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Sharp Quill


Sequels1

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This story is a sequel to Destinies


Nearly a year has passed since the events that had brought two realms together. Each had kept the other a secret until now, two worlds separated by a certain cartoon. Finally, both are ready to deal with the inevitable complications, to realize the benefits of trade: human technology for Equestria, and magic for humanity.

The Princess of Friendship is convinced she‘s up to the task, while Meg‘s doubts over the true meaning of her cutie mark grow as the two worlds converge.


Read Destinies first. You won‘t have any idea what‘s happening if you don‘t.

Pre-reading and editing by Mitch H, Doggyshakespeare, and darkszero.

Chapters (41)
Comments ( 562 )

Woohoo! It's happening!

To half-quote Beetlejuice, this chapter gets funnier every time I read it. :pinkiecrazy:

Conrunners! Keep an eye on those people, ponies. They get paid in ego. You can turn your back on a paycheque, but never, ever turn your back on an ego.

Well, things are certainly starting off exciting, which is nice - it would have been far too easy to start at an earlier point in the timeline and build things up slowly.

Definitely looking forward to see how this all plays out.

This is gonna get interesting.

will the ponies get to see the rest of the world? id love them to see my home country of canada, aj and dash would fit right in at a hockey game.....maybe either ottawa senators or my fav team the toronto maple leafs.....fuck the habs

Glad to see the sequel up. I can't wait for more.

So something's up with Twilight. Part of me is hoping it's just stress and perfectionism, but another part of me is wondering if she's somehow been replaced by a changeling. That point about offering a meeting with her as a reward instantly struck me as just the sort of thing her changeling replacement would've said in To Where and Back Again.

Meanwhile, of course, I'm eagerly awaiting more information on where the portal came from and all the other mysteries of the connection between the two worlds.

“Not to mention the real Celestia can’t imagine why anyone would think she’d do such a thing, even if it were possible.”

Yes. Of course the real Celestia that we all know and love would never commit Equestria's resources to trying to save an advanced alien civilization from extinction as the result of a magical catastrophe. (That was the CB concept, remember?)

I’m really excited to see this setting is continuing! :pinkiehappy: Perfect timing, too! Just after Pandemic, another excellent “human world meets pony world” type story that I was following, concluded.

I was just thinking about Destinies the other day and wondering if it would update anytime soon, then bam, new chapter and a sequel.

Hmm, if magic absorbs or impedes radiation this would make things a bit interesting. The most radioactive object in our solar system is, of course, the sun. If Equestria's sun is magic, it would not emit any radiation beyond light and infrared, and maybe some other wavelengths, but no cosmic or gamma rays. Also, Equestria's sun is able to be 'connected' to and moved by an alicorn. Even Equestria's moon, which would reflect and absorb the sun's magic field, is able to be linked to and moved by a pony.

Does that mean that to jump start our magic field, we need to 'awaken' our sun?

If so... all hail Solara and Celeste*, the human princesses of the sun and moon. (names are tentative until the ladies who can hit you with a cosmic-sized object kindly inform us what they would like to be called)

i realized something in the last fic were the cmc showed up in the human world did the cmc take the plaid pills? its been awhile since i read the last fic but its seems very irrisponsible for twilight to leave what could have been medication around for little foals to get at them

8531346 They did. Twilight thought she'd kept the whole thing a secret, but upon learning the Crusaders had overheard things, she actually locked up the pill machine.

“And how did you arrive here? Is there… a magical train that connects us?”

Heh. I get that reference. Gold Dust!

She selected a few bags of sugar and fat filled snacks

Unless the bags contain either pure sugar or fat-filled snacks, you want "sugar-" and "fat-filled" so it's clear that the "and" is being used to remove a duplicate "filled" from "sugar-filled" and "fat-filled".

More generally, include a hyphen whenever you're building a single adjective from multiple words... with the exception of adverbs. "quick-witted guy" vs. "quickly running water".

(As I understand it, you omit the hyphen for adverbs because it's already unambiguous that "quickly" is modifying "running" rather than both of them modifying "water" directly. "quickly water" is nonsense.)

If she was supposed to make sense of that data, then it ought to have been encoded in a way she can decode. As she had mentioned to Jessica, the apparent randomness could be explained by either compression or encryption. Or both.

Compression was easy enough to test. She tried every compression utility she could think of, to see which one understood the file format. None of them did.

Actually, compression is not that easy to test because the header which the compression tool looks for to recognize the file isn't an inherent part of the compression.

...plus, If it's compressed in a way a compression utility will recognize, then it can be recognized without trying to decompress it. For example:

  • Zip files have identifying strings beginning with "PK" embedded in them, because Zip files were invented for PKZIP by PKWARE.
  • RAR files start with a header beginning with "Rar!"
  • 7-zip files start with a header beginning with "7z"
  • gzip files start with a header beginning with the bytes 1F and 8B.

