Lateral Movement

by Alzrius

207 - The Deepest Wounds

One of Nosey’s hooves twitched feebly.

It was the most that she was able to move, her attempt to make the world stop spinning failing miserably. If anything, the effort made things worse. Although she knew she was laying still, vertigo overwhelmed her as the world continued to lurch in a nauseating cycle, the sensation powerful enough that she felt herself convulsing as her stomach clenched. She tried to look at something, tried to focus on the distant mountains to regain her sense of equilibrium, but they wouldn’t focus correctly, and she dimly realized that her glasses were gone. For some reason that made her sad…she’d looked all over for them after the battle at the docks…

“Are you running away again, Lex Legis?!” screamed a chorus of voices from behind her. Just hearing them made Nosey whimper, knowing that they belonged to the monster that had used her like a puppet for almost two days now. “Are you planning on saving yourself and leaving this mare to me?!”

No! Just hearing that was enough to bring a sob of terror to Nosey’s lips, and she tried again to climb to her hooves, wanting-, no, needing to get away from that monster before it violated her again. She knew that she couldn’t get away; that even if she could move, it would catch her before she could get anywhere, but maybe if she got to the river she could throw herself in and sink to the bottom. Death was better than going through that again!

Before it had possessed her, when the monster had still been wearing Block Party’s skin, it had used some sort of magic on her to make her tell it whatever it wanted to know. She hadn’t realized it at the time, knowing only that she’d felt exceptionally talkative, and before she’d known it she’d told it not only everything she knew about Lex, Sonata, and everypony with them, but all about herself as well. Her job at the Canterlot Chronicle. Her relationship with her parents. Her dream of becoming the best reporter in all of Equestria. Her fear that her job would always get in the way of making any real friends. Her secret fantasies… The creature had wrung them all out of her, leaving her exposed and vulnerable in a way she’d never felt before. And then it had used her body like a cheap suit.

The sensation of being possessed had been horrible beyond words. It had been like wearing soiled clothes, except the feelings of filth and grime and the utter revulsion they had brought had all been inside her, rather than something she could take off. But that someone else – an intelligent being, capable of speech and reasoning – was doing that to her on purpose had made it infinitely worse. The creature had mocked her the entire time it had commandeered her body, somehow able to speak directly into her mind as it rubbed her nose in her forced submission. The humiliation had been worse than she’d known could be felt.

Nor had the creature’s torments stopped there.

Nosey had always been a pony that loved to watch everyone around her. It had been like a game; figuring out what was newsworthy and what wasn’t, talking to people to find out what they knew and how much they were willing to say, making notes about things to go over later. Not to mention the persistent, low-grade hope that maybe, just maybe, something big would happen while she was right there, giving her a front-row seat to the next major headline. But that was ruined for her now; the monster hadn’t missed the irony between her favorite activity and how it was forcing her to watch and listen as it used her for its purposes, and had made sure to raise the point at every opportunity. “You must be so happy!” it had gushed sarcastically at her on one occasion. “You get to be the only one who knows what’s really going on, and get to see every new development with your own two eyes, just like you always wanted.”

Her one hope had been that Lex would notice what had happened and rescue her, and inside her mind she’d screamed incessantly at him when he’d encountered her at the train station. The terror and despair she’d felt when he hadn’t noticed had been absolute, certain that she was going to be the creature’s slave until it got tired of her and disposed of her like it had Block Party. That thought had almost broken her, and she’d very nearly lost all hope…until a few minutes ago. Her heart had soared when Lex had confronted the monster, and then he’d done what she’d been hoping for ever since it had possessed her: he’d set her free.

At that point, she’d been sure that everything was going to be okay, that Lex would slaughter that monster just like he had the dragon he’d fought outside of Tall Tale, and it would all just be a bad memory. She’d run toward him, knowing that he’d protect her, but then the creature had grabbed her, and she’d been choking, and she’d felt herself passing out, and when she’d woken up…

When she’d woken up, Lex had been defeated.

That had been the only way to describe it. He was lying in a pool of blood in front of the monster, his stomach covered with bite marks, his chest punctured, and one hoof twisted in a direction it shouldn’t have been able to go. The creature, in contrast, had been standing over him with no visible wounds whatsoever. The sight had made Nosey’s blood run cold, and when she’d realized that Lex was still alive, and that the thing was about to deliver the killing blow, she’d acted before she’d been able to remember how scared she was. And it worked, she knew. Lex got away. That’s why it’s yelling. That meant that it knew Lex was going to try something else. He’d come back and keep fighting until he won. He wouldn’t abandon her. He wouldn’t. He’d counterattack and find some way to save her, and he’d kill this monster before it could hurt her agai-

“Fine then.” The creature’s voice had stopped shouting now, and the amused tone made her shudder weakly. “If the easy way won’t work, then we’ll just have to try the very easy way.” There was silence then, and Nosey squeezed her eyes shut, wishing with all of her heart that it would just go away, that it wouldn’t remember she was there, that it would all just be a bad dream. But a moment later she felt something curl around her neck – keeping its grip just barely loose enough that it didn’t choke her – and lift her into the air, drawing an anguished cry from her. A second later she was staring into the hideous faces of the thing, the middle head’s tongue holding her aloft. “Luckily, my Nosey-suit is none the worse for wear.”

“No,” she moaned, kicking her back legs weakly. “No no no…”

“Now now,” jeered the thing’s left head, its tongue extending outward to caress her cheek. “Is that any way for my favorite set of clothes to act?”

“You don’t have to be afraid,” assured the right head, its voice almost sounding sincere. But Nosey could hear the cruel undertone. “I don’t plan on killing you. I need to put you back on when this is all over, after all.”

“I’d do it right now,” spoke the middle head, “but I can’t take the chance that Lex might pull off another fluke and yank me out of you again. Not when I can only put you on once a day.”

“bUt hAVe nO FeAR. wE WiLl bE tOgETheR aGAiN vErY sOoN,” screeched the fang-lined mouth on its other end. “i JuSt NeEd yOU tO dO mE OnE LIttLe fAvOR fIrST.”

Nosey squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head as best she was able, both to deny what it was saying and what was happening. In that moment she would have given anything, anything to be somewhere else! But despite her fervent wishing, the sensation of the dry, leathery tongue around her neck remained, and a moment later the voices spoke in chorus. “Call to him. Call out for Lex Legis to come and save you.”

“No…” It should have been an easy thing to do. She was already wishing and hoping for exactly that. But despite that, or maybe because of it, she couldn’t bring herself to do what the thing was telling her to do. Instead, she bit her lip, her eyes remaining closed as she repeated herself. “No…”

“I thought you might say that,” replied the voices, and this time there was no mistaking the malicious glee in them. A second later, Nosey felt the thing moving, carrying her along with it, and she cracked open her eyes, unable to stop herself from trying to find out what new torment the thing was planning for her. A moment later she had her answer.

