4. Escape and Investigate
The Guarsai dungeon had only one way in or out, as Lyra and Trixie discovered while making their way through it as quietly as possible – a set of stairs leading straight up, presumably to their headquarters. It was guarded, of course: two members of the Guarsai in their green military uniforms, both alert and attentive, not standing still but instead looking each way down the three corridors that lead to their charge. Of course, at the moment, every spare Guarsai was behind the two Equestrians, searching and magically scanning the room they had been in. These two Guarsai were alone, at least for the moment. One moment would have to be enough.
As alert as the two guards were, they weren’t – couldn’t have been – ready for two invisible, inaudible mares sneaking up on them and delivering strong bucks to the sides of their heads. Lyra’s crumpled instantly, while Trixie’s only staggered a bit, but a follow-up buck with her hind hooves took him down before he could call for help. Once that was accomplished, the two crept up to the door.
“What do we do?” Lyra whispered.
Trixie looked the door over. She didn’t see a lock on this side, and didn’t have anything to even try picking it with anyway. It did, however, have a sliding window, closed at the moment. Pressing Lyra and herself against one wall, she banged on the door a few times and shouted “laguntza!”, one of the few Zaldian words she had been able to memorize – ‘help!’ Even as she did, she created an illusion of herself standing over the two guards. The slat covering the door’s peephole opened, a pair of eyes glancing out. They widened at the sight of the two fallen guards and the illusory Trixie standing over them. She made her illusion’s eyes widen as well, then had it gallop off and out of sight, whereupon she dispelled it.
It had the desired effect: the slat closed, there was the sound of several locks being undone, and the door was thrown open, three Guarsai running through it. Once they were past, Lyra and Trixie both dashed through the door before it could be closed again.
It wasn’t long before Trixie and Lyra were in the Guarsai offices themselves – and Trixie paused at the sight of the place. She had been expecting panic, ponies rushing back and forth, the paranoia of Zaldia coming to a head as it was surely going to do with the entire Platinum Armory (whatever that was) having been stolen. Instead, the Guarsai offices seemed relatively subdued. Ponies moved back and forth undertaking various tasks, filing paperwork, questioning some ponies…they looked tense, yes, glancing around a lot, speaking in harsh tones, but they didn’t look panicked. Professionally concerned, maybe – but there was, simply put, no way that the Zaldians’ secret police force should have been so calm right now.
“What?” Trixie breathed. She felt a tugging on her tail then, though, and remembered that she didn’t have time to analyze the situation. Glancing back at Lyra to make sure the pony still had her tail in her mouth – Trixie made a mental note that she should try and change her spell so that her friends could see through her invisibility spells as well as Trixie herself could – she started off, the two carefully making their way through the office and doing their best to avoid bumping into ponies.
They almost made it, too. But just as they reached the front door to try and open it, it swung inwards of its own accord, two Guarsai officers charging in for some reason – and hitting Trixie square in the muzzle with the door as they did.
Trixie cried out, falling backwards and onto her back, dragging Lyra with her. Her concentration on the invisibility and silence spells was disrupted, and both disappeared in a faint puff of blue smoke – leaving the two mares, still in manacles, suddenly very visible. There was a pause as everypony in the room, a dozen or so Guarsai in all, turned to look curiously at the two mares. Trixie put on her best, most innocent-looking smile.
One Guarsai smiled back – and then shouted at the top of his lungs. “Alarma!”
The Guarsai all sprang into action, horns glowing. Trixie tried to think of something to do – but Lyra beat her to the punch, covering her eyes and setting her horn glowing gold as bright as possible – and then brighter still, releasing a flash of golden light that felt like it plunged straight through Trixie’s eyes and into the back of her skull, then proceeded to bounce around inside her head a bit for good measure.
“Gyaaah that is not fun when someone else does it!” Trixie exclaimed, rolling to her hooves. None of the other Guarsai in the room reacted any better. Trixie felt a hoof with manacles around it reach out to her; she followed it as Lyra trotted forward as quickly as possible, Trixie being guided by Lyra now that the mint unicorn had rendered her blind for a few minutes thanks to her flare spell.
