At the Inn of the Prancing Pony
Credits & Acknowledgements
The world of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic continues to grow and evolve past the initial vision of Lauren Faust, undoubtedly into realms she could not or would not imagine it going. Nevertheless, I retain my faith that those who run the show currently are bringing it into directions I will continue to watch, enjoy, and participate in, via the writing of overly-convoluted fanfics like this one.
Second only to the show’s existence, I have to thank the efforts of my co-author, Hope, without which this story would not exist in its present form. The novel from Chapter 5 onwards was written in a series of Google Doc role-playing sessions, where Hope played out the parts of Midnight and Captain Sparkle (and her personal guard in Chapter 6), Nestoria the Valiant, Ellen Powell, Luke Gygax, Erica Gray and Alexia Reichart, and Gulrikkc the Pech, while I played everyone else.
The majority of characters in this story are either original, or real people c. 1984. The exceptions all come from the series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Princesses Celestia and Luna, Nightmare Moon, Discord, Clover the Clever, Star Swirl the Bearded, Princess Platinum, Tirek and Scorpan; the Sparkle, Blueblood and Pie families; the locations of Equestria, Baltimare, Canterlot, the Everfree Forest, the Castle of the Two Pony Sisters and Hoofington; the holidays of Hearth’s Warming Eve and Nightmare Night; and the FIM versions of unicorns, pegasi, earth ponies, dragons, griffons, timberwolves and breezies.
The title of The Inn of the Prancing Pony owes something to the seedy establishment described in The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) by J.R.R. Tolkien. The title illustration is derived from “Celestia Window”, which in turn is an element of “First Day” by harwicks-art. As a general reference, I got a lot of information about Gary Gygax and the origins of Dungeons & Dragons from the Wired article “Dungeon Master: The Life and Legacy of Gary Gygax” (David Kushner, March 10, 2008). The “Lost Caverns of Soap Candy” adventure from Chapters 23 - 44 was a thinly-disguised version of The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons module written by Gary Gygax (1982 and 1987 versions consulted).
Additional References by Chapter
Preface
* A Mare Forsaken: I was thinking something similar to the ancient Egyptian Story of Sinuhe for the plot of this play, about a court official who flees Equestria in the wake of Nightmare Moon’s banishment.
* “L. P.”: Luna, Princess, which is in the style of Queen Elizabeth’s signature of “Elizabeth R.”.
Chapter 1: Signs and Portents
* The dream: This is largely an expansion of the story of Discord’s fall told by Celestia to Voltaire in Chapter 30 of The Best of All Possible Worlds. In fact, this entire story was inspired by Celestia’s story in that chapter.
* “Come to wager your father this time?”: A cruel reference to the self-sacrifice of Celestia and Luna’s mother. See Chapter 30 of The Best of All Possible Worlds.
* Luna’s saltarello: I always think of one particular saltarello whenever I use the term, composed anonymously in Italy in the Fourteenth Century. Here’s a link to a traditional performance of it by Arany Zoltán, and here’s Corvus Corax’s version.
* Discord’s aria: This of course is “Largo al factorum” from The Barber of Seville (1816) by Gioachino Rossini. Here’s one good performance out of many. If John de Lancie ever records a version, I’ll be sure to link it here.
* Whinnychester: The fan name for the city which once surrounded the Castle of the Two Pony Sisters.
* Canterhorn: Fan name for the mountain where Canterlot Palace is situated.
* The adventurers: Rigged Bee, Big Bee, Hug Bee, Zig Bee and Zag Bee. The names were derived from those of three members of the Circle of Eight: Rigby, Bigby and Zigby. The Circle were a group of overpowered player characters created by Gary Gygax; they showed up frequently in the Dungeons & Dragons manuals.
* Foaltus: Parody of Pholtus, one of the original deities in the Greyhawk campaign setting of Dungeons & Dragons.
Chapter 2: Transfiguration and Descent
* “A walking cane draped with what looked like moss”: This was the cutie mark of Moldy Cane, a contemporary of Nestoria the Valiant. The name is a reference to Mordenkainen, which is both the name of a wizard from Finnish mythology, and one of the characters played by Gary Gygax in the original Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
* “I will be the best, like no one ever was”: As every single commenter noted, this is a reference to the Pokémon animated series (1998).
* The fate of the Bees: This was inspired by Desert of Desolation (1987), a set of D&D modules set in an analogue of ancient Egypt, which had the goal of punishing any players more interested in looting the tomb than in relieving the suffering of the neighboring villagers.
* “Experience”: In D&D, a character’s power, as in what kind of spells they can cast or how much damage they can take without dying, is measured in levels. A character starts at Level 1. Every time they defeat a monster, they are awarded a set number of experience points based on how tough the monster is. Collect enough experience points, and you are eligible to advance to the next level of power. When playing D&D, players spend roughly equal amounts of time in the following three activities: eating snacks, talking about how many experience points they need before they can go up a level (and what they need to do to get those points), and actually playing the game. Background characters are considered to be “Level 0”, with weaker skills and life force than any player.
Chapter 4: A Tale of Two Sieges (Horn’s Reach)
* Vaya Con Dios: Monsignor Martinez from King of the Hill as a D&D character. At least, that’s how he started out in my head.
* Staff of the Magi: A really-neat magical item from the First Edition Advanced Dungeon Master’s Guide (1979, Gary Gygax), page 134, that allowed you to cast all sorts of magical spells far beyond your current level. One of my characters got to have a Staff of Power back in the ‘80’s, but it wasn’t the same.
