Fragile Peace
In Equestria, it was a well guarded secret that dragons could eat meat. While the steady supply of gems that left for the mountains in clandestine caravans continued to flow, this fact had no impact on life. Of course, the errant dragon that did manage to find itself in Equestria was quickly and quietly dealt with. The rest of the dragons were content to live on the fiery mountaintops.
This relationship had worked well between the dragons and the princesses. However, each day, the ponies had to dig a little deeper, and each day, the quota was harder and harder to meet. The princesses knew it was only a matter of time before the inevitable clash between them and the dragons.
Many of the dragons were proud and capricious. They thought nothing on the ponies. The influx of gems strengthened the status quo that ponies were beneath the dragons. To the dragons, it was as if they were lords, raking in tribute from the multitude of servants. Yet, some dragons doubted this. They knew that survival hinged on the delivery of gems, that to go to war would be next to suicidal. Some dragons were old enough to remember the great power that the princesses had. They knew that the princesses were not to be taken lightly. One such pair would leave an egg with the princesses to ensure that their son would have a brighter future, under the protection of the princesses.
So it was that when Rainbow Dash created the legend of the Sonic Rainboom, that very egg hatched for the soon to be prodigy of Princess Celestia. That filly would grow up to become an Element of Harmony and gain fame through dangerous adventures to vanquish mighty foes. It was like tales of knights of old, except more cheerful. That was the way Princess Celestia wanted it. She did not want her ponies living under the shadows of the past, when ponies lived in fear of being eaten by dragons. When ponies kept arms close at hands. When ponies were ready to be rallied for war. Princess Celestia was reluctant to let their sacrifice be in vain. The future they had worked for would come to fruition. While the fragile peace lasted, everyone was under the illusion that all was well. While the peace lasted, Princess Celestia knew that her favorite student would be safe from the true horrors of the world.
Just yesterday in fact, Twilight Sparkle had brought the most delicious looking confectionery out for a dessert contest. Unfortunately, Pinkie Pie had eaten most of it. Princess Celestia couldn't help but laugh in the end due to the comic way in which the cake had been consumed. These moments were what gave her the energy she needed to provide rulings that would continue to keep the guise. No matter how much she knew that she was only delaying confrontation, she had to continue. If not for her ponies, then for her sister. She knew that her sister, recently ravaged by the Nightmare would not take well to taking up arms against the dragons. She was glad that her sister had forgotten the troubled times, when their disagreements over the treaty had almost torn them apart. The thousand years had given her time to delude everypony into thinking it was safe. As long as everypony was happy, Princess Celestia would delay.
Time passed. The dragons grew lazier and more complacent. They also bred more, since they had more than enough food. The demand for gems increased with the increasing number of mouths to feed. But the supply could not meet this demand, and some of the dragons found themselves a little more hungry than they were used to. Wiser dragons would have suspected something a long time ago. Most of them had already entered hibernation of sorts, and the problem was left to fester as the younger generation did not understand the true implications of such a shortage.
Meanwhile in Ponyville, a group of friends were having a discussion over some tea.
“If the prices keep going up like they have been, I'll be out of business. It doesn't help that gem finding has been taxed so heavily. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have gems for the dresses,” said Rarity.
It didn't help that Rarity had a sister to take care of, or that her parents were in retirement.
“I'm sure Princess Celestia would be more than happy to give you some sort of extension,” said Twilight Sparkle.
“Yeah!” piped Rainbow Dash.
“It's not that simple,” said Rarity.
Twilight Sparkle thought for a moment and realized the what Rarity was talking about. There were very few ponies that used gems on a day to day basis. This was partly due to the subtle machinations of Princess Celestia. Not many ponies knew about gems and more importantly, where the gems were going to. Only ponies heavily invested in the gem market had much information on gems. One such pony was Rarity, who used gems in most every clothing line.
