Notes on The Nightmare · 9:10pm Nov 20th, 2013
-There Will Be Spoilers-
The whole story came from the ideas that filled my head after watching The Mummy. I just had to write it after this scene.
Characterisation then went from this one point, with Twilight of course taking the role of Evelyn (complete with a cute contraction of her name that matched!) and Shining easily fitting into the doofy older brother bit.
The Rick character was one I considered a short while, but it didn’t take long for me to decide that Rainbow would make the best adventurer. Canonically we have her love of Daring Do and the character attitudes and roles were a decent enough match. It really helped that TwiDash is a ship I love to write.
Then I had to figure out the best way to tell the story before I started to slot the others into different roles. A straight re-write of The Mummy but with some of the names changed didn’t appeal to me and might not have conformed to the rules. So I had to choose a villain for the piece. Sombra was tempting, but a motivation for his acts was lacking. Discord didn’t feel like the right fit and Chrysalis wasn’t going to work at all. Nightmare Moon was the only real true “bad” character left.
The Nightmare it became, a neat name. Though now it comes to the real diversion. With a Nightmare taking the place of a Mummy I knew that the story could involve elements of the first two episodes of Friendship is Magic mixed in with the events of the film. Though I was stuck, Twilight as Celestia’s student wouldn’t sit right in the story. I needed a put upon librarian desperate for recognition and a chance to get out into the field. The handpicked personal protégé of a princess wouldn’t be in that situation at all.
So Celestia became the imprisoned princess. It meant I could fix something that often bugged me about FiM too. She loved her little sister so much, I have two younger sisters, one is a decade younger and the other just over a year, there is a lot I would do without question for them. So why did the benevolent Celestia allow her sister to be locked away? After the Nightmare was able to take possession of Rarity in the comics I decided on a little fix.
With the storyline decided in its basic form, I could cast the others and figure out any name changes. Pinkie as a guard was a hilarious and entertaining idea and the actor of the original role is a great comedian, she had to survive though. Rarity and Applejack were easily placed into the rival group’s roles, again I needed to alter that a little to avoid killing off half the elements before the end.
Fluttershy became Mēi Ombao, Khmer for Butterfly, sparking off my other major deviation from the film where I decided to develop the guarding tribe. A’triet took the place of Ardeth Bay, A’triet means Midnight in Khmer.
Luna and Cadence as mother and daughter seemed like a good idea, I hope no one thought it wasn’t too contrived. It let me involve our favourite pink princess more actively and have her act as the concerned guardian in the city.
Hoops as the deserter and rival/annoyance for Rainbow was an obvious move. The other sky-man was Thunderlane but I left him as silent as possible because all he has done in-show was get sick, so I didn’t want to rag on him too much!
Spike did turn up, if anyone noticed. Young Klin, (Klin being a Russian name for a kind of rail spike) growing up under the care of Fluttershy made a nice alternative. Maybe I will give him a bit more of a role in my next Nightmare story.
Once cast, I just let the story go from there.
Land trains are an awesome idea I had, my favourite desert/sand vehicle after the Land Yacht (kite buggy is rated third) and gave a chance for Rage-Shift Twi’. That would then give a reason for The Nightmare to go after Twilight, after all she wasn’t reminding it of a long dead lover in this take on the story!
Not being able to kill the characters off also set Rarity up to be a poor puppet, I pinched the nightmare sequence idea from the comic storyline so that the glam gal would be taken and force their return to the ruins.
I hope nothing felt too rushed or forced as I told the story, it was difficult balancing two sources, my vision for the story, adventure and romance.
Some translations:
Réo – Taken from part of the Vietnamese for Speedy.
Asa Nemänah Kâx - Asa Nemänah is Avestan for Sky (above a point) and Kâx is Persian for Palace. A dreadful mix cadged from trawling wikitionary
Sorani – this one came from a name book that was knocking around the house, it is actually the name of the Kurdish dialect, it sounded nice.
Some other notes.
I decided to make the strong magic be backwards because Zatanna is awesome.
When I wrote the original word document the font I used when Twilight was reading the scroll was NewRocker , though I had to change it for the format here on the website.
Here are links to some songs and music I listened too while writing
Winterspell - Has a good adventure quality to it.
Blackheart - Really puts me in mind of the Guarding Ones through the ages.
El Dorado - Starts off like a desert Bazaar and moves on to high adventure!
Blacksong - Lyrics wise, this one makes me think of The Nightmare.
And the tune I had in mind when the tribe was playing
The Return of the Eagle
Music is a great inspiration for me and helps me concentrate or get in the right mood for writing.
And that’s the notes.
Do you have plans to do the mummy returns?
2300522
! I am developing it in much the same manner as I detailed above. Though this time instead of keeping the elements alive, I have to put them in place as players in the story. I have to re-watch the film soon so I can get a more concrete ideas, but there are already over 1000 words in a document called The Nightmare Returns 
Yes
This is years later that I read this story and you haven't written a sequel so I'm going to hazard a guess and say it's not happening? I really enjoyed this story and would have loved to see that sequel.
5042503
I have some things written, but nothing is satisfactory to me. I would love to write it, but I keep getting stuck. It is very frustrating.