Part 17 of the Palaververse: Antlertis · 6:00pm Jan 20th, 2016
One last world-shaping nation and species to go for the Palaververse, one that I've been sitting on for a fair while. On the dark side of the world, past oceans and nightmares and the gulf of millennia, Antlertis awaits.
Although this post may mark the last of the major players in the world, I'm content to keep doing these posts for as long as there's something regarding the setting that folk are interested in. If you want to know anything about other topics, such as the small or stateless sapient species in the world, or the forces and tactics of assorted armed forces, or celestial bodies, or anything else I might be able to either blether about at some length or frantically pull stuff out of my arse for, then give it a nomination in the comments. Depending on the extent to which I can reasonably yammer on at length about it, I may combine different topics in one post, or spin a topic into a more general form. No guarantees that I can cover all topics in broad detail, but I can give it my inept best, at least.
Anyhow, all due thanks continue to go to themaskedferret for being as excellent a proofreader for these as I could have hoped for and for suggesting that I do them in the first place.
And if you want to know what lies past the Black Ocean ... well, you probably know where to find that sort of elaboration by now.
Once upon a time, in the magical lands of what would become Equestria, there came from across the seas the explorers of a great and truly magical kingdom.
These explorers, the magically-gifted deerfolk, raised towers and outposts in the new land they had found. They sailed onwards in enchanted boats that could outsail the wind itself, sweeping around the entire coasts of Ungula, Dactylia, and Ceratos, raising new towers and performing feats of magic that amazed the early sapient tribesfolk wherever they went, who must have thought they were witnessing gods at work when they themselves still lived in caves and were hard at work figuring out these newfangled ‘fire’ and ‘wheel’ things.
When their voyages were done, some of the explorers stayed to occupy the towers and explore the interiors of the continents, while the rest sailed home to their island kingdom on the other side of the world, Antlertis. The home of the sapient deer tribes, Antlertis was the first known civilisation to emerge in the world, and the ability of all deer to channel magic with unmatched skill made them a power truly without equal. Great spires, palaces, and universities rose into the sky, built upon arcane geometries and awash in a sea of magic. Fleets of enchanted and beautifully-made ships scouted out all corners of the world and brought their natural treasures home for eager study. The Mage-Lords, the greatest and noblest of the magic-wielding deer, researched day and night in order to craft new wonders and artifacts for their kingdom. And all this transpired under the eye of a line of kings and queens, who ruled in peace and prosperity and unmatched power.
Alas, as the great kingdom reached its height, the skill of the Mage-Lords and the kings they served began to surpass their sense and all due caution, and their experiments pushed ever-harder at the world’s fragile magical membrane. And one day, more than three thousand years ago, the Mage-Lords inadvertently brought doom to their civilisation. Antlertis Fell beneath the waves in a churning maelstrom of wild magic in a sudden and great cataclysm sparked by an unknown spell, and the shockwave that rolled across the world destroyed all the Antlerteans abroad and laid many of their outposts and towers low. The world’s greatest civilisation had Fallen in one fell swoop thanks to their hubris and lack of foresight, and all other then-primitive sapient species were left to rebuild the world, Antlertis’s ruins standing in silent vigil over them. To this very day, the farthest and storm-wracked reaches of the Black Ocean in either direction remain untraversable by any sailor or flier, and the place where Antlertis once stood is lost forever to sapient sight. Only magically-charged wyld storms come blowing eastwards to Equestria these days, spawned by the chaotic magic that lingers across the sea still.
That, at least, is the story understood by most of the common civilians of the civilised world, whether Equestrian, Capric, Ovish, Zebrican, Ceratosan, and any and all points in between. It accounts for the Antlertean ruins that either stand in the wildernesses or have sunk beneath the earth, with most explored and excavated in the modern day. It answers the age-old questions of what may lie beyond the vast Black Ocean in either direction, and what produces the destructive wyld storms that come blowing from both east and west. It provides a neat morality tale of caution’s necessity and the folly of blundering onwards. And with those essentials in mind, most then simply relegate it to background knowledge and get on with their daily lives.
Some others, however, take a more professional interest. Many adventurers in the early days of post-Antlertean civilisation plumbed the depths of their ruins as they quested for knowledge and powerful old artifacts, and the latter were always keenly received when they were found. Nowadays, adventurer-archaeologists undertake the same job in a vaguely more professional and slightly less destructive manner, and the ability of modern spellcasters to overcome some of the lingering Antlertean wards and traps have assisted their task greatly.
Some probe yet deeper. Assorted academics, esoteric scholars, and bored nobles with ample curiosity and free time examine what the Antlerteans left behind, and have even painstakingly — and often fruitlessly — tried to decipher whatever fragments of writing were left behind in the old ruins. Most fragments are believed to be in code known only to each writer, and incorporate ancient forms of arcane notation, describing spells that demand more power than any one mortal spellcaster could hope to draw upon from their own will. And some Equestrian scholars have observed similarities in the forms of lettering and the writing that runs upon the walls of Tartarus.
Others have ventured into the depths of the ruins after the adventurer-archaeologists have had their fun, into the labyrinthine complexes so often built below the towers proper. In there, they have found the remains of guardposts, faded arcane wards designed to deter all intrusion and scrutiny, and old runes and spells with meanings beyond any modern being’s ken. They have found what seem to be old laboratories, with channels cut into the floor to allow something to flow free.
