In Which Princess Luna Is Nadreck of Palain VII · 7:05pm Aug 12th, 2018
(Canon to the Advancedverse, although it's deep background unlikely ever to be relevant.)
Those blessed with access to the restricted section of the Canterlot Archives, or with a reader's omniscient perspective, will know that the list of Equus's sophont species Twilight gave to Cordelia was somewhat incomplete, for all that it is the list of species which any well-educated Equestrian savant would be able to rattle off. Perhaps the most prominent omission, other than the strange species of the uttermost West, would be the yaks of Yakyakistan.
Another omission is the caribou. (Or rather, was the caribou.) Yes, those caribou, who had developed into every bit as disgusting and terrible a culture as that series portrays them. They just made three fatal mistakes, unless one counts their fundamental error (or fundamental misfortune) of existing in the same universe as Luna Versuta, Avenger of the Herd.
In the past, the caribou dwelled in the lands north of the Crystal Mountains, and as slaver cultures tend to do, they preyed on their neighbors - those being the dragons of the Withered Wastes (which extended less far south back then), Yakyakistan to their west, and the Crystal Empire and the future Stalliongrad to the south. They were notably unsuccessful in attacking the major cities (the Crystal Heart repelling such loveless creatures very effectively, and proto-Stalliongrad having thick walls and cannon), but their hinterlands suffered greatly from raiding.
Their first mistake was in assuming that the alicorn Princesses concerned themselves only with the ponies of Equestria, rather than all ponies everywhere. Not that they would have taken them seriously anyway, being mares ruling, but that's less a mistake than a persistent state of stupid.
They did, however, send a diplomatic mission south to Equestria. To their eyes, after all, it looked like a soft country ripe for conquest, without any real power. It should perhaps be noted at this point that "diplomatic mission" in this and various previous cases meant "some caribou able to control themselves and their mouths well enough to spy".
In the modern day, it is generally accepted both that diplomatic immunity for diplomats accredited to the Day and Night Courts includes a solemn promise that Princess Luna will not walk in your dreams uninvited, with the awareness that if your dreams are particularly charged, there's no guarantee that she won't overhear things from the dreamscape, and as such, diplomats are generally chosen from those possessed of great serenity and ability to look at pretty much anything with a calm mind.
The former rule exists because of the caribou's second mistake: sleeping in Canterlot, where their dreams of what exactly they would do to their new anticipated conquest - and the Crystal Empire too, for that matter, once they had the ability to hit it from both sides - were completely open to the Princess of the Night, resulting in their rapid ejection from Equestria with a stern warning never to return.
And their third mistake? That would be believing they were safe after having returned to their homeland, and to go on plotting havoc and war. After all, they knew Princess Celestia's reputation; and through the eyes of their comically macho culture, kindness, gentleness, and second chances look almost exactly like weakness. And if one weak mare cannot possibly be a threat, what threat could her younger sister be? Ridiculous!
(They may also have had some trouble with the concept of diarchy, and assumed that only the elder could actually be in charge, and could therefore keep the younger in check. Oops.)
Three of them found out.
The rest of them never understood exactly what happened, because Luna's epithet isn't Versuta for no reason. The only reason to get Equestria's armies entangled in a long war was to preserve lives, and she was in no mood for that. From the heights of the Crystal Mountains, the Cunning Moon whispered ambition, delusion, and paranoia into the dreams of the caribou, stoking dissent, jealousy, fear, greed, and so forth, and raising tensions until one final spark eventually exploded into violence, and in one bloody night of fighting the caribou tore each other apart. Only the aforementioned three nobles survived in long-before prepared hidden bunkers, forcing Luna to slay them personally. She still prefers not to discuss the matter, finding it quite embarrassing.
(Those of their slaves still functional in mind, prepared to hide from the eruption by dreams of their own, scavenged all the necessities from the ruins and began the long trek south into the Empire, shadowed and secretly helped by Luna's agents.)
As for how this affected Equestrian relations with Yakyakistan and left them in a rather sorry state for many years thereafter, resulting in they, too, being omitted from common knowledge… well, that's another story.
It is, however, entirely untrue that Luna still keeps the caribou king's skull, dipped in molten silver, in her liquor cabinet.
(It's on her desk.)
Niiiice. A bit gory to even make that canon in the past, but nice.
I swear I saw that somewhere... I know! That's a Lensman reference! They had that one alien (was it that it needed cryogenic temperatures, or that it couldn't breathe air? I forget.) just shred the stupid place in one crowning moment of awesome, but he refused to ever speak of it for the shame that three survived.
If it IS the case that's a reference and I called its source correctly, I suppose the explanation is unnecessary, however. But if not, it was a pretty good series, if a bit dated (I recall the physics wasn't quite right, and it had a few moments where it wasn't quite fair to women).
