The Order-naries are four mercenaries of Order with the bad luck to be caught up in an inter-dimensional race against a demon named Tau'rin to find seven Gems of chaotic magical power. After failing once again to stop the cycle, the Order-naries find themselves in Equestria, and the Mane 6 become wrapped up in the hunt for the Gems, with the price of failure being the total destruction of Equestria. <<This story is plucked directly from fanfiction.net and is actually my first-ever published fic. The quality probably isn't as good as my current work ,so keep that in mind as you comment.>>
Chapters (17)
Glad to see this here! Loved it on EqD.
yay
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EqD Brought me here, just read the first chapter and I have to say...I have a lot of reading ahead of me.
DUN DUN DUUUUN!
Ah, the story that started it all, well not for me. I sorta back-doored into it all; reading first Of Two Minds and then Order-naries: Vacation. While the later did give me a firm appreciation and interest in these OCs, that wasn't the real reason I read this, rather I was still chasing Trixie, who Heart and Soul had mentioned previously encountering. What can I say? I'm something of a Trixieholic; which is how I got involved in my current writing projects, but I'm not here to shamelessly promote my own feeble literary attempts. Nope. I'm here to laud excessively long rambling praise unto my favorite under-appreciated author.
Being already familiar with the Order-naries, it was rather interesting to only now bear witness to their humble origins, that is if one can call being refugees from over a dozen lost worlds and engaged in an apocalyptic scavenger hunt with an eldritch evil humble. Watching them have to adapt to Equestria was most entertaining, or rather to some extent how little effort it seemed to take, but that's only natural to expect from a crew of planet hoppers and who apparently have even already visited a horse world before. I've already made some comments about them in pervious rambles, but I'll say a bit more here.
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Ashen Blaze: Grim, determined, and every bit the quintessential defector from evil. He above all the other Odinaries is the one who's history I'd like to learn more about. Not just because it sounds like he's lived a rather intense life, but because it's hard to appreciate his road to redemption aspects without having ever seen his former atrocities first hand.
The fact that he could potentially be every bit Twilight's magical equal were it not do to circumstances of world and form grossly limiting his full abilities makes for an interesting concept. Another reason I'd love to see some prequels, so I can see just how frighteningly dangerous he is at full power. For the purposes of this story though his limitations also serve a very practical narrative purpose, preventing an OC from outshining a canon protagonist.
It's also quite entertaining to see his, "I've seen horrors you can only dream of" attitude cause him to continuously underestimate just how dangerous Equestria can actually be, despite its seemingly candy flavored sugar-bowl veneer. It's something I'm quite glad he's mostly worked past in later stories, but here it makes for a delightful character trait.
Gale: An interesting girl. Being the only non-magical member of the team she seems to possess the expected over-shadowed by greatness attitude, even if only minutely. After all, she's got more than her own far share of talents and abilities. It's just in the generally low tech Equestria, and especially due to the limitations of her earth pony form, she can't really bring those abilities to full bare. Even more so than Ash, Gale is the one that truly benefits in later stories from the added time to adapt, as she learns that Equestria's got more tech then first assumed and she figures out ways around her lack of hands. The whole techno trance she goes into with the taffy puller was also lots of fun. It's little quirks like that which really help bring characters to life.
Soul Mage & Gold Heart: The impossible twins, or rather not so impossible now days, but no one could have predicted Baby Cakes when this was first written. An interesting pair, Soul snarky and comical, with Heart as possibly the most level headed of all the Order-naries. That latter trait could seem to make her the least interesting of the team, but as in good comedian will point out the straight-man is a crucial role. The whole Elemental Wheel powers is rather intriguing. Perhaps all the more so because with much of Ash's powers unusable, their abilities become the generally most exotic quality the team brings to the world of Equestria.
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Anyway, back to the story in general, as briefly mentioned with Ash, one of the biggest problems with OCs, let alone a whole team of them, is that they all too often overshadow and obsolete the canon characters. While some might disagree, I firmly believe the Order-naires to be the good kind of OC. Their presence doesn't supplant the Mane-6, but enhance them. They all have their own unique talents and quirks and serve to expand the narrative ensemble. Actually the Order-naries being 4 OCs rather than 1 might actually help even more. It allows for a divers pool of new talents to be dropped into the story without creating a can-do-everything-pony, while the fact that there are 4 of them creates more dynamic opportunities for character interaction than if all the Mane-6 were taking turns talking to a singular new guy.
