Eleven centuries ago, Prince Crimson Quartz grows up amidst the relics of past glories. The Crystal Empire, once the mightiest Power in North Amareica, now stagnates beside the rising Realm of Equestria to the south. A brilliant young stallion, Prince Crimson wants to avert this fate. Despised by his decadent family and unlikely to ever take the throne, the young scholar-prince searches ancient tomes and forgotten places for the power to restore the Crystal Empire to its ancient greatness.
Will he find his realm's salvation, or instead call up horrors from the darkest depths of spacetime? Can his friend, Princess Luna of Equestria, turn him from a ruinous course, or will she too be tainted by the touch of the Shadows?
Chapters (1)
It's rare that I blindly pick up a newly posted story, rarer still since such whimsical soujourns so often end with disappointment.
But holey hooves of Chrysalis, this story is certainly a diamond to stumble upon!
The writing is educated in its technique, subtle in its breadth of worldbuilding, and well focused in its narrative perspective. What we the reader see comes always through what Pentos sees, and from that we distill the full richness of what this world you've got writing is. And oh is it rich!
High praises! I really like this. The standard of quality is wonderful here, it is a joy to read.
Oh, did find a small typo to address: were]
Don't be dissuaded by the ignorant downvotes of people who don't give things a chance before passing a uninformed judgement. I for one am tracking and happily awaiting further instalments on this story.
Okay... this is... wonderful. I love your world-building and characters. I'm very much looking forward to more! Promoting it on my blog.
BTW, I'm unfamiliar with the term bulla as you've used it here. I know it as a cord-and-clay seal, but it's obviously supposed to be some sort of weapon in the story?
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I'm probably using the Latin incorrectly: I'm trying to avoid "bullet" which is what small dense projectiles, used by slingers, were actually called because it's become synonymous with the projectiles fired by gunpowder weapons, and nopony has personal gunpowder weapons yet (only cannons like the "bombard" whose etymology Pentos / Crimson and Tourmaline were discussing).
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The idea is to project the bulla or bullets in one's aura.
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Ah! Gotcha. With unicorns able to impart momentum to objects magically, aerodynamically shaped stones would be a staple weapon of war. My guess for the plural would be bullae... but my Latin is practically non-existent.
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I'm inconsistently combining Greek ("pentos") and Latin ("bullae") here but (1) nobody's really speaking any human tongue anyway, and (2) the real Byzantine Empire sometimes did this, anyway.
Wow, this really is quite fascinating. I absolutely love what you are doing with the political landscape and history. Talk about a great explanation as to why the Crystal Empire is the Crystal Empire.
That is a pretty interesting idea as well, and it suggests that the Golden Age mentioned by Lady Tourmaline is more than just mythology. Makes me wonder what really caused the fall, I got the impression from the timing described so far that it wasn’t Discord.
And then the Cataclysm is directly mentioned in the author's note, that's pretty solid confirmation too.
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The very first time I saw The Crystal Empire, calling one city an "empire" said Vestigial Empire to me. And if it was so old that it was already ancient before Luna's banishment, then it must have been older than Equestria, with secrets dating back to the beginning of their cycle of civilization, or before.
I got the idea of the Age of Wonders and the Cataclysm from Alex Warlorn's writing. I did some of my own things with them, though.
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I am so very glad you like what I'm trying to do with this tale.
3914119 Since the Empire is canonically stated to have had a first Queen, and it's seperately wondered as to why Celestia and Luna (plus Cadence and Twilight) are exlusively Princesses It could be put forward as conjecture that the C.E. is in fact the root civilization from which Celestia and Luna arose, and from which their titles are derived?
Perhaps Equestria was once a province (or several provinces), with the Three
KingdomsTribes Era being the aftermath of Imperial withdrawal?Seperately, there's another question - why are there so few unicorns and no pegasi in the modern day Empire? Has it always been that way, or is this indicitave of something?
This is fun!
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That's a good point -- the Empire might have ruled the Three Tribes directly or been a strong civilizing force on them through provinces bordering on their original homeland.
I'm guessing the Crystal City was founded primarily by Earth Ponies, and never had all that many unicorns or pegasi, even if unicorns and pegasi may have dominated certain occupations. It might even be that any unicorns or pegasi in the city today are descendants of the Three Tribes who assimilated, maybe long ago.
The Crystal Empire seems to me to be a very good candidate for the origin of the Equestrian rock-farming tradition.
... Considering how this all works out in the end, it's interesting to note that King Sombra, by getting himself and what remained of his country banished for a thousand years, may have in fact succeeded in his goal of keeping the Empire alive. If the patterns of history make decline inevitable for now, perhaps the best way to work around that is to just skip a millennium or so.
Of course, that would never have worked if there hadn't been others waiting for them at the end of the trip with an interest in restoring the Empire to its former glory. And Sombra never planned for it to happen that way at all, so he can hardly take credit for it. But still, if it hadn't been for him, the Crystal Empire might not be around anymore for Cadance to rule.
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That's an extraordinarily good point! If he hadn't done that, the Crystal-Imperials would have been assimilated into Equestria LONG ago!
This certainly feels promising. I wish we had gotten to the stuff that had been teased in the summary. It feels kind of Game of Thrones-y. Admittedly, I'm not actually that familiar with Game of Thrones. I'm going off of what I understand Game of Thrones is all about. But much like that, I like how you've transposed a historical situation into this fantasy setting. I'm also already really liking the relationships between Pentos/Crimson and Princess Luna. I look forward to seeing where that is going. I hope there's more coming up soon. I look forward to seeing that. Keep up the good work.
Additional thought:
I love the Lovecraft reference.
Is the Shadow Wars Series a Luna's a Prick fanfic?
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No, it's not. It's a "Luna's feeling pretty depressed at this point in her life, in about a half-century or so she's going to fall to the Nightmare, in part because of what's going to happen in this story" kind of world.
4515734 Does this include the rest of the stories in the Shadow Wars Series?
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She's depressed in some of them, but she's not only not being a prick, she's mostly trying to make up for the damage she caused. Particularly in All the Way Back, she acts heroically.
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If you want to know why she's depressed, it's because Discord turned on them, smashed their home, killed much of their family, then wrecked the world for a thousand years aborting their first attempt to bring back the Age of Wonders; then after they finally succeeded in defeating Discord, she had to fight bloody, heart-rending batles to secure the new nation of Equestria, for which she inevitably found herself becoming increasingly alienated from ordinary Equestrians after they'd enjoyed the peaces she'd won at the cost of the lives of her friends (bringing her to the point in Corruption at Nightfall); then the new friend she found will betray her, introduce her to the Shadows, and she goes mad and becomes Nightmare Moon, turns on her sister and is banished to the Moon, comes back and is defeated again (Nightmares Are Tragic) and must adjust to a strange new Equestria that has its threatened doom fast approaching, largely because she failed Celestia a thousand years ago leaving Celestia to have to handle everything herself and nearly go mad from the strain. That's why Luna is sometimes depressed.
You know it's tragic irony, Celestia is attracted to a alternate sombra who has succeeded with his life-long goal yet whose loves is damaging the worlds walls. and Luna trusted the one in that universe who became a monster. (Quite tragic.)
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Indeed. This is a situation in which semi-canon not only did not Joss my original concept, but instead made it all the more applicable!
I really like this version of part of world building (for the Chrystal Empire.) For some reason I kept on thinking of Game of thrones .
Interesting story so far. I can't wait to see what the next chapter is going to be about.
Can I expect any more of this?