//------------------------------//
// Extralude: Clover the Clever Recaps The Story So Far 
// Story: The Crown of Night 
// by Daedalus Aegle 
//------------------------------//

“All right, Professor, I’ve done it,” Clover the Clever said, as she placed the heavy tome on the table in front of her with a soft thump. “I’m ready with that assignment you gave me.”
“Indeed?” Star Swirl the Bearded looked over to her from his resting position in a comfy chair nearby. “Did it prove interesting?”
“Oh yes, very,” Clover said, as she opened the book to the title page and smoothed out the page with her stylus: The Crown of Night. No author listed. “So, you asked me to read this story and…”
“And to explain it to me,” Star Swirl the Bearded said. “From the beginning, as if I were somepony else, and you were summing the story up for me.”
“Yes. Well, I’ve read it, as you asked, and taking notes…”
“That is a good place to start.”
Clover nodded. “It’s quite a story,” she said.
“I think so,” Star Swirl said. “Begin when you are ready.”
Clover nodded, and looked down at her papers. “Alright. So…”
“The story begins with Star Swirl as a little foal. He’s been in a fight with some bigger colts and he’s angry and alone and vulnerable, and he’s run off to sulk on the hill outside his village.” Clover shuffled her papers and looked over her notes. “Far from the legendary wizard he will eventually become, little Star Swirl is a frail, unhappy foal with no friends, who feels no connection to anything or anypony around him. Born to an earth pony family, he is the only unicorn in the farming village of Edinspur, with no idea how to use his magic and nopony to teach him, and he feels misunderstood and alone. That’s when he meets Princess Luna.”
Clover looked at an artist’s depiction of a bygone historical figure half-passed into myth. “Princess Luna, ruler of the night. Though one of the most powerful beings in the world, she’s isolated, lonely and unhappy, her mind weighed down by omens of disaster, distant but inescapable. She has noticed Star Swirl sitting alone on the hill at night, looking up at the stars, and she decides to say hello. These two ponies who both struggle to relate to others make an instant connection with each other, and they spend half the night sitting there talking together. They talk about the night, and the stars, and ponies. And she shows him how to use his magic. But when she helps him cast her spell to move the stars she is shocked to find that it comes unnaturally easily to him, and that his magic is unnaturally powerful. She realizes there is something very special about this colt and his destiny is linked with hers. And for his part, this chance encounter with her will shape the course of his entire life. And that’s chapter one.”
She glanced to her teacher, who sat quietly in his chair, looking at nothing. “I still remember it so clearly,” he said eventually. “But it feels so strange to hear it from outside… Please continue.”
Clover nodded. “After that beginning the next major section is the story of Star Swirl’s studenthood. Years have passed, and Star Swirl grows from a little foal to become a stubborn, reckless, single-minded teenager. When he’s fifteen he leaves his home and walks across Braytannia by himself, to study at Princess Luna’s Academy of Magic at Cambridle. Because he’s had no schooling in his life up until then he flunks the entrance exam, but forces his way in anyway with a staggering display of raw magical might that silences the entire faculty. That sort of sets the tone for his entire time there. He’s always accomplishing great things, but nonetheless manages to alienate everypony around him. Well, almost everypony. He has a roommate, Time Turner, who introduces Star Swirl to the wonders of the library, forever changing the course of arcane history. Oh, and there’s Ginny the Librarian, who used to be Time Turner’s girlfriend!” Clover said cheerfully at recognizing a friend in the text. “I still meet up with her for tea on occasion. You know, I heard about all this backwards and second-hoof, so reading it in chronological order is pretty interesting.”
Star Swirl grumbled. “There’s a reason I don’t talk about them. But it’s important to get through. Go on.”
“Right.” Clover flipped the page and moved her stylus across her notes. “The next chapter is all about Princess Luna. In the old royal palace at Everhold Princess Luna has… the worst birthday anypony has ever had, and frankly it kind of hurts me to even read about it.” Clover paused a second to let out a sigh as she looked over her notes. “Luna spends her days in Princess Celestia’s shadow, the two of them never agree about anything and Luna feels inadequate and inferior to her sister in everything she does. After everything goes wrong for her in Everhold she leaves the palace unannounced and flies to her school at Cambridle searching for something to cheer her up. But even there at her own school things don’t work out for her, and her efforts to raise her spirits crash when she overhears the faculty talking about her as an annoyance for disrupting their evening. And she leaves, slinking off from the party unnoticed.
“That’s when she meets Star Swirl again, for the first time since all those years before. She opens up about her feelings, with great difficulty. They talk together about loneliness, and not fitting in the ponies around them… And then Star Swirl puts on a magic show for her that covers the entire city in magic starlight, filling the ponies with dread or joy as their own consciences dictate, and reveals the beauty of her night for her to see. And at long last she feels better, and the two of them hang out on a rooftop together, enjoying her birthday.”