“When did you learn to do that?” Trixie demanded, eyes fluttering rapidly as she tried to regain her sight. Then something else occurred to her. “Why is it brighter than mine?!”
“Not now, Trixie!” Lyra exclaimed. The two were outside now, Trixie could tell thanks to the cool air on her. She felt hair brush against her muzzle, figured it was Lyra’s tail, and took it in her mouth, following her friend. With the manacles around their legs, they couldn’t exactly gallop, but they kept up a relatively good pace for what had to be several city blocks before Lyra finally stopped, breathing heavily. Trixie was as well – this high mountain air meant they were quickly out of breath.
“Okay…okay…” Trixie said, squinting. Her vision was coming back. “We’re fugitives now. Yay…”
Lyra nodded, closing her eyes a moment as her horn glowed again. Trixie flinched and her eyes automatically squinted in memory of what had happened just a moment ago, but all that happened was that a gold sphere appeared in front of Lyra and popped, releasing her lyre. She hugged it close.
“Oh – right, good idea,” Trixie said, duplicating the spell herself. With a flash-pop, a gilt necklace with an inlaid red gem shaped like a lyre, and a matching golden tiara with a purple gem shaped like a magic wand, appeared. Trixie doffed her hat and put on the Element of Magic underneath it – it wouldn’t be comfortable, nor as ostentatious as she normally liked, but it would also be less likely to come off – while Lyra slipped on the Element of Loyalty.
“When did you learn to summon these?” Lyra asked. They had been in their hotel room, part of the ‘official’ wear the two had for their trip to Zaldia.
“First chance I got after Tambelon,” Trixie answered, as though it should have been obvious – why wouldn’t she want to be able to easily summon the six Elements of Harmony to her side? She pouted after a moment of thought, though. “But I didn’t tag anything else I brought with me! I had some really nice outfits, too…” She looked down at her manacles, then to the Element of Loyalty. “Hey, give me that a second.”
Lyra did so, and Trixie found the pin at the back to be suitably long and thin enough for her needs. With a little telekinesis and gentle hoof-work, she managed to undo the lock to the manacles around her front legs – not as fast as Cheerilee would have been able to, but fast enough. She quickly repeated the process with her other set of manacles, and then Lyra’s own two pairs.
“You just picked locks with an ancient artifact of unspeakable magic,” Lyra noted.
“Whatever works,” Trixie answered with a shrug, hoofing the Element back to Lyra. “Okay. Now what?”
“Embassy,” Lyra answered, glancing around. They were in an alleyway between two of Gotorleku Hiria’s tall, filigree buildings; despite the sheer height and thinness of both towers, space remained at a premium on the plateau and so the alley they were in was quite cramped.
“Not a good place to go,” Trixie countered. “It’s the first place the Zaldians will think we’re going, they’ll be watching it. And, the Zaldians think that we stole their Armory as a lead-up to an Equestrian invasion. If we try to get to the Equestrian embassy, that’ll just make it look more suspicious.”
“Who cares?” Lyra asked. “We didn’t steal their stupid Armory!”
Trixie held up a hoof. “And I think there’s more going on here. What happened to Amarria Solidoa? Why did Kristal Zati lie about not seeing me? Why did all the Auditorio’s employees do the same? And if the Armory really has been stolen, why did the Guarsai’s office look so calm before we appeared? There’s some kind of conspiracy here, Lyra. I think that somepony is trying to harm Equestria’s diplomatic relations with Zaldia – maybe enough to get Zaldia to go to war.”
Lyra considered, then let out a long sigh as she nodded, conceding the point. “This is starting to sound like some kind of Ace of Clover mystery.”