* Staff of Withering: A nasty magical item that causes the victim to get older. Also from page 134. Using a Staff of Withering on a dragon, who tends to get more powerful with age, is not a very smart idea.
* Canterday: Fan term for a day of the Equestrian week.
* Chest of Holding: Custom variant of the Bag of Holding from the Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 138.
Chapter 5: Sworn by the Horn of a Unicorn
* Queen Platinum IX: My mental image of her portrait lies somewhere between this and this.
* Midnight Sparkle’s cutie mark: Although the ends of the curved arrows resemble the alchemical symbols for arsenic, I’m pretty sure I had something else in mind. Too bad I lost my notes.
* “They had been weighed in the balances, and found wanting.”: Paraphrase of Daniel 5:27 from the Old Testament. Of course in the Bible, the one doing the weighing was God, and the consequence of that judgment was the death of a king and the overthrow of an empire.
* Kelogto, Cutbelt, Calorus and Howard: More of the original set of deities from Gary Gygax’s proto-Greyhawk campaign: Keoghtom, St. Cuthbert, Kelanen and Heward. Rule of Funny demanded that the last one be Howard.
Chapter 7: The Waggle Dance
* The title: A reference to the way that bumblebees communicate to each other the distance and direction to the nearest source of food.
* “Peeping through the knothole”: First line of the nonsense song “Go Get the Axe”. The song, or Scottish/Irish origin, is old enough to be anonymous. I first heard it in the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Hare Trigger” (1945, Friz Freling).
* Foaltus Flakes song: Paraphrase of the Crumbly Crunchies song from the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Hare Devil” (1948, Chuck Jones).
* “Ellen, Gary, Susan, Luke...and Luke”: Names of the humans we’ll meet later. Luke is repeated because he played both Zig and Zag Bee.
* “I got saved by trying to resurrect a dead goddess”: A sign that Ellen never forgot her character’s meeting with Celestia.
* “The High Court may well sentence you to TORCHA!”: Teenagers from Outer Space (1959), as immortalized by Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988).
* Bandit: Ye-olde version of the game Cops and Robbers. Luna was always the bandit.
* “Wait! Strike that, reverse it.”: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971, Mel Stuart).
* Uropygial gland: A feature of birds (and presumably pegasi), which produces the oil they use to preen their feathers. If you’ve ever seen a bird preening, then you know where it’s located.
Chapter 9: Poor Wand’ring Ones
* The title: Song from the Gilbert & Sullivan operette The Pirates of Penzance (1879).
* The Firefly family: Ancestors of Rainbow Dash, as established in my earlier fanfic “Secret Histories”.
* “Hooks and blowing balloons”: Has anybody ever actually used the term “hookers and blow”, except in the context of a bad movie?
Chapter 10: Cloud Cuckoo Land It Was Not
* Cloud Cuckoo Land: Taken from The Clouds by Aristophanes (423 BC), a reference to a place of idle perfection. Oh, and there’s also that bit in The Lego Movie (2013).
* Lampyra: Scientific name of the glowworm.
* The melting point of tungsten is 3695 K, about twice the melting temperature of iron.
* The Pegasus Heptarchy: The name is borrowed from the term for the period 500 - 850, when the seven rival kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex controlled the territory of later-day England.
* “Seventeen”: On the off chance I didn’t make that obvious enough, the number of ponies over the years who tried to get what they wanted from Princess Celestia by trying to sleep with her.
Chapter 11: Border Crossing
* “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”: Inscription over the gate to Hell, according to the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1308).
Chapter 12: Cruelty Trap
* FYI, I generated the events of the Everfree chapters by using the random terrain tables in Appendix B of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and the random encounters table of the Fiend Folio (1980, edited by Don Turnbull) and Monster Manual (1978, Gary Gygax). Hope and I actually role-played through all encounters, using the AD&D ruleset. Hope even used her own dice, although I had to resort to the official D&D die-rolling website.
* The monsters: Lizard Man, page 62 of the Monster Manual.
Chapter 13: Black Hooves
* The monster: Cockatrice, page 15 of the Monster Manual. Or, you know, the one that showed up in the one episode of the show...
* Celestia having a cockatrice as a pet when she was a teenager: She also wore multiple piercings and dressed in black. It was part of her rebel phase.
* “A wretched hive of scum and villainy”: Star Wars (1978, George Lucas).
Chapter 15: Everypony Should Believe in Something
* W. C. Fields (born 1880, died 1946) was an American film comedian. His on-screen persona was of a misanthrope who preferred the company of a hard drink.
* “I exercise extreme self-control. I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast.”: Unsourced Fields quotation.
* “Everybody’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another drink.”: Unsourced Fields quotation.
* “Go away kid, you bother me.”: Some form of this phrase pops up any time Fields is stuck acting with a child.
* “Any man who hates babies and dogs can’t be all bad.”: Leo Rosten, describing Fields in Time magazine, February 27, 1939.
* “I once spent a year in Philadelphia. I think it was on a Sunday.”: Unsourced Fields quotation.
* “Whilst traveling through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We had to live on food and water for several days.”: Fields-written scene in My Little Chickadee (1940).
* “Never give a sucker an even break.”: Fields in an interview with Collier’s, November 28, 1925. Fields was so fond of the line that it became the title of one of his movies in 1941.
* “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.”: Unsourced Fields quotation.
* Dire bunny: D&D-style name for the Killer Rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975, Terry Gilliam & Jones).