The creature had slithered over to the churning mass of greenish mist that it had conjured around Lex before he had managed to force it out of her body. The fog cloud had remained where it had been created, the vapors lazily swirling despite the lack of wind. As the monster moved alongside the mist, Nosey could practically taste the acrid gas, remembering what the monster had said about the fog being like the acidic breath weapon of the green dragon Lex had killed. Without hesitation, the monster extended the tongue that was wrapped around her neck, and in an instant Nosey found herself hanging directly in front of the caustic vapors, only a few inches separating her from the deadly fumes. The threat was obvious, but the creature spoke anyway. “Now, call to Lex.”

Terror gave Nosey new strength, and she struggled against the creature’s grip, trying to pull herself from its grasp, but it was futile. “N-no!”

“A pity,” mused the voiced from behind her, though they sounded anything but displeased. “But as much as it pains me to ruin my good clothes, you can still walk with three hooves.” And then another tongue darted out, wrapping just behind the knee of her left foreleg as it lifted it, making her stretch her leg forward.

“S-stop!” The words tumbled out of Nosey’s mouth of their own accord as she renewed her struggles. “Stop it!”

“You should understand by now,” murmured the monster, its voices almost purring in delight. “I am the one who decides what happens to you, regardless of how you feel about it. If I want you to give me information, then you will. If I want you to be my host body, then you will. And if I want you to scream for help, then you will.” With that, the thing plunged her leg into the acid cloud.

Pain immediately exploded through her, and an anguished scream tore itself from Nosey’s throat a moment later. She thrashed again, agony giving her new strength, but with no better results than her previous attempts. The pain grew worse a moment later, and her wail increased in pitch to match, shaking her head as tears rolled down her cheeks, her cries coming as fast as she could draw breath. “Call to Lex!” snapped the monster again, and this time Nosey didn’t even think of disobeying.

“L-Lex!” she wept. “Help me!”

“Louder!” The command was emphasized by shoving her leg an inch deeper into the cloud, burning more of her.

“LEX!” screamed Nosey at the top of her lungs. “HELP ME!” Her words were almost slurred with pain and sobbing. “PLEASE HELP ME!”

“Much better!” snickered the monster. But Nosey barely heard it over the sound of her own screaming. But as bad as the pain was, she could feel everything starting to slip away, her head wobbling as her consciousness began to fade out for the second time since the fight had begun. Dimly, she glanced to the side, noticing out of her peripheral vision that the monster’s heads were twisting every which way, trying to anticipate where Lex was going to reappear.

But it quite clearly didn’t expect what happened next.

Author's Note:

The creature tortures Nosey as it tries to lure Lex out.

Will she be rescued, or will she be another victim of its campaign of cruelty?

Comments

[Not so New Brony]

I'll admit, reading the torture scene made my stomach churn And coupled with the stomach flu I'm currently down with...bad combo to say the least. Hopefully the damage isn't as dire as her screams since I can imagine that Lex won't have enough magic to heal her after this and the medical supplies the doctors brought can deal with acid damage or a missing limb if the belier's words hold true.

I can only imagine Lex's hatred of the creature to be rising and the subsequent satisfaction he'll feel when he pulls a fast one on the belier. Hopefully it'll be enough to grant him enough of an edge to beat it and save Nosey. The fact that the belier is keeping its heads on the lookout for Lex's approach tells me that it doesn't realize how Lex vanished when Nosey distracted it so it would be logical for Lex to spring a trap from underneath it.

Potentially, Lex could summon a crystal spike(or spikes) to appear from the ground in an effort to stab it or at the very least, disable it's movement for a followup attack of some sort or to rescue Nosey.

[Treforce]

Not when I can only put you on once a day.

I feel like this sentence is of a major importance.

Can the creature be tricked into possesing a laughable weak creature? Like an earthworm?

Would the creature be trapped if said host were completly encased in... black crystals for instance.?

Could the creature be killed if the one it posses is killed? with it still posessing them?

[Booster Spice]

This guy needs a crystal enema.

[Alzrius]

8740257 Given that this thing is an amphisbaenic monstrosity (to quote its descriptive text), I don't think it has the parts for that.

[Alzrius]

8740255 Okay, I'm going to put spoiler text around this because I'm not sure if I'll be able to work the answers into the story itself or not, but I'll mention that a lot of the answers to this are implicit in how the various game abilities work.

I put that mention of how often the creature can use its possession ability in there because I was worried about readers who don't know the game rules wondering why the monster didn't just possess Nosey again immediately, since that would place Lex at a major disadvantage. It can't take that chance, since if it uses its possession ability again now and Lex dispels it a second time, it has to wait until tomorrow to use it again, and it doesn't want to wait. So for now it's holding off on it. It's possession ability has a sort of "life force targeting," however, where it knows how much vitality potential targets have, and so can choose who to try and take over. Once it does, it can stay inside a target indefinitely, and can leave at will. Given that it can teleport, and use all of its magical abilities while inside a host, trapping it might be hard. Likewise, if the host dies, the creature is simply expelled none the worse for wear.

[Alzrius]

8740103 I wanted to play up the existential anguish that Nosey was in because of what had happened to her. Although she hasn't physically suffered from what the monster's done to her, she's severely traumatized...and that was before it started torturing her here. Given that she's not a particularly strong-willed character, it seemed important to showcase that she isn't going to be able to just shrug off what she's been through. More than likely, this will severely impact her for some time to come.

No doubt Lex loathes this creature to the core of his being. Unlike virtually all of his other fights that we've seen, this one has taken on a personal dimension, and he's the sort of individual who responds very strongly to that sort of thing. But given how badly he's losing so far, he doubtlessly knows that he has to be very careful about what he does next, since he's not going to have another chance to pull this off. Whatever he does, it better be good...

As a note, the creature is looking around because it knows that Lex is going to come up from out of the ground, but it doesn't know where. Last time, Lex came up near it and managed to force it out of Nosey. This time, it's probably going to try to hit him with another greater dispel magic as soon as he appears.

[howard035]

8741659

But that's an iffy proposition at best, since there's no real indication of what function they serve.

It's the best proposition we have, especially if ponies have wireless transmission. Based purely on what we actually see, hydroelectric is a more logical idea than assuming they have irrigation, especially when Pegasi actively manage the weather.

Rather, what we see are a small number of ponies engaging in work that apparently matches their personal inclinations, and doesn't really require much in the way of outside assistance.

