This story is a sequel to Prim Rose's Redemption
This is the second of the Moonlight's Redemption series, written by Hope. It can easily be read as a standalone story.
Four hundred years before the show, this story follows Vivid Colour. She was born blind in the pony country of Bitain in the Griffish isles, long ago seized from the race that it is named after. Despite living her life independently and trying to remain isolated, she finds herself banished from Bitain, and left adrift as a final punishment.
She must find a way to survive on her own, unable to sense beyond the reach of her magic, and often in hostile lands, while all along seeking a way to fill the ache of sorrow and loneliness in her heart.
Chapters (38)
I haven't finished Redemption yet, I'm still on the fifth chapter; would it ruin that story if I read this one first? Because this is one hell of a hook, very interesting.
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Would not ruin at all! This series (Except for the final one, when I get that far) will be very serial, you could take each one on it's own if you wanted, though seeing how Luna develops between them and from each is very interesting. I'm planning on six stories overall, so this would be #2.
hooray! like the last one, i'll be tracking until completion. I don't know if i couldhandlea few chaptersat a time!
Did she just left the boat at shoreline?
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Yup. Not her boat, too heavy to carry, and she's hoping not to go back out on the water anyway.
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It may be unfair to require long-term planning from someone who almost dead, but turned over boat + a few rocks and sticks = shelter. And she could as well be on a tiny island, so at least dragging the boat where it could not be washed back to the sea looks like a good idea.
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Oh, you are absolutely correct, yes. But for Viv that's not a logical conclusion. The idea that she would be capable of taking the boat out of the water in the first place would never occur to her. She's only experienced them when they are in the water, and when other ponies interact with them, they use winches. She would assume until she learns otherwise that boats cannot be moved except with some sort of crane or machinery when they aren't in the water.
Plus, yeah, she's kinda out of sorts lol
That is very interesting ability! I wonder if it can be used for performing minimally invasive surgery, for example. Or even non-invasive at all one (which sounds strange for a surgery). Although I would say that snapping every single stalk inside the cushion will compact the cushion and make it harder, not softer.
Jeez, WTF has happened in that village?
Did those guys decide to burn the witch?
Princess Luna seems to be shockingly nice to her under circumstances. Especially taking into account:
There is a good reason to thing that It kinda is: if she died in the sea that would have reduced total death toll by 20.
This is true! Even if the deaths were in self defense, and so on, it is quite true that if Vivid had died, many others would have lived! It is also true that Luna is taking all of this in stride and not reacting as she likely should by our norms. But by the norms she is following, and what she wants out of her country, she is playing a waiting game and neutralizing a threat. For as long as Luna is able to completely neutralize her only weapon, and able to provide the needed defensive spell to all of her guards, she sees Vivid as a... one trick pony. (I'm so terrible, so very terrible.)
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It's not "our norms", it's consequentialism. The question is if Luna is sure that she can fix her robustly and safely enough to gamble with pony lives on it. So Luna's arguments are better to hug this query very tightly
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So you're saying, in order for me to be a good writer I'd better have Luna be right on Vivid's tail every chance she gets? Veeeery conducive to romance!
Luna is an expert at making sales pitches
That may have interesting military applications.
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Hehe, yes indeed! Just transport this large metal framework, lean it against the magic you don't want to be there, and watch as it is consumed! It'd work, sure. But I'm not sure how easily it could be deployed. Plus there aren't any other magic using nations anymore. At least, not until the crystal empire comes back.
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Best response I've ever received to a chapter hehe
She's a princess. Unlimited power!
That shouldn't be too difficult to fix. Also, where had solar court with all mortal princes/princesses lineage gone?
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Solar court will feature heavily in the next few chapters once Vivid finishes her mission, but in the previous story Luna had separated the "Mortal court" from the legend and obscured name of Celestia. For the majority of the last 600 years, Celestia's name has not been spoken in either court.
Perhaps Echolocation.
Y’know, I didn’t go into this story for the romance, but I’m really digging it.
It’ll be like ponies discovering radiation for the first time.
That's kinda unlikely thing for guards to do: swords are expensive and pretty laborious to properly sharpen
).
