Epilogue
Who would have thought I would have resorted to writing diaries, yet here I was, years later, reading them again. When you lived for a long time, they became essential. Even with HELaTS enhanced memories, the way our brains worked ensured that memories eroded over time. Sometimes the ghosts of the memory remained, but almost all access to it was lost. It might surface as déjà vu, or something even stronger if that elusive trigger could be found.
Sometimes the memory was totally gone, and in the case of the pony who wrote the diaries that Kakuun had found, who exactly she was has been lost to time. That she was Princess Moon Glow's daughter and Princess Lunar Eclipse's younger sister was almost certain, but her name had vanished along with the covers and front pages of her writings. Yet, forgotten as she was, she would be remembered for the effect her writing had on Kakuun, and how that would affect the lives of all in the habitat. To be forgotten and remembered at the same time was sad.
And in time, I would also pass into obscurity, being nothing more than a name in some old books, a figure from history, or even someone from so long ago all relevance was lost. Admittedly, that would be some time off, as we HELaTS were proving to be quite hardy.
My first diary was showing its age now. Years of handling and sliding on and off the shelf had left its cover scuffed and fragile. If I felt like it, I could have restored it with magic, but I liked it as it was, showing its history.
Carefully I opened the cover, and started reading the first page.
The first entry I had made in the new diary was a bubbly piece of fluff about reaching the surface of the ringworld and all its beauty. It's a good thing I was the only one who got to read it. In fact, it covered several pages. The writing style varied from paragraph to paragraph as I alternated between hoof-writing and using my horn to manipulate the pen. It would be a few years before my horn writing improved to the point I was happy with it.
The second entry was better.
RW 0. Day 2. We have decided to start an new calendar to celebrate our emergence into the ringworld. Of course it only applies to those of us who have come out here, and those involved in the logistics. Mostly it is just us HELaTS. We call it the Ringworld Calendar and are using the prefix RW to distinguish it. It's about time ponies had a new calendar anyway. The numbers in old system were getting a bit long, and our dopey Habitat Eleven calendar was designed to hide our real history. What defined days and years will probably need trimming further down the line. At the moment, there is no distinction between day and night, and as the ringworld is static with respect to the star, orbital years simply don't exist.
Anyway, we have hit our first major problem. Food. While we HELaTS seem to be able to eat some of the plants growing in the ringworld, it appears regular ponies can't. We brought back samples from our first trip out there, and handed them to Storm Labs to examine. The results were not promising. Those that were not outright toxic were of no nutritional value or so foreign as to be unpalatable. It was possible they had been engineered for spiders to eat as a substitute to creatures.
One solution would be to turn everypony into HELaTS, but we really don't want to go that way. For starters, our supply of modifiers is limited to what our tiny HELaTS modifier factory can produce. We could convert hundreds of ponies a year with what was available, as distinct from the hundreds of thousands we would need to convert the population.
Turning everypony into a HELaTS also gave us the population control problem. It would not be an issue for a very long time as long as we could expand out, unopposed, into the ringworld, but what then? Would we also have to start stealing solar systems from other life forms to build ringworlds of our own?
The other solution is to plant food we can eat. Food generators will do for as long as our population remains stable, but when ponies start spreading out around the much larger space available up here, I expect there will be a population explosion. Besides, the generators only work in an artificially generated magical field.
There must be a seed bank hidden somewhere in Habitat Eleven. In the sublevels, there was the hidden warehouse that contained the ship's main gun used for practice – the gun I destroyed outside Brainstorm's Advanced Weapons Development Laboratories. Surely there must be other hidden warehouses we missed.
---
If they weren't going to eat these plants, I wondered what else the HELaTS spiders were planning on consuming. I suspected, if they were remotely civilized, it would have been food from generators. I doubted very much they would have survived against other intelligent species if they kept catching them in their webs and eating them! Yay for being herbivores.
We eventually found the seeds. They were in an unexpected location, and in an unexpected form.
Ah, here was the entry from when we found the seeds. Fortunately, it didn't take too long. After all, we had every pony and changeling in Central searching.
RW 0. Day 8.
We found the seed bank, but not in the place we expected. It was hidden in one of Central's deniable facilities. In fact, it looked fairly innocuous. It was, or should I say they were a variant of the portable food generators. All we had to do was heap carbon, water and a few trace minerals into them, and they presented us with seeds, or in some cases, seedlings. The easiest source of material to put into them will be the vegetation we will have to clear to make way for our crops.
Here was another interesting entry.
RW 0. Day 15.
After some lengthy discussion with the heads of the habitat, it has been decided that for the time being, we will keep the life-extending benefits of HELaTS conversions a secret from the general population. Well, maybe not secret, as our longevity will reveal that. Perhaps unstated would be a better term. We will not be offering conversions to ponies outside of those who really need it for their dangerous lines of work, including farming, exploring, both on the surface, and within the lower levels of the ringworld, construction work, and so on. The stigma associated with being a HELaTS will work in our favor.
---
HELaTS, while now legally accepted, were still strange, hairless, black ponies. Full acceptance could still be generations away. Ponies liked their coats! Dangerous jobs were not particularly appealing to ponies who had led a soft life until now. We now considered those who expressed interest in conversion on a case by case basis.
The existing HELaTS simply kept on living they way they were used to. They educated their own offspring in their ways, and when the time came, the youngsters were offered their freedom as a regular pony, or conversion to HELaTS with the corresponding responsibilities. Our HELaTS population had doubled over the years, which was nothing compared to the general population explosion. After going through school and mingling with regular ponies, many of the foals of the HELaTS ponies elected to lead a normal life.
RW 0. Day 17.
The ship Snow had sent to the ceiling of the hangar when the first clockwork spider attacked was finished today. It is big enough to carry ten ponies in relative comfort, as well as providing somewhere to sleep. It can carry ample supplies. Coupled with its inbuilt food generator, it would be possible to travel for weeks without needing to return to base. We expect to find other stations or fuel points on the surface where it could be refueled. We flew it around the hangar cautiously. It will be fantastic when we get it up onto the surface. But that is the problem. How do we get it up there? It can be disassembled for transport, but I'm thinking ahead. We need to open direct routes between the habitat and the surface of the ringworld.
Convincing the blunt spiders to cut us a new route through the levels would be the best, but getting them to understand us is going to be difficult until the techs work out how to communicate with them. For now, I have assigned a team to explore and map the tunnels between our hangars and the shafts. They are, of course, equipped to deal with any clockwork spiders that may prove hostile. All the same, I doubt we will find any, even in the areas we have not explored yet.
---
After several years we were able to create four paths to the surface, with the help of the blunt spiders. Each began at one of our hangars, and intended egress points from the life support dome. They exited at four places around the foot of Mount Eleven, which was what we ended up calling the mountain that covers our habitat. Ponies now frequently traveled between the city in the habitat and the new satellite cities and towns.