I'm not sure what you mean by "small," if we say that 1 pony can equal the work of ten humans then that's a larger construction crew than almost any building you would see. And wrecking balls and cranes (in Mare Do Well we actually get to hear the whirring of motors and sputtering of a combustion engine as a crane lever gets stuck, that's not magic powering that crane) require a huge amount of outside assistance to build, maintain and transport. The most direct logic that requires us to make the fewest assumptions is that there's an Equestrian equivalent of Caterpillar building this heavy construction equipment.

That's sort of the point I was making: "infrastructure" is an issue of "finding ponies who happen to have the relevant cutie mark" rather than "a large-scale workforce that, regardless of their personal interests, performs tasks necessary to keep society functioning."

Based on what we've seen it's definitely large-scale. Whether there are ponies who all happen to get manufacturing cutie marks at the right levels is unknown, but we know that plenty of ponies work day jobs not directly tied to their cutie marks (like Pinkie, Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle).

As we see, it's a job that the Mane Six can do on their own.

Sure, and a rural cherry canning plant in the 1950s would probably need no more than 60 workers to run it, so it's good to see the ten to one population ratio tested out.

As for the train, well, there's no "might" about it. Notwithstanding the engine, coal car, and caboose, I believe that literally ALL of the train cars we've ever seen are passenger cars. There's no freight shipping that has ever been shown.

There's no freight car that has ever been shown, Bloomberg definitely qualifies as freight. So we know ponies could do it, the question is if they've ever stripped out the seats in their passenger cars to move goods (other than the time they did it with desserts). There's no magical device shop shown either, it's a much bigger assumption that relies on many more unseen factors to use that explanation for how ponies have large equipment in Ponyville than "they stick them in the train cars sometimes."

I have no doubt that Ponyville wants tourism, since that's going to be a boost to the local economy, but it doesn't appear to have any particular industry - cottage or otherwise - set up around that

You mean like Carousel Boutique, where Rarity is always trying to get business with famous celebrities and Canterlot ponies? Or those fancy restaurants where ponies in formal wear are seen dining? You think their primary market is the local farmers?

Those short-lived aberrations aside, there's really no evidence of any sort of tourism industry in Ponyville (or much of anywhere else, for that matter).

Twilight Time is solely about local kids, I would agree it has nothing to do with tourism. Those other two episodes, however, are two of the best examples we have of tourism in action, you can't really dismiss them as "aberrations." We have examples of large numbers of tourists visiting in Fame and Misfortune, though I admit they are there for a singular event, not the regular trickle like ordinary tourists asking Fluttershy where the Ponyville Belltower is. I'd say Once Upon a Zeppelin is 90% of the show's body of evidence about the thriving tourism industry in general, but it has nothing to do with Ponyville so it's not relevant.

Most of the Canterlot ponies that we see there are simply there for social reasons

You mean most of the Canterlot ponies that we know by name, since the show is set in Ponyville ponies visiting from out of town that we learn the name of are of course going to be here for social reasons.

And that makes sense; "tourist traps" don't really work when the "tourists" are from the next town over.

They do when the next town over is a much bigger town, and they are literally the only place available if you don't want to fly. The Hamptons get almost all their tourists from a single city, after all.

The Hooffields and McColts aren't examples of small towns at all; they're two isolated enclaves that only house members of their extended families.

That makes them a rural enclave, but we never see them forbid outsiders from visiting. I can understand why no one else would want to move there.

Even then, there was no actual "poverty or food insecurity" going on. The two families had inadvertently set up a self-sustaining dynamic, where the McColts received food from the Hooffields and likewise sent them building materials in return, which ended up making both families live sustainable lives despite neither being part of any wider community.

Relying on your enemy to fire materials at you that you use to feed/house yourself is not exactly a secure method of sustaining oneself.

So that particular town isn't really useful as a point of comparison to Equestria in general.

It's a better point of comparison for Equestria in general than Ponyville, the immediate suburb of the nation's capital! Most rural communities are extremely hard to get to before we had either trains or highways that could reach them. If you want an example of a well-off suburban community, like Loudoun County, Ponyville is a perfect fit. If you want an example of actual rural communities, Hayseed Swamps is a better fit.

That efficiency (along with several other factors, such as weather control, no need for clothes, etc.) means that general infrastructure can, for most areas, be effectively nonexistent and still allow for a functioning society.

It also means they can afford to build more infrastructure per person with their productivity. Based on what we've actually seen in the show, they've got just as much capital goods per capita as the US does.

It's fairly self-evident throughout the show that ponies do what they love, as evidenced by their cutie marks, rather than worrying about money.

As above, half the mane 6 work jobs for the money, rather than doing what they love. Rainbow, Pinkie and Twilight might enjoy working as weather control, pastry chef, and librarian, but they are doing that for a paycheck while they pursue their real dreams. And again, Hayseed Turniptruck. I'll agree ponies working for their paycheck are generally less interesting than ponies pursuing a dream, so you wouldn't expect to see them as much. Oh, and let's not forget Zephyr Breeze, who after he couldn't find a job almost starved to death as a homeless person.

The skyscrapers in that shot of Manehattan aren't tenements (and, in fact, don't seem likely to be residences at all)

What makes you say their not residences? And yeah, I'd say the Hooffields and the McCoys live in a slumlike multi-unit housing situation.

Cherry Jubilee's factory isn't automated; Applejack has to run on the wheel in order to move the conveyor belt, and as mentioned that's just so that a small number of ponies can separate the cherries by color.

Right, it's an investment of factory infrastructure so that a small number of ponies can do the work of a larger number of ponies.

With regards to Thoth's reasoning, it's an extrapolation, but one that much better fits with what we see than the idea that there are large-scale production lines somewhere.

It really doesn't. Barges aren't built to haul small numbers of goods, giant bridges aren't built to shuffle a few travelers around, these are the base components of a national economy that moves large amounts of freight around, and if it's moving all this freight then that freight is coming from a factory.

Likewise, there's no real evidence of large-scale manufacturing plants or processes; the closest we ever see is the weather production center in Cloudsdale, and there's nothing to compare that to since it makesweather, making it a singularly poor example with regards to extrapolation

For transportation, sure. Cloudsdale is mobile, it doesn't need to transport goods anywhere because it moves them itself. But if you're saying the weather factory doesn't work for extrapolation, that means no one has ever had the idea of making a factory for things other than weather. What's really weird about the weather factory in particular is that it seems like half the Pegasi have weather cutie marks, so if their was one product that I would say "yeah, this could totally be crafted by huge numbers of ponies without much equipment," it would be clouds. Apparently Equestrian society has just developed sophisticated enough automation techniques that it's cheaper to have a factory produce most of the weather, even with an over-supplied market for manual labor in this industry.