And amongst those who delve that deep, some will remember old legends and alleged superstitions from the dawn age of their respective tribes. Legends about demons that dwelt in the sea-depths and crept onto the land to devour whole villages. Superstitions about how magic-users in other tribes were omens of disaster, and how the Antlertean towers held only monsters beyond imagination. The vaguest of vague accounts about how the old tribes hid from their tribal enemies, natural disasters, wild beasts, dragons … and other things shrouded in shadow.
A rare and brave few have even chartered ships with similarly brave crews, and set courses into the Black Ocean. Of those who turn back, some abandon their research altogether, while others pursue it with furious and dedicated resolve and venture across the rest of the civilised world to compare notes with their counterparts in other lands. All nearly always come back changed in some subtle way, secluding themselves from their old pastimes and social circles in favour of quiet isolation.
Those who don’t turn back never come back at all. Barring two. And those two reign in Equestria to this day as its Princesses. Celestia and Luna maintain only silence on the matter of Antlertis, refusing even to confirm or deny the old legends that they sailed out there in their days before their ascension to alicornhood. Their frequent confiscation of unearthed Antlertean texts has provoked a few discontented mutters but little more, and all such texts are kept under ward and lock in an unknown part of Canterlot Palace.
Those two, as well as a scattering of others in the world who have collected whatever evidence exists and have joined the dots together, know something of the truth of Antlertis. For all that they wish they didn’t.
In the broadest of the details, the popular story gets the matter right. The civilisation of Antlertis arose thousands of years before any other species had so much as contemplated any lifestyle other than hunter-gathering, and came from a large island past the Black Ocean and on the other side of the world. The deer of Antlertis, though they had originally once consisted of all manner of different tribes and phenotypes, shared a common rapport for magical channeling that seemingly outstripped that of any unicorn or ibex or any other. In these early days, the Antlerteans were the first to get the erratic natural motions of the sun and moon under their control, with the magic that first locked the sun and moon into fixed orbits secured into the oldest of all known Antlertean artifacts, a hiltless sword known as the Sun Blade.
The wielders of the Sun Blade were great magic-wielders, even by the standards of other deer, and their forging of the Blade coincided with their expansion into neighbouring tribes and petty realms of Antlertis, forcing local nobles to bend at the knees or burn. A unified kingdom grew across the land in time, imposing one rule under one king and — for a fleeting while — enforcing peace across their land where war had once existed between the different tribes
This peace brought about no utopia for most Antlerteans, however, and most common deer were still subjugated by their aristocratic superiors with the king’s blessing. Their place in the upper echelons of Antlertean society allowed the nobility and kings to keep a tight grip on all magical study, keeping new spells and any research away from the eyes of their peasantry in order to cement their own power. The lords of Antlertis — the Mage-Lords — supported their own scholars and hoarded their own stores of knowledge, using their magic as a whip to keep their inferiors in line and as a weapon with which to assail rival Mage-Lords.
The courts of the kings and Mage-Lords became circles of pure ambition, as the competing lords and factions turned on each other without any external threat to unite them. Research into deep and dark areas of magic were hotly pursued, and new artifacts were constantly churned out both as symbols of prestige and power, and as weapons against rival Mage-Lords. Power gradually petered away from the royal court as their subject Mage-Lords pulled apart and sought out new sources of power in all different directions, and any attempts to rein their efforts in nearly always ended in humiliating and/or lethal failure.
The most reckless of the forays into the arcane arts let the Mage-Lords discover the grim and eldritch methods of dark magic, an art that sacrificed piece after piece of the wielder’s sanity and conscience in exchange for unmatchable magical power. In the constant arcane arms race of old Antlertis, many Mage-Lords submerged themselves in dark magic past any point of recovery, and their courts and fiefs truly became powers unto themselves away from the theoretical authority of the kings. Antlertis fractured, and the era of the Mage-Lords entered its full swing. Their conflicts and intrigues against each other followed without end, in which the most frequent victims tended to be the hapless common Antlerteans, reduced in many cases to mere serfs toiling at the behest of their increasingly-unhinged masters. Under the vast floating palaces and towers which cut through the laws of geometry like steel blades, slums and fallow fields sprawled across the once-verdant country, with many parts reduced to magically-infused wasteland in the frequent clashes between the Mage-Lords. Many civilians were brainwashed en-masse when their lords took a preference for obedient thralls over unruly peasantry, and countless others were swiped off the streets and used as blood sacrifices in the darkest of dark magic rituals, or subject to experimentation at the hooves of Mage-Lords pushing at the limits of what was possible. Life-prolonging spells made many lords ageless, and the oldest of them grew truly terrible in their power and knowledge.
