[INTERROGATOR, VAPOR TRACE, SPECIAL NONDOMESTIC OPERATIVE, OCCULT PROJECTS] Ahem. Nine-fifteen AM, August First, Fifth Celestial Era, One Hundred Ninety-five. Debriefing session number three, Special Agent 'Baker'.
[SPECIAL AGENT 'BAKER'] Don't be a drip, Trace. My name is Cup Cake. It's going to be in the official record. Maintaining a transient cover which was only intended for transport is just foolishness.
[VAPOR TRACE] Protocol is protocol, Cake.
[AGENT CUP CAKE] See? I've got you doing it already. And really? 'SNOOP'? I thought the last backronym was ludicrous, but this one takes the, ha! Cake.
[VAPOR TRACE] Ahem. In our last session, you insisted on discussing protocol rather than the actual matters before us.
[CUP CAKE] Mostly because you refused to let me tell the story the way it happened. At least that fool Halo Insert is gone. Found a better use for her time?
[VAPOR TRACE] As you say. You were assigned by the late Umbral Heap to trail your target organization three years ago?
[CUP CAKE] This again. Yes, a little less than three years ago. Do we have to go over this again? It took some time for me to catch up with my assignment, as they'd gone mobile. Very mobile.
[VAPOR TRACE] Skipped worlds, in fact.
[CUP CAKE] Well, if they hadn't, my predecessor wouldn't have lost them. I eventually caught up to the Black Company conducting operations in a war zone deep inside of a backward, savage wasteland known as Tambelon.
[VAPOR TRACE] In this hrm, Rennet?
[CUP CAKE] Pepin, actually. They'd left their previous assignment behind, and had plunged into the heart of a minor zombie outbreak.
[VAPOR TRACE] Zombies. Really.
[CUP CAKE] Really really. Nopony uses the zee word on Tambelon though. 'Ghouls'. Nasty things, and more common than diamond dogs here. Not nearly as reasonable, either. The target proved to have a serious hate on for the undead, though. Throughout my time with the Company, they consistently reacted to the ambulatory dead with a ferocity unmatched by anything I've seen or heard of. Including some griffon tribes my elders used to tell stories about when I was a filly.
[VAPOR TRACE] Your Nightmare Moon cultists were zombie-haters? Really?
[CUP CAKE] Don't make me repeat myself, Trace. I made several passes in the vicinity of the Company, and was able to take them under observation for a brief period of time, and begin to build up an observational network. Then I asked the wrong question of the wrong set of locals and set off a paranoia response.
[VAPOR TRACE] You got the tar kicked out of you and were captured.
[CUP CAKE] Yep, that. The locals by that time virtually worshipped the ground the cultists trotted upon, and sold me to the target. It turned out that they'd already made me, but had left me loose to see if they could track me back to my handlers. I'm not sure if they ever truly figured out that I was my own handler. Well…
[VAPOR TRACE] Well, what?
[CUP CAKE] I'm pretty sure that the abomination had me pegged from the moment she got her tendrils in my forebrain. The thing was, she just didn't care about espionage. If that horror had ever really applied herself to counter-espionage, or spying in general – she would have been unstoppable.
[VAPOR TRACE] You call it a 'her'.
[CUP CAKE] Well, that's what she was. Or, I should say, what they were. It wasn't just one thing, the Spirit of the Company. It was originally the two of them, and then later, three.
[VAPOR TRACE] Like the Furies?
[CUP CAKE] Or the Fates. But originally it was just the two personalities. I never had much interaction with the 'Princess'. It was the Nightmare that fixated on me.
[VAPOR TRACE] OK, I have to ask now – is this actually Nightmare Moon escaped from the moon? Is this the monster broken loose from her prison?
[CUP CAKE] So she'd have you think, if she's in the right mood. The Nightmare was, and is, an unholy terror, a screaming monster that in her worst moments can and will drool over foal-meat.
[VAPOR TRACE] The cultists fed foals to this monster of theirs?
[CUP CAKE] Of course not, you ninny. And in the normal course of affairs, the abomination loves foals, especially the apprentices. But she likes to playact as much as any of those feral lunatics. And one of her modes of operation is the eager cannibal, histrionic and gape-jawed. She liked to play to the cheap seats. For the most part, she never actually carried through on it, at least in my observation.
[VAPOR TRACE] For the most part?
[CUP CAKE] Yeah, well, I don't really think that barrowgasts and liches ought to count, do you?
[VAPOR TRACE] Barrow whats? Liches?
[CUP CAKE] Look, we're going to be here until Discord breaks loose if you're not going to keep up. Barrowgasts are nasty, semi-sapient undead. The liches were the greater undead, the princes of the dead. It's Tambelon, there's this entire ecology of dead things. Tambelon ain't exactly Tartarus, but it's Tartarus-adjacent. Not a happy place. You don't want to take your foals and family to go visit, is what I'm saying. And the Spirit occasionally… devoured one or two. Or a bunch, in one case.