“That was a very good night. For me, at least.” Star Swirl smiled wistfully at the memory. “It’s strange how all memories feel so different, even though they all lead to the same place.”
“Yes Professor,” Clover said studently. “At the end of the night Luna tells Star Swirl about her fear. For many years, she has felt a premonition of something terrible on the horizon, some great calamity that will destroy all of ponykind if she can’t uncover it first. She asks Star Swirl to study at the school, and then come work for her and help her try to find it and stop it. And when she leaves for Everhold and Star Swirl is alone, he hears the stars speak to him directly… and ask him to save her.”
Star Swirl sat unmoving, staring into the unlit fireplace. Clover let the creaking of the turning page pierce the suddenly-heavy silence that ruled when she paused her tale, and cleared her throat. “While all this is going on there are also a bunch of shorter stories from far away about other things mixed in. Princess Luna has this elite band of pegasus warriors, the Shadowbolts, who are her bodyguards and spies, and maybe even assassins. They are fanatically devoted to her and her alone, and if anypony else knows they exist they’re terrified of them. It’s this almost cult-like secret society, with secret teachings and rituals. Seems kind of unhealthy to me.”
Clover turned the page again and saw another illustration, of a pony figure, with no horn or wings, covered entirely in armor, even his eyes obscured by a veil beneath his helmet. “And there’s this guy,” Clover said, watching him warily, as if he might turn and look back at her. “The White Knight, who travels the lands of ponies in secret on a mission for his master, bringing death with him wherever he goes. We see him meet with this earth pony supremacist aristocrat, Baron Whiteblood, who thinks pegasi, unicorns, and griffons alike are abominations. In order to reinvigorate the Baron’s legacy the two of them conspired to spark the Great Griffon War, which raged for years and caused tremendous bloodshed on all sides. The Baron both delighted in and profited from the war, and in return he allowed the White Knight’s master, whoever that was, to carry out terrible deeds in secret in his lands… including abducting and disappearing foals.
“The Baron also has a son, a unicorn named Blue Horn, who was a stain on his legacy as a pillar of the earth pony aristocracy. So he and his wife denied Blue Horn, and pretended, even to him, that he was a distant relative they had taken in as an orphan… Celestia, what utter monsters. And once Blue Horn is old enough they send him to Cambridle, where he meets Star Swirl. And the two of them hate each other instantly.”
Clover tapped her stylus on the edge of the table. “Blue Horn… Blue Horn… That sounds vaguely familiar, should I know who that is? Is he somepony important?”
“It will come,” Star Swirl the Bearded said. “Keep going.”
“Right. Anyway, Star Swirl’s studenthood continues for a few more years. But nopony at Cambridle except Time Turner can tolerate him for long. He’s got a lifetime ban from the library for defacing the books, his classmates do worse when he’s around, ponies think he’s single-hoofedly causing an ink shortage… Things finally reaching a breaking point at the end of his third year, when a member of the faculty sabotages Star Swirl’s chronomancy exam to get him expelled. Things go horribly wrong, and rather than fizzle out harmlessly as his professor intended, Star Swirl’s spell blows up a building… as well as his roommate, Time Turner, who is never seen again. This is harsh, Professor. This is very harsh.”
“I’ve tried to master time magic, on occasion, but it never works,” Star Swirl the Bearded said. “Sometimes I wonder if old Check Mate cursed me, back then.”
Clover looked to the next page, her face serious. “Star Swirl is expelled, and runs away from Cambridle, and nopony is sorry to see him go. He’s devastated by everything that happened. And when he reaches the edge of the city Princess Luna is there to meet him. She tells him she knows he didn’t mean for any of it to happen, and tells him to have faith in himself when nopony else does. And she asks him to make his way to Everhold to work for her, in his own time.” Clover sat back in her chair, looking down at the copious cross-connected notes. “And that’s the story of Star Swirl’s time as a university student.”
“It feels so strange to look back on it now, after all this time,” Star Swirl the Bearded said quietly. “Turner was… a good friend. Please, keep going.”
Clover nodded. “Some years pass. While far away the Great Griffon War rages on, Star Swirl wanders Braytannia as a wizard. We see him face off against a Kelpie, a dangerous water spirit preying on villagers. He reads its thoughts and sees that it’s fled across the frozen seas from some unknown fear, and he seals it away in a manner that’s surely going to break in about a thousand years. While he wanders the country hunting magical creatures and helping ponies, he also learns magic from Luna herself in his dreams. And at the age of 21 he arrives in Everhold.”
