Points of Canon: Legends of Magic #1 · 9:37am Aug 27th, 2017
I can’t delay those four any longer. Where’s my shredder…
The cover of the first issue together with observed content of the four issues currently out implies we will be dealing with at least six explicitly legendary stories – Rockhoof, Mistmane, Flash Magnus, a Egyptian pony, an unidentified earth pony which is rumored to be Meadowbrook, and Star Swirl. Since every issue published so far includes a frame saying, basically, “you know the story of X, now hear what happened later” – it’s literally a frame, the comic frame is surrounded by a decorative frame – we can assume that the story of Star Swirl is already covered, because this is the issue where this frame is present for Star Swirl.
Framing story
This is the most interesting bit, to be honest, because it at least refers to current events and can be treated as a primary source – unlike the contained stories. Also, Sunburst and Starlight shipping…
In a bizarre twist, this issue does not spell Star Swirl with a space.
- Star Swirl had yet another library-study-room in Canterlot Castle in addition to his underground lab and library seen in Reflections (Friendship is Magic #17-20.) This one is in a tower.
- Celestia reports always being “a bit reticent to disturb my former mentor’s things.” I’m not sure if we can assume the room remained entirely untouched for the entire period since his disappearance, though. It certainly doesn’t look like it stood sealed for longer than a hundred years, so someone might have been cleaning it every century or so.
- Celestia states and Sunburst confirms that Sunburst is researching the history of Equestria. Celestia further claims that Star Swirl was researching the subject himself, and all the fruits of his history research are in that study.
- The study contains a whopping two globes – one on the bottom, the other one apparently used as a light fixture. The top one is surrounded by strange disks depicting moon phases. Some of the moon phases are not oriented left-right.
- There’s a mouse hiding between the books. Looks like this is the one place in the castle where nopony tried to chase it away.
- Among other paraphernalia, Star Swirl owned a crystal ball.
- According to Celestia, Star Swirl explicitly “disappeared” when the Sisters were “still young.” This did not cause much alarm because he was known to disappear often in this manner, only to return in a few weeks. The disappearance is explicitly dated to before the Nightmare. Wait, so what about Reflections, which seems to want to date itself to just before Nightmare?…
- The label on the bookshelf is written in readable modern Equish.
- Celestia refers to those stories as “nothing more than tall tales,” even at the time they were written down.
- Star Swirl writes of himself in third person: “Now, without a doubt, many among you will know the legends of Star Swirl the Bearded. One of the great heroes of our time, Star Swirl was known for facing down magical creatures and forces no other pony would dare. Indeed, Star Swirl was one of the great pony heroes. His feats will be sung long after he has left us.” Sunburst labels this an ego trip, but I can’t help but wonder, it’s almost like Star Swirl didn’t write this.
Inner story
- The story presents Star Swirl as the first person narrator, without explaining the scenes he could not possibly witness with his own eyes – or the voices that are explicitly described as only audible to Luna.
- This story is explicitly located to the Castle of the Two Sisters, rather than the Canterlot castle.
- Star Swirl’s robe includes bells. Notice that Twilight’s rendition of the robe did not, and yet Luna commended her on getting the bells right in Luna Eclipsed.
- Star Swirl, at least, definitely casts spells himself in this story.
1. Actually, the more I think about it, the odder the old castle looks.
Both sisters already have their cutie marks, so this story postdates the Journal We don’t know if it predates or postdates Discord, though. While it should, in theory, because in the Princess Twilight Sparkle flashback, both sisters are at the modern sizes already, and here, Celestia is notably shorter than Star Swirl, Legends of Magic #3 wants us to think they moved to the Canterlot castle while still this tall. The Elements of Harmony ending up in the old castle would become quite inexplicable if that were the case.1
- Celestia learns magic faster than Luna. Luna in fact has trouble with magic Celestia calls basic. I do wonder about the sun and moon, because those two are anything but basic.
- Luna tries to cast a spell from a spellbook, but she has to close her eyes to do it.
- A spell is called “Dimensional Doorway.” According to Celestia, it’s one of the hardest spells in the book. It’s not entirely clear what’s the point of this particular spell, however – teleportation spells normally don’t open doors to evil dimensions as far as we can see, yet this one does once Luna casts it. Celestia’s line describing it is interesting: “It looked bad. Maybe even evil.”
Star Swirl makes a statement that I need to quote in its entirety:
“Princess, our world is only one of many. There are an infinite number of worlds all around us. This spell can connect us to one of those worlds. If a pony does not possess the power to control which door they open, a more powerful force may choose for them. Many of those worlds contain evils worse than you could dream. Evils that have devoured the light of their own world, and hunger for a taste of a new world.”
Tempting as this whole line is, it’s dubious for multiple reasons: What exactly would be the point of mirrors if one can simply use a spell? Why exactly dimensional travel is not much more widespread, if there’s just a spell – and we know that ponies capable of casting it are not at all unique?
