This story is a sequel to Good Trooper Gilda

Gilda has been a fugitive, a refugee, a prisoner of war, and a bat-hen to Equestria's fussiest unicorn. But it wasn't until she took 'the Princess's bit', that she began to know something about what it meant to be responsible for the welfare of others, even if the others in question happened to be the pack of imbeciles, blackguards, con-ponies, and bat-ponies who had been fool enough to answer her captain's call to the standard.

A crystalline standard which had not been seen in the living world for over a thousand years.

And although Captain Gleaming Shield and her motley band of raw recruits and shifty bat-ponies aimed to do nothing more exotic and dangerous than put a foreign princess on her proper throne, there are other things stirring in the shadows.

Like calls to like, and the revival of ancient battle-colors may lead to the revival of other, darker memories upon which the rays of Celestia's sun lay lightly and infrequently.

A continuation of “Jake and the Kid”
Warning.
You really need to read that story first.

Goose Down wanted to be a Guard Pony more than anything else in her life, just like her Father, numerous uncles, and six big brothers. Unfortunately she was small, a Nocturne Mare, and, oh yes, had a phobic fear of the open sky.

Combined that with her mistake of getting in the wrong job application line at the palace and ending up a maid, things look very dim indeed in regards to realizing her dream.

On the plus side, she works for the Princess of Dreams. So maybe, with a little help from her friends, and a very different type of princess, she will manage to achieve her heart’s desire.

With a few minor modifications.

Proofed and contributed to by Georg, who also graciously allowed me to steal some of his better characters. Georg really needs a co-writer credit on this. He contributes so much during his pre-reading that the stories simply would not be the same without him.

Be sure to catch his Nocturne stories, especially Diplomacy by Other Means.

Twilight Sparkle has been abandoned.

After an expedition into the badlands is torn to tatters by an unprecedented monster attack, Twilight finds herself stranded in a hostile environment with no safe way back home. With no supplies and no survival training, It all seems hopeless for the scholarly unicorn until she is discovered by a type of creature she has never seen before. A changeling named Thorax, a native of the badlands.

With Thorax's knowledge of the environment, he is Twilight's best chance of getting home safely. And by that same token, perhaps Twilight is the best chance the timid, pacifistic drone has of discovering something he has lived his entire life without.

Set well before the Season 2 Finale.

Cover art was drawn by me.

This is a spiritual successor to The Bug in The Herd, and The Bug in The Basement.

Edited by Mister Hypothetical.

After years of being the runt of the litter (despite having no siblings), Spike finally comes into his own and starts to grow up and mature. The result is a unique bit of magic all his own, or so the theory goes: He awakens one morning to find words hanging overhead that call him [The Gamer], along with powers that let him 'live life as though it were a game'.

How he decides to handle all of this, and where things go from there? That would be a spoiler, and you all know how we feel about spoilers around here...

Frequently asked questions will be answered from time to time, and those answers linked here for the curious:
The First FAQ

This story is a sequel to Friendship Is Monsters

It’s been over month since Twilight first saved Sunset's life and began to make friends. She finds herself happy for the first time in a long time and breaking out of her shell. However, as she ventures out and expands her horizons, things are gonna get messy. Secrets will spill, faces from the past will return, and new threats lie around the corner.

Maybe friendship really isn't so scary, even if your new friends are monsters.

Maybe its all you have

This story is a sequel to Leading Causes

Twilight Sparkle has more than a little anxiety about Spike's upbringing. In the wake of the Molt and the Sludge fiasco, those anxieties are clearer and stronger than ever. Like any good caretaker, she took advantage of an opportunity to learn more about dragons, including their needs and, most importantly, their vulnerabilities.

What started as a casual conversation about death for Smolder spiraled out of control into a full-fledged princess freakout, one that she is in the middle of. When it becomes clear that her teachers are completely hopeless when it comes to dragons, it's up to her to take Spike under her wing and teach him what they can't, one lesson at a time.

After a surprising number of requests for a sequel to "Leading Causes", I finally came up with something of a quasi-anthology of Smolder's lessons to Spike. While I do have a fair number of ideas, expect sizable gaps between updates.

Rated for academic descriptions (but no depictions) of death, and possible future scenes of hunting and fishing at a level slightly too mature for an E rating. Warning tags may be added later if I, or any commenters, feel they're needed.

A lonely Pegasus, scared by the world around her and content just being by herself. On a faithful day, she earns her cutie mark. What if on the same day, she also found a dragon egg. How would one simple shift change Fluttershy and Spike's life?

AKA, a story I'm surprised didn't get made sooner.
Inspired by The Dragon of sweet apple acres, My Dragon Brother, and Spike Pie.

Special thanks goes out to
NaomisHeadspaceART at devianart for making the cover. Seriously, thank you for this!

It had been hard enough, being one of the first. With the walls dropped, leaving her nation, her herd, traveling to Japan and trying to exist among so many strangers... every day had been a challenge. But she'd tried. Day by day, hoofstep by hoofstep, she'd felt she was finding her place in the human world.

But now there are no humans. No other demis or liminals. Nothing to anchor her. She exists among tiny horses and the scent of their fear, or at least what little of it drifts into her cell.

For nopony can look at a centaur and see anything but a monster.

(Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages -- and the TVTropes page just went live.)

Cover art by Harwick. Please contact him for commission rates & prints.

Trigger warning: character interpretation.