The elemental gems were an interesting touch, nothing all that original, but as magical plot driving mcguffins go they were effective enough. The gems sort of steel the narrative spotlight, but then again there wouldn't even be much of a story in the first place without them.
Finally, Tau'rin himself made for an interesting villain, even if he wasn't ever really around enough for me to truly get a handle on his nature and motives, though to some extent that unknowableness combined with a "because I can" attitude only adds to his menace. In his Equestrian form I was always given flash backs to the Red Bull of the animated presentation of the Last Unicorn. Actually this whole fic consistently put me in the mood of any number of animated feature films from the 80s. I could almost imagine the Order-naries being stars of their own show, with this story as a theatrical crossover promotional with MLP:FiM. That mind frame probably helped make it very easy for me to accept Tau'rin's seemingly random ability to re-corrupt Luna into Nightmare Moon for the requisite big bad villain team-up moment, though I do rather still wish we could have seen it happen.
So with all said and done, the world saved and the Oder-naries quest over, life in Equestria returns to normal. Well, as normal as it ever is. Gosh, this was a long one, but it's well and truly deserved. My sincerest thanks go out for both this wonderful story and series in general
Loved that bit at the end with Blueblood.
This is quite an interesting story, i'm surprised there aren't more comments on here.
Is this a crossover to something, or did you make these character's yourself? Either way, can't wait to read more I'll probably end up reading the entire story tonight.
wow, great ending. just finished reading the entire story in the last few hours and I must say, this was quite an enjoyable read. The comedic interactions between characters really added to the story overall. Absolutely loved this. I can't wait to read some of these other order-naries stories that you've written
Taur'rin... did the villain role. He had a good mystique at the beginning half, but he seemed to drop out of focus in favour of world-building too much in the second half, and whenever he appeared, it seemed anti-climactic for someone who supposedly beat the four OCs thirteen times in a row. Nightmare Moon was a nice touch, but again that seemed anti-climactic, like the final fight scene was done in a hurry.
I also noticed how short the chapters were near the end. It felt a bit like you were running out of steam just a little bit. Maybe more fleshing out would improve this. Offering the four more resistance could improve the tension as well, as it seemed at times they were having it too easy. Say, Trixie tried to break her promise and run, or Tau'rin gave them a hard time, or we were given scenes of Tau'rin taking over Canterlot so that the revelation near the end wasn't so left-field: something that suggests storm clouds are gathering.
There are also grammatical and orthographical problems, and your style of setting out any paragraphs containing speech is a bit of a no-no. You tend to lump speeches in along with normal writing in long paragraphs when you could simply break it up into smaller paragraphs. You also abuse ";" and "-" a little too often, and your punctuation around speeches is a little off. I'd recommend finding a proofreader to spot the more egregious problems.
The idea of a 'dragon balls' quest is not very original but the way you wrote it kept me glued to the monitor.
) and most of all well balanced. Thank you very much for not making another Mary Sue character, this site is already overflowing with them.
The ocs are very nice with fitting, easy to remember names (Thank Luna you avoided names like Zallanx or Xorgian or whatever
And most of all, you managed to somehow keep the lighthearted mood of the show in spit of world destroying monster. No idea how but you've done it.
I have no idea why this story had so little attention. It definitely deserves some fame, brohoof!
Wow this chapter is alot like the episode Magic Duel that aired just last week!
Yes, Fluttershy stared down a cockatrice!
I love it when Fluttershy gets aggressive. 
746223 You really put alot of thought into this didn't you?
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I had to, CTV here is a great author and not enough folks sing his praise.
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It's all true
I really liked this story. The Order-naries are really well-founded characters and much of what they say and do belies their history and the whole other world they come from. I can't help but want to learn more about the world they came from. I like the fact that they finally defeated Tau'rin in this world with the help of the Elements of Harmony. It seems that they never made it a habit of making friends with the inhabitants of the previous worlds they've traveled to, and they finally defeated Tau'rin by making friends with the Mane 6
Keep up the good work.
Hah! I knew the Diamond Dogs would be involved!
Didn't see that comin...
Lcool!
If the main OCs in this story were voiced, what would they sound like?