As the era progressed, many Antlerteans cast their gaze across the seas surrounding their home. Some civilians and smaller lords initially tried to flee in search of kindlier lands absent any ruling psychopaths, but they were quickly outstripped by their own ruling psychopaths intent on discovering what new resources and beings may await to be exploited. The continents of Ungula, Dactylia, and Ceratos were discovered in this time, inhabited by the tribal ancestors of the known sapient species — equines, caprids, corvids, rhinos, dragons, and all others who dwelt on the surface in those distant days. The small and primitive populations were helpless before the avaricious Mage-Lords, with many taken as further sacrifices or as subjects for experimentation. Even the dragons were unable to meaningfully resist the Mage-Lords, and those few dragons who were able to escape the early attentions of Antlertis hid away in the deep wildernesses. Outposts and towers were raised by individual Mage-Lords as secure havens away from the vicious rat-race back home, in which they could work and remould the native beings to the satisfaction of their designs or simple curiosity.
The work of the Mage-Lords continued unceasingly, barring the odd hiccup as some ran afoul of their own research. Abominations were crafted in their laboratories as living weapons from whatever common Antlerteans or other sapients had been kidnapped. A spate of the creations turning on their creators led to the founding of Tartarus in western Ungula, a secure prison where those abominations that terrified even the Mage-Lords could be disposed of until the lords’ arcane arts had sufficiently developed to control them. A couple of the more compliant creations, Tirek and Scorpan, moulded beyond recognition and memory from a pair of pony brothers, were assigned to watch over Tartarus and left in its dark halls. More and more weapons and artifacts and creatures were fashioned, and one great project even bound the world’s wild and chaotic magic in the form of a living creature. News of said project was uncovered by the maker’s rival, who grew their own harmonious artifacts to contain the creature if it ever got loose. Although the creature was assessed partway through its creation and considered too dangerous to be reliably contained by its creator, it was kept sealed away and slumbering in the holding of the Mage-Lord who fashioned it rather than being consigned to Tartarus, and it wouldn’t escape to leave its own mark on the world for centuries to come.
The plunder of the world continued as before, and still the dark magic that had consumed the Mage-Lords hungered. They had peeled open every secret their mundane world seemed to offer, and they had let their fetters fall free as the dark magic took root in their souls. They had cast their gazes abroad to the resources and creatures past the oceans. And with that exhaustively explored, they now cast their gazes up. And beyond, to the darkness past the stars hanging over the world.
No written record exists of how the Mage-Lords sounded that void, nor of whatever they found out there. But something responded, or was ensnared, and the triumphant Mage-Lords prepared to manifest it on the world, planning to add its power to their own and secure their supremacy over all things on the earth and in the heavens above.
The day came. And so did the Fall.
In a succession of short moments in which the whole world seemed to scream at once, the membrane of the world’s reality buckled around Antlertis, and the whole land was surrounded and scoured in twisting columns of eldritch fire. The land fractured in a distressingly literal sense, and sloughed Antlertis off piece by piece into the churning ocean. Countless Antlerteans perished either in the sea or in the void-coloured flame that blazed across the whole island, with the conclave of Mage-Lords seemingly the first to have been consumed by the latter. Finally, nearly all of Antlertis fell below the waves and into the abyssal trenches ripped open by the force of the tumult, with only the tops of the highest towers protruding above the waves as if they were clawing for release.
The whole world shook, and the whole world screamed. And then it slowly stilled, and as the ocean finally stopped churning and the arcane storm dissipated, the world finally knew silence once again after what had seemed like an age.
The sapient tribes gradually emerged from the caves and forests in which they’d huddled, and found many of the Antlertean towers toppled or empty or swallowed by crevices in the earth. Their inhabitants were either dead or comatose. And before long, the first of the endless wyld storms would come blowing from both the eastern and western seas.
Life for the tribal sapients settled, and returned to something resembling the normalcy they’d known in the days before the arrival of the Antlerteans. Oral accounts of the Antlerteans developed, shifted down the centuries, and became indistinguishable from myth in due time. The dragons emerged from their hideaways, and were quick to try and reassert their old dominance.
Years ticked by, and tribes of sheep and zebras and rhinos began to form the first agrarian settlements in their respective regions. The faltering Sun Blade kept the stars in motion until the unicorns stumbled across the power for themselves. An empire or two rose. Under the waves, an amiable deep-sea creature with an gelatinous and magic-resistant body found a cage, ate its way through the cage’s nice tasty metal, and freed the aforementioned creation composed of pure wild magic. The awakened creature delighted in its sudden existence and all the fun world around it to explore and tweak, and promptly picked up its new and confused best friend to head off on many bewildering adventures around the world before it finally decided to settle down in the land of the united pony tribes. Two princesses arose to dispute said settling. An empire fell.
Life and history, in short, went on, and the ruins of Antlertis stood in silent vigil over it all. Parents told their children legends of the great kingdom that must have once built them, and the children told their own offspring the same legends in the course of time, with a few additions here and there to make them more entertaining.
And to most of the world, life and history looks set to go on as it always has. Various world-threatening perils may arise here and there, and pony princesses may poke their snouts in where they aren’t welcome, and conflicts between the great nations may produce violent spells in one continent or another for a time, but all these fade away in importance as their times pass. History’s tapestry lengthens, with Antlertis only one part of it, and the world continues to spin.
But to some, history holds as much potential peril as the future, and nothing can ever be taken for granted. And in recent years, those with knowledge enough to be concerned have seen reasons to be concerned.
