Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
“I can’t believe we’re really just going to stay here like this,” murmured Slip ‘n’ Slide incredulously.
“We heard you the first ten times, Slip,” sighed Hopscotch, shifting her weight from her right legs to her left nervously.
“Seriously,” chimed in Funshine. “You keep saying that, but it’s not like you’re coming up with any better ideas.”
“Here’s a better idea for you: we run away!” The last two words were uttered as a strangled shout, his voice only barely kept at normal volume. Even then, it was still enough to cause several of the ponies around them to glance over at him, interrupting their own conversations to send looks ranging from disapproving to uncomfortable to sympathetic at him. But Slip ‘n’ Slide barely noticed, his attention firmly concentrated on the ponies that he’d grown so close to in the wake of what had happened to Vanhoover. “Seriously, we pick a direction and start galloping and don’t look back! Somepony please explain to me why we aren’t doing that?!”
“What good would it do?” asked Granola Bar morosely, though it might have been exhaustion in her voice instead; they were all aware that she hadn’t slept since they’d found out what had happened to Turbo. “We could run until we couldn’t move anymore, and the ghouls would still catch us. They don’t get tired, remember?”
“Besides,” added Funshine. “Sonata said that Lex is going to waste them all, and I don’t wanna miss that.” He sat back on his haunches, clopping his forehooves together sharply. “It’s about time they all got what was coming to them, especially after what they did to Turb-” He didn’t get a chance to finish as Granola Bar cuffed him on the shoulder, shooting him an angry look before nodding toward where Garden Gate was sitting.
Funshine winced, but Garden didn’t acknowledge his faux paus. Of course, that wasn’t unusual; ever since Lex had told them what happened, Garden had become withdrawn almost to the point of catatonia. She hadn’t said one word to anypony, and had barely moved without being prodded to do so. Even now, she simply stared forward blankly, looking at the empty space where Lex and Sonata had been a few minutes ago.
An uncomfortable silence fell over the group then, but it only lasted for a moment before Slip ‘n’ Slide spoke up again, looking at Funshine. “Lex,” he said slowly, as though his brother were a very young child, “is crazy. Whatever dark magic he’s got has obviously driven him berserk. He’s been looking for fights ever since we met him, and now he’s finally found one he can’t win, and we’re all going to pay the price for it.”
“But he is really strong,” protested Hopscotch. “You remember how easily he defeated all of us, right? Plus all that stuff that newsmare was saying he’d done before we met him. And don’t forget how he made all that food yesterday. Plus, I think Sonata’s going to fight with him. I bet she’s really incredible too.” The hope in her voice bordered on desperation, wanting to believe that a miracle was possible.
But Slip 'n' Slide had no such hope. “They’re just two ponies against all the ghouls. Literally, she said all of them were coming here! That has to be, what, a hundred of them? Two hundred? Three? And the two of them are going to defeat them all, completely on their own, without letting any get past them and reach us?” He paused to let that sink in. “I’m telling you, they’re both going to get eaten, and then we are too.”
“It would serve them right for stealing from my mom’s bank,” snorted Piggy. His face was still twisted in the same scowl he had been wearing for over twenty-four hours, ever since he’d heard about how – and more importantly, why – Lex was sending a team into Vanhoover. “Those awful temptresses too, they got what they deserved for embarrassing me like that and trying to take what didn’t belong to them. Them and those idiot sailors-”
“-and Turbo?” finished Hopscotch, her voice taking on a dangerous tone as she glared at the fat little earth stallion. She wasn’t alone either, with Funshine and Slip ‘n’ Slide giving him dark looks. Granola Bar didn’t, but she pointedly turned her back on him, moving to sit closer to Garden Gate, as though worried about how the unresponsive mare would react to hearing their deceased companion’s name. But the cursed mare continued to gaze straight ahead emptily. “Is that what you were going to say?” continued Hopscotch. “That Turbo got what he deserved too?”
