Feb
18th
2019
Points of Canon: Legends of Magic #11 · 12:24pm Feb 18th, 2019
Just two left…
Continuing from where Legends of Magic #10 left off.
“She is probably on a beach or doing a foxtrot.”
“What’s a foxtrot?”
“It’s a strange sort of walk where the back hoof of a diagonal pair lands before the front one.”
- Pretty much the only reason to have this conversation at all is to establish that Somnambula has the Pinkie cross-world information leak abilities.
- But at least we know that the word “foxtrot” is otherwise meaningless in the era. Hopefully…
“Guys, the greenhouse is locked from the inside.”
- Using a complicated metallic paddle lock for some reason, rather than a built-in lock of any kind.
- The lock is riveted together. At least one thing about this isn’t anachronistic: Rivets actually date to the Bronze Age or earlier for us.
- Notice that the subsequent events imply that it’s the plants locking the greenhouse from the inside, rather than Mistmane herself.
- “Rockhoof, you see if you can’t do anything about that chain.” It’s a greenhouse, though. All the walls are glass. Which mysteriously doesn’t break when Rockhoof kicks it, or when Flash crashes helmet-first into it, but still, trying to break the glass should be something Stygian would have thought of first. In fact, none of what they do does any damage to the glass, which is… really, really odd.
- Meadowbrook cooks up a ruse targeted at the plants that relies on misleading them through conversation. It works.
- “Of course, that’s just good horse sense.” Stygian appears to use the term to mean “common sense.”
- “Thanks, Cleopatrot. I’m gonna owe you one.” Considering that Flash complains that he’s not thinking well because he just crashed headfirst into a building immediately prior, Somnambula is probably not identical to Cleopatrot. However, it implies the reign of Cleopatrot preceded these events, doesn’t it? Maybe she was Hisan’s mom.
- “Everypony and plant stop!” Mistmane explicitly talks to plants. Notably, Stygian has never heard of such an ability, and neither did anyone else – even though minutes ago, Mistmane secured their entry into the greenhouse by bamboozling plants.
“Well, I was going to the castle of the Two Sisters to find Star Swirl the Bearded.”
“Star Swirl? Isn’t he a myth?”
“Well, he is a good choice, but I’m afraid you won’t find him at the Castle of the Two Sisters.”
“Why not?”
“Well, let’s just say that he and I have nearly met before, at the Princesses’ new castle.”
- Stygian knows that this is where Star Swirl would be, and yet the castle is “of Two Sisters.”
- Sisters exist at the time. Even though they’ve never met any of the Pillars and Luna explicitly calls Rockhoof a “myth” in modern day.
- Rockhoof considers Star Swirl to be a myth, for some reason. He doesn’t say the same about the castle of the Two Sisters.
- This conversation dates itself to after the events of Legends of Magic #3 and much more than halfway through the construction of the Canterlot Castle, as the subsequent scenes imply.
- “He’s the most important conjurer of the modern era! He proposed the idea of amniomorphic spells. Last I heard he had created over 125 spells!” Of course, nobody explains what makes an amniomorphic spell special this time, either, Stygian just quotes Twilight from Luna Eclipsed verbatim, minus a few spells.
- “From one to another, another to one. A mark of one’s… purpose?” Star Swirl is working on his Unfinished Spell. We still don’t know what was it supposed to do. Star Swirl doesn’t explain this time either: When Stygian asks, Star Swirl’s answer is that he doesn’t know. How the hell does that work, and why would there be a point working on it if so, is left as an exercise for the reader.
“And these gardens are where I come when I wish to be away from the two bickering teenaged girls who will someday be the rulers of this land.”
- Notice that this implies they are currently not rulers of this land, though it doesn’t explain why the hell does Star Swirl think they will be – he definitely doesn’t know the date, so there probably no agreement yet.
- And yet they had a new castle built for them for some reason.
- This is directly incompatible with the Journal of the Two Sisters, by the way, even though Horse Play quotes that source verbatim.
- “You spend all day around two moody teenagers who can alter the fabric of reality and…” Neither Celestia nor Luna have previously been accused of anything of the sort, but this sounds like it would be very important.
- “What sort of danger? An Ursa Major? A centaur? I was sure I put the last of those in Tartarus…” Star Swirl claims to have dealt with the last of the centaurs by himself, and that last centaur can only be Tirek.