"Compression utilities" don't generally expose support for working with blobs of raw compressed data (eg. DEFLATE is the algorithm used in Zip and gzip) because, without a header/footer to identify the format and provide an integrity check, the only way to tell if something is compressed is to decompress it and see if the output "looks right".

(If a compression algorithm is well-designed, every possible compressed string is a valid representation of some decompressed string. It's up to you to ensure you only compress meaningful stuff because any input the decompressor refuses represents a wasted opportunity for the compressor to pack things more tightly.)

The only situation where headerless "try and see what we get" behaviour is the standard is deniable encryption like TrueCrypt, where the data is supposed to be indistinguishable from the gibberish a secure erase utility might leave behind when you're preparing to throw out an old hard drive. (When you enter your passphrase, TrueCrypt tries every decryption algorithm it knows and, if it finds a valid header, it keeps going with that method.)

Then again, maybe it wasn’t encrypted. Maybe it’s an application-specific file format—which begged the question of which one.

A more viable option. Not every format follows the convention of using recognizable ASCII characters like "PK" (Zip), "Rar!", "PNG", "GIF89a", or "MZ" (The initial form of the EXE format was created by Mark Zbikowski) for the "magic number" (the part of the header which identifies the format to the application).

For example, "JPEG" files have a non-alphanumeric "magic number" (identifying string). The "JFIF" (JPEG File Interchange Format) that you're likely to see a few characters into the file if you open one up in something like Notepad just indicates a specific variant of the format.

8531267

...though I doubt they'd say no to "Sol Invicta" as a title. ("Sol Invictus", literally "The Unconquered Sun" was a roman deity, with "Invictus" being the masculine form because, as in modern descendants of Latin, Latin nouns have gender, adjectives agree in gender with their nouns, and the sun god was male.)

Also, related trivia: "victim" comes from the Latin for "conquered".

That was an interesting interaction! :pinkiehappy:
Involving the conversion stories was an awesome surprise, never liked that stories:ajbemused: funny to see the characters get upset and and make fun of it. Lol
So glad this sequel finally came out!:raritystarry:

Like the fact they thought to seek some help from bringing groups, not a bad idea. Xd thou I can understand some concerns of certain people within those groups.
But what's up with meh? See seems extremely stressed out, and goes into attack mood under the smallest at times unintended provoktion.:rainbowhuh:

Also, will we see how the rest of equestria (whatever the planet's name is) reactions to humans being revealed? Extremely curious how the minotaurs react. Xd

Those banana worms sound delicious. And a miniature T-bone steak? Bah, those humans have no sense of taste or adventure. Hmm, a meeting with Discord... the only question is, who gets it? Will they even be a US citizen? What if it's Patrick Stewart?

One chapter in; I'm disappointed that no characters mentioned that Jon Batiste's band is called "Stay Human".

“If we can make our case directly to her…” said the woman next her, the one who had mentioned the beer. The head of PR & Marketing?

Typo.

Ponies having to weigh in we n god? Only excuse I can think of is since Equestria is a different reality they can refuse to comment on the grounds of having a different cosmology.

Well, time to turn this series from Fantasy drama to Political Thriller!

8531546
im also curious once humans and equestrians meet will it be allowed to pursue relationships with each other

“…in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Only then did they know of good and evil, and thus felt shame at their nakedness. These ponies, not being children of Adam and Eve, do not possess this original sin, and hence lack this shame.”

Okay guy, as a fellow Christian I can explain this one...
First, Ponies DO sin from time to time. They can lie, they can steal, they are no strangers to immoral acts. Ergo, they HAVE had an "original sin", though they seem to have forgotten the event.
Now, why in that case do they have no problem with nudity? Simple: THEY. AREN'T. NAKED! Ever hear of the phrase "fur coat"? That's why they don't wear clothes all the time: they have built-in clothes already!

8559137
Basically, yeah. They had little requirement for protective clothing, thus little incentive to develop cultural taboos against nudity. Also, pants look ridiculous on a horse!

8559137
Original sin is not the only thing that leads humans to sin; if it was then the original sin could never have happened (because a prior sin would be required for the first sin). Therefore, no original sin in necessary for ponies to sin in a multiverse where (nearly any variety of) Christianity is a representation of the truth.

By the same logic, we are never naked. Fur and hair are interchangeable terms (other than for sensory whiskers) with no defined difference, so if their hair counts for them then it also counts for us.

8560013
I... suppose it's possible that the ORIGINAL original sin may have been all that was needed for the omniverse's corruption (much as Christ's death in our world would have been enough to PAY for all of it), but I'm not sure...
As for the fur/hair comparison... that doesn't work exactly. Our body hair doesn't cover us up nearly enough, while their fur does.