...I love this Princess Luna. She has all the interesting characteristics that I like in a leader and probably is deadpanest of deadpan snarkers.
She's also the one that Princess Celestia says, "My sister is the nice one. You don't want to find out why that is."
4918950
The "Lensman" series is pretty much the sci-fi equivalent of the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. Ultimately, if you see it in a sci-fi movie or book series, it probably was done somewhere in a Lensman book. (And maybe even better.)
And, Lensman has absolutely no fear about the scale of the stories it tells. Someone wrote (and I wish I could find it), that if Doc Smith wrote the Original Star Wars trilogy, "A New Hope" would be about capturing the Death Star plans so the Rebellion could build a Death Star of their own. Death Stars would be a common warship in "The Empire Strikes Back," and an obsolete weapon by the time of "Return of the Jedi."
There's a reason why Lensman Arms Race has that name.
And, for a book written in the era that it was in, it was a pretty good book about what it did and what it said. Context is everything.
4918954
Try Ringo's Troy Rising trilogy, if you like that sort of big thinking...
I don't know what that series is, but I suddenly have a morbid curiosity to read/watch/listen to whatever it is.
Also, I find a certain grim satisfaction that those who would destroy Equestria often find themselves encountering its protectors in the same way that a sentence encounters a full stop.
4918962
Own all the books in hardcover, paperback, and electronic and waiting very patiently for the next one...
4918968
Not so patiently, for me. :D
4918963
Well, the series is Fall of Equestria, but seriously, you don't.
This is some fucked-up shit on a level that makes the infamous OH JOHN RINGO NO books look like Sunday School stories for kindergartners by comparison. I want brain bleach just from a second-hand encounter; I expect reading the primary material to call for filling your hollowed-out skull with chlorine trifluoride and trimethyl mercury, then striking a match.
So, y'know, not a fan. Even as hypothetical hate-reading.
4918950
My 'verse-canon is that Equestria will always try friendship first, and since people often deserve second chances, they'll usually try friendship second, too. But having evolved on a world absolutely filled with monsters outside the settled zones and from ancestors notably not at the top of the food chain, you get a second chance. Not an indefinite series of enth chances. Use that up, and Tartarus is probably the best option you might be able to get - if you're facing Celestia, and she's feeling merciful.
And yes, you called the reference correctly! A favorite of mine, that series. (And, really, it's practically feminist by the standards of when it was written in the early '20s.)
4918951
As I think I've said somewhere before, Celestia's "Let me just see what my sister thinks" is once again becoming the "MY WORDS ARE BACKED BY NUCLEAR WEAPONS" of Equestrian diplomatic parlance.
4918975
FoE, as far as I can tell, was written to justify rape fantasies and all the really bad hentai tropes.
The last caribou invasion in my headcannon had every caribou involved short of the king having their heads explode the moment the first hoof touched Equestrian soil.
Pin-head sized bits of plasma in the center of their skulls tend to do that....
4918986
I am so happy to have caught it correctly. :D
And I wasn't going to mention the last bit in case anyone yelled at me for it, even so. :P
Ah. Your yaks are in the west. The most west part of the west. And given the Mild West so named because things only get worse from there...
In any case, fantastic example of why one does not mess with Moonhorse.
4918950
Well, that handily answers my question about which bit embarrassed Luna.
4918986
Which is wonderfully ironic considering that Celestia's words already were backed by nuclear weapons.
4918996
Well, the west part of the north, rather than the west part of the west, sort of thing.
4918973
John Ringo's muse is currently stuck on zombies and isn't cool enough yet to properly work.
But, he writes such great stuff that I'm willing to wait and enjoy whatever is.
4919008
Yeah, that's a good summation. Fun fact: Most of the books were released free in the CD collection up til ~2011. See the baenCD mirror at thefifthimperium (Google it; the site navigation is nonexistent or confusing otherwise, and you need the right page), or try https://drive.google.com/open?id=1HG50DKT2P41bNs0QakM4kmjeE8zuBtWD (my copy in my Google Drive which has the duplicates removed and all the books in one folder. You miss out on the audobooks and other goodies, but for an e-reader, it's useful. You might want to get Calibre, though, to get the format you want.)
4918975
Duly noted.
I wish to retract my earlier curiosity in favor of an orbital friendship strike.
The guy who took out an entire Boskonion armoured planet, personally? I really need to re read that stuff again. I thought it was the psychopathic high grav drake.
What does Versuta mean?
4919200
It's Latin for "subtle, cunning, wily, full of stratagems".
4919253
Got it, thanks.
WTE?*
* What The Emmfoze?