The rest of the six friends stared at Rarity in confusion. They had no inkling of what she was going through, or what the consequences would be, and Rarity had no easy way to explain. But the friends knew something was wrong, and changed the topic accordingly. The mood brightened instantly again, and the friends resumed their friendly banter, leaving the problem for later. There was very little that they could do about it anyway.
As the dragons continued to starve, they grew more irritable. The tension did not go unnoticed by those that delivered the gems. Rumors started to spread through the chain. Fearful claims of ponies disappearing, of ponies being roasted alive, of ponies being eaten. Princess Celestia was upon one of those paths and she knew that deep in her heart that somehow, the situation had gone too far. But she continued to do nothing. She could not abandon the ideal that she had worked so hard to craft and maintain.
The problem was left to fester.
Stats
Page generated in 0.021 seconds
Total duration
1,003 users online
232,647 hits today, 1,996,409 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Looks like a promising premise. Better see how it goes.
Considering how massive the dragons are in the show, ponies wouldn't be a good food source. An intelligent hunter must consider the cost of the energy it expends while hunting prey and subtract it from the amount of energy gained from consuming it. This is the reason sharks don't eat us whenever they see us. We don't have enough meat on us to be worth it. Most shark attacks are the result of sharks mistaking us for prey species because our surf boards make us look bigger than we are. Once they realize their mistake, they usually let go and swim away. Considering this, why would a dragon for after something so small and potentially dangerous to feed itself?
431636
They eat ponies like whales eat krill. That wood stuff doesn't really give them indigestion. They only fear Princess Celestia because she controls the sun. The sun is pretty dangerous.
431666
Oh, so they just open their massive mouths and hundreds of ponies helplessly swim in? I'm sorry to be "that guy," but the biologist in me is shaking his head.
431694
Dragons are pretty fast o.0
This could be interesting
I can see that this will prelude a great story. The cover art also contributed to the understanding of the to-be adventure. Waiting for the next chapter!
Seems like an interesting idea, but right now it's not a whole lot more than a summary, so it's hard to give much of an opinion.
One thing, though, I'm not yet convinced that this situation would be so hard on Rarity. Even if there's some kind of tax that demands she give up 90% of the gems she harvests, she still has an easier time finding them than most, so the portion she gets to keep would be very valuable. She said prices keep going up, and since she's a supplier, that's a good thing for her. Or if she has to pay a fee in bits for each individual gem she digs up (which wouldn't make a lot of sense), that still leaves her with her full collection of jewels she can sell, probably right back to the government, since the gems themselves are what's needed, not money. But perhaps I'm over-analyzing.
Also, don't forget to justify the absence of Rarity's parents if you say she's taking care of her sister. A lot of stories just completely ignore their existence and state it as a matter-of-fact that Rarity is raising Sweetie Belle on her own, which has been untrue for a while now.
Anyway, I don't mean to sound too critical, just a couple points that made me wonder. The story has potential, so I don't want to sound overly negative.
432056
Uh... oops....
I've been reading a lot, way too much apparently. I've gotten to the point where I'm glossing over plot holes because sometimes it doesn't really make sense to consider them. I'm apparently at 9 million words read now of Pony fic alone.
It's time to go fix things then...
432105
Well at least Rarity's portion is probably a secondary element to the story, instead of critical details central to the entire premise, right?
432219
Which is why it ended up unnoticed
431694
I'm on the fence on this. While you are rather serious and the author is not, we dont have a lot to work with on dragon diets. It seems they'll eat anything, gem, plant of animal. I will, for the sake of knowledge, run a few numbers on this though.
Using deer/horse information, we'll estimate a few things-
A 4 foot tall deer tall,weights about 300 pounds. A typical 12 hand (4 foot tall) horses weight around 600-700 pounds. 650 to be simple.
Normal edible weight: 50-75%, or 150-225 pounds for the deer and 325-487 for the horse.
Mammalian predators typically need to eat around 5% of their mass per day, averaged out (a very large number of animals gorge then fast, so this even the original numbers for each individual species was already a rough average). Crocodiles are just a little behind that at around 4%. 5% is decent generalization for most larger animals, from dogs to whales, so it should be a good estimate for what a dragon will need.