Given that virtually everything else is handled by singular ponies or small groups working together with minimal equipment, it's far more likely that's how it goes for manufacturing as well.

I don't know what you mean by "small groups," but when I'm looking at these construction scenes, there don't seem to be that many fewer ponies than there would be humans doing the same job. They have heavy construction equipment, definitely not minimal.

My guess is that you're suggesting that this necessarily indicates a number of related industries that likewise require human manufacturing techniques and processes in order to exist, .

Yup.

quite frankly this is an extrapolation that isn't supported by what we see.

It's far less of an extrapolation than a bunch of independent ponies crafting cranes and other heavy equipment, which we never see. It's the Occam's Razor explanation based on what we actually witness in the show.

No, Rarity makes clothes for everypony, celebrity or no.

So do Savil Row tailors if you pay them enough.

She's not mechanized at all, and is able to be successfulbecauseof that.

You mean other than her mechanical sewing machine, which is sometimes hand-operated and sometimes magic powered? You step into the back of a bespoke tailor's shop and you will see the same amount of equipment, and probably the same production times.

Remember, Sassy's advice is apparently typical for her

Right, and if Sassy is suggesting this production-line process for high-end clothing boutiques, where did she learn the production-line process from?

So if anything, that suggests that the production line method of doing things isn't standard, if for no other reason than, as Sassy alludes, it predicts failure in the market.

It has to be standard somewhere to have collected enough data points to predict failure. By their very nature tailors of fitted outfits are not the most optimal industry for production lines of course, so I'm not surprised when Sassy brought a technique to the fashion industry where clothing is sold purely as a status and prestige good, it failed miserably.

The vast majority of the buildings in that shot don't have a dozen floors, let alone "dozens."

Are we looking at the same picture? You can see two identical buildings that appear to have about 12 floors near the bridge, and they are shorter than most of the other buildings in the picture we can see.

That said, those are almost certainly all office buildings, rather than residential ones.

That's a pretty big assumption.

the fact that we can see a train on the left side of the frame heading inward could point to a large commuter population

That's an even bigger assumption. Rather than a "whole bunch of ponies live in this city" you're saying the existence of trains suggests a vast commuter population? I think Occam's Razor is gonna point to the former. Additionally, trains could be connecting this piece of Manehatten we see here with the equivalent of Brooklyn and Queens. (To be clear, when I was saying millions of ponies lived in Manehatten, I was treating it as analogous to all of New York City, not just Manhatten Borough.)

I don't see enough buildings in that shot to necessarily indicate that you need to have a population anywhere near the size of what you're talking about.

Yes, that was a representative sample shot, that's not a picture of Manehatten, that is a picture of one slice of Manehatten, since I didn't want to do a frame-by frame of every shot from Rarity's song.

It would be just as plausible - possibly even more plausible - to suggest that there's a small handful of ponies who simply go around Equestria asking various towns if they need things built, and then simply build them there and move on.

This seems like a repeat of above, but again this version sounds way less plausible, based on all the ponies and equipment we've seen. I think we're entering a basic state where we just think different basic assumptions are more or less plausible, and I don't see any way we could reasonably convince the other at this point.

In point of fact, he was; he was gathering power so that he could confront the alicorns, whom he seemed reluctant to face before getting some major buffing accomplished first. He didn't even try to drain Discord until he was already extremely powerful.

That's a fair point. In fact, I think the last pony we saw him drain before confronting the alicorns was Shining Armor, who is a pretty good guess for class levels (other than the Mane 6 themselves, but it seems like Discord was trying to keep them secret from Tirek.)

Notwithstanding ponies with royal titles, and foreign ponies (e.g. the Duke and Duchess of Maretonia), none of the ponies who live in Canterlot seem to have any sort of feudal nobility to them at all.

1. You're absolutely right.
2. I've had this conversation before, which made me realize something: Have I never pointed you at Oliver? This guy has done more to analyze the setting than anyone else. He's written blogs for pretty much every episode ever specifically on what that episode can tell us about the setting, as well as movies and EQG specials and such. A lot of other really smart users chime in and add extra points that may have gotten missed, making it possibly the most definitive reference guide short of just re-watching an episode. I cannot recommend him highly enough, someone as sophisticated in their analysis of the show as you would clearly get a kick out of his blogs.

Remember, time in Equestria passes on a 1:1 scale with the human world that we see in the Equestria Girls productions (we know this, because Luna tells Twilightin Equestriathat she has three days to get her crown back in the first film, which is how long she has in the human world as well).

Yeah, that's problematic. My guess would be that the portal freezes the timeline while it's open, and that time moves differently while it is closed, but of course that's speculation.

Even then, the analogy doesn't hold up since Twilight hasn't had "advanced combat training" and was able to fight Starlight to a draw.

Not a draw, Starlight wanted the combat to play out that way, but I think we're honing in.

Twilight was essentially handicapping herself, and fighting below her level of ability.

I'm not sure there's a real difference between "Twilight never got around to getting trained in using magic in a combat situation" and "Twilight's handicapping herself." I agree in the sense that Twilight was handicapped by lack of training and practice with her alicorn magic beforehand. But she definitely wasn't holding back in her fight at that moment.

That's a school of thought that's built around starting with the mechanics and then fleshing out the character from there, rather than vice versa.

Yup. I find I can always discover an interesting role-playing angle with a character once I make sure they can do something fun in a fight.

that and older edition materials; I really love those).

Here here! Thanks to you I ended up re-reading most of Fiendish Codex 2.

You know, you could just go back and re-read the chapter in question.:derpytongue2

I did that, I still couldn't figure out what was powering his spells pre-Sev.

However, although he can use the horn's dark magic, it's not enough on its own to power his main spellcasting.

Wait. I thought Lex had all this skill and experience from adventuring in the Everglow. He certainly comes off as extremely proficient in his main spellcasting in this story. Are you saying he's almost never used it before the start of this story?

[Alzrius]

8744009

It's the best proposition we have, especially if ponies have wireless transmission. Based purely on what we actually see, hydroelectric is a more logical idea than assuming they have irrigation, especially when Pegasi actively manage the weather.

It's not the best proposition we have; again, we don't see evidence of electrical materials (or wireless transmission) in Ponyville, which undercuts the entire idea of the dam being hydroelectric. Given that, almost any other function that dams serve becomes more plausible. Irrigation would still be useful regardless of the fact that ponies control the weather because that would make it so that large-scale rainfall didn't need to be near-constantly scheduled in order to keep nearby farmlands supplied with water, for instance. The would also be useful to maintain a reservoir of drinking water, as another idea. But hydroelectric generation is simply not supported by everything we've seen in Ponyville.

