18 - Dance for Two, Dance for You
Morning and Roll nodded towards the functionaries and bowed at the balcony that held the queen.
A message was quickly passed down and the mare in charge of speaking for the Queen gestured at Roll while her eyes were on Morning. "Is this your golem?"
Morning blinked. "Oh, no! Heavens no. She is a pony, and I will let her speak for herself."
Roll glanced back at Morning before raising her eyes to the balcony. "My kind are the clockwork. Though perhaps less numerous than other tribes of ponies, we are members of this nation proudly." She dipped her head toward the balcony. "Today we will perform for you."
Morning bobbed her head in agreement. "I will sing a few classic songs of my people, celebrating an old time of unity, while Rolling Precision will dance to celebrate the new age of collaboration, even with ponies we scarcely recognize." She took a slow breath and began to speak from the heart, a talent her people were known for. Her voice was clear and notes stirred those that heard it both in pitch and content.
Roll began to move, using her singing as a metronome for her own performance. With every beat that pulsed through her, she moved a little further, rising smoothly to two legs and bowing in the stance that would be awkward to others, but came with an artistic flair to her. With hooves out wide, she made a slow circle, tracing unseen patterns in the air. It would have been enough perhaps for her to move slowly and precisely to the music, but that was not how it would be.
She fell to the ground, but did not strike it, catching herself just before she struck to begin moving with greater energy. Picking up on the desire for greater tempo, Morning's song began to catch up as it faded into a new melody, speaking of new starts and energetic motions, of grand times that the pony race has brought to itself. They danced together, though they never danced at once. She led Roll in her tongues, Roll led her in her steps, and they worked together, guided only by the power of the music itself running through the hallway.
Her voice gently faded as Roll came to a smooth halt. Both bowed to the silent queen. Both bowed to the quiet room.
All eyes turned towards the balcony.
Queen Iliana leaned forward into clear view, quite young for one that qualified as an empress. She brought her forehooves together in a slow clopping, and soon the others joined in, following her in what would become a thunderous display of clapping and stomping approval of what they had just been witness to.
Twilight nudged Sunset. "So we're not getting home fast. Let's be on the same page about what we're doing."
Sunset frowned a little. "You don't have to be so happy about it."
"Happy?" Twilight raised a brow high. "Not exactly the emotion I was aiming for. Look, we're friends, and we want the same thing in the end." Twilight nodded firmly. "We'll get home, so let's be smart about it."
True pointed at Twilight, then Sunset, and hugged himself.
Sunset quirked a smile at his antics. "Yeah yeah, I don't plan to stay mad at her." She sat up and let out a sigh of breath. "We're still just two random people in a world we barely understand."
Twilight raised a hoof. "But that's where you're wrong!"
"I am?"
Twilight tapped her head. "I have genre savvy!" Sunset didn't look convinced, so she continued. "Besides the dragon being the wrong color for its element, everything is what I would expect it to be, assuming I was playing the game. So I vote we play to win, and then we get to go home."
Sunset rolled a hoof. "Great, let's assume we do that. What part of that makes us able to take on a whole mess of those gnoll things? I don't think my fire bolts will do much but annoy one by the time they run us over."
Twilight tapped her cheek softly. "I just wanted to get you and I on the same page. We don't have a plan, yet, but we can do this, together." She waved a hoof between the three of them. "Do you think Roll did well?"
True gave a soft squeak and thrust a hoof up.
Sunset nodded in agreement. "If she has a chance, she'll do it." She rose to her hooves. "As crazy as this world is, I trust her, which sounds crazy to me just saying it. We're friends with a robot."
Twilight frowned a little at that. "Robot implies she was made in a factory somewhere. She was born, just like us, she just happens to, you know, be made of metal."
"Right right." Sunset shivered faintly in memory of the fact that clockworks produced young in such a fashion. "Look, why aren't you freaking out more?"
"Huh?"
Sunset reached out and poked Twilight gently in the snout. "You're a pony."
Twilight went crosseyed a moment looking at the hoof on her snout. "I am, and I did, but we have to get something done, unless we're happy remaining ponies forever. I mean, being able to hurl ice is pretty cool, but I do want to get home. I have responsibilities, and we both have friends waiting for us. I wonder what they think happened to us?"
True tilted his head a little bit as if thinking about it, but added little.
Sunset sighed softly. "I bet they've visited both our houses by now looking for us. Let's get back quickly and put their fears to rest." She pointed ahead. "For now, let's head to the castle and pick up Roll, win or lose."