Blanching, Piggy looked around nervously, twisting his head around to glance at everyone else as a look of worry broke through his sulking. Folding his ears back, he lowered his head and shuffled a hoof listlessly. “…those loose mares probably tricked him,” he muttered uncomfortably, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “I’m sure he didn’t know what their plan was.” It was a grudging admission, which was the only kind he knew how to give, and even then only because everypony was suddenly picking on him. If my mom was here, she wouldn’t let any of you talk to me like that! And she wouldn’t have let that awful unicorn even think about taking our money either!
Despite the resentfulness of his capitulation being obvious, the others turned away from him, mollified. “Anyway,” started Slip ‘n’ Slide, only to trail off. For some reason Piggy’s outburst had undercut his anxiety, replacing it with a sense of bitter fatalism. “…nevermind. It’s probably too late now anyway.”
“They’re coming back,” announced Granola Bar suddenly, sitting up straighter as she peered ahead.
“Huh?” blinked Funshine. “Who?”
“Lex and Sonata. They’re coming back.”
“I’m just saying, I think a really big cage would be better.” Sonata’s voice was light and airy as she spoke, as though she were discussing her favorite flavor of ice cream. “Or maybe, like, a super-huge fortress with giant walls and stuff. And a big moat, filled with those fish that eat people.”
“The ghouls would throw themselves against an obvious fortification, Sonata,” replied Lex levelly, holding the scroll in his telekinesis. “They might be insane, and I suspect that a consequence of that is that their sense of self-preservation has atrophied to virtually nothing, but they’re not stupid. The sight of a defensive structure large enough to hold a great number of ponies would inevitably invite a siege on their part. I want them to take one look at this and completely lose interest.”
“Something boring then,” she grinned, determined to be helpful again. “In that case, how about a croquet course? It’s totes a more-boring version of mini-golf. Or maybe cakes that don’t have any frosting on them. It doesn’t get any boring-er than that!”
“…just tell everypony what’s about to happen,” sighed Lex.
“Roger!” Not noticing his lack of enthusiasm, Sonata saluted and trotted toward her box, still sitting right where she’d left it.
But this time, Lex didn’t go with her. Instead, he hung back waited until she’d started to address the crowd before he turned his attention to the scroll in front of him, more specifically to the tenth of the eleven spells it contained. If the theory that Sonata had given him was correct, and he managed to successfully cast this spell by forcing energy through the scroll, then in theory the problem of keeping the ghouls away from everypony would be taken care of, leaving him free to devote the bulk of his efforts to annihilating the undead ponies without needing to keep them at bay.
Ironically, this spell wasn’t even designed to be defensive in nature. There was a defensive spell on the scroll – the very first one, in fact – but it wasn’t suitable for the current circumstances. It relied on enchanting a place or a thing so that it created a powerful sense of antipathy in a particular type of creature, driving them away from it. But that enchantment was mind-affecting in nature, and as he’d told Sonata, the undead had no vulnerability to such things. They wouldn’t even have noticed the magical aversion created by the spell, going right through it to get to everypony.
But the same couldn’t be said for this spell. Although it didn’t actually create any protective elements, it was designed to cover a large area in a powerful illusion. With it, he could effectively make whatever he wanted appear, or disappear, from the affected area, altering sight and sound to his whim. Of course, direct interaction would potentially reveal that something was amiss – a pony made to look like a tree would still feel like a pony if touched – but that was why Lex wanted to cover the place in an illusion that would make the ghouls lose interest immediately.
But that’s purely academic if this doesn’t work, frowned Lex as he raised the scroll in front of him. In theory there was no real danger here; despite the brief amount of time he’d had to review the writing on the parchment, the spell appeared to have safeguards in place designed to prevent the magic from running wild if something went wrong. In the event that the casting was disrupted, it should simply short-circuit and fail to take effect. That would waste the energy involved, but presuming that didn’t completely debilitate him, he would be able to try again since the writing would remain.
But over the course of his life Lex had learned, repeatedly, that theories quite often failed to live up to reality. In this case, he was using the scroll in a way it hadn’t been originally designed for. It was entirely possible that something would go wrong, some unforeseen complication would occur, and that the entire process would produce unintended consequences. But even if it didn’t, a failure would mean that he’d still have to start the casting process all over again, and this spell wasn’t one that could be invoked quickly, not to mention that he’d have pushed himself- Enough! Forcing his anxieties from his mind, Lex let out a slow breath and waited for Sonata to finish informing everypony as to what he was doing and what they should do. Fortunately, it didn’t take her very long to explain; the instructions consisted of letting them know that he was using an illusion, and that they needed to remain within the area of its effect in order for the ghouls not to notice them.