Chapter 16: Village of the Polearms
* The monsters: Orcs, page 76 of the Monster Manual. It took me forty-five minutes to roll up that village. Of course, half of the time was spent looking up what all the different polearms were.
* All the friggin’ polearms: Gary Gygax was obsessed with polearms. He wrote about them in the Player Manual in far more detail than was necessary, and even penned a 6-page appendix about how to tell them apart in Unearthed Arcana (1985), complete with bibliography.
Chapter 17: Non-Player Character
* This chapter was really fun to role-play with Hope.
* “Lose initiative”: In D&D, there is procedure called “determining initiative” which sets who’s allowed to attack first in combat.
Chapter 17: At the Inn of the Prancing Pony
* “Something insane”: I had a good Dungeon Master when I played D&D, but the part that in retrospect I wish he didn’t do was always clean up all the bodies when we weren’t looking. It make the killing feel a lot easier.
* “There is no more worthy cause than one taken up in faith, and no more worthy death than one against the forces of Evil.”: I’m pretty sure this is my original phrasing, but it looks like the kind of thing my unconscious may have plucked out of something portentous.
* “An additional component”: This is the point where Midnight gains the ability to see the front page of her record sheet and to hear the various gaming references that Hope cannot.
* “That thing she could do with her left hind hoof”: That’s right—I never got around to using that...
* “‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the Spider to the Fly.’: First line of the poem “The Spider and the Fly”, by Mary Howitt (1829).
Chapter 19: Horsewords
* Pony Handler: The equivalent term in the real world is Dungeon Master.
* Mary Jo Powell: Wife of Gary Gygax (as Mary Jo Gygax), creator of Dungeons and Dragons with Dave Arneson. Just like with every other work about D&D, poor Mr. Arneson will never be mentioned again. Anyway, the point is, the human world in this story is a gender-swapped version of our own, so that means that the equivalent of D&D was created by Gary’s wife instead of by Gary himself.
* Horsewords Incorporated: This world’s equivalent to Tactical Studies Rules, Inc., or TSR.
* “Bright pink meat”: It’s salmon, if you must know.
Chapter 20: The Vital Importance of Snacking
* By this chapter, it should be pretty obvious that Sorrel and Chestnut are ancestors of the Apple family. Specifically, Sorrel has Big Macintosh’s colors (and gender), but Applejack’s build and speaking ability, and Chestnut is the opposite.
* Tin-foil hat: If you don’t know what that is, I can assure you that an Internet search on the topic will get quite interesting...
Chapter 21: The Last Day
* This chapter’s optional subtitle: Copper Plate Invents the Comic Book.
Chapter 22: A Princess in the City of Angels
* Ellen Powell: I didn’t dig into Mary Jo Gygax’s personal life, so I have no idea if she has a sister.
* Los Angeles, California: Population as of the 1980 census was 2,966,850 humans.
* Los Angeles International Airport: Owned by the city of Los Angeles.
* O’Hare International Airport: Owned by the city of Chicago, Illinois.
* U.S. Route 101 is a north-south American highway that runs from Washington state through Califorinia. In the Los Angeles area, it is one of the most-frequently congested roadways.
* Lincoln Town Car: A luxury sedan sold by the Lincoln division of the Ford Motor company from 1981 to 2011. It was one of the longest cars on the road, and one of the most common sources of stretch limousines.
* “Some girls take a bashful boy”: First line of the gender-swapped version of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper (1983), one of the songs that help establish that this part of the story is set in the year 1984. I couldn’t find a cover of “Boys Just Want to Have Fun” online that I liked, but here’s a male cover of “Girls” by Chase Holfender.
* Uncle Bernie Powell: Another invented member of the Powell clan.
* Luke Gygax: Gary Gygax’s real-life brother. In the original campaign that gave birth to Dungeons and Dragons, Luke played Melf, after whom an acid arrow spell was later named. There are no Melf-inspired characters in Inn of the Prancing Pony.
* Gary Powell: This world’s version of Gary Gygax, with the personality toned down a bit. In addition, the alternate universe version is overseeing the cartoon adaptation of the game for the Marvel animation studio, just as he did in this reality.
* Ponies & Dragons: Took me long enough to drop the name. The reference is to Dungeons & Dragons (1974). In 1984, the game was known as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which was effectively a second edition. The actual 2nd Edition came out in 1989, the 3rd Edition in 2000, Version 3.5 in 2003, 4th Edition in 2008, and 5th Edition in 2014. I’m trying to (very roughly) match the fictional game with the generations of My Little Pony, so the year is 1984, when the 1st Generation cartoon premiered.
* Grue: A monster made popular by the interactive fiction game Zork (1977), which eats any character unfortunate enough to have their light go out in the caves. The creature was actually invented by author Jack Vance for The Eyes of the Overworld (1966) entry in his Dying Earth series.
Chapter 23: Into the Lion’s Den
* PonyGameCon: Alternate-universe version of Gen Con, North America’s largest tabletop gaming convention, founded by Gary Gygax in 1968. PGC was invented in 1974, the year Ponies & Dragons was first published.
* Katherine Lawrence: Name of an actual screenwriter for three episodes of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. The actual chief screenwriter for D&D was Karl Geurs. As of Halloween 1984, D&D had just completed airing its second season.
* The fourth season of Ponies & Dragons: The Dungeons & Dragons cartoon was cancelled without having a definitive final episode. Michael Reaves wrote an unproduced episode which redeemed series villain Venger, meaning that a fourth season would have introduced a new villain, or gone with an approach where a recurring villain was unneeded.