"If you would stay behind?" The functionary pointed to a small area where only one other performer stood, sending Roll and Morning to join them as the next act was brought out to perform.
The one other performer was a pegasus, smiling as they approached. He nodded to either. "Splendid show you gave there. Did you two practice together?"
Roll considered that question. "Yes, but not in the way you likely imagine."
Morning deferred to her friend, waving to Roll. "I just sang. Roll was the one performing the intricate steps of her routine with such precise timing."
The pegasus perked his ears. "So modest. You were both lovely. Clockwork, was it? I've met another of your people before, though he was no performer. He liked making traps for hunters and the paranoid alike. Quite in-demand, if I recall."
"Next," spoke the functionary in precise tones, dismissing the current act of a pair of goats.
Morning tilted her glittering head. "I imagine it's quite like any tribe. She can be what she wants to be, and she likes to dance."
Roll nodded at Morning. "Dancing is a preferred hobby of mine, but not my profession."
The pegasus seemed surprised at that. "Not your profession? What is, madame?"
Roll paused. "Well, I'm a warrior..."
Morning started at that. "You're a warrior?!"
If Roll could have blushed... "Normally!"
The pegasus shook his head. "Well, for a hobby it is clearly close to your heart, be it flesh or otherwise." He dipped his head at Roll. "It is a pleasure to know you are a peer."
Morning joined the motion quickly. "Yes, a pleasure knowing you, and performing at your side. I trust my own performance was good enough?"
"We are here," noted Roll with a bit of a smile. "We succeeded."
Another performance was selected of those remaining, a trio of the three major tribes that formed a gymnastic group. The pegasus, unicorn, and prairie pony settled with the earlier victors, all smiles and joyful. Roll noticed something. "The performers with less-than-satisfactory attitudes were not selected regardless of ability."
Morning perked an ear. "Why I think you're right." She just finished shaking hooves with the last winners. "All those that got this far have been quite personable."
The unicorn of the trio nodded. "We do try to be reasonable sorts."
The pegasus pumped a hoof. "Reasonably awesome! Look at us!"
The earth pony nudged his friend. "Easy there. There were many good performances today."
The functionary that had been calling out each performance approached them. "You are the last of the day. The Queen would like to see you each personally." She glanced from pony to pony. "Even in the case of groups, she wishes to see you individually." She raised a hoof to point at Roll. "She wishes to start with you. Miss Precision was it? This way."
Morning nodded at her new friend. "Good luck."
They shared one last bumping of hooves before Roll followed down opulently designed and furnished hallways. She was led into a small room where the Queen sat, looking out a window. "You may go," spoke the Queen, and the functionary bowed before departing silently.
Roll nodded at her as she took in the details of the room. It was furnished with decorations of pony greatness, but little of it directly reflected of the Queen. "You wished to see me?"
"I did." She turned to face Roll with a faint smile. "You need something from me, don't you?"
Roll started. That was not the path she expected. "I--"
"Don't be shy, they all do." Iliana rolled a hoof slowly. "You're a performer. I imagine you just need to be paid, and that is hardly an unreasonable thing."
Roll needed more than that, but she hesitated a moment before words found their way to her lips. "I have a more serious matter. I apologize if I am upsetting you by bringing it--"
"You sound serious." Suddenly she looked focused. "You need something, but not for yourself. What is it?"
Roll pointed in a Northeasterly direction. "The short-legs have been assaulted by the gem gnolls and taken prisoner."
Iliana winced. "I..." She heaved a sigh. "I told them it was not safe. That land, north of Turves, we have scarcely anyone there, save the short-legs, and I feared for them. I asked them to join the empire, to come where it was safe." She looked to Roll, not with anger, but with sorrow and shame. "I wanted to protect them."
Roll pivoted an ear towards Iliana. "You can still protect them by sending an armed for--"
"I can't..." Iliana sagged. "I've seen the numbers. We're lucky to keep the empire intact. Declaring war on the gem gnolls would be disastrous, no matter how distasteful they are." She sat up tall, spreading her wings. "I would ride down on them myself, dashing the dirty gnolls to the wind, but this is my cage, and I'm needed here..."
The room fell to quiet as Iliana seemed to consider things. "You are a brave pony. Why are you here, a clockwork pony, to tell me of their capture?"
Roll gestured to the city as a whole. "I was with them during the attack and escaped. One of them is in the city."
"One of them made it?" Her eyes shone with hope. "At least there is that... Will you bring him or her here?"
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Being a nerd pays off!
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would that make her a biot? A cyborg? A Reploid?