The Storms, Maisie, Briggs and his team of sapient computers were able to tweak the coding of the factories that made the spiders. The result was that the factories were now producing blunt spiders that could understand us, clockwork spiders that protected us and computers that didn't rely on modifier rewritten brains of pony corpses. The code was spread via virus to all facilities in the ringworld. Well, that was our intention. For all I knew it could still be spreading around the other side of the ringworld, or some counter had been created to it. After all, this place was huge and we occupied only a fraction of a percent of its surface area.
The original blunt spiders continued with their original programming, which suited us fine, for the most part. Direct communication was possible, but difficult. Some times they either ignored us, or simply were incapable of understanding what we were trying to tell them. Occasionally we had to persuade them to abandon a project that went against our interests. Persuasion usually amounted to blowing up what they had just created a few times.
The few original clockwork spiders, as theorized, were quite intelligent. When first made, they were merely automatons, but the longer they functioned, the greater their reasoning abilities grew. There were several, both large and small, living in our society. Mostly they worked with Briggs and the other sapient computers that had been transferred to clockwork spider bodies. They no longer tried to protect the interests of the blunt spiders, which fortunately prevented conflicts when we had to destroy their efforts.
As for Snow's ship, it was quite successful, and over the years, the design had been tweaked to make it even better. There were thousands of them in service now. Some had been lost to accidents, general wear and tear and old age, but quite a few of the first generation, including the prototype, were still in use.
Many of Snow's other designs had also been mass-produced and were in regular use.
Others had also tried their hooves at design, and there were now some competing manufacturers, but so far none had enjoyed the same success.
RW 0. Day 26.
We are drawing up plans for our first surface colony. That sounds impressive, doesn't it? The reality is a little less glamorous. We need some sort of headquarters, a village, and some farms. The headquarters isn't really that essential, actually, but... a certain somepony with a penchant for palaces disagrees.
Princess Lunar Eclipse wants us to build a castle, believe it or not – a castle like the one in the old picture book of Snow's.
"The people will expect one," she had insisted.
What people? She expected the same ponies and changelings that were used to Central, in the hub below the center of the Mane Way, cramped living quarters and a forgotten royal residence would want a castle? I was not convinced.
"Visitors need a clear visual indication of where those in charge can be found," she said.
"So, build a tower," I said.
"This will be prettier. And it will have towers."
"Bah!" I said. This was a losing battle. If we wanted her to act as an interface between the creatures of Habitat Eleven and Central, she did need somewhere to do it, and her current 'throne room' left a lot to be desired. "Make sure that what you do does not make all of ponykind jealous. I wish to avoid creating a society with any more classes than it already has. We have enough problems with having changelings hidden in our midst, and with some regular ponies still turning up their noses at the HELaTS."
"All the more reason to put me on a pedestal," Princess Lunar Eclipse said. She was a HELaTS, after all, and a large one at that!
---
I never thought space faring creatures were likely to look for a castle as a point of contact, but as she kept on insisting, we built one. It was not so much a residence for her, but as a new home for Central. It looked quite regal on the outside with its spires, grand windows and balconies and all the storybook glory of the old capital of Equestria.
Inside it was quite different. It was mostly offices, meeting rooms, and all the usual infrastructure needed to run a nation. It also included a residential wing, with apartments for the dignitaries to live in if they so desired. I made sure they were similar to what we were building for the regular folk. Of course, there was nothing stopping anyone from decorating their rooms in a manner of their choosing, as long as it was at their own expense.
We built the castle on what we had arbitrarily decided was the east slope of the mountain. We based the points of our compass on the nearest approximations of the directions used in Habitat Eleven. Of course, the alignment was well out. We had been very lucky for the habitat to be captured by the construction work when it was perfectly vertical. To have had our east-west line up with the plane of the ringworld toroid would have required our original planet to have zero tilt on its axis, or for something to have moved it into perfect alignment, and that would have been an unrealistic expectation, not to mention a monumental engineering task.
And the really funny thing was that near the castle was exactly where our unexpected, off world visitors would choose to visit us.
The following entry was one I wish I had never needed to make.
RW 0. Day 167.
Today we found out what the alien spiders eat. They eat other creatures. They eat ponies. One of our exploration teams failed to return, so we went looking for them. They had gone on hoof. We flew in pods. Using scanning spells, we were able to follow their trail, even from the air. Several days travel by hoof, and only and hour or two by pod, we found where they had vanished.
There were caves, trees, and webs – lots of webs strung out between trees. From the air, it was clear that the webs had been used to corral the ponies. The ponies had not merely stumbled into the web – they had been hunted and herded into it.
Equipping ourselves with our weapons and protective bubble spells, we landed the pods, and followed the trail to our fallen friends. All that remained were skin and bone. All of their flesh had been dissolved and sucked out.
That was when the spiders attacked us. Our protective bubbles prevented them gaining purchase on us, or biting us with their venom dripping fangs.
I started shooting, my shots cold and calculated. I started with the spiders that were attacking, then moved on to all others, young and old. These things had stolen our planet, and were now trying to steal our lives. Would this have been the fate of all ponies if the Warners had not assisted in the evacuation of the planet?
It took my team several hours to cleanse the caves. There were a few dozen adult spiders, which were about the size of the pony based clockwork spiders. There were also hundreds and hundreds of young, each about the size of my hoof. When we were finished, there was a lot of charred organic matter generally coating all surfaces of the caves. I kept one of the young, and samples from the adults – specifically the fangs and venom glands.
We found their stores too. They had brought food of their own, and also had equipment that appeared to be food generators, although these did not look to be in the best condition, so either they were afraid of running out of food, or enjoyed hunting for fresh food.
Probably the most sickening discovery was one of our own, still alive, wrapped in web and paralyzed by poison. We rescued her, and took her to the hospital in Habitat Ten. Brainstorm and Stormie are using spells and their regrowth tanks in an attempt to heal her. They should be able to, considering the miracles they can now work, but true success will depend on what the poison has done to the pony's brain.
---
Poor Lucy never woke from the venom, passing away within the year from complications associated with it. Even having having samples of the venom was not enough to help her. Her last gift to us was an antivenom made from the antibodies her body generated to fight it. Fortunately the antivenom was very rarely needed. With time, a synthetic vaccine was developed and given to all regular ponies.
After that encounter, we ramped up security, and limited exploration to repurposed clockwork spiders and trained HELaTS living weapons, who were immune to venom. We found several pockets of spiders hiding in caves. None had attempted to build any sort of structure, let alone a township. Was this their usual way of life? The complexity and elegance of the rail network and stations suggested otherwise. Were they early colonists?
As it turned out, we would get our answers many years later.
RW 5. Day 91.
Cacha and I are both taking another turn in the conversion tanks. This time we are getting bat-pony wings. They are just too convenient to not have.
---
Well, royalty were meant to be alicorns, weren't they? Seriously, bat-winged unicorns were not alicorns. Brainstorm found that pegasi could not have horns, and unicorns could not have pegasus wings. Alicorns were different, the result of an unrelated, and very specific gene sequence. He compared my DNA with Allie's, as she was essentially a clone of me, with alicorn modifications. The programming in the modifiers generated by the bodies of HELaTS ponies also helped to unravel the code.
RW 6. Day 23.
