside and said universe. If universes are safe after clean detachments, then Twilight just disorganized the outsider troops (and I doubt the scattered forces can defeat Celestia and Luna without their organization and surprise), blocked all possibility of further outsider reinforcements, and hopefully put Theta out of commission for at least a while, if she didn't just kill her.
7299252 Yeah... I'm talking about dropping a moon onto the planet. I don't see how there is not collateral.
7299345
I don't think the MLP moon is anywhere near as big as the real life moon (for several reasons), and the impact happened at the edge of space. I would not be surprised if there were earthquakes and/or shockwaves that would kill a good number of ponies below the two of them, but it's more than would have survived an army intent on wiping out every citizen.
7297384
I thought outsiders were just ponies whose worlds had been detached
7297774
It would be more accurate to say that Bastion is under the de facto administration of Outsiders, rather than it being independent and on good terms with them.
7298134
7299345
7299362
The answer to both questions (those being 'How did Theta survive?' and 'How Did Twilight not just straight-up kill everyone from the impact shockwave?'), are, believe it or not, the same.
I have mentioned on a couple of previous occasions that I use a set of (modified) mechanics from GURPS Magic to model the magic used in the story, for two reasons - Firstly, it provides a consistent sent of rules and limitations, which in turn keeps the story consistent and avoids 'magic as the plot demands', and Secondly, I can easily fit the FiM universe into it (with some minor modifications that don't effect much in the grand scheme).
Any spell that I have explicitly mentioned by name (such as Ignite Fire, Sense Danger, and Utter Dome) are actual spells in this system, and pretty much every other spell is either an adaptation of an existing spell or combination of spells in that system.
The two most pertinent spells in this case are Force Dome and Utter Dome (and their planar equivelants, Force Wall and Utter Wall). As has been established earlier in the story, magic here works in a 'Do what I mean' fashion, so when you cast a spell with the intent of creating a force field bubble, said force field bubble is going to be impenetrable, because why would you ever want a defensive force field that could break?. Utter Dome is essentially the same, but it also blocks magic passing through the field boundary (Not ALL magic, there are still a couple of spells that can break shields of this type, but it will happily block everything else).
Practically, this means that so long as you have the energy to cast an maintain the bubble, you could sit at point-blank range of a supernova and give precisely zero fucks, because Impenetrable.
Bastion Canterlot's defensive shield is the Utter type, linked to a second spell and energy reservoir that activates it when a set of triggering conditions are met, and most major cities on Bastion Equestria have similar defences due to overengineering and paranoia.
Theta also knows how to cast the spell, but in her case, the fact that the bubble takes a second or two to fully instantiate is... problematic (And bypassing that limitation means either pre-casting the spell in advance, like Twilight does, or block-casting the spell, but that prevents it from being maintained long enough to block more than a single inbound attack)
TL;DR - Magic Bullshit Force Fields
7300018
Meh; if I have two pet peeves regarding combat systems, it's attacks and defenses with no limits (swords that cut through anything, armor or magic shield that block anything, etc), and debilitating effects with no possibility to resist (like a petrification spell that cannot be resisted under any circumstance). Any battle system that includes one of these two, unless there's a really good explanation for why a spell or weapon that has "infinity" as an explicit property can exist (such as an omnipotent god being responsible), it's an automatic thumbs down for the battle system for me.
Also, I don't think Utter Dome would protect you against a supernova, unless it's more complex than the rules say it is; 99.9999999% of a supernova's output is in the form of photons, and considering that you can see out of an Utter Dome, photons can pass through just fine.
Anyway, what do you mean it answers "How did Theta survive"? The text says that she didn't use any extended shields to block the moon.
7300242
I personally don't mind unlimited offense/defense that much if it fits in the overall balance of the system. For example, Force Dome, Utter Dome, and Penetrating Spell (which can be upped to an infinite armor divisor) require quite a few prerequisite spells to be known before you can learn them (Force Dome needs 9, Utter Dome needs 15, and Penetrating Spell 17), and both dome spells can be broken by either counterspell (which has no prerequisites) or Dispel Magic (which has 13).
Actually, most of the energy output of a supernova is in the form of neutrinos, not electromagnetic radiation. In any case, the 4th edition version of the spell permits 'only enough light to see by'. Everything else is blocked. I realise this is in contradiction to the effects seen on-screen with regards to force fields, but as mentioned, I've modelled this story magic as 'Do what I mean', so there's nothing stopping the caster from specifying the degree of light permeability, if any.
