2 - Princess Twilight
Sherbert - 10th of Plantation, 25 The Arcane Era
Lifegiver’s Clinic, Ponyville - Equestria
Not everyone appreciated Twilight’s ascension. As with the restoration with the Elements of Harmony, many foreign countries feared that this change to the international status quo was more preparation for war. After all, if the Princess of the Sun controlled the motions of the sun, and the Princess of the Night controlled the appearance of the heavens and could see the dreams of all living things, did that not mean the Princess of Friendship could manipulate the bonds of friendship to change the world however she pleased?
Operating on this logic, the Venisneighlian Parliament instigated a false flag operation, freeing Lord Tirek from his prison in Tartarus and planting evidence which implicated Hound as the nation responsible. However, the plan backfired horribly.
Princess Twilight and the Elements were able to defeat Lord Tirek by unlocking the full potential of the Elements of Harmony. In short, the Venisneighlian plot made Equestria stronger rather than weaker. Furthermore, the Knights of the Rampant Moon were dispatched to investigate Lord Tirek’s prison break and found pieces of a Hound Special Forces uniform near the broken ward-runes.
The investigation into Hounds involvement angered the small nation immensely, as they saw the entire investigation as an attempt to gain a hoofhold in the region to launch an invasion of their homeland. While Sir Heartstrings eventually discovered the uniform’s patch was a forgery and linked the forged patch to a factory in Venisneighlia, the damage had already been done, and Hound openly declared a State of Hostility against Equestria. One which lasts to this day, and makes the possibility of war with the small nation quite likely.
Venisneighlia, meanwhile, remains under heavy trade sanctions. A state of affairs which has greatly crippled the nation’s plastics manufacturing industries which depended on Equestrian minerals to operate. Naturally, Princess Celestia's actions here have greatly lowered the quality of Equestrian-Venisneighlian relations as well.
Despite making enemies abroad, Equestrians could not possibly have been happier with the current state of affairs. The Elements had not only stopped the soul-devouring demonic centaur, but had restored everypony’s magic in the process. To many, this meant Equestria was not just safe, it was invulnerable. Nothing could ever possibly threaten Equestria so long as the Elements stood strong in its defense.
This state of delusion lasted for eleven years. During these peaceful years, the Elements of Harmony went on many adventures, most of them light-hearted ones designed to keep them in the public eye. Such as retrieving long lost artifacts, participating in diplomatic talks as Celestia did her best to improve foreign relations, with a few important events along the way.
The most notable adventures include: Slaying a rogue dragon who was so fixed in his belief that by destroying Equestria the world would be brought into balance that the Elements could not stop him or change his mind. Befriending a rouge Pegasi with unnaturally sharp weather control powers who had plans to flood Manehattan. Saving the Empress of Neighpone from a sinking ship which had been attacked by the Dread Pirate Sudikahmen.
It is important to note that while the Elements were working mostly at home, the Knights of the Rampant Moon were doing more than their fair share of work as well. The Knights predominantly were dispatched to deal with foreign threats. Rogue spies, shadowy deals, and other conspiracies intended to bloody Equestria's nose were dealt with swiftly and at the source. The Knights are equally responsible for the eleven years of peace as the Elements, and indeed the Equestrian Guard as well, though both of those forces contributions to the peace tend to be ignored.
I winced as I realized what I wrote and what it sounded like. I turned my chair to the left, sheepishly looking at my poster of Sir Heartstrings in her signature human costume.
That thing had to be expensive. It definitely used magic to either let her squeeze into it or to make the inside larger than the outside, and to compensate for the different ways a pony body bent vs a human body. All that on top of looking almost totally lifelike. Pretty sure my Aunt and Uncle made it for her. I couldn’t see anypony else pulling that off.
“I um, I hope that doesn't sound like I’m sucking your dick too much there…” I said to the poster before turning back to my work.
Did she have one? Maybe. Possibly. She had been to dad’s clinic before. Futanization was super popular with mares living in the Crystal Empire. Like one in three popular. Sure, Lyra didn’t live there but she definitely would fit right in if she moved to it.