I'm not sure what you mean by "small," if we say that 1 pony can equal the work of ten humans then that's a larger construction crew than almost any building you would see. And wrecking balls and cranes (in Mare Do Well we actually get to hear the whirring of motors and sputtering of a combustion engine as a crane lever gets stuck, that's not magic powering that crane) require a huge amount of outside assistance to build, maintain and transport. The most direct logic that requires us to make the fewest assumptions is that there's an Equestrian equivalent of Caterpillar building this heavy construction equipment.

That assumption is neither direct, nor logical, and it requires a very large series of supporting assumptions that don't fit with what we see. There's simply no evidence ever displayed in the show that there's a large company engaged in mass production of heavy machinery. The presumption that the mere existence of such machinery necessarily indicates the existence of such an industry doesn't follow for how we're never - in almost two hundred episodes - seen such a thing. On the other hand, we have seen automated production machines that are powered by magic (i.e. the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000), which also whirred and sputtered. For that matter, so do small machines like Tank's little helicopter, which even glows with a magic aura when in use. Given that, the idea that other machines can be categorically stated to not rely on magic is quite clearly not the case.

If one pony can do the work of ten humans (which is a rather arbitrary number), then that's all the more reason why you won't see automated production, since there's no need for it. The ponies are already doing a phenomenal job on their own, and so mechanical assistance can only provide so much help, which cuts down on any sort of necessity that would require large-scale manufacturing.

Based on what we've seen it's definitely large-scale. Whether there are ponies who all happen to get manufacturing cutie marks at the right levels is unknown, but we know that plenty of ponies work day jobs not directly tied to their cutie marks (like Pinkie, Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle).

Based on what we've seen it's definitely not large-scale. Given that we don't see large numbers of ponies with production cutie marks, there's no reason to assume that there must be a lot. From there, we can determine that there are either A) not much need for ponies to go into production, or B) a lot of ponies who work in production despite it having nothing to do with their special talents. Option "A" is a much closer match with what we see. Likewise, the ponies you cited do have jobs related to their cutie marks: Rainbow Dash's being a weather pony is related to her speed, as she demonstrated in her very first appearance in Friendship is Magic - Part 1 (and in how Rarity, when she had Rainbow Dash's cutie mark in Magical Mystery Cure, tried to manipulate the weather). Pinkie Pie makes cakes and sweets because that's related to throwing parties (cakes being a staple of the sort of parties that she throws). Twilight Sparkle's element is magic, and she studies magic constantly, maintaining the local library before becoming Princess of Friendship and studying friendship...which, as the show tells us, is magic.

Sure, and a rural cherry canning plant in the 1950s would probably need no more than 60 workers to run it, so it's good to see the ten to one population ratio tested out.

Leaving aside that I'm not sure where you're getting those numbers from, Cherry Jubilee's ranch wasn't practicing canning. The operation she had Twilight, Applejack, and the others running was being "cherry sorters" (as Twilight says), separating the red cherries from the yellow cherries.

There's no freight car that has ever been shown, Bloomberg definitely qualifies as freight. So we know ponies could do it, the question is if they've ever stripped out the seats in their passenger cars to move goods (other than the time they did it with desserts). There's no magical device shop shown either, it's a much bigger assumption that relies on many more unseen factors to use that explanation for how ponies have large equipment in Ponyville than "they stick them in the train cars sometimes."

Leaving aside that we the shop we see at the beginning of Magic Duel could very well be a magic shop (the shopkeeper knew exactly what the Alicorn Amulet was, after all), the presumption that the ponies do ship freight and that the reason we don't see them doing so is because they just retrofit passenger cars is the very definition of an assumption being made to support a predetermined conclusion. That we see a passenger car without seats in MMMystery on the Friendship Express is likewise unconvincing; the doors and windows are still too small to move bulk goods larger than a few large cakes. If there were regular freight shipments, then by your own logic there should be freight cars designed to handle them, but such things are never shown. Ergo, we can conclude that freight shipments don't happen, which undercuts the idea of large-scale transportation of bulk goods. Hence, based on what we see, we can conclude that Equestrian society doesn't work like that. That means that, if we don't presume anything and rely only on what we see, there's a different explanation for the few isolated instances of heavy machinery that we see.

You mean like Carousel Boutique, where Rarity is always trying to get business with famous celebrities and Canterlot ponies? Or those fancy restaurants where ponies in formal wear are seen dining? You think their primary market is the local farmers?

Rarity's desire to come to the attention of famous celebrities is very clearly not out of any sort of desire to increase tourism in Ponyville; it's because she simply wants widespread recognition and acclaim. Hence the plot of Sweet and Elite, which had Rarity celebrating being "the pony everypony should know" for its own sake, rather than because she thought it would draw in new business. Likewise for why she rejected Sassy Saddles' advice about large-scale production of the Princess Dress. Saying that Rarity's boutique is primarily focused on attracting tourism quite clearly isn't supported by what we see.

As for the formal restaurants in Ponyville; yes, they cater primarily to the local population. Why would they not? Most of the ponies in Ponyville don't seem to be farmers, and there's no reason to suggest that they wouldn't enjoy going out to a fancy restaurant from time to time. It's less of a presumption to say that they cater to the locals than it is to say that there must be a large tourism influx to support those businesses, since that's not the case for Rarity's boutique (which is the very definition of a luxury store, since clothes are quite clearly not mandatory for ponies).

Twilight Time is solely about local kids, I would agree it has nothing to do with tourism. Those other two episodes, however, are two of the best examples we have of tourism in action, you can't really dismiss them as "aberrations." We have examples of large numbers of tourists visiting in Fame and Misfortune, though I admit they are there for a singular event, not the regular trickle like ordinary tourists asking Fluttershy where the Ponyville Belltower is. I'd say Once Upon a Zeppelin is 90% of the show's body of evidence about the thriving tourism industry in general, but it has nothing to do with Ponyville so it's not relevant.

They're absolutely aberrations: as you yourself admitted, Fame and Misfortune was a singular event, and so isn't indicative of anything, except that such things are quite clearly not the norm. Once Upon a Zeppelin makes it clear that - again, as you noted - Ponyville doesn't really have a tourism industry, since Iron Will had to create a fake "Cruise of the Princesses" to draw ponies in. Even then, the underlying presumption was that the zeppelin trip was itself a luxury, since Twilight's parents didn't know about the Princess aspect of it and still referred to it as a "relaxing vacation." (That also tracks with what Rarity says in her "Becoming Popular" song, where she refers to a similar airship as a "fancy yacht.") So that tells us that Zeppelin cruises are a luxury industry also, but that's nothing particular to Ponyville. (Also, if a singular instance of something is 90% of your evidence, then there's really not much basis for suggesting that it has wider regularity.)

