Bridge Universe Building: Equine Powerhouses · 12:39am Nov 12th, 2014
The Kaiju'verse isn't the only universe with some great powers in it. This post is more or less my headcanons and thoughts on how powerful someone is in the story. Now this isn't a canon listing, it might conflict with other's views; it's just my viewpoint. Now, in this post I'm only going to cover
1. Characters, not artifacts (like the Crystal Heart or Elements)
2. Non-Mane 6 Characters as it seems like the Mane 6 is most powerful when working in a unit, elements present or not.
Princess Cadance - Now everyone's pretty pink princess in a posy dress does seem like a bit of an odd book to read. Some of her more powerful feats seem to be more so when she's super charging someone with her magic, such as powering up Shining Armor to force Chrysalis out of Canterlot, rather than it is acting by herself. And as the biggest conduit of Love magic, she definitely can lend a lot of power. However, I think there is some hints to show how strong she is on her own. During the Crystal Empire opener, she single handed (hoofedly?) held up a citywide shield that both kept out King Sombra, and projected a more happy, pleasant image to the populace. Sombra's no slouch as we'll see later. Now true, her shield did falter eventually. However, before it fell she basically was holding up the largest shield we've seen in the show that was being attacked by a pretty potent force, and held up said shield for hours if not days on end. Now true, Sombra might not have been near full power when he was attacking it. But, that feat is still pretty darn impressive. That, along with the fact she'd been an alicorn for awhile and was Celestia's pupil; makes me think she's probably stronger than her husband. Now her full potential for using magic combative wise may be lower than Twilight, considering the latter's talent, but given Cadance's older age and feats I do think she's the more powerful of the two 'ascended' alicorns at the moment; if only by a bit.
Queen Chrysalis - Now this is an odd measure because we'd need to guess Chrysalis' power in her normal state, rather than engorged on love. When engorged on love, we know she's at least a bit more powerful than Celestia. But this is a case of outside force, comparable to us letting Celestia use the Elements of Harmony. By the same token, we can't quite count examples where she is 'starved' of love, like when a magic bursting, 'Avatar State' Twilight managed to overpower her in the comics. So we'd need to know how strong she is in her base form on more or less neutral love. We can guess she's powerful given she seems to be the alicorn version of changeling. The best presumption I can get for her is based on her interaction with Cadance. We know she imprisoned Cadance below Canterlot, and judging from the pink alicorn's appearance, likely fought her. So if Chrysalis won, we can presume she probably is a bit stronger than Cadance. However she may not be as strong as Celestia or Luna without being engorged on love because her plan seemed to be set to avoid fighting either of them for as long as possible even when only one of them was in the castle at the time. So I'd say she is probably a bit stronger than Cadance, but probably weaker than Luna. Now this is without assuming Chrysalis took Cadance by surprise in an ambush or had outside help.
King Sombra - Sombra's feat in taking over an Empire, pretty easily defeating a pretty powerful unicorn in the form of Shining Armor; and wearing down Cadance all seem to imply he's a force to be reckoned with. Similarly, in the flashback we see it took both Luna and Celestia (Fall of the Empire rustled my jimmies for what they did to Tia) to overpower him; abet pretty easily. But the fact two immortal alicorns showed up to fight him and his odd appearance definitely seem to imply he's pretty far beyond a normal unicorn. If he wasn't very strong and maybe not near their level, it could be understandable for only Celestia or Luna alone to attack him. The best evidence I can get for him is from his Mirror Universe counterpart in the IDW comics. In the Mirror'verse, Sombra is the benevolent ruler of Canterlot and Celestia & Luna are conquering tyrants. Judging from the dialogue and fights, Sombra could at least hold off one of the two sisters alone and force them back a bit; but the two together gave him a lot of trouble and he was losing. This makes me think that he's roughly on par with one of the two, maybe a bit stronger, maybe a bit weaker depending on circumstances. This puts him somewhere between Cadance and Luna as I see it.
Princess Luna - Ok, gonna be unpopular here. Princess Luna is the weaker of the two ruling sisters. I don't think they are equal, I definitely think there is a power difference. However, as she stands, Luna is still HUGELY powerful when at full strength. In the IDW comics the times she throws down it's pretty clear she is stronger than most others. From shrugging off a direct hit by Nightmarity to her mirror counterpart taking on Sombra or the entire Mane 6 at once. With that said, I'd affirm what I say above in that she's about equal to if not a bit stronger than Sombra. Setting might also matter as some headcanons put one of the sisters as stronger at their respective times (day and night), and this is not regarding her non-combative potential such as dream-walking which could give a lot of utility.
Princess Celestia - Hold your torches Luna fans, I have a reason for what I said. Several actually.
1. Celestia is older than Luna. Age means experience. And we see from 'Diary of the Two Sisters' that Tia was just as big of a study egghead as Twilight. Match that with more time to practice magic (both from age and from not being sealed away as a Nightmare for 1,000 years), and Celestia probably has a better grasp on both modern and ancient magic forms than her sister. This brings more cards to the table. And given she's been Twilight, Cadance, and Sunset's teacher, we can also infer that she knows most of the spells we see those three pull off with a few exceptions.
2. Luna needed to grow into a more powerful state to fight Celestia. We know based on how Nightmarity was leagues stronger than Rarity, and that Nightmare Moon is more mature and older than Luna; that the Nightmare form does grant a power boost on some level. Thus for Luna to have to change into Nightmare Moon to start going after Celestia, we can infer that Celestia was at least a bit stronger than Luna was at that time. Otherwise Luna probably would have gone on the offensive in her natural form first.
