Herin lies the tale of the STARK WEATHER - MARE EXPEDITION to the CLOUDBREAK ISLANDS, in 1365 YD. The mysterious floating islands are the stuff of legend, said to exist within the massive, eternal storm wall, far off in the wilds beyond the north-west borders of Equestria. A few fringe historians claim they are the origin of dragons, griffons, even magic itself, but only a few fragmentary, contradictory accounts exist from those who entered the storm and returned to tell the tale.
Fifteen years after Princess Twilight took the throne, the time has come for the secrets of the Cloudbreaks to be revealed. Two great airships of the Storm Fleet have been slumbering, mothballed since their capture in the Sixth Battle of Canterlot. Now the EAS Friendship and the EAS Harmony have been refitted for the task ahead: equipped with experimental devices to cut through the storm. Nearly two hundred ponies and allies are assembled: the finest explorers, researchers, aircrew and engineers Equestria has to offer. Together they will be the first to pierce the veil and fly to the Cloudbreak Islands.
High adventure awaits in these 'sky lands', populated by strange creatures and filled with unknown magic. What caused a piece of another realm to seemingly break away and become part of Equus? What happened to the long-vanished guardians, villains and great spirits of the realm? What designs do the remaining population have on Equus and how will they greet its ambassadors?
Set around the time of 'The Last Problem', and based on a four-player online RP with Ferret, Patashu and Spearmint. Note: the action takes a while to get rolling; the early chapters focus on character interaction. If you want to skip the prologue, try Chapter 4: Crossing the Storm, or Chapter 18: Exploring the Cloudbreaks.
If the main OCs in this story were voiced, what would they sound like?
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Nutmeg Inferno : like G3 Cherilee (as in Runaway Rainbow)
Summer Scribe : like Princess Glimmer (from Princesses of Power)
Reef Skimmer : like Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart (from classic Doctor Who)
Azure Feather : like Kameo (from Elements of Power)
Skylanders Swap Force correct?
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The Cloudbreak Islands themselves are from Swap Force, but we're also using elements from Trap Team, e.g. the light and dark elements are present on the village shrine, and the latest chapter has a colony of Buzzer Beaks. We might bring in concepts from the other Skylanders games as well (although probably not Imaginators).
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Ok. So it's a Spyro crossover.
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Spyro himself hasn't been seen yet, but Cynder made an appearance in last week's session (not yet published; the story is running a few weeks behind the game), so it's likely he'll show up at some point.
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Sweet! So it is a Spyro crossover! What's Cynder up to anyway defending skylands from old Kaos and Glumshanks.
Kaos: I Kaaaoss will conur these colorful creatures and use their powers to rule Skylands and the destroy the Skylanders! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!"
It's the chapter after next so you'll find out soon. 😃 Kaos on the other hand, it might be a while before we find out what happened to him.
If you did it in the Legend of Spyro universe Spyro, Sparx, and Cynder would probably be sent to he Cloudbreak islands after Dawn of the Dragon and when Spyro and Cynder are now mates along with growing up a bit. They would be sent there by the guardians after reports of surivors from Spyro and Cynder's year of the dragon along with Ember and Flame who would be Ignitus' children had taken refuge on those islands along with the remains of the dark armies who want revenge on Spyro and Cynder for destroying their master and of course Kaos and his army would be in it trying to conur the islands and heard about the powerful purple dragon hero that vanquished the Dark Master. Just like the Skylander version he would just want to destroy both Spyro and Cynder to prevent they from ruining his plans. The Equestrians would play a major role in it too.
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Sweet! I'm fallowing.
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The ending of Dawn of the Dragon made it look like Spyro literally created Skylands, with all the floating islands we see. Of course Spyro's Adventure occurs thousands of years later, in the Skylands timeline, so if so that would have to be a distant descendant or reincarnation of the original Sypro (or a rather implausible time travel + memory loss + depowered).
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I'm going with my take. But hey it's your story after all. If it were in the LOS universe I bet Sparx would be complaining about going to find surviving dragons on islands that no one excextly knows about with Cynder gets captured by the expedition while Spyro and Sparx get once caught by those dog pirates and use them in a tournament again. That one parrot got away and we don't know what happened to him afterwords.
Oh boy… Chmopies.
silly you should know, anything that generates heat can power a steam engine
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But adequate soul density is normally only found under divine conditions!
Beautiful cover art!
It's a crop of the illustration for chapter 23: the full version is even better. You can see all the artwork for this story (published to date) here.
As opposed to what? Also, why is it in all capital letters?
