Death Valley Author's Notes · 3:26pm July 20th
So! Death Valley is complete. The longest planned single thing I’ve written. It’s quite a bit more intricate than Hinterlands and Urban Wilds: a longer narrative, an obscene amount of foreshadowing and Chekhov’s guns, multiple plotlines going on at once and interweaving across a larger cast of characters, frequent callbacks and callforwards, stuff like that. Why? Blame Edgar Wright.
Around the time I finished Urban Wilds, I watched Hot Fuzz for the first time. (You should, too!) One of the things I was struck by was the way just about everything in the first parts of the movie gets called back to in the later parts. Everything. I thought, “Y’know what, I wanna do something like that.” Then I realized that, in order to do that, I’d basically need to write the whole thing out before posting even the first chapter, for maximum callbackiness, rather than my usual method of “vague outline of the important bits, fill the rest in as I go”.
Writing like that taught me a lot of things. It’s an interesting process, adjusting what you’ve already written for things that are coming up differently than how you thought they would, hiding in hints where you can… So I might as well share. Spoiler and how-the-sausage-gets-made warning, naturally.
Setup
When I write, I usually come up with the premise first, then the actual plot, then the characters. Writing a sequel is lucky because I already have a few characters assembled for me. In this case, the premise came from the Port Hanshan quests in the first Mass Effect. For those who don’t know, for that part of the game, you spend about roughly half an hour cooped up in a spaceport with a raging blizzard outside, navigating different corporate factions and backstabbing to try to get one of them on your side to get authorization to leave. And me? I’m a sucker for single-location thrillers.
I quickly had an idea blossom: Amanita, traveling to… somewhere or other gets stuck in a hotel during a bad blizzard. As she waits for the weather to clear, she realizes that the guests are hiding something… But I didn’t have much to go on after that and my thoughts kept expanding the setting. A hotel was too small for this, but I liked the isolation brought on by the blizzard. A small town in the middle of nowhere in the Frozen North? That could work just fine.
Once I set about expanding the setting, my mind drifted towards Resident Evil Village. It’s a bit of a monster mash, drawing on a lot of different classical movie monsters for its villains, but I was left a bit disappointed. It didn’t do as much with them as it could have, I thought. So it was settled: I’d stick in as many Universal monsters as I could. Vampires? Werewolves? Mad scientists? You betcha. Let’s just go nuts. Why is Lixivia discovered in a muskeg bog? Because that was as close as I could get to a black lagoon in the North.
So: vampires. They can’t go out in the sun. How can I avoid that? By keeping the setting out of the sun, most of the time. Rjukan is a town in Norway in a valley so deep it doesn’t get sunlight at all from September to March. I went a little overboard with the depths of Midwich Valley, but it sure makes for a distinctive setting.
Speaking of which: Midwich. Named for Carpenter Brut’s “Escape From Midwich Valley”, which has the single best bass drop I’ve ever heard. I let the song set the vibe I was trying to get throughout the story. Sounding like it comes from a Lovecraft story is a plus. Tratonmane, meanwhile, may be the most flexible horse pun I’ve ever come up with. It comes from “tramontane”, a name for a northern wind. But it can also mean “from the other side of the mountains” or even (in the 18th century) “strange, foreign”. Equestrified, it rolls off the tongue nicely.
Now we’ve got monsters in a deep valley. I already want the plot to be twisty. So what’s going to happen? And why is it going to happen to Amanita?
Plot
Once I was thinking of Amanita, the image I kept coming back to was her failing to resurrect a pony. From there, I just needed to ask “How come?” and “So what?” Like, “Amanita couldn’t resurrect a pony. How come?” Well, let’s say she was dead for more than three days… “She was moving. How come?” Maybe her body was possessed by something. A spirit, something along those lines. “There’s a spirit around to possess her. How come?”
And from that came the Deormont.
Eldritch abominations aren’t among the Universal monster catalog, but they’re a classic of modern horror. But I wanted to make it more Equestrian. They’re always supposed to be horrifying and evil… so what if this one wasn’t?