There was a pencil sketch of Everhold Castle from the side, a large and elaborate structure, with the Astronomy Tower circled in red. “The old Royal Astronomer has retired and Luna gives the position to Star Swirl, over Celestia’s objections. This is when Star Swirl gets his robe and hat for the special occasion, which is a very funny scene. Just putting that in there… Star Swirl meets Celestia for the first time, and she is very clear that she thinks very little of him or his appointment to court. And after the ceremony is over Luna gives Star Swirl his first mission in her service.”
Clover turned to the next page, and looked over the disparate points. “It’s also around this time that Baron Whiteblood dies,” she said. “The Shadowbolts have been investigating him, and are close to unraveling the conspiracy. In response the White Knight kills him, making him a martyr to the cause, and the White Knight ends his activities there, leaving his true purpose still unknown.” Clover sighed and shook her head. “The widow Baroness writes a letter to Blue Horn, finally telling him who he really is, and he leaves Cambridle to claim his inheritance. A very bitter inheritance. These incidents still seem very disjointed, but I assume there’s a reason why they’re there.”
“It’s better to know than not,” Star Swirl the Bearded said heavily.
Clover hesitated, and nodded, and continued. “Star Swirl is now the Royal Astronomer of Everhold, and official arcane adviser to both Princesses, although only one of them trusts him. Princess Luna shares her fears with him and sends him on his first mission.” Another drawing, of various stone orbs linked together in an elaborate net. “She tells him that the magical web that protects the world is failing, and she suspects it’s because the powerful artifacts that keep the web strong, magical items that are the source of power for many of the world’s nations, are being corrupted. She shows him the Elements of Harmony, the source of Everhold’s power. And she sends him on a mission to Saddle Arabia to investigate their artifact. And this next story is more of an epic adventure, and it’s hard to convey the full impression in a short span of time but I’m gonna try my best, okay? Alright, here goes.”
“Saddle Arabia was a rich and powerful kingdom, but at this time it is… troubled. A terrible spirit known as the Queen of the Golden Sands haunts the land. She has captured the Khalif’s son and heir, turned him into a mindless puppet wielding terrible magics, her ghûl, and sent him out to destroy the people. The Khalif, in despair, has called on all the sages and oracles of the world to tell him how he can save his son. The prince attacks Star Swirl’s caravan, and after barely surviving Star Swirl catches the eye of a zebra mystic called Womeluki, who was tracking the prince, and the two of them travel to the capital city together.
“Star Swirl gets to meet the Khalif, delivers an oracle he reads in the stars, and asks to examine the artifact, the Sun Stone. But the Khalif’s Grand Vizier, the immortal Sphinx, refuses. Unwilling to return empty-hooved, Star Swirl challenges the Sphinx to a game of wits. The Sphinx resolves to make an example of him, but he stands against her so strongly that the clash between them shakes the very palace to its foundations, and the Khalif, shocked, cuts the contest short, declares a tie, and shows Star Swirl the door while the Sphinx fumes. But Star Swirl so impressed Womeluki that she stays with him, and the two of them set out into the desert to find and defeat the Queen of Golden Sands.
“They track down a lone ghûl and capture it, and use its magic to lead them to the Queen’s lair in the very heart of the desert, where they are promptly captured and taken prisoner.” The next page was filled with evocative drawings of grotesque creatures in all shapes and sizes. “They are brought before the Queen’s own Grand Vizier, the Gorgon Stheno, and surrounded by the Queen’s court of monsters. It’s filled with beings terrible and dangerous, previously forced to live on the edges of the world, now brought together under the Queen’s banner. The Queen is planning an attack to crush Saddle Arabia and take back the lands that were once theirs, and it seems like they’re referring to the same impending crisis that worries Luna.
“That is when Star Swirl abandons Womeluki and offers himself to the Queen, leaving the zebra behind as he delves into the Queen’s innermost sanctum. He comes face to face with the her and realizes that she’s a Draconequis: the mother of Discord, who has sworn revenge on the lands of ponies and horses because of what they did to her son. Star Swirl offers to help her defeat the Khalif, if he is allowed to take the Sun Stone. She accepts, and begins to dominate his mind, only to find herself deceived. Star Swirl has studied the magic she used on the ghûl and figured out how to turn it against her. He takes all of her dark magic for himself, rendering her powerless and throwing the court of monsters into chaos as all the ghûl are freed from her control.
“But Womeluki is furious at Star Swirl for deceiving and abandoning her, and when she sees that he has absorbed the Queen’s dark magic she is horrified. She prophesies that because of his recklessness he will usher in an age of war, and she leaves him there, trapped in the sanctum while she leads the ghûl away.