Work on Central Castle is well under way. It looks more like mud and mess than anything impressive yet. Building materials are on tap from the ringworld itself, and our own blunt spiders are doing the work. The structure will be a lot more sturdy than the buildings we first built without the assistance of blunt spiders.
RW 7. Day 84.
The giant spokes between the star and the ringworld are shrinking. It appears they are no longer required. What was their purpose? Most likely they had a dual function – to hold the ringworld in place as it was built, and to serve as a conduit for the building materials gathered from the sun itself. At the rate they are shrinking, they will be gone in a year or two.
RW 8. Day 129.
We have day and night. We have watched as the mass that was held above and below the sun was formed into a slowly rotating cage around it. Barely visible at first, the bars grew in thickness. At first their effect was limited to a passing drop in light level, but as they grew thicker, the shadows became darkness. We call that night. Conveniently, the night shadow moved from what we were calling east to west.
And of course, it has thrown our schedules into total chaos, as the day is about two hours longer than what we were used to.
From this day forward, the ringworld calendar shall synchronize itself with the new day length time. As we are not orbiting a planet, a year is an arbitrary measure. We have decided to reduce the number of days in a year, so that a year stays more or less the same length as we are used to. Hopefully drastically changing seasons will not mess that up.
---
The clock makers were busy for a while, adapting clocks to run slower to match the new length of day. Years are now three hundred and thirty seven days long.
RW 8. Day 183.
The temperature has dropped, now that we have a period of darkness each day. It may fall further. I hope not.
---
Temperatures did stabilize in a very livable band. The tint on the sky dome faded, allowing more heat in during the day, to compensate for the period of night. Over the course of each year there were slight variations, causing changes in weather. According to Princess Lunar Eclipse, none of these changes were as drastic as used to occur on our original planet. We were not subjected to blistering heat where plants died back, or to freezing cold, where water turned to ice. Snow remained on Mount Eleven, but came no further down. The variations were never enough to warrant being called seasons.
Okay, so the sky wasn't really a dome – it was the inside of a toroid. All the same, no matter where you stood, it appeared to wrap around you like a dome.
RW 9. Day 22.
Breezies have created a tiny society for themselves. Being sensitive to anything stronger than a breeze, they made their new home in the atrium of the castle. We will address expansion issues when it becomes a problem. I don't see that being any time soon.
The changelings burrowed into the mountain behind the castle, making their nest in the caves and tunnels they created. Apparently their tunnels went far enough back to hit the hull of Habitat Eleven. It's not the sort of place I would want live, but they seem very happy to be free of the restrictions of pony architecture.
Queen Kakuun also has a throne in the throne-room of the castle, along with whatever serves as a throne for each of the other royalty. Mostly the throne-room serves as a place for meet and greet with the general population when they have issues they are unable to sort out any other way, like deciding which of two arguing farmers get to keep the pear tree on their fence line.
---
Yes, even I had a spot there, as did Cacha, Allie and Princess Lunar Eclipse. There was even a tiny throne for the current breezie representative.
Mostly, discussions and meetings held there were civil. I wished I could say always but ponies will be ponies!
RW 39. Day 256.
Cacha is less clingy than she used to be. It's been a gradual change, but it seems her subconscious has realized that I will never abandon her, so she can afford to let me out of her sight. I don't think I would be capable of following a pony to the total exclusion of going where I wanted or needed to go, as Cacha had been doing for many years. Well, not total exclusion – I would ask her if there was anywhere she wanted to go or anything she wanted to do. Usually she was just happy enough to stay near me.
---
And Cacha decided she was a male again, the poor confused pony. We ended our sham marriage to Brainstorm, married each other in a quiet ceremony, and raised ourselves a family.
That made it sound so easy, didn't it. She left her body as it was – female with male genes, and we used magic and cell manipulation to get pregnant. Yes, both of us, to each other. We'd raise a couple of foals, then after a few years break, have another go. Now we had children and great grand children that were the same age! The mix had been fifty-fifty, five fillies and five colts, courtesy of Cacha's male chromosomes, and plain old luck. I had carried three of those fillies, and of course, there was my oldest, Allie, bringing my total to four fillies, two colts.
Cacha was delighted to have fathered and borne colts, considering she was a member of the generation of HELaTS where all male had been born intersex.
Add in Allie's and Bittersweet's foals, and we had quite the family!
RW 51. Day 22.
Today my mother died.
RW 51. Day 28.
It seems my father could not live without my mother. He wilted and died in such a short amount of time.
---
Apparently I had been too upset to write anymore about these events at the time. Then again, what else did I need to write? I didn't have any regrets in my relationship with them. I didn't need to pour my heart out with lists of things I wished I had done. Sure, I missed them, but that was okay, wasn't it?
RW 56. Day 320.
With the possibility of more aliens showing up, and the language barriers that would cause, a few of us unicorns worked together to make a new translation spell. It sort of worked like the spell we had developed for Snow, but in reverse. Instead of the transmitter being a unicorn, it was the receiver that worked the magic. The spell would discretely hook into the subject's mind, allowing us to understand what they were saying. It also had the advantage of not wasting our limited memory space on even more languages. Coupled with the original spell, we now had duplex.
The translation spells proved quite useful more than once. The first was this, although in retrospect we would have done fine without it on this occasion.
RW 59. Day 11.
Giant black ships appeared in the sky today, casting huge shadows on our lands. Technically, the ships were on the other side of the sky, it being a physical barrier and all, not that it stopped the aliens from them coming down to the surface. They were some sort of biped, clad in powered shells and carrying impressive weaponry. And there were lots of them, so it was of some concern.
And of course, the ones Cacha and I personally approached were waiting just outside the castle, as if expecting an invitation inside. Score one, Princess Lunar Eclipse.
Fortunately for us, they didn't start their negotiations with shooting. I approached them with my own weapons hidden, and they kept theirs lowered. Dialog was entered into, and while the conversation was relatively short, it answered mysteries that had been puzzling us for millennia. They didn't even enter the castle, happy to discuss things with us right there.
The conversation went something like this:
"So, where did you come from? How did you find this ringworld? We found one of your ships docked outside the ring," the leader of the aliens said. I presume they had found Lander 2H6. "We presume it was yours – several ships strapped together as some sort of life boat."
"We came from here. This was our home before the spiders drove us away. The ship you found was from the few of our species who returned here after their habitat was destroyed on the way to its destination. The rest of us have been here all along, living in our habitat as the ringworld was built around us. Our habitat failed to launch, and no spiders ever came back to check," I explained.
"So this is your home system? Good, I will have it registered as such with headquarters. You are the first species we have found that have survived a takeover and remained at their original location."
"Unfortunately, most of the species from our planet left," I said.
"The handiwork of those kooks, the Warners, no doubt," the alien said. "They are slightly better than the other spiders in that they do not believe in killing and eating other life forms, but they do still breed like crazy."
The aliens went on to explain that they were looking for spiders, and they were looking for them with ill intent. Apparently some of their worlds had been stolen too, and they had gathered their forces and were fighting back. That was a quick way to get into my good books.
