Unstability
It was an especially beautiful day in the city of Gear-Morcog. The smog was thin enough for the sun to shine through, the flowers were only half-wilting, and the even mechanical cheeps of clockwork birds were slightly less ear-grating than normal.*
It was then, in the midst one of the many grime-caked streets, that a great purple light began to shine in midair. The city’s passers-by paid no attention to the disturbance, as the most were all too familiar with the strange shenanigans of sorcery. Little did they know that it was not merely sorcery, but horsery.
With a sizzling pop, Princess Twilight Sparkle emerged into the plane of Bablovia, and in a manner most unbefitting of her title, crashed face-first onto the ground. Shaking off the sudden dizziness, she pulled herself to her hooves.
She was in a city, that much she could tell. Yet it was certainly not like any city she had ever seen. The buildings that surrounded the street were covered in all sorts of clockwork gadgets, whoozits, and thingamajigs, whirling and clicking as they performed functions that Twilight couldn’t discern. Standing tall above the buildings was a massive tower, with multiple mechanical shutters placed over brightly-lit panels, blinking as the shutters opened and closed in rapid patterns.
Strangest of all, however, were the people. There were humans, goblins, elves, and practically every other sapient species that most planes seemed obligated to have in some form.** That itself was not unexpected. What was unexpected were the ways in which they had seemingly modified their own bodies. Clockwork prosthetics were abundant, and none of them appeared to be strictly necessary for medical purposes, and some were so extensive that they had nearly replaced the entire body of its owner. Others were strange mashups of different creatures, combined in ways that didn’t seem the slightest bit evolutionarily plausible. And then there were the goblins, who were... well, goblins. The contraptions they carried were cobbled together entirely out of trash, and looked like they would give a nasty tetanus infection to anyone who wound up on the wrong end of their pointy bits. All the non-goblin pedestrians, naturally, tended to avoid getting too close.
Given the diversity of bizarre sights, it wasn’t a surprise that none of the passerby seemed fazed by the sudden appearance of a magical winged pony that looked like something straight out of a children’s picture book. Twilight, realizing nobody particularly cared about where she came from or what she looked like, decided to forego her usual illusionary disguise and skip straight to the fun part of exploring a new plane: finding a library.
Of course, never in Twilight’s entire planeswalking experience did exploring a new plane go smoothly. A slow dread bubbled up within her, well within the knowledge that something would go wrong before she returned to her home plane.
“Hey! You there!” that something called out to her.
With a groan, Twilight turned to see a human that she could have easily mistaken for a ratfolk on her home plane, pushing a large barrow down the street. Figuring she might as well get her misfortune over with, she trotted over to the man, her nose immediately assaulted by what appeared to be a large inventory of sausages.
“What do you want?” said Twilight.
The man smiled, his eyes sliding over Twilight’s body like a slick coat of grease. “Just wanted to get a closer look at you, that’s all. Does an adorable little thing like you have a name, by any chance?”
“It’s, uh, Twilight Sparkle. Listen, I’ve really got to get going—”
“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Twilight!” said the man, crouching down and forcefully grabbing Twilight into a combination handshake/hoofshake. “That name’s Bashro. While you’re here in Gear-Morcog, why not try one of my famous sausages? Cheapest prices on all of Bablovia! It’ll run you a mere three sprockets, and that’s cutting me own leg off!”
“Um.” Twilight glanced over to the barrow, despite the continuing protests of her nostrils. “Thanks, but I, uh... don’t eat meat.”
“Oh, I can assure you, Miss Twilight, these sausages ain’t got a lick of meat in them,” Bashro replied with complete honesty.*** He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pair of tongs, grabbing a sausage and placing it into a bun, before placing the sausage-inna-bun right in front of Twilight’s. “So, what do you say?”
Before she could even think to respond, the sausage’s aroma assaulted her nostrils directly, a smell so intense that it nearly forced Twilight’s upper intestine to strangle herself from within to spare her the misfortune. “Sorry, but I have to go! Like, right now!”
Twilight’s wings beat furiously, and she took to the air without another word.
*The Order of the Widget replaced Gear-Morcog’s birds with mechanical facsimiles† after the native population was wiped out by a nefarious plot involving a dragon, string cheese, one million teapots, and an entire paperclip factory.
**While these species are practically ubiquitous in the multiverse, Ponder’s Multiversal Law of Fantasy Settings states that only dragons are a constant on every plane.
***If anyone else learned what Bashro’s sausages were actually made of, it would immediately send every health inspector on Bablovia into a shared brain aneurysm.
†While mostly similar to natural avians in behavior and ecological niche, Gear-Morcog’s clockwork birds can only mimic chirping noises with a mechanism that scrapes a very sharp object against a tiny internal chalkboard.
