On Why You Don't See Many Crystal Unicorns Around These Days

Well, yes, Sombra. Obviously Sombra.

But even he needed a reason for things that he couldn't justify as cryssstalsss.

Y'see, the Crystal Empire is a harsh enough place for a big ol' shadow being, bright as it is. (I suspect drapes were every bit as much among his obsessions as stairs, if not so much as crystals.) But crystal unicorns? Particularly bad for him. Because while regular unicorns can blast things if they have to, with their crystal coats and natural ability to refract light places under magical control...

...crystal unicorns can take in that light that shines on them, and use it.

Or, to put it another way, crystal unicorns can lase, and that'll put quite the dent in your average ravening creature of darkness. Or, indeed, anything else you point it at, but especially ravening creatures of darkness.

A sufficient number of crystal unicorns, in the proper formation, on a sunny day, with a particularly powerful individual at the pointy end focusing and concentrating all those individual lasers?

How do you say 'Death Star' in Equestrian, anyway?

(These speculations inspired by the first chapter of Estee's The Bounce Test.)

Comments

[Oliver]

Mmm…

1. Later episodes do clearly show that crystal ponies are not continuously crystal, even when kept happy and content.
2. The first Crystal Empire episode, likewise, demonstrates that any pony can temporarily acquire the crystal refractive properties upon point blank exposure to a blast of the Crystal Heart. The Mane 6 are not crystal ponies themselves, yet they go crystal just like them.

Which makes me think there is nothing particularly special about the crystal ponies in terms of biology – glossy hair and polygonal glint eyes are more likely to be just a regional genetic trait.

So any unicorn can lase when exposed to the Crystal Heart, if this trick works at all. :)

[FanOfMostEverything]

4441470
Given that, it's no wonder Sombra hid the Heart. Had to strike a balance between wintry death for his slaves and risking death by refraction.

[Jade Nekotenshi]

Which, taken altogether, I suppose makes it lucky that Sombra got, err, quite authoritatively discorporated when the Heart got its mojo back. If not, he would have been about ten seconds later once Twilight, Cadance and Shining all noticed their newfound enhanced firepower!

[Cordial Nova]

4441470

Oops. While I was aware of (2), I must have missed (1) somewhere along the way, having adopted the loose headcanon that while any pony can go crystal for a time on being exposed to the Crystal Heart going active, actual crystal ponies were the permanently-crystallized result of repeated exposure.

But still... even if any suitably exposed unicorn can do it in theory, I suspect in the pre-Cadance era, the actual trick to lasing was kept buried in Defense Secrets of the Crystal Empire: Do Not Steal, or some similarly named tome.

[Oliver]

4442191

Oops. While I was aware of (2), I must have missed (1) somewhere along the way, having adopted the loose headcanon that while any pony can go crystal for a time on being exposed to the Crystal Heart going active, actual crystal ponies were the permanently-crystallized result of repeated exposure.

For the longest time, crystal ponies were consistently crystal when shown on screen, but in Princess Spike the first clear unambiguous shot of a crystal pony in a non-crystal state post-Crystal Empire turns up. Most people didn’t notice. Later on, in The Crystalling, large numbers of crystal ponies remain normal for almost the entirety of the episode. Most of the fan theories regarding crystal ponies seem to have been established early after their introduction and do not take these episodes into account.

Equestria Games scenes in particular suggest that crystal ponies do stay crystal for a longer time after exposures than others, (otherwise we would be likely to see a crystallized non-crystal pony during the Games, which we don’t) but we don’t know the reason.

My own solution to that was that crystal ponies are not a tribe or even an ethnic group, but essentially a religious order, intimately magically tied to the Crystal Heart, but that’s probably not a plotline most people can or want to use. :)

But still… even if any suitably exposed unicorn can do it in theory, I suspect in the pre-Cadance era, the actual trick to lasing was kept buried in Defense Secrets of the Crystal Empire: Do Not Steal, or some similarly named tome.

In the pre-Cadance era, there was no railroad to Crystal Empire, so the contact between it and the rest of Equestria was nowhere on the scale of modern day, so it wouldn’t be known even if it wasn’t a particularly big secret.