I'm a long time science fiction and animation fan who stumbled into My Little Pony fandom and got caught -- I guess I'm a Brony Forever now.
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YOH 1269 (231 years before Luna's Return): Keen Trader was all set to make a tidy profit and secure his family fortunes when vicious bandits wrecked his venture. Now he wants revenge. And, with the aid of somepony who is older than she looks, he's going to get it!
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Random thoughts:
Have you mentioned the Leveller Risings in your chronology before? If so, I've forgotten... and the name sounds like an uprising of Starlight Glimmer's ideology.
Good explanation of how ancient Equestrian history became myth; I like pointing out those points of Pony psychology.
Typos: "adeuate living"; "n choice"; "he wuld not"; "sectral forms"; "solid Aspet"
Oh wow; the little filly is Ruby - I thought it was going to be one of Horror Pie's relatives! And great character narration!
Nightmare Moon has no respect for marriage or divorce; does she?
I'd love to read the story hinted at in your author's note about Celestia letting herself be abducted out of boredom; it sounds really fun...
7293818
I may not have done so. I should have. Basically, the Levellers are a prototype of the sort of ideology that Starlight Glimmer adopts. It's one of the reasons why the early 13th century is a rather dark time.
It's even half-true. Nightmare Moon did not of course intentionally set the Wraiths there. She just didn't care about the consequences of cursing them to innocent third parties. Indeed, a lot of the seductive appeal of becoming Nightmare Moon to Luna was not caring about the consequences. Normally, Luna cares a lot about the consequences.
Thank you for noticing those typos. Fixed them.
Well, NM killed them. And cursed them. So I think it's safe to say she had no respect for them. Except for Ruby.
That's from Ask Aquilinus, and he's an Unreliable Narrator.
7293858 I love your intricately-woven history; I only wish you - or someone - could write out more of it. It's almost like reading one of Tolkien's sketches where you can find room for a whole novel in a single sentence. I can imagine Starlight coming across the philosophy of the ancient Levelers in a library, reading about their speculative ideal society where ponies weren't pigeonholed into different roles, and realizing that she has the power to tear away cutie marks and actually bring it about...
... come to think of it, this might've gotten me over a hump in the characterization of Starlight in one of my AU's where she hasn't gone completely insane. Thanks!
But to get back to your actual story, great portrayal of Mitta's pathos at being tied down over centuries of near-sleepwalking, which - aside from being a great story in itself - is just why Luna should care about consequences. (I'm remembering Ardashir's scene where she finally meets them again.) I'm looking forward to reading more!
7293818 it sounds similar to Princess Celestia gets mugged
7294013 Oh yes, I read that; it was fun, though some of the humor fell half-flat with me. Doing it with another country like the Gryphons (or even a band of dedicated ideologues like the Levelers) would be even more interesting, I think. Though, if we get talking about all the stories we'd like to see, we could be here all night...
Ruby is surprisingly zen about being a Wraith, a twisted sort of unlife that forces her to relive her death to keep existing, especially considering the fact that she's a ghost because of Greyhoof and Luna, her father and best friend respectively. But if I remember correctly, she is the one who decided to remain in Sunny Town.
Oh dear. Keen just set himself up for some killer retirony. Granted, the pirates would've struck even if he hadn't made that decision, but now it's going to be especially tragic. (Also, the names of his wife and children makes me think that he might be an ancestor of Ponyville's mayor, though I could be reading too much into it.)
You're having a lot of fun with Ruby Gift, aren't you? I can understand why. She offers a unifying thread that ties together historical narratives across more than a millennium, a touch of the familiar to get the reader better engaged. Definitely looking forward to seeing what she does here.
That said, the mention of tangible undead both concerns and intrigues me. I suppose there are some examples in Sunny Town itself, but its the possibility elsewhere that makes my skin crawl a little.
7294006
I've worked out rather a lot of the history considering that it's someone else's universe and it's all going to get jossed anyway if the Show goes on long enough. Maybe I'll recycle a lot of it someday for a non-MLP fantasy novel. I like the idea of Equestria having a deep history with all the intervening periods being as "real" as the Century of Disaster and the Shadow Wars proper.
Her "Yes! It all makes sense now! I can achieve my dream!" moment.
Ruby's pathos, actually. Mitta's more mellow about it. But then Mitta got to live more before she died.