Spiders, we were told, were very much like their miniature cousins. They had dozens, even hundreds of eggs every year, and now that they were more scientifically advanced, they did everything to ensure as many of their offspring as possible survived. That included using HELaTS to make them more or less immortal. Their expansion as such, was exponential. First they had conquered their own world, then their own solar system. Soon they had discovered an ancient network of hyperspace lanes and spread to other solar systems, conquering and stealing them.
That was clearly not going to be sustainable, as there was limited space on mere planets, so they started with a long term plan, converting solar systems that could be reached along these hyperspace lanes into ringworlds, then as they became ready, thousands of years later, they and their supporting species would move to them.
At some point there were moral, political and commercial hiccups that changed their ways from war to simple stealing. They would set their system in motion, then tell the current occupants move on, because the spiders had been there first, and that their planets were going to be destroyed. That was quite believable. They had done exactly that to us, after all. The marginally more moral sections of their society provided those who were losing their worlds with enough old technology to move onto another.
As for the Warners, they were not upstanding enough to stand against the mass injustices that were being committed, instead satisfying their own guilt by giving some assistance to the victims, who were directed at the nearest solar system that was not connected to the hyperspace lanes. What awaited the displaced at the other end of their trip was unknown, as the spiders themselves had never explored them. That the ancient builders of the hyperspace lanes had not seen fit to connect to them did not bode well.
The expansion plan had worked well for thousands of years, until they tried it on a species that had a vast network of planets of its own, and their own method of traveling faster than the speed of light. The spiders stole colony worlds of this species, and that proved to be their largest strategic error. Militarizing themselves, the species set about ridding themselves of the problem, or more accurately, ridding the galaxy of spiders. The extent of the spiders' domain was bigger than expected, and the war had been going on for over a thousand years, but was nearing its end, with the military of bipeds now in the mop-up phase. And that was what they were doing here. This ringworld was one on the outer fringes of the spiders' domain, and on the opposite side to that of these aliens.
The war explained why the spiders we had found were living in caves, with limited technology. We were not seeing any spider colonists. Those we had found were refugees, fleeing to an unfinished ringworld in a desperate attempt to escape those who were exterminating them.
While we had eradicated any that encroached on the lands we had claimed, the bipedal aliens were going to sweep the entire ringworld until they found and killed the rest. They had the technology required to rapidly search the huge area of land.
What amused me with this encounter was that the aliens had translators of their own. The principle of their operation was similar, but based on technology, rather than magic. Those communicators could prove useful for those not endowed with the universal unicorn tool, a horn. We negotiated with them to gain the technology. That we wanted a method to communicate and not weapons appeared to impress them.
They were also relieved to hear that there were only a few thousand HELaTS ponies, reserved for dangerous work, and that most ponies were living a natural life. That we could only have a single child per year was also good news to them, as we would never become a galactic plague like the spiders. When all was said and done, I think we had gained an ally.
---
We occasionally get visits from these aliens. Sometimes we share technological discoveries, but mostly they leave us alone as it is clear we are quite capable of surviving without their good will or charity.
We even got to meet them outside of their hard shells. They have four limbs, but walk only on their rear legs. Their front legs have fingers but apparently they are born that way. And they are as multicolored as we are!
They still don't understand magic.
RW 67. Day 22.
Time Travel. Now there's an interesting subject. We found out why the ancients that had tried to use time travel to head off the spiders had failed. Simply put, you can't go back and alter the past. Sure, you can go back, but in doing so you become part of that past. It is as if you had always been there, as part of that past. Why didn't we already know that? How come we didn't have ponies from the future constantly dropping by, telling us about what was to come?
I suspect the answer is that those who tried it once realized its futility and abandoned all future excursions. Oh, and I met this funny fellow called Swirling Star the Bearded, or something like that, when I went back to see what had happened way, way in our past. Unlike other ponies attempts, I had merely gone to observe. I had no intention of trying to change history, because by then I already knew it wasn't possible.
What I did learn was interesting. The spiders had probably lied to us. I was not able to find any evidence that they had ever visited our planet to check for existing life forms. Color me surprised – not.
---
Had ponies from the future ever visited me? I didn't know. If they had, they had not told me they were from the future.
Time travel had a much more useful application, and it had nothing to do with trying to change or even visit the past. We were using it in spaceship engines.
Hoping to find the other habitats, we had explored many different methods of space travel. So far this was the most promising. There were no hyperspace lanes in the direction which the habitats had gone. Slower than light speed travel would require a generation ship, or a habitat, to make the journey. No pony was interested in taking that approach. Searching would take too long. We needed something that was so fast it was practically instant.
Light speed drives had successfully been developed. It would take many years to travel the required distance using them, so they, by themselves, were not the solution. They did have one very exploitable trait though – they slowed time for the travelers. So, by reaching the speed of light, we could do away with generation ships. A single crew could make the trip in what seemed to them to be only a few minutes to a few hours, most of the spent time being during acceleration and deceleration. Gravity technology allowed us to create inertial dampers, much like those used in the trains that moved between the outer and inner surfaces of the ringworld.
The problem was that while the crew did not feel the passing of time, the rest of the universe did, so they would still arrive at their destination after many years.
And that was where time travel came it. The spaceship would make thousands of tiny trips into the past as it went, each trip to a time immediately after its last jump. As such, it would reach its destination moments after it had begun its trip.
Well, that was the theory, anyway. They were still assembling the prototype.
The time travel spell itself had been proven, and tested with much experimentation. Unlike the old spell we had found, this spell did not whisk you back to your own time after a short visit to the past. In fact, it worked in a completely different way.
It was a two part spell. The first part was cast, creating an anchor in space-time. The second part returned everything within its field of influence back to the time the anchor was placed, but not to the physical location. The anchor spell had a sphere of influence as well, and the further you got from it, in either space or time, the weaker its influence became. If you got too far away, it became lost. To an observer, it seemed to fade with time, which I guess it did, from their point of view, yet it remained as strong as ever at the point in space-time as when it was placed. Experiments with parallel spells and multiple paths had allowed us to return to one of these lost anchors, where, as expected, it was as strong as when it was cast.
As the influence of the anchor spell was in three dimensions, there was a cubic relationship between the energy required and the effective distance one could travel in it, as travel was only in a single dimension. As such, we were casting the anchor spell just big enough for the ship to pass about twice its length before casting the second, return-spell to recover the spent time.
Once a return-spell was used, that anchor was lost. Traveling backwards in time with this method was impossible, however if one cast two anchors in a short time apart, one could jump back to the earlier anchor by completing its spell first, then jump forward to the other.
We thought about casting anchors to allow us to return to earlier times for purposes other than that of the ship engine, but realized something very important – We knew we couldn't change the past – by returning we simply would become part of the past as it already was.
And that brings us to today, RW 114. Day 148. More to the point, the reading of and reflection on my diary had just been interrupted by one of the aides coming in and telling me that there was a giant ship in the sky, slowly approaching from the east.
"Inside the skydome?" I asked. We hadn't had a large ship approach us from inside before. I was not aware of any way for a ship to get into the ringworld, short of being built within its confines. The biped visitors had never mentioned finding any other species, so I wondered where the ship could have come from. Was it one of theirs? Could they have teleported the entire ship through the barrier of the sky?