————————
An aerial view of the city proved to be far more productive than searching on the ground, all things considered.* From here, Twilight could see that the city’s machinery was vastly more extensive than she had anticipated, the vast networks of clockwork contraptions joined together in a massive web of whirligigs and gimcrackery. Several more towers like the one she’d seen before periodically dotted the cityscape, spaced several miles apart, all of them spread from a larger central tower that easily dwarfed all of them.
It was there, as she surveyed her surroundings, that she saw what she was looking for. While she had to squint to get a clear view through the constant smog, what she saw was undeniable. The building, labeled with a sign showing a book and quill, was exactly the library she was looking for.
As she landed onto the sidewalk just before the front steps, she immediately plowed face-first into a large metallic object that had somehow escaped her notice. She turned up to see a old man, every part of his body save his head replaced with clockwork, dressed in what she could only assumed was a constable’s uniform. His body clicked and clanked as he leaned over, brandishing his baton in a manner most curmudgeonly.
“Looks like you was flying back there,” said the Old Guard, “you got yourself a permit for that?”
“A... a permit?” Twilight gulped, her mind flashing back to a rather unpleasant encounter with the local law enforcement on Ravnica. Just where was she supposed to obtain a permit for flying? (And being unblockable except by creatures with flying and/or reach?)
The Old Guard leaned over and eyed Twilight warily for another few seconds, before loudly standing himself upright again. “Yup, that checks out. You’re free to go, ma’am.”
“Huh?” Twilight blinked rapidly, staring as the Old Guard spun around, his treads turning with the spin of a crank as he wheeled himself away. “W-wait! What permit? I didn’t even show you anything!” But by the time she was able to articulate her questions, he had already disappeared into the street.
Twilight sighed, perhaps realizing that her question would not be answered here. With a shrug of her wings, she made her way into the library.
*Were the smog not thinner than normal that day, getting a bird’s-eye view would have been rather less productive.
————————
The interior of the library was quaint, far from the extravagant space she had come to expect from the massive archives on Ravnica or the elegant crystal structures of her own castle, but it carried a homey, lived-in atmosphere that made her feel oddly nostalgic. As she entered into the front door, the librarian — apparently human/cat/wasp hybrid — glanced at her through half-moon spectacles before turning back to the book she was reading.
Twilight soon found herself settling into the most routine of her routines, browsing the library’s catalogs for any and all information she could find. She learned of the Carta Scientia*, the oldest document on the plane of Bablovia, and how it shaped the plane’s political and social structure for centuries to come. She learned of the ways in which the different factions — the Order of the Widget, the Agents of S.N.E.A.K., the League of Dastardly Doom, the Goblin Explosioneers, and Crossbreed Labs — ruled the plane together in a pentarchy, and how the differences in their philosophies often brought them into opposition. She learned of the city of Gear-Morcog, a city nominally controlled by the Order of the Widget, but which frequently served as a battleground for inter-faction conflicts due to its favorable position as Bablovia’s largest trade center. She also, of course, learned many other things that were entirely irrelevant to narrative exposition.
Hours passed as she voraciously read through the entire library’s contents, naturally making sure to place each book in its proper location when she was finished. Just as she was nearly done reading the last untouched book in the library, her attention was turned to something large, orange, and hairy in the corner of her eye. She turned to look, and while far from surprised given what she’d seen on Bablovia, she still found herself slightly bewildered.
“An orangutan?”
“Oook.”
“Right, orang-utan. Sorry,” said Twilight. “Just where did you come from, anyway?”
The orang-utan rolled his eyes. “Oook,” he said, grabbing a very large, black book and disappearing around a corner. Curiously, Twilight followed, and found nothing but a dead-end corridor lined with bookshelves.**
Deciding it wasn’t especially relevant to her current interests, Twilight put the thought out of her mind, and turned to bid the cat-wasp-person librarian one last silent goodbye as she exited the building.
As she opened the door, Twilight was almost immediately accosted by a massive crowd gathered just outside of the street. Dozens upon dozens of people of all shapes and sizes were gathered around something that she couldn’t quite see. As she stepped forward slightly, she was just barely able to perceive the shape of Bashro, standing behind a makeshift booth carved from driftwood, selling miniature figurines of...
...of herself?
“Twilight Sparkle merch! Get your Twilight sparkle merch! Your own little horsey to take home, all for a measely twelve sprockets! At that price, that’s cutting me own leg off!”
Twilight felt her heart sink into her stomach. As she slowly backed away, a little human girl with a lion’s tail tugged onto the pant leg of a larger man with a lion’s mane. “Daddy, look! It’s a real Twilight Sparkle! Can I have it? Can I?”