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It's a very obscure roleplaying joke, referencing a module for the old Chaosium Call of Cthullu game: Beyond the Mountains of Madness (released in 1999). While not many have heard of it now, that module was legendary back in the day, both for the quality of the writing (amazing concept, details, research, deep background) and the utterly gruelling slog it would have been to actually play. The scenario was the players joining an expedition to Antarctica in the 1930s; the STARKWEATHER-MOORE EXPEDITION (yes, the chapter summaries did like to capitalise all the important terms). I guess the implication is that the Cloudbreak Islands (aka Skylands) is just as dangerous and filled with eldritch magic and horrific monsters as the Cthullu Mythos; it just has a bright and happy theme to it :) The characters are actually referenced in chapter one : Stark Weather is a pegasus and Professor Mare is presumably a distant relative of Mayor Mare, a nod to the leaders of the expedition in that old module.
Pretty soon Kalos is gonna come back and be up to no good again.
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I think we might need a more credible threat than Kaos. I mean the guy tried to take over Skylands at least six times (more if you include the comics and mobile games), with every conceivable advantage, and still lost every time :) Though it's true that with the Skylanders down to a handful of dragons and no portal master, he might be able to pull off the win.
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Good point. Also Spyro looks almost like his TLoS appearance.
I'm confused. Where does the prologue end?
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When the Equestrians reach the Cloudbreak Islands, in chapter five. Chapter 19 is where they head out, beyond the first island.
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What happened to the others? Because, I love Skylanders! And I don't want anything bad happened to them all. For the Originals, Giants, Swap Force, Trap Them, Superchargers, and the Imaginators/Senseis. 😥
Why are these words in all caps?
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Strange isn't it: Nutmeg & Gearshift spent days with Spyro, Cynder and co, hanging out in the ruins of the Skylander Academy. Yet they never asked 'what was the catacylsm', 'why are there only five Skylanders left' or indeed 'where did the Skylanders come from' or anything similar. I guess that's what happens when you send a pair of engineers to fix something, instead of historians or archeologists. Maybe if Sunburn hadn't looked so scary, Blue Type could've asked him while he was visiting the pony's airship...
Seriously the question of what did happen to all the Skylanders is one of the main mysteries facing the characters. We've RPed up to the point where Spyro properly explains Skylands history from his perspective - in about 20 chapters time - but even he doesn't know what really happened in the cataclysm. Hopefully Nutmeg will get her hands on a Supercharger vehicle soon. :)
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One. HOW is Sunburn "Scary"? He is a Dragon/Phoenix Hybrid! It makes sense if it was the Undead Slylanders, Dark Skylanders, or some of the Tech. Skylanders like Drobot with his robotic voice? No Offense to them in anyway. I Love all 10 Element Types.
Two. 20 More Chapters to see the Truth??!! 🤦
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To ponies, regular dragons and griffons are scary giant magical predators. Sunburn is like a combination of griffon and dragon with the ability to teleport right next to you and burn you up before you can blink; a super-super-predator! Also he's pretty nonchalant about killing thousands of 'bad guys' over the years, which certain ponies (cough Azure Feather cough) might go for, but comes across as extremely violent and callous to normal ponies. Sunburn's a good guy though, just bitter from spending the last two centuries watching things fall apart in Skylands.
Undead elementals are pretty much inherently unsettling to everyone, as Cloud Cutter found out and Nutmeg mentions in the latest chapter. That's probably why they go for the over-the-top comedy, to try and put people at ease. Cynder is really hostile on top of that, although apparently a total tsundere based on the 'fix the core of light' chapter.
Drobot makes an appearance later although it may just be a cameo (haven't RPed it yet).
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Okay! So, Ponies are still just some scary cats. While, I don't blame Sunburn taking down the Skylander's Bad Guys, Villains, and other enemies. They all deserve it! 😈
And it's over 200 Years since this Terrible "Cataclysm"??!! That's not fair for Skylands??!!
Finally, for the Undead being comedians??!! Didn't see that coming? And as for are favorite female dragon: Cynder is still a tsundere??!! I know she has a terrible dark past, and Spyro did saved and helped her in the Original Legend Trilogy, and Skylanders Lore. I just don't like that "Anime Personality" word itself, that's all.
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The bad guys were certainly bad, but the ponies prefer to reform and/or capture them instead of killing them. Where possible, of course. Skylands has seen a lot more conflict than Equestria has, in living memory at least.