(and that's barring the question of how the heck horses would use swords in the first place
So you guys won't have only qualified first hand witness and stumble into that mess blindly
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Hah, all very good points.
All I can say in my defense is that touching it would be incredibly uncomfortable for them, so I needed them to use something else to leverage it up. But realistically... Maybe they should have gotten a shovel from the farmer. I'll think about it.
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Thank you very much! I like writing romance, but I feel like a lot of people avoid it because of the toxic or damaging stereotypes and tropes that can appear.
Raised them both simultaneously?
Dark Side is strong with this one
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Good catch! Moon would have been setting.
Well, she probably could teleport Luna away into some hidden place and then do her duty.
Also what guards and changelings were doing meanwhile?
Oh
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Revealed in next chapter, I promise! hehe
Less talking, more killing
Are you threatening me, master jedi?
So...
Now that I'm up to date and read throu this finised part of the story I can safely say that I really enjoy it. It it really nice as a stanallone story but even better if you can understand the connections to the prequel.
In the last few chapters a little threorie of me was even confirmed by the story Cloves and the Monster from the last story are one and the same and also Chrysalis.
I Hope that there are few other people reading this story and supporting you with the writing. I can see the great protential of this story and the series so please continue writing it whenever you find the time.
Until then have a great new year the clock is ticking just about 20h left
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Thank you, I'm really glad you've been enjoying it!!!
I write these stories in paragraph sized chunks so I always worry it will come across as disjointed or non-congruous, but hearing that it's good and that it feels connected to the prior story is very satisfying!!
I love this story so much <3
A minute of political cynicism!
Because you're an envoy of powerful foreign nation. The choice between mom and pissing powerful nation off is ridiculously obvious (unless mom is someone really-really influential).
Because you were village weirdo, and the choice between village weirdo and respectable mother of two is ridiculously obvious. But I will lie that you had a chance because see previous point about powerful nation.
Now, the choice between pissing off nation and showing myself being bossed around before all my underlings is slightly less obvious. Hmm...
I really like the imagery in this chapter.
One thing that stuck out to me: Queen Victory rules over the United Kingdom of Great Bitain and Ireland. Bitain is a pony pun of "Britain", but "Ireland" wasn't changed, and at first I thought this was a bit of laziness on your part. Until I realized that "Ireland" is already a pun, a very appropriate pun for this setting: ire-land, the land of "I don't like you."
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I deeply appreciate that you figured out that I spent three hours trying to come up with a pun for Ireland, only to figure that out, lol
I'm a bit surprised that thankful population of village didn't torch all that down just after she "departed".
Alicorn's eyes are magically enchanted to be poke-proof I guess?
Riiiiiight
Well, what's she trying to do as a ruler and what Equestrian political system is?
Oh no I smell big trouble
now I want to know what happens. Damm teasers
Several years could mean that there is a war or some big confilct.
Maybe I'm confusing something, but wasn't Prim Rose a unicorn?
Well, one half suggests that they kinda have (at least something functionally similar). Second half probably can't afford (direct or opportunity) costs or/and doesn't see much benefit.
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Holy cow I managed to misremember the race of one of my main characters! Jeez, lemme fix that, thank you for your help
Good idea, actually! Just teleport there and kill them
There probably shouldn't be capitalization for "yesternight" there. Cool word, by the way
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So I've spent a lot of time thinking about the power inherent in Luna and other alicorns. In the first story of the series I showed that she was capable of fending for herself, and in this one I've had her be only truly threatened by the Alicorn Amulet, but I feel that it's appropriate for Luna to have some reluctance to become a front line combatant again. Not just because of the physical threat but because she's learned in the last few hundred years the importance of her own sanity. If she truly goes for blood, laying waste to hundreds of soldiers, that weight will weigh on her for a very long time. So she goes by rules, she goes by processes, and now that Vivid is breaking those, Luna will be walking a careful line between a princess leading a nation and a general leading an army.
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She doesn't need to do that, just to assassinate very top of their chain of command and that's be it in less than one day. Arguably the most humane and just way of ending the war (let the folks that make decisions about starting wars at last be the ones who die in those wars).