Ruby likes both her mother and Three Leaf (remarkably, given Three Leaf's role with Ruby's father) and wishes that Grey Hoof had married both of them. And that Grey Hoof hadn't killed her. If he hadn't killed her, none of the other bad stuff would have happened; even had Luna still become Nightmare Moon, Nightmare Moon would have had absolutely no grudge against Sunney Towne, and the village was far enough away from the Castle that the chance of it being hit by a stray gravity lance would have been very minor. For that matter, Mitta would have preferred that outcome; she and Three Leaf were friends in their youth.
My interest in Story of the Blanks started, like my interest in this fandom in general, with Ardashir's My Little Balladeer. It's a great story -- everyone should read it.
And yes -- especially when you're an immortal super-powerful being, you have to be concerned about the consequences. And care about other Ponies. Luna is well aware of that -- when she's sane.
7294256
She knows her father killed her under a false assumption, and that her patron then killed her father and kin in a fit of madness. She's not really happy about this, but while she's not a saint (as she'll inform you) she's a very positive sort of filly. She's much more loving than she is hateful. That's part of why Luna befriended her in the first place -- she was cheerful and intelligent and brave, and loved the night. Luna had hoped they would be friends for many decades to come and that her optimism would help her heal her own wounded soul.
This characterization of Ruby follows logically from the assumption that she chose to stay to redeem her kin. If she hated them, she never would have stayed to help them. And only someone with an extremely forgiving nature wouldn't have wound up hating them.
7294525
I freaking love Ruby. She's just the right combination of a fundamentally heroic, idealistic and lovable personality with a keen mind and brave and fiery spirit which lends itself to epic snarkery at moments, whcih is one reason she and Luna got along so well at the end of the Century of Disaster.
And she's undying, so I can tell stories about her in all sorts of historical periods. She's limited a bit by the fact that she can only range out so far from Sunney Towne, but one of the areas she ranges through the most is the Everfree in general, and once they build the bridge or even have a regular ferry, she can get into Northern Ponyville. And she can get into Southern Ponyville without any such assistance, because it's on her side of the river.
As for other undead creatures, the Everfree Forest is full of all sorts of oddities. It includes the ancient location of Dream Valley and Paradise Estate, it's had holes torn through to other dimensions by sorcerors and Chaos Gods, there's a ruined castle and city and numerous lost towns and steadings in there, there's a whole mini-Lothlorien of Deer -- why not liches, wights and zombies somewhere? Aside from the Skeletal Guards of Sunney Towne, who I've already mentioned.
7294930 My interest in Story of the Blanks started, like my interest in this fandom in general, with Ardashir's My Little Balladeer. It's a great story -- everyone should read it.
Wow. Hey, thanks, I mean that. You've certainly done a whole lot more with the undead ponies than I ever did; and to very good effect. And as a side note, the Sunny Towners will be showing up if only briefly in the sequel to My Little Balladeer that I'm working on.
Let me add in my own delight at the history you've created for your stories. It makes reading them really a delight to an old-school fantasy fan like me, especially when I recognize names from one to the next. Particularly when we see what someone's legacy has become.
I enjoyed both the description of the riverboats here and the potential problems they face. It reminds me of what I've read in books like Spawn of Evil about early trade along the Mississippi and the pirates at Hole-in-Rock. I have to wonder if Equestria at this time has towns that are basically hangouts for robbers and other criminals like Natchez Under-the-River. I can almost see one of those places with ponies that are ancestors of some of the Ponyville ponies living there. (Just imagine how someone like Diamond Tiara would react to learning her ancestors were a gang of bandits!)
The situation for merchants sounds familiar too. I've read about traders in early medieval Europe and pre-Columbian Mexico, the pochtecas, and they were a pretty rough and ready lot. So much so that there seems to be a historian's joke to the effect that 'the difference between a robber and a merchant for most of history was if you were armed or not'.
I'm eager to see what becomes of your brave riverboat captain and poor sweet Ruby. I'll definitely be following this one.
Alas. Keen was outclassed in every sense of the word. Still, death need not be the end of the story, as he's going to learn. I just hope he learns forgiveness before it's too late...
Poor guy. I knew he was done for the moment he started talking about retirement.
I look forward to seeing where things go from here.
7348312
"And as soon as I get past this dangerous stretch of river, I promise I'll spend more time with my family ..."