An expedition to circumnavigate the world was led over a century and a half ago by the great pegasus explorer, Tumbleweed. He met with Celestia before setting off, and whatever was discussed in her office remains unknown. Tumbleweed emerged subdued but still determined, and he set off with three windjammers westwards across the Black Ocean. Of his expedition, only one ship returned to Equestria from the eastern Black Ocean over two years after it had set off, and only one maddened pony was left on it. Her words when she was found, and the only words she repeated for the rest of her life, were "'I can't stop them! I can't stop them! Sounding out in every thought at every time, and I can't stop them! I can't stop them! I can't stop them!'"
As the Asinial trading empire has expanded its operations, some crews have sailed deep into both the western and eastern Black Ocean, and the sailors aboard these crews have increasingly reported strange sightings out on the sea. Black flames whispering across the black waves. Half-glimpsed forms floating under their ships, indistinct but for unblinking eyes. Half-finished songs and trilled laughter in the night skies that follows the sailors into their dreams.
From the Utmost South, a weary Lord Regent who knows more than he likes receives reports of cold winds blowing from the south once again after an age. He reads and re-reads older reports stored in his infallible memory, and considers their descriptions of frozen and moving corpses, stormclouds, and skulls crowned with writhing antlers. And he saw enough in his earlier travels among the mammoths to know that these accounts are no myths.
In the heart of the Ceratos Empire, a young Emperor receives messages from provincial governors on the eastern coast requesting the attention of a team of investigator-bureaucrats, so that their local fisherfolk’s claims of dead things drifting beneath the water can be properly assessed.
And at the heart of the greatest of the great powers, in the magical land of Equestria, two royal sisters occasionally turn their gazes to the western horizon, knowing full well what dreams out there in the ocean darkness, and hope that what they once discovered in their quest to free their little ponies never surfaces in the world again. In their hearts, they suspect these hopes are in vain. And despite what challenges the world may throw their way in future, they know the horizon and their world’s history holds a greater one yet.
A storm is coming.
Ooh. Lots of fantasy tropes here. I loved the aside about Discord and the Smooze. I'd be interested in the Dactylian Interior next, with the Utmost South joined up if necessary.
Aslo, a question about the future of the Palaververse. I love these blog posts, but I was wondering if you have the next story in the 'verse planned out or if that's still in the works.
tl;dr the Mage-Lords all chanted "Hastur Hastur Hastur" and Antlertis got rekt'd.
Daring Do and the Fate of Antlertis, coming soon from Lucasarts on CD-ROM.
Someone's a fan of Michael Moorcock I see.
Are Deer extinct now?
Does the sun blade literally control the stars and move them, or is the world being spun?
Do the Alicorns have to constantly fight the Sun Blade's intermittent influence on the heavens?
I find the most interesting thing here is that the Mage-Lords were more powerful than Discord and the Tree of Harmony. They only lacked a absolutely reliable means of control.
How did the Tree of Harmony end up in Ungula?
Why didn't the Mage-Lords explore parallel worlds to exploit their resources, ala the Combine of Half Life 2?
Was Tirek purposefully designed to have magic draining powers as a way to manage the inmates of Tartarus?
Was Tartarus designed using the same physics-defying geometry-breaking principles of Antlertian mage towers? Is Tartarus a pocket dimension of its own with a hardlink to reality, or is it a physical place that can be dug into the sides of?
Did Antlertian culture have a preference for: teleportation, waygates, portals, dimensional compression, dimensional detours, for fast travel?
More questions later.
I know you have to be writing a full story in this setting, I just know it. And I can't wait to read it!
Well, that went darker than I expected! A bit of Melnibone, a bit of Chaos from Warhammer, hints of something Cthulhoid, maybe a taste of the White Walkers from GoT... It's an awesome, antlered mix. Did Antlertis leave any surviving scions anywhere in the known world, I wonder?
Also, this is one of the best origins for Discord that I've seen, and I'm delighted that you tied Smooze into it!
Lots of similarities to Dragon Age's Tevinter in here, and I like it! I am curious as to whether sapient deer still exist, though, or this was meant to imply that only the non-sapient remain.
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Nominations for the Dactylian Interior and Utmost South noted! I'd be inclined to make them part of a broader 'wildernesses' post that encompasses the Ungulan North and Utmost North as well.
I've got two more stories in the works, one of which is in the final proofreading stages while the other's as yet underway. Both of them take place within the 'verse, and the underway one's got a heavy Antlertean component. I've yet to properly start the sequel to Moonlight Palaver and the Tempest, which will focus on the Canterlot wedding, but which has yet to have its plot and assorted details sorted out in a way that can properly advance things.
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A classic point-and-click in a classic cosmic horror-y style.
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Not read any Moorcock, alas, though his reputation precedes him. I should pick up a copy of one of his works one of these days.
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-Sapient deer no longer walk amongst the civilised races, that's for certain. Wild deer exist with all the intelligence of animals, and it's a matter of some debate in the Ungulan scientific community as to whether they're the dumb descendants of the old Antlerteans, or just an offshoot that never went for the whole sapience malarkey.
-The Sun Blade passively kept the sun and moon and stars in orbit around the planet after Antlertis Fell, though it went seemingly dormant after the unicorns assumed control with their own magic. It didn't stir when control passed to the alicorns either, and exerts no influence at all these days. After Celestia and Luna first retrieved it, they did try awakening it in case some calamity happened to them or their personal ability to move the celestial bodies were ever compromised. So far, nothing's availed, and the Sun Blade simply remains a very old, very sharp, and subtly enchanted sword.
