First you're born, and then you're recorded in triplicate. The end of labor is the start of a very long paper trail, because nopony can exist without being documented. Sending copies of a new foal's documents to the Herdbook Registry is perfectly normal. And of course, in order to make sure there's nothing strange going on, that paperwork gets reviewed. Which is done by bureaucrats who establish absolute control inside their office while having no idea of what's happening in the actual world. So as far as they're concerned, the forms associated with somepony named 'Flurry Heart'...

Don't tell them. It's funnier if they find out on their own.

(Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages. (Due to minimal story length, this was a pledge freebie.))

Gallus doesn't want to go home for summer. With a little gentle persuasion, he gets his friends on board to keep him out of Griffonstone, though none of them are quite sure how to do it; that is, until Silverstream hatches a scheme.

All he has to do is join the Hippogriff Navy. It's not the relaxing summer away from school that he hoped for, but hey, it promises to be interesting! Who knows what three months as a sailor could bring?

Adventure? Certainly.

Self-discovery? For sure.

A sea battle with a band of renegade pirates? Anything's possible.

Romance?

Pssh. Yeah, right.

Edited by a crew of scallywags who mean the world to me. In no particular order: MissyTheAngle, Freglz, Muggonny, Semillon, FamousLastWords

Special thanks to Pascoite for his assistance.

Cover art commissioned from the incomparable Marenlicious!

Curious about how the next chapter is coming along? Check my user page for regularly updated progress reports!

A nurse has seen it all. A combat medic has seen even more.

Princess Celestia sends her elite Household Battalion—"Celestia's Own"—south, far beyond the borders of Equestria, to break the slave trade and to free the oppressed. Medic Redheart, a young rookie among the Guard's hardened veterans, is with her Battalion every step of the way.

She's never told anypony her story. Until now.

A side story/prequel to my The Ponies in the Caves and A Story to Relate To, but reads independently.

This story is fantastic. There wasn't a single chapter that didn't give me chills or bring a tear to my eye. The way you describe the selflessness of the soldiers, and Redheart's unrelenting drive to save them, no matter the personal cost, was exemplary. I look forward to more of your work.

-SGTBRONY

Has a Black Company feel to it with the medic POV. Great story so far!

-Lerris

Cover art by Pabbles, by commission. Thanks!

With massive thanks to the folks in the Discord for comments and advice, and Totallynotabrony, Raleigh, Sledge115, and ChudoJogurt for detailed pre-reading, in whole or in part. Any remaining errors are fully my own.

Author's notes and commentary blog, with big spoilers.

Tracy Maxwell is in a desperate situation: find somewhere to live, or lose the internship he needs to survive. After exhausting every property in the city, one last option appears the day before his deadline. Sure the agent selling the place is a little weird, and more than a little overeager to get the property signed off. At the worst, maybe there's a little mold in the bathroom somewhere, and he has to make do until the lease is up.

But then he steps inside and discovers things can be much worse. The property is in another universe, and while he's there he'll have to play by its rules. He's free to continue working his dream job, so long as he keeps to the contract. Even worse, he's got a roommate who has no intention of leaving him alone.

If he ever wants to escape, he'll have to read the Fine Print.

This story now has a hardcover! If you'd like one of your own, you can grab it here: https://starscribe.net/

This story is a commission by _Kenzu_!

This story is a sequel to Lost Cities

Once upon a time there was a high tower at the edge of the world. The ponies who lived there thought it would last forever.

It did not. Neither did the great pegasus cloud fortresses, or the earth ponies's mighty metropolises, or even Everfree, home of the Sisters and the glorious capital from which they ruled an empire. Cities, it seems, are as mortal as ponies – they are born, they live, and someday they must die.

But the world goes on. The stories never end.

Prince Blueblood is absolutely convinced that Tempest Shadow has lied to Princess Celestia and that she is still plotting to conquer Canterlot. Now it's up to him to stop her.

Unfortunately, he is (a) dead wrong, (b) not a fan of comic books, and (c) not trained in espionage, counter-intelligence, special operations or anything else that would be useful in such a situation. But he does know which flowers go well with her coat and what restaurant can offer the best candlelight dinner opportunities, so... that's... a start...?