You mean most of the Canterlot ponies that we know by name, since the show is set in Ponyville ponies visiting from out of town that we learn the name of are of course going to be here for social reasons.

And again, those are the ones we see. There's no reason to assume that there are a lot of other Canterlot ponies visiting Ponyville otherwise. That's an assumption, and one that isn't really supported by what we're shown in the source material.

They do when the next town over is a much bigger town, and they are literally the only place available if you don't want to fly. The Hamptons get almost all their tourists from a single city, after all.

Except, as already established, Ponyville doesn't really get much tourism, period. Rarity's boutique quite clearly caters to mostly locals, cultivating a wider appeal because she wants to branch out (and hence open more stores elsewhere) to fulfill her personal desires, rather than bringing more ponies into Ponyville to achieve greater financial success. Likewise, we don't see many Canterlot ponies in Ponyville to begin with anyway, so that further undercuts that idea. Likewise, Canterlot has train access that goes to other cities anyway, so Ponyville is hardly "the only place available" to them.

Tourism, as an industry, only seems to be a financial draw for Las Pegasus, and even then that's because it's a casino and gaming town, along with having various shows and events. Ponyville, while it certainly has some local landmarks (much like everywhere else) doesn't really go out of its way to commoditize them that we see.

That makes them a rural enclave, but we never see them forbid outsiders from visiting. I can understand why no one else would want to move there.

A rural enclave isn't the same thing as a rural town. There's literally nothing there except for two multi-generational families continuing their multi-generational feud (and in doing so, inadvertently supporting each other). "Forbidding outsiders from visiting" is a non-issue. You can have an enclave without them having some sort of policy of exclusion.

Relying on your enemy to fire materials at you that you use to feed/house yourself is not exactly a secure method of sustaining oneself.

It pretty clearly was for the Hooffields and McColts, since they'd been maintaining that particular lifestyle for generations. In a very real way, they were living up to the usual pony values of cooperation, since they were effectively sharing their respective specialties with each other in a way that guaranteed their mutual prosperity. They were just being rude about doing it.

It's a better point of comparison for Equestria in general than Ponyville, the immediate suburb of the nation's capital! Most rural communities are extremely hard to get to before we had either trains or highways that could reach them. If you want an example of a well-off suburban community, like Loudoun County, Ponyville is a perfect fit. If you want an example of actual rural communities, Hayseed Swamps is a better fit.

Except you're ignoring what the show itself has told us: that that particular town (I'm still not sure where you're getting that name from) is particularly hard to reach. The very fact that that's mentioned so often makes it clear that it's unusual compared to most towns in Equestria, otherwise it wouldn't be considered notable. By that point, almost any other non-urbanized locale that we see would be a better point of comparison, presuming that you took local circumstances into account (e.g. Appleloosa is a new town).

It also means they can afford to build more infrastructure per person with their productivity. Based on what we've actually seen in the show, they've got just as much capital goods per capita as the US does.

That strikes me as backward. If the local ponies are more efficient at what they do than human beings are, then infrastructure becomes superfluous by definition. Infrastructure functions as a support system, one which the ponies wouldn't need because they can already do the vast majority of what their community needs with very little mechanical assistance. Likewise, we know that they don't have as much in the way of capital goods (i.e. goods that are used in producing other goods, rather than being bought by consumers), simply because there's no real evidence that such capital goods exist in the first place, let alone per capita (i.e. for each individual). We know, for example, that they have far less in the way of animal products (e.g. leather) and food processing (e.g. meat processing) due to their being vegetarians. We know that they don't use as many clothes as we do, and so any presumed production of related materials (e.g. canvas, elastic, etc.) will be likewise less. They quite clearly don't have as many capital goods, especially per capita, as the United States does.

As above, half the mane 6 work jobs for the money, rather than doing what they love. Rainbow, Pinkie and Twilight might enjoy working as weather control, pastry chef, and librarian, but they are doing that for a paycheck while they pursue their real dreams. And again, Hayseed Turniptruck. I'll agree ponies working for their paycheck are generally less interesting than ponies pursuing a dream, so you wouldn't expect to see them as much. Oh, and let's not forget Zephyr Breeze, who after he couldn't find a job almost starved to death as a homeless person.

How do you know that they work for money? Instances of actual monetary transactions are certainly present in the show, but given the lack of taxation, rent or mortgage payments, utility bills, student loan debts, or other necessities, most of what the ponies would seem to need to buy could likely be categorized as "food" and "luxuries." We could just as easily say that Equestria has some sort of basic income which allows everypony to work only so that they can pay for luxuries. (The major issue here is that Sweet Apple Acres, in the first few seasons, seems to be perpetually on the verge of insolvency...but there's no real explanation for what that means in practice. If Applejack "lost the farm," who would own it? What are they buying that's apparently put them into debt? Since they don't seem to live extravagantly, wouldn't that mean that their business is simply unable to support them, and so should eventually be lost in the later seasons anyway?)

Beyond that, the examples you listed don't really hold up: Rainbow Dash is a weather pony because that's a part of her dream (she wants to be a Wonderbolt, certainly, but that's also a different manifestation of the same thing that she loves doing). Likewise for Pinkie and Twilight, as explained above. Ditto for Hayseen Turnip Truck, as mentioned before; he's following his destiny because that's who he is, as shown by his name and cutie mark. As for Zephyr Breeze, he could find a job: he was just so stricken with fear of failure that he couldn't stick with it. As soon as his personal issues were brought up and resolved, he was able to fend for himself just fine. He's the apex of the point that employment isn't really an issue in Equestria: personal fulfillment is.

What makes you say their not residences? And yeah, I'd say the Hooffields and the McCoys live in a slumlike multi-unit housing situation.

The Hooffields and McColts housing situations are only poor because one family isn't very skilled at using the building materials they're receiving, while the other has to clean up the splattered food that can't be salvaged. That, and a general lack of luxury goods that isn't really impairing their quality of life so much as it is just making things a little less palatable than they would be in a real community. They're hardly "slum-like." Likewise, their housing situations aren't really "multi-unit," since they're basically large family homes.

As for the buildings in Manehattan not being residences, well, I thought that was immediately obvious. The large horse-head on top of one building is pretty clearly a corporate logo. Likewise, the buildings themselves lack balconies on any of the windows, which might not be unusual on one or two apartment buildings, but hard to believe that over a dozen wouldn't have any, nor any other treatments such as fire escapes, awnings, roof gardens or really anything that you'd expect to find on at least one residential apartment building. By themselves, this isn't conclusive - the entire point of Occam's razor, of course, is that you apply it only when things aren't conclusive - but the lack of them over any of the numerous buildings we see makes them seem more characteristic of office buildings than apartment buildings...and that's completely ignoring (not incorrectly) the issue of parallelism to downtown Manhattan.