* Jonestown: The infamous mass suicide was only six years old in 1984.
* Dorothy Reichart: Maiden name of the wife of John Briley, Oscar-winning screenwriter for Gandhi (1982).
* Indira: The name of Mahatma Gandhi’s daughter-in-law, and the most-powerful woman to ever rule India.
* “The Lost Caverns of Soap Candy”: Basically the D&D module “The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth” (1984), written by Gary Gygax.
* Laura Curtis: Maiden name of Laura Hickman, who with her husband Tracy created the Ravenloft and Dragonlance settings and spinoff novels in the mid-80’s.
* Marcus Powell: Yet another fictional Powell.
* Commodore 64: 8-Bit home computer from 1982, named for its incredible 64 KB of RAM.
* Apple II: 8-Bit home computer from 1977.
* Gandalf the Gray: The Hobbit (1937) and the Lord of the Rings trilogy (1954), created by J.R.R. Tolkien.
* The members of the Young Women’s and Men’s teams: All fictional.
* Susan Blume: Her name was borrowed from Brian Blume, another member of the group that played the first ever campaign of what was to become Dungeons and Dragons. Everything else about her is fictional.
Chapter 25: Panic Control
* “Assassin’s Waltz”: The plot of this module is cobbled together from multiple sources, but the name is inspired by “The Assassin’s Knot,” by Lenard Lafofka (1983).
* “Against the Slavers”: Basically “Scourge of the Slave Lords”, a collection of four modules by various authors (1986), except, you know, written before 1984.
Chapter 26: Orientation
* “In the chaotic years following...”: This paragraph is a paraphrase of the Introduction to “The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth”, 1982 version, Booklet 1, Page 2. I worked with both the original 1982 version of the module—which had one booklet for the adventure and another for the new monsters and magical items—and with the Lost Caverns part of the 1987 compilation Realms of Horror—which had one booklet for the module, one for illustrations, and one for maps and inscriptions. I’ll reference them going forward as follows: 82B1P2 means 1982 version, Booklet 1, Page 2. The same introductory text in the other version is 87B1P56 (“Lost Caverns” begins on page 53).
* Eggswife: Iggwilv in “Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth”.
* Northern Equestria: Perrenland in Greyhawk.
* Soap Candy: Tsojcanth.
* Grazer: Graz’zt. See, converting D&D names to P&D names is easy!
* Howard’s Torch of Miracles: Daoud’s Wondrous Lanthorn. Named in the 1982 version of the introduction, but not the 1987 version.
* The Thieves’ Guild hiring the adventurers: In the original (82B1P3, 87B1P57), the party is hired by a local margrave, afraid that the powerful magical items in the recently discovered caverns might be found and used by unnamed enemies of his domain, with no mention of trying to hide these items away. Frankly, I think my version’s better.
* Members of the party: For role-playing purposes, the stats for the player characters were taken from the Sample Player Roster (82B1P31-32), with the new characters rolled back to Level 1. Midnight Sparkle is Cathartic, Hope Springs is Ethelrede, Torn Deck is Flemin, Burnished Lore is Weslocke, and Carry On is Hockerbrecht. By the way, the biggest mistake made in the ’87 version was to refer to a sample player roster, but not include one. I had to get the ’82 version for that reason alone!
* Facet: Obvious Rarity ancestor. Corresponds to Benedict in the Sample Player Roster.
* Itty Bitty: Obvious Fluttershy ancestor. Corresponds to Arocken in the Sample Player Roster.
Chapter 27: The Hermit
* The earthquake: This is foreshadowing for the collapse of dimensional boundaries at the climax of the game. “Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth” only used dimensional shenanigans to explain why so many weird creatures were in the caverns, but the original 1977 version (entitled “The Lost Caverns of Tsojconth”) went further, and stated that any party playing the game were capable of meeting one another. See the “Planar Nexus” section of grodog’s “Lost Caverns” page.
* The dragon fight: In “The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth”, there were twenty possible random encounters that could be rolled up in the wilderness, while the players try to find the lost caverns. Encounter #19 is a blue dragon (82B1P8; rather infuriating, the ’87 version has a different list of twenty encounters, and then only describes the first ten; you have to figure out that the Dragon’s Cavern lair on 87B1P63 is the same thing). Obviously, the fight is my way of replacing the original dragon with the transformed Firebelle.
* “The Underdark”: The D&D term for all of the underground spaces of the world.
* Three brown bears: Wilderness Random Encounter #3 in 82B1P5, #4 in 87B159.
* Avalanche Aftermath: Wilderness Random Encounter #3, “Rockslide” in 82B1P5, #3 in 87B1P59.
* Dead roc: Not in “Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth,” but necessary to set up my version of the Craggy Dells encounter next chapter.
* Stone giant: Wilderness Random Encounter #20 in 82B1P8, Stone Giant’s Playground Lair in 87B1P64. Both encounters described two giants, but I decided to only use one.
* Hermit’s cave: Wilderness Random Encounter #13 in 82B1P7, Hermit’s Lair in 87B1P62.
* The hermit’s parchment: Described on 82B1P7, and graphically reproduced in 87B2P4-2 [Booklet 2 has weird page numbers]. Grodog’s website (section “The Hermit’s Fragment”) manages a partial reconstruction to figure out the missing words. Grodog concludes that the hermit was the actual author of the fragment, which I tried to imply was true of Nestoria as well. “Trotter and Scout” were “Yaim and Brelid” in the original. Prayer in the original was not directed to any deity in particular.