It was like a light went on. “Let’s make friends with the chthonian entity!” Because this is Equestria, of course they can. But if cults are going to seem evil, well, imagine what this one would look like from the outside. And so I got my first twist: assumptions being made about the cult, the cult making assumptions of their own, and a pile of problems simply because they don’t do the pony thing and talk. The town’s secret isn’t that dark, but everyone thinks it is. I even included a dig at Lovecraft in the chapter title “The Shadow Beneath Midwich”. There’s something from beyond the known world, sure, but the shadow is regular old people doing bad things.
So what’s the cult doing with their god? It’s in the North. Food, crops, shelter? Sounds good. Maybe it’s the source of a ley line. And, hey, I still need a way to get Amanita up here… maybe the ley line’s corrupted somehow. But why? Well, I still need to get the vampires and werewolves back in…
Naturally, I’m leaving out plenty of changes across time. The exact nature of everyone went through a lot of iterations. In the initial draft, the vampires, werewolves, and mad scientist were all on different villainous factions, vying for control over Midwich, with the sympathetic Tratonmane cult caught in the middle. The vampires would be the most public, pretending to be Midwich’s nobles and ruling with an iron hoof. I merged all the bad guy factions together and made them secret because I was asking why Tratonmane didn’t just leave, Fuel Vassalage Commission or no. Incidentally, the FVC itself provided both a solid reason why the town didn’t leave when starting out (they were more-or-less ordered to stay there) and a tangible source for their distrust beyond “don’t like outsiders”.
The rest of the plotting isn’t as interesting. I came up with plot points, discarded some, wrote, rearranged, rewrote. Gradually, the fic came together, mushrooming out from a failed resurrection and a nice cult.
As the story took shape, I started leaving hints here and there, all the way from the prologue. Pyrita murmurs out a prayer of thanks as she enters the mind. What’s she praying to? Amanita comments, “Everyone hates midwinter. Midwinter is the worst.” Midwinter laughs after saying that Tallbush isn’t a bloodsucking parasite. More. Some of the clues got picked up on. Some of them didn’t. But there’s a lot of them.
Characters
As I mentioned, characters are usually one of the last things I consider when writing; I’m more of a plot-focused guy. (I’m honestly kind of surprised people like the characters in these fics so much…) But characters need to be there, they need to influence the story and have personalities and goals and an arc would be nice, too. So here are the more interesting ones.
Amanita
When writed started, I planned on just dumping Amanita in the North, sticking her through the wringer with the failed resurrection, and seeing what happened. But first I needed to establish her as the nervous type for new readers, and so came the opening. After Urban Wilds was fairly laid-back as far as reactions to necromancy go, I wanted to push her more out of her comfort zone, partially with the failed resurrection, which would give her more regressive reactions. For instance, after Amanita resurrects the mouse, I considered having her kill it again out of frustration, with no resurrection. After all, her experiences as a necromancer have inured her to violence. I decided Amanita casually snapping the mouse’s neck was already a good enough reminder of that and killing it again would be a bit too much of a stain on her character.
But that wasn’t all I learned. Her two most-used settings turned out to be “wishy-washy, slightly risk-averse” and “this needs to be done so I’m doing it NOW and asking for forgiveness later”. Case in point: in the middle of the night, she decides she needs to go grave robbing(!), so she just gets out of bed and heads for the graveyard right then and there. When she makes plans, I suspect she subconsciously assumes they’re going to go wrong and makes them just to get herself into her action phase. (Remember, she dropped an entire mine on Circe’s head.)
One thing I was able to do quite a bit with this fic that I couldn’t with the others was have Amanita work with dead bodies, one way or another, to the horror of most other people. She’s a necromancer, after all, and I love that she’s the kind of pony who can, say, casually stick her head in a bear’s chest cavity. It also gives the fact that she is a necromancer more weight; she’s not just casually talking about body parts, she’s pulling them out and tossing them around like balls and utterly uncaring about the bodily fluids she’s covered with. Note that, when she’s returning the knife Code gave her to cut open the bear, she wipes the blade down not on the ground or something, but on her chest.