Even as he took a breath and began to prepare to start reading, Lex was already thinking ahead. He’s chosen to do this first not only because safeguarding everypony else came first, but because he wasn’t sure how much he’d be able to endure channeling more energy through himself, and this was the lengthiest of his last-minute preparations. Ergo, it had to be undertaken before he’d depleted his stamina any further. After this, he’d need to balance how much further he could push himself via enhancing his magic items and how much he’d need to conserve his strength for the actual battle. Assuming that this left him with any stamina at all…
Refusing to get drawn into that line of thought again, Lex forced all extraneous thoughts from his mind as he began to read.
Fencer watched silently as Lex started casting his spell.
She idly ran her tongue over the small knife in her mouth, feeling the sharp edge of the blade. Her jaw ached from carrying it there for so long, having managed to swipe it when nopony was looking, but she bore the discomfort silently. She knew that her prolonged silence was worrying her friends, but the thought was distant, as though she was thinking about the weather on the other side of Equestria. It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered. Not comfort. Not her friends. Not surviving the night. Nothing.
All that mattered was that it was almost time to take revenge for Turbo’s death.
Lex prepares to use a powerful illusion to hide the camp ponies, but will he be in any shape to fight after he casts it?
Meanwhile, Garden Gate has reverted to being Fencer again! Is Lex in danger from one of the very ponies he's trying to protect?
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I finally catch up, and hit a doozy of a cliff hanger, just like almost every chapter Tbh, can't wait for the next one.
Best time for the insane to strike is right when Lex cannot interupt his casting spell, which means the spell fails, Lex is injured and everyones life is in danger, but hey, at least they got revenge.
So the Fencer persona returns, most likely as a subconscious means of protecting Garden from feeling the lost and despair over Turbo's death and while the last line implies that she's seeking to kill Lex for his part in Turbo's demise, I doubt that's the case. She has seen how dangerous Lex could be so it would be foolish of her to attack Lex given how little she knows of what he's capable of(including the defensive charms on his body) as well as the effects of her curse. Given how calculative 'Fencer' was, I doubt she'd forget what Lex is capable of.
Personally, I think she's waiting for the ghouls to arrive so she could kill as many ghouls as possible before she's killed since it's possible that she sees herself as the one responsible for Turbo's death since he volunteered in her place. So in a roundabout way, she's seeking vengeance on herself. A little crazy but I feel a little crazy tonight so why not cut loose.
Then again, given how little regard she has for her own safety or anything else for that matter due to Garden's grief, it is still possible she's looking to kill Lex even if it's the last thing she does. So who knows what will happen, certainly not me...and possibly you either.
8926474 I'm glad you're liking how things are unfolding! Stay tuned, there's a lot more on the horizon!
8926625 That's the thing about revenge: it tends to be self-destructive.
8926920 Heh, while it's true that a lot of what happens catches me by surprise, I don't go into things completely blind. I do have (sometimes rather vague) plans for how various scenes and arcs will go...it's just that sometimes, those plans get completely overturned as I'm writing, which catches me off-guard as I realize that what I've outlined in my head won't work anymore.
Of course, that means that I can never really guarantee anything with any certitude, but there's little that I can do about that. Heck, the original conception of Lex didn't involve Everglow or Ponyfinder at all, for example, and when I started writing his adventures down I was intending to ship him with Twilight rather than Sonata (though really, David Silver is
to blameresponsible for those particular changes)! So in a very real way, there's no point to me saying that any particular guesses for what will happen are right or wrong, because I might very well overturn myself later.We'll just have to find out together, I suppose.
Oh dear... The problem with illusions like this is that all it takes is one huge idiot (like Fencer) to spoil it for everyone.
Sonata will need to do some kind of calming effect on the refugees to get them to sit still and shut up for a while.