* Materializing maps: My contribution.
* “The horn of Eggswife”: 82B1P3, 87B24-1. I just swapped out the words “Iggwilv” and “men” (which ruins the final rhyme).
Chapter 28: An Unexpected Rescue
* The roc rescue: This encounter, called “The Craggy Dells” in “Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth”, appears at 82B1P12, 87B1P65. In the original, it was hippogriffs being enslaved instead of rocs, and the slavers were humans and orcs instead of Earth Pony Army goons. I then tied this into the separate “Gnome Vale” encounter (82B1P9, 87B1P64), turning the gnomes into breezies.
* “The path crests and then drops away...most of the area is covered with lush grasses.”: Direct quote from “The Craggy Dells”.
* “The Three-in-One”: An alicorn.
* Web spell: Using the rules outlined in the AD&D Player’s Manual by Gary Gygax (1978), page 72.
* Ewoks: Toyetic creations of George Lucas, 1983.
* Staff of Striking: Magic item from p. 134 of the Dungeon Master‘s Guide.
* “Torn Deck gained the boss’ Crossbow of Speed, and Carry On claimed a Rope of Entanglement”: And the author promptly forgot about both of them.
* Bumble the Brave: Once he joined the party, he got the Sample Character profile of Dunil.
* The gold circlets: The first of two major contributions to the “Lost Caverns of Soap Candy” in order to allow non-violent solutions to future encounters.
* Bumble’s story of the breezies under Eggswife: Another original contribution. So much of these chapters is straight Gygax, so I felt it only fair to point out the occasional interleaving moment of McPoodle.
* The silver bands: The second way I made “Lost Caverns” less violent. Plus, it allowed all kinds of dragon/pony hijinks.
* “I place the ring on myself and think of the sun”: Hope, why are you so crazy?
Chapter 29: She’s Not Entirely Stable
* The chapter title: Always makes me think of a particular scene between C3P0 and Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back (1980).
* “The track leads to a cavern...[p]robably the wind”: Text taken from 87B1P66; 82B1P13 leaves the moaning out.
* “The walls of the cave...some discarded gear.”: More text from 82B1P66.
* “[Marcus] left way back when the Guild was assigning the mission”: Which just happened to be when the name “Howard” was spoken aloud.
* “Somebody’s Watching Me”: Single by Rockwell, released January 14, 1984. Here’s a female cover by Anna Waronker.
* “Owner of a Lonely Heart”: Single by the progressive rock band Yes, released October 1983. Here’s a female cover (at least the singer), by Jad&Den Quintet.
* Sweet’N Low: Artificial sweetener manufactured by Cumberland Packing Corporaton.
Chapter 30: Calling in the Cavalry
* “I even remember that stone’s DBC!”: “DBC” stands for “Draconic Bloodline Code”, a fanon system for addressing a dragonfire-sent message to a specific recipient. I should know, because I invented it for “The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville”.
Chapter 31: The Best Boat Ever
* Enormous cell phone: And yes, they were enormous in the 1980’s.
* The underground river: The ‘87 version does a better job of handling this: 87B1P67.
* Map of the Lesser Caverns, in case you want to follow along. This rendition is by Scrivener of Doom, from this page. In a move designed to drive the DM insane, the ‘87 version switches the name of the Greater and Lesser Caverns in the text, but not on the maps. The upper (entrance) level is supposed to be the Lesser Caverns, and the lower (boss) level is supposed to be the Greater Caverns. The guano-filled cave is area 4 on the map. “Area” 13 is the boat, which is supposed to be located on the eastern shore of the underground lake, although there’s a note in “Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth” suggesting that the DM stick it where Scrivener does to make the game even harder than it already is.
* “Spanish Inquisition”: Sketch from the “Spanish Inquisition” episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1970).
* “Tow rope!”: See, this is why you need to have rope with you at all times.
* Hall of flesh-eating bats: Between numbered areas 10 and 11 on the map. Called, as I had M.J. admit, the “Corridor of Limitless Bats”.
* Descent into the boat: An example of the kind of drama you can generate strictly through die-rolling and role-playing.
* Feather Fall: Page 66 of the Player’s Handbook.
* “The river pours into a high-vaulted cavern...the landing there leads off to the northwest.”: Direct quote, 87B1P67.
* The Gorge of Eternal Peril: Conveniently located under the Bridge of Death, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
* “Eat all the passengers like an angry Muppet”: OK, first of all, Disney currently owns the Muppets, who were created by Jim Henson. Second, Muppets have a long history of eating each other...and even people. And it’s always hilarious.
Chapter 32: An Alternative Theory
* CompuServe: The first major commercial online service in the United States. It was eventually eclipsed by AOL, which bought the company in 1998.
Chapter 33: Escort Mission
* Praporshchik: A rank in the old Russian Imperial army, equivalent to an ensign. The term literally translates to “flag bearer”.
* “I take care of the place while the Master is away.”: Yeah, I admit it—I stole that line wholesale from Manos: The Hands of Fate. And no, I won’t subject you to a YouTube clip of that scene.
Chapter 34: Let It Go
* “Tribe of reptile creatures”: Troglodytes, to be specific. This is Area 1 in the Greater Caverns.
* “A distant nautical tune”: “Sailor’s Hornpipe” (traditional, before 1770). Since I learned the tune as the introduction to the Popeye the Sailor cartoons (1932, Fleischer Studios), I added his laugh onto the end.
* “The ornately carved and sculptured bridge...fills the ears.”: Direct quote, 82B1P69.