-The Tree of Harmony was crafted by a Mage-Lord, who wanted it out of sight of their rival who'd fashioned Discord. Its location in Ungula seemed suitably remote and safe to work in without fear of discovery.
-They may well have scouted out other worlds in search of resources, and the inhabitants of the Equestria Girls 'verse probably have a old legend or two about demons or fae in deer-form. Nothing especially exciting presented itself, though, and those few Mage-Lords who discovered how to cross between worlds undoubtedly kept that secret close.
-Magic-draining is a wonderful tool for a guardian of arcane horrors, and he was designed with that in mind, yep.
-Tartarus is purely physical, albiet swimming in a sea of wards and enchantments. Introducing arcane horrors with the potential to manipulate magic beyond their masters' control to pocket dimensions seemed like an experiment best conducted by someone else, even to the Mage-Lords.
-Teleportation across short distances was certainly rife, and a few with the skill created portals between their homes in Antlertis and their overseas outposts. Most didn't have that skill, though, and teleporting across the entire world in one go would have been a daunting prospect even for the greatest amongst their number. Enchanted ships were generally preferred for reliability and relative speed's sake.
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More stories in the setting are coming, rest assured.
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Mixes of stuff are always great fun. Glad you like the Discord and Smooze origin as well! The Smooze always struck me as an amiable wild animal of some description, and this seemed as sensible an entry point for it as any.
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Only non-sapient deer are seen on the surface today. It's not entirely clear whether they're the struck-dumb remnants of the Antlertean settlers, or just a wild offshoot from further back in the evolutionary line.
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Quiet, you fools! Do not provoke The King in Yellow! You'll doom us all!
Now I wonder how Celestia and Luna would react to the announcement by someone that they've found a still-functioning stasis sarcophagus that seems to contain a preserved Antlertian magician...
3700598 I was thinking the same thing. They'd probably resort to Celestia's usual go-to plan, "Let Twilight Do It."
Hmmm… Sounds like
someponysomeone long ago either escaped the fall of Antlertis, returned from an expedition to the heart of the Black Ocean, or at least found a remote Antlertean research facility in better shape than the others. Someone encountered again in contemporary times.vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/5/5d/King_Sombra_in_The_Crystal_Empire_S3E01.png/revision/latest?cb=20121112224913
oh wow what a wonderful write up. Iia iia and then Antlertis fell.
How much of Antlertis would Celestia tell Alicorn Twilight?
Did any deer survive the Fall?
Are there worlds beyond this one in space or is this world in it's own little pocket of universe/space/time?
(some of these may have been answered and I missed them, but the questions I have now are) What is the Sun? The Moon? Spirits? Energy? A ball of plasma and a large rock? Are we talking about space as we might understand (planets, solar systems etc) yet here celestial bodies rotate around a globe due to *handwavy* physics? or are there celestial spheres which spin around the world, constructed by something?
What is the origin of Ungula itself? was it designed or did it arise?
Please talk about the celestial bodies themselves next!
Awesome! I have waited for this. I'm reminded of Numenor in Tolkien's work as much as any thing, when it was essentially ruled by Sauron. I would bet a few fictional Atlantis' and their analogs contributed. As ever, you did good. I will throw in a curve ball and vote for Equestria girls.
Edit: The rhinos last week were also awesome. We need to be able to upvote blog posts. Also, you should edit these together into a history / geography piece.
Ah, the other side of the world? That makes sense; I was wondering where it was.
Well, since you ask and mention it, what is the state of the celestial bodies in this universe?
...Hm. And with the above in mind...
"untraversable by any sailor of flier"
"lost forever to sapient sight"
Presumably, the troubled magics around Antlertis don't have infinite range up, and it does appear that Equestria is a spherical planet. What, then, about the possibility of looking down from orbit?
And the origins of the Elements and Discord; interesting. :)
...Um. And now my question about orbit from earlier has suddenly grown some potential implications...
"Pst. Hey, cosmonaut. You're up here to learn about the Fall of Antlertis? I can give you lots of information about that..."
"Under the waves, an amiable deep-sea creature with an gelatinous and magic-resistant body found a cage, ate its way through the cage’s nice tasty metal, and freed the aforementioned creation composed of pure wild magic."
And it was the start of a beautiful friendship?
...Though does this mean that the Smooze wasn't a creation of Antlertis?
"its new and confused best friend"
Heh. :)
Oh. And never mind my concerns about orbit. Looks like orbit's probably safe. Because the Things are already down on the surface. :D
(Unless of course there are enough of them to be in both places.)
And an ominous closing line. :)
I did notice that the changelings weren't mentioned in this, though. An indication that those legends were only legends (And if that's the case, where did they come from?), or something else?
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Oh, and more interesting information; thanks.
Anyway, as usual, an enjoyable post to read, but unfortunately I'm in a bit of a hurry at present and must be off. I'm looking forward to your future writing, though. :)
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Twilight Sparkle's a excellent solution to any and all problems, whatever they may be. And Sombra may very well have had some experience with Antlertean facilities amidst the Crystal Empire.
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Nomination for the celestial bodies noted! I'll probably cover the moon and stars and suchlike in there if I get around to it.
