From the Journal of "A.K. Yearling" · 5:19am Feb 8th, 2017
Generally, I try to avoid engaging with others in the field – these big archaeological meet-and-greets are just scholarly circle-jerks, with more hors d'oeuvres and fewer climaxes. It's actually why I chose to pursue a career in adventuring and being awesome, rather than hunker down in some musty university library and scribble out articles for a living.
But, tonight, I actually had a pretty interesting conversation with a cultural sapientologist. I realize that's not a statement which has ever been written or uttered with any sincerity, so, by my reckoning, doing so makes me a trailblazer. Damn shame that nopony but me will ever read this.
The fellow in question was a drab old stallion, with bushy gray ear hair, who ran his mouth unceasingly about his divorce settlements when he wasn't busy slurping his soup, and got real grabby once he'd had one too many appletinis. Your standard academic, pretty much. Alright, so, just looking at him as a guy, he was far from interesting, but he'd spent about a year running with a buffalo herd that stampedes around the southern frontier. That alone made it worth my while to tolerate his presence and spend the evening talking with him.
Of course, that just barely made up for the tedium of his personality, and there was only so much of him that I could take before I was forced to conk him on the head with a tin serving tray and make a discreet exit with as much complimentary bread as my form-fitting-yet-functional khaki blouse could hold. But, before I did, he told me this story that rang some bells for me.
The buffalo oral tradition holds that there used to be a lush valley in the middle of the frontier, a little pocket of heaven amid all the rocks and sand and cacti. The valley was home to a tribe they called "the dirt minders." Or "the rock lovers." They alternated between the two. Any way you name them, they were a race with an uncanny predilection and aptitude for sculpting stone and tilling earth, and they built a civilization using those talents. Dr. Gropey Hooves figured they were earth ponies, and, well, the description fits, but that's purely an inference. The story wasn't entirely clear on what they were, besides experts at bending the natural world to their will.
Oh, and the fact that they were assholes. On a specieswide level, apparently. Mighty warriors who took shit from no one. They came to the frontier from far away, saw some other civilization living in the valley (not the buffalo, I'm told), and drove them out of the region entirely, burning their city to the ground and building a new one over its ruins. Something huge, something grand, something that made Canterlot look like Griffonstone. From then on, they clashed with neighboring cities and races whenever they had a pretense. This included the itinerant buffalo.
The valley was smack in the middle of the frontier, and took up a very, very large amount of space, and the buffalo were used to stampeding through it as part of their migration. The dirt minders put a stop to that real quick, restricting them to the southernmost portions of the frontier, closest to the badlands. Needless to say, not ideal grazing land, especially if the Equestion Geological Survey is right about the badlands being the caldera of a dormant supervolcano. So the buffalo munched on a steady diet of ashes and pumice, while the dirt-minders luxuriated in their valley, doing whatever it is that dirt-minders do when they luxuriate. Presumably, anything besides minding dirt, which sounds almost as stimulating as academic writing and publishing.
Getting off track now. Okay, so, they ruled the valley for a couple of generations. Then, one day, quite literally out of the blue, who should come down demanding tribute from them but the sun? Yeah, the sun. The great big burning ball of incandescent gas, the giant nuclear furnace, that keeps all of us warm and happy, and graces the hindquarters of our most regal and beloved monarch. Except, instead of being a cutie mark on the Princess's butt, it was... a great big burning ball of incandescent gas. Literally, the sun.
Gotta keep in mind that this is a third-hoof account of a highly idiomatic, culturally specific, orally transmitted story, from an oral tradition that doesn't exactly hew closely to scientific interpretations of the natural world. And that the pony relaying it to me was growing progressively drunker as he told it. And that he kept getting distracted as he told it by my resemblance to his ex wife, before, and I quote, "she got so old that her teats started scraping against the ground when she walked."
Anyhow, the dirt-minders naturally prided themselves on being a nation of militant badasses, so when the sun pressed the issue, they told the ol' bringer of light and sunburns to stick it where it don't shine (which, the sun being the sun, is effectively nowhere, I think), and decided to pick a fight with it.
Okay, I'm just a simple, run-of-the-mill, best-selling fiction writer and adventurer, with a list of academic credentials and sexual conquests that will no doubt make me a mythical champion thousands and thousands of years from now, when some distant pony civilization discovers my works and journals and immortalizes me as The Mare Who Dared To Do. But even I know just enough about astronomy to know that, when you pick a fight with an astronomical body of that size and luminosity, it's not gonna go over well.