7345311 Typo fixed!
HAHAHAHA!
And here we have our Rainbow Dash analogue. 
I can just imagine that Rarity, Applejack and Rainbow Dash found a way in and decided to go with the flow....
7345311 It makes her awesome...We have a parallel to the Carbons from Megaman Legends.
I see Twilight's still planning of running a gestalt kineticist/metagamer. It will be interesting to see how that works out for her. At least she's convincing Sunset that they have no choice but to play along for now. No use in rebelling against that... though there is the question of how they're going to find the right planar frequency.
As for Roll's audience with Iliana, it's actually going better than I expected. At leas the Queen wants to help, even if its untenable at the moment. I do wonder what she wants with True, though...
Two typos to dismiss from the court:
Morning's.
Did what, exactly? Be made of metal? Give birth? A little clarification would be nice.
7345445 Typos fixed! iliana is a good soul and an idealist, but she can't ignore reality.
7345445 Sending to Other Twilight? Although they have no way to know that she knows even assuming this is in the same continuity.
7345488
Even then, that will provide Equestria's frequency. And with the portal in the state it's in, it's not clear if they'd be able to get back to the world of technicolor noodle people. Manageable for Sunset, disastrous for Sci-Twi.
7345518
That would also depend on whether my time displacement theory is true too. Aside from the regular difficulties in communicating accross dimensions, they might need to communicate across times too, which is even more tricky, especially since Pathfinder/DnD time magics tend to be unreliable even at the best of times.
A simple method of understanding time displacements relative to planes, is to use the Douglas Adams method of planar arrangement, instead of the Einsteinien. That is, instead of the planes being like pages of a book, laying next to each other but seperated, they lay at all possible higher angles as well, or are even curved and folded in comparison.
They have one way of getting back home, but given its everything they have to work towards and has been blatently offered already, Ill just enjoy the journey.
The Queen is Lawful Neutral, and Roll is a Clockwork Soldier with points in Perform/Dance? If used correctly that would make her far harder to hit in combat, etc? I suspect Lashtada would be happy if she was to help the short legs, but she would have to be far more powerful to help True Shot in that way. Assuming he wanted to become a blacksmith.
What new adventurers will they come accross to help them in their quest, or is this a four party play?
7345425 never played it, beyond the demo.
queen
queen
were (the rest of the sentence is in past-tense)
queen (not to belabor the point, but Iliana's parents were farmers; she's either a queen/empress or a nobody.)
7345655
The queen is Neutral Good, but her hooves are tied. Clockwork pony is a player race in Ponyfinder, so Roll has class levels like anyone else.
short but still very good I look forward to more and I hope to read others you make, so till than have a vety alwsome day
that held the princess - that held the queen(?)
her people are known for - her people were known for
Her eyes shined with hope - Her eyes shone with hope
*****
A lyrically beautiful and gracefully choreographed chapter! There were even a few nibbles left as a bedtime snack, though I must be careful to keep typo crumbs out of the bed.
Iliana is intriguing, she seems to have a sense when people need something. I wonder if it is some sort of innate magic, or simply savvy. It seems that she is distressingly aware of the composition of her kingdom and the people within it, so she did not become queen through popularity alone.
I really wish it were possible to see Roll dancing, my imagination just isn't up to the task except knowing that it would be a glorious event.
Okay, forgive my rant here, but WHY?!
What numbers? What numbers has she seen, and why exactly are they indicating that she's barely keeping things intact? Is this a matter of funding? Is she suggesting that her empire doesn't have the material wealth necessary to raise up and support an armed force? If so, why is that? There's no other major power on the continent at this time (save for the isolationist griffons, since the purrsians are likely still little more than independent trade collectives in the barren desert), so she's clearly not hurting because of unfavorable foreign trade policies, so if it's the economy then what's keeping it down on the domestic end? Is there a problem with food production that would be impacted by pressing a civilian service into force (and why would you do that when adventurers are better combatants anyway)? Or decreased mineral wealth (which would, ironically, be helped by raiding the gem-loving gnolls)?
Is it because of population problems? Does she not have the numbers to send a large force? If so, why not deputize adventurers to do the job by publicly declaring bounties for slain gem gnolls? If that's too unappealing, then how about placing bounties for each rescued short-leg then? There's clearly a para-military force that's sitting around the capital, so why not put them to good use?
Are the bad numbers due to popular opinion? Will she face stiff political opposition due to an increase in short-leg immigration, with local ponies talking about how foreigners are coming in and stealing their jobs? Will it trigger a popular referendum to have parts of the Empire break away into independent nation-states so as to preserve their cultural identity in the face of a short-leg migrant crisis? Are conservative ponies afraid of the free-love-goddess-worshipping short-legs introducing a moral decay into their society?