Between the setup, the deaths in the plot, and facing off against other necromancers, this was about as good a use of Amanita as I could get.
Bitterroot
I almost didn’t include Bitterroot, because early drafts had her just sort of hanging around and not doing much. Charcoal was even the one who turned into a timberwolf during dinner, not her. When I decided she was the one to get touched by the Deormont, I was able to work backwards and give her a slow descent towards a breakdown while twisting the tone to be something more eldritch. It fit perfectly and I was able to go back and add more and more bits and pieces to make it happen.
Major thing I learned: when she’s getting pushed from event to event like a pinball, she slowly breaks down, but the second she has enough capacity to steer her own course even a little, she seizes it and manages to calm down. (Why do you think her response to getting caught in a hostage situation was to kill herself in Urban Wilds?) I nearly had her die and get resurrected a third time (dive on a vampire from above and impale them both on a wooden flagpole), but the flow didn’t turn that way.
Restricted Code
Not much to talk about, here. Code’s about as close to an immovable object as you can get. Her eating dirt started as just a worldbuilding quirk before I turned it towards Tallbush and the Deormont.
Charcoal
Charcoal actually didn’t start out as a kirin! She was an older unicorn, still an environmental mage. Along the way, I changed her to a kirin, because why not? It even happened totally independently of the timberwolves. Somewhere along the line, I thought, “Hey, what if Charcoal was transformed and burned her way out? Ha, that’d be neat.” And it took me a hideously long time to realize I was the one writing that.
One of the things I’ve learned about writing darkness, and you probably already know, is that it works better with lightness to contrast. Along came Charcoal’s basic personality: bright, peppy, inquisitive, weak social skills because of her time Silenced. It worked out great. I hope I can find a chance to use her again in the future. And if she’d had a bit more cultural experience with pony stuff, she’d’ve identified Midwinter and her ilk as vampires on the third day.
No, seriously. Charcoal keeps noticing things, asking questions, and getting dissuaded, kept from being suspicious only because of her lack of experience. In the very first hour, she asks Midwinter why she moved out to Tratonmane, only for the conversation to shift.
Tallbush
Named for the Dahlbusch Bomb, an evacuation device used in mining that can fit through incredibly narrow shafts. Modern versions were used to rescue the thirty-three trapped miners in the aftermath of the 2010 Copiapó mining accident in Chile. In other words, with a little bit of outside help, he can pull miners out of bad situations and to safety. Given that he’s a noble (being the Duke of Tratonmane) and, well, a cult leader, I took steps to make him less villainous than the usual: he’s not afraid to work, he’s not snooty towards those “beneath” him, and Tratonmanians aren’t afraid to criticize him or go against his requests if it comes to that. (Arrastra straight-up punches him in the muzzle and has no reprisal!)
Because Tallbush is the Deormont’s messenger, I wanted him to appear angelic when Bitterroot could also see him. The base design started as an analogue to the four-faced cherubim in Ezekiel’s vision, and Sleipnir provided a ready-made motif that could tie into that. Incidentally, one of the foreign languages he speaks to Bitterroot with when she first sees him like that is Romanian. Where Transylvania is.
Midwinter Fire
Her name pretty much gives away the whole plot: it’s another name for Cornus sanguinea, the bloody dogwood. Her being able to go out in the sun is a reference to Dracula, where he could also go out in the sun, but lost his powers in the process. She was sort of the main villain in my mind, steering the vampires and being the one to talk to Amanita while also being subtly dismissive of them all the while. In hindsight, I probably could’ve written her a bit more strongly prior to the reveal.
Considering Arc loves her deeply while she casually lies to him, she’s probably the source of her family’s general messed-up-ness. She swipes ideas from Carnelian, punishes Varnish by aging him, had some reason to kick Lixivia out… I deliberately didn’t explore it much to leave it to interpretation. But there’s a lot I could dig into, if I wanted.