Of course, plenty of ponies come here for non-sexual things too. Maybe she just wanted more perky ears.
She’d also been single for decades now… Poor mare. She’d had true love once, apparently. Everypony old enough to remember the Era of Harmony said that.
And yet, almost everypony on the street would go “Oh, Lyra Heartstrings? That’s Princess Luna’s weird bodyguard who dresses up like a human, right? Doesn't she teach an archeology class at Canterlot University?”
None of them knew that she was bucking awesome! Who else could take their fetish and turn it into a signature look, and still be taken seriously?
But even if you ignored that, she was STILL bucking awesome! She once held off an entire Griffon platoon by herself to recover her friend’s retreat, lasting for three days before being captured and then escaping in under twelve hours by biting her own legs off, sticking them back on, and letting her vampiric regeneration reattach them.
Made it back home, and said escaping was no big deal. Nopony learned what happened until I’d overheard her mumbling to herself about there being some pain still while I was walking past her in the park.
Sexy. Tough. Brave as anyone could ever be, and skilled enough to guard a Princess while Tartarus itself was attacking.
You go, mare! I am SO getting into your Archeology class! That’s step one of my plan to maybe get to hang out with you some day.
I put my pen to paper again, to resume my writing, when something suddenly occurred to me. Maybe the costume thing wasn’t a fetish of Lyra's.
After all, I knew her twin sister was somehow a biological human, despite using a magical disguise when in public. Public baths are awesome! Maybe Lyra dressed up to be closer to her sister?
Maybe. Yeah, actually that seemed probable, really.
I frowned, looking down at my report. “Um, well… Maybe I’ll know one day. If I can ace this report,” I said with a weary sigh, my ears drooping.
If I didn’t pass this report, I wouldn’t get into the exchange program. If I didn’t get into the exchange program, Canterlot University wouldn’t accept me as a student due to lacking cultural studies. It had to be the exchange program. It’s credits counted as double. I didn’t have time to just take Prench Culture and Germane History classes on top of every other credit I’d need to get into CU. At which point I could take Lyra’s classes.
UGH! Why was it so hard for me to focus on history? I’d learned Neighponese just fine…
Back. To. Work!
Two major events occurred during the Peaceful Eleven which no examination of the Era would be complete without. Princess Cadence opened the doors of the Crystal Empire as Equestria’s first Red Light City, and the Emerald Hive opened itself to outside contact for the first time since its creation.
We will discuss these events in the order given above.
Many know of Princess Cadence as the ‘Princess of Love’, and assume she is able to act as a sort of ‘cupid’ and create love where there is none. This is not true. Princess Cadence’s power is limited to strengthening or diminishing the existing passions within a person’s soul. Unfortunately, her nature prevents her from seeing diminishing passions as anything but completely and objectively evil, save for in the cases of those who love to harm others.
The misfortune comes from her uncontrollable power to instantly know the greatest passions of everypony she ever sees, and remember those passions forever because she will typically copy them to herself for a short time.
Since most ponies have a personal fetish they greatly adore, Princess Cadence was constantly aware of every sexual thought of every pony she ever saw for the entire five hundred years she has lived as an Alicorn. Naturally, this warped her personality somewhat, turning the once stoic and brave warrior into a loving, bubbly, kinky-as-all-Tartarus, warrior princess.
Princess Cadence had come to style herself as a champion of those who were looked down upon for enjoying their passions, sexual or otherwise, though typically sexual. As such, when given the Crystal Empire as a reward for her half millennium of faithful service, Princess Cadance turned the city into a refuge for people who wished to live a more sexual lifestyle than normal Equestrian laws permit.
One hardly has to think to understand the controversy involved in her project, but despite objections, many legal battles, and undergoing a massive PR campaign to demonstrate that foals and ponies under twenty-five would not even be allowed to visit the ‘Guest Quarter’ district of the city, the Crystal Empire became the place it is today.