What I'm trying to say is that Iliana hasn't given us an actual reason for her refusal to do anything to help. Rather, she's given us an excuse, and a flimsy one at that.
7347602
7347325 Typos chomped!
7348221 They have x soldiers, we have y soldiers. x > y by an uncomfortable amount. Not to mention we can't use all of y, since we need some for policing and defense, whereas they will have most of x since we'll be attacking.
That's... pretty much it. Could she hope a citizen force pulls it off? Sure, she's talking to one. If you mean the Seekers. this is very much not their usual thing, but hey, could work? They don't have the raw numbers either. The gods have presented a possible solution, shame about...
7348260
My issue here isn't so much that this doesn't make sense (it does, though simple issues of numbers are far less important when the scale of personal power is so dramatically variable as it is in Pathfinder), but that the entire idea of "they outnumber us, and not by a small amount, so we can't afford to piss them off" is one that's never been hinted at before that I can find.
The short-legs lived in a single town, and while there were enough gem gnolls to take them down in a single attack, that's not necessarily as impressive as it seems, mostly due to the fact that the short-legs seem to lack any real inclination to violence and so could have been routed by a much smaller force. At the very least, there's no concrete (or even circumstantial) evidence to consider that the gem gnoll forces are very numerous. Now compare that to the military force that carved out an empire for the ponies.
Now, there's certainly going to be a large distribution of the pony military forces, as you noted, but this sort of action is exactly why they've been distributed in the first place. They don't necessarily need to start a war against the gem gnolls (I also question the degree to which the gem gnolls could threaten the Empire at large, given that their Chaotic Evil nature would seem to undermine a large-scale attack as anything more than a mob; they did wipe out a town, but what little we saw of the attack didn't show that much coordination), but simply go and rescue the short-legs from captivity. Given that gem gnolls live in mines, I'll admit that this could take the form of a siege or other extended campaign, but while that wouldn't favor the attackers it would also put the gem gnolls into a corner.
In other words, the idea that the Pony Empire's military is so outnumbered and short-hooved that they're afraid of antagonizing the gem gnolls is one that's inconsistent with what we've been shown so far.
7345326 Really? I was getting a CMC vibe from them.
7348494 It’s not that the Gem Gnolls have too many numbers/power, it’s more like there is too much for an easy victory. Right now with how things are in the Empire, the Queen needs to save her forces. The Empire is not yet an adult, I’d imagine not even a teenager. It’s still very young and vulnerable. If you move too many forces way from the front lines and more key areas, then it could end up causing more problems down the road. Even more so for a tribe that so few even know about, who worship a goddess almost no one knows about.
At least that’s the way I understand it from the various hints we’ve been shown.
8212488 “Save her forces” for what? “Young and vulnerable” to what? With the exception of the griffons - which are off to the north, and have (insofar as I recall) made no moves to suggest that they’re interested in expanding southward - the Pony Empire is the only major power on the continent. The vast majority of the wars that Iliana undertook were against other ponies in order to unify them, which she succeeded at. At this point, there are no “front lines” to move the soldiers away from, as there aren’t currently any active conflicts. So with no other major powers left to challenge her, what exactly is Iliana saving her forces for?
The major issue here isn’t one of force distribution, so much as it is simple numbers in the first place. From what I recall, the battle with the Tribe of Bones only recently came to an end, and that cost Iliana a lot of troops. Fair enough, that. But the gem gnolls aren’t a major force the way the necromancers were. They’re just a group of disorganized savages, and they’ve already been displaced anyway - the reason they attacked the short-legs when they did was because the newfound Pony Empire had pushed them back, which suggests that they’re not any match for the ponies to begin with.
And that’s leaving aside my other suggestions of simply posting bounties for dead gem gnolls and/or rescued short-legs. There’s no reason why that couldn’t work, unless Iliana’s government is broke, but that doesn’t seem likely, since there’s no issues with economic infrastructure that we’ve seen. And it’s not like that would rile the gem gnolls up anymore than they are, since they’re already raiders and slavers who are a threat to everyone around them.
There are reasons why the short-legs weren’t rescued, but “lack of resources” shouldn’t have been one of them.
8212488
Exactly.
Medieval ages are filled with cases of neighbors taking advantage of exposed neighbors. To make matters worse enemies could rally support by pointing out how she's invading a country that didn't attack her lands to label themselves as justified.