Whippletree
His name’s an old term for the dogwood (guess why). By happy coincidence, it’s also a horse term, being the name for a device that distributes pulling force across several linkages. I needed him to be warm and welcoming so the personality change from the mearhwolf shift would be more obvious. In the process, he became an unexpected friendly face for the Canterlotians, being the one who would hear them out even if the rest of Tratonmane wouldn’t.
Resin Varnish
Named for Varney the Vampire, a mid-19th-century penny dreadful serial that inspired many of the common vampire stereotypes. It was published over fifty years before Dracula and is longer than War and Peace because the author was being paid by the line. He was basically a brute from the very beginning, and as I wrote, I realized I could push him into conflict with Code so their eventual showdown would have some personal underpinnings, hence why they start going at each others’ throats after Whippletree goes missing. His ability to mist up comes from Dracula’s ability for the same.
Carnelian Orchard
Named for Carmilla, a Victorian novella that uses vampires to explore themes of homosexuality (a massive no-no back then). “Carnelian” sounds close to “Carmilla”, while “Carmilla” itself may come from a Hebrew word meaning “orchard” or “garden”. The story was published twenty-five years before Dracula. In my opinion, Carnelian is probably the weakest-characterized of the vampires; I had her just so the vampire group would be rounded out a bit more. I tried to push her towards implications of being the smart, unappreciated one, but I’m not sure if it came through.
Arrastra
Arrastra’s original name was Iron Mattock, which… just didn’t really work for her. (For someone else, sure. Not her.) She began as just a way to put a face to what happened when Amanita failed to resurrect Pyrita, but as I wrote, that expanded to her being protective of her family in general. She was originally the most aggressively suspicious towards the Canterlotians out of all of Tratonmane, but then nothing would change much once Amanita didn’t bring back her sister. By now, she’s old enough that she doesn’t have the energy to care much about them any more. In spite of that, she’s probably the character who changes the most over the fic, simply because of the way her attitude towards Amanita shifts so much so often. I wonder if she has the roughest week out of everyone.
Also, how did she lose her eye? She had an accident chopping trees while trying to be a lumberjack and changed course.
The Deormont
Less of a character and more of a plot device, but characterizing an abomination too much risks making them too human/equine. “Deormont” is faux-Latin-ish for “one beneath the mountain”: deorsum, “below, beneath”, + mons, “mountain”. Much of its writing basically comes from my own dissatisfaction with how abominations are usually portrayed. For instance, the beginning of Bitterroot’s… interaction with it came about because of a weird trend I’ve noticed in cosmic horror: whenever the narration describes how mindbreaking an abomination is, it tends to become poetic, dripping with imagery and metaphor. That is to say, not just not incoherent, but using language that requires considerable focus to craft. I wrote it the way I did to give the Deormont’s otherness more weight: even the narration is reduced to insane rambling because of how strange it is. (I wrote this particular section as stream-of-consciousness-ly as possible with only the bare minimum of edits.) When the narration is speaking in sentences again, it’s because the Deormont is actively trying to protect Bitterroot. I also considered phrasing Bitterroot’s narration (and only Bitterroot’s) during that scene as coming from religious scripture, particularly the NIV Bible, complete with verse numbers.
Similarly, the Deormont “talking” with impressions of intent came from abominations that are supposedly far beyond humanity/equinity, yet still speak. Like, they’re timeless fifth-dimensional beings, and yet they communicate through pressure waves? In atmosphere? To be interpreted as sound? Within the human audible frequency? That can be formed into grammar and a lexicon? And not only that, they understand English/Ponish? Seriously? (And before you say, “they’re higher beings than us, our language is easy for them”, let me ask you: can you speak Worm?) I also had the idea of making its messages have all sorts of random formatting, even making a Python script to do it for me, but the result was too much of a mess to read easily.