Now, I cant get enough information to estimate a dragon's size in MLP, so that's a problem. Even ball parking the weight will be tough; I would probably need a bit of background knowledge of airplanes and more knowledge on birds to figure out an honest weight, but I don't have time for that so I'll use the size/weights from D&D for a red dragon, the most common variety:
An adult dragon weights around 20000 lb, is 55 feet long and has a comfortable carrying capacity of 500 pounds while flying. (as context, humans are listed as considering 30-40 pounds as a comfortable load). We will use this adult dragon because older, larger ones are simply unreasonable to consider, but here are the stats for the largest, oldest dragons: 120 feet long, 1,280,000 pounds and able to carry 2000 pounds. It'll need 64000pounds a day. Simply no.
Adult dragons sync up rather well though: A dragon just large enough to carry a pony would need to eat roughly two ponies worth of meat a day to fill itself. If the dragon is eating the pony's bones, it would need a pony and a deer to make the day's hunt successful, or two ponies for every three days.
To be honest, I don't see how Equestria could exist at all if dragons had the option of digging for gems (keep in mind there have been countless other generations also digging, so they'll need to go deep to find anything) or eating two ponies every three days. Gems would have to rapidly grow and be rather filling. All animal life would need to be a well maintained farm.
432514>>431694
Let's put it this way, scientifically (in a human sense) Equestria is somewhat dysfunctional. The fact that Pinkie Pie exists basically throws most human physics out the window.
432624 To be honest, I simply wished to out Science everyone commenting on the story, you included.
432737
Obviously you would need to introduce a new system to explain Equestria...
431636>>432737>>432624
Why don't all just focus on the obvious promise this story has, as a story. Next, Ponies don't talk, Pinkie can see us, and sonic booms that look like rainbows are not real. Screw logic, this is Equestria!! Can't wait for more.
Review Time!!!
So interesting...
Because nobody likes critiscm.
1) I would have to partially agree with the other two critics that pointed out physics. But this is, of course, Equestria. And whatever Pinkie says goes. But even with that being said, there are a few things that bug the mind. What I don't understand is how many dragons are there? Plus gems take awhile to solidify and actually form, but maybe its magic. Who knows. But if there really are that much dragons, then Rarity and all the other designers wouldn't even have that much gems to begin with. Also, when they ate ponies, that would be in mass amounts. And if they ate in mass amounts, ponies wouldn't have time to find their special talents and just be spending their whole life guarding their towns. I don't know, it's just something I find a tad annoying,
2) I also have a little problem with the format. I like how you're just trying to supply a backstory, but then it kinda strays to the whole scene with the Princess, and the one with Rarity. I almost feel like your going from informational to narrative.
I don't like critiscm.
1) Once again, an interesting idea! I love how you can just think outside the box, and then randomly deliver something that executes the idea so perfectly. I have no idea how you come up with these concepts, but it really sparks the mind.
2) Dragons aren't really elaborated on a lot, and even then they're incredibly shallow. I think this story has so much potential, and I can't wait to see what you do with it later on. It could also spike the idea of how ponies, (the obvious higher race) co-exist with other mythical creatures. (dragons, gryphons, manticores, etc.) Bravo.
Over all, you get a:
4/5 Scoots!
Wow, how consistent! Haha, seriously. I think your writing is so rich and rare, so I really love that abut everything you've written. The one reason you didn't get the last Scoot is lack of description and reasoning, I guess. I'd just love for it to be more specific.
GiddyOnUp
467343
My bad. This was more of an introish type chapter. I am going to get into detail later, but that requires research. I was interrupted by other ideas which I then had to write.
467389 Yeah, I totally understand. Just thought I should put in my 2 cents, since there was a huge request in the group.
467408
I was the one that started that lol. It's nice to see that there had been a decent response.