Plans for the Future

Read:

Crucible of Shadows
Wargame Exercises between Lunas school for unicorns and Celestia's and
Pirates of the North Pole

to get the most out of this:

(Most of this new storyline has come within the last week and still has yet to solidify.)

New alternate universe. Twilight never came to Ponyville at the Summer Sun Celebration; and for now Luna/Nightmare Moon's return is left a little ambiguous. Luna partially co-rules with Celestia, though their assets are kept very separate and Luna establishes the Crucible of Shadows in the ruins of the Everfree Castle where none of Equestrian law applies.

Students are recruited by dreams, most from dropouts of Celestia’s school or ones who just failed their applications to Celestia's school. Luna’s students are trained in secret, membership is for life and after a few years, they emerge to hold wargames against Celestia.

Twilight went to Moondancer's party all those years ago, and the two are now close friends. They get deployed together in the first round of the wargame (the round described, only the clues will replace ponies cutie-marks rather than appearing on their backs). They get captured almost immediately by a team of Luna's students, including Trixie. After a failed rescue attempt they are put in the permanent prison to wait out the round, in cells next to each other.

Shining Armor is a supervisor in the prison, to make sure that prisoners are not raped, tortured beyond the rules etc. He distributes very meager rations to the prisoners, but won't break the rules to give anyone, including Twilight, extra rations, distressing them both.

The unicorn in charge of recording their cutie-marks, and making sense of them is a stallion named Feral Chase who grew up a pirate in the north pole until Luna discovered them and threatened to reveal their actions to the surrounding tribes/ governments unless they worked for her. As part of the deal, she took some of their best and brightest to train/ indoctrinate at her Crucible. When he first meets Moondancer, their cutie-marks are two puzzle pieces that fit together, sparking a conversation. He asks about why she's with Celestia with her name, she asks about the North Pole, they both think the other is hot etc. (He identifies himself as a smuggler rather than a pirate.)

Twilight is strongly against, 'flirting with the enemy' whereas Moondancer insists these are friendly war games etc. Feral Hunt sometimes gives Moondancer extra food, if she flirts for it, and Twilight gets upset. Feral also offers them both some meat that he hunted, Twilight refuses but Moondancer accepts. You get the idea. The only other person who really hates Feral getting close to Moondancer is Trixie, because she also has a crush on Feral Chase.

After a couple weeks, Moondancer voluntarily invites Feral into her cell, which he accepts; (after putting magical curtains around the bars for privacy). Afterwards Twilight, (whose been cold and hungry for several weeks) basically calls her a whore and the two have a fight, with Moondancer insisting they really are in love. A short time later however, Moondancer admits she's pregnant.

Moondancer is given a medical pass from the war games. Feral Hunt proposes marriage, but given that he is not allowed to leave Crucible, it needs to come on the condition that Moondancer abandons Celestia's school and becomes one of Luna's students. Given that Celestia's students have been being obliterated from the start of the wargames, indicating Luna to be the better teacher, Moondancer agrees.

By the time Moondancer gives birth, she is engrossed in her new studies. Breastfeeding/ staying up all night with a crying baby would make keeping up with her studies impossible, so she needs a wet nurse. Given that this is a very magical baby, it needs milk from a highly magical mare to develop properly. Since taking care of a foal is a full time job, Luna doesn't want to impair the studies of a magical, and intelligent mare. You need someone with magic, but not the intelligence or discipline to do anything meaningful with it. Someone like Trixie.

Crucible runs by a rather authoritarian pecking order, where the higher performing students rule over the lower; with Moondancer and Crucible being two of Luna's star students. Due to Feral's extremely high performance, and Trixie's low performance; she is basically given to Feral as his slave. Moondancer gets to succeed in school, have the power, awe, parties, and the stallion Trixie wants and responds with the jealousy usually associated with her and Twilight.

Knowing she can't compete on an academic level, or kill her without being caught, Trixie takes advantage of Feral being emotionally attached to her as the caretaker of his child, she starts going after him saying taking care of a baby is making her want one of her own. 'wink, wink, I'm basically your slave already; why not make me your concubine as well?' She doesn’t really want him anymore, now she’s just out to hurt Moondancer.