- “They call themselves the Dazzlings. They’re sirens.” Notice the modern-sounding Pedestria-side name used by Equestrian sirens before they ever know what Pedestria is.
- “Well… you certainly do have some strong opinions about these mythical heroes.” Notice that at this time, Star Swirl, who has already written a book called “The Great Heroes of Equestria,” which details the adventures of the rest of the Pillars far enough for Stygian to compare them to the real thing, considers these heroes mythical. Full stop, something’s seriously wrong here.
But I did say the same about the rest of the Legends already, didn’t I?
To be concluded…
It possible that Luna and Celestia not just random fillies but heirs of previously existed royal line. Quite possible that ponies been united at some point but fractured after fall of the royal line.
Justice3442's thesis that all of the Pillars are terminal alcoholics and are continually three sheets to the wind now makes for a pretty good hypothesis, doesn't it?
5015992
It rather sounds a bit more like they’re on drugs that Rockhoof brought from his “high desert”.
Horse sense is an idiom that still exists, even if horse use is no longer so high.
Hee hee, bamboozle.
They're teenage alicorns, so even though they're brats everyone has already decided they will rule someday and get a castle. Even if the tribes haven't formally agreed to let them rule, they still bear the mark of the chosen ones, etc. Starswirl is confident they will rule because he's going to make sure of it.
So in this primitive society, there's no organized form of news, think Dark Ages Europe without the Catholic Church to be the one institution all lands have in common. I think bards are the sole source of news from other lands, and they are happy to make things up as to tell the truth about someone they met in another country. In that context, "legendary" just means "I heard a bard say a guy named Rockhoof carved a tunnel to save a town from a volcano." Maybe the "legend" is entirely true, maybe it's a lie, but it's a being heroic enough for bards to talk about them. Meanwhile a "myth" is a legend you heard from a bard you think they made up entirely. If you think maybe Rockhoof is some random ditch-digger and the bards made up a story about him saving his town from a volcano, then you think this legendary Rockhoof is a myth.
Perhaps the Greenhouse is made of CE-brand magic crystal.
Also that something happened to wipe out all the other centaurs.
5016125
According to Star Swirl, they’re “other unicorns”
Which would work if the trips across this Equestria on hoof didn’t take apparent weeks rather than months and years.
5016276
"other unicorn"s with visible wings.
Weeks for the bards who aren't devoured by Lumber bears. Outside of cities and towns Equestria is pretty dangerous right now, I doubt there is a huge amount of travel, and very little national consciousness.
5016279
It’s no problem for pegasi to relocate their entire HQ across the continent for a training exercise.
So nope.
Which, as I believe I mentioned on the discord, serves to clear up some of the confusion about the Pillars/Tirek/Discord timeline. So we now know that Tirek predated Discord, and that Star Swirl befriending Scorpan as a "young unicorn wizard" was the earliest part of this timeline (though note that the princesses were still around even then). This was then followed by the Pillars uniting in this story, the sirens being dealt with, and then Discord came along some time presumably after, once the Elements of Harmony came about. This does still leave a tonne of implications and additional questions about Tirek, such as how he knew about Discord but not about Twilight, but given the revelation in season eight that he receives fucking mail in Tartarus, Tirek's place in the story almost makes sense now if you squint at it.
5016125
5016279
That something possibly being Tirek himself.
Something which is still the case a thousand years later.
5016812
If we accept that, we also must conclude that the battle against Discord never happened and that the Potion of Plot-Relevant Flashback lies. See the mention of chocolate rain during Flash Magnus’ adventure in Legends of Magic #4, which unambiguously has to predate this line of Star Swirl substantially – and predate the appearance of the Elements of Harmony.
Sorry, if I squint any more my eyes will be closed.
5016812
Yup. I mean, if he can drain the magic from various different pony races, he can probably drain it from other centaurs.
I think it's pretty safe where the rail lines are, except for when the trains get attacked by buffalo. Of course, any town without a rail line is still in terror incognita. Heck, those bards have never gotten around to telling Manehatten cabbies about the 4th alicorn princess.
5016813
I don't remember this part. When was it?
5016814
Yes, yes, Manehattan is a lawless wasteland left to the mercy of monsters. Any New Yorker could've told you that.
5016819
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/337980406760734730/547678441793650688/rain.png
5016820
Thanks.
Though, that looks more like a throwaway reference to me than any actual evidence of Discord. Not that Discord existing at all at this point has any special implications if he wasn't yet doing anything notable enough to get blasted.