Astonishingly, that happens to be a place of perfectly happy, content, extraordinarily caring ponies who just to happen to almost exclusively be made up of nymphomaniacs and sex enthusiasts.
I made a quick footnote to show evidence for that last statement. Yeah, sure, the source was me but I was an expert on the mentality of the average Crystal Citizen. I lived with my dad. Doctor Azur Lily, Biomancer.
Sure, dad had trained a few more biomancers over the last thirty years, but he was still the pony who had performed species changes, fixed Celestia’s horn, and healed hundreds of soldiers after a major battle. Everypony who could afford his cosmetic modifications came here.
I’d personally seen, talked with, and honestly enjoyed the company of at least three thousand ponies from the Crystal Empire in my life. Great people, really mad that mom refused to sign the permission slip I’d need to visit the city despite being the age of consent for five months now. I’d like to visit it before leaving Equestria, seemed like a great place to spend a spring break!
Where else could I get up to typical twenty-five-year-old fooling around in a totally safe environment? I could get drunk and wind up hooking up with a stallion into sexy torture and he wouldn’t do a damn thing to me because I was drunk. And if he did, an angry alicorn would beat him bloody.
Seriously, mom. I’m almost legally able to live on my own! I’m legally old enough to bone. I’m not a little filly, I know what things are now and want to do them. I think I can handle spending a week in a city full of loving, kinky ponies, whose only taboo is non-consensual fun.
Sheesh! Repressive much? Also hypocrite much? I've seen your bedroom, mom...
At least dad said he’d do free work on me if I ever wanted anything after my thirtieth birthday. That’s something. I guess. Would be really weird to tell him anything I might want though. Cuz, you know. Dad.
I’m also definitely still worked up over those twins in the park. Maybe I should-
No. Finish report first.
The next of the two major events during the Peaceful Eleven was when the Emerald Hive opened their borders for the first time since their inception. The hive had remained hidden in the Equestrian Badlands for hundreds of years, and despite not existing before Equestria conquered the Badlands, Princess Celestia honored the changeling hive’s wishes to remain isolated and gave them a two hundred kilometer radius around their hive as sovereign territory known internationally as The City-State of Phoenix.
Some sources report that this territory wasn’t given, but couldn’t be taken from the changelings in the first place. However, there is not enough evidence to prove or dismiss this alternative. Yet it does bear mentioning, as the Emerald Hive has never once been successfully attacked in its history, despite over two dozen attempts. The most recent three being the only times its walls were ever breached, though its record of having never once been occupied by enemy forces remains intact.
A short time after Twilight’s ascension and the defeat of Lord Tirek, the major global manufacturer SkyTech revealed that it was headquartered in Phoenix. This involved a public announcement and an open interview where the President and CEO answered questions regarding this, which eventually involved the Hive revealing itself as a changeling city due to the need for more food for its citizens after a social schism drove half the ponies who had been living there away from the hive.
As such SkyTech was going to be running a new trade agreement with any country which wished to participate. The Emerald Hive would turn it’s own independent manufacturing capabilities to producing raw materials as well as manufactured goods and medical supplies in exchange for foreign citizens moving in to live and work within the hive.
Due to Equestria’s uneasy relationship with changelings at the time, Princess Celestia accepted the offer and made a big public show out of the first hundred hoof-picked volunteers for the program. The exchange did wonders for improving the Equestrian relationship with changelings, as the publicly aired interviews and day-in-a-life recordings the program produced showed the Emerald Changelings simply being people.
The program worked, and Equestria became a changeling friendly nation within the span of ten years after the program began. Unfortunately for the Emeralds, the program did reveal one of their hive’s secrets. Their underground city was, in fact, the wreck of an ancient starship built by a long-dead species, which they had spent generations reverse engineering and restoring. While this did little to diminish the appreciation of their services as manufacturers, it did somewhat diminish their mystique. Which had been of great importance to the hive’s culture.
