Behind the Curtain: Compendium of Creative Curses, Part I - How It Works · 6:28pm Oct 28th, 2018
In the course of Lateral Movement, one of the powers that Lex Legis makes liberal use of is his ability to lay curses on other people. A product of his dark magic, he primarily utilizes this as a method of dispensing justice to those who've worked against the common good, though he's not above deploying it as a weapon in a combat situation or other dangerous scenario. As Lateral Movement is closely predicated on the d20 System role-playing game rules, we're going to examine the curses Lex has used throughout the story so far and take a look at what their game effects look like.
But before we do that, we need to look a little deeper at exactly what curses are.
Curses in Theory and Practice
In its most basic form, a curse is an affliction that causes someone to experience misfortune. Who it affects, what sort of misfortune it inflicts, and how severe it is, are all variable depending on the nature of the curse and the strength with which it's able to manifest. A weak curse might simply cause a specific victim to suffer an upset stomach if they eat their favorite food. A powerful curse might cause anyone spending the night in a particular locale to experience horrific nightmares when they sleep. The sole unifying theme is that the curse is something bad for those it afflicts (even if clever individuals can sometimes find ways to use them to their advantage).
But that brings us to a problem: since "bad" is a highly subjective term, this means that curses are qualitative in nature. This is important, because it requires that a curse be maintained by an intelligence once it's been laid down. Take a look at the example curses in the previous paragraph; someone whose stomach becomes upset when they eat their favorite food needs to have something make a determination as to what that "favorite" is. Likewise, there needs to be something deciding what constitutes a "horrific" nightmare for whoever stays in the accursed locale. These aren't things that can be determined without an ego guiding them, making decisions and adjustments as necessary to make sure the curse remains effective.
Moreover, there needs to be a power source that makes the curse manifest. In myths, literature, and other media, this is often the strength of the curse-giver's will, but that's not much of an explanation unto itself. Everyone has points in their life when they're overcome with great emotion - specifically great enmity towards someone else - and that by itself virtually never translates into some sort of ill fate befalling said person. So there has to be some other source of power allowing a curse to operate.
The obvious answer here is to say that the intelligence and the power come from whoever laid down the curse, but this requires us to ask how exactly they're doing that. A farmer whose crops are all taken by a greedy lord, despite the farmer's family being starving, might curse the lord bitterly, but he himself has no ability to make that curse manifest beyond what he, as an ordinary man, can do. He could certainly work to bedevil the lord on his own - stealing his horses or setting fire to his manor, for instance - but none of those are really what we'd call a curse.
About the only way that a person can be the power and guiding intelligence for their own curse is after they die. "I'll haunt you (and cause you some manner of misfortune)" is archetypal as a death curse, wherein someone about to be slain swears to forgo their afterlife in order to stick around as an angry spirit and torment whoever killed them. A variant on this is the Egyptian-style curse laid down upon tomb robbers, where the person so entombed swears to come back and take revenge on those who plundered their resting place. In each case, the individual so wronged is acting with the powers and abilities they've gained as a spirit to carry out their own curse.
That's not going to be worthwhile a lot of the time, however. Most people don't want to have to die to get their revenge (let alone be burdened with carrying it out themselves in lieu of whatever normally happens to them after death). So this means that, when a curse is successfully laid down, something else has to oversee its administration. But what?
The typical answer here is gods, devils, or other spirits of similar stature. Both sapient and powerful, such entities are often called upon directly when a curse is laid down, the mortal making the declaration beseeching their chosen power to take revenge on their behalf. Sometimes this will be accompanied by an offering in order to entice the chosen spirit into accepting the task of cursing someone else; these offerings can range from minor ceremonies and rituals to animal (or human) sacrifice to the curse-layer's own soul. Other times, no such offering is needed, either because the curse-layer has been a devout follower who has good standing to ask for such a favor, or because it's in the entity's favor to strike back against those who'd harm their interests in the mortal world. Or there could be some other reason altogether; why a particular entity might choose to heed a mortal's call and carry out the desired curse tends to be as varied as the nature of the curses they oversee.