"Thank you. Mobilize the defenses," I said. "I shall go out and investigate. Cacha, are you coming?"
"Rhetorical question, my dear," Cacha said. Of course it was. Even with Cacha being less clingy, we still did almost everything together.
We hurried from our private rooms, through the throne room, grand hall, through the ornate front doors, and out into the forecourt. As soon as I had a clear view of the sky, I began searching for the ship. Perhaps a balcony would have afforded a better vantage point. Nonetheless, I soon spotted the ship.
Sure, it was large, but it would have been dwarfed by the sky-filling battleships of the bipeds. If it had been outside the sky dome, it would have been little more than a speck to the naked eyes.
Using the targeting spell Cacha had developed, I zoomed in on the flying object, and was very surprised that its appearance was of similar styling to that of our castle. It consisted of three lesser hulls in a triangular configuration around a central, somewhat more substantial hull. The lesser hulls were each linked to the central hull by substantial fins. The main portions of the hulls were white, with the noses being purple with gold detailing. It was clearly being held up there without the assistance of wings, so either it had magical or technology based antigravity capacity.
"Weird," Cacha said. "Has someone been studying our picture books?"
"I suspect they have. You realize that what that means, don't you?"
"It's a pony built skyship," Cacha said, "and that may mean that we are not the only ponies living in the ringworld."
"That's not what I was thinking. If they were from the ringworld, why didn't the bipeds mention them to us?" I asked.
"That is a good point."
"I think they have come from somewhere else, and are searching the ringworld for us," I said.
I turned to one of the aides that had followed us out. "If they are not already doing so, please have the other royalty prepare themselves to receive guests."
"Right away, your highness," the aide answered, galloping away. I would have preferred them to call me by my name...
I knew some alicorns who would like enough time to put on their regalia, and Kakuun would need fetching from her nest.
The skyship slowed, losing altitude as it approached the castle. I wondered if it was going to land as it was, or if it would turn its bow towards the sky, and reverse down to the ground. If it did that, it would really look like a castle itself. I also wondered what it was planning to land on. We hadn't included a skyship landing pad in the our designs. The most we had allowed for was a few of Snow's fliers.
It didn't land. Instead, it just hovered above us.
Around me, the other HELaTS that were on security duty gathered, looking at the ship. There were about a dozen of us. While we were used to seeing Snow's fliers or pods hovering above us, this was something we had not experienced before. A few extended their HELaTS head armor, but none formed weapons, as I had not done so.
A portal opened in the side of the building sized craft above us, and a team of armored, winged ponies galloped out, pulling a golden chariot. It really looked bizarre. None of the few pegasi I knew galloped in the air. There was simply no point!
"They are all a bit fancy, aren't they?" I said as more pegasi in golden armor followed the chariot out of the skyship.
"It must be an alicorn princess or someone with similar tastes," Cacha said. "Way too glitzy for me!"
I had to agree with that. Neither Cacha or myself wore much in the way of regalia. Occasionally we'd put on a crown or tiara when we were on the throne, but that was all. When I was out and about, I either went au naturel, or wore the same sort of clothing as regular ponies. Princess Kakuun had a tiny black crown, relying mostly on her physical differences as a changeling queen. The alicorns, however, both liked dressing up, Lunar Eclipse because she was raised that way, and Allie because she enjoyed a little rivalry with Lunar Eclipse.
The pegasi and the golden chariot they were pulling spiraled around us several times as they flew lower, eventually coming to a stop between us and the doors to the castle. Indeed, the passengers were both alicorns, one white, and the other dark purple, both dressed in a manner similar to our own alicorns. Both also had flowing, glittering hair. Their guards either landed around the chariot or remained in the air above the royal ponies in the chariot.
Really? It couldn't be? But it had to be! These were the oldest alicorns. Princess Lunar Eclipse had described them to us on many occasions.
Seeing as how they were between me and my castle, I walked around the front of the chariot and the team, positioning myself between the newcomers and the castle entrance. The princesses watched my progress with raised eyebrows. Cacha was, of course, beside me.
"Welcome to Mount Eleven," I said.
"Have no fear, ponies. We come in peace," the white pony said. She spoke in yet another variation of Ancient. My translation spells had no trouble compensating for the differences in language.
"And we are peaceful," I said. If they hadn't come in peace, we would have already been shooting.
"Could you please direct us to your nearest princess?" the white pony asked. I had a good view of the underside of her chin, a problem I now also had with my own daughter and her towering stature.
"Sure," I said. "She's standing right beside me. This is Princess Cacha, and I am Queen Aneki."
"Be a good girl and tell me where your alicorns are please," the white alicorn said. Her attitude came across as that of a mother dealing with cheeky children. It was true that my one hundred and forty something years of age were insignificant when compared to the millennia she had lived. I guess she simply wasn't familiar with the concept of a non-alicorn ruler.
"They are in the castle, obviously," I said, jerking a hoof in the general direction. "Come, Princess Cacha. It seems we are in the way of the elite."
"I am so looking forward to seeing my daughter and granddaughter again," the deep purple alicorn said to her sister, ignoring the jibe.
I was no longer part of the conversation, but that did not stop me from speaking.
"Don't get your hopes up," I said.
"How so?" The attention of both sisters was once again on me.
"Your daughter, Princess Moon Glow died more than half a millennium ago," I said.
"How?" the purple alicorn asked.
"Prisoner of war," I said. "Details are sketchy, as most of our records have been lost."
"Oh," the purple alicorn said. "After so long, I was looking forward to being with her again."
"You appear to know who we are," the white alicorn said.
"Celestia and Luna. Yes," I said, not bothering with any formalities, as was my habit. "Eclipse is in the throne room waiting, or will be shortly, although at this point, I doubt she knows she is about to be visited by her grandmother."
"Your familiarity with royalty will not be tolerated," one of the guard ponies said, stepping towards me. He was a classic story-book guard, in golden armor and brandishing a spear. He was a pegasus, and not even a HELaTS. He was currently pointing the spear in my direction.
Many HELaTS hooves around me rose to the ready, pointed directly at him. The message was clear, even though their weapons did not appear.
"You are my guests. If you wish the situation to remain cordial, I suggest you go back to guarding your princesses," I said. "Although you may not realize it, the ponies gathered around me are the elite soldiers of our settlement, and the royal guard, and all of us are extremely well armed."
"Sentry, remain silent, and return to the ship," Princess Celestia ordered.
The sentry immediately took flight, leaving us.
"I apologize. He was warned that the culture may be different here, and that for that outbreak he will be disciplined later," Princess Celestia said.
"Are you not HELaTS maintenance ponies?" Princess Luna asked.
I shook my head. "No, we are not maintenance ponies. We are combat specialists, and are much more advanced than what you call HELaTS. Now, if you would be so kind, further discussion can wait until we are all in the throne room. This way please."
"As you wish."
This time, I took the lead, Cacha beside me, and my security team behind me, and skirting the princesses and their guard.