Do you mean the chapter text itself? It doesn't say that she didn't block it. Since the chapter is written from Twilight's perspective, it doesn't got into detail on exactly how Theta didn't get utterly pancaked by the moon because Twilight doesn't know exactly how quite yet (those sort of details are somewhat hard to make out from behind a cloud of shattered moon while sitting at the edge of space).
I'm merely telling you what she used, not how she used it (though I did include ways that it could have gone wrong), because I like encouraging speculation and audience interaction.
7300329
Even if there are countermeasures, it still creates an infinitely asymmetrical skill > result correlation when you hit that point, which I think is extremely bad form for any mechanics system. It just feels wrong that a mage of decent skill could say block attacks a million times what they can dish out just by learning a standard spell they can cast in less than two seconds. Doing stuff like smashing a moon into someone becomes significantly less cool and badass when any decently skilled mage could block it with minimal prep time. Countermeasures don't really help when so many things have no access to them, and when Utter Dome can be brought up so quickly.
Plus, it has uncomfortable implications for the energy system of the setting (and in the type of setting you're using here, this is important), which irritates me as a physicist. Having infinite blocking power and infinite momentum-change resistance requires infinite energy, so apparently a finite amount of magic can be turned into infinite energy. It's silly to hold conservation of energy to be true in settings like these, but introducing literal infinities into the laws of physics is on a whole different level, and a huge no-no. Why doesn't that infinite energy density collapse the universe, and why can said infinite energy conveniently only be converted to a shield in that one spell?
I meant useful energy output, since the vast, vast majority of neutrinos would completely miss anything of reasonable size. I see that the spell covered that loophole, then.
The text specifically mentions that the moon dropped onto Theta's head, so given that Utter Dome must be cast into a shield-type structure around or near the caster (unless the story has been misleading on that point in previous chapters), it couldn't have hit an Utter Dome.
If it can be quickly cast as a barrier on just the skin, then it's even more broken and damaging to the narrative, where nearly any attack on a skilled mage can be written to just have been blocked by an Utter Dome that was cast without the audience knowing about it, making cliffhangers like in this chapter pointless.
Finally, you should put the info that Utter Dome can block infinite force into the exposition somewhere; the only note on what it can block is a quick mention by Twilight a few chapters ago, but the description doesn't say it's unbreakable. As it is, only someone already familiar with the spell would know that it can't be broken by force.
7299362 But Shockwave's man.
7300018 I see. I can follow this.
7300018
Excuse me for thinking that Pinkicorn is more powerful on Pinkiness than on an Outsider magic basis. "Nobody could have survived that!" This utterance guarantees that she would/does.
And your spell descriptions from early chapters suggest that magic is do-what-I-say BUT the Outsider database of spells made by Sparkles turns it into a user-friendly do-what-I-mean.
I suppose this means they have acceleration-compensators so that "lithobraking", as Twi put it, is only hazardous if you run out of magic.Not that that's necessary for cerapters(alicorns)—see Tirek fight in canon. At the least, Theta will have to move a moon, something she is described as having the power to do.I miss the worldbuilding of early chapters.
ed: Twilight is noted to have inertial compensators earlier: "organ-flattening g-forces only barely held in check"
7300018 Okay. (I hope that they aren't oppressive)
Was having definite flashbacks to The Avengers when Theta went all "I am a god!" on Twilight.
Excellent chapter... Twilight took out an entire reality. Kaboom yo.
Hm... on the one hand, dat combat gave me goosebumps. I love Litany of the Night type stuff we have going on here
On the other hand, things are... well have been, I guess, getting a bit... ridiculous.
I honestly don't know how to feel here. I love seeing these amazing action sequences, but throwing the moon seems a bit much. I just hope it doesn't get much more than that.
I don't know how many readers caught it, but Theta caught it really well...
Also, "I thought we were in trouble."
Also also: I bet the leak is Aleph.
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I can understand where you're coming from , but I think there's a bit of a disconnect between our understanding here, which I'm going to put down to unfamiliarity with the system I'm pulling this from, since being able to cast Utter Dome requires considerably more than simply being a 'mage of decent skill'. I'm not going to go into details (going into the nitty-gritty of GURPS' skill system is about as off-topic as it's possible to get at this point), but the simple explanation is that being able to cast Utter Dome with any level of usefulness requires at least one out of three of the following-
a) Extraordinary dedication and training to the degree that it makes a neurosurgeon look like a primary-schooler
b) Extraordinary talent in magic, far above-average intelligence, and sufficient reference materials
c) Absolutely ridiculous amounts of power
Twilight and Theta are both relying primarily on C (Twilight from her Void magic trick with a bit of natural talent mixed in, Theta from her Alicorn biology reducing the energy requirement from 'ridiculous' to merely 'large')
Not quite true, actually. It has a finite energy content by definition (or at least, the amount of useful work it can perform is finite) since the spell duration is finite. Practically, this means that there is a very nonlinear relationship between the amount of magic expended and the amount of useful work performed, but this is a given even in FiM itself, let alone Outsiders.