It should also be noted that in some cases, the entity behind the curse is also the one laying it. The polar opposite of a mortal carrying out their own curse after death, an entity powering a curse might also hand one down without a mortal's beseeching it. This is typically an example of the aforementioned idea of an entity protecting its interests in the mortal realm, save that it's not based around a follower being harmed. Rather, it can happen if a temple is defiled, a treasure is stolen, or even if the entity in question is blasphemed. But for this reason, such curses tend to be rarer; while it's possible to stumble onto a sacred place and arouse a god's ire by looting it, most people simply won't find themselves in such a situation to begin with (though adventurers might find themselves in such scenarios with more regularity).
What's interesting about this is that (presuming that the one laying the curse is another person) it puts a middleman between the one laying a curse and their target. A curse can potentially be lifted if the entity administrating it is unwilling or unable to continue doing so, regardless of the wishes of the person who initially called it down. That might mean making an offering to that entity in order to placate it (which - if they accept it (they might not) - would have to exceed the one made by the curse-layer, since the entity is going back on its agreement with them, at potential repercussions to the entity's reputation). Or it might mean asking another entity of equal or greater power to intercede on your behalf (which would depend on your standing with that other entity, and so might require some sort of persuasion if you weren't already in good with them). Alternatively, you could (at least in theory) slay, capture, defeat, or otherwise force the entity in question to stop, though this is usually a quest unto itself. Of course, the curse-layer could always then turn to a different entity and ask them to pick up where the previous one left off...
One way or the other, where there's a curse, there's some sort of intelligence behind it.
My Little Malediction
Having established how curses function, contrast this with how they're discussed in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. In Briddle Gossip (season one, episode nine), the following is said:
Twilight Sparkle: You guys, there's no such thing as curses!
Rainbow Dash: Well, that's interesting to hear coming from Miss Magic Pants herself.
Twilight Sparkle: My magic, real magic, comes from within. It's a skill you're born with. Curses are artificial, fake magic. It's conjured with potions and incantations; all smoke and mirrors meant to scare. But curses have no real power, they're just an old pony tale.
Except, of course, we later learn that curses are real. Take, for example, what Princess Celestia tells Twilight in The Crystal Empire - Part 1 (season three, episode one):
Princess Celestia: But not before he was able to put a curse upon the Empire. A curse that caused it to vanish into thin air.
Several of Daring Do's books (which, as of the events of Daring Don't (season four, episode four), are presented as being autobiographical rather than fictional) reference curses; in Stranger Than Fan Fiction (season six, episode thirteen), Quibble Pants references "Curse of the Jungle Queen," and in Daring Done? (season seven, episode eighteen), Rainbow Dash reads a newspaper article referencing a forthcoming title called "Daring Do and the Curse of the Pharaoh's Tomb."
The takeaway here seems to be that, in the world of MLP:FiM, curses are real, but are so strikingly rare that even ponies who study magic professionally (as Twilight does) think that they don't exist. And in fact it's not hard to see why; Equestria doesn't seem to have many evil entities who are capable of maintaining a curse like that, and those that might be are typically presented as not being in any position to do so. Even if we assert that the likes of Nightmare Moon or The Pony of Shadows have that much power, they and other villains are typically presented as being locked away before they briefly escape, only to face near-immediate defeat at the hands of the Mane Six or other heroes.
Exceptions exist, of course, but they're not very compelling ones. Discord could very well be behind a curse, but he doesn't seem to have the temperament for it, even if he conceivably has enough power to maintain one with ease. We know King Sombra cursed the Crystal Empire to vanish, but it's easy to interpret that as him cursing it to follow him into banishment, maintaining the curse because he was right there with it. Queen Chrysalis was never presented as being locked away, but the nature of changelings is that they need to feed to maintain their power, making it unlikely that she'd spend the energy maintaining a malediction. The Storm King seems to lack mystical abilities altogether, being a feared force because of the military strength he commands (and, presumably, the magic items at his disposal).
Overall, there simply don't seem to be many entities in Equestria that have the means, motive, and opportunity to administrate a curse. No wonder Twilight thought that curses weren't real!
The d20 Dilemma
Everything above has been describing how curses work. When translating that into a role-playing game system, the "how" of things informs us of what the game mechanics are meant to model, with the actual rules translating that into playable form so as to accurately represent what's happening. At least in theory.
