Introductions Are in Order · 10:50pm Apr 20th, 2017
A bit late given when I published the story, but writing another “ponies on Ravnica” story got me thinking: Whatever happened to all of the major threats to Equestria in a timeline where the pony nation got folded into a planet-wide city? Time to take a thought experiment and run with it.
Nightmare Moon: If Luna ever did go crazy, she did so more than ten thousand years ago. Even on Ravnica, history has forgotten any such indiscretions beyond her being characterized as the disciplinarian of the Sisters when pony parents need to get their foals to behave.
Discord: Not even native to Ravnica. Discord was the second greater elemental to form on the world that would become Lorwyn and Shadowmoor uncounted millennia ago, perhaps older than Nicol Bolas himself. His sapience is considerably younger than that, but still multimillennial. He has visited Ravnica in the past, but has rarely needed to do anything to keep the plane interesting. Guild politics usually suffices there. Rigging the Implicit Maze in the favor of the Gateless was the most overt action he’s taken on Ravnica in over a thousand years.
Chrysalis: Currently working at the Ismeri Library, recording due dates, late fees, and the intelligence gathered by her hive dispersed throughout much of the Tenth District. She has no wish to advance further, partly because she’s at the limit of her logistical capabilities and partly so Lazav doesn’t detect her disloyalty.
Sombra: The sisters sealed away the Crystal Empire before the signing of the Old Guildpact. Upon its signing, Sombra’s illegitimate claim on the Empire was wrested away… and due to a bizarre corner case, the time-shunted Empire fused with Agyrem, Ravnica’s pocket dimension afterlife. The Crystal Heart went from a source of heat to a source of life. During Szadek’s ghostly war with the angels, the crystal ponies offered what help they could to the latter, which wasn’t much, but still something. Today, they’re a huge, almost transparent minority—a few thousand in a population of billions—and prefer to stay in the Ghost Quarter even after it returned to conventional existence with the dissolution of the Old Guildpact.
Sombra himself was sentenced to about three millennia of community service, largely spent guarding Orzhov bank vaults. He then truly died and passed on to Agyrem, where even now he spends much of his time snarling ineffectually at the crystal ponies. Nopony over the age of three is impressed.
Sunset Shimmer: An all too eager part of the Warmind Initiative, a Boros-Izzet collaboration to bring better law enforcement through technology. Most of that technology tends to burn things. Especially Sunset’s contributions.
Sunset is aware of Twilight Sparkle, and like her is part of the Firemind telepathic network. However, Sunset largely knows Twilight as the caretaker of Niv-Mizzet’s nephew, and feels no real rivalry with the other unicorn beyond the one-upsmanship common among all members of the League of Izzet. Twilight is a theoretician while Sunset is more concerned with practical applications, so she’s happy to leave the bookworm to her research. The whole kirin thing threw her off, but she’s still having too much fun getting paid to design more effective explosions to feel really jealous.
Plundervines: Only exist on Shadowmoor. Discord had to get Oona something for Mother’s Day.
Tirek: An early son of Rakdos, gone and gladly forgotten. While his father admired Tirek’s ambition, he found the younger demon’s humorlessness disappointing and fatally unamusing. Also, Rakdos likes ponies.
Meanwhile, Scorpan produced a long and successful lineage that inspired several styles of gargoyle sculpting across Ravnica. It is believed that he also invented the knock-knock joke, though this is considered apocryphal.
The Dazzlings: Ravnica has no sirens, and the merfolk insist that those skeletons just look like tasty, tasty sea ponies. There is a trio of conniving hippocampi on Theros who dream of something far greater than scavenging the leavings of Thassa’s pets, but the entire ocean’s laying low at the moment. The goddess of the sea still hasn’t gotten over that pretender stealing her bident and she’s taking it out on pretty much everything she sees.
Starlight Glimmer: A firebrand in the Gateless movement who took great joy in destroying guild signets, spurred on by the traumatic childhood experience of her best and only friend being accepted at an Izzet academy. Since the return of the Sisters, she’s found herself unsure how to feel about the changing world, one with little room for righteous iconoclasm.
There are so many stories lurking in here! I can only hope you choose to tell us more of them.
Does this mean that all the crystal ponies are technically dead?
I like the idea that the Rakdos family is to blame for knock-knock jokes and other comedy. I'm guessing that ponies proclivity for puns contribute greatly to Rakdos's love for them.
You've done it again
This offers endless opportunities to explore in terms of lore and the stories that can be built from them.
Tirek was related to Rakdos? So much makes sense now
No Film & Flam? They did cause the apocalypse in at least one timeline, after all.
4503576
in Ravnicka, the birth to death rate of suckers trends toward a net zero with some fluctuation at a micro scale, so instead of con men they would have found employment as logistics engineering consultants.
These are all the best. Super excited at the possibility of more Ravnican ponies, The Implicit Neighs was excellent!
To be honest I would love a story series that jist goes into the setting lore like how you did here.
So wait, what are Celestia & Luna up to right now?
I need more Neighs in my life!
I'm always for headcanons that make Sunset Shimmer a pyro. Not necessarily a maniac, possibly a technician, but definitely a phile.
4503545
Not dead, no, just eerily translucent and part of a culture that has had to be very careful about its population over the millennia. Fortunately, being sealed in the afterlife meant that their aging was significantly slowed, so the genetic bottleneck wasn't too much of an issue. Some of that longevity seems to have carried over even after Agyrem reunited with the rest of Ravnica.
And given the combination of joy and suffering they inspire, Rakdos definitely likes puns.
4503576
I considered putting them in for that very reason, but decided against it. They're strictly small-time racketeers. Even after the return of the Sisters, no guild wants anything to do with a pair so obvious in their self-interest.
4503772 4503949 4504185
I can't guarantee that anything substantial will come down the line any time soon, but it's nice to know that there's still interest in this AU.
Eh heh heh... oh dear.
4504073
Acclimating themselves to present-day Ravnica; moderating interguild disputes; looking out for the welfare of the downtrodden, equine or otherwise... Basically the duties of the Living Guildpact plus a few others they take upon themselves. And to what would be Lavinia's great relief if she knew how her canon counterpart felt, they don't get distracted by any of that Gatewatch nonsense.
4504252 Were they asleep for a billion years or some such?
4504418
Sealed away by Supreme Judge Azor I somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 years ago.
4504971 Oh, well, I guess that sort of nonsense would explain it
4505121
Certain adjustments have to made for a fusion fic.
4505156 Pah! Fie on you sir, I say, imprisoning best horses for 10,000 years! HOW RUDE!