3. Celestia holds back, A LOT. We see this in both the books and the comics she's featured in. This is partly because it seems she doesn't want to risk hurting others in the crossfire, partly because she is well aware how strong she is at full strength and doesn't want to accidentally overdo it, and partly because she wants others to learn to solve their own problems unless she is needed to step in. The one on-screen time we've seen her go full tilt in a fight with no regard for anyone else was her Mirror Counterpart going on a rampage. In said rampage she effectively mopped the floor with everypony around her, including Luna (abet it was a surprise attack).
So while she is certainly not a god and has limits, I am inclined to think Celestia is probably the strongest of the main heroines/heroes in an upfront fight. I think Luna going all out could hold Tia back for awhile, but the younger sister would lose eventually. So while not that much incredibly more powerful than the others on this list, I do think Celestia is quite the powerhouse. If Luna was 80/100, I'd say Celestia is 90/100.
* Now I will include a special clause here because the two Royal sisters do seem to have two distinct states. Alone and when near each other. Implied by the books and comics, it does seem that if Celestia is near Luna or vice versa, both sisters get a power boost. This was more direct in the Mirror Universe comics when we had an offscreen fight between the Main!Celestia and the Mirror!Sombra vs. Mirror!Celestia and Mirror!Luna. The heroic Celestia lost. However, this would seem a bit odd as that world's Sombra is on-par with Mirror!Luna and in theory, Celestia and her counterpart should be even. But then some dialogue later on shows that Sombra has had a much harder time fending off Mirror!Celestia ever since Mirror!Luna joined up with her, even if it was just one of the two attacking him. This implies a change. And then back to the Tia vs. Tia fight, if the two are identical in power; any difference between them that determined the fight may have been because Mirror!Luna was close by. Time and time again we get the statement from Celestia that "Luna and I were meant to rule/work/fight together."
So for my headcanon, having one of the two present does increase the power of both alicorns significantly. So applying this to 'The Bridge', Princess Luna alone was dead even with Unicorn!Godzilla Jr. and mostly broke the tie based on luck. However if Celestia was nearby, Luna could have overpowered Junior at least a bit more easily. This same boost applies to Celestia in a similar situation.
Nightmare Moon - Having my thoughts on Celestia and Luna aside, this one is pretty easy. Nightmare Moon is the strongest alicorn so far. Done. I infer this because we know the form does grant some type of power boost and because Luna is already a very powerful host. Now the boost in power may or may not be gigantic as her fights with Celestia are a tad inconclusive. We know Celestia was extremely reluctant to fight, if not didn't want to fight at all during the two times they crossed horns; whereas NMM was going for the throat. So this leaves NMM at a bit of an enigma. She may be about equal to Celestia, she may be slightly stronger and just this and the previous power level resulting in a win because Tia was reluctant to fight. Or she may be much stronger than Celestia regardless of if Tia fought back or not. It's kinda up in the air for me.
I'll do Tirek and Discord later.
So in a nutshell, the rankings I'd put Equestria's top equine magic users (least those living or recently living) from lowest to highest is
Princess Twilight Sparkle
Princess Cadance
Queen Chrysalis
King Sombra
Princess Luna
Princess Celestia
Nightmare Moon
Your theories are well thought out. I've felt that NMM might be a bit more powerful than Celestia, even if Celestia fought back, given how Lauren Faust said in a twitter post that when NMM returned, she banished Celestia to the sun.
2589043 Where exactly on twitter did you learn the 'Banished to the Sun' fact?
2589228 Youtube user Inkrose posted a pic of the twitter post in a vid of her's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFv1pcJe00U
You'll see the pic of the post at 6:30 in the vid.
It's a shame we never got a real showdown, let alone character development for King Sombra. There should have been more to this guy than just "Grr Crystals". I don't even think the show has touched on the usage of dark magic since then. Too much wasted potential if you ask me
Still discussing power levels on the internet is often a fruitless endeavor. But you seem to have ruminated on this for sometime, and even brought up some points I hadn't considered. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this matter.
i think we can just naturally assume that discord is stronger than both luna and Celestia together since they needed the elements to beat him. Tirek in his non withered from seems to match discord with his Amped form being strong enough to with stand the Twilight fueled by Cadance, Celestia, Luna's magic. i'm really not sure i like the idea that cadence started as a normal pony and then somehow became an alicorn it just seems off to me.
2594252
Going off origin story given in her book. Apparently she was originally a pegasus who ascended into the same realm Twilight got put into to become an alicorn, abet via love magic rather than friendship magic.
2594491 until such time as that is brought up in the show I'm going to consider that non-canon. if you like it that fine it just doesn't sit right with me is all.
Tirek and Discord are tricky to powerscale, though for entirely different reasons. For Tirek, it's because we aren't sure where his "standard" form is; however, given it took Celestia, Luna, Scorpan, and possibly Starswirl together to imprison him, he's got no shortage of raw power. I'd say the level just before he took Discord's magic is a good measure.
As for Discord, I'm actually going to say that he's not all that much more powerful than Celestia and Luna. Problem is, his magic basically manifests as toon force, which makes him punch well above his weight class, so to speak.
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Very well thought out. I'd agree that Tirek would be hard to measure as his power flip flops so much and given his energy draining nature, doesn't seem to have a hard limit. I'd say his 'true form', or at least the form he spent the most time in during the past, would be somewhere between the state he drained Shining Armor and the state he fought Twilight in. Putting a rough estimate on it, I'd say this makes him somewhere in the ball park of 1.5x the modern Celestia (who would be stronger than her past self to note) and Celestia and Luna working together. And this is assuming he was stronger than Scorpan during the battle given his personality.
As for Discord, I agree again, hard to measure. His might could come from less sheer offensive power as much as it is how hard a time one might have actually hurting him. He's like wolverine on a magic level. Unless you hurt him or entrap him in a very specific way, it's hard to keep him down.