Right, it's an investment of factory infrastructure so that a small number of ponies can do the work of a larger number of ponies.

And that's as far as it goes; a non-automated process for a very small (family-sized, really) number of ponies to do a largely-cosmetic job of separating cherries by color. That's not an argument for larger-scale infrastructure, it's an argument against it.

It really doesn't. Barges aren't built to haul small numbers of goods, giant bridges aren't built to shuffle a few travelers around, these are the base components of a national economy that moves large amounts of freight around, and if it's moving all this freight then that freight is coming from a factory.

The bridges were built so that the trains can get where they need to go, and as we've established the trains are there to move people rather than things. As for barges, can you confirm what episode we've seen those in? I ask because, looking at that picture of Manehattan you posted before, the ships there are a cruise liner and a sailboat, with no barge in sight. I also searched through the wiki, and couldn't find any examples of barges there either.

For transportation, sure. Cloudsdale is mobile, it doesn't need to transport goods anywhere because it moves them itself. But if you're saying the weather factory doesn't work for extrapolation, that means no one has ever had the idea of making a factory for things other than weather. What's really weird about the weather factory in particular is that it seems like half the Pegasi have weather cutie marks, so if their was one product that I would say "yeah, this could totally be crafted by huge numbers of ponies without much equipment," it would be clouds. Apparently Equestrian society has just developed sophisticated enough automation techniques that it's cheaper to have a factory produce most of the weather, even with an over-supplied market for manual labor in this industry.

There's an explanation for that, which is that the weather "industry" is extremely diversified; literally every town is going to need weather ponies if they want to have rain, snow, or pretty much any meteorological phenomena. Hence, that job is necessarily dispersed across Equestria, which gets back to the idea that most production is local, rather than centralized and nationally distributed.

Beyond that, the reason the weather factory doesn't work for extrapolation is that we don't know what the process is by which the weather is made. We can presume that it had some sort of non-industrial method by virtue of the fact that the pegasi used to produce the weather, if the play in Hearth's Warming Eve is anything to go by (and it might not be; remember, Starlight Glimmer casually dismisses the play as being "just a story" in A Hearth's Warming Tail, and isn't contradicted by Twilight, calling its accuracy into question), but the lack of knowledge here makes that a useless supposition. Likewise, you can't say that "that means that no one has had the idea of making a factory for things other than the weather," since it could just as well be that they did have such an idea and simply didn't find it to be feasible...which is entirely plausible, as factory work tends to be boring, dangerous, generate a lot of waste products, and there's simply no need shown that the ponies would need large amounts of something generated.

I don't know what you mean by "small groups," but when I'm looking at these construction scenes, there don't seem to be that many fewer ponies than there would be humans doing the same job. They have heavy construction equipment, definitely not minimal.

Except that those few ponies seem to handle all of the construction for Ponyville, since we've seen them time and again rather than seeing different ponies for different construction projects. That's sort of the point: they're taking care of the local aspect of a particular "industry" all on their own in that locality. Hence the "small group" designation.

Yup.

[...]

It's far less of an extrapolation than a bunch of independent ponies crafting cranes and other heavy equipment, which we never see. It's the Occam's Razor explanation based on what we actually witness in the show.

Again, no it's not. We never see anything regarding how large-scale products are made, and that includes the larger-scale productions that would be required to make them. Given that we have numerous examples of small groups of ponies handling extremely large jobs (e.g. Applejack and Big Mac apparently harvest the apples from Sweet Apple Acres all by themselves, which would require a lot more than two humans), and it seems just as likely that Flim and Flam built their fully-functional apple cider-squeezing Rube Goldberg device - including powering it - then that becomes the more reasonable assumption for similar instances of large jobs that use machines as well.

So do Savil Row tailors if you pay them enough.

That's not an extrapolation for Rarity's shop, though. She's able to handle orders for Ponyville, and apparently Canterlot and even Manehattan, all on her own. Which isn't surprising, since she's got her cutie mark magically boosting her talent in making orders, and since ponies treat clothes as a luxury anyway. She shows us, once again, that large-scale manufacturing simply isn't a necessity in Equestria.

You mean other than her mechanical sewing machine, which is sometimes hand-operated and sometimes magic powered? You step into the back of a bespoke tailor's shop and you will see the same amount of equipment, and probably the same production times.

You quite clearly don't see the same production times, since Rarity was able to meet the artificially-inflated demand that Sassy generated in Canterlot Boutique, and did so mostly (if not completely) on her own, to the point where there was a line of ponies that could just have those dresses fitted onto them one after another. She has a sewing machine, sure, but it seems to be more of a convenience than a necessity.

Right, and if Sassy is suggesting this production-line process for high-end clothing boutiques, where did she learn the production-line process from?

Clearly it wasn't from successful boutiques, since she seems to have universally brought them to ruin by implementing that exact same process. The more germane question seems to be why she keeps trying a failed technique over and over again.

It has to be standard somewhere to have collected enough data points to predict failure. By their very nature tailors of fitted outfits are not the most optimal industry for production lines of course, so I'm not surprised when Sassy brought a technique to the fashion industry where clothing is sold purely as a status and prestige good, it failed miserably.

None of Equestria's industries are optimal for production lines; given that ponies can apparently return vastly greater results for individual work than humans can, along with their lionization of personal fulfillment, very few personal needs, control over their local environment, and other factors, they simply don't have any impetus to build up mass production (nor the infrastructure surrounding it). Sassy's "data point" could very well be her own previous failures, since she quite clearly was trying to push her own ideas at the expense of Rarity's.

Are we looking at the same picture? You can see two identical buildings that appear to have about 12 floors near the bridge, and they are shorter than most of the other buildings in the picture we can see.

A good rule of thumb for measure the number of floors in a building from the outside is that a particular row of windows is equal to one story, and that a window above or below that is for another story. If we use that metric, then the buildings closest to the bridge don't quite hit a dozen floors. I'd say they're in the high single-digits at the very most.

That's a pretty big assumption.

As explained above, it's really not; it's the most reasonable assumption for what we're shown, compared to saying that they're dwellings.

That's an even bigger assumption. Rather than a "whole bunch of ponies live in this city" you're saying the existence of trains suggests a vast commuter population? I think Occam's Razor is gonna point to the former. Additionally, trains could be connecting this piece of Manehatten we see here with the equivalent of Brooklyn and Queens. (To be clear, when I was saying millions of ponies lived in Manehatten, I was treating it as analogous to all of New York City, not just Manhatten Borough.)