Lixivia
Named for lixiviants, a liquid medium used in hydrometallurgy to selectively leach the metal you want from whatever ore or medium it’s contained in. In other words, it’s a liquid that removes something from another thing, much like how Lixivia’s water removes equinity from the ponies drinking it. …Okay, yeah, that’s a stretch. I just found the word “lixiviant” while researching metallurgy and thought it sounded too cool to not use as a name. And she’s… Lixivia’s partially based on me. At one point when I was coding at work, I ran into a problem that seemed to be happening for no real reason and spent hours trying to figure out what was wrong. At one point, I wondered if the computer was doing it just to spite me and it really ought to just work. I quickly realized that thinking that was a stupid, petty thing to think… which made it a promising villain personality. Hence why Lixivia thinks Tratonmane ought to just do what she says and is baffled why it doesn’t. I needed her to make something of an impression in just three chapters. Her overall dismissiveness of the hurt she’s caused, particularly “that was fun”, comes from Owen Davian in Mission: Impossible III, played chillingly by the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman and still the best villain in the series.
Arc Fault
I probably could’ve found a more interesting name for him to go with the others, but it was taking too long. His personality is basically a swipe at another fic on here, which had a villain who was supposed to be sexually aggressive, but that only came out in him saying, “By golly, I sure do love rape!” (That’s not even that much of an exaggeration, he always called it rape.) Arc’s basic personality came from me thinking I could do it better: he’s touchy-feely, he uses pet names that imply Bitterroot belongs to him, he gets a kick out of his power over her, he does his best to control her, and most importantly, he violates her boundaries in multiple ways rather than just talking about it. It was a lot of “fun” writing him, especially since his personality is a radical shift from the rest of the vampires.
As a side note, kuru is a disease that causes shakes and random bouts of sporadic laughter. You get it from cannibalism, specifically eating brains.
Fuligin
I wonder if Fuligin might be pushing the whole “plot twist” thing a bit far; him being Arrastra’s father is largely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. But I wanted the ending to feel more ponyish rather than just having the bad guys getting beat up; something good needed to happen. I nearly had him follow through with his suicide, but decided that Arrastra’s family had been through enough and he deserved a happy ending.
Miscellany
There’s tarot symbolism scattered throughout the fic, ranging from “the fool” being in the name of the first chapter and Amanita telling Fuligin he’s got “all the world before him” in the epilogue, to certain numbers of coins in the right places. I pulled from both arcanas and even took into account whether the card was upright or inverted. It all started from me calling the chapter where “Pyrita” hangs herself “The Hanged Mare”… which got changed when I decided it was too spoilery. (The Hanged Man is usually depicted as hanging upside-down from a living tree, but Pyrita “dies” hanging rightside-up from a dead tree. Inverted, the Hanged Man symbolizes delays, stalling, and stagnation. Tratonmane keeps trying to put off telling the crew about the Deormont, which prevents the crew from being able to do their job and leaves them spinning their wheels trying to figure out what’s up with the ley line and leaves the situation in Midwich slowly falling apart as ponies aren’t honest with each other.)
There are a few things and chapter titles I am very very proud of:
- The opening line: “Necromancy had a PR problem.”
- Amanita holding a severed heart and saying, “It’s just blood! Everyone’s got it!”
- Amanita barging onto the scene of a dead pony, resurrecting them, and walking away with nothing more than, “Questions tomorrow. I’m tired and I’m going to bed. G’night.”
- Chapter 26’s title: “Desecrating the Dead With Friends”
- “How can you be such a powerful necromancer while still being such a… goober?”
Whenever someone’s outside for the first time, take a look at their breath. The vampires’ breath never mists up.
