Stellaris
Not for the first time, Rarity wished she still had eyelids.
Such thoughts were a sin, but even the most pious mare could not help the vestige of the beast inside her. She imagined the little filly that once was, the shaking thing, the animal, body full of drool and blood and piss. It was so easy to picture her, sitting beside the throne.
“Don’t look!” she imagined it saying, when the pain struck her particularly fiercely. The little filly squeezed her eyes shut when she was afraid. “Please, don’t look!”
But it was only a dream, and that filly was no more. Rarity ignored the feeling, and lifted her perfect, lidless eyes to heavens.
From her throne on the bridge of the Above All, she watched ponies die.
“Empress Rarity,” spoke her Grand Admiral from his place in the command pit. “All Federation forces are now engaged with Chancellor Sparkle’s armada. Tactical analysis suggests the two sides are closely matched.” He paused a moment, then continued, “Admiral-General Dash requests our assistance.”
The bridge lapsed into silence as Rarity considered her answer. Through the bridge’s great dome window, she could see Equestria floating in the void. To eyes of flesh and fluid, it would have been only a small blue-green dot, but Rarity could see it all: the continents and the islands, the great oceans and the clouds whose movements could be tracked from space. Its day side was turned towards them, and it shone in the sky.
Above Equestria’s northern pole, a blue star flared into being, shining bright and dying in a fraction of a second. A softly glowing computer readout informed Rarity it had been a heavy destroyer.
“No response,” she said. “Continue to hold position.”
A second blue flash came fifteen seconds later. A corvette. A third came ten seconds after that. Another heavy destroyer. Then the flashes started to come in sets, two at a time, ten at a time. Rarity’s perfect eyes could see the missiles flying through the void. She could smell the radioactive cloud left behind by the bombs.
There were red flashes for ship destroyed by plasma weapons, yellow flashes for ships destroyed by lasers. Long red streaks marked ships that entered the atmosphere out of control, their crews denied a quick and painless death.
Hours passed. Sometimes, Rarity imagined the filly that once was, her face leaking snot and other fluids. But she never looked away.
She was the great empress of her people. Once she had been a beast, a thing of blood and filth, squeezed into the world from between a mare’s legs and doomed to die in a pool of its own waste. No more. She was a machine—a perfect machine of steel and glass, made in the shape of a pony by the infinite wisdom of the Divine Precursors. She sat on a throne of jagged metal, wrapped in robes as white as a fungus, that neither blood nor sweat nor dirt would ever befoul. Her horn came to a point that could penetrate a steel wall.
The Divine Precursors had chosen her to free her people from the beast, to cut them from nature’s womb and bring them into true existence. It felt so long ago.
A white star flared to life above Equestria’s western continent, so bright it cast the dim bridge into sharp contrast. It did not fade at once, but lingered, dimming over several seconds from brilliance into a dull white spot.
“Empress Rarity,” spoke her Grand Admiral. “Chancellor Sparkle’s command ship Golden Oak has experienced critical reactor failure.”
“Is she dead?”
“I do not believe so.” He watched the bridge’s sensor readouts. His eyes were also perfect, and just the same as hers. “Federation forces have collectively taken 87% losses, and the Sweet Apple Confederation’s fleet has been eliminated entirely. However, Chancellor Sparkle’s forces have taken 91% losses, including the loss of both the spaceport and the command ship.”
He paused for a few seconds, considering the matter before him: “I project a narrow Federation victory within the hour. However, they no longer possess sufficient forces to effectively bombard the planet. Absent the arrival of other ships, Equestria will remain in Chancellor Sparkle’s control.”
“The perfect outcome.” She lowered her head, turning away from the sky and towards the bridge before her. “Move us into the system, Grand Admiral. Communications officer, broadcast an unencrypted diplomatic communique to all points and stations -- by my command, the Carousel Nexus hereby declares war upon the Principality of Equestria.”
The stars swirled outside the bridge dome as the Above All repositioned itself. Equestria was no longer high in the sky but directly before them, growing larger in the viewer by the second.