Prince Blueblood / Tempest Shadow, because I love my random and obscure shipping constellations these are two very different, very fascinating characters who can probably learn a lot from each other. (Also maybe some Capper/Celaeno on the sidelines later on?)

Content warning is again on the "better safe than sorry" side: there is no suicide, and the only reference to self-harm will be when some of Tempest's scars are discussed.
Took out the warning label for the time being. If I or others feel now or at a later time that it should go in again, it'll go in then. Thanks to the commenters so far for the feedback on when to include it!
Also a mild spoiler warning since this takes place shortly after The Movie.

Cover art (and thus early hype-generation for this fic) done by the amazing Earthsong9405 (Tumblr, DeviantArt).

(Featured Box on March 4, 2018? Thank you all!)

Five hundred years after the Discord's first defeat, a lone unicorn scientist makes an interesting discovery. Across Canterlot, over the last few centuries, accident rates have increased in the area around the Royal Palace. His work is ridiculed by his peers, but comes to the attention of the Princesses, who know exactly what is happening: Discord is waking up. With Luna and Celestia, he concocts a plan to stop the Lord of Chaos forever.

===
Cover art butchered from UnderwoodART's render of the stained glass in S02E01.
This story is based on S1/S2 (Discord was never released and reformed) and sits within my Soot-Covered World canon, but is stand-alone. No knowledge of the other books is required.

All thanks to ascendant, NoeCarrier, turol, KMCA, Caliaponia and billymorph for their prereading and editing over the life of this story.

There are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, and humanity is determined to explore every one. We send probes, probes with the blueprints to reproduce human explorers upon arrival. Uninhabited worlds the galaxy over can be colonized and populated, until after many years they too can join the vast throng of interstellar civilization. But if a probe is very, very lucky, it will land on a populated world instead. Equestria is one such world.

Even so, it's far from perfect for colonization, not with an environment lethal to human life. But each probe is resourceful and armed with the greatest machine intelligence mankind has devised. If placing a human mind into a newly manufactured human body won't work, it will just have to get a little more creative.

This book has a Hardcover! If you want to pick it up, you can grab it here: https://starscribe.net/

This story was written at the behest of Canary In The Coal Mine, who is sponsoring it on my Patreon. As usual, cover by Zutcha. Editing by Two Bit and Sparktail.

Fantastic prereading help from: Chyre, Danger Noodle, Doctor Disco, and Doggyshakespeare (who also did the Esperanto translation). Thank you all for helping to make this story more readable and more consistent for everyone.

Theodor Pichler knew joining the Barrow Observatory's winter crew would be a difficult position. He thought he knew the danger--freezing temperatures, gale-force winds, and terribly spotty broadband coverage. What he didn't expect was for an experimental new telescope array to interact with an unusual storm and send him screaming helplessly into the sky.

Instead of falling to his death, Theo landed in an alien world, populated by colorful horses he can't understand. What's worse: the body he landed in isn't his own, and he's not sure anything is where it should be. Having wings might be cool if he didn't have to be naked all the time...

With limited supplies and no help from the Observatory, Theo has to somehow navigate this new land, making new friends and encountering terrible dangers along the way. It will take all his cleverness, and a healthy dose of luck, if he's ever to be human again.

This book has a Hardcover! If you want to pick it up, you can grab it here: https://starscribe.net/

This story was a commission for Lucky Ray on my Patreon. Feel free to PM me if you'd like one of your own. It was edited by Two Bit and Sparktail. Coverart by FoxHatArt. Where chapters have art, it was done by Jasper.

Zutcha was here too.

Sleepwalking--the act of walking while not conscious of it or aware of it, during one's sleep; to walk and/or perform other actions while sleeping; to somnambulate.

Which for Smolder, that alone is bad enough. Crawling into bed with Gallus while she's sleepwalking though...that's a whole other level of awkward.

Third place winner in "The Discovery" Young Six contest.

Featured by 2/5/2020.

Audio Reading done by No One And Nobody