When Princess Celestia banished Luna, she expected her to return in a thousand years as a weakened little mare for her to mother and nurture back to health. When Luna tacked on a few extra years and finally returned with just as much snark as she ever had, she's thrown for a loop. And that's not even mentioning that apparently the Multiverse is actually a real thing, someplace called Hogwarts is inviting her people, and the war she didn't know Equestria was fighting!?
First off, this story is an experiment. It's another story in the Gate/OtIoPW/AI/etc vein, though it really only shares the same general idea; I've done numerous little tweaks so it's still a whole new story. And at least part of that is the format: For the most part, the story is presented as a series of journal entries written by the various people. I'm doing my best to keep entries from the same writer consistent in tone/style, but don't expect too much there. There's going to be a few little event scenes slipped in between, whenever I really want to show rather than journal.
While I have structured these entries so they're sorted by character and each chapter group represents one month of entries, meaning that there will be multiple chapter entries that technically happen in parallel, I don't recommend skipping any of them unless you've already read the story. I already have trouble repeating myself between stories- something I'm hoping this format helps me learn to overcome- so repeating myself between characters when multiple characters see the events is simply not happening. Besides, you're not here to read about the same event three times over, you're here to read about something new, aren't you?
While you can probably read the various 'subchapters' in whatever order you wish, I have ordered them the way I have for a reason- in some cases, at least. The ones tagged 'Origin' are the first time a given character has supplied an entry, and may introduce that character.
This thing's been writing itself quite well so far, so I have hope it'll keep going. For as long as it does, expect one chapter- that is to say, one chapter group, comprising one month of entries- per month.
And finally? Tags may be updated as the story progresses. Even though I've never updated them.
And this story was written with the able editing assistance of ... Me, Myself, and I, apparently. It seems I was silent for too long, so they all wandered off.
Cancelled 10/22/24 for the same reason as all the other recent stories. This time, though, I've actually noticed the trend and realized what I need to do to make something longer-lived.