Functionally, if I were aiming to model the magic system to a full simulationist level, I would need to take that nonlinearity into account, but that is far beyond the scope of this story.
7301077
What chapters do you mean when you say 'early chapters'?
I'm a bit confused here, since the earliest I can recall going into the nitty-gritty details of spell mechanics is chapter 12, where it explicitly establishes that we're using do-what-I-mean rules.
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Hmm, perhaps I should rethink that bit where Twilight starts using stars as billiard balls.
No, we're going to be taking a step back from lunar hammers for the finale, the ridiculousness has peaked.
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Ah, that's actually a bit of relief on my part. Looking forward to the finale!
Spoiler warning? If it's a problem for you, don't read this post.
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Beacon/Operations Spire/Gate-interfacing magic rules might be different, as the artifact's technically the caster…and someone might have asked it/them to do what ponies ask of it rather than what they want of it. Even if you specify, that doesn't mean that you've written spells actually working that way. Rather, the preponderance of evidence is that spells do what you (or the creator) tell them to, not what you mean them to.
In any case, "do what I say" magic is basically a literal genie, and "do what I mean" magic is basically a benevolent genie. Another wording, you don't have to program spells when they do what you mean.
No intent, no meaning. If it's triggering off of "wearer's intent and pony touches" then it's going off of what someone said not what someone meant.
Confirmation is not what she wanted. It is not what she meant, much like when facing an evil genie and getting a contrary result and crying "That's not what I meant!" Confirmation is asking if you meant what you said. If you are running off of what is meant then there is a reason not to ask for confirmation, because if they truly meant it you'd go ahead, and if they didn't, then you're never going to do it.
Why would you need to
Seems like this teleportation circle wasn't developed by the same failsafes-and-confirmations as the "Confirm EF?" designer. Nor is the split-insertion
This calling-out implies that it's not implicit. "Did you mean to not splat on arrival? Then why didn't you say so?" This also means trans-hemispheric teleports need to specify to reorient. It also neatly ties into the problem that started this argument, that in fact momentum compensation is not implicit.
I am not familiar with GURPS, but I'm 99% sure that it's on the "simulation/numerical" end of the RPG spectrum, which is also the "do what I say," hard-and-fast-rules end. Why are they using teleport spells that take them where they say rather than where they mean? Sure, indexing schema might be necessary to say among Outsiders what they mean.
Again, programming = "do what I say" and thus needing to specify all of those fiddly little clauses that you mean when you would just ask, "Where did she go?"
If the activator doesn't mean "put me inside a wall" how does it do that? If the designer meant "put user inside a wall" then they're dumb.
"if they can say what they mean"
"If you don't 'say' into the spell enough detail, then you won't arrive where you meant to be"
Having to write out clauses and provisos to deal with things you don't expect is having to say more. Teleportation arriving off-target is very, very clearly a "did what I said, not what I meant" magic case.
Twilight's consternation in chapter 13 over the locking mechanism…is explained later. But she does imply that sufficient brute force of a simple "unlock this" will overpower the "no, keep it locked", in analogy to the latest chapter's debate-starter.
"I heard what you said, but I have to do more work to find out what you could have meant." The object does not get that she meant "teleport" without having to look it up. It does not have access to her meaning. It had to be told (to search and execute) how to figure out what she means and how to do it. The confirmation bit comes up again.
Does what she said, not what she meant.
"Did not do what I meant" almost literally. Interpretation is the act of working on what is said to find out what is meant. The
And there's how teleportation "doesn't work" in the Exterior , despite it being "such a simple request that many aspiring spellcasters will invoke the spell unintentionally while assembling other spells."