In actuality, the d20 System is doing exactly the opposite, with the rules primarily focused on internal consistency and mechanical cohesion first, with any translation of how the game world functions being relegated to a secondary role (when it's mentioned at all). In theory, this is meant to allow for the game to represent anything, with the rules being a modular set that can be tweaked, twisted, and tinkered with so as to better fit any particular setting or paradigm. In actuality, that only works so well, at least where curses are concerned.
Take, for example, the most common application of curses under the game rules: the bestow curse spell. Right away, we can see a problem: it's a spell, requiring that you have the ability to harness magic in order to call down a curse on someone. In many, quite possibly most, stories where curses are called down, the person laying them isn't a powerful wizard or priest, but rather is a helpless individual. That's one of the central themes of curses: they're what the powerless turn to when all other avenues of retribution are lost. By itself, the bestow curse spell is just another avenue of magical debuffs in a spellcaster's arsenal.
Leaving that aside, the "how" of the curse offers something of a mixed bag. If you look at the spell lists bestow curse appears on, it can be cast by nine different classes (actually ten; as an NPC class, everyone forgets about the adept). Four of those (adept, antipaladin, cleric, and oracle) are divine spellcasting classes, meaning that there's a built-in explanation as to which entity is backing up the curse: the spellcaster's god. Another two classes (the shaman and spiritualist) expressly deal with spirits, filling that role, and the witch class has their mysterious patron to do the same. But for the arcane spellcasting classes - the bloodrager, sorcerer, and wizard - the question of who is maintaining the curse from the spell is an open question, since those classes' spellcasting abilities don't come from a sapient power source.
Now, there are expanded game rules that make at least a modest attempt to plug some of these holes. Pathfinder has a long section about curses that talks about some of the ideas presented here. It covers laying curses without being a spellcaster, for instance, but has very little to say about what entity is behind them. Overall, it does a credible job of providing expanded mechanical options for d20 System curses, but doesn't go very far in establishing an underlying idea which the rules are meant to flesh out.
Next Time: We bring it all together to discuss how the curses Lex lays down work, in terms of what's happening and how the game mechanics work, in Compendium of Creative Curses, Part II - Lex's Hexes.
Maybe Curses are more along Discords line of work, in that they get the chaotic randomness of the local reality to alter very slightly, the more effort is put into the curse, the more effort on what randomness occurs, and because its the random noise, its suprisingly persistent?
4959457 Except curses aren't meant to be chaotic, they're meant to be malevolent. Admittedly, some of them can be minor enough that they're more in line with being annoying pranks rather than serious threats to someone's health and/or safety - which is up Discord's alley - but there's no suggestion that he's out there granting curses on behalf of other people, and given that he's a rather self-centered individual it's not hard to see why.
It's also iffy as to whether or not he's necessarily aware of such things at all, at least without making some sort of deliberate effort to know what's going on. Between the situations where he doesn't appear when his personality suggests that he'd be inclined to (such as Fluttershy being in danger during the events of the Movie), and the situations where he's taken by surprise even when he has his powers (such as when he finds out Fluttershy was kidnapped by changelings in To Where and Back Again - Part 1), its clear that he doesn't have - or maybe, regularly utilize - much in the way of supernatural awareness.
In Twilight's case, I think her statement is really more a political/ideological stance than anything else. I think "curse" in Equestria has been used when isolated villagers didn't like that one unicorn and thought the bad luck was his fault, so it's been a project of Celestia, and unicorns in general, to define the word out of existence, as it is seen as kind of a pejorative term for magic.
It's a bit like how in the US, there are no more swamps. Instead, we have wetlands and estuaries. In Equestria, there are no curses. Unicorns may perform illegal magical spells on others without to negative effects, but they aren't "curses" because the definition of curse has been carefully re-written to exclude normal magical use.
In d20 terms, Blood of the Coven says even good churches use Mark of Justice and such, and considers them curses. So quite possibly mediated by divine beings, but not necessarily malevolent.
4959490
The problem with this is that it conflicts with what we see in the show. In Bridle Gossip, Twilight's friends are afraid of Zecora, and worry that she's placed a curse on them somehow after they're hit with the effects of poison joke. But Zecora isn't a unicorn, and isn't able to cast spells, something I've pointed out before. This suggests that the popular conception of curses in Equestria is much like that of our world: that they're a type of supernatural misfortune that can be called down regardless of whether or not the one invoking them is a wizard, warlock, or some other type of spellcaster. Trying to change public perception of unicorns in regards to that makes no sense, since no one seems to be attributing them to unicorns to begin with.