-Antlertis would be the sort of thing Celestia would drip-feed to Twilight over the coming years in ideal circumstances, so as not to overwhelm her. Cadance already knows some of the details. If circumstances turn less than ideal, though, then all manner of unpleasant exposition might be dumped upon Twilight's head.
-Some elaboration was given on the deer in answers below. Suffice to say that wild deer exist as simple animals today, and that no Antlerteans seem to have survived the Fall.
-Most leading Equestrian scientists and astronomers reckon that there are other worlds than theirs out there in the void of space, occupying their own little magic-thick patches of space amidst the universe. Distant lights have been seen past the stars, suggesting worlds adrift with their own celestial bodies in tow.
-The current prevailing theories among Equestrian geologists suggest a natural formation for the world and its continents, coalescing out of molten rock in the dawn of time and shedding raw magic as it did so. Continents took shape amidst the oceans, shifted with the tectonic plates, and amidst the background magic, life took form and evolved over long aeons to the state it's in now.
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Nomination for Equestria Girls noted, and jings, crivens, and help ma bob, I'll be frantically making so much up on the spot for that one. Numenor in its last days was certainly an inspiration, as were any and all knock-off Atlantis'. (Atlantises? Atlantii? Some poor words don't deserve to have pluralisation inflicted on them.)
Others have also recommended an edited and published form of these, and I'm giving it serious consideration. There might end up being truly heavy amounts of editing, depending on the direction I go with, as well as a lot of new writing and shorter fictions leading on from each entry. Worth considering, at the very least.
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The celestial bodies have their own states, which I'm inclined to make a future blog post in its own right. And looking down at the remains of Antlertis could theoretically be done from orbit, though the constant layer of overhanging storm clouds may present a problem there.
The Smooze ain't an Antlertean creation, yep. It's just a regular deep-sea dweller which Richard Attenborough could happily narrate over in its natural habitat. Longevity and a resistance to magic have helped it weather long centuries of life in most places it finds itself.
As for the changelings, this would seem to suggest that their legends are indeed just legends. But the average changeling queen would likely just retort that they ruled before the Antlerteans came along and ruined all their fun.
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Makes one wonder if Princess Luna can recollect any observations of the ruins of Antlertis from her millennium of exile in orbit…
Awesome! Thanks for the wild ride Carabas! Good to learn more about the Sun Blade. (We know what sacrifice it take to reactivate it, and I doubt the Sisters have tried that).
I suspect at least a few slumbering mage lords in their distant towers must have escaped the fall, or at least the ones who happened to be traveling to different dimensions at the time.
I too love the origin of the Smooze.
I vote for the Yaks. After the many dark empires we've seen recently, something a bit more light-hearted might be nice. Is it true when Yaks are chasing down a particularly heinous imperfection they've discovered, their speed and stamina are increased by the accompaniment of Yakish war-bards, playing the Yakity-sax?
Oh shit.
Oh shit.
If you've got room for more world-building, I'd definitely like to know more about, what was it, the Burning Mountains? Dem islands seem to be a notable void in the middle of the known world.
What a lovely and heartwarming story about how Discord and Smooze met
But seriously more Palaververse stories. Actually, sounds like the Rings of Scorchero from the Daring Do episode might be some Antlertian invention intended to override the Sun Blade. Is Ahuizotl another Deer creation?
(nomination: The various Landless Sapients and quasisapients(Chimeras, Sea serpents, Phoenixes, etc.))
Chilling stuff. I like that it actually tied in with all that creepy shit from the Pachydermia post. Now I can mentally file all my dread and desperation for answers under one big "Antlertis" section.
As for what I want to see next? I vote for a Tempest sequel.
3700598 The same way she does with all of the Equestria-threatening disasters.
img02.deviantart.net/a448/i/2013/247/5/5/friendship_fiexes_everything__or_something_by_csimadmax-d6l2zlp.png
Okay, I vote for That Which Dreams In the Deep aka Cthulhu as the next entry. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Ftagn!
Not that Celestia would be having any of this shit.
3701155
With one known exception:
‣ There are not enough problems for Twilight Sparkle to solve.
3702000
You speak of the dreaded "i have read all the books, there is nothing left to read" scenario?
3701329
3700528
I found a google hit for that phrase:
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/8238553/14/The-Devil-s-Details
Look at the author name.
3701175
"The celestial bodies have their own states"
...
WELL THAT DOESN'T ENFLAME MY CURIOSITY AT ALL.
"which I'm inclined to make a future blog post in its own right"
Yes please! :D
"And looking down at the remains of Antlertis could theoretically be done from orbit, though the constant layer of overhanging storm clouds may present a problem there."
I thought that there might be something like that, though how much of a problem it is depends on just what those clouds are opaque to. And whether there's anything on the ground that would be irritated by active sensing.
"The Smooze ain't an Antlertean creation, yep. It's just a regular deep-sea dweller which Richard Attenborough could happily narrate over in its natural habitat. Longevity and a resistance to magic have helped it weather long centuries of life in most places it finds itself."
Huh. I wonder what else is down there, then...
"As for the changelings, this would seem to suggest that their legends are indeed just legends. But the average changeling queen would likely just retort that they ruled before the Antlerteans came along and ruined all their fun."