* “I don’t have the ability to shrink it.”: In one of the many casual cruelties in “Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth”, the magic word to shrink the boat, “shrimpkin”, is only revealed right near the end of the game, at a moment when the player is least likely to notice.
*” Smells like a trap”: Yup. Best trap in the entire adventure, in fact. Oh well.
* “[T]he cavern’s ceiling was unusually high...coins and metal bars.”: Nearly-direct quote, 82B1P17 & 82B1P73. This is Area 16 in that map of the Lesser Caverns linked above. The creature here is a Gorgimera, introduced to the D&D world for the first time with this adventure (82B2P13).
Chapter 35: Magical Hydraulics
* “Unlike what you may have been told, there are parts of that place that are not designed to be a prison, but rather a place where rejected creatures can live as they wish.”: I’m basing this on the mythical Tartarus, which was the same way.
* The dull-looking satchel: Amusingly, Chossos’ treasure actually included a Bag of Holding.
* “Carry On Wayward Son”, song by the progressive rock band Kansas (which somehow became Nebraska in an alternate universe), released 1976. Female cover from Supernatural The Musical.
* “Miner 2049er”: Video game written by Bill Hogue for the Apple II and various other home computer platforms in 1982.
* “Is it ticking?”: I swear, you cannot go through a D&D game session without somebody asking that question.
*” In the center lies the gate...”: Verse from 82B1P18, 87B3P2. My sister Sparky, who ran this game back in the 80’s, added the third verse here, after her players failed to use the directional clues she had been dropping to figure out the Greater Caverns (of which “Going south takes you southwest” was the first). It’s her copy of the ’87 module that I’m using.
* The water level discussion: Taken straight from Jason Thompson (alias Mockman)’s satirical guide to “The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth”, Areas 17 & 18. Just so I can’t be accused of stealing money from the guy, and because I like a lot of his stuff, here’s a link to a place where you can buy a print of it, in case Tsojcanth was a major part of your misspent childhood or something.
Chapter 37: You Are In a Maze of Twisty Passages, All Alike
* Title: Taken from “Colossal Cave Adventure”, 1976. Written by Will Crowther and Don Woods.
* May I have a map to the Greater Caverns, Mr. Notes Guy?: Okay, since you asked nicely. Like the last one, this is by Scrivener of Doom.
* The large stone idol: Described only as a “type IV demon”, I decided that this was a statue of Graze/Graz’zt instead. 82B1P26, 87B1P78.
* “AC 2”: Armor Class. Lower numbers indicate someone who’s harder to hit. The related abbreviation “THAC0” stands for “To Hit Armor Class 0”. Basically, you adjust your unique THAC0 number up or down compared to the actual armor class of your opponent, and then you have to roll that number or higher on a 20-sided die to hit. 1 is always an automatic fumble (and possibly breakage of the weapon), and 20 is always an automatic hit (with a chance of dealing double damage).
Chapter 37: Celestia the Cheating Cheater Cheats Some More
* The entrance: Area 1 on the map of the Lesser Caverns.
* Giant mosquitos: Stirges, Monster Manual, page 92. They came from Area 2 on the map.
* Small grotto: Area 6 on the map. The description is a paraphrase of 82B1P14, 87B1P70.
* The pech: A race of creatures introduced to the D&D world with this adventure. 87B2P15. They come from Scottish legends, so imagine them with Scottish accents.
* “The passage made a sharp left turn”: We are now in Area 10 of the Lower Caverns map.
Chapter 38: A Horse with Two Names
* Title: Reference to “A Horse with No Name”, a 1972 song by the rock band America.
* “[A] pair of riveted iron doors...circumscribed place.”: Direct quote, 82B1P28, 87B1P78. Oddly, the ’82 version calls them “valves” instead of “doors”. Obviously, “Iggwilv” and “fools” in the original were changed to “Eggswife” and “foals”, and measurements were translated into Equine (three inches equals one hoof, four feet vertically equals one ponyheight, and three feet horizontally equals one ponylength).
Chapter 40: Introductions
* “[A] pair of riveted iron doors...circumscribed place.”: Direct quote, 82B1P28, 87B1P78. Oddly, the ’82 version calls them “valves” instead of “doors”. Obviously, “Iggwilv” and “fools” in the original were changed to “Eggswife” and “foals”, and measurements were translated into Equine (three inches equals one hoof, four feet vertically equals one ponyheight, and three feet horizontally equals one ponylength).
* “Beyond the iron doors...the entire passageway.”: Direct quote, 82B1P27, 87P1P78.
* “On the left wall, a painting shows a four-and-a-half ponylength wooden boat with a lovely, black-maned pony at the tiller, smiling under a stormy night sky.” And, if they had examined the boat in the painting, they would have seen the magic word “shrimpkin” written on its prow. See what I mean about this game being unfair?
* “This room appears...center of each wall”: Direct quote, 87B1P74. The ’82 version doesn’t bother describing it. If you’re following along on the Greater Caverns map, they went through the northernmost Area 19 through Door D, and emerged in area D.
* “[The] small and non-descript area has a strange box in its center. Atop the box is a skull—probably that of a human or elf.”: Direct quote, 82B1P25, 87B1P76. Area 11 in the Greater Caverns map. And this room is reminiscent of the crypt of Acererak the demi-lich from “Tomb of Horrors” (1978) by Gary Gygax, one of the most famous (or infamous) of all D&D modules. “Oubliette of Terror” is the alternate-universe version of this game.