I heard quiet chattering between the two princesses as they followed us through the grand hall. Mostly they were commenting on the high number of HELaTS present in the scenes pictured in the stained glass windows. The windows weren't my idea, and I was in too many of them for my liking, but according to Eclipse, if I didn't want to be in them, I needed to stop being such a significant part of our history.
As we entered the throne room, the security team separated from us, taking positions around the walls.
The other princesses were all on their thrones, Kakuun to the left of the large, central throne, in her odd-looking, black affair, and Lunar Eclipse and Allie to the right in more traditional thrones. The tiny breezie throne was immediately to the left of the main throne, directly attached to it.
As for those present, technically speaking, Allie was the lowest rank among the princesses, and Cacha's title was merely a formality. What power she had was directly through me. The breezie representative's power was limited to that of her own tiny kingdom, although we always considered her needs and listened to her requests.
"Allow me to present Princess Celestia, and Princess Luna, formerly of Equestria, part of our long lost home planet," I said as they entered behind me. I heard Lunar Eclipse gasp. "Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, allow me to introduce our court, Princess Kakuun, our ruling changeling queen, Queenie Breezie, the breezie representative, Princess Lunar Eclipse, as you well know, and Princess Allie, the queen's firstborn."
"Your central throne is empty," Princess Celestia said. "Is there another yet to arrive? The queen perhaps?"
"That would be my throne," I said, climbing the few stairs of the dais, and sitting on it. Cacha settled beside me, between me and Queenie Breezie. I opened a hidden compartment in the arm and pulled out my crown, levitating it into position on my head. Cacha did likewise with her tiara. The crown was a simple affair, more a representative token than royal jewelry. Fittingly, it was made of the same multidimensional material as the habitat and the ringworld.
"So, outside, you were not joking when you said...?" Princess Celestia asked.
"That I was the queen? No, I wasn't joking."
"That's unusual for you," Princess Lunar Eclipse said, chuckling. She turned to the visiting princesses. "She usually prefers to remain anonymous, revealing herself at the most awkward time."
"She really is the queen – the ruler?" Princess Celestia asked, not quite sure if she should be believing what she was hearing.
"She is, and a fitting one at that. If it were not for her, the effects of the war would still be lingering, if the habitat's failing systems hadn't already killed us."
"My sincerest apologies. It seems I have been discourteous," Princess Celestia said.
"These things happen. I'm not much of a royal example," I said.
"Maybe she isn't a royal example, but she is the perfect example of what royalty should aspire to be. She is selfless, and a true leader. She's our warrior queen," Princess Lunar Eclipse said.
I found the praise to be quite embarrassing! It was no wonder I preferred to stay anonymous!
After that, we moved to a more comfortable, less formal room, where we could swap tales and chat about what each party had been doing for the last two millennia.
I could repeat what they shared with us, but really, that's another story, isn't it?
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Hee, i think i have a small inkling on how that tale would go based on that foreshadowing. Nice chapter which tied a lot of loose things nicely and opened story opportunities *hint hint* to many directions if someone would like to write a sequel. *hint*
Thanks for writing this time reading it was time well spend!
all i can day is that if you decide to make another please make an update chapter on this one to let us know
I see what you did at the end there, bravo. Bravo my man.
History fades so quickly with being recorded so often in a rushed and fragile manner.
Another race turned up, being bipedal and coloured, maybe Girls world was closer than expected and The Shepherd was just there protecting their flock?
The Sun rose in the West, because Celestia flew East?
This chapter of this Equestrias story is now complete, but there are many more to be seen. Who will write them, is itself another story.
End Log.
*Click*
I have enjoyed this story. Good job otherunicorn!
This was definitely needed. Well done.
I HAVE A SPECIFIC QUESTION!
Would that be a sequel or prequel? At any rate, I'd love to read it.
WOOOOOHOOOOOO THIS WAS EVERYTHING I DREAMED OF AND MORE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH OTHERUNICORN!!!
I was semi-hoping that the spiders in the rest of the ring-world would try to immobalize an army, and we would have a huge final stand off in the "new land" or perhaps even outside of the ring.
But this is fine to..
Well that explains a few things about the Warners. Especially about why if it's been this long, why haven't they meet any of them yet?
Sounds like Sunset Shimmer's world is doing alright from the sounds of things. Though no magic? I wonder if it's something so incredibly uncommon in the human world that Canterlot High was able to keep it under wraps?
So is Aneki an alicorn now? Hmmmm, must read on.
I remember nothing about Bittersweet and how she is family.
Hmmm, Aneki said she kept one youngling spider.
Oh shit, wonder how the other ponies are going then.
I am assuming this is something analogous to humans? And if Stellaris has taught me anything, it is that Hyperlane travel is nice and quick but can't beat jump drives.
I do not remember anything about time travel or ancients.
What method do the bipeds use?
I guess the daughter is taller than the mother now? Still unsure if Aneki is a unicorn-bat pony hybrid or if they alicorned her.
Ah, non-alicorn. Looks like Aneki needs to get back in the tank to show her daughter what for.
Looks as if I have another story to be following in my future.
So, Luna and Celestia didn't react oddly if Aneki had bat wings. So I am wondering if she is still a normal unicorn. It was also implied the Brain Storms found a gene so they could make alicorns, is this something that can be done? I almost expect them to trick their queen into going through the process similarly to how they got Aneki to touch the unicorn gun.
I'm sad this story ended. Happy that humans are doing some good. And surprised that Princesses Celestia and Luna are alive.
Sequal???
You and your cliffhangers. Sequel hook, whatever.
Just FYI, I LOVE this story. It sat on my read it later list for months with me waffling on whether to try it. When I finally did, it caught up in one sitting. At that point we'd just recruited Crimson and the Storms, so it wasn't exactly the beginning.
I'm sad to see it end. So many great stories have been completing. Falling Feathers, Arrow 18, Thousand Year Change, Savage Skies, H'ven Sent. I'm running out of stories.
Anywho, Thanks for the adventure. Hope to see you
ifwhen there is another one.8336784
So many thousands of years later, the events at one little high school would have been long forgotten.
8336355
Really? Are you intending to keep it secret?
8336772
All that were left were refugees, and the bipeds dealt with them all.
8336849
Not much is said about it in the story, but Bittersweet was invited to be Allie's grandmother, and later went on to have foals of her own.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/159685/34/hven-sent/chapter-34-the-elder
Used as a lab-rat by the Storms. No doubt dead by the time the bipeds show up.
Lore friendly humans - i.e. Equestria Girls style.
Warp drive, presumably.
Early chapters. When the artificial sun and moon were installed around Equestria, they were told to develop technology to get off the planet because the spiders already owned it. Instead, they made time travel spells to go back, and claim ownership first. It didn't succeed. (Starswirl the Bearded and his spells).
She has bat wings. Luna and Celestia were prepared to there to be some cultural differences, thus would not have commented at the first meeting. That sort of thing comes later, when intros are over and everypony is sitting around, having coffee.
8336851
Immortals have the annoying tendency to do that! They were alive at 10000 in the story, so what's a couple more thousand years to them?
8337693
Yeah, but I was going with the "They all died" theory when it was said the place they were sent to is unknown.