Ah, having already fallen by the time the Antlerteans arrived, if they were active before the Antlerteans came and it's not fictional. Thanks. :)
My vote is for the pests of the world - parasprites, termites, platypus, that sort of thing
3701155 Wait wait, you can vote for Equestria Girls? I vote for Equestria Girls‼
3702030 Fimfiction link: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/91124/the-devils-details
3702086
aaand that's going on tracking now :V
Ah, beautiful!
What a nice shout-out. The Crown might be open-minded, in the literal sense, to whatever will emerge after all. At least in some different timeline.
Hm... some magelords achieved vast power in studying the magic forces of harmony. Two beings ventured across the ocean in ancient times. Two beings in this world are ageless. Funny that.
Also: beautiful origin story for Discord. The best yet, for me at least.
And I wonder what exactly they found beyond the void between the stars. Many things maybe? A familiar being of stars and darkness comes to mind that would love nothing more than to latch onto a magelord. An alicorn passing through on a quest will do of course, poor substitute though. Can't even tear reality apart. Quite boring, really. The staff you get nowadays... tsk.
The elements of harmony also might not be all that benign at their very roots. In the light of the history of their creation, splitting their power between six ponies might make a lot sense. One powerful being to awaken them, five lesser beings to buffer them. Oh and don't tell Twilight. She'll want to study their true potential to rip through the fabric of spacetime.
Anyway, I'll stop the speculations here.
Parasprites or the Nightmares.
I would like to hear more about the minor magical creatures, like Phoenixes and Parasprites.
Voting for EQG!
3701204
"Day 2837 of stars-alone know how many to come, and the clouds above the locale of great interest have cleared somewhat. To the best of my remaining perception and far-sight, black and ruined stone protrudes here and there from a churning sea. Just as we - I left it then. No change in their condition."
"..."
"Skyfire, how I wish I'd so much as packed a deck of cards before confronting Celestia. A lesson should a next time ever arise, I suppose."
3701262
Nomination for the yaks noted - they certainly deserve more elaboration than what they've gotten so far. Tactful discretion refrains me from commenting over-much on the source of their great power, though.
3701329
The dragons have you covered there. A natural mid-ocean mountain range turned especially volcanic by the strange magic of a long-gone Fire King, after the Capric Empire tore their holdings in Ungula a new one.
3701361
Nomination for assorted landless sapients and quasisapients noted! Both the Rings and Ahuitzotl are Antlertean creations, as all the inconvenient things in life tend to be.
3701544
That's not a blog post, cheeky. But one such sequel's in the quasi-eternal planning process, if that helps. Just for you, a name. Wedding March.
And Antlertis does indeed act as a marvellous sink for all things dreadful and desperate.
3701768
3701988
Might keep a lid on suchlike eldritch things for now. Though that is as fair a representation as any of how Celestia would respond to them if they appeared.
3702000
3702030 3702086 3702096
Och, I wouldn't bother. The author of that sounds like a complete twat, as handsome and clever and modest a devil as they may be.
(Nomination for EG noted as well.)
3702041
And nothing on the ground seems to have been irritated by any sensing efforts sent their way. As yet, at least.
Count celestial bodies among the ranks of potential future potential blog posts.
3702042
Nomination for the pests of the world nominated. These platypi can't ever be allowed out of sight for too long, after all.
3702184
Good speculation all-round, and nominations for the Parasprites and.or Nightmares noted! Good on you for noticing the shout-out as well, which was also noted in The Tempest. Worth noting, alas, that it didn't re-activate even long after the events which led to that particular story. The Sun Blade shan't stir easily ... at least, not easily for any magic in the world today.
3702645
Nominations for phoenixes and/or parasprites noted!
3703014
Nomination for EG noted! I'll just point out that at this stage, a fair amount of conscious effort is going into both screaming internally and coming up with EG-related lore. If it all emerges somewhat half-haunched, I beg pardon in advance.
3703308 Fair enough, though I understand their tunes were played at the Battle of Benjamin Hill.
An interesting twist on the classic And Man (Deer?) Grew Proud story. I don't know what I was expecting, but a whole civilization of superpowered Sombras wasn't it. (On that note, how powerful were the Mage-Lords? Starswirl-powerful, Alicorn-powerful, god-on-Earth-powerful?)
Nice work tying all modern threats and horrors in with Antlertis. I'm guessing that the Dwellers Below and the Night Serpent of Zebrica are the only things that aren't their fault?
Also, how big was the actual landmass of Antlertis, exactly? I'm also guessing it lay directly opposite the Burning Mountains, maybe a bit off.
I'm going to nominate the Sun, Moon, Stars and horrors beyond, and space in general. I'd be quite surprised if the Antelrtians didn't leave a few eldritch space stations floating about.
3703308
Maaaan. Now I got nothing left to vote for. :(
Carabas, if there is runic magic in your setting, did any of it get derived from deer runes? Did the Deer ever pull off the whole "we are gods, we have literally embedded our language of magic into thd fsbric of creation" or the alternative "we have found the base programming script language of the universe and have adapted it for our own"
3703594
Nomination for assorted celestial objects and horrors noted!