Yeah. Sort of like being the cop at the start of the police movie who is just a week from retirement.
7345615
Do you know I'm a big fan of ghost stories?
7298968
Why thank you -- I'm glad to hear that you like what I've been doing with the ghosts.
I'm also glad that you like the way that I've depicted the riverboats and trade. 13th-century YOH Equestria isn't exactly like 17th-century Europe for a number of reasons, one being that the Ponies know a lot of things are possible that they can't actually do it. So, for instance, they haven't yet developed riverine steam engines so they don't have steam-powered riverboats, but for riverine naval purposes they use Pony-powered paddle-wheels and screws on their biggest armed riverboats -- these are, however, far too mechanically-demanding and expensive for either Keen Trader or Red Devil to use.
The North Amareican river system used to look a lot more like the one from our world before the Cataclysm. Roughly speaking the Muddy is the Missouri and the Motherwater the Mississippi, with the Avalon being a very course-shifted Ohio. When the Earth was suddenly put through tens of millions of years of geological change in a few hours -- something that wuld have slagged the crust if not for the Sunwarp Celestia, Luna and Discord made as their Cosmic Selves -- shifts in the incline of the eastern part of the North American continental plate took the Tennessee and changed its outlet to the Atlantic, by way of what had been Chesapeake Bay, through the eradication of a portion of the Appalachians by the titanic explosion that created Horseshoe Bay, one of several titanic explosions that happened that day (one of which created the Badlands).
Half of Ponykind died in a day, and about eight in ten of the survivors in a year. That was because Fusion, Gravity and Dissonance were protecting them; if they hadn't been, then all multi-cellular life on Earth, and most uni-cellular life, would have been instantly eradicated. It would have been like the impact that tore the Moon from the Earth's mantle.
Anyway, the Everfree Forest is meant to cover roughly what in our world would be Kentucky and parts of West Virginia and Western Virginia. There's a reason why Kaintuck was called the "dark and bloody ground." Sometimes monsters fell through flaws from the other side.
Canterlot is located roughly in what would be Illinois or Indiana. The Crystal City was built roughly where Lakes Superior, Huron and Michigan would have come together. Of course the geography of that area had already been changed by the Cataclysm. It got changed more in the Climatic Optimum after things settled down, and again in the Coming of the Windigos.
Yes. Keen Trader is very honorable, but not all merchants are, especially the ones who mostly trade in the Northwest, still very unsettled after the recent defeat of the Griffon Uprising. There's enough room here for a band of insane alchemist serial killers pretending to be merchants to trawl for bandits -- and they do. This is a time when Celestia has succumbed to despair and spends far too much time sitting in Canterlot eating cake and inspiring a fashion for plumpness among the aristocracy, which is one reason why the Guards are so lethargic and Levellers have risen and plot to rise again.
7350073
I will confess, I am enjoying this rather more than I thought I would. In particular, I enjoyed the unicorn pirate's rant, with his completely delusional self opinion.
I suspect that it was not for nothing that he was exiled by even an apathetic Celestia.
I shall enjoy seeing more of him.
7350989
Red "Devil" Longhorn, of course, has to believe in a version of reality where he's the romantic but overly-honest and brave cavalier who was not understood by the soft weak courtiers, and his actions are but the only way for a true gentlecolt to survive, by making war on the trade which nourished his rivals. Of course, he's incredibly arrogant and scornful of the lives of "lesser" Ponies -- indeed, he's sociopathic. Which is why he wound up having to flee Canterlot in the first place.
Celestia's demoralized and lethargic, but not entirely inert, or at all sadistic. She's still a good Pony. Just a rather sad one, right now.
Red isn't good at all, though he has some virtues -- most notably courage and decisiveness. Oddly, those he shares with Keen, though Keen is also genuinely honorable, caring, kind and responsible.
I'm assuming the late captain isn't a wrath, but some other type of Dead. The first thing I wonder is how an earth pony would fight with a sword. I would think those would be unicorn or Pegasus due the fact the foot work and dexterity needed would beyond a earth pony. The second thing you would think they wouldn't kill all of the crew just for the reason if the area gets to the point of to dangerous, river traffic might dry up, or worse pull down a raid by the guard.
