Data-Scientist-in-Training and voracious fic reader. Occasionally edits/proofreads for people he likes, and even publishes story chapters once-in-a-blue-moon. Thinks he's a reneighssance pone.
Supporting Original Characters4,070 stories ·1,822 members
Seattle's Angels1,255 stories ·2,656 members
Equestria Daily2,248 stories ·708 members
Stories on Goodreads28,595 stories ·492 members
Footnotes of Awesome79 stories ·95 members
Time Action Glory Challenge!176 stories ·95 members
Dragons, as a rule, are not subtle creatures.
Dragonlord Ember is far from a typical dragon.
Garble wishes he had a sane dragon for a Dragonlord, instead of some Cunning Optimist who's going to get them all killed.
Change is coming to dragonkind, one way or another.
Received an Honorable Mention in FanOfMostEverything's Imposing Sovereigns Contest. (It was in the "Ember the Mad" slot.)
Edited by SirNotAppearingInThisFic.
Cover Art borrowed from DeathPwny.
Page generated in 0.031 seconds
Total duration
1,021 users online
1,595,906 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Ok, I laughed hard enough at the intro that you earned a like just based on that.
I understood that reference.
Garble Gecko.
This makes perfect sense.
Splendid!
8033721
Glad you thought so.
8033657 8033678
Ember got to be in the position of a matriarch who has to make do with being proud when her kid puts the paste on the paper instead of in their mouth. Everybody's got to start somewhere, right?
That's not to say there was nothing truly museum-worthy in the mix, though.
Glad you had as much fun reading the footnotes as I had writing them!
And I'm also really glad that prologue got a good laugh out of you.
Insanity is a mentality that deviates from group consensus. Driving your entire civilization mad can be tricky, but having an obedience-compelling artifact definitely helps.
Fantastic story of how dragons had civilization forced upon them, even among the most grudging adopters. I can only imagine what Spike thought of these developments. Indeed, I'd love to see what Celestia thought of them. I don't think she saw this one coming. Plus, the idea of Ember getting just as much pony lore as Twilight did that of dragons is a fantastic idea in general.
Really, there's nothing here I didn't love. Thank you for it, and best of luck in the judging.
The great dragoness raisers her head to the sky noticing the sudden use of her name...She turns to hatchling that she was teaching, "Your girlfriend causing quite the stir among those fools it seems, hmmm her actions seem to be a reminder of what dragonkind was before the great collapse of Shangri-la and what it might be again...."
"She is not my girlfriend." Was the young drake's reply, curt and short, the way he cut his attempts at his mentor figure shipping the two of them together.
"Oh surely you jest, you gave her the center piece of the royal hoard surely you realize..." a long pause ensued as the the elder of the two looked upon the confused face of her junior, "I can't believe this...she never bothered to..." A single roar was heard across the multiverse as the young dragon looked on in shock as a young purple alicorn materialized in front of a particularly peeved Dragon Goddess of Chaos, Monsters, and Motherhood.
"Oh thank Celestia your here I just finished reading this primer on draconic social traditions and I just realized that..."
"That Spike giving Ember the Bloodstone Scepter is the equivalent of putting a ring on it?" Tiamat inquired of Twilight arching one of her eyebrows, "And you just now realized this?"
The poor alicorn bobbed her head up and down in a rather quick fashion and Dragon decided to send a note to Faust Epona to tell her how badly her eldest daughter had blew the hooch on this one.
Any good mom was a stickler for education of the children after all.
I think Talc should have the last line to Garble saying Greed is Good.
Yes, Minister.
8033798 To reply to other comment y'left - that's my 'Stuff that tickles me in the perfect way', so can't easily answer it because, well, it's sort of a 'Either it does or doesn't scenario and this one has no real flaws sticking out to critique, on my end :)
8034032
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Senpai noticed me!
Ahem.
"Sister, come quick!" Luna said(1), snatching a startled Celestia in her telekinetic aura and teleporting the both of them into the skies above Stalliongrad.
After shaking her head and ensuring she didn't plummet to the busy streets below, Celestia fixed her sister with one of her medium rare glares of irritation. "Luna, what is the meaning of this?"
Unfortunately for Celestia, Luna had long since grown immune to every last one of Celestia's lesser glares. "Look!" Luna said as she once more grabbed Celestia's snout in her telekinesis and twisted it towards the Problem.
She swiftly forgot her erstwhile irritation.
"What in my name(2)..."
A massive hoard(3) of dragons, ranging from adults to whelps, was marching towards the city.
"By Star Swirl's famed invisible pants(4)!" Luna shouted, chipping some shingles off an unfortunate roof. "They're bringing..."
After a moment of Celestial squinting, followed by an air-lensing spell, Celestia turned back to her sister. "Statues, among other things."
"The fiends intend to shatter our walls with golems of stone and steel, then! We must rally the troops at once!"
"Nay, sister. Hold your horses," Celestia said, the wheels within wheels of her brain visibly turning. "
Some of the letters I've been receiving from Princess Twilight are beginning to make sense. I think we should have a word with whichever dragon is in charge."
"The largest, then?"
"Most likely."
(1) The words "Luna shouted" are reserved for instances involving actual property damage.
(2) People at the top have unique lexical difficulties.
(3) The proper name for a large gathering of dragons.
(4) Some people are more creative about resolving the aforementioned lexical difficulties than others.