Here's a prediction: Piggy's mom will be one of the ghouls!
8927031
First, I'm really impressed with the research you've done.
I'm not saying that Tolkien is responsible for a majority of that content, but he might be responsible for a plurality of that content (ie, more than any one other author, but much less than all the authors you've mentioned). Not just the specific examples you mentioned of races, but a lot of the deeper elements of quests. Things like having small quests near ones home village that grow into big world-saving quests over time. An ancient empire that created powerful and magical artifacts lying in dungeons but was destroyed through its hubris. A diverse pantheon of gods with multiple evil deities working together.
Now, I definitely agree this stuff wasn't really present in early D&D, Keep on the Borderlands has basically nothing in common with Tolkein. I think if you look later on, in the late 70s and 80s, when the Dragonlance setting was created, when big world-saving campaigns like Against the Giants/Drow were rolled out, they owe more to Tolkein than earlier things. And of course, as you point out,
a lot of other authors created more mechanics for specific classes than Tolkein did (though I thought Law and Chaos come more from Michael Moorcock), but any setting book I've ever read about ancient empires or the gods reminds me more of Simirillion than anything else. (Heck, Kingmaker reminds me a lot of Farmer Giles of Ham). The Pathfinder Adventure Path, for all the flaws we've talked about here, owes a huge debt to Lord of the Rings.
I definitely agree on early pulp as well. Part of why I give so much credit to Lovecraft is that his active cross-promotion with other fantasy authors means he should get almost a co-writers credit for Fritz Leiber and Robert E Howard, both of whom also contributed immensely to early D&D.
Yeah, it sounds like it'll be like current Pathfinder. LG Paladin, LE Tyrant, CE Blackguard, and probably a really dumb name for a CG type. Those classes might be mechanically almost identical, but there were still people outraged by the very concept that you couldn't have a class named "Paladin" for every alignment.
Well, the witch is unique in that their class abilities are effectively unlimited, since you can always cast them on a different enemy. That said, I've played with a very casual player who wanted to avoid all danger, and he would try and play a bard who just used bardsong in every fight and then hung back. I think that's the point of the Envoy in Starfinder, so casual players have a class with unlimited party buffs that can "do something" every round without having to expose themselves to a lot of danger.
I think it would be really frustrating to play with someone like that in Eclipse. If they just grab the first powers they see without doing the research, you're talking about a pretty random grab-bag of abilities flailing about every combat (and every skillcheck too).
8927485
Thanks! Though I didn't consider it "research" as much as I did "fun"...which I just realized is exactly what Twilight would say.
There's no real way of measuring what a "plurality" would constitute, since you're going to get into different measurements about how exactly to count the content derived from various authors. Does the use of prepared/memorized spells (not the specific spells in question, but rather the very nature of spellcasting involving that particular system), which comes from Jack Vance, count as "more" than the presence of elves, dwarves, and halflings? And that's just with regard to specifics; I honestly don't think that you can assign Tolkien any sort of primacy where things such as "quests to save the world" or "lost treasures from ancient empires" are concerned. Certainly, he didn't come up with "a diverse pantheon of gods with multiple evil deities working together" - even if we take the Silmarillion into account, the number of evil "deities" (if we can call Melkor-Morgoth and Sauron that, since they, as Valar and Maiar, were more akin to angels in a monotheistic "pantheon") remains at two, and they didn't so much work together as one of them was the minion of the other, who took over after his master bit the dust - and that's something more akin to what we see in Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword (though the "works together" part might be a stretch).
The pulps had a lot of picaresque elements to them, to be sure, but they weren't devoid of epic quests either; we need look no further than E. R. Burrough's John Carter of Mars series to see that. Likewise, Anderson's works were often religious in their overtones, having the same Manichean-esque levels of "primal goodness vs. absolute evil" that Tolkien would also use. And of course, fantasy elements were everywhere, from de Camp's Harold Shea to Howard's Conan the Barbarian. Gygax is fairly open about who among his list was, to him, most notable in setting the tenor of D&D, saying right there in Appendix N: "The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt."