7355344
Right, among other things he is far less powerful than one of the Sunney Towne Wraiths, because he's not being powered by the Shadow magic of Nightmare Moon (most of the Wraiths) or by the hopes of redemption of all the others (Ruby Gift). He's just an ordinary Vengeful Ghost, albiet a highly-intelligent and determined one. He was killed unjustly under circumstances that make him more than normally hate his murderer, and he is worried about the fate of his family. He thus has some really classic Ghostly Goals.
This is highly-relevant to the story, because he can't affect the mortal world as powerfully as could, say, Grey Hoof or Three Leaf. He can't just kill a foe by draining life energy; he can't easily telekinese with enough force to strongly grasp or strangle a mortal; he can't form a full-tactile contact spirit form as an the Sunney Towne Wraiths. If he could do those things, all he'd need to do to get revenge would be to find Red Longhorn and start killing him and his crew. That wouldn't be as interesting a story, now would it?
There are a combination of reasons that Earth Ponies can fight with Pony-designed swords. The grip is extended and curved to be easier to hold by the combination of hoof-suckers, short-range telekinesis and balance with the cannon that Earth Ponies use to manipulate objects in general. But yeah -- they're generally not as good with swords as are Pegasi or especially Unicorns. And note that he sword-fights a Unicorn -- and loses. Heck, the Unicorn, Red Longhorn, is fencing rapier-and-dagger style, while Keen Trader is using an older type of weapon and fencing technique. And a Unicorn could fight with a Human-designed sword, which either of the other two main Kinds would find difficult or impossible. (Sea Ponies aren't in an environment conducive to sword-fighting, though Deep Ponies frequently venture onto the land but are there essentially just weaker and less comfortable Earth Ponies with nastier teeth, a Siren would of course sing rather than sword-fight; a powerful enough Changeling could either telekinese the sword and fight with it, or Shift into a form that had good hands; a Royal would use her Stare).
We don't yet know how many of the crew were killed or wounded or captured or escaped unscathed. The pirates were after the Mare Mustang's cargo, rather than wiping out the crew; they wouldn't go out of their way to kill fleeing crewponies under most circumstances. Red Longhorn chose to kill Keen Trader.
7355415 I see. Another problem with Earth Pony fencers is that if they fight with blade in hoof, already they fight unbalanced. One leg is already off the ground and it would be awkward to cross over the body to parry or block strikes to the off side. And holding a blade in the teeth is, well foolish due to strikes aimed at the head and the poor grip. Pegasus ponies could fly so they could negate the stance problems by hovering upright, while a moderately strong Unicorn like Red could just hold it as normal, so like you said no wonder he lost.
Well at least the Captain can say it's his UN-birthday today!
7355509
Heh. By the way, I added a few lines onto the end of this chapter -- I hiccup-published it when I was very tired, took a nap, woke up to realize what I'd done, then realized that it ended at close to the optimum point anyway so I just wrote a short chapter and changed the title. Hope you like the chapter as it is now.
I mean, it was pretty obvious all through Chapter 3 that Keen was dead, wasn't it? To everyone, and everypony, but Keen himself?
Vital status is one of those things you take for granted, since it doesn't change for your entire life and you don't expect to care about it afterwards. But in a world with souls, thought and activity can persist long after vital functions; it's just that most people aren't used to thinking of themselves in terms of the postmortem. And thus we have the adjustment period. Good thing Ruby's here to show Keen the ropes, and that the fog shielded him from the full intensity of the sun.
Of course, now he's going to have to accept the fact that he's dead. Not just confront it and acknowledge it, but digest the ramifications. This isn't going to be pleasant for anyone involved...
7355953
Yep. Ruby sympathizes with him and tries to help him for several reason. The first is that she's just plain nice. The second is that she likes him. And the third is that she really hates bandits.
7356285 That last fact, the hate of bandits.. I wonder where it comes from. And the second part would be funny for a short story on how hard it is to get a date when you are a 15-year old ghost who sucks out life energy.
7356691
Childhood trauma, described in Fools and Drunks specifically Chapter 11 "The Shadow Over Sunney Towne."
Well, aside from the fact that it works with the D&D / Tolkienian nature of Equestria for Wraiths to drain life force with a touch, if I didn't have it work this way, Ruby's undeath would be entirely Cursed With Awesome. Instead, she's an eternally lonely teenager who has to make an effort to focus her mind to avoid simply repeating her last day of life, again and again and again. Though one with what amounts to some serious superpowers.
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