Trixie grinned despite the situation. “I know, right?” she asked. She was a fan of the series. “Look, we can’t go to the embassy, we’ll be spotted – by now they probably realized I turned us invisible, so they’ll be looking for that. We can’t just hop a train, they’ll be watching those too. And we can’t just contact Luna,” she tapped her hat, which she could use to magically send messages to Princess Luna’s desk when she wanted, “because I don’t have anything to write with or on, and because there’s nothing Luna could do at the moment that wouldn’t just escalate matters with Zaldia. We’re on our own and we need to go to the last place the Zaldians would look.”
Lyra’s golden eyes met Trixie’s own violet ones. “No,” she said firmly, knowing what Trixie wanted to suggest. “Because even if you could sneak us into that Armory place, then you could probably sneak us into the Equestrian embassy just as easily.”
Trixie opened her mouth to object, but Lyra leaned in close, muzzle practically touching Trixie’s own. “No, Trixie,” she hissed.
The blue unicorn sighed after a moment. “I don’t like ponies thinking I did something I didn’t,” Trixie grumbled as she looked around, then pointed in the direction she was pretty sure the Equestrian embassy was in. “At least, not something bad. Why couldn’t we be accused of fostering Equestrian-Zaldian relations? Kidnapped so that they could throw me a surprise party for the nice map I gave the Guarsai?”
Lyra rolled her eyes as Trixie’s grumbling grew quieter and less intelligible. The two at first moved stealthily through the city, flitting from shadow to shadow and sticking to alleyways and blind spots, a skill they’d started to pick up when they’d visited Tambelon and refined with help from Cheerilee thereafter. Gotorleku Hiria wasn’t a nocturnal city the way Canterlot was, so there were few ponies to avoid at this time of night anyway.
“Shouldn’t somepony be looking for us?” Trixie asked after half an hour of careful movement. “I haven’t seen or heard any guards or search parties…”
Lyra had wondered as much as well, but had decided to not look a gift horse in the mouth – and had used wondering about the origin of that phrase as a means of distracting herself from the overall situation. Still, they were finally nearing the Equestrian embassy, distinctive due to being built in the castellan style of Canterlot architecture rather than the thin filigree of Gotorleku Hiria, which made it look a bit like a small, fortified castle in the middle of a city.
Completing the image of it being a fortress, the two saw as they approached, was that it was currently under siege. Well, perhaps not something so dramatic – but the embassy was surrounded, and the ponies – unicorns all – doing the surrounding were all dressed in green and platinum armor, with helmets that incorporated gemstones just below the horns and capes that had the image of a swan on them. One of their number, whose cape had platinum epaulets and who lacked a helmet, was pacing among the presumably lower-ranked troops, inspecting them for something.
The Equestrian embassy’s own guards – a more-or-less even mix of the three tribes – were out in force, dressed in the somewhat less ostentatious but no less functional blue-silver armor of the Equestrian military. They were doing their best to look unconcerned with the situation, but weren’t succeeding very well in that regard.
Lyra and Trixie stared from where they ducked in the alley, behind a collection of rain barrels. “Is our embassy under siege?” Trixie demanded.
“You said it would be watched,” Lyra noted.
Trixie shook her head. There was a huge difference between placing a few nondescript-looking ponies within easy sight of an embassy’s gates, and surrounding that embassy with troops. The Zaldian ponies didn’t appear to have weapons, but that meant little when the entire force was made up of unicorns presumably trained for combat. Though on that note…
“Those aren’t the Zaldian royal guard,” Trixie noted, eyeing their capes. “The royal guard uses bears. And their military uses a double-headed eagle. What’s with the swan?”
“Who cares?” Lyra asked, hooves lightly gliding along her lyre’s strings in nervousness, too quiet to be heard from more than few feet away. “Can you get us past them?”
“Maybe – ” Trixie began, when the epaulet-adorned unicorn among the Zaldians stopped his pacing and stepped outside of the circle they’d made around the Equestrian embassy, then barked a command in Zaldian. At once, the Zaldian soldiers-of-some-description had their horns light up in a multitude of colors. As Trixie and Lyra watched, a platinum-colored, somewhat transparent dome erected itself around the Equestrian embassy, shimmering into reality and settling into place firmly as the Equestrians trapped inside watched with wide, unbelieving eyes – not at the spell itself, so much as the fact that the Zaldians were performing this action, for reasons they probably couldn’t even begin to guess at.