Getting the timing of act 2 down, with Bitterroot’s arc (branding, hallucinations, transformation, breakdown, communion), Arrastra’s family’s arc (Pyrita’s death, Crosscut’s death and resurrection, Whippletree’s search party), and Amanita’s arc (Pyrita’s failed resurrection, Crosscut’s resurrection, grave robbing, the Deormont) was a huge pain, both in writing and in-universe time. It’s basically a giant juggling act making sure we don’t dwell too long on any one element to the point that either it overshadows the other plots or the characters uncover the twist too early while still giving every bit its time and ensuring we don’t get too jarred from one plot point into another, all while avoiding having too many gaps in the chronology where characters spend the day puttering around, waiting for the next plot point. In the end, I managed to make it work by having the different plots basically trip over each other (example: Bitterroot gets branded, but the pain’s gone when Pyrita hangs herself and Amanita’s resurrection fails, so it slips her mind for a while; when she remembers that, the lack of pain is a plot point).
I toyed with the idea of sticking Zecora in the research group with the excuse that, since she lived in the Everfree, she had experience with harsh magical environments. (The pony world needs more zebras in general and more Zecora specifically.) I dropped her not because I didn’t want to work with the rhyming (one of my fics on here is a ten-thousand-word ballad!), but because I wanted every character to have a good-sized role, and Zecora was just one character too many. It’s a shame; I imagine she’d vibe well with Code.
Thanks to scenes like Bitterroot’s capture by Arc or Charcoal’s death, I seriously considered putting the Horror tag on this, and I might’ve if I could’ve fit one more. I decided that since everyone makes it out okay, Drama fit better than Horror.
I bounced around the idea of the crew having a jar of dragonfire to send messages in case they needed to tell Twilight something immediately. When captured by the vampires, Amanita would claim that they were sending messages out daily and Twilight would get suspicious if they missed a letter. She’d write an innocuous letter saying that they still hadn’t found anything of note and that Tratonmane was “almost as quiet as Grayvale” — that is, even worse than a town that a lich destroyed to rejuvenate her phylactery. Lacking the context of Amanita’s past, the vampires wouldn’t see anything wrong and would let her send it. Twilight would send Tempest in response, who would show up during later stages of the climax to provide assistance. Unfortunately, between the already-established travel time and the tight pacing, the timing wouldn’t pan out. It’s probably for the best; several chapters of “Tempest Shadow beats up everyvamp” wouldn’t contribute much to the plot, no matter how fun they’d be to write. Her appearance in the last chapter is half reference to this, half “I need somebody to say this; why not Tempest?”
- The second she saw Tempest, Bitterroot would get a brief toughness crush on her, mentally pronouncing her “battleship sexy”. It wouldn’t develop beyond that one scene, though; picture a celebrity crush.
- Bitterroot’s actions of “get infected with vampirism, get into the sun quickly to burn it out” were originally done by Tempest (she’d convince Bitterroot to carry her up into the high sunlight).
- One of the vampires, not knowing who Tempest was, would mock her perceived softness by saying something along the lines of, “What’re you gonna do? Sing at me?” At which point Tempest would break into song about murdering them: Been thinkin’ ’bout murder up here in the North / ’Cause maybe your death is the reason I was sent forth…
- Another vampire would try to wreck her morale by calling her crippled. Her response: “Oh, Twilight. Is that really your best? The most obvious, most boring insult? I’ve heard worse from ponies who like me. Get creative, you narrow-minded pissant.” Her fighting style would revolve around unstable bursts of magic and telekinesis on herself to augment the strength of her blows.
You’ve gotten this far? Wow. Thank you for reading. Feel free to drop a question in the comments and I’ll answer it!
Not gonna lie that would have been pretty badass/cool. But mmmmmhh...thrice is maybe too many.
Cool to read all the thoughts and planning behind this story.
Hey, was the whole, "soul recognizing the leg prosthetic" thing from cribbing the vampires' notes, or something Equestria already had?
I would love to see tempest, zecora, bitterroot, and amanita doing some live hunting together. That would be epic. Also: excellent story, good show.
5793398
BitterRoot: I sure keep dying on these Amanita Adventures, I wonder if that's a pattern?
5793403
That was something Equestria already had. It's just something they learned through passive observation rather than the active experimentation of the vampires. And it works for what they want, so they don't need to go more in-depth.
Thank you, this was really interesting read. The amount of foreshadowing was impressive, and it's always fun to see things like the ideas behind the names of various characters and such.