8337799
That would have been awfully sad, wouldn't it?
git rekt, dickish space spiders!
Meant for another story, eh? Can you give us an approximation of when we can expect this other story?
8338346
I don't know if there will be another story. All I was saying there was that what happened there was beyond the scope of this story. Maybe one day. Who knows. I didn't even plan to write this story. It sort of just happened.
8337693
Nope! The specific question is: Will there be a sequel? (Or something from 'Tia's end)
8337874
Yeah, but such is life.
8338433
The answer is at the moment I'm not ready to commit another two years of my life to writing it.
8337693
But we didn't know that untill this chapter. hench why I said I had hoped for what I thought would happen.
This is a great way to wrap up a story. You remain faithful to the tone you set right up until the end. This piece, it's not a story. It's life. Not a fairy tale, not an edgy ffest children think of as deep and mature in their ignorance. Just life, a little bit of happy coincidence included.
Well done. These words don't do it justice, but they're all I've got.
8338472
I can understand that. Do what you wish, your life, not mine.
I have a few specific questions, and will come back another day with more:
Will you be willing to keep an eye on this story's comments and reply to lore questions for another month?
Can you share how magic works in this story's universe setting, and why Equus developed magic and magic species when other worlds failed?
Can you explain how the Warners were able to construct the Alicorn species without understanding magic((or am i confusing you with another story?!)), and what stopped them (or EQG Humanity) from adopting magic into their tech like ponykind did?
Is Habitat 11 the only other habitat Luna and Celestia have found at this point, and did all the other habitats get accounted for by past or future expiditions? What FTL system did Luna and Celestia use?
is Celestia and Luna's low tech guard just a ceremonial thing or is it representative of their post-migration tech level?
Are Ponies in the future still unknown non-participants to galactic civilization?
Fid the Tree of Harmony ever get evacuated? Was the ringworld's construction specifically effected by the high amounts of magic in Equus's raw materials? Were the clockwork spiders purposefully modeled after ponies, or crafted after ponies that were incidentally harvested? How did you envision the timespan and the process by which the ringworld harvested Equus into raw materials?
Do Aneki's ponies continue using Habitat 11 brain-in-a-jar computer systems into the future? Was brain-based computing another one of the crimes the spiders were charged guilty of by EQG humanity and other civilizations, or was that asystem the ponies developed during habitat construction?
Thank you in advance! I am going to re-read this story again (and again!) so i can come back with better questions!
8342257
Of course. PM me when you post, if you wish.
I'm just following the lead of MLP - ponies are an inherently magical species. Basically, if you have it, you do but if you don't, you don't.
They worked with what they had - unicorns. You can use electronic items without fully understanding what's going on inside. You can even patch them together to do bigger things without understanding the details. EQG world simply had greater, more controllable results using tech, and with time, magic was forgotten by all but a few dedicated people. Most just consider it hocus-pocus, much like humanity today.
They know were the others are, except for 6, but as it is destroyed, they don't care about it. The 1st survivors from 6 caught up with another habitat. The second batch are a mystery, and the third returned to the ringworld and were part of the story.
Magical teleport.
Ceremonial. Celestia and Luna are the true power-houses.
Not after this story!
Unknown. Maybe taken on Habitat 1.
No effect.
They were modeled after the species they were meant to exterminate. Had the Diamond Dogs survived, there would have been dog-headed spiders too.
With much thinking :) (probably not what you meant). Erosion by billions of modifiers.
No. They would use EQG tech.
Modifier based conversions. Spider tech. It would have been ponies that did the deed though, as the fitting out of the habitat was left to them.
This was a wonderful ending to a wonderful story, if perhaps a bit rushed, but not detrimental to the entire experience. I appreciate the satisfying writing style, a novel premise, as far as i know the only one like such, and the simply magnificent worldbuilding.
Thank you for this journey.
Query: Whatever happened with Sunset Shimmer and the rest of the girls from the EQG movie? does this make EQG NOT a different universe, but instead a different planet to be Canon in your story?
8344862
I expect, like all humans, they died of old age, thousands and thousands of years earlier. Different universe? Possibly still is. They are using warp drives. Who knows where that put them. Plenty of people put humans in the same universe as the ponies. I wanted to keep the species at least within the MLP lore.
So many potential spin-off stories, the mind boggles.
I wish I was a better author-!
8352130
Indeed, and I have put thought into a lot of them. All the same, that doesn't mean I am going to write them down.
Wow, it's finished very abruplty oO. Congrats with that - another decent sci-fi book with pone (first half of the book is moar interesting on my taste, but can't say that the second half was boring or so). Hope to see new story from you someday - you have only two books here but both of them are ^_^.
8352130
#3 is in outlining.
A miniseries of individual experiences. Working title Six Paths to Peace
Don't expect anything for a few months at least. I'm not a writer at all, but trying anyway. I don't think I'll be able to incrementally post because of the interconnected -ness. I could really screw myself up and write myself into a mutidemensional material wall.
Oh look, im very blind. What a wonderful epilogue of all the stuff that made this story shine to begin with.
And it appears Aneki has claimed Celestia's title as a grandmaster pranker
Ah what an amazing story.
8395265
Thank you for your feedback. I'm glad my characters and story meant that much to you.
Sequel sequel sequel no pressure. This is a satisfying end to not just one of the best books on the site but one od the best books I have ever read keep up the good work.
It only took a century of research and development to get word to the distant habitats that the ringworld was inhabitable again. No biggie!
So ponies got FTL drives in a hundred years, completely removing the obstacle to being limited to hyperspace lanes. Something tells me that the ancient beings who built the hyperspace lanes walked on four hooves...
Incidentally, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that on a small enough level, one cannot observe something without changing it. To measure the position of a passing electron for instance, you have to reflect some sort of particle off of it, which will change the electron's course, altering its momentum. Since elementary particles exist, there's nothing small enough to hit them with that wouldn't change their position (or momentum) in significant ways. And thanks to the Butterfly Effect, these tiny changes can have a big effect on the ultimate outcome.
So either you can go back and alter the past, or you can't go back in time.
This was a fun story, and the epilogue was really nice to read. I'm glad things finally started working out for them. Well, except for the ones who are dead. It was a brilliant setting, and you really did a good job of painting this strange alien world, that the characters felt was their home. Of course the story wasn't perfect, but even the rough parts were made up for with clever scenes around them.
My biggest criticisms would have to be that the two mad science ponies seemed a bit OP, solving century old problems in a matter of minutes and such. They were fun characters though, and I genuinely liked how creative some of their solutions were. Also, the story dragged on a bit... especially when Aneki became queen. It was less exciting and more political, when that happened. The war with the spiders kind of helped with that, I guess. Cache and Aneki's relationship seemed a bit... clinical. Like instead of "Yes, Cacha! Give me your babies, you pregnant stallion mare!" it was "We used magic and cell manipulation to get pregnant. Yes, both of us, to each other." Not everyone's relationship has to be on display though, so that's okay.
So, few rough spots, but overall a good job. A neat setting, an exciting plot, relatable characters, and a satisfying resolution.
I never got around to reading this! Waaaaagharbleblargh!