Chapter 40: That Trapper’s a Keeper
* That title: Totally worth it.
* Trapper: Monster Manual, page 95. One of my favorite pages, mostly because it has this picture on it:
* “Capriccio Italien”: One of my favorite works by composer Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky.
* A bastard sword is a type of two-handed (or two-hooved) sword. Never ask how a non-unicorn pony can competently wield a sword.
* “Facet broke her Staff of Striking”: Cue Big “NO!” (And cue obligatory TV Tropes link.)
Chapter 41: Syd and Marté Krofft This Isn’t
* Title: Sid and Marty Krofft created the 1974 children’s show Land of the Lost. The title version represents how hard it is to gender-switch the names “Sid” and “Marty”. Land of the Lost is being invoked because it’s about a family of explorers that find themselves in another world.
* Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave System: Administered by the U.S. National Parks Service since 1941. I do not know for certain if Mammoth-Flint Ridge inspired the layout of Tsojcanth’s caverns.
* Patricia Crowther: For once, I’m not gender-switching accomplishments around. Pat Crowther really was part of the team that found the connection between Mammoth and Flint Ridge, in July - September of 1972, and she alone made it through the “Tight Spot”, which was a crucial part of that effort. She also wrote the official account of the expedition. After her second marriage, she became known as Pat Wilcox. If I knew her maiden name, I would have used that in this story, but as it is, I stuck with her first married name.
* John Crowther: Pat Crowther’s second husband, John Wilcox, leader of the Mammoth-Flint Ridge expedition. They married in 1977. Sandy and Laura are the names of Pat’s daughters by her first husband, Will Crowther. For comedic purposes, I made him the one who didn’t think spelunking was the best recreational activity in the history of the universe. Seeing as all of these people are still alive, let me reiterate that my versions of all four are completely fictional, and no offence was meant.
* Colossal Cave Adventure: In our world, it was actually written by Pat’s first husband (and frequent caving partner) Will Crowther.
* Walt Disney World: Property of the Disney Company, and don’t you forget it.
* Purgatory: Name of a cave in Mammoth. Styx and Lethe, the Great Walk and Echo River are also actual features of the those caverns, although I doubt they are part of any modern tours—I got them off of a Nineteenth Century map.
* Flint Dome: Another part of Mammoth Caves, and the closest area to something on the Greater Caverns of Tsojcanth that I could find. The “historic entrance” is also real.
* Pakuni: The race of cute caveman-like beings from Land of the Lost.
* “Am I in Oz?”: Something emphasized in the original Wonderful Wizard of Oz book by L. Frank Baum (1900) but not in the movies or the sequels, was the fact that all of the inhabitants (not just the Munchkins) were the same height as Dorothy.
* Technicolor: The main method of providing color to motion pictures between 1922 and 1952. Owned by the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation.
* “Novelties and notions”: Setup for a joke in the W.C. Fields/Mae West vehicle My Little Chickadee (1940). See, Mae West character’s supposed to look at the business card that W.C. Field’s character gave her and ask, “What kind of notions you got?” and Field’s character would then reply with “You’d be surprised.” Which is sort of her catchphrase, you see.
* The abbot and the castellan: Bud Abbot and Lou Costello.
* NaCl: Chemical formula for salt.
* “I can remember when, with my own unsteady legs, I toddled from room to room.”: Line delivered by W.C. fields to the ventriloquist’s dummy Charlie McCarthy on the radio show The Chase and Sanborn Hour (1939), with Pat delivering Charlie’s comeback. Charlie was Edgar Bergen’s puppet.
Chapter 42: Reunions, Happy and Otherwise
* Identical twin cousins: As far as I know, the American sitcom The Patty Duke Show (1963) was the last time anybody actually tried to pull a stunt like “identical twin cousins” and expect anybody to believe it.
* Gas Spores: Animate fungi that impersonate the far more dangerous beholder in order to trick adventurers into puncturing them...at which point they release their spores into living flesh. Gary Gygax loved coming up with stuff like that to spring on unwary players.
* “[A] pair of riveted iron doors...circumscribed place.”: Direct quote, 82B1P28, 87B1P78. Oddly, the ’82 version calls them “valves” instead of “doors”. Obviously, “Iggwilv” and “fools” in the original were changed to “Eggswife” and “foals”, and measurements were translated into Equine (three inches equals one hoof, four feet vertically equals one ponyheight, and three feet horizontally equals one ponylength). What?
* Nasty knife: The Thief and his knife are actually from “Zork I” (Infocom, 1977), which was adapted from “Colossal Cave Adventure”.
* Demons of the dark: Door F/Area F in the Greater Caverns map is adjacent to Area 8, where several demons use the powers of illusion and darkness to try and outsmart any adventurers who enter.
* Putting a portable hole inside a bag of holding: It’s true that this will get you sucked into another dimension, although it’s supposed to be the Astral Plane (Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 152).
Chapter 43: Eggswife’s Treasure
* “Many times have you opened these ebon doors...moons, stars, and strange symbols.”: Direct quote, the longest one in fact. 87B1P78-79. The ’82 version has different text.
* Dreadna: Drelnza in “Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth”, the “fighter/vampire” daughter of Iggwilv and Graz’zt. (Yeah, I don’t know how that works either—was it being a half-demon what made her into a vampire, or did her mother deliberately infect her later?) One of the best illustrations in the ’82 version of the module shows her asleep. It’s by Jeff Easley:
Chapter 44: Falling toward Apotheosis
* Dreadna’s sword Slayer: In “The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth”, Drelnza’s weapon is one of the very few intelligent swords not to have a name.