And so it ends! What an incredible read. It isn't just that Amanita simply took part in a journey to mend a ley line or to cure Tratonmane of its affliction, it still felt like she was wrapping up the journey she had started all the way back in Hinterlands to heal herself.
I've not been this engrossed with a story or its characters in eons, and there really aren't any words to describe just how glad I am that Bitterroot did make the final cut — she and Amanita compliment each other so well, and I can't help but think that they are an intrinsically inseparable duo; and with Code standing there and being the badass she is is just the icing on the cake. There were so many plot points and yet you weaved them all together amazingly, but as the story is over now, your characters' and universe's absence will definitely be felt. Thank you for writing such a masterpiece!
Code just having two lines' worth of reflection in the AN and one of them being about eating dirt is the best thing ever. She's excellent.
Yeah, considering how much time we'd already spent with the crew, having Tempest come in to stomp the vampires at the last battle would've felt too much like she was stealing their thunder.
I'd say that Fuligin's connection to Arrastra goes a long way towards showing how the vampires have violated the lives of the Tratonmanians, even on a personal level.
Also, for a while, I did wonder whether Fuligin's name was a pun. As in, after Amanita had restored his memories, he won't get fooled again.
One thing's nagging me, though. So, the Tratonmanian technique of sharing magic is not because of the Deormont or the leyline, right? That's quite the revolutionary change that they'll be bringing to the rest of Equestria, then.
Which is itself a very pony way of getting a conflict going.
Clearly that means we need Moondog to interpret.
A fascinating peak behind the curtain. This was indeed an impressive feat of coordination, so it makes seeing what ended up on the cutting room floor even more interesting than usual. And here's hoping Zecora and Code get a chance to interact at some point in the future. Thank you gain for an amazing read.
5793424
I didn't mention it here, since it wasn't as interesting as the other names, but "Fuligin" is derived from "fuliginous", meaning dusty or sooty. I wanted a dark-colored word for his name.
That's the idea, yes. It wound up being less important than I thought it'd be, unfortunately, but any possible stories I write will hopefully expand on it more. (Such as the fact that, if you already have the pony there to share, why not just have them do it? But if you want two different types of magic used in conjunction, having one pony coordinate both is easier.)
5793428
Is thistoo much? Mayb
e.You tell me.No wonder the fic turned out so tightly written, you put a fuckton of effort into it.
No wonder the fic turned out so tightly written, you put a fuckton of effort into it.
5793429
Code did demonstrate one use of it when confronting mearhwolf'd BitterRoot: combining someone with the skill but not the power, with someone with the power but not the skill.
Also, I guess you could let someone be a temporary alicorn while you do paperwork 5 feet away from them.
This is, funnily enough, similar to an unfinished idea of mine, where an Earth pony helps supercharge a Unicorn's spells, via a Soul Eater like set up.
Loved every second of it! Hope to see more of this crew!
My thoughts on the prosthetic: I'd love to see Amanita end up with a custom bone based prosthetic in the future. Something ethically sourced of course. It would be quite fitting and I would think due to her natural talents be extremely easy to connect with. Or maybe metal inlaid with bone or horn to enhance such a binding.
When it came to bitterroot fighting Arc I was slightly confused as to what exactly happened. Due to her wing magically being fixed and her heart stopping I thought she might have turned into a vampire but had it been interrupted so she could exist in daylight. It would have lead to another death in an unconventional way and would have required a conversation if she wanted to stay like that, as I assume Amanita would let her feed.
We also didn't get to see Arrastra and the family get to to talk to her sister and her mother. I think the closure for the family would have been really heart warming to see.
Hopefully in the future we can get a look at Amanita training the equestrian necromancer corps. Who knows maybe one of these days she will die and one of her students will bring her back. I could also see in the far future it's just standard to call her soul to teach lessons on a schedule after she passes of old age. She really is too stubborn to let a little thing like dying and not having a coporial form to stop her from doing good.