“Empress,” the Grand Admiral spoke, “we have incoming communication requests from all six factions involved in the conflict.” Scrolling holographic text appeared before Rarity’s eyes, but the admiral summarized anyway. “They are displeased.”
Rarity’s hoof lifted to cover her lower face. Laughter was hedonistic and debased, being nothing more than a pleasurable seizure of a beast’s innards, but there was no commandment against expressing amusement. She no longer had a jaw, but she hid her smile yet. “Yes,” she said, “I imagine they are displeased. Put them all through with Chancellor Sparkle on the center screen.”
Five floating holographic images appeared in front of her, depicting the leaders of five great nations: Admiral-General Rainbow Dash on her battle-bridge, Speaker Fluttershy in her office, and so forth. Chancellor Sparkle’s image floated in the center, the sensor output screens behind her suggesting she was on some sort of research vessel.
“You kill-stealing varmint!” Applejack shouted, cutting off the others. She made quite the space-pony, all dressed up in apple-red spacesuit. “We lost near-on two thousand ships taking this system, and you think you can just steal it out from under us!?”
“Yeah!” Rainbow added, still very much a pegasus save for the little insectile antennae on her forehead. “I wanted your help when it would have made a difference! Not for you to swoop in after and claim all the glory. If you capture Equestria, you can bet I’m going to take it right back!”
“No no, everypony wait!” Pinkie Pie hopped up and down, having taken the form of a very excitable little pink ball of fuzz which presumably had hooves somewhere under all that fur. “We can make this work. Hey, Twilight, you want to end the war right now? Because if you’re going to lose Equestria anyway, you should totally surrender it to us before Rarity takes it. Wink!”
Rarity listened to it all without moving in the slightest, so still she might have been a steel statue. The jagged metal on which she sat rose behind her like a grasping claw, framing her in the image the other five could see. She weathered their threats and their bellowing, their attempts at negotiation and their idle speculation.
When she had heard enough, she said: “It is Equestria that stands before me. Will its master not speak?”
Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie each fell quiet, the direction of their eyes shifting slightly as they turned to look at Twilight. Twilight, still a proper alicorn, looked more put-out than anything, a peevish frown on her face. “Fine,” she said, hooves crossed, “what are your war goals?”
“You will bend the knee, and swear your empire in vassalage to mine,” Rarity spoke. “Your people will revere the Divine Precursors as their rightful gods, and will lead their lives in accordance with the commandments they left behind.”
The others looked incredulous. Twilight laughed. “Rarity, you-”
“Empress.”
Twilight’s jaw snapped shut on reflex, so sharp was Rarity’s tone. She sat back in her command chair, and rubbed at her jaw with a hoof. Then she laughed again, though the second time it came out stiff. “Empress Rarity. Fine. I don’t think you get how this works. How many ships do you even have?”
“In the Equus system, I have three.”
“You have three.” Twilight repeated. She laughed again. “You understand that Rainbow Dash just threw five hundred at me?”
“One of the Precursors chosen is a match for any number of beasts.”
Twilight lifted a hoof to her face as a few of the others chuckled. Only Pinkie Pie looked nervous. “Okay, look,” Twilight said, “you can’t have what you want, and even if you could have it, you don’t actually want it. See?”
Twilight gestured, and a floating holographic map of the galaxy appeared in her screen. It was split into sections, marked with colors for the great empires: hers in blue, Rainbow in red, and so forth. “Empress Rarity, I command a nation of sixty planets. The Harmony Federation has a hundred and nine planets between its members. How many do you have?”
“Only One.”
“Just one planet isn’t-”
“No,” Rarity lifted a hoof. “The name of the planet is Only One. It is the jewel of the heavens, and the rock upon which the Divine Pre-”
“Okay, whatever.” Twilight waved her hoof across the screen. “Look, bottom line, I’m already rebuilding my fleet. Soon I’ll be back up to full strength, and I’ll outnumber you fifty to one. Even if you could capture Equestria, you can’t hold it. I’ll take it back. And you can’t capture it. It’s a world of ten billion ponies. You’d need at least five-hundred million soldiers to capture it, and you don’t have that many ponies in your entire empire!”
