Neigh Orleans, the city of Trixie Lulamoon's birth. Haunted, full of necromancers and as Trixie knows, it also suffers from a surplus smugglers and body sellers.
And now that the bodies of her mother and grandfather have been stolen, Trixie and the other element bearers must journey in the city over the Nightmare Night celebration to get them back.
But not all is what it seems, and the six will soon find themselves challenged by a dark conspiracy with even darker goals.
A Lunaverse story, for the 2013 Nightmare Night writing event.
Chapters (4)
First thing that came to mind (hoping that was intentional):
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Oh, it completely and totally was!
I pretty much have been writing this story with that song on my playlist.
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Glad to know I'm not the only one with a fic based on a Voltaire song! Just for that, I'm checking this out.
Well this is really interesting, not to mention creepy.
I await more chapters with bated breath.
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Thanks Talon!
I wanted to go for a whole kind of creepy, New Orleans style story.
I also liked your more humorous story for the event, by the way. The costume becoming real take is always cute.
Well, at least we know where she is in the Lunaverse: wearing a Green Lantern T-Shirt and yelling BAZINGA!!!
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Sheldon from Big Bang Theory....Arrogant....No Social Skills.....No interest in developing them....tendency to declare people his mortal enemy.......
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Oooooh! Okay, now I get it!
Sunset Shimmer! Can't help but wonder if she'll show up again...
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Poor Cheerilee, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
Has Ditzy gained a general madness or possibly some sort of second sight, possible futures / past vision thing?
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It's more of a straight memory curse, in Ditzy's case. Tender Care lost her own children somewhat young, and basically saw a way to get a new child and purge herself of the memory of the loss at the same time.
So now Ditzy has a false memory of loosing Dinky, constructed from circumstances in her own memory where it could have happened. In this case the events of Longest Night, Longest Day.
Right now, in her mind, Dinky was killed by Corona as an abject lesson for defying her. And as she said once in A Hard Bargain "Kindness has limits.", so she's kind of enraged right now.
Wow impressive first chapter, the scenes were very well described, the story and plot interesting and every felt quite in character with a great cliff hanger. I do feel the Nightshade scene suffered a bit from tell over show though, but besides that this was great!
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Thanks for the kind words Vazak, glad that you liked it.
I will confess that I might have fallen into a little too much telling there. Something I struggle with in my writing at times, I've noticed.
Always room for improvement though!
Looking forward to seeing it!
Looks like auto correct got to you. There's a few lines where the words used are completely wrong. Like 'he's filling intended to protect' instead of fully.
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My apologies. I will endeavour to get everything done and fixed as quickly as possible.
Looks like some ghost wants grandfoals.
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Hey, she hasn't seen her daughter in a decade, at least. She has to get her motherly nagging in now while she still has the chance!
Great conclusion! I really loved this fic. It was great to see Trixie in her hometown and interacting with her family. Though there were some typos in this chapter, notably, 'fairing' for 'faring' and one time you used past and present tense in the same sentence.
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Glad that you enjoyed it!
I really wanted to do something Neigh Orleans based the minute the Nightmare Night writing event was announced.
And I will keep stomping out those mistakes as they come up too.
Pretty solid chapter, I did think that Quatermoon smiling was a bit off given the situation, I can see what you were aiming for but that ideas always felt off to me, sorry, but besides that this was a good solid chapter.
Great fic! I really enjoyed this story it's been a great and adventurous ride and the world building was very well done. With Shades death am I seeing hints of Dr Faciliar?
Can't wait to see what you bring to the L!verse next!
I think it went well, it fits into the L-verse and I wouldn't see any major problems with it even being canon.
I'm glad Coal Black didn't have to return to his previous state, that would be horrible.
Interesting how much of a monster Fall Harvest must be, she could get rid of any part of her and all she chose was her appearance, presumably so she wouldn't be captured rather than getting rid of any guilt, or bad memories or anything like that.
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I will confess that I did draw a little bit from that Disney death for Night Shade's. It did seem appropriate that Night Shade, who was based on a Gen 1 villain (him breaking apart into a black cloud was a reference to his master in that same episode.), would get dragged kicking and screaming into Tarturus, which is run by *another* Gen 1 villain.
It's all delightfully meta!
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Yeah, Fall Fields is definitely a darker character. A bit of her back story that didn't really come out in the story, was that she was skipped over for inheritance of her family's farm/plantation.
So, Fall Fields took an axe and gave her family forty whacks.
By taking Carrot Top's place, she would have been independent and owning her own farm again, without the police chasing after her.
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I think Sunsets presence might sadly cause an issue, but besides that I actually agree.
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ah I was wondering if you were referencing the shadow eater! It all tied together very well.
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Huh. I didn't think that any decisions had been made on Sunset Shimmer. Actually kind of why I put her in. Being tied to a library that's out of the way of what the rest of the cast was doing seemed simple.
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Sorry, I guess we just assumed, we probably should have put her and Lightning Dust in the L!verse bible even if they aren't published yet. The idea, as it stands, is that Sunset and Lightning Dust are friends and are glory seeking antagonists, intent on finding fame fortune and power, through any means necessary. When we first meet them, they're trying to steal Corona's throne, but other times they are just entering races and cheating to win, as the greatest issue for them is less about active malice and more a lack of consideration for others. That, I think, is how it's planned anyway, sorry, I should have mentioned that when she first popped up.