While i may not understand the type of stress she's going thru, I think she's kinda making a big deal of certain stuff that really isin't. Frustrating? Sure. What I'm saying is she doesint have to think she needs to hold both worlds up on her own.
Great CHAPTER by the way! :pinkiehappy:
I'm still waiting thou on how the minotaurs react thou. :rainbowhuh: xd

8560334
You're not quite understanding what I'm saying. If the original sin is required for anyone to sin at all, then what was required for the original sin? In Christianity, it is plain to see that at least one sin did not have the original sin before it (because it was the original sin). And if one sin is possible, then why not more?

Animals have hair all over, but it usually doesn't completely obscure the genitals, especially in males. It requires a lot more hair than most animals have, to be considered clothes (for the purpose of covering genitals).

8560687
I get where the confusion is now! It's not that sin is impossible before the original sin, rather, all knowledge of "this is wrong" doesn't exist... except for ONE restriction. That restriction is required for free will (as one must have the opportunity to choose wrong for it to mean something), and BREAKING that causes that "Knowledge of Good and Evil" to be known... and people to become responsible for adhering to said knowledge.
As for that "thing" being too large to cover... many animals (including equines) have retractable ones. That works.

8560996
That still doesn't require ponies to be subject to the original sin, because they could simply figure out right from wrong by developing various axioms and by coming to agreements as communities as to what is most useful to consider right or wrong. They can know right and wrong because they taught each other what is right or wrong.

The end of the chapter absolutely killed the mood. The appropriate use of scripture in fiction is always a blurry mess, trying to figure out where the lines are between respectful and disrespectful and outright blasphemous. And it doesn't help that you started with an issue that denominations within the church disagree on, so not only are the lines blurry they are moving.

“…in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Only then did they know of good and evil, and thus felt shame at their nakedness. These ponies, not being children of Adam and Eve, do not possess this original sin, and hence lack this shame.”

I'm an atheist. I don't necessarily hate Christians (except for Westboro Baptist Church...) I try not to include myself in religion, but I can see why this can be a thing of sensitive thing. These ponies being sentient, technically do not even know what the first sin should be because there is religion there. I'm not saying that makes them all Atheists (even though that would be... kinda correct but not really) They can say they more or less worship three (not including Twilight) living Gods, Celestia, Luna, and Candyass Cadence. 4 if you're going to throw Flurry in the mix (then again she might not be canon at least according to you, but hey, it's an off chance since smooze WAS canon) However as to the religion thing, what it be called? Would it be 'Sol et Luna est religio' (Religion of the Sun and Moon)

So many implications... So many variables...

A male horses thing is pretty hard to miss or ignore, even flaccid. I'm surprised they're aren't more fics that mention this.

Meg paced inside the perimeter of bookshelves. “I suppose not. We both know too many will seek her out. Others too. Time Turner will get sick of being asked about his ‘blue box,’ Lyra and her obsession with hands—”

Blue Box?

8568680

Doctor Who reference. The TARDIS that looks like a blue police box?

i'm more curious about this business with the minotaurs and their ancient human catacombs. The more I re-read, the weird that gets.

A little bit of a tangent, but this is the most intuitive explanation of Special Relativity I've ever seen, and really made the concept "click" in my head for the first time ever. So thanks for that.

Also, things are definitely getting interesting. So many mysteries and plot threads being set up, and I'm excited to see how they pan out.

I love scientifically accurate explanations in stories when they are used well and relevant. Too many magic using stories ignore any limitations imposed by physics at all, especially those that treat Equestria like the cartoon. There are a lot of subtle things that could happen if writers think about their stories. Instead, they read kinda dry. Which is strange if you think about it, since in the past before modern understandings, the world was the opposite of dry. It was a magical place full of things beyond mortal understanding, where everything was a wonder, and some things could be anticipated, but others not.

Another great chapter! Xd
Great to see how the minotaurs reacted about the humans, thou we've only seen a taste thru the ambassador. Would like to see what is happening behind closed doors. :twilightsmile:

“But if something is moving through space, doesn’t that mean it has to move more slowly through time?”

“Exactly! Acceleration causes a hyperbolic rotation of the accelerating object’s frame of reference with respect to all others...”

I don't write physics textbooks. But if I did, I would (with permission and attribution, of course) put this in. Basically, it all makes sense now. Bravo.

Comment posted by Voltaje deleted Dec 16th, 2017
Comment posted by Voltaje deleted Dec 16th, 2017

This reminded me of this https://vimeo.com/78458486 , windowwless cars, trains, and jets, are completely possible with our current technology, but is not comercial as it would eb too expensive, so we must wait a couple of decades to actually see it or experience it.

Leave em in a room with Luna for half an hour, they will talk... And not sleep for the rest of their lives.

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