Haunted by memories of Nightmare Moon’s unnatural darkness, a mysterious stranger has staggered into Ponyville, the grand city on its horizon guiding him forth on a grim quest to have Princess Luna answer for a terrible tragedy. Fate quickly entangles Twilight and her friends into its designs, and it may take the combined efforts of the Elements of Harmony to stop what could very well spiral into catastrophe. Can they conquer their own doubts and inspire a conflicted soul to give up on revenge? Or are the mistakes of the past destined to repeat?
Chapters (19)
So. Many. Words
First of all... whew. That was insanely long. You might want to consider breaking it up. It's hard to swallow that many words in one go. You could easily divide it into four chapters as the story does differ enough to warrant it several times in this one chapter.
Anyway, apart from minor errors, the biggest one is uniformity. Some paragraphs are indented, some aren't. Some are double-spaced, and some aren't. The writing styles also completely differ from one section to another, which I don't mind, and considering how you did it, I would say adds to the story's flow.
I liked it. Fav'd and thumbs up.
chzgifs.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/funny-gifs-will-only-read.gif
I'll read it later instead.
Oh wow this sounds great and I have no problem with extremely Long chapters I like them better than reading 92 small chapters that just gets annoying but this story sounds amazing so far
I'll read the rest later I've got to go to work
668917 Looks like the transition from GoogleDocs to fimfic was a little less smooth that I hoped it would be.
Chapters 3-9 seem okay, but i'll see to those paragraphing errors as soon as I get some free time. In the meantime, I hope it doesn't hamper the reading too much.
I think I remember reading this on EQD, was it posted there before?
669032 Yes, that's correct. It was featured, but I ceased writing close to august last year. I've been working on bringing it back, and this is very much different to what you may have seen back then. For instance, back then it had 11 chapters and 98,000 words. And now... well, let's just say I've been busy trying to get back up on the horse. Pun intended.
669050 Eeeeee! I've actually been wondering where this went, this is great!
Woah that was intense
You know I actually like these long paragraphs this story is amazing so far
I updated chapters one and two so that the paragraphing matches up to the rest of the chapters. Hopefully it looks a little cleaner now, and it's just generally easier to read through.
It's nice to see this story again, welcome to FimFic!
Fav'd, Thumbs Up'd & downloaded
I'm still slightly confused about time frame. Did it really take Marco a few months to walk from his town to ponyville? I'm curious because we go from the incident having just happened a couple days ago to celestia in canterlot saying Luna still hasn't forgiven herself for what happened "months ago"
723488
In preparing to write this behemoth, I needed to encompass a lot of the happenings of season one which take place in a rather indefinite time frame. Sure, there's the first two episodes from which this story draws most of its 'source material', but there's also themes that come in later, such as Twilight having Owlicious, or having already been to Appleoosa, and many other episode-dependent plot points. In this sense, the time taken for Marco to arrive at Ponyville is left purposely vague, because the passage of time in the show itself is also vague.
In any case, Marco did indeed begin his journey a few days after the incident, and arrive at Ponyville months later. In what little explanation of his home I allowed, it's stated that it was a long, long way away. The introductory chapter is long enough as it is, so I could hardly afford to delve into what happened over those months, but you can assume it wasn't as simple as walking from point A to point B. Few things often are in this universe, no? Just look at how complicated things got trying to go from Ponyville to Canterlot!
Anyway, I hope that cleared up a little confusion. Thanks for pointing it out though, being the author makes it hard for me to notice these things on my own.
723851 thank you for the response. I guess it would take a pretty good chunk of time especially if the town was a large distance beyond the borders. I'm just surprised he didn't starve while crossing the desert area.
724380
Well, in his youth he was taught by Arabelle and trained by West so that he could travel the world. Or at least that was implied... I think. Regardless, he's got a decent set of survival skills, which is contradicted somewhat by his tendency to misidentify poisonous fungi.
Yay another long ass chapter I really like them seriously I love them
New chapter please
963128
It won't be too much longer now. Sorry about the wait though, it's been hard for me to find time now that uni has started back up. Regardless, I try not to force myself, and just work at my own pace. Sometimes that means delays, but other times I happily pump out chapter after chapter. Stay tuned, the next one's on its way!
963186 yes awsome
MAN THIS STORY IS SO LONG BUT GOOD I LOVE THIS STORY SO MUCH
A very good story, a shame i doesnt have more views
200,000 words and only 30 thumbs?
And on EqD?
Apologies, but the next chapter may not be out quite as fast as the last few. Uni's been ramping up a bit and I've been trying to churn out more than my fair share of essays, but I'm almost out of the woods. Anyway, the wait should be too bad, it'll be be business as usual pretty soon.