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Damn.
Well, I suppose that I could always change her name, if that's what I'd need to do. The fact that she *is* that character isn't critical to the story.
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Sorry, I wish i'd mentioned it earlier, we really should have out this on the bible, though given it hasn't happened yet I suppose it is subject to change. While i'll admit a great deal of fondness for the LD/SS duo idea, (Emeral and I are scheduled to write the fic) maybe run this by RDD?
Again, i'm really sorry.
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It might be possible to tie this int the current canon for them as well, now that I think of it.
Great fun and genuinely creepy in places!
I'm pretty impressed that you managed to introduce a "alternate" set of bearers, body swap everyone, and keep the new characters distinct along with conditions of first six still being clear. Pacing their introductions and playing the conditions imposed on the Mane 6 off against their usual approaches worked really well.
It's all pretty seamless here, but I've seen similar scenarios founder because it was just a headache to keep track of.
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Thanks a lot Tanglemane! I'm glad that it worked well for you.
I actually kept a little cheat-sheet on my computer to keep the pairs all straight. It really helped.
Took me a little while to get around to finishing this, but I had a lot of fun reading this. Given you were trying to get this all written for Halloween I can't complain much that it felt a tad rushed in places, but you managed to make a fun set of antagonists who gave our heroes some trouble in Trixie's hometown. I'm curious who or what that voice was that turned Night Shade into the black cloud, and what the origins of that gem was; I'll assume it wasn't actually diamond given Raindrops was able to smash it. The story had a good, fast pace, and I dug the darker, horror tones that got wove into what was basically an adventure story. I liked the angle you went with the villains being motivated by trying to get back things they'd lost, kind of wish we'd had more time to see more of their characters before everything concluded. Overall, good job, I enjoyed it.
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Thanks Vex!
I had pictured both the gem being tied to Tartarus and Tirek, honestly, with the lord of darkness whispering into Night Shade's ears.
I might come back to this story at a later date and flesh it out more. But it was still quite fun to write as is.
After reading this chapter, I cannot understand why something as wholesome as necromancy is illegal.
¿Where have I heard the name SunSetShimmer? CrystalGazer probably met foul play. This CrystalGazer is probably an imposter like the others.
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> “I’ll assume it wasn’t actually diamond given Raindrops was able to smash it.”
AssUMe makes an Ass of YoU and Me. Diamond is the hardest known naturally occurring substance, but it is brittle. If one tries to crush diamond in a vice, assuming that it does not have previously existing flaws, it resists. One can rub it with sandpaper until the cows come home without scratching it. Unfortunately, an hard impact can shatter diamond. It is like steel knives versus ceramic knives:
Steel knives almost never break. under load, they bend. One just bends them back, later. This malleability does at the cost of dulling easily. One must ofter resharpen them.
Ceramic knives never need sharpening because they are too hard to dull; but unfortunately however, if they fall from the countertop, they shatter on impact with the floor.
Diamond is like the ceramic knife.
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Neat. Well, there goes my plans to make a giant hammer out of diamond. Stupid physics, ruining perfectly good plans.
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> “Well, there goes my plans to make a giant hammer out of diamond.”
Try Aggregated Diamond-NanoRod:
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/aggregated_diamond_nanorod
One basically takes Fullerenes and compresses them under extremely high temperatures and pressures. The result is a substance made of randomly oriented interlocking crystals of diamond. It is not pretty like a big single-crystal diamond is but it is as hard as diamond, as resistant to scratching as diamond, and is tough instead of brittle:
The last property comes from being made of microscopic randomly oriented interlocking crystals of diamond. If 1 crystal of diamond shatters, a gzillion others remain intact. If used as a hammerhead, it will eventually become diamonddust through use, but that will take a long time. It definitely will not be just an 1-Whack Wonder —— ¡That sounds like a great title for a clopfic! —— like a single-crystal diamondhammerhead would be.
Is Trixie seriously not going to ask the rest of the police force for help? Or try to contact Luna? It seems like such an obvious and essential thing to do, it doesn't work well to leave on a cliff hanger.
Also, it seems awfully convenient that the bad guys didn't make sure that their curse could block or confuse detection spells and the like. And when they meet in person, does Twilight see her as Fall Fields? If not, why?
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Well, the Lunaverse has established that Trixie's hat only sends messages to Luna's office, and not her directly. Trixie wasn't expecting any messages she'd send to get to her in time.
In terms of the curse blocking detection spells, that's not really the main point of the spell. It's supposed to inflict a debilitating effect on the target, while the caster gets something they want from the target.
So, you'd only get a non-detection effect if you were say, stealing the fame from a rather famous pony, because the curse effect would involve said pony being overlooked and forgotten by everyone.
In regards to Twilight. ...Ehh. Fair cop, I think that I just pulled a brain fart with that one and tripped over my own plot.
"No! I want grandfoals! Honestly, Trixie, I'm not getting any alive-er!"
Moon Shade is best snarky ghost pony.