There's a lot to unpack here, so I'll start with some of the more obvious stuff. First, the advent of Dragonlance in 1984 with DL1 Dragons of Despair wasn't quite the beginning of the "Hickman Revolution" (so named for Tracy and Laura Hickman, who were the driving force behind it) that supposedly ruined everything. It had actually begin a few years earlier when the Hickmans started writing their own adventures prior to TSR picking them up. You can see it in the guidelines the Hickmans set for themselves.
However, the adventures that collectively made up GDQ1-7 Queen of the Spiders, beginning with 1978's G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief and ending with 1980's Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits is slightly less clear. That's because there's some evidence to suggest that the adventures didn't unfold the way they were originally intended to (notice the intriguing connections that series has to the Temple of Elemental Evil). In point of fact, based on what's there, those adventures would have ended up being even more epic than they were, because the PCs would have had a chance to not only send Tharizdun further into banishment, but potentially get rid of Lolth at the same time.
Now, there's a distinct difference in tone between the Dragonlance adventures and the adentures in Queen of the Spiders, which I largely attribute to the former having a great deal more characterization and the presence of a powerful-yet-distant "good" side of things that's trying to counterbalance the much more active evil (characterized by a godlike presence that wants to manifest itself directly in the world). By contrast, in the GDQ adventures you're pretty much confronted with different evils and no overarching goodness guiding you (though you might be able to turn the evil forces against each other, i.e. the civil war going on in Erelhei-Cinlu). Likewise, in GDQ you do have some overviews of the villains, but it's comparatively paltry compared to what Dragonlance offered, and beyond them there's little fleshing out of anyone else (and certainly a dearth of tragic characters or other examinations of motivation).
All of which is to say that while I can see elements of Tolkien in the tone of the Dragonlance materials (though that's not necessarily definitive), I don't see the GDQ adventures as having any real elements of that. Quite the contrary, they seem distinctly lacking in such elements.
(Regarding Moorcock, his first Eternal Champion stories - which I believe is where his use of Law and Chaos came from - began in the early '60's. By contrast, Poul Anderson began using Law and Chaos in Three Hearts and Three Lions, published in 1953. I've heard it said that Moorcock has flat-out admitted that he took the idea from Anderson, though I can't find a direct quote.)
Well, bear in mind that Lovecraft openly stated that his own views were broadened by the (incredibly voluminous) correspondence that he kept, which was likely true for the people in the "Lovecraft circle" as well. Robert E. Howard, for instance, disagreed with Lovecraft regarding the overarching nature of human civilization (Lovecraft thought that it was the best part of humanity; Howard thought just the opposite).
I believe it, and while I understand the dynamic regarding alignment- (and, for that matter, elemental-)parallelism, I'm less sympathetic to it now than I was several years ago. I'm personally fine with the idea of certain things being intrinsically characteristic to one area and not another, though those other areas should have their own things that are unique to them as well. It's why I like there being angels, demons, etc. but not "angels" that serve all deities regardless of alignment (i.e. the way it was in 4E).
Well, there's always the kineticist.
That said, I know this isn't quite what you meant, but I've always associated those sorts of play-styles with a distinct sense of disinterest; we all know someone who's playing but isn't really interested in the game (or at least, in a certain area of the game, such as combat) and whose eyes glaze over when things get to that part. Ironically, there's some evidence to suggest that at least a few things (in certain editions) were designed with those players in mind. Remember how the healer base class in the Miniatures Handbook was referred to as "the girlfriend class"?
Well, the idea is that such a person would have an idea for a character that was based around narrative/descriptive characteristics and could then utilizing the more-flexible mechanics to build such a character, leading to them being more engaged. If they're just taking powers willy-nilly, then they're not likely to be very effective (and if they can't even come up with an idea, then the problem seems much more fundamental).
8927439 Well, the screen spell that Lex is using is pretty powerful, so it won't collapse if someone does something dumb...but that could give anyone observing it a chance to make a Will save to realize something fishy's going on.
Note that Sonata did calm the camp ponies down...but it was an area-affect ability on her part, and some ponies doubtlessly made their saving throw.
As for that last one: no comment!