Trixie and Lyra looked to each other. “No,” Trixie answered after a moment. “I can’t get past a shield spell, not without getting us noticed.”
The two Equestrian unicorns sat close together, considering. They were trapped in a city that had, very suddenly, become hostile to them. The only place they could have gone to escape it, or at least been somewhat safe, had just been sealed off from them. There had to be members of the Guarsai looking for them, and if they were caught a second time, there would be no chance of escape – the Guarsai would make sure of it this time.
Lyra took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Okay,” she said softly. “Where’s the Armory?”
---
The Guarsai did not often have good days, but today was shaping up to be a particularly bad one. The captain-lieutenant – in the Guarsai’s police forces, roughly equal to an Equestrian chief inspector – had hightailed it from Guarsai headquarters for the Armería Urrutira as soon as he had heard the news of the theft, bringing several lieutenants with him. Being the highest-ranked Guarsai on duty, it was his job to cordon off the Armería and begin the investigation of who had stolen the artifacts. He’d heard that Equestria might be responsible, but the captain-lieutenant couldn’t think of a single reason why and could think of a number of good reasons why not – particularly with two of Luna’s Elements in the city at the moment, which would make any Equestrian action against Zaldia a virtual death sentence for the two of them – and refused to let his upcoming investigation so important a matter be based on biased assumptions. He made a mental note as he galloped to have some of his ponies keep an eye on the Equestrian embassy just in case, however, though it was doubtful that any thief would then go to literally the first place the Guarsai would check.
The captain-lieutenant and his small herd of underlings arrived at the gate of the Armería Urrutira in record time, and found the gate to naturally be closed and guarded by two members of the Sorginbehat, with a third behind it, a commander from the lack of helmet and platinum epaulets, pacing back and forth and apparently waiting for him.
“I am captain-lieutenant Bilaketa Sakon,” the Guarsai captain said as he flashed his credentials. “Open the gate. You must hurry, time is of the essence in these matters.”
The commander on the other side did so, but he held up a hoof before the captain-lieutenant could enter. “I cannot let you pass,” he said. “This is an internal matter for the Sorginkeria Behatzailea.”
Captain-lieutenant Sakon had started to walk forward and almost didn’t hear the Sorginbehat commander, until that pony lit up her horn in warning, and Sakon had a moment to consider what he had heard.
“What?” he demanded. “Any act of espionage falls under the authority of the Guardia Saila, regardless of where it takes place – ”
“You are mistaken. The Sorginbehat has ultimate authority over the custodianship of the Armería and the artifacts therein. That is our jurisdiction. We will, doubtless, need to coordinate with the Guarsai once we have determined where the artifacts have gone in the city, but – ”
“Have you gone mad?! Let me in this instant or I will get Ispelu Magikoa here and have him…”
---
The Armería Urrutira was relatively easy to find in Gotorleku Hiria – the tightly-packed buildings gave way to a wide, bare plaza in which sat the Armory, the idea being to give the Armory’s defenders a wide degree of view and make it difficult for anypony to sneak through. Of course, this didn’t work so well when the ponies in question were invisible.
“Aren’t there ways to see through invisibility?” Lyra asked as she and Trixie galloped up to the walls of the Armería, Lyra once again holding Trixie’s tail in her mouth in order to be able to follow her invisible leader.
Somehow Lyra knew that Trixie was smirking, particularly since for once didn’t call Lyra out on her tendency to speak while invisible, a bad habit Lyra had tried to break, so far unsuccessfully. “Zaldians tend to focus on ‘practical’ magic,” she noted as they came up against the Armería’s wall, “and I don’t cast any ordinary invisibility spell! It would take a master diviner to see through my magic.”