* Bigby’s Crushing Hand: Page 92 of the Player‘s Handbook.
* “Death From Above”: A very popular phrase. I always associate it with Sam & Max: Freelance Police, myself.
* Shocking Grasp: Page 68 of the Player’s Handbook.
* “Я люблю тебя”: “I love you” in machine-translated Russian.
Chapter 45: One Last Game
* “Just following orders”: Standard defense at the Nuremberg Trial of Nazi officers after WWII (1945).
* Bugles: Corn snack food manufactured by General Mills.
* Zone of Truth: One of those weird post-First Edition D&D spells that Hope keeps coming up with.
* “I hear [Brian’s] fancying himself a writer now.”: You know that really awful D&D-crossover fanfic you read once, where the main character raped everything you held near and dear to your heart? Brian wrote it.
* Valley Girl: Term used to describe a group of upper-middle class teenage girls living in the San Fernando Valley of California, popularized by a 1982 song of the same name by Frank Zappa and typified by their way of speaking.
Bonus Chapter: Howard
* Alice Crowley: The infamous occultist Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947), who managed to gain the press title of “wickedest man in the world”.
* Sumerian incantations: In 1977, a work claiming to be the real version of the fictional Necronomicon was published (later referred to as the “Simon Necronomicon”, to distinguish it from H.P. Lovecraft’s creation). A hugely popular paperback printing was put out in 1980 by Avon Books (later Bantam Books), and has never gone out of print. The spells it contained were largely cribbed from Sumerian texts.
* Cordis and Trieques: Try reversing the syllables of each name—the second one is admittedly missing an “A”. The 1970’s were a time when many psychics claimed to have made mental contact with alien or time-travelling intelligences.
Chapter 48: Rebirth
* Laura Curtis’ Dragon World: The Dragonlance campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons, the first such setting to be accompanied by a set of novels. Dragonlance was invented by Laura and Tracy Hickman in 1982, with the first work published in 1984. The setting was mostly developed by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss.
* Laura Curtis’ Vampony World: Ravenloft began as a 1983 module written by the Hickmans. After also writing a 1986 sequel, the idea was given to Bruce Nesmith and Andria Hayday to develop into a complete campaign setting in 1990.
* Laura Curtis’ Steampunk Pony World: The term “steampunk” was invented in 1985 by author K. W. Jeter to refer to a type of science fiction written by himself and others, involving anachronistic steam-derived technology in some variation of the Victorian world. D&D doesn’t actually have a steampunk setting, but it does have Spelljammer, which could be considered the fantasy/Ptolemaic equivalent. Spelljammer was developed by Jeff Grubb in 1989.
* Laura Curtis’ Post-aPocalyptic Ponies: Dark Sun, a D&D campaign setting centered on a world devastated by magical overuse. Developed by Timothy B. Brown and Troy Denning in 1991. Oh, and the title is a pun on Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies (1984, Jim Henson/Marvel).
* History of Horsewords, Inc.: In reality, Gary Gygax lost control of TSR as a result of paying more attention to the production of the cartoon and his divorce from Mary Jo in the mid-80’s than to the rickety finances of his company. In the mid-90’s, market share shifted from tabletop role-playing to collectible card gaming. Wizards of the Coast, the manufacturer of the most-popular such card came, Magic: The Gathering, bought TSR in 1997. Two years later, Wizards itself was bought by...
* Fashion Pro: Alias Hasbro.
* Ponies & Dragons editions: AD&D 2nd Edition was published in 1989, designed to remove all those controversial references to demons and angels, to remove morally grey/black classes such as assassins, and to move the target demographic once and for all from young adults to teenagers, both male and female. D&D 3rd Edition was put out by Hasbro in 2000, and generated a rather large backlash from players, who refused to leave 2nd Edition, abandoned D&D entirely for Internet-popularized custom systems, or even went back to AD&D 1st edition. (I wasn’t a player at this point, so I can’t be more specific about why 3rd Edition supposedly sucked.) Just like My Little Pony, D&D had a v.3.5 (2003), and just like MLP, it was also despised by the fandom.
* Warehouses outside Phoenix stuffed with unsold merchandise: I figure you can’t have a “failed company” story without warehouses in the southwest United States being involved. I’m thinking in particular of the E.T. the Extraterrestrial video game for the Atari 2600 (1982), where 700,000 unsold cartridges ended up being buried in a New Mexico landfill.
* Defenders of Sicily: I’m thinking something that’s Settlers of Catan-ish, the chief representative of a class of games that replaced tabletop board games in the hearts of many players.
* Brooke Golden: Brian Goldner is the current CEO of Hasbro. He has a daughter named Brooke.
* Aly Fassfelder: Made-up name based on the Hassenfelds, the “Has” in “Hasbro”.
* “One of the modules I have in mind is an athletic competition”: Module 16 of Friendship Is Magic, “Sonic Rainboom”, written by M. A. Larson.
* “Let’s say for now that it’s ‘secret’, and fill in the blank later.”: Super-module 1-2, “Friendship Is Magic”, written by Ellen Powell.
* “They might even have to chase off [a dragon]”: Module 7, “Dragon Quest”, written by Meghan McCarthy.
* Power Morpher: It’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, only instead of riding in Zords, they transform into giant robots!
* “The best possible Equestria...through ponies and people”: If that sentence didn’t make you slightly nervous, then I wasn’t doing it right.
* “A new, eternally bright beginning”: So, Tia, what do you think?