As some of my readers might know, the latest season of my fanfic, Journey To Hearth's Warming, is almost over which means I need to start exploring the next land which is based around ancient pegasus warriors and cliffs cities. So I was wondering since I spent so little exploring the previous land of Batpony, what would people like to see in this land of pegasus. No advertising, just wanted to expand on more than just my thoughts.

I have at most, cities of clouds and ice sitting upon cliffside. Remember these are meant to be ancient pegasus cities based during the time of Hearth's Warming. Yes, Commander Hurricane will appear during the new season, but I already have a full plot setup for her. I'm asking for pure background and ambiance advice.

7690493

Lots of verticality, pegasai don't give two figs about purely land-bound travel, they fly as easily as they breathe. For this reason, floorplans and architecture is going to be very open and airy, high ceilings with plenty of room for flight, lots of room for natural (or magical) air circulation. Pegasai control the weather, so they don't worry about unexpected weather damages to their structures, windows might well not have any sort of coverings in them.

Also, a certain, minimalism, of decor, given that they're mostly working in clouds and ice. Anything that can't be set down securely on a cloud purely through pegasus techniques is something that's going to get lost very easily. Vessels and containers made of ice instead of glass or clay, perhaps there's a way to make cloth-of-clouds, or use finely-crafted cirrus clouds in place of curtains or hangings?

7690510
Oh, I love that idea. With your high ceiling idea, maybe some have no roofs at all, with rainbows flowing out of them like waterfalls. Possibly some small labs working out the right kind of rain and rainbow colors, lacking a roof to ensure nothing to break apart should there be any explosive mishalfs as well as a quick escape when needed.

7690510
As for the structures of ice. I was thinking, maybe some sharpened ice pillar for defensive measures.

7690526
There you go, try leaning on that Greco-Roman theme they have going, lots of columns and acropoli.

7690493
Usually I depict pre-Equestrian pegasi as nomadic people taken to logical conclusion. Most of pegasus population lives in cloud cities, which are moved to places where these are necessary. They don't control land, they don't plant, they don't harvest. "Dusters" are the ones who do it, forced to pay tribute, either in reaches or in blood. Obviously without cloudwalking you can't really visit flying city, unless it is grounded for whatever reason.

7690554
They've got mead though, water and honey in an appropriate vessel, nothing simpler.

Yes, quite a lot of mead really, knowing pegasai. Probably wine as well, plenty of foraged fruits and berries to be had out there.

7690493
I'd like to see no cloud building, at least en masse. It looks dificult to do, and also how do you keep items on the clouds? Multi-race Equestria can provide some magics, but back then... Remember that modern cloud production is industrialized, it is possible that they even make special clouds for building, like they did for Wonderbolt training by mixing something in devices.

This leads to another cliche, already mentioned here. Nomadic non-planting pegasi. If you have to hold onto certain position, no matter how fortified (unclimbable mountains and such like) you have to move the goods to it and not otherwise. So here comes roman logistics taken to logical extent. Pegasi use slave labor, mules, earth ponies, whoever, to operate large ground farms which may even compete with magically productive earth pony peasants because of ancient superscience, I mean agronomy and coordination. And as long as we consider carrying various carts in the air result of inner magic (which can easily not fit fot holdin something on the cloud for long enough without touching it), we don't even need these famous roads, for the most part.

7690624

roman logistics

You forget another common roman thing, like stealing enemy land and technology. I've already setup that the pegasus and batpony are living inside massive hourglass ruins with the idea of two massive countries within. I could play up the readers and the main character's assumptions that the pegasus are brilliant only to later reveal they stole the land from the griffins, who previously stole the land from the umbrum. Heck, I could even play it up higher by treating the griffins as the greece, roman's greatest and most constant rival.

7690621
Actually, in modern day, Rainbow Dash herself has been shown to go out of her way to drink cider which is shown to be an earth pony product. What if in the past, due to no union yet, the pegasi were stealing the cider from the earth ponies.

7690714
Good point. As for the griffons, go on, unless you want to implement canonical image of loser inferior species of wannabe dragons with greed and spite but no power. As for me, I went for the old image of viking griffons, germanic barbarians in this case. And their kingdom was made where the ponies lived before migration. They were there, see Rockhoof's village on the cutie map.

7690765
Outside of one mini-arc from season one, I really haven't had much time to explore the griffins until now. Yeah, I agree the greed rip-off they had in the show was just bad, even if mythology is accurate. For my take on the griffins so far, they are one of the largest military forces and are at war with the pegasus. Outside of that, I've got plenty of room to work with them in the coming seasons.