“Still, Star Swirl manages to get back to the Khalif’s palace, and even gets to look at the Sun Stone. But he is saturated with the Queen’s dark magic, and he is captured and banished for practicing forbidden blood magic, for which the penalty is death. And to top it all off, when he looked at the Sun Stone he found that it was actually doing fine and wasn’t being corrupted at all! I swear, professor, I feel like there must have been a better way you could have done this!”
“Imagine how it felt to live it,” her teacher said.
Clover’s eyes moved across the final pages of her notes. “All these events had far-reaching ramifications. The mission was technically a success, but Celestia was furious at the damage and it took all of Luna’s goodwill to talk her down. Star Swirl’s name was now known across the world, as the sages who had come to help the Khalif and witnessed the duel with the Sphinx brought the news to their homelands. A kingdom of monsters was broken, and its inhabitants returned to the shadows. Star Swirl used the Queen’s monstrous magic to make great advances in healing magic that made life better, but Saddle Arabia sank into civil war between the ghûl and the Sphinx. And in the end, the prophecy of doom to come was still unaffected.
“And finally, back in Everhold, all the different strands of the story have now come together: Luna and Star Swirl, Celestia, Blue Horn, and the White Knight are now all there under the same roof, as we all wait to find out what happens next.” Clover reached the final written page: there were plenty of pages left, but they were blank and untouched. She closed the book. “And that’s as far as it’s come.”
“Indeed,” Star Swirl the Bearded stroked his hoof across his beard, deep in thought. “So what are we to make of all of this?”
“I’m honestly not sure… That was actually really complicated. The recap, I mean.”
“Indeed? How so?”
Clover bit her lip. “Well, I’ve been wondering how to do this, and I’m actually very unsure. I think part of the reason is it turns out that recapping is an act of interpretation and analysis,” Clover said. “I mean, sure, in theory summarizing the events of a story is pretty straight-forward. But a novel is a complicated machine where all the parts have a job to do. How do I pick out what matters, and what doesn’t?”
“You’re doing just fine, rest assured.”
“Thanks, Professor. But it’s not just about finding the important moments either. It’s not just ‘this is what happened’ but ‘this is what you should think about it’. Things the author might prefer to leave more subtle in the text, but need to be included in the recap for it to be effective. And of course, I’ve tried to describe the intended emotional impact as I understood it, but emotional impact has to happen in the reader and they might disagree with me. And exploring themes and such directly is sort of a spoiler, not just for what’s already happened but for the parts that are still to come.” Clover shifted in her seat. “And that’s another thing. This is a long and complicated story, and it’s still unfinished. I love this story, and obviously it means a lot to you, but I’m trying to understand it well enough to explain it before it’s complete, and that makes me wary.” She flipped the cover and the first few pages to the prologue. “And then there’s this frame narrative, which I find difficult to understand. It’s a prophecy of some kind, where this whole history is a story that Princess Celestia is telling to another pony in the distant future? It’s very strange. Even though the story presents Celestia in a fairly negative light, where she’s unhelpful and dismissive of her sister’s worries, this is also a story Celestia herself is telling about these events. Does… Does this have to be in the recap? Or am I just making everything more confusing now? I don’t know.”
“Do it in your own words then,” Star Swirl the Bearded said. “Forget about homework, you’re not getting graded. What are your own thoughts?”
“My own thoughts?” Clover frowned for a moment, thinking. She flipped the book open and put her hoof down on the page. “Well, maybe the biggest impression I’ve gotten is that meeting you like this, compared to when I first got to know you face to face… The shift is huge. There is a vast gulf between the young, proud, excited adventurer in this book, overjoyed to be on a mission from a marvelous pony and eager to stare down death and danger to prove his greatness… and the old professor, the arch-wizard weighed down by a century of regret, who has seen everything and hates to say a word about himself or his past.”
Star Swirl said nothing in response. Clover watched him for a moment before continuing. “That gulf is what this story is really about. You could say it only makes sense when the reader already knows the old stallion. But I wonder. Because that also means there isn’t really that much question about where this is going. What does it even mean to tell a story when everypony knows where it’s going to end?”
There was a moment of silence. Then Star Swirl the Bearded said, “Ponies are complicated creatures.”
Clover sighed. “That they are, Professor,” she said. “So. What do we do now?”
“We continue,” her teacher said. He nodded to the book, and to Clover’s notes. “I think that’s good enough for now. Thank you, Clover. I’m going to take the rest of the night off, I think. You can do that same.”
“Alright, Professor,” Clover the Clever said. She took one last look down at the book. “I think I’m gonna keep reading this. Have a good night.”