Needless to say, the sun cooked 'em. Took everything the dirt-minders threw at it, then stormed right up to the gates of their walled city. "Give me tribute," the sun said, all big and boomy and classical-Royal-Canterlot-Voice-like. "Tribute and virgins and discipline."
(No, wait, isn't that Fillydelphia U's thing? Goodness and knowledge and... Oh, who cares)
The dirt-minders, in response, gave him all the virgins in the city. Just marched them out in the back of a wagon and dumped them at the gates for him. Except that they all had their throats cut open, because the dirt-minders were all douchebags. "You want our virgins? Take 'em. Enjoy 'em while they're still warm." And they all had a big old laugh about it.
(I may have added that last part. Call it creative license.)
Well, the sun didn't take that insult lying down. In retaliation, it opened the skies and rained down into the valley a deluge of smoke and liquid fire, reducing it to a burning lake. The city was subsumed, buried in ash, and the dirt-minders wept bitterly (and saltily) as they were crushed, drowned, and/or burned alive.
So it sucked to be them, but, on the other hoof, the buffalo got a new place to stampede around. And on volcanic soil, too, assuming I'm interpreting the story correctly. Although I imagine there wasn't much grass to munch, either way.
Poor buffalo. They can't catch a break, can they? And after they took the trouble of asking that fancy bird to stop it from snowing...
I didn't really make much of it at the time, being preoccupied with fending off the horny old academic who kept trying to grab my tail in his teeth. But then I remembered later, as I was sitting in the cab on my way back to my hotel room, munching on my ill-begotten complimentary breadsticks, that I'd just been reading about about a certain sun-related calamity-bringer, the so-called "Rings of Scorcherro." My mind made the connection between the two, and...
Well, I don't know what to make of it, exactly. But I haven't been able to get my mind off of it ever since.
I've thought about this, and I don't think there's a concrete relationship between this ancient buffalo fable and this alleged sun-based superweapon (I say "alleged" in the hope that it isn't real, because if it is, I'm inevitably going to have to deal with it. Probably to keep it away from Assholezotl, because that's just how these things always go). I also doubt that that this is one of those rare fables meant to be interpreted literally. I mean, granted, metaphysics is such a well-mapped field that they could honestly get away with dropping the "meta" from the title, and calling it plain old physics. But even so, there's no basis, factual or mythological or scientific or whatever, for assuming that a star would or could go out and commit genocide for shits and giggles.
...Besides zebra folklore.
But knowing what I do about these rings, knowing what they could do in the wrong hooves... or hands... makes me think about the cultural significance of the sun, both in and outside of Equestria. About the fact that Celestia is worshiped, mostly outside our borders (in an organized fashion, anyway), as the avatar of the sun. About the fact that there are still so many questions surrounding her, and the nature of her connection to the sun, and alicorns, and the precise origins of our monarchy. About how the sun, for all of its relevance as a symbol of life, and fertility, and bounty, can sometimes be seen as a symbol of death. The bringer of drought, and famine, and cancerous melanoma.
And then I think about how Princess Celestia is not opening up about any of this ambiguity.
Of course, I'm getting ahead of myself. I cannot picture our tea-sipping, scone-munching, sunny-butted ruler as a vengeful, virgin-lusting tyrant of any kind. I don't see her forging earth-scorching, mystic superweapons, and no tale I know of, historical or mythological, paints her as a villain. It's just got me thinking, like I said.
I suppose that I oughta look into this. Maybe examine the way the Princess is depicted in other cultures more closely – or maybe check and see if anypony in the field has discovered any other deific manifestation of the sun in ancient folklore. That'll have to wait until I get some downtime, though. Who the hell knows when that'll be? Hey, maybe I oughta revisit the idea of vacationing at a Daring Do convention.
After all, there's no better place to hide a needle than a stack of needles.
Alternate Title: Portentous and Unsubtle Foreshadowing
This alone was worth the price of admission. (That zebra folklore tho.)
Why isn't this a story? Or the first entry of a series of stories? >:V
I really like this characterization of Daring Do; one that, while a practiced archaeologist, also enjoys a good adventure every time rather than stay in one place with her findings.
4414017 Daring Do's Surviving Whackademia?
It was just supposed to be a one-shot bit of supplementary material, but now I'm kind of tempted to write a story around the concept. Actually came up with a premise and a rough idea as I was out for a morning walk.
I'll add it to The List.