The two unicorns glanced up. The walls of the Armería were thirty or forty feet tall, at least, far too much for either unicorn to use telekinesis to lift the other up – they could slow a fall, but not lift a hundreds-of-pounds pony dozens of feet, and additionally both were more used to fine manipulation with their magic rather than heavy lifting. Instead, the two unicorns trotted along the wall towards the Armería’s main gate.
The gate was open, guarded by another two unicorn ponies, once again wearing the gem-encrusted helms and swan-marked capes that the Equestrians had seen at the embassy. A third pony, without the helmet but with platinum epaulets, was talking to several more Zaldians – Guarsai – outside the gate in angry tones. The Guarsai themselves seemed far more incensed, gesturing profusely to the Armería but making no headway with the other Zaldian. Lyra didn’t understand a word of it, of course, but she did pick out a name she thought she recognized – Ispelu Magikoa, the High Mage of Zaldia.
Regardless, the distraction coupled with the open gates at least solved the problem of getting in – the two unicorns simply ducked between the talking Zaldians as quickly as possible. Unlike the plaza that surrounded the Armería, the courtyard was not wide, and the doors to the Armería itself were similarly open and guarded, but easy to pass through to get inside the fortress itself. Inside, it was dimly lit by glowing crystals set into the ceiling, the walls of its wide hallways broken by the occasional door that looked like it belonged to the safe of a bank vault more than anything. Standing outside each of the doors – there were five in sight – were more swan-caped unicorns.
Lyra leaned against Trixie so that she’d know where the other mare was – she really needed to come up with a way for Lyra to see through the invisibility as well as Trixie. After a few moments of silent contemplation trying to decide which way to go, the two decided on ‘deeper’, trotting quickly into the bowels of the Armería on the theory that wherever the artifacts had been kept was probably there. As they trotted, Lyra noticed something immediately: guards, or rather, the lack of them. After just a few dozen feet, the two found themselves trotting alone through the Armería, without any Zaldians in sight at all.
“That does it,” Trixie said aloud after a few minutes, causing Lyra to jump even as the invisibility spell faded around both of them, disappearing into blue smoke. Trixie had an incensed look on her face as she glared back the way they came, tipping her hat over her eyes. “I think I know what happened. Those swan-caped ponies are part of some division meant to guard this place, and – ”
“And they’re responsible for the thefts,” Lyra continued, nodding as she made the same leaps of logic that Trixie was. “Then they somehow framed us. Maybe some of the Guarsai are in on it. But not all of it, which is why the Guarsai’s office didn’t look too concerned; they must not have heard about the theft yet, or at least not all of them. It’s also why they were stopping the Guarsai from entering, and why they locked down the Equestrian embassy, and why they don’t seem too concerned about things in here.”
Lyra glanced back at Trixie, and was surprised to see that Trixie’s glare had, if anything, doubled. “Oh, come on!” she exclaimed, albeit quietly, throwing her hooves in the air. “I thought I’d figured it out first.”
Lyra rolled her eyes even as Trixie pouted, the two of them heading deeper into the Armería. “So the swan ponies steal the artifacts,” Lyra resumed, “but why? And why frame us?”
Trixie shrugged as the two proceeded. They avoided taking any turns that looked like they might deposit them at the outer edges of the Armería, since those were probably still guarded. But the inner parts weren’t, it seemed – after all, there was nothing left to guard. At length, the two found themselves standing before a pair of gem-encrusted platinum doors, both of them thrown open and revealing a room that looked like it had once contained artifacts on display as though they were a museum – though that museum had been cleared out. At a guess, this was probably where the stolen artifacts had been, but none were present.
The two proceeded into the room, looking around, but didn’t find anything – which, really, wasn’t a surprise to Lyra. They were just normal ponies who occasionally read Ace of Clover mysteries, not real detectives, nor experts in divination magic. After just a few moments of searching it became obvious to Lyra that if there was evidence here, they weren’t going to find it. Although…Lyra sniffed at the air. “You smell that?” she asked as they continued into the room, looking around. “Smells like something burning…or was burned.”