"Magic" and "spellcasting" aren't the same thing; the former seems to be ubiquitous across Equestria, albeit in various different ways, whereas the latter seems to be restricted to unicorns and alicorns (and maybe a few others), with only a small number of those able to push it to any notable heights.
I'm not aware of any campaign to get rid of the term "swamps" for lands within the United States - certainly, places like the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge or the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge don't seem to have gotten a name-change - but it's worth noting that those terms all have precise definitions, even if the casual usage has them as being interchangeable. A "swamp" is one particular type of "wetland," and is different from, say, a "marsh." (Though, to be fair, there are terms like "mire" that I believe are synonyms for other classifications without any particular meaning of their own.) For a great game-related resource on this, check out Frog God Games' Marshes of Malice.
That said, I think that what you're talking about would be far better utilized with regards to "dark magic," which is something that we hear about far more than curses over the course of MLP:FiM, as well as something that seems to be more likely used by unicorns (e.g. King Sombra, or Rarity in season four's Inspiration Manifestation) than curses - which are supposed to be the province of anyone who's so wrapped up in negativity that they cry out for something to strike down whomever they hate - are.
I really do have to pick up a copy of that one of these days, though I confess I'm sort of inclined to wait until after Pathfinder Second Edition comes out and Paizo starts discounting Pathfinder First Edition products in order to clear out inventory.
That said, I'm not at all surprised that good churches would use spells like mark of justice; as the name says, it's used for justice. Likewise, that spell is absolutely a curse, since as per Ultimate Magic it has the [curse] descriptor. My use of the term "malevolence," was quite literal: it refers to hatred, malice, and ill-will. Those things aren't necessarily "evil" per se - it's a recurring theme in many tales about curses that they're called down as retribution for a wrong done that would otherwise go unpunished - which is why bestow curse and similar spells don't have the [evil] descriptor.
Looking at the list of curses, I'm reminded that Lex could have done much worse to everyone he cursed so in a way, he was being merciful. Shame there's no one around that has knowledge of that and explain how easy they got off, relatively speaking that is. Though I think it would only make everyone more nervous around Lex than they already are.
4959622 Well, some of those curses are beyond what Lex can evoke, though that depends on how far he pushes himself when he uses them (as we'll see in the Part II). But it should be noted that in Equestria, simple forgiveness as soon as the offending party shows remorse tends to be the norm, so the idea that Lex would hand down a punishment - especially ones that impact quality of life - would be considered exceptionally harsh by the standards of most ponies. It's just that the camp ponies have seen Lex in action long enough to understand that, as harsh and unfriendly as he seems, he's putting everything he has toward securing their welfare.
But someone who's just arrived, or is about to arrive, and finds out what he's done will likely be far less inclined to think well of him.
An interesting overview of curses. I'd like to suggest one intelligence which might be used (unwillingly) to fill the role you've described here - the victim's. After all, who knows their favourite food - or what things they find horrific - better than them? And some of the effects we have seen - from the poison joke to Sombra's fear trap - seem to utilise this kind of "psychic reflection" to show or afflict multiple targets with personalised effects.
5331258 A very interesting idea! The major reason I discounted that is that this, like virtually everything else in these posts, is predicated on a d20 System-based design, which is quite high-magic in its underlying assumptions. While a particular low-level individual might not have any particular recourse to prevent their mind from being read, high-level characters (and certain types of creatures) are a different take altogether. Spells and powers to prevent thought-reading aren't presented, under the game rules, as having any special aspects of foiling curses, nor are curses powerless against undead creatures or constructs, two creature types which are normally immune to mind-affecting effects (which includes spells like detect thoughts). As such, I took it as a given that the intelligence involved needed to come from somewhere else.
With regards to Sombra's fear spell, that's certainly an issue of what the victims see, but that strikes me as less of a cause and more of an effect. That is, the spell was basically just supplying undiluted fear (though perhaps existential anguish is a better description, rather than sheer terror) and the victims were interpreting that through the lens of their own personal experiences. That might be a very technical definition, but I see it as being akin to (in d20 terms) how a cause fear spell simply creates an emotional impression of fear (that spell, you'll notice, is given the [mind-affecting] descriptor); you can easily suggest that the victim is supplying how that manifests for them, but that's ultimately window dressing; the spell just makes you afraid.