Leaving aside the issues of scaling up "Manehattan" to mean all of New York City rather than Manhattan itself, I'm suggesting that the existence of a large number of office buildings in that shot, combined with an inward-moving train on the bridge, necessarily means that at least some of the ponies who work in those buildings live across the river. Hence, they're commuting into work. Given that we don't know that there is an Equestrian version of other boroughs, that doesn't seem like a very large assumption. To be clear, they might be living elsewhere in Manehattan (the entire city can't just be workplace buildings, after all), but either way if we make the very reasonable assumption that what we're seeing are places of business, then the ponies who work in them have to live somewhere.

Yes, that was a representative sample shot, that's not a picture of Manehatten, that is a picture of one slice of Manehatten, since I didn't want to do a frame-by frame of every shot from Rarity's song.

Sure, but for the purposes of this discussion that's what we're discussing. As a representative shot, it doesn't seem to represent a population of millions of residents; but rather a large number of office buildings. That's going to necessitate different results than if those were places where families live.

This seems like a repeat of above, but again this version sounds way less plausible, based on all the ponies and equipment we've seen. I think we're entering a basic state where we just think different basic assumptions are more or less plausible, and I don't see any way we could reasonably convince the other at this point.

I suppose we might very well be at an impasse, which going by what the show has taught me, means that I should ransom your friends in order to make you give me your magi-, er, no, wait, that's not right. Ahem, I suppose we do simply have different ideas about what's plausible, though I don't think that means that discussing them is necessarily without worth.

That's a fair point. In fact, I think the last pony we saw him drain before confronting the alicorns was Shining Armor, who is a pretty good guess for class levels (other than the Mane 6 themselves, but it seems like Discord was trying to keep them secret from Tirek.)

Shining Armor is pretty clearly different from your average pony, since Twilight herself noted that the force field around Canterlot was one that only he could cast. Admittedly, by the beginning of The Crystal Empire - Part 1, he seems to have taught it to Cadance, but given that she's an alicorn I suppose it's not surprising that she could pull it off too.

1. You're absolutely right.
2. I've had this conversation before, which made me realize something: Have I never pointed you at Oliver? This guy has done more to analyze the setting than anyone else. He's written blogs for pretty much every episode ever specifically on what that episode can tell us about the setting, as well as movies and EQG specials and such. A lot of other really smart users chime in and add extra points that may have gotten missed, making it possibly the most definitive reference guide short of just re-watching an episode. I cannot recommend him highly enough, someone as sophisticated in their analysis of the show as you would clearly get a kick out of his blogs.

Hrm, I wasn't aware of this person. My thanks for pointing their work out!

Yeah, that's problematic. My guess would be that the portal freezes the timeline while it's open, and that time moves differently while it is closed, but of course that's speculation.

Honestly, I was ready to throw in the proverbial towel on reconciling things with the Equestria Girls universe when I realized that, since that universe maintains parallel analogues of each individual, that should mean that by the time of Friendship Games human-Cadance should be pregnant, since Flurry Heart's birth should be imminent. The fact that she doesn't even seem to be married (judging by how human-Shining Armor was blushing when he was caught staring at her, which seems more like a "longing from afar" thing than "married couple"), that means that the two universes are about to fall out of whack with each other in a pretty bad way.

Not a draw, Starlight wanted the combat to play out that way, but I think we're honing in.

We've been over that; there's a distinction to be drawn between Starlight's strategic goal and her actual combat ability.

I'm not sure there's a real difference between "Twilight never got around to getting trained in using magic in a combat situation" and "Twilight's handicapping herself." I agree in the sense that Twilight was handicapped by lack of training and practice with her alicorn magic beforehand. But she definitely wasn't holding back in her fight at that moment.

I don't think she was deliberately holding back; I was saying that her lack of use of her alicorn magic was essentially her handicapping herself - inadvertently - because she's still fighting like a unicorn, forgetting to use the greater power she had (or simply deciding not to use it), but that seems iffier since I'm still convinced she did use it in Castle Mane-ia and The Hooffields and McColts. There honestly doesn't seem to be much in the way of formal combat training in Equestria anyway.

Yup. I find I can always discover an interesting role-playing angle with a character once I make sure they can do something fun in a fight.

Right, but I meant coming up with a character's powers - combat or otherwise - independently of system considerations, and then figuring out how to generate that under the Pathfinder rules in a way that's not only true to the character, but effective compared to other characters as well. That last part is important, since I've seen a lot of people say that you could build various fictional characters in Pathfinder by kludging together various class abilities, feats, and spells...but the result is usually so sub-par that it's not really worthwhile. If you want to play Scorpion (from Mortal Kombat), you could probably put together some sort of undead monk character that multiclasses with a fire-using kineticist, but it almost certainly won't be a very adroit build.

Here here! Thanks to you I ended up re-reading most of Fiendish Codex 2.

It says something about me that I didn't include Third Edition when I said "older-edition materials." To me, that still means Second Edition and earlier.

I did that, I still couldn't figure out what was powering his spells pre-Sev.

In terms of his arcane magic, it was his waiting for the various solstices and Equinoxes...mostly. His dark magic and (when he acquired it later) his divine magic replenish themselves normally.

Wait. I thought Lex had all this skill and experience from adventuring in the Everglow. He certainly comes off as extremely proficient in his main spellcasting in this story. Are you saying he's almost never used it before the start of this story?

No, he has used it quite a bit. The main reason for this is because he's figured out how to utilize small reservoirs of power that let him dip into his primary spellcasting without depleting it. The primary way is that he can take ability damage (ability burn really, since the damage can't be magically healed; he has to rest to recover it) to his physical ability scores to retain his spells after he's cast them (2 points of damage is worth one spell level in this regard). He's also got his circlet, which allows him to use three spell levels per day for free.

That's not very much, however, and it's forced him to become extremely discriminating with the magic he uses, as well as relying heavily on his dark magic and divine spellcasting. Even then, during the period between the Crystal Empire's return and when he faced Tirek, Lex was (having been thrown forward in time and having nowhere to live) residing at the Castle of the Two Sisters. Shortly after he got there, he found the Tree of Harmony, and it was exactly the sort of major magical battery he needed (simply absorbing the magical energy the Tree passively radiated didn't harm him; but when he tried to force open the chest, the Tree basically slapped him into another dimension: Everglow). So during that time he was able to use his primary spellcasting much more than he otherwise would, as well as explore the magic that Princess Celestia left behind when she relocated to Canterlot.

[James Fire]

Creature had slithered over to the churning mass of greenish mist that it had conjured around Lex before he had managed to force it out of her body.

The creature?

[Alzrius]

9217584 Whoops! Fixed now!