8034222
I'd say Spike is a lot closer to golden dragons in diet and demeanor than to any sort of chromatic dragon I've ever heard of, but perhaps Tiamat would be able to look past such details for his sake. Thanks for the scene!
8034552
But then we'd have nested references. Don't want this getting too crazy.
8034558
Can't fault you for that. Taste is a fickle, hard-to-pin-down thing.
Welp. I guess I'll have to settle for 2nd place now.
8035587
I mean, it can't be that good.
Shouldn't "bloodstone scepter" be capitalized for consistency with the rest of the fic?
8035813
Oops! Fixing...
Clever, funny, and an interesting take on dragon culture. Good stuff.
Do wish it had been a bit longer, if only to smooth things out a bit. Word count may have been a factor, still a bit rough.
The r-?
8038428
Ember, at this point, is still getting used to the fact that she is the head honcho now.
Love your profile pic, by the way. Both cats and snakes are pretty awesome.
A fun story about Ember being a much-better-than-expected Dragonlord. Though I can't help but think Celestia might come to regret that when she has to deal with a thriving nation of industrious, larger than life dragons living right next door.
8040106
Glad you had fun following the rise of dragonkind.
And why wouldn't Celestia be happy about it? Twilight assures her that their Dragonlord is perfectly friendly.
(A sequel dealing with the effects of modernized dragons on pony (and other) society could be fascinating, come to think of it... No promises just yet.)
Simplistic, but pretty good.
8040718
Like banker dragons, for example? Because I´m not sure teaching a race of overpowered, fire breathing lizards defined by greed the joys of capitalism and globalization was a good idea to begin with.
8041203
Thank you.
8041272
Well, I'm not claiming it'd all be sunshine and rainbows. A loan shark would be way less intimidating than a loan dragon, after all. And I don't currently have a handle on just how international lending would work, or how extradition for contracts in default would function, or... Well, international trade is complicated.
It would certainly make the world more interesting, though.
8041272
see, the ferengi were bad enough, but when your ferengi can destroy a small town...
that cover art...
reminds me of Napoleon
8042788
Makes sense, as the art is an allusion to a painting of him.
This is the sexiest two-word phrase ever
8043593
Nah. Doesn't have nearly enough consecutive vowels in it.
8043040
ahh that would explain it
Amusing and, as far as I know or care, an unique take on dragons and on Ember's career as their leader. Of course Garble would be swept up in the progress, just like the rest, only meaner and less self-aware about being influenced than most.
8067922
It's amazing how fun it is to have a character at either extreme on the self-awareness spectrum.
Glad you enjoyed it!
8034222 headcanon accepted
8071635 Your welcome to use it...I don't have a good enough of an editor to pull a story off with this...in fact I don't have an editor period...
For the record, transliterate does not mean translate literally, but rather, to translate the letters into a different writing system. So what this is saying is that the phrase is actually pronounced "Cunning Optimist" in the draconic tongue, but they use different letters.
8073762
Blast it all, you're right. I'll have to go and fix that...
"Cunning optimist"... I've heard that particular phrase before, but where?
Anyway, good fic.
8081055
If it's been used elsewhere, that's news to me.
Glad you liked the fic.
"Vixen" as a term for female dragons? Never seen that before. <.< Also, is "firstfruits" a typo?
There are no typos here, good job :V
That was fun. ;D
8082827
I couldn't find anything definitive on the proper term for a female dragon, but vixen was the term I saw mentioned that I liked best. And I figured that since I was the author, and canon hadn't said anything on the subject...
Firstfruits is, in fact, a perfectly cromulent word. It refers, typically, to the first produce of a harvest. I'm using it a bit more figuratively here.
8082834
You are a knave and a scoundrel!
...
You are also right. Fixed!
Glad you enjoyed the fic!
8082834
I see what you did there, you son of a horse.
Well played!
And then began the Red Trade... the more unscrupulous ponies selling their own kind as dragon snacks.
Twas a dark day indeed... well, except for Luna, who found she could once again go back to gobbling up ponies.
For the Hoard! (hey, somebody had to say it in the first chapter)
8093913 Did you just took that from the 'Horizon: Zero Dawn' game ?
8094593
I'm more surprised nobody's made the "Whoever smelt it" joke.
8094614 That's in a game? I was just using the 'red' as symbolic of selling ponies to get crunched up in dragon jaws.
8096565 Well, there's a tribe raiding other tribes for people to sacrifice to the ''Sun god'', so that ''he'' gives them mercy from robotic animals attacks... and these raids are called ''Red raids''(Red-something) by others.
8100692 Eh, simple phrases are always bound to exist somewhere before anyone thinks of them anymore. 7 billion minds; only so many words.
Imposing Sovereigns reviews conclude with a look at the madmares.
I was convinced that "Cunning Optimist" had to be a term taken from Pratchett, but it seems not. It may be more a Garble story than an Ember one, but it's way up in the ranks of Garble stories. Suddenly introducing footnotes partway through the fic is a bit odd, and they're not all that amusing. But the last line has a lot going for it!
8241806
Not the first time I have been mistaken for Sir Pterry, and not just because of the footnotes. I'll take that as a compliment.
I'll admit, the footnotes crept in on a whim and I didn't feel like backtracking to make them consistent.
Glad you enjoyed the fic apart from that, though!
8242814
Being mistaken for TP (not that sort of TP) is definitely a compliment, yes!