- I'd say your average individual Mage-Lord during the later days of Antlertis swithered between Starswirl and an alicorn in power, when dipping into dark magic. Going all-out with the dark magic or working in concert with others could crank their magic up to gods-on-Earth level. The latter situation was pretty rare, though, and too much of the former could make them unhinged and dangerous enough to actually get other Mage-Lords working together to bring them down.
- Yep, the Dwellers Below and the Night Serpent weren't any of Antlertis's doing, and their source lies deep beneath the earth rather than surface laboratories or being summoned from beyond. They're the nice, home-grown sort of eldritch nastinesses.
- The Antlertean landmass itself wasn't too massive, nowhere near as large as any of the continents. Going by the maps I drew earlier, I'd call it around Saddle Arabia-sized - just over half the size of the Equestrian mainland.
3703758
Even if all the major stuff you wanted to see is done, minor stuff's totally nominatable as well. And if all else fails, you can just nominate exceedingly complicated and technical stuff and watch me flail desperately as I try to assemble something coherent.
3704255
Runic magic exists and is even the magical specialty of a few tribes, like the takins in Capra. They tended to come up with their own runic scripts and languages independently, though a few have dabbled in what the Antlerteans left behind. Every case - even for the deer - has been a matter of interpreting and speaking the universe's base magical language in different ways, rather than outright embedding their own into the fabric of creation.
Hmm. I am somewhat reminded of the Wind of Dhar, from Warhammer, and my own ponderings upon it.
A vote for an overview of the Lunar Polities, and also the Nightmares, whichever is most leading the vote.
3703308
You tease me so.
Equestria Girls then. If I can't get a sequel, I'll settle for watching you squirm.
3703308
Ah, thanks. :)
3704325
Moon-related stuff under the auspices of 'celestial stuff' seems to pulling ahead thus far. A nomination for it noted.
3704374
Nomination for Equestria Girls noted, you awful sadist.
3704541
Nae bother.
Were the Antlerteans actually super-powerful, or was it more a lack of competition or moral restraint leading them down the same path Sombra sought and that kind of artifact/monster producing nation was just the result of all the elites being equivalent Alicorns/Sombras?
Somewhat bummed even harmony and related artifacts were just another creation, but I guess that doesn't mean the underlying forces used weren't natural. Did Harmony magic and the elements mean there were virtuous mage-lords running around that just got swept off by the cataclysm? Or was Harmony all relative; like back then you just had to abstain from cannibalism or mind control for a few weeks, or at least take a real thorough shower before using it?
Vote for Celestial bodies, Moon first if they're separate.
3705022
Nomination for celestial bodies noted! The moon would fall under their purview.
Power-wise, the Antlerteans certainly became super-powerful, though a lot of that was mixed up with the widespread use of dark magic playing havoc with their usual moral restraints. A lack of external pressure also meant that the Mage-Lords had no enemies to worry about except each other, and existing ambitions made a magical arms race between them all but certain to spiral out of control once dark magic entered the playing field. If you're a Mage-Lord in possession of a moral sense, and your rival's delving into dark magic, then they're going to acquire a distinct magical advantage over you unless you do the same, and if everyone around you's doing the same ... then your best move from a survival perspective really is going with the crowd.
That doesn't mean there weren't a few Mage-Lords who eschewed dark magic running around even near the end of Antlertis, but they were in a definite minority and dedicating most of their efforts to avoiding the attentions of their monstrous peers. Stuff like the Tree of Harmony wouldn't have been likely to be produced by them, but rather by normal Mage-Lords who understood the underlying principles of Harmonic magic and wanted to use it to counter the weapons made by their rivals. Since Discord was never actually released by them, the Tree and its Elements were never put into use ... and if the wielders had been a bunch of Mage-Lords with all the collective social conscience and empathy for others of a shark with its genitals caught in a zipper, I'd personally bet against them working as intended.
3704306
So no Wizard Of Earthsea/Eragon "true name/language" magical bullshit then?
3705232
So is Harmony a fundamental particle-wave of magic, or a holographic procedurally generated force like gravity, or a false force like centripetal force, or an artificial form of magic, or a natural byproduct of sapient activity?
Are Discord and the Tree made out of actual condensed Chaos and Harmony magics, or are they specially designed "ASIC chip"-esque systems for autonomously directing and generating Chaos and Harmony?
3704306
Does Dark Magic "break the rules" of magic, and is that why the Mage Lords were more powerful with it than without it?
Or... Is Dark Magic the same as the Sith Way, wherein the expression and manipulation of the power is greater through forcefully binding the Force into a shape and imbuing it with passion to empower it?
Magic seems odd to have such a cutoff of power between nondark and Darkdark.
It is almost as if entities have already claimed authority over expressions of magic, and utilizing those expressions automatically brings the user under the influence of these invisible outsider-gods of magic.
3705232
I'm imagining the Elements of Harmony usage flowchart involving the phrase "find pure of heart peers" and a lot of question marks before skipping to the rainbow of friendship step.
3705327
But in every instance we've seen, harmony magic has completely obliterated or otherwise defeated dark magic, Discord, Tirek, etc. It certainly seems their go-to magic for power, but evidence also points towards Friendship trumping everything. Plus harmony doesn't drive you to doing things that risk total annihilation or (even scarier thought) remove your race's sapience. Unless we're imagining some Twilight-Friendship Borg Collective outcome...