The biggest hurdle to the full acceptance of Changelings into Equestrian society was with the nobility. They viewed changelings with the same kind of disgust as they did the Crystal Empire. Only changing their opinions after a large amount of work by several different changeling hives to educate ponies on changeling culture and behavior at last taught everypony that for changelings, sexual intercourse really is just lunch.
Amusingly enough, the way ponies will publicly behave with their romantic partners, the hoof holding, hugging, loving nicknames, and date nights, are what changelings find to be taboo, and reserved for private places. Our romance is their sex, and our sex is their cooking a meal. Quite a few amusing cultural conflicts have arisen from this and doubtlessly will continue to arise in the future.
The most practical part of Equestria participating in the exchange came in the form of manufacturing. Equestria is and always has been, amongst the forerunners in the mass production of goods, but the Emerald Hive was a cut above. They could make things faster, cheaper, and at a higher quality than almost everyone else. However, they generally did not work in the traditional styles Equestrians of the time preferred.
The Emeralds provided prefabricated houses, furniture, infrastructure, entertainment systems and media, construction equipment, and other major goods, but these goods clashed with the more Classical Era inspired designs for Equestrian technology. Over the years, this slowly began to loosen the traditional designs grip on Equestrian culture as younger ponies found themselves linking the more industrial sleek look of Emerald made items.
This created a divide between the youth of the nation and the older generations. Many young ponies wished to integrate more technology into society, while older ponies saw little point when magical equivalents to most everything already existed. The divide exists to this day and remains a source of inter-generational conflict. Despite the science proving that mundane technology and arcane technology only benefit from being combined into a greater whole.
Today we find ourselves at a turning point where roughly half of the buildings and household items integrate non-arcane technology to some extent. Whether the old world survives in some form or the new style takes over completely remains to be seen.
Of course, the Peaceful Eleven couldn’t last forever. They ended shortly after Celestia seemed confident she had fixed Equestria’s foreign relations and started to make cuts to the Equestrian Guard as a show of her good intentions. Things seemed as if they could only improve from there.
But everything changed when the Swarm attacked.
I snickered at my little reference joke. Miss Cheerly hated cartoons. She’d never get it, ever. But on the off chance anypony else read it someone would get a laugh out of it.
At least if they’d watched the Mage Gem recording version of Avatar, or if they owned a TV and watched the STE channels. I got to see the real version too, not the reanimated version SkyTech Entertainment produced. The one where everyone’s replaced by a pony. Perks of having an awesome Uncle.
It’s pretty cool to think that a beyond ancient show beloved by an extinct species enough to have preserved it past their own extinction was equally beloved by us. Then again, good comedy is good comedy. It doesn't really depend on species, and when dealing with a fictional world, a simple change to species usually won’t ruin the way the in-universe culture works. You can still get it.
I reached into the left barrel pocket of my coveralls and fished out my pink mage gem. I had the show stored on it. I could watch an episode now.
“I am EXTREMELY bad at focusing on this junk!” I shouted, tossing the gem onto my desk in anger.
“Take a deep breath dear,” Mom called from across the house.
I blushed, embarrassed that she’d heard my outburst from what sounded like the reading room.
“Sorry, mom,” I apologized loud enough for her to hear me.
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Herp derp, Geo-political backstory.
Ohhh loved this character . Gotta love the alphabet soup that is Lillies DNA.
Yep, that is some excellent deterrent there, you hurt somepony and a deity will descend on you and beat your plot.
You just described every college student, ever.
I'm liking this, not too overwhelming, and it gives a nice background to how everything fits in and where
8238183 If Sherbert asked, would you make a dictation machine so she could fail less at writing reports? [Implying that she would think to ask in the first place]
I can kind of understand where she is coming from in regards to the Elements of Harmony, but at the same time I'm going to call Sherbert out on not knowing how the Elements worked to begin with. They weren't just an "instant victory and forget about it" button. If one of the Element Bearers were absent or not feeling very harmonious at that point in time, they wouldn't work no matter how hard the Bearers tried. Furthermore, in this universe the Elements have made their "guardians" eternal in addition to enhancing physical attributes (which, by the way, is pretty much my headcanon too), which could put the Bearers on equal footing with the Knights in terms of getting shit done; the Bearers simply had a super weapon they could fall back on if things started to go south, whereas the Knights kind of just pressed on even when shit did hit the fan too hard.