Then, in one of the most horrifying several seconds of her entire life, the entire crowd went silent, slowly turning around to face her. As she stared into the massive crowd of covetous eyes, Twilight’s flight or flight response screamed at her at the top of its metaphorical lungs.
Before she knew it, Twilight was surrounded by a flurry of hands, claws, paws, and other appendages, each of them screaming as they grabbed and pulled at her wings and mane, in the desperate hopes that one of them would get to take her home. Pain shot through her scalp as one pair of hands ripped a chunk of hair out of her mane, and another shot of pain through the base of her tail as someone forcefully grabbed it with what she could only assume was a crab’s pincer.
Then, in a scream and the familiar rush of traveling through the Blind Eternities, Twilight found herself back in the equally-familiar environment of her own throne room. There, on the central crystal table, her faithful assistant Spike was playing a tabletop role-playing game*** with Big Macintosh. They both turned and stared as she blinked into existence beside them.
“Whoa,” said Spike, “you okay there, Twilight?”
Twilight spit out a clump of hair that had ended up in her mouth. “Could be better. Just remind me never to give my likeness to any merchandising deals in the future.”
*Otherwise known as the ‘Science Charter,’ Bablovia’s system of governance was intended first and foremost to promote the development of the sciences for the good of all. This being a fantasy setting, it wasn’t long before that science turned into mad science, with all of the dangerous and unethical practices it entails.
**Had she also known of L-space, Twilight likely would have started exploring the multiverse long before her coronation.
***Though Ogres and Oubliettes had long been their game of choice, they had more recently switched to Wayseeker after a very long argument over the new O&O edition that ended with both parties covered in cake batter.
————————
Twilight, Driver of Merch 3WU
Legendary Planeswalker – Twilight
+1: Create a 1/1 pink Horse creature token. Use a My Little Pony® toy to represent the token.
0: Offer another target player a fist-bump. If he or she accepts, you and that player both draw a card.
-3: Target creature becomes your friend for the rest of the game. (It can’t attack you and its abilities can’t target you or permanents you control.)
-8: You get an emblem with “At the start of each opponent’s combat phase, that opponent offers you a hug. If you refuse, creatures that player controls can’t attack you this turn.”
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This is genious.
Mad genious.
The best kind of genious
What's better than combining two stories? Combining three!
I particularly liked the Librarian showing up, he's always been one of my favorite Pratchett characters.
I am ashamed to admit I did not catch the Hasbro reference the first time through.
Looks like Dibbler-likes are likewise a multiversal constant. Or at least a stringently constrained variable.
Yay, L-Space! But what could the Librarian want with Bablovian books?
Is Gear-Morcog canon to Unstable?
All-in-all, that was a fun chapter. Thanks!
8745735
Nope! There’s actually very little canon info about the plane of Bablovia, but when coming up from the idea for this chapter I realized Pratchett’s writing style would be a very good fit for the silliness of the setting, so I decided to take that to its logical conclusion.
Counterpoint: Ixalan, which demonstrates the Saurian Exception.
In any case, at least Twilight never learned of the true rulers of the plane. If she thought a bunch of merch-hungry Crossbreeders were bad, then the Sciuridae family would've eaten her alive. Possibly literally, as per Chip 2:54.
In as much seriousness as is appropriate for Bablovia, thoroughly fun. Thank you for it. (I do need to work on that idea with Ditzy negotiating with Baron von Count...)
8746036
Worth noting that Angrath has gotten a bunch of pirates to start referring to dinosaurs as dragons, so there’s a possible loophole there. (On a more meta level it’s poking fun at how Magic R&D has a policy of including at least one reference to dragons in every new setting they create.)
8745708
Hasbro reference?
8747713
Check the name of the guy selling Twilight Sparkle merchandise.
8747715
*checks name*
Oh.
OH!
That was a nice one.
I love the implications of L-Space existing in the Magic multiverse (or the Magic Un-iverse, technically. Details). It definitely erodes a bit of the glamour of regular planeswalkers. So they can cross universes. Give me me a couple sufficiently stuffed libraries or bookshops and enough twine, and see if I can't do the same! They can't even go back in time! Too much emphasis on flashiness, if you ask me.
...
You know, thinking about it, your really would think Twilight would have stumbled upon L-Space before she even moved to Ponyville. I guess she never performed feats of librarianship of sufficient valor.
This...... was quite touching. Very, very, very well done. Thank you.
And can't have an homage to Sir Pterry without The Librarian showing up, which was just perfect. Also, yeah, Twilight would ditch Planeswalking in heartbeat if she ever learned about L-Space. The ability to go right to any library in existence? No needing to deal with all those messy other things on a plane that arne't libraries? SCORE!
Also, Bashro < Dibbler, Dibbler would have managed to sell that sausage-in-a-bun to Twilight.
That was wonderful.