Trixie nodded, taking in a deep breath, looking around the room. “Not just burning,” she said. “Brimstone.” She shuddered a little bit, looking to Lyra with a slight smile on her face. “Remember that time I was kidnapped by salamanders? They all smelled like that.”
Lyra did, then frowned. “You don’t think…?”
“Salamanders?” Trixie asked, considering. She shrugged after a moment. “Anything’s possible. They managed to sneak into Canterlot’s Royal Library, so why not here? Probably not the same ones, though, given how far away we are…”
“I think we’d need more than a smell to convince the Guarsai, if it even was the salamanders,” Lyra noted. She considered the repertoire of spells available to her and Trixie. “Hey, Trixie. You know that magic sight thing you do? Think you could see salamander magic?”
“Probably, if it leaves a trail,” Trixie said, horn flashing and eyes taking on a blue glow as she glanced around the room, before finally squinting at something. “Maybe…it’s really faint. Let’s see where this goes…”
Lyra followed Trixie out, keeping her eyes on Trixie but her ears open for the sound of anypony approaching; fortunately, though Trixie had cancelled her invisibility spell, she’d maintained the silencing one on their hooves. The path that the two ponies took lead them to an out-of-the-way, unlocked door, down several flights of stairs, and finally to something that could only be described as a broom closet – on account of the brooms. The two unicorns had to use their horns for illumination.
“Trail ends here,” Trixie said, sniffing. “But I still smell brimstone. And look – the handles of those brooms are blackened, like they were burned.”
Lyra nodded. She brightened the glow of her horn – Trixie still flinched, apparently not yet over Lyra’s flare spell – to get more light in the room, studying the ground. “Look,” she said, pointing a hoof at a large, roughly circular part of the floor. “The stone right here, it’s…different. A different shade from the rest of the floor. Like it’s new.” She glanced to Trixie. “Salamanders can melt stone, right? No reason why they couldn’t replace it.”
“Right, so there’s our working theory,” Trixie said, nodding. “It makes perfect sense: subterranean lizard folk stole the Royal Armory of Zaldia as part of some conspiracy against the Zaldian government, and they're being helped by a special branch of the Zaldian military.”
Lyra and Trixie both paused, glancing between each other as Trixie finished speaking. “Yeah…” Lyra ventured, grimacing, “maybe, when we tell the Zaldians, we don’t lead with that.”
“It’s all we have to work with right now,” Trixie countered, though her own incredulous look at her own words didn’t go away. “But it’s not much. Argh! This is a dead-end!” She stomped on the discolored floor with one still-silenced hoof, but it didn’t budge. “No way to break this down. And we’d be lost underground, too, even if we managed. If we’re gonna figure out what’s going on, we’re going to need to find somepony in-the-know.”
Lyra considered a few moments. “Kristal Zati?” she asked. “He lied about meeting with you…assuming the Guarsai weren’t lying to us, anyway.”
The blue unicorn’s ears perked up at that. “Track down Kristal Zati and make him spill the beans? Probably have to threaten him a bunch first? Oh, I am all over this plan.” Her horn glowed, turning both of them invisible again. “I know he lives at the High Mage’s place. We’ll go there first and then beat some answers out of him.”
“Well, I mean…we might not have to beat him. He might not even be in on things – ”
“Lyra, let me dream.”
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And so the plot, or conspiracy thickens.
Another very enjoyable chapter. Great job.
"What?"
"What?"
"What!?"
The plot thickens. If you know what I mean...
But anyway this is interesting... seems like not everybody is aware of the theft... of course they probably don't want it to be known by anyone.
Hmm... just realized I forgot to comment on this chapter. Partly that's because I first read it from my phone which has a terrible keyboard, but mostly it's because I'm not sure how much there really is to comment on. There just isn't very much happening in this chapter, mostly it's just Lyra and Trixie catching up to speed with stuff we the audience already knew. It's a necessity to keep the plot moving, but at the same time does very little to progress that plot or provide any new insights into what's actually going on.