8929212
Never in my life have I more wanted a meme that's a quote of Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds shouting NERD, over a picture of a D&D Ogre.
That's fair.
I feel like a lot of the Valar represents the way a typical D&D deity functions. They are incredibly powerful but not as powerful as our classic ideas of a deity, with a specific area of concern, and active in certain areas but bound by rules about how they interact with mortals. Of course, Tolkein got a lot of that by swiping from the Norse Pantheon.
Thanks for the link. It's a good article about not only Tolkein's influence on Dragonlance, but Dragonlance's influence on later D&D.
Yeah, that's a recurring theme, Gandalf to Fizban and Elminster, though Mordenkainen was more of a neutral force.
That's a good point. One of the ways I think Tolkein was different from a lot of other authors was his greater reliance on happy endings. Good was destined to triumph over evil and all that. Most of the other authors' fiction seemed to lean more towards the tragic, and I think you can observe that effect in a lot of early D&D, where there is much less of an assumption that the PCs will save the day for everyone.
Agreed. Having one side be much more powerful than the other side doesn't work, then there's no ongoing conflict. But opposing forces should have mechanical differences and not just flavor.
Yup, the bard player I referenced only plays when his boyfriend is GMing, and the ranged character who never tanks only plays when her husband is also there.
8929573
I usually go for the Homer Simpson "NEEEERD!" meme (from Homer Goes to College) instead, but that one works just as well. Of course, I wonder if a picture of a troll would be more appropriate there.
I'm no Tolkien scholar (though I like to think I've got some game where D&D scholarship is concerned), but I always associated the Valar's areas of responsibility with being more akin to how the Catholic Church describes the various angels as having specific spheres of concern. Given that Tolkien himself was Catholic, and Eru Ilúvatar was quite clearly God, that seemed like the most plausible explanation to me.
Yeah, it really was a notable development in the evolution of the game (which, as that article notes, is "evolution" in the truest sense of the word; adapting in a manner necessary to survive and thrive in a given environment).
Well, when I referred to a "powerful-yet-distant 'good' side," I was referring to celestial deities that remained deliberately removed from the conflict, providing only covert or indirect aid. That is, sending Gandalf back to life, or Fizban acting as little more than a bumbler who only appeared infrequently. Contrast that with Sauron wanting to reconstitute himself physically, or Takhisis wanting to enter Krynn directly.
I think that your third sentence here is particularly salient, and stands in contrast to the sentence before it. A notable element in Tolkien's stories is that he made the necessity of good overcoming evil be in-character with regards to how his universe is constructed. That is, it's not just an issue of narrative structure; the Silmarillion tells us that the nature of evil is that it is fundamentally an aberration from Eru Ilúvatar's (i.e. God's) design of the universe. Because of that, it necessarily corrodes over time, inevitably losing strength until it can't help but be overcome by goodness. This isn't really something you see in a lot of other stories; even Poul Anderson's tales make it clear that Chaos could potentially conquer the world (but hadn't, since the stories that deal with that tend to be at least somewhat historical in scope, and make it clear that the advancement of human civilization means that Chaos loses). Other pulp authors aren't so much "tragic" to my mind as they don't assume the presence of an omnibenevolent over-deity, nor the primacy of "goodness" and its necessary ultimate triumph.
Personally, I like the pulp take on that better, since the universe requiring you to win sort of makes individual heroic effort seem less, well...heroic, to my mind.
There's a sidebar in the old Complete Paladin's Handbook where it talks about why there's no anti-paladin in AD&D 2nd Edition (though an NPC of a "fallen" anti-paladin did sneak into an adventure in Dungeon magazine's late in 2E's run). Basically, it says "the nature of goodness is to have quality individuals who are few in number. By contrast, the nature of evil is to have large numbers of beings that cannot match the paladin. The anti-paladin throws off that dynamic, and so we eschew its inclusion here." While I can see a lot of people disagreeing with that, I find myself appreciating that reasoning.
If Fencer kills Lex... wait, she's smart enough to know that... uh oh.
9219880 Yeah, she's not exactly coming across as stable, here.
(No pun intended.)