Applejack is not having a good day.

She was nopony special: a gardener and sometime-engineer aboard the Golden Oaks space station, providing food and oxygen for the CelesTech researchers living and performing experiments there. She vaguely knew everypony, performed good work, and even was on first-name terms with a certain royal, but wasn't noteworthy. She was nice, a dependable worker, and not much else.

But when the Stellar Thrones send up representatives for a routine tour, something goes wrong. Applejack wakes up a week later, with no memories of what occurred in the meantime, to find Golden Oaks ravaged. The entire station is in lockdown. Communications are nonexistent. The shuttles are destroyed. Power is unreliable. Most of the crew have been slaughtered. The escape pods don't work. Every module has been badly damaged. And something is prowling the station. Something capable of disguising itself as anything.

With only a wrench and herself to rely on, Applejack pushes through the crumbling station to unravel the mystery. But her every step is being watched, her every movement is a risk. Because Golden Oaks isn't a research facility anymore. It's a hunting ground. And ponies are the prey.

Although this is a crossover with Prey, no knowledge of it is required.

Have you ever just been having a regular day, then suddenly, BAM, you're dead? Well, no, of course you haven't. But what do you expect to happen after you die? If the answer was getting shoved into an overly pink copy of a pony princess, you'd be lying. Worse yet, she made me an alicorn just like her, which causes a whole new set of problems.

Unfortunately, she was adamant that I stay and become her twin sister. I ditched her immediately in my bumbling confusion and fear, and who could blame me? The last thing on my mind was being here! Ponies, princesses, and twin sisters? What kind of fantasy story was that? I was on the run, hiding from guard patrols, and fighting for my next meal. However, my own hubris caught up to me in the end, and her super powerful mother, Cadance, found me and made me see how stupid I was being. And Cadance, is an absolutely crazy powerful pony, with an even more powerful maternal instinct. So when it came down to her word against mine, she was really hard to convince, and she wasn't taking no for an answer.

(AKA, Super wholesome, fluffy, found family. And me having fun tugging on heartstrings.)
(Cover image by: me)

When knowledge of Sunburst's great skill in magical theory spreads to the small Streamhaven University, he's offered a position on a time travel experiment. Knowing of Starlight's history with time travel, he invites her to see the moment of truth, the first actual use of the time machine. Starlight accepts. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

Everything. The time machine malfunctions. The project director disappears. Time begins stuttering. And Starlight and Sunburst find themselves pursued by the mysterious Monarch Solutions, a company that knows much more about time travel than they should. Now it's up to Starlight and Sunburst to find a solution to their predicament before time itself ends forever.

Although a crossover with Quantum Break, no knowledge of it is needed to understand this story.

Beyond Equestria, the lands to the north are hostile and unforgiving. Ponies eke out a subsistence in uncontrollable weather, separated by mile after frigid mile of snow and mountains. A land where only the hardiest survive is no place for civilization.

Yet civilization encroaches from time to time. When a colossal bounty is placed on the head of a unicorn deep in the arts of necromancy, a motley crew of bounty hunters assembles and gives chase. It’s too good a chance to pass up. They’ll bring her to justice, no matter what stands in their way. Not her dark magic. Not the inhospitable environment.

And certainly not each other.

Other entries in this series:

• Hinterlands
• Urban Wilds
• Death Valley

Trying to patrol the dreams of every pony in Equestria can be stressful. To ease her burden, Luna retools the Tantabus to turn nightmares into good dreams instead of vice versa. Aware of her mistakes from last time, she tests it out thoroughly, making sure there are no unexpected behaviors. And as far as she can tell, there are none.

Except that it's started calling her "Mom".

Faced with the prospect of possibly creating life, Luna seeks out Twilight's advice and assistance. With a little luck, they can get this all sorted out before the sun rises.

Twilight is on the cusp of leading Equestria for a year. It's been an easy year with no major difficulties. No wars. No natural disasters. No villains.

At least until a villain from the far, far future appears in Twilight's throne room. She's escaping defeat at Twilight's hooves, with one thought in mind: she won't be stopped if Twilight doesn't exist in the future. And here's Twilight's past self, right in front of her. Easy.

Unfortunately, she's not the only villain with this idea.

This story is a sequel to Tantabus Communication Protocol

What started with laziness and a tiny slip-up in arcane intelligence creation has blossomed into its own being. With Luna's blessing, the second Tantabus is free to flit around the dreamscape as it pleases, unburdened by oversight. And what pleases it is making good dreams. Who couldn't be happy by making others happy?

As the Tantabus settles into its life, its horizons keep expanding, forever revealing more of the world and of ponies. There's always new things to learn. New dreams to spice up. New nightmares to beat down. New ponies to help. New ponies to annoy.

Don't tell Luna about that last part.

Cover art by Harwick.

Sweetie Bot needs fifteen bits. A month. For a subscription.

Author's notes blog (spoilers)

Audio Reading

A thousand year absence from the world would be disorienting for anyone, but when your job is Head of State, understanding how society has changed during your interregnum is vital. Princess Luna, banished in the age of the longboat and the longbow, has returned just in time for the launch of the tablet computer. With the help of her sister, she undertakes to understand the history she's missed and the people she finds herself among, in order to resume the duties of her title.

This story takes the form of a series of conversations between Celestia and Luna that take place months and years apart. It is openly concerned with political ideas and how societies are organised, and not at all concerned with monsters and magic beyond the conceit of immortal monarchs. The Alternate Universe tag is there because I will be ignoring every single one of the thousand year catastrophes that occur in the show after the Nightmare Moon crisis, the retirement of the Princesses, probably the presence of any other Princesses, and anything else in the show I feel like ignoring, because I find them irrelevant to the themes I want to cover.

In short, if you wanted The Audience with ponies, I got you covered.

This story can be considered canon to my comic works such as The Sunjackers, and my other associated worldbuilding projects, and uses the same date system as them (ie. roughly matching our own, with the return of Nightmare Moon happening the same year as the episode aired, 2010). May also be your jam if you like Equestria At War, but not affiliated at all.

A normal day was all it took.
A simple failed prototype, a missed experiment.
There was an explosion, and I woke up. I don't really know what happened between those two events, but I'm fairly certain I shouldn't have awoken in a small, dark box.

I'm scared.

Cover art by the amazing Avatar of Madness!