Which isn't to say this was a bad chapter, just an uneventful one. The saving grace is definitely the banter between Lyra and Trixie which keeps things lively and entertaining. The other lesser highlight would I guess be Bilaketa Sakon, who simultaneously provides an example of an officer outside the conspiracy as well as an all around pretty reasonable authority figure to counter the otherwise paranoia prone implications of Zaldia. Although, much like my complaints for the chapter as a whole, he really doesn't get a chance to actually do anything yet. I rather wish we'd been able to see more of him, or even that he'd cross paths with Trixie and Lyra while investigating the armory. He certainly seems like a potential ally in the long run, but I guess having them meet up too soon would risk undermining the fugitive aspect of this story.
On a final note...
Ha! Called it... or caused it, maybe. Either way it was fun to see Trixie coming to the same realization.
Nice chapter!
I'm surprised that the rogue faction (I'm assuming it's the rogues) have actually besieged the Equestrian Embassy. Too easy for the real Guarsai to realize that something's up.
I'm pleased to see that my suspicion that they were being held by the rogue Guarsai is valid.
And it would take a master diviner to see through Trixie's invisibility, eh? Trixie, you do know that that's exactly what Ispelu Magikoa is, right?
Okay so far I enjoyed the story. I like how bring in political issues and make them even interesting. Is the society based on the South Africa "apartheid" laws but only in a less extent?
Espionage, Trixie's element... er, besides Magic, I suppose. I'll have to remember she can pull that trick with summoning the Elements. There any limits to that spell, like distance or how many objects she can tag at once? Anyway glad to see this updating again, looking forward to more.
7190901
I'm inclined to say up to six things, for obvious reasons. Distance has never seemed to be a problem, meanwhile. If it has a drawback it's probably that Lyra's never shown any ability (and thereby Trixie probably can't either) to teleport the object she grabs back to where it came from. The transport is one-way. Probably limited by weight/mass, too. Let's say 10 pounds per item max.
7190187
I don't know too much about South Africa. Mostly Zaldia is being inspired by Tsarist Russia with a touch of Soviet Russia (in the institutional paranoia and spinning of history to fit its own internal propoganda), while the stratified society is more inspired by Jim Crow laws and how African-Americans were treated in America around the late 1800s and early 1900s, though it's loose and really you can find an echo of it in any society that places one class of people firmly over another in its laws, which is to say, every society at some point in its history. But on the other hand Zaldia's mercantile empire, including early inroads into not!China and a series of trade-colonies and outposts (small things, not wholesale claiming of large tracts of land), is inspired by the Venetians and early Portuguese Empire - but also, if I'm being honest, the Romulan Star Empire in Star Trek
Zaldia was originally supposed to be a sort of Basque-inspired nation, but the truth of the matter is that the Basques haven't really controlled their own nation for going on five hundred years now or so - it was incorporated into Spain in the early 1500s and has never been seriously independent since. The most defining thing about the Basques since then is their occasional bouts for independence from Spain, which has taken various forms through the ages (currently most Basques are content to consider themselves Spaniards but there's a substantial minority that want an independent Basque nation - kind of analogous to Texas in America). I sort of took that independent streak and ran away with it.
Whatever it started as, Zaldia as a nation has become almost wholly defined by being not Equestrian, to the point where basically anything Equestria does is automatically at least suspicious and probably nefarious, and constant action and vigilance must be taken to ensure that Equestria never gains the upper hoof over them because the Equestrians are surely waiting just to pounce on them or, at the very least, weaken them in some way.
Quick question: do the embassy guards have the enchanted armor that grants the batpony transformation and the strength and speed boosts, or is that just for the elite Guard?
7240183
That's only for Luna's personal Night Guard, of which there's only about 100 or so.
7240191
I imagine pegasi like to be generally free to do their own thing and so, as a result, can't stand living in Zaldia, or at least Zaldia as it's emerged over the past few centuries. A lot of the native Zaldian pegasus population moved south to Cavallia as a result - which creates another sore spot between Zaldia and Cavallia as the Zaldians have a sense that the Cavallians "stole" their pegasi.
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So, the plot thickens. Interesting, in a good way.