- “First, you must realize that you are a big sister, and that you will someday be the leader of Equestria.” …wait, what?! There was a Queen or King of Equestria somewhere and nobody told us? Yeah right.
- Star Swirl never explains how exactly did he reopen the door to the particular world Luna shuffled off to. He does confirm it’s “another world,” though.
- It remains rather unclear where the Nightmare Moon helmet on Luna came from, and Luna gets rid of it the first chance she gets. The mossy stony creatures assaulting her don’t look particularly threatening, to be honest.
- Notably, first Luna says “they want me to be some sort of —” but later, she says “They think I’m somebody else. Like, I have some sort of powerful dark magic.” which I’m not sure is consistent. In either case, for the entire story there’s a voice talking to Luna which Celestia can’t hear.
Framing story
- Sunburst is shown reading the story in his Crystal Empire house, rather than anywhere else – the shape of the window, the wall, and other artifacts seen are quite distinctive – before returning the book to Celestia. So he left Canterlot, read this book, and then returned? Why?…
- There’s a frame that shows Celestia and Luna laughing while reading the story when sitting on Celestia’s throne in Canterlot, once Sunburst is done with it. Unfortunately, this does not let us conclude if they confirm this happened or not.
And this was the issue that made me annoyed with the whole Legends of Magic series. I suppose you can see why.
I wouldn't be surprised if Clover the Clever wrote this while cleaning up her master's notes into something intelligible to other ponies.
The same reason cars exist when people have perfectly good rocket sleds: A safer, more accessible option.
The Reflections arc showed that bouncing about parallel universes has some consequences. Aside from that, all it would take would be one overconfident apprentice opening a door to dread Dormammu to ruin Equestria's whole week. (And let's face it, if Sunset had access to this spell while she was Celestia's student, that would've been a likely outcome.)
I can see how this issue would be frustrating.
Because it's offer stable dimension gateway so you don't end in some Outer Gods world of madness? Well, that and the fact that anyone could use mirror portal but most likely only selected few can learn the spell?
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Sure, now riddle me this, gentlemen: If jumping dimensions is that easy, why every given Equestria is still not riddled with visitors?
Oh wait.
I suppose that means that every other HiE is canon now, does it?
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Every time you rend open the dimensional barriers, that universe tumbles down both legs of the Trousers of Time. Most of the time, canon material follows the isolationist timelines.
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They’re ponies. Their Time’s trousers should have four legs.
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Ah, we're getting into that grand philosophical debate.
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Tossed this picture to my friend with actual equestrian experience. His reply was enlightening:
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Actually there a chance that Equestria are riddles with vistors. Like in "Witcher" where half of monsters and sapient races are permanent visitors from at least two other worlds.
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Possible, I suppose. Shame we’re not getting a confirmation or denial from the show itself anytime soon, though.
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What about the seasonal Breezie portal? That implies that dimensional holes are a natural phenomenon in Equestria.
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Might be, but we haven’t seen breezies coming around again either, have we.
This comic had several notable points, though it looks like Oliver covered all of them.
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4649470 I've long suspected this about Equestria. You've got dozens of territorial sapient apex predators, and on earth we didn't even have room for the neanderthals. I think a lot of the weird magic creatures wandered out of their world, and weren't just made from Discord (who, according to the latest comic, himself just wandered over here through a portal from his own dimension).
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I play with this idea for quite some time and plan to use it in my fanfic. Although in my story I blame it all on ancient alicorns who experiment with large-scale dimension transfer and ended up with massive Witcher-like "Conjunction of the Spheres".
4649477 Fluttershy says they've come before, though.
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Actually, has she ever seen them before? I’ll need to investigate that, there’s that forward reference when Fluttershy announces she got a special permission to study them…
4649709 And then she says at the start of the episode that "I went to see them gathering their pollen in Western Equestria." Now that I look it over, I suppose that might be a one-time thing, even though she does seem to know so much...
"Some of the moon phases are not oriented left-right." Not sure why that is a thing in the first place; the most orientable moon-location is the horizon, where phases will be mostly vertical..
"Sunburst labels this an ego trip, but I can’t help but wonder, it’s almost like Star Swirl didn’t write this." Starswirl the Great and Powerful
"What exactly would be the point of mirrors if one can simply use a spell?" Regulation. Also, as "hardest spell in the book"…
"why every given Equestria is still not riddled with visitors?" Primality. You need a true, complete Pattern or Logrus to learn to world-walk in the Amber multiverse. Messing that up tends to unmake the attempter. Fixing one requires knowing where it's wrong and how; and even though the monkeytypewriter might hit on it in some 'verses, thence visitation to Prime practically requires also an "all roads lead to Amber" postulate.
Also, some don't have magic, and some would lack sufficiently-concentrated magic without a thaumic supercollider.
And some say such things just lead to "the Dungeon Dimensions" and practically-speaking stamp out investigation.
yeah they're really muddling about with preNMM chronology