O.O so long
And yeigh, Glob said. LET THERE BE UPDATE!
I like it. Or should I say 'liked' it. I was fine throughout chapter 1 and the beginning of Chapter 2. But, once Celestia put him into a catatonic state, I bailed. For me, it was more interesting while nopony knew the truth about him. Of course, this is just my opinion. And you can't go off of this alone. There are still all of those other readers you have to think about. Other than that, I think that it's written well. Not many clichés, good characterization, great storyline. 7/10 from me.
Everyone is dead but him.....
PROTOTYPE reference?
Navaras? Am I grasping when I assume it's an alternate spelling to Navras?
Because that music will be appropriate later on, I can tell.
3433968
Good question. That song (and this is all going off my memory here) is named navras because of its relationship to a particular Hindu mantra. The definition of 'Navaras' that i worked with in naming that city was also a Hindu term, which references how some art styles represent philosophy and include spiritual symbolism in its figures and themes.
I wanted the name of the city to reflect Neptune's character, which has so far been all about wisdom and spirituality. This might make more sense later on :P
Gee. I think Torrin might be a little shit.
not a reference to season 4
and also... the mlp devs might have read this story
Sorry about the delay on this latest update. I was originally going to split the chapter up like they usually are and focus on the various things going on around the world, but considering things are quite action heavy at the moment, I decided in the end it that flowed better to narrow the focus onto one or two things at a time.
So... in other words, I wrote too much extra stuff. Optimistically, that means the next one won't take super long to publish, because there's bits written for it already. So yeah, this is kinda why getting this chapter out took a while. That, and life stuff. And procrastination. But mostly the other thing.
sees all those words for each chapter.....
*whimpers*
4136780 come on! take it up the ass like a man/woman!
4136780 someone hasn't read fall out equestria
4137352
oh god no. i never read those.
never will.
aww you did not kill her
4137725
Yep, that's totally why there wasn't Apple Bloom singing that she's apple-licious in Pinkie Apple Pie. And it isn't the only case of referencing the fandom in season 4, although the only other ones I can think of were less blatant for the fans (eg Dr Whooves) or not with everyone's knowledge (Slendermane).
I like it. Still waiting for Nightmare Moon to make a move rather than just trollin' around Marco, however. I know you're going to get to RD, but... we all know Gilda's gonna go crazy, and we might as well get it over with!
You're killing me with suspense here, matey!
Tager is fun. I love her. Please, when they engage Terra, make her do a Dash move and just buck him in the face! I swear, I will crack up!
9/10 - "Bloody bloodied bloodsuckin' bleeders of our blasted society! Where's my M-Rated Gore tag? Or at least Teen-rated? Bah. Whatever."
Ever bloodhungry, (I bet you'd thought I said bloodthirsy) Kenny the Changeling-Vampony-Alicorn-King, Master of Titles!
4149314
Dr Whooves was a background pony with absolutely no connection to Doctor Who, and if not for fan works and interaction, he wouldn't have been given his prominent background appearances seen in season 4.
Twilight-licious was a Tara/staff thing, but it was the fans that made the whole thing popular enough to bother including in the show.
4151024
The difference is that you said it to back up your claim that the staff don't look at fan works, but I was saying that it was evidence that they do look at fan works.
4152012
Are you then claiming that Dr Whooves and Apple-licious both exist without any inspiration from the fans? Should someone have been fired for Slendermane, given that it was an entirely fan made creation before it appeared in Pinkie Apple Pie?
4152206
Yes, Slendermane appeared exactly once. What's your point? It was still there and was originally a creation of the fans not the artist who snuck it in.
Apple-licious wasn't directly a fan creation, but it was a nod to the fans who took Twilight-licious and rolled with it.
Dr Whooves was placed very blatantly in It' Ain't Easy Being Breezies. It was the fans who decided that a random brown stallion with an hourglass cutie mark was actually the Doctor, and although it was not the most common fandom pair, it was also the fans who decided Rose/Roseluck was his companion. If not for fan works, then it is obvious to me that Dr Whooves would not have walked by with Rose wearing red/blue glasses in that episode; at best he would have continued to be an unnamed and non referential background pony.
4154502
Not exactly, but yes. Most times there has been a brown stallion with an hourglass cutie mark, it was not a reference to anything, but on at least two occasions it was a reference: one I've already mentioned, and the other was in the background of Flight to the Finish standing with Rose (not wearing glasses).
4154927
To not see the appearance of Whooves and Rose in the Breezie episode as a reference, shows you have no familiarity with modern Doctor Who.
On the other hand, to think that every one of his appearances as a background pony is a reference, requires ignoring all the other ponies with hourglass cutie marks (such as Minuette aka Colgate).
This is on Equestria Daily, right?