Leaving home meant losing many of Orson's old friends, separated by time and distance. But they weren't willing to give up one thing: their old tabletop game. After trying and rejecting each of the online tools for roleplaying games, they stumbled on a novel solution: Equestria Online.

The game was unlike everything else on the market, an entire procedural generated world ran by a mysterious curator artificial intelligence. But Orson and the others didn't care about any of that--they just needed somewhere with a game table and some dice. The AI happily obliged, and soon they transitioned all their games to E.O. Equestria Online had its own host of benefits, bringing the GM's images to realistic life before their eyes, and even letting them visit and interact with the characters between sessions.

That was only the beginning...

A Friendship is Optimal story. I suggest any readers who are unfamiliar with that universe read the Original first, or FiO: Futile Resistance before reading this one. None of my other optimalverse stories are required to understand this one.

Written as a Patreon reward for Sparktail, though we stole the idea from Silver Wing.

Edited by Two Bit and Sparktail, cover by Zutcha.

Updates weekly on Wednesdays.

Updates: Weekly, hopefully.
Don't think about this too much, it hurts the squishy sponge.
WOO, FEATURED! 18.1.2020

EDIT: Added a character cheat sheet in the bottom of this section due to requests.

The only thing that's known about changelings in general is that they came from the Badlands and that they eat love. Oh right, and that their queen is evil, cool, and certainly does not star in some of the wilder pony dreams.
Not much, is it?
The thing is, it's not as if they know too much themselves. For example, how many of them there really were? How many of them survived the invasion? How silly was it to attempt to disrupt princess Celestia's cake supply?
No one can fully answer such burning questions. Only one thing is for certain - they're now everywhere, and they all have their own stories to tell, some long, some short, some violent, some silly, some happy. Changelings all over the place.
Not every creature minds, though.

--156,387--
156 - infiltrator, F, hive loyalist.
387 - warrior, M, knows strangely too much.
918 - infiltrator. F.
47989 - drone, hit head on rock, a bit confused
559, 791, 2899 - warriors, M
10013, 13887, 19441, 31214 - drones

--1988,9999--
1988 - infiltrator, M, in charge of the lumber camp lings, totally femboy looking.
9999 - currently the highest ranking drone in the hive, involuntary drone Jesus.
36658, 57999 - drone bark meister, drone bark padawan. Definitely not opiate dealers.
13415 - drone, second-in-command after 9999.
17070 - cooking drone, deaf.
20100 - moving pictures drone
54331, 74989, 33125, 65661 - drones
3x Silent

--1313--
1313 - infiltrator, M, breaks easily, is put together easily.
Zamira - F, Blueblood's zebra bodyguard

--65536--
65536 - drone, requires no details here.
Sharp Biscuit - Batpony, M, Nightguard Commander.
Beacon - Unicorn, M, paladin Grandmaster
Pink Sunset - Batpony, M
Gloom - Batpony, F
Night Hunter - Batpony, M
Steel Glimmer - Batpony, F

Ronald Lee is the systems administrator for one of the largest fan-made online games in the world. Though nothing new has been produced for MLP for decades now, fans old and young continue to flock to the online version of Equestria they're building together.

Of course he knew that the programs they wrote would grow more intelligent over time. With cheaper hardware and better AI, this was always expected, and a user experience allowing for content similar to the show to be produced in real time for every user was always tantalizingly close.

Then Starlight Glimmer started talking to him.

This story is a prequel to Synthesis, and doesn't require knowledge of that story. You may want to check it out when you're done here, however.

This story was commissioned by Two Bit, who also helped edit because he is an absolute mad lad. Sparktail helped too.

Cover by Zutcha

Button Mash's life was torn asunder on a fateful night when his mother and his home were taken away from him by a group of thieves. After that horrible event, the poor child could hear a voice calling to him from a mysterious golden puzzle set hidden among his belongings, urging him to complete it. Upon completion of the puzzle, his whole world flips once again.

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

When Wallflower Blush's girlfriend has her purse stolen, she swiftly gets it back. With rocket launchers.

Cover art by Scampy

A large corporation in Manehattan hires you to fulfill the Diversity and Inclusion goals and reach the target numbers on the key metrics such as the absence of gender and racial bias. They specialize in customized spell solutions, distributed enchantment systems and cloud mana storage: three things that you, a human, didn't know even exist.

To their surprise, you are not entirely useless.

This is an RGRE (Reversed Gender Roles Equestria) story. You were warned.

Huge thanks to Vayne Hellslinger and SirReal for helping me to make this stuff more readable.

Twilight Sparkle was only a filly when Equestria detected the enigmatic Signal. A series of increasingly complex mathematical proofs, the Signal transformed from an intriguing curiosity to reliable evidence of extraequestrian life.

And as it happened, Equestria's exploration of their own solar system was nearly complete. With colonies orbiting every planet and large body, and an asteroid belt filled with miners and prospectors, Twilight's civilization was just about ready to turn its focus outward. The signal was less than ten light-years away, within reach of a daring, experimental voyage. A voyage Twilight Sparkle would lead.

Along with a small crew of the most skilled scientists and engineers Equestria could offer, Twilight is determined to uncover the mystery of the Signal, and brave the final frontier for future generations of Equestrian explorers.

A comment-driven, CYoA story. Please use the links provided in the author's notes of each chapter to vote, rather than the comments.

This story is a creative experiment of mine, one meant to explore the general idea that creativity is often most fostered by restrictions. As a result, I've imposed a number of restrictions on the writing of this story, which I'm stating explicitly here so I can be called out if I break any of them.

1. Brevity is the soul of wit
No chapter may be more than 1000 words long. This wordcount only includes prose, and not the questions/rolls.

2. Every choice matters
When a choice is offered in a chapter, at least one sub-optimal choice must be present, with no indication about which is which other than the prose itself. Every chapter should end with a CYoA-style decision tree when possible.

3. Fate is cruel and the universe is heartless
The decision of the vote must be respected. This means any character could be killed, or the entire story could end in failure, if that's what the votes decide. Where numbers, stats, and randomization appear in the text, these elements are not verisimilitude, but are decided by public diecrolls in my discord server.

Note: Because of the unusual production of this story, its chapters won't be edited in the same way as my usual fare. Feel free to point out any mistakes you encounter.

Awesome cover by Zutcha as you can probably tell. Editing stuff by Two Bit and Sparktail, where applicable.