I dunno. I can really, really see where she's coming from (and the fact that Sherbert has a LOT of hero-worship going on), but at the same time being directly related to two Bearers and being non-blood related to each of the others, it really pains me that Sherbert hasn't ever seemed to take the time to understand how exactly these particular "super weapons" worked. I can only hope she really comes to appreciate the fact that the Bearers are every bit as badass now as they were back then with the Elements in working order, just without a more powerful weapon to always fall back upon.
Maybe I'm just looking too much into this entire thing...
Sherbet, you have a hard crush on a mare that already found her True Love. That can never, ever end well. But then again, horny teenager without lovers or much in the way of friends. Let's hope the disappointment doesn't hit her too hard.
Oh, a big and convoluted plan to get some. Yep, teenager alright. She will crash so hard, though...
Celly, Celly, Celly... You live in a world of magical monsters that periodically try to end it. Why the flying fuck would you diminish your military?!?
Sherbet must have seen some shit. Some really weird shit
Pony Avatar. That must be hilariously cute
I'd say that her plan can only fail catastrophically. But she's a ponyvillian. And the unholy spawn of a CMC Goddess. So it can only end in catastrophically epic shenanigans. And so much tree sap Everfree herself will feel the cringe from half a world away.
8238638 If she asked me(Sky) anything, I(he) would definitely help. I(he) just said no time machines. It's her own derp self's fault that she, for some reason, wont seek out the help of her massive-ass family. Seriously, she is connected like you wouldn't believe, yet she rather suffer in silence...
8238878
She is truly her parents daughter
8238740 She does appreciate them now, and would agree that everything they have done since the Elements active use became impossible is very heroic. She would also say that they did plenty of heroic things even back in the day, when they didn't use the Elements. It's just their early work that she's got problems with, and only then because she HATES when things are unearned. Furthermore, as revealed in later chapters she has a massive inferiority complex due to everypony she's related to being a hero and she's upset that three of her relatives basically got to become awesome with no effort while she's been trying so hard to excel anywhere but cant. It's jelliouscy, mostly. They had a powerful tool that let them do good despite being normies and she's got nothing.
As for her not knowing how they worked, a lot of the Elements magic is still classified. Because theoretically a good wizard could reporduse some of the effects.
The truly funny thing is that the group she idolizes is a black ops team that she only knows about because of the time they had to save Ponyville durring the Tartarian Conflict. The reason they are not national heros is... They are a black ops team. You're not SUPPOSED to know about them. It's like how no one knew about Seal Team 6 till they killed Osama.
Fucking degenerates.
We loved The Last Airbender so much that we preserved it past our own downfall?
You know what? That fuckin' checks out. If any show deserves that it would be Avatar.
8239310
Not intentionally XD The USS Phoenix carried a large archive of public domain media as part of it's entertainment package.
8239322
Ssshhhhh.
Let me have this.
8239175 Well, sure, if by 'normies' you mean prime examples of their archetype... There was nothing even remotely normal about the Mane 6 even before the elements came into the picture; all 6 of them were kind of the best possible examples of their birth given subrace, and the elements simply amplified what was already there.
But I suppose I'll see what happens. While so far this new character really grates on me, you've never led us wrong before. Here's to hoping she gets her life lesson out of this!
8239368 Assure you I wouldn't write her like this if the point wasn't for her to learn her lesson in the end :D
8239368 Sherbert is so close to everything she doesn't see the bigger picture. It feels like she is working with the public image of Twilight and the rest of the main 6 rather than the information she would've gotten talking to them
8239368 , 8239522 hit the nail right on the head. The problem is Sherbert's been too affride to ask the M6 about their adventure related stuff. She's worried about being seen as useless. She wouldn't be, naturally.