This is also rather incongruous with the gates in/out existing, except that they're not-well-understood artifacts…
So, up to a thousand words, might as well wrap it up here. Spells and enchanted objects have varying ways and qualities of interpreting what a pony wants. Thus, they are better and worse and not necessarily at all able to know what a caster meant. If they cannot know what a caster meant, they cannot do it. Even if magic were "do what I mean", the actual spells and objects created tend to be "do what the caster says in this manner"; "do what this person says rather than what they mean" is easier for a meant-magic to accomplish than "do what this person means rather than what they say" is to a said-magic.
these
7300018
"consistent set of rules and limitations" is inconsistent with magic here works in a 'Do what I mean' fashion, so when you cast a spell with the intent of creating a force field bubble, said force field bubble is going to be impenetrable, because why would you ever want a defensive force field that could break? Why would you ever want an offensive spell that is stoppable by defenses? So, if you cast a spell with the intent of breaking through defenses, said offensive spell is going to be unstoppable. (Obviously, this parallel construction and contrast creates a logical impasse/paradox.) Why would you ever want a teleport that takes you somewhere other than where you wanted? Why would you ever want armor that increases your magic resistance, but has the loophole that it itself easily be affected by magic?
I could conceive of reasons to want teleports that leave you at perilous momentums (weaponized Rainboom or other projectile), at odd entry orientations (microgravity, also Rainbooms), and even leave you unconscious due to magical exhaustion (escaping this city in this chapter to a theoretical safe place, for instance).
I was going to add "why would you ever want a defensive force field that could be dispelled?" but if you're (somehow) bleeding out while encased in one, you'd want your allies to be able to, and then that gets into IFF and thaumic information warfare.
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vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/mspaintadventures/images/b/b2/Caliborn%27s_session.png/revision/latest?cb=20130316032504
DID SOMEONE. SAY PLAYING POOL. WITH PLANETS?
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While I appreciate your thorough-ness, it may have been better to PM me the errors you've come across rather than adding another 20-or-so entries to the story's comment area.
If you want to take the discussion to PM, I'd be more than happy to explain the various inconsistencies you've discovered with regards to the magic mechanics. But as it is, quite a few of the comments you've posted are nitpicking the implications of an off-hand author's note, rather than actual content of the story.
In retrospect, it may have been a mistake on my part to give an explanation that relied upon a 'peek behind the curtain' into the underlying mechanics of the world, since said explanation is rooted in everything else behind said curtain, and invites nit-picking because you're getting an incomplete view of the machinery, so to speak.
It's compounded by the fact that I can't really explain away these problems without sounding like I'm talking out of my ass and making stuff up as I go along, since most of these low-level mechanics aren't explicitly established in the story, you only see the effects (in much the same way that you usually don't get to see the internals of a clock, only the arms moving).
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Most were supposed to just be my usual "find-errors, report errors" since I was reading it again.
And it was fun to reread!
Unfortunately, the PM box doesn't fit on my phone screen (from which I do most of my reading) so I can never hit send.
I'd probably just do a Sparkle and figure out how to live in The Library until I'd reconciled my observations with a theory of magic.
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Perhaps "decent" wasn't the best choice of words, but going by the story, the requirements aren't that high. Twilight has been shown easily and quickly casting it without any usage of the void magic, and while she is powerful and skilled, without her void magic, she was still a young unicorn who was still in studying. Even disregarding all the multitude of Sparkles, there should be many spellcasters in numerous worlds that, while most might not be as naturally powerful or smart as Twilight, can make it up with experience. I wouldn't call it rare if there are dozens or hundreds of skilled spellcasters in each sufficiently magic-developed world that have the ability to cast it (or the knowledge and experience to learn to cast it). My point wasn't that it was easy or especially common on the whole, but that it isn't nearly as restricted as a spell as ridiculous as "blocks any force, no matter what" should be (IMO).
Well no, because the limit for the force it can block is infinite, which means that the force it can project to resist said force is also infinite, even over a finite length of time. Since force that it can exert to repel attacks has no limit, that means that the energy required to be dormant in the shield until such an attack hits it must also be infinite. Nonlinearities for energy in fictional settings are fine; it's only when said nonlinearity reaches infinity that systems cease to be scientifically analyzable (which this story's magic system has been purported to be).
Incidentally, blocking all the force would still mean being buried beneath a large mass of rock that would still fall on you when the spell collapsed unless you could somehow pull of a teleport/translation spell to move you out from underneath or away from it all.
She just... swung the moon around like a hammer.
7460858 Because 10^10^100 Isn't 460 Googols?
Are you dead?
Shit... Now that I realize how long it's been since this story was updated, and how long it's been since the author has been on, I'm afraid this story won't actually get finished...
It seems at this point that it might as well say cancelled rather than just incomplete.
8284332
I thought the last update was June of this year. If I'd realized it was June 2016, I wouldn't have even started. I hate getting into stories that never get finished. 😩
8392010
You and me both
Anyone have ideas for how we might be able to get in touch with Arania?
Well, that was fun while it lasted.
Loki quote!
Too bad this is dead!