[VAPOR TRACE] And this is the –
[CUP CAKE] Spirit of the Company. Sort of a tutelary deity to the organization. It honestly thought it was Nightmare Moon reborn through its followers, the Black Company. The Company was generally inclined to credit her delusions, at least at first. From my observations, the sapience of the Company's pet monster was a new state of affairs. They were only beginning to come to terms with her when I came on the scene. And wasn't that a trip and a half.
[VAPOR TRACE] Wait, let's back-track. Is this thing actually the monster of Nightmare Night, the foal-gobbler?
[CUP CAKE] No. No, I don't think it is, nor is it the Princess's exiled, mad sister. Ah, you haven't been read in on that one? How the hay did you get assigned my case without being briefed in full?
[VAPOR TRACE] Si-sister? What the Tartarus-
[CUP CAKE] OK, stop the session. Get this idiot a briefing book. We can start again after a break, yeah? I'm thirsty anyways.
[BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT]
[VAPOR TRACE] OK, we're starting again, session number 4, 12 Noon, August 1st-
[INTERROGATION SECTION CHIEF BEEF WELLINGTON] That's enough of that, get on with it, Vapor Trace.
[VAPOR TRACE] Ahem, OK. Right, we were talking about the sister of the motherbucking Princess-
[BEEF WELLINGTON] TRACE!
[VAPOR TRACE] Whom apparently has been in exile in a remote prison for the past thousand years or so –
[CUP CAKE] A bit less, actually.
[VAPOR TRACE] Right, right. And this monster of yours –
[CUP CAKE] The abomination isn't mine, you burnt hotcake. Excepting so far as she was my tormentor for over two years, I don't own the Nightmare. And while she looks and sounds and acts like that old stereotype, 'Nightmare Moon' – mad, black, alicornic, jagged-toothed, taste for foals, thinks she's the younger sister of the Princess Regnant of our motherland – after years of watching her, I'm sure that the Spirit – neither Princess, nor Nightmare, and definitely not the Filly – are not actual embodiments of any part of our Princess's sister. What she is, is a sort of tribal or group mass memory, a sort of remembrance of that long-missing princess. A thousand ponies, dreaming for nine hundred years of their lost Mistress. With the aid of their warlocks and their forbidden magics, the whole lot of them sort of, well, dreamed the Spirit into existence. The Spirit is a sort of mass hallucination, a ferocious, violent, lunatic delusion that walks, and talks, and screams, and throws massive, irrational tantrums from time to time. In one sense, the Nightmare of the Company is the Company's collective unconsciousness. In another sense she is-
[VAPOR TRACE] Wait, you've described this thing eating, devouring greater undead. How does a delusion devour an actual physical monster?
[CUP CAKE] I was just getting to that. The Company's delusion is so ferociously intense, that at times she takes actual physical form, she manifests. And when she does – the world warps around her. She might not actually be here, but as far as the world and the stuff in the world is concerned, there's no practical difference. I saw the splatter from a few incidents, I was surprised there wasn't blood on the moon from those outbreaks.
[BEEF WELLINGTON] And this is the screaming horror that you think we ought to negotiate with?
[CUP CAKE] Sir, she's an abomination and a terror, and when the wind's northerly, she hates our Princess like fire. But I don't know that I'd say that the Spirit is in charge of what the Company does and where they go. The monster who led the faction in favor of storming the portals and laying waste to their hated ancestral enemies is not only dead, but quite thoroughly and truly dead. I've seen the shattered and melted mansion where he died. They quite literally fought a little civil war over the matter – and that old bokor tried to kill me, personally, multiple times. Saw me as a symbol of the hated Princess, I think.
[BEEF WELLINGTON] You're hardly making your case, here. They sound unreasonable, mercurial, and exceedingly hostile.
[CUP CAKE] And those are their good qualities! They're also quite loyal, stubborn, and devoted to their young. The new White Rose is a daughter of the regiment, to use the old cliche, and she's bonded quite firmly with all three aspects of the Spirit. In fact, the third aspect literally wears the White Rose's face. Or rather, it wears the semblance of her youth; it's kind of unsettling when the two of them stand together, like a mare looking at her past in the ectomorphic flesh. Or maybe a mother and her foal, now that she's getting older, and the Filly stays the same.
[VAPOR TRACE] Ahem, quite. And the White Rose is, exactly?
[CUP CAKE] Local theology. A mystery of Harmony. The totem of rebellion against the sovereign authority.
[VAPOR TRACE] The sovereign authority that you say the Company just overthrew?
[CUP CAKE] Murdered, more like. Well, the anti-Equestrian faction's leader did, anyways. Right before he self-destructed in a really impressive way. Politics will be in a considerable flux over there for at least a generation, maybe two. The Rebellion just won, they just don't know it yet. And their cultural touch-stone is a leader among the most organized of the loyalist factions.
[VAPOR TRACE] I'm lost now.