5793472
Clearly the most ethically sourced bone is her own! If she can find it in that train wreck
I thoroughly enjoyed the story here.
And seeing you mind behind it is great too.
Good news our lovely necromancer is a unicorn and the prosthetic leg shouldn't be a problem with magic compared to an earthpony. But it dose raise the question if will effect any rituals.
I hope to see more of the plucky necromancer crew. And Code, I love Code.
This was a great story and I think you're right that Zecora is underutilized on the site. Also I agree that Tempest wouldn't really have contributed much to the story. Especially since it wasn't established early on that she was in the guard although if whe were added that would hvae been changed naturally.
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Bitterroot was in the middle of being turned into a vampire when she pulled Arc Fault into sunlight. The sunlight burned both of them I think, but the Deormont kept Bitterroot from being killed by the flames (I think so, based on how she felt the Deormont's brand on her neck after the flames happened).
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Hmm, what about more species-specific magic? Can a Kirin share their Nirik-ism, or a Changeling their shapeshifting?
Awesome. I'll be looking forward to Amanita's future adventures!
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Remember, you need to learn how to use the magic you're given. Earth ponies can share easily, since it's not hard to just be strong. Code was a special case, since she studied magic she couldn't use extensively and so knew how to use it anyway. Kirins turning into niriks is just a thing that happens, so there's probably no difficulty there (except maybe on the kirin focusing enough to share), while someone receiving changeling magic would need to know how to use it to shapeshift. But let's say you start small and have the changeling sharing their magic walk you through the process, or you studied it super in-depth to understand the mechanisms beforehand. I don't see why not!
...*scribbles furtively*
You'll answer all our questions? Hmmmm...
Who's the second cutest necromancer?
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I've actually seen a character like that! Here on Fimfic, in Consequences of Darkness, the sequel to Consequences of Unoriginality, there's a gruff, creepy necromancer who joins the party, and the first thing we learn is that at least one bone leg keeps showing from under his cloak when he moves. One of the other characters confronts him about being a skeleton, and he spits back something like, "It's a prosthetic, you idiot. I'm not a skeleton, that would be stupid."
...and naturally Amanita would be amazing with such a thing.
Pony: "Ahhh! Boney pony!"
Amanita: "Hoofshake?" offers bone leg
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Midwinter, but only by default. Carnelian looks too old to be considered "cute"; Varnish's, Lixivia's, and Circe's personalities are all major turn-offs; and Arc looks sickly and pasty.
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Cut to the next scene of Amanita being chased by every dog in town.
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There's also the question of how much biology is involved. Unless Nirik magic comes with fire immunity baked in, the receiving pony might not have a good time self-immolating.
I am curious about your headcanon for the mechanics of changeling shapeshifting. Does a disguise constantly drain magic? If not, then there's some potential for amusing shenanigans if the shape-changed pony gets separated from the changeling, and thus is unable to change back.
On another note, have you read A Beginners Guide to Heroism, by any chance?
Amanita is tied with Mortal Coil for my favourite necromancer on Fimfiction.
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I haven't given much thought to changeling mechanics yet, since I've rarely written changelings. However, "separated and unable to change back" sounds like something I'd do. Plenty of opportunities for either shenaniganry or plot complications.
Not yet, but... *adds to Read it Later*
If there's one thing that's always stood out to me about this series, it's been just how true to pony you keep the plot, and by extension, the characters.
The use of the Deormont is the most impressively in-tune execution I've ever seen for a concept like it. On top of the setting, its presence and influence made everything feel just like it'd fit into the world of ponies.
You also did a crazy good job with "tripping" those plots. It was a wonderfully orchestrated calamity, and I'm always glad it works out in the ponies' favor. It was a fantastic ending.
Satisfying round-up, and thanks much for writing!
Could the next story involve going outside Equestria? Like maybe they get lost in a massive storm and land in a new undiscovered continent/island chain? Or maybe they visit Zebrabwe!
Something like that.
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If the story universes are connected, technically Twilight did visit the Zebras already in an earlier work.