Ideas I will not be writing #6: Space Battleship Harmony · 4:01pm Nov 1st, 2018
So I had this idea for a fusion crossover the other day. Which I won’t be writing, but it’s been annoying me for the better part of a day, so I’m writing it down so that someone might stumble on it.
Of course, nobody will ever write it, but at least someone might say it’s cool.
So, imagine Equestria. Or rather, the Pony Earth itself, a tiny planet the size of our Moon or thereabout, with even smaller sun and moon moving around it, controlled by the everlasting alicorns, who ruled Equestria for over a thousand years.
How peaceful it looks.
It’s a hundred years or so after the events of the TV series. Princess Twilight is now the leading authority of Equestria, Celestia and Luna have long since saddled her with the matters of government and are enjoying their semi-retirement, raising the sun and moon from their restored castle in the middle of the ancient Everfree forest. The rest of the Mane Six passed on, but left a legacy that will be felt for generations to come, and lineages that tend to greatness. Ponies have gone to space, built bases on the moon, explored the other planets of their dim little white dwarf star, and are thinking of building colonies and terraforming.
Unfortunately, a new enemy has come from somewhere nopony expected one. Or rather, science fiction writers did, and wrote extensively about hypothetical war with an invader from outer space, but even they did not actually expect what really happened.
The invaders, with no provocation, appeared in mighty spaceships, blotting out the sun. No words were exchanged. No pleasantries. Just fire from the sky, taking out major population centers, military bases, magical locations, and things even Equestrians themselves forgot they had, which were surprisingly plentiful.
Princess Luna, not ready to be discounted, figured that turnabout is fair play, and used the moon as a bludgeon, swatting half the fleet out of the sky with it.
The aliens retaliated with rocks. Endless rain of falling stars, disrupting the fragile ecosystem, since ponies could no longer maintain it under fire.
Shields came up. Every city that could still be saved was put under a bubble. Citizens were evacuated across the mirror into the human world, and what a havoc it caused! But that still didn’t save the planet, because, once they had ensured that no resistance would be worth the term, the aliens stole the sun itself.
It all looked grim, and ponies were in despair. But then a message came – from beyond the stars. “I am Starsha of Iscandar…” A beautiful creature – some would say, a gazelle, but it would be silly. An alien gazelle? – sent a promise of help. “Come to Iscandar. Our planet holds a system which can create you a new sun.”
With the message came the plans for Harmony Wave Engine, a heretofore inconceivable system to extract energy out of harmony itself, propelling a spaceship through space faster than light – so much faster, in fact, that the destination, a neighboring galaxy, did not seem like a pipe dream anymore. To run it, a twig of the Tree of Harmony was required, and a ship to put it on. The twig, Twilight’s School of Friendship readily provided, shortly before being bombed to oblivion. But what about a ship?
In a strange twist of fate, while ponies no longer had spacecraft suitable for the job, they did have an option. Battleship Harmony, an ancient airship, built to withstand the forces of the Storm King, never finished in time. Back then, ponies believed in the doctrine of battlefield decisive weapon: Instead of maintaining a large army, build one war machine, so awesome, that its very appearance on the field will turn the tide of battle, and maybe, you will not have to fight another battle again, ever. Now, it’s just a useless antique. A ridiculous notion, but it’s a hull of the right size, and it’s already enchanted up to the gills…
And so, Princess Celestia – deathly ill from the loss of the sun that her soul is tied to so deeply, but you’d never know looking at her – sets sail in a newly converted battleship, the most dangerous vessel ever built by ponies, in a long journey to Iscandar. And Sunset Shimmer is her tactical officer, who lived to see this day without aging at the same rate, due to Pedestria/Equestria temporal gradient.
Ready the Harmony Wave Cannon!
I like the idea. And I think you should write it.
Hums theme song.
4961528
I want to finish “Aporia” first, and that is expected to take most of my time, alas.
I have only one way to improve this: Incorporate the whole darn Tree into the system and send the entire planet.
Nothing says "back off" quite like bringing it all with you.
4961534
That would be something to do in the sequel, when the Comet Empire turns up.
4961534
That gets right in the Lenspony territory. Arisian alicorns ahoy!
Why does this remind me of Homeworld?
4961528
Yes. Or someone, if Oliver can't/won't. Because this is too awesome to not be written!
4961541
Homeworld does share the theme of piligrimage with the “Yamato”, and quite a few other things, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned up in the list of influences.
Cadence had never lost Shining Armor. He had always said he would be next to her heart, and as she touched the crystal pendant around her neck, she could feel his warmth and strength as if he were there in flesh and bone. Without him, she would never have been able to do this. With him, she could move worlds.
She settled into her cradle, the encompassing embrace of plastic and cloth which would be her home for the immediate future, and after a moment to brace herself, reached.
The immense power of the Harmony Wave Engine was never meant to be channeled by a single individual, but at that moment, Cadence was anything but. Tens of thousands of changelings scattered across the hivemind resonated with her might, tied together as one while the transformational magic reached down behind the fleeing starship and touched the charred planet they were abandoning. Frightened and alone, gathered together and waiting for the end, or trapped away from any known pony, it did not matter. Ponies, griffons, changelings, yaks, and every other being, sapient and otherwise, began to vanish and reappear in the shielded chamber Cadence reigned over, changed from their frail form of flesh and blood to the impervious crystal of her namesake. Much like the pendant around her neck, every living creature still remaining in Equestria turned to a diminutive crystalline state and sorted into the immense chamber inside Harmony, regular patterns of silicone and carbon and other chemicals in tight array where they would await their destination, and hopeful reconstitution.
And once it was done, the chamber was silent as Cadence, the True Princess of the Crystal Empire, reigned over her remaining subjects in similar crystalline slumber, waiting as the days and years....
IIRC I read something like this. Well, not exactly this but close enough? It's been about alicorns piloting some Tree of Harmony-powered arc ship while searching for a new home. Or something like this.
4962169
If there’s no Harmony Wave Cannon, powerful enough to put continent-sized holes into planets, it’s nothing like this.
It's cool.
I don't know how much the Equestria/Pedestria temporal gradient would stand up to 700 years, but there's an alternative: Steal Aragon's idea and have Sunset revert to being a teenager every time she ponies up, thus making her immortal.
So would the Harmony Wave Cannon be powered by the collective friendships of the crew? Because if so, ship's guidance counselor is the most important position of all.
I must ask the inevitable question, but where is best non-pony Discord?
:P
4962401
You have an extra zero in there. In any case, I have that long dialog in my head explaining how it works…
Unfortunately, Starlight Glimmer has long since passed on, but there are her students and descendants, some of which also inherit the penchant for using smoke bombs to run away when the situation gets too tense…
4962538
After Fluttershy died to old age, surrounded by friends, animal friends and family, about 30 years before the aliens attacked, (She was ~95 at the time, a very respectable age for a pegasus.) Discord held on for a whole decade, trying to figure out what to do with his life. It wasn’t working. Eventually, he left Pony Earth altogether, saying “it’s time to meet somepony new” and “I’ll scout ahead” – the latter of which two phrases nopony understood at the time.
The crew of Harmony discover him imprisoned and much reduced in power along their way, (due to not having access to his chaos dimension) and as they free him, he relates certain secrets of the ancient precursor civilization that is responsible for most life in both galaxies being quadrupedal.
I literally wrote this summary because I caught myself outlining things in my head, I could plan out the whole series right now down to individual scenes. Unfortunately, writing would take a lot more spare energy, which I don’t have.
4962553
Ha! Sounds pretty good indeed.