[CUP CAKE] I mean The Company, keep up. They're cohesive, militarily effective, are a bulwark against the dead, and are expanding, rapidly.
[BEEF WELLINGTON] It rather sounds like you're describing a clear and present danger to Equestria!
[CUP CAKE] That's just the thing, sir. They're fixated on Tambelonian matters. The natural contours of the situation over there is such that they'll continue to be drawn into the orbit of the White Rose and her destiny. They make a great deal out of their loathing of Fate and Destiny, but I've never seen a group of ponies so prophecy-struck as those maniacs. They've essentially declared undying emity against the lords of the dead, the princes of the undead. And those pests are elusive as all heck. We never pinned down a lich-legate who wasn't looking for a fight, only the late traitor managed that trick, and he's dead.
[VAPOR TRACE] This… Obscured Blade?
[CUP CAKE] Yes, but best to forget that name, especially when talking to representatives of the Company. They're still sore about his betrayal. Even after he died.
[BEEF WELLINGTON] Duly noted. Again. You don't have to repeat this in each session.
[CUP CAKE] It bears repeating. As does this: the Company will leave Equestria alone if you don't poke at it. Today's Company is like a foal who has escaped from the cult that raised her – full of eccentricities, imprinted with many unhelpful prejudices and strange expectations, but essentially and primarily in revolt against her own upbringing. The Company was for a long time burning with the intent of returning to Equestria to free their dark mistress and overthrow the Princess, but that Company died in the burning deserts of the Dar al Hisan, centuries ago. There are ghosts of that lost Company within the Company, and the idea had something of a renaissance these last few years.
[BEEF WELLINGTON] But then-
[CUP CAKE] Don't interrupt me. The partisans of that ideal are dead. They are reviled by the survivors. Most of the ponies who make up today's Company are native Tambelonians, and almost all of those who are not, haven't been Equestrian in centuries. The old Third Thestral Regiment is dead, and has been dead for almost four Celestial Eras now. The last traces of their blood have mixed so inextricably with the blood of a dozen worlds, that not even Harmony itself could make that blood run pure again. My having left the Company has quite literally cut the Equestrian membership of that organization by half.
[VAPOR TRACE] You consider yourself a member of the Company?
[CUP CAKE] I consider it a complicated question. That old horror spent too many months inside my head, I'll never quite be just another Equestrian again.
[VAPOR TRACE] Then why are you here? Why did you come back?
[CUP CAKE] Family, you ass. Those friends who are still living. Princess and country, and the land I was born.
[VAPOR TRACE] Agent? Do you need a -
[CUP CAKE] And Carrot, too. He needs a home. The Company is many things, but I don't think it'll ever be home to a simple baker. We need a home. Carrot needs peace, and Cherie is many things, but every one of those is a lance in the night. There's nothing of peace in that filly.
[BEEF WELLINGTON] Wait, who's –
[CUP CAKE] That's another thing. Never call her by that name in negotiations. That name's only for the initiated. They're going to be calling her the White Rose from here on out. Tambelon doesn't know Cherie from Puddinghead. The White Rose is a name to conjure with, so they will. If we don't jostle their elbow, they'll conjure a just and lasting peace over there, for the first time in two generations.
[VAPOR TRACE] You almost sound like a partisan.
[CUP CAKE] It's not often you get the opportunity to foster a child of destiny, Mr. Trace. Let alone one as sweet-tempered and loving as the mare who is poised to become the new White Rose.
[BEEF WELLINGTON] You see yourself as a Star Swirl?
[CUP CAKE] Hardly, the new Star Swirl is dead, and died well at that. Think of me as more of a Princess Platinum, or rather, one of their hangers-on. Maybe the Broom Apprentice. Or Char Horn.
[VAPOR TRACE] [snorts]
[CUP CAKE] And that brings us to the Annals. The new Annalist went to a great deal of trouble to have those copies made, so that I can bring them to you. They're an offering of immeasurable price, almost, but not quite priceless. They are in the mind of the Company, a sort of immortality for a group of very, very mortal ponies. They are a peace offering. They are the mind of the Company, the dreams, the hopes, the failures and the heartbreaks of the Company as it is – not as it pretends itself to be, not the face it shows to all of Creation, but itself, in full. The gift of those volumes is a promise of peace, of amity. Of a declaration that the centuries-old grudge against Equestria and her Princess Regnant has been suspended, so long as good relations are maintained.
[BEEF WELLINGTON] Just like that? No other expectations?
[CUP CAKE] Oh, don't be a sap. Of course they want other things. That's up to the diplomats, isn't it? But war and peace are too important to leave to the diplomats. I've seen too much of war.
[CUP CAKE] I've had enough war for a lifetime.
Transcript from the interrogation records of Special Agent Cup Cake, late of the Special Projects Information Evaluation Service. All contents are marked Top Secret Codeword: Family Business, released to the Restricted Archives 1/12/196/5 by order of SNOOP Restricted Archive Control, authorization number #4457, Senior Archivist Dusty Shelves, authorizing.