As for poison joke, that just seemed random in what it did, rather than specific to anything in particular about its victims.
5331271
Certainly you using that lens might have an effect, as in the FIM setting we see very little in the way of such mindproofing (or the mindreading it's meant to foil, for that matter). You did mention in the other post how forcing one setting into a ruleset not meant for it could have odd results.
As for Bridle Gossip, the curses are fairly personalised, attacking a "strong point" of most of them - Rainbow's wings, Twilight's horn, Rarity's looks, Pinkie's speech, Applejack's strength... the only really odd one is Fluttershy, and given 5 out of 6 fit I'd read that more as a revelation she cares more about her soft affect than we thought.
5331289 The major oddity that comes with most such instances of mapping a narrative onto a set of pre-existing game rules is how to measure the magic system, which is especially true for how magic works in MLP:FiM compared to D&D!
As for poison joke, I don't agree that they were "personalized," per se. They were certainly highly inconvenient, but shrinking down to a few inches tall would be inconvenient for anyone, for instance, as would having a swollen tongue (Pinkie Pie). Likewise for a part of your body suddenly being somehow warped, and while that did just happen to be Twilight's horn and Rainbow's wing, that struck me as more of a narrative contrivance rather than in-character personalization. Ditto for Rarity's mane and tail. And as you noted, Fluttershy's voice was just...weird.
5331296
Certainly they could be coincidental, but I think targeted intent is at least as likely.
(In truth, we already know that each affliction was custom-made for it's bearer - we just don't know if that's true in-universe. But if the mechanism I describe exists - and there are so many examples I feel it must - then I find it more likely then mere coincidence.)
5331303 There aren't really that many example for poison joke, though. The only thing we can say with certainty is that the effects of the plant vary for each individual, and are the same each time (hence Fluttershy's voice changing again in Filli Vanilli, season four, episode fourteen).
5331309
With certainty, yes. But worldbuilding is not science or even archaeology - there is a point where one must decide the truth for oneself.
5331315 I agree, I just prefer to adhere closely to Occam's razor when a judgment call has to be made; the interpretation that makes fewer assumptions (and, as a corollary, assumptions of smaller scope) is the "safer" bet.
5331322
I'm also a minimalist - I prefer to adjudge potentially setting-breaking abilities tightly. But for exactly the reason you describe above, allowing a curse to use the victim as the driving intelligence does so, by avoiding positing an unproven hypothetical entity.
5331327 Well sure, within the context of MLP by itself. The post I wrote here is more within the context of the d20 System, which doesn't really cleave to that idea very well, as I noted previously. I meant that insofar as poison joke (which isn't really a curse at all, as Bridle Gossip told us) goes, it seems like the more conservative interpretation is to find its effects to be random rather than attribute it to being able to read the victim's thoughts and adjust its effects accordingly.
5331332
Only if one considers such a frequency of effects being suited to their owners plausibly coincidental. I mean, if we put the Mane 6's names in one hat and their conditions in another, and drew pairs at random, how often do you think the results would "work" as well as what we got in the episode?
(And of course, I'm not considering the D20 system at all - because assuiming anything like it applies in FIM is very much a violation of Occam's razor.)
5331333 Given the limited circumstances in which we saw it applied (i.e. just to the Mane Six), and how things like Pinkie's tongue and Fluttershy's voice don't seem to be particularly on-point for how targeted to characteristics central to who they are, I think that falls within the realm of plausible coincidence.
Likewise, I'm not using the d20 System for my understanding of canon, as I noted before; it only works with my underlying how I'm constructing my fanfiction.
5331336
Plausible, yes, but not more plausible than targeting if one both believes it to be a good match in at least both 5 of 6 cases and has other examples of such phenomenon elsewhere, which cannot be explained by coincidence.
5331340 There are no other examples, though. Outside of Bridle Gossip and Filli Vanilli we don't see poison joke put to use again (unless you mean in the comics, chapter books, etc., but I don't believe those can be considered canon). Likewise, I disagree with the "five out of six target their central characteristics" premise, as I've mentioned before.
5331351
Not with poison joke, but with magic in general, starting from as early as the second episode.
And I'll save that debate for your Bridle Gossip rewatch thread.