Hmm. Cacha, then, not Aneki? Or was this about the ringworld surface, not the surface of H'ven?
Because, um, this whole story is kind of Aneki's diary, and it sure didn't start with getting to that surface
Ohh, clever. Carved their genetics into old unicorn horns. Much more durable than actual seeds.
Dun dun dunnn? Though she said "funny", so, that's good, I guess?
Wait, with "spiders" she means the original aliens that created the ring?
Ew.
Yeeah, bizarre. Something must've gone wrong...
Ohh, interesting. I wonder if that still collects energy though; like, a half Dyson Sphere.
Oh
Oh? I never realized the ring world had a ceiling.
I wonder if they're public knowledge by now...
Huh. Well, that's a bit of a surprise. But, nice
Ah? Allie got some kids too? Now I'm kinda of wondering if those are alicorns too.
Ah. Yes, those things happen... and a lot sooner to unaugmented ponies
First the original builders turned out to be reduced to savages, now they get invaded by humans? Innnnnteresting!
Why yes, an impressive castle does help
Ooh. I see. They're cleaning up the mess from those spiders' colonizations.
Yeah, I gathered that. Nice.
Hah!
Good lord. You'd think that instead, they'd look into birth control
That bodes well for the rest of the pony drifters
Little did they know they were talking to a species that had mastered weaponised energy conversion in a scarily efficient way
Which is probably good, because... they more or less own the galaxy
Heh. Not humans? Or just developments / personal genetic manipulations through the ages?
[edit]Derp. EQG humans. Duh
[/edit]
Well, good. Need to have some advantage over dem durn dirty hairless apes
Oh. I was thinking, perfect recording of history and recovering all ancient spells, ever, but, sure. Spaceships it is
Hah! Fake instant travel.
Welp... okay?
Exactly what I was thinking... I think magic gave the other generation ships the edge needed to survive.
Both, hm? So Allie's kids aren't alicorns, then. Mkay.
Welp, that's a faux pas
Umm. Are you sure this is Celestia...? She's usually a lot more tactful than this.
Uh-oh. Big mistake.
"No," I replied casually as I started walking towards the castle. "This is what royalty looks like since we rid ourselves of our despotic Alicorn tyrants."
The two Alicorns followed, looking rather unsure at what was happening, but having no choice but to follow me to keep talking. "Now I know you're not serious,' Celestia said, frowning. "We sensed Alicorn magic here."
I nodded. "A changeling experiment to resurrect a dead branch of pony genes to regain access to locked sections in the habitat. It only succeeded due to the HELaTS modifiers." I looked back at her and grinned. "Are you sure you want to see the result of that?"
Celestia looked increasingly uncomfortable. "You're kidding, right? Please tell me you're kidding..."
"Also, when I said I was the queen, I must point out that I actually usurped the changeling queen's throne by killing her, so that made me queen of the changelings... but since they were controlling our society from the shadows, it effectively made me queen of the ponies, too."
I glanced behind me at the two ancient rulers. Huh, fancy that. A completely white pony can still manage to look pale. Can't wait until she sees Lunar Eclipse and draws all the wrong conclusions.
Cacha suddenly stopped and gave me a flat look. "Aneki..."
"What?" I said. "It's all true, isn't it?"
He didn't respond, and just thwapped me over the head.
Hah!
Hah. Wonder how our dear old-fashioned princesses will respond to that.
Yes, somewhat
Remarks and corrections:
> We build the castle on what we had arbitrarily decided
"We [built] the castle"
> died more than half a millennia ago
"half a [millennium]". Singular.
> "How," the purple alicorn asked.
Should have a question mark instead of that comma.
8488335
Unless, you know, you can simply look at the reflections already sent out. Like the way we can look through a telescope and see the light of faraway stars as it was sent out billions of years ago. All that requires is an accurate method of reconstructing and focusing the light reflected into space by these events back when they happened, and observe them in the present.
8593296
I merely used CANON time travel from the episode "It's About Time"
Aneki, on the ringworld surface. (text adjusted to clarify)
I guess it is, in a way.
Indeed. Little spiders are content with other insects.
Of course the whole ringworld is solar powered. The ponies had no problem finding places to connect to when underground. The convenience continues above ground.
Early art showed tubes. Its the best way to keep out stray rocks and unwanted UV rays.
Yes, they are. Over 100 years have passed since the introduction plan was implemented.
Inevitable, I would have thought.
Nope. There are still only two alicorns from Habitat eleven.
Perhaps they were Catholic?
Nor were the ponies prepared to reveal their trump card at the time!
The failure of time travel to be useful was exactly why Equestria found itself in the messy position it was in. Those who gifted the "sun" and "moon" had suggested they needed to develop technology to leave the planet. Instead they investigated time travel spells to stop the whole ringworld problem - and failed. And then they forgot about it.
She's 10000 years old or something. You can forgive a little senility :) I really did try to keep the princesses true to character.
"Your familiarity with royalty will not be tolerated," one of the guard ponies said
Hehe.
8607582
Well, ending the marriage, and making things official with Cacha, sure. I was talking about Cacha's own gender identity problems.
This was really quite the trip! I kinda expected Aneki to end up alicorn-ified by about half way through (she was getting overpowered in every other way, so why not?) but the bafflement of other alicorns about a non-alicorn queen is pretty funny. It's not without its flaws, but I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it, so thanks!
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Where would I be without a flaw to stand on?
Yes, Aneki really powered up - but the reason was not so I had an all-powerful hero, but to show just how strong the enemy were. The last thing I wanted was a Mary-Sue, and thankfully no one has called her one.
I'm glad you enjoyed the trip.
Hmm. I've read about out of context problems before, but few times from the perspective of the out of context problem. And I think it's fair to say ~4 societies encountered have Aneki the same way a sentence encounters a full stop.
I can also see plenty of the classic Hero's Journey, which is both a good and bad thing. While she works hard, and doesn't give up, she often succeeds more through luck and who she meets, rather than her choices and actions. Usually a character gets superpowers once in a story, but here she goes on to get double-superpowers, and then double-superpowers+royalty. I'm not sure that's a strength of this story. And it's compounded slightly by how ineffectual the clockwork spiders turn out to be. Ninja vs gun can be funny once or twice as individual combat, but as a war it just makes me feel sorry for the ninjas.
There are some interesting ideas here, and I like a lot of the small touches, but I'm not sure the ideas were explored as well as they could have been.
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I wonder how much Discord is aware of what happen in Equestria, he is the god of chaos, he could very well teleport with a snap of fingers (curious that did not happen but I guess then there could be no story) Also, I could like to read the "other story" with the P.O.W of Celestia and Luna and what they talk with the Queen Aneki... Any plans for a sequel as the two Equestria reunite?
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Discord, like everyone else would be worried about the local problems, and would probably not even be aware of a missing ship, although with what we now know about Discord, I guess he could of provided an instant worm-hole to visit each and every one of the ships if needed. Maybe his eyes were just too full of Fluttershy.
No, I'm not planning on any sequel. I doubt the two Equestria would reunite. The logistics of returning everyone to the ringworld would be astronomical (literally).