He resists at first but eventually gives in. When Moondancer finds out Trixie is pregnant from Feral she’s furious, but doesn’t leave. Polygamy is legal here and so Trixie is Feral’s slave, not Moondancer’s so she can’t stop him from making her his concubine. All she can do is act very snide and angry towards Trixie who in turn starts manipulating Feral and Moondancer’s foal(s). “The reason your mommy is gone most of the time is because she doesn’t love you; but Aunt Trixie does.”

This also assumes that the story is based over at least 3 years or so, probably more if the kids are active enough to be pawns. I’ve got a few ideas that could spread out from this but that’s about as far as I think I know. An obvious question would be for a school where telling the difference between a disguised teacher, student, changeling and siren is crucial to thrive; how two of the top students could make such a bad choice of wet nurse. (I’m reminded of Once Upon a Time where Prince Charming and Snow White hire the Wicked Witch of the West to be their nanny.)

The only answer I have right now is if the kind of magic that a mare has, affects the milk she produces; finding a compatible wet nurse might be looking for someone with a rare blood type, and Trixie could be the only option. (Also: Maybe Moondancer has a medical condition that stops her lactating properly.)

I suppose the logical thing to do then would be to milk Trixie, but bring in another mare to be the nanny. Maybe Fluttershy, but then you’re worried your kids won’t grow up tough enough so you bring in nurse Rainbow Dash on weekends. Then I realized that this train-line of thought was headed to crazyville, so I jumped off.

I am also seriously considering the idea that Feral Heart had gotten married in his mid-teens but that his wife died leaving him with a young daughter. When he got drafted to Crucible he needed to leave her with his parents, and he misses her terribly, but after he gets promoted several times for doing well in the war games etc, he gets to bring her down to be with him. (Feral is about 23 at the time he meets Moondancer, and his daughter is about 7. People in warlike societies tended to marry young.) I like this idea; yet it kind of makes his and Moondancer's relationship even more irresponsible. Marrying someone you've known for three weeks is one thing. Marrying someone and becoming step-mother to a daughter you never met is something else. I guess it depends on how strongly you feel that if a unmarried couple gets pregnant, that they need to tie the knot. It also makes the Trixie triangle more complicated.

Another major factor would be the idea that Luna has been grooming Feral to be loyal to her so she can send him back to his tribe where he can use his advanced magic to take over and be her puppet ruler. He might be OK with this idea, and Moondancer and/or Trixie might say they're OK with going with him knowing that it will be "cold"; then getting there and actually realizing how cold the north pole actually is, and then wanting to go home immediately.

Strategies to end poverty have included giving the smartest people from impoverished nations scholarships in Harvard, Oxford etc, on the idea they could go back and teach/ organize/ lead their communities. A lot of the time the people decided they didn't want to go back to a 3rd world slum after living in the west. Other times they went back and became the notorious 'African Warlords or tyrants' that we hear about. (Hearing several stories of when it went bad doesn't mean there weren't times it worked. I don't know if it's still done or what the actual success rate was/ is.)

I'm also thinking of saying that Ponyville, being the closest town to the Everfree Castle, does a lot of trade with it, so the other mane six come in more. Fluttershy might be hired as a magic animal trainer, Crucible becomes one of Sweet Apple Acre's biggest clients, etc. I have the image that Dash the Cloudsdale was right over the wargames, providing weather, and there was some shield that stopped the pegasi interfering with the games but they could all see Celestia's students getting whipped. Soon after this Dash tried signing up for some position at Crucible after deciding that they were the awesome winners she wanted to hang around with.

So anyways: I already have a highly developed pony-cannon that is not compatible with this. Also, I see no reason why this has to be pony. Celestia and Luna really aren’t necessary and all I really need here is two magic schools having wargames. Twilight is without the EoH or Spike so far as I can tell; and a snide, quickly seductable, party-going Moondancer who falls for a pirate seems very different from the one in the show.

You could justify these as being due to alternate history, but I’ve wanted to write for a living long before I found MLP and started here as to practice as a writer. I think what I’ll probably do is start my own website sometime soon; include this story as humans at like 25 cents a chapter and then ponyfy the first few chapters and leave them around here as advertising.

Your thoughts please?