Gesticulating wildly, Twilight went on like a professor in their lecture hall: “And even if somehow you did force me to bend the knee? Applejack is right. What you’re doing is kill-stealing. Do you want to tick off the Harmony Federation too, and make two enemies? So you can be outnumbered a hundred to one? The… game of empires doesn’t work that way, Rarity. You can’t just declare war on someone because you want their territory. You need claims, casus belli. You know, a pretext?”
Rarity nodded. She considered Twilight’s works at length. The silence grew heavy. Finally, Twilight asked: “Well?”
Then Rarity spoke: “Commence primary ignition.”
“Commence primary ignition!” the Grand Admiral called to the bridge crew. Levers were pulled, controls flicked by robotic hooves. On the monitors, Twilight and Applejack and Rainbow Dash and all the others were shouting -- shouting at each other, shouting at Rarity. Rarity ignored them all.
She resolved that, next she visited confession, she would speak to her private priest about this urge to shut her eyes. If the Divine Precursors did not bless her body with eyelids, it was because she was better off without them. And so for the second time that day, she watched ponies die.
A bright white beam shot out of the base of the Above All. White cracks spread through Equestria where it struck. Ten billion ponies cried out in terror. Soldiers clung to weapons that would not protect them. Parents held their children.
And then they were gone.
On the monitors, all five of Rarity’s rivals starred in slack-jawed silence. They watched the cloud of debris that was once the planet of Equestria slowly expand in all directions.
“As you can see,” Rarity said, her voice ever so quiet. “My people have evolved beyond the need for pretext.”
“Sweet Celestia…” Applejack whispered. Twilight’s jaw opened and closed without a word.
“Silence,” Rarity barked. “Hear my words and know them to be true, Chancellor Sparkle: this was your doing. Like all beasts you are selfish. It’s all about your life, your needs, your urges, the urge to consume, to reproduce, to earn the respect of your herd! You built your nation like a foal playing with blocks, planning your logistics and thinking you were oh so clever.”
Rarity reached up, stroking Twilight’s holographic image with her hoof, though it had no substance. “And you are clever. Your nation became powerful. So powerful that the entire galaxy united against you. The Harmony Federation exists for that purpose alone. They knew it was their only hope. And now, by your greed and their paranoia, both of your fleets lie shattered and you do not have the time to rebuild them.”
She pointed sharply out the window, at the debris field beyond: “Look at what I have done today and understand there is nothing you can keep from me. Your beast-flesh offends the Divine Precursors, and they have given me the means to cleanse the galaxy of your filth!”
Rarity’s hoof slammed into the deck, hard enough to crack the decorative ceramics that surrounded her throne. Her robe, being little more than loose white cloth, was knocked from her shoulders by the force of the impact. It slipped away, and left her naked in her glory: a perfect, sexless, soulless machine.
Rarity looked at herself, then at Twilight. She shook her head. “But you are fortunate. Genocide is not my aim. Bend the knee, and for now at least, I will spare your lives.”
The clock in Twilight’s castle went tick-tock, tick-tock.
Twilight, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy all sat around the table. Between them in the center was the board game Stellaris, and a cardboard map of the galaxy with game cards and little glass ship tokens scattered over it.
Rarity was seated at the table too. All five of them were staring at her.
Eventually, Rarity managed to ask: “What?”
“Uh…” Twilight cleared her throat. She looked at Applejack for support, but Applejack quickly shrugged. “Are you um… are you enjoying Stellaris, Rarity?”
“Oh, yes!” Rarity said, perking up her ears. “It’s quite exhilarating.”
“Okay.” Twilight licked her lips. “Good.”
After a moment, Twilight added: “Okay good.”
Now with chapter art by Cold in Gardez!
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Hehe, the reactions at the end were great.
And wow, I'm apparently the first reader of this story! Nifty
.
This was weird. If they're playing board games can you have them play Betrayal at House on the Hill, Champions of Midgard, Munchkin, and Fