It Started With An Idea · 6:24am Dec 16th, 2019
This is something that I've had running around my head for the last month or so. It's not something overly complicated, but about half-way through writing down this synopsis, I realized this had more potential than as just a fan-fic story. Alter a few key facts, such as ponies being involved... and I may have something I could genuinely turn into a book to one day be published.
Please, read this and tell me what you guys think. Should I make it an MLP fan fic, or try and make an honest to God book out of this?
It should be stated that Hero Souls: Awakening, will be finished before I begin any real work on this one way or another.
And, of course, suggestions are welcome.
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It all started with an idea.
Magic, made physical. What would happen? Many Unicorns wondered this, believed it may the path to furthering their understanding of magic. But… how does one turn an energy like magic into a solid state?
Then there was an idea.
Compressed in a special chamber that prevented magic from leaking out, the energy was eventually forced into a viscous liquid-like substance that glowed with a powerful inner light. Incredibly unstable. Incredibly volatile. Incredibly powerful.
Then there was an idea.
Labelling the liquid magic “Ether”, Unicorns, in their lust for power and dominance, took to researching ways to weaponize Ether. Bombs, powerful, planet shaking, and… more dangerous than even the Unicorns knew. An explosion of Ether gave off an almost undetectable wave of some kind of radiation, which was magic returned to its energy state, but somehow… flawed. Anything living that was infused with this flawed magic, “Ether Radiation” they called it, mutated. Horrendously. Few, if any, survived direct exposure. There were consequences.
It took years, decades, centuries, and many wars and treaties, but eventually someone realized it. Magic was becoming harder to use. Magic was becoming harder to maintain. Magic was… disappearing.
Then there was an idea.
A special team of highly trained and experienced Unicorns spent years studying the phenomena, crunching the numbers, and making the connection. They discovered the truth early on, but refused to accept it. Eventually though, they were forced to admit defeat. In roughly two hundred years, magic would completely vanish.
Earth-Ponies, downtrodden and abused by the Unicorns, but connected to the planet itself, immediately stepped forward with ideas. Machines, to pick up the slack where magic would eventually fail. It would take time, effort, and trust, but technology could support the world as it healed.
Pegasi, slowly losing the ability to shape the weather but not their ability to fly, stepped in to ensure order and compliance between the two groups. Fighting at this point would help no one.
The Unicorns initially scoffed at the very thought of seeing Earth-Ponies and Pegasi as anything other than beneath them, but could not forever deny the truth. Survive together, or die alone.
It took nearly all of the two centuries that had been predicted, but technology had in fact managed to replace most every function that magic had once maintained. Cities in the sky no longer floated on clouds, but large sheets of earth and metal held aloft by massive anti-gravity engines. Equipment to streamline the production process of food and resources. Founderies to process raw material into usable forms. The world had changed.
Somewhere along the line of developing technology in the following two hundred years, Ether and the project that gave birth to it was forgotten to all but the history books. Eight hundred years passed.
Then there was a discovery.
A thousand years since the fateful day that changed the world, a simple farmer, in a simple village, found a glowing rock in their vegetable garden. A glowing, solid, rock. Magic, crystalized into a solid form.
The world instantly went into a frenzy of questions. Magic was all but a fairy tale at the point, though not quite. Not long after the discovery of the crystalized magic, dubbed “Mythril” by scientists, someone asked if it was useful for anything.
It was.
It was very useful.
When used as a power source for machinery, it ran the machine far longer than any electrical or steam source of power ever could, and far cleaner and more efficiently as well. It did not take long for the development of more advanced technology to pick up again. Nor did it take long for companies to demand Mythril for their own machines.
Mines the world over went into overdrive, frantically hunting for the rare material. Soon a stockpile began to form.
Then there was a secret idea.
Some countries in the world had never abolished slavery, and they abused this fact by forcing nearly every able-bodied person to work mines. Hidden behind the scenes of the public, the big name companies supported this, greed driving them forward. It did not take long for infighting to begin, and inter-company wars to break out over ownership rights of the mines and, in some cases, the people that worked them.
War.
When the infighting grew too large, it spilled into the public. The slaves of the mines saw the resulting public outcry and military intervention as an opportunity and revolted. It became a full scale three-way war. The military of the government tried to restore order. Since this would mean that corporations would be severely impacted, they fought back with privatized militaries of their own. The slaves, realizing the government intended to throw them back to their previous masters, organized and fought back as well.
This conflict escalated and flagged repeatedly for ten years, before a single family stepped up and seized control of all the mines currently producing Mythril. Despite many attempts by the corporations and the government, this family maintained a steely grip on the source of the conflict.
The family made a decree.
“There will be peace, or we will blow the mines.”
This brought all the hostilities to a screeching halt. Talks started. The slaves, mostly Earth-Ponies, were the first to accept, under the condition that they were allowed to lead their own lives. The companies refused to give up, as one of the conditions set by the family was that all the companies came together under one banner, that of the family’s banner, and end infighting, but in time they also gave in.
The government, seeing that this family had brought peace, stepped back once the other two had given up.
Now the owner of the biggest and only source of Mythril in the world, the Asche Family didn’t stop there. They merged all the corporations into one name, and did something no one expected.
They refind Mythril.
Refined from its raw state through an unknown procedure, Mythril became magnitudes more powerful. It also had an unexpected side effect. Anyone who held the refined material on their person could use it to cast magic spells.
For the first time in over a thousand years, magic tomes and grimoires saw the light of day as researchers and historians both rediscovered the secrets of magic.
But there was a price. The pony body was no longer adapted to using magic, and could not stand having magical energy course through it for extended periods of time. This endurance could be extended through rigorous training and exposure to magic, but only the gifted few could do more than make basic elements and spells.
Then there was an idea.
Schools and research institutions were created, all dedicated to discovering, preserving, and teaching magic to all who could use it. The hope was to eventually give rise to ponies capable of using magic without refined Mythril. To restore the world to how it was before the Ether Bombs.
But there was still one last secret for the world to discover about magic, one last mystery. One final test.
I got more and more hyped with every line.
Impressive....
This said...why not both? You could write the pony version and then rewrite for the Twilight Sparkle version or the other way around...
I say go for the pony version to test out your idea, then write your novel. I'm actually working on the two side by side
Not a bad idea. I saw something similar attempted in a MLP/Mass Effect crossover that has since been abandoned. Except this time it was a Reaper’s corpse that cause the loss of magic and the destruction of every non equine race on the planet. The Mane 6 where magically removed from the planet after they beat the Reaper and put in stasis between cycles until they where saved by Shepard.
I say like everyone else here do both try out the idea here before changing it into a novel.
(Though I be honest the either here sounds similar to the effects of seither from BlazBlue not an criticising you just pointing it out))