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And I agree in principal, though I wouldn't go ahead with that storyline since it would imply a seizing of command of Griffonstone and the dragon lands immediately, which doesn't feel like it would work out well. I could expand on the sociopolitical game I'm playing out in my head, with the slow expansion of the griffin incursions easing them into a long term war with not many losses, then suddenly becoming much more deadly, but I think the most important point here is if Luna assassinates the leader of a foreign country, that violates the terms of war. Bitain and all other nations would then know that she's willing to break those laws of war, and it would risk isolating Equestria much more.
Now days we have a much more personal relationship with war but in the older time periods one accepted that the leaders would follow the laws of war, and fight the war as hard as they could, while mourning the soldiers lost. The laws of war were the only things preventing the killing of citizens and poisoning the land, so it was important to follow them.
I hope this makes some sense!
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I'd say if their rules specifically state that only lowly peasants supposed to die in war then that's very "let them eat cake"-ish rules
Well, there was no one to enforce those laws --- United Nations (which is supposed to do that; kinda) is pretty recent thing. What was stopping them is knowledge that if they do something like that other side would gladly reciprocate. As a corollary, when retaliation wasn't a concern, those things were done.
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That makes sense if you ignore the rest of what I said. The laws of war are enforced by allies. This extends to the modern day, for as long as you have allies that benefit from those laws or standards, there will be pressure to maintain them, and backlash if you do not. Luna is a singular threat, akin to an atomic bomb. When America used the bomb, it wasn't just their enemies that took notice but also their allies. If Luna killed the leader directly without fighting a war fairly to get to that point, the Bitain, the deer (I haven't mentioned them yet in either story) the buffalo, and any other allies would then know that Luna is willing to execute leaders she finds issue with, without winning a war. Effectively she has proven a desire and willingness to determine who is in charge of other countries and noone wants that.
In the first story, Prim Rose's redemption, Luna fights a war to the shores of Griffinstone, and then is fully willing to execute the king. But this is the same standard of warfare as any other nation would have to meet to do the same, it lets us pretend like the power structures are intact and we don't have a literal goddess walking around on the planet.
If Luna breaks that power structure and reclaims a god-like status while still being the leader of a nation, then all other nations will band together to overthrow her, since she is basically tyrannical over the whole of the world.
Also I've been careful to show it's not just peasants fighting and dying. The castle staff and the nobility are nearly nonexistent in the last few chapters, and Prim mentions that she is due to the draft if not for being a member of the castle staff. She is nobility by being a consort, so even nobles are being sent to war.
Now, I don't like portraying war in the MLP universe. I don't like it at all, but I want to give reason behind the MLP universe having certain technologies and features, as well as show how far they've come from violent beginnings similar to humanity. This isn't the utopia that we see in the show yet, but it will be some day, and I find a bit of hope in that.
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They took notice that they'd better stay in latter category than switch to former.
There's no such thing as "fighting war fairly".
Firstly, in that case she would have won the war by virtue of her enemies being dead. Secondly, they would know that aggressive idiot who's brought knife to gunfight got obvious consequences.
Conditioned on "who in charge" committing big no-no first. That's awesome message to send if you don't want big no-noes to happen in the future.
Standard "power structures" are horrible thing. That's the whole point.
They probably won't, since she isn't and they don't want to accept fair risk of being dead in exchange for... what? Better behave themselves and be friends!
They do, the question is how conditions mortality rates compare.
Why will it if violence perpetuators are getting advantage by other guys going easy on them?
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I am not presenting my ideology or beliefs in the war and politics of this story. I agree that all these traditions and power structures are improper, and given time Luna will rise above them.
The "big no-no" here is a prolonged battle along one border, for disputed land. 300 soldiers dying is a shock to Vivid but not out of the ordinary for a fight like this. If a big no-no worthy of an assassination is "armed land dispute" then Luna will be very busy killing leaders.
Well, a lot more than four works even better
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Hehehe give it a few dozen years, and they'll start building vehicles that can carry more than four!!