The choice to set this a long time after the game canon was because we wanted a bit more mystery and exploration, out-of-character as well as in-character. You can't just look things up on the Sklyanders wiki, because while we are sticking to that canon, it's now two centuries out of date. A lot has changed in the mean time. Another factor was that Skylands is now physically adjacent to Equestria. It clearly hasn't been on Equus the whole time, so we needed some explanation for how it went from being its own plane of existence to a region on Equus (albeit one with its own magic, surrounded by a huge storm). I guess we could've kept it separate and gone with any number of 'ponies went through a magical portal' type explanations, but we wanted it to seem like a simple wilderness exploration mission, and the ponies to only gradually find out just how alien this new place was.
The undead being comedians isn't something we made up from whole cloth - that's pretty much in the original games, starting with T-Bone from Spyro's Adventure. There are exceptions - Cynder and Chop Chop spring to mind - but most of the undead characters have some kind of humour going on. Ferret went with that and developed it into a kind of nihilistic, 'nothing matters so you have to laugh' outlook.
As for Cynder, something major happened to her to cause a kind of regression (towards being callous and evil) from where she was in the games. Again there's more detail on that coming in later chapters.
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Well, the Ponies will have a bit of a hard time trying to "reform/capture" every single Villain or enemies in Skylands. Even though the Trap Team already done it, and even have some "Reformed" Villains into Senseis. And I won't be happy with the Out-Of-Character stuff to the Skylanders. But, that's my opinion. And I hope that Spyro will help Cynder with her personality change that she is being a little jerk sometimes.
Looks like your story got featured, and with such a good like to dislike ratio maybe you'll get the attention this story deserves
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Thanks. I can understand a lot of readers taking a brief look and moving on; quality of writing aside, making a story out of an RP log has some inherent compromises. The pacing is slower than it would be if I was writing from scratch, and this story was rejected by Equestria Daily for 'breaking the rule of one viewpoint character per chapter'. Still, I hope it's interesting to read, particularly for people who already enjoy or are thinking about trying RP.
They lack discipline and self-control.
The mutiny shall be foal's play. *Helix Splice, the diabolical Earth pony geneticist, cackles in the shadows, with all sorts of EEEEEEEVIL science plans and world domination and all the other stuff scientists are REALLY doing all the time that you don't know about because THEY keep it all hidden!*
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Mr. Popo, "This carpet gets 2,000 miles to the soul..."
Bulma, "Wut?"
Mr. Popo, "The gallon."
Reef, "Oh bucking Tartarus... I'm a tentacle monster!"
Summer, "It's... uhm… not that bad. Sure, you'll have a hard time finding shoes now, but-"
Reef whimpers, "No, it's worse than you realize! THEY will sense my presence and... oh no! THEY'RE HERE!!"
Suddenly, hoards of hentai-obsessed otakus burst through the dimensional barriers, all demanding that Reef rustle their jimmies them with his wigglies!
"NOT LIKE THIS!!" Reef sobbed as he was buried beneath the reeking hoard of basement dwellers. "I can't die like this!"
Aw, I thought he was Mabu, Instead he’s a troll.
A nice one though.
No sign of the island from the first game on the map,
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For the purposes of this story, Skylands is shaped roughly like a galaxy. Eon's Redoubt is somewhere in the 'core', whereas the ponies have arrived on the 'fringe'. Initially they just draw their own maps of what they can see, but later in the story they find a proper world map.
To go boldly to places where nopony has gone before.
So... She's basically Red Bull.
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/171/091/pinkie_on_red_bull_by_aleximusprime-d48wv6h.png
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There were allegedly unicorns in Skylands at some point (Whirlwind is 'half-dragon, half-unicorn'). Whether they are/were unicorn ponies remains to be seen.
Hey, have you though about having a chart showing the crew of the Harmony on the left side and the names, status, element they are lending towards, and element they are aligned to on the top? I feel like people would like to know how many of the crew are elemental currently and the possibility of seeing which elements we might be seeing among the crew later on in the story.
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There's this cast page, but yeah something more condensed would be nice. For now here's the summary:
We have some other undead background ponies, several background engineers but no one else showing potential for alignment. Dark and Light are less common than the other elements, as they only appeared in the later games, although they sometimes show up as powers that other elementals have e.g. Whirlwind's dual-purpose healing/harming rainbow is an air-themed light power.
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Ok. Nice to see what you have so far.
"We're not beasts! We can talk and stuff!" said Anonymous Pony A.
"Oh good!" Evil Feline A said. "I do love some dinner conversation!"
"Oh great. This is gonna be like trying to bargain with the chimera," grumbled Snack Pony A. "HEY!! Why am I Snack Pony?" Because you look tasty. "I hate my Narrator."
When negotiations fail, GENOCIDE IS THE ONLY LOGICAL OPTION!!! *Alondro is best God-Emperor of Mankind*
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What??!! When did this happened?!