Hippogriff Plumbing · 10:54pm Oct 1st, 2018
Silverstream’s enthusiasm for plumbing in What Lies Beneath shows she has an active curious young mind. I can relate to this. It is very satisfying studying such diagrams and figuring out how it all fits together for the first time - how the U bend acts as a water trap to prevent smells drifting up from the drain and so on - I would love to see her glee when she gets to the chapter on the toilet cistern and learns how once the flow is started the water continues to flow upwards through the siphon driven by water pressure.
While knowing how to plumb a sink is a very useful life skill for any creature, I suspect that hippogriffs have a particular aptitude for hydraulic engineering. Let’s look at what lies beneath Mount Aris and the remarkable water tunnel linking Hippogriffia with the underwater world of Seaquestria. Remember that in the movie, Twilight and friends walk into a majestic derelict stone room on the mountain, and follow the sound of humming to a beautiful dark pool, with water lilies floating on the surface overlooked by stone hippogriff heads with waterfalls as manes.
They then get swept into a whirlpool and the water flushes our little ponies on to the next stage of their epic adventures.
There are some technical details of this remarkable bit of subterranean fluid mechanics in the The Art of My Little Pony The Movie book, including a geological cross section. It also reveals that this is a basalt formation, with hexagonal rock columns. The artists studied Reynisfiara in Iceland and the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland.
It is not clear if the water tunnel is a natural feature. We can speculate that it is some sort of lava tube created by past volcanic activity. Lava flowing down the slope of a volcano often cools and solidifies on top, forming a crust which insulates the molten rock flowing below. Once the flow stops, it leaves a hollow tunnel. Many such tunnel may form this way in layers after multiple eruptions.
Yet it is also possible the tunnel was constructed by Hippogriff engineers. But what was its original purpose? Did hippogriffs just enjoy throwing themselves down underground water slides, or was there a more practical purpose?
Let us consider the needs of a high density avian/equine population on Mount Aris. Anyone visiting a seabird colony on Atlantic coastal cliffs will have noticed the amount of guano they produce. Imagine the extra excrement generated by a large pack of hungry hippogriffs. Some form of robust sanitary engineering would surely be necessary as you can’t imagine Queen Novo squatting on the cliff top. Perhaps this water slide was part of a sophisticated pre-Storm King hippogriff sewer?
And all of the organic detritus washed into the deep cavern would have nourished a undersea ecosystem, giving rise to such an amazing diversity of sea life.
I do seem to remember the sound of a toilet flushing during that part ...
Also, I hadn't noticed the waterfall manes. Very cool.
The consequences of that line of thought are disgusting. Logical, but disgusting
So they were forced to take refuge in their own septic tank? No wonder Skystar wanted out.
.....all the yes.
My personal favourite explanation for such a detailed drawing is that it was so you could see what type of plumbing it offered. After all, baths use the same sort of water trap as well.
I beleive this was this episodes Obscure Star Trek Shout Out.
Via the graphics system used to render the first season of Star Trek:Voyager.
NewTeks Video Toaster.
And the add on card.
The Kitchen Synch.
I like how the two inverted mountains are positioned such that you can place a background orbit around both, and achieve Yin/Yang?
...Actually, what's making me go "What?" about this isn't the plumbing.
I thought Mt. Aris was an island. o.O
Nice! I actually had the same technical workings of the last three paragraphs in my head by the time I reached them.
A system like this beats the alternative:
While I don’t know if this is an actual fact, I suspect that hiding in a septic system is a good choice if you want to make sure that nobody finds you. Who’s gonna look there? Nobody with a sense of smell.
Sorry that I am late, but it is my annual vacation and I went to the Natural HistoryMuseum Californian Academy of Sciences.
1one thing to mention is that in SeaPonyForm, the hippogriffs breath their sewage.
Sink/toilet-plumbing is interesting because it uses U-Bend, the siphon-effect, and VentPipes for keeping the air in the home clean. That is applied physics.
4946687
Saw this linked from twitter, noticed no one has responded to this question/comment.
It appears to be in the final product: This was from an earlier draft. In the final product, the valley separating the peak from the facing cliffs is filled with water, forming a relatively narrow channel. Think like the English Channel: On a clear day you can see across it (I think... OP would know better!), but it's still a fairly effective barrier to land-based creatures. This does imply that the slide actually goes under that channel and that the SeaPony caverns are rather close to Kluge down on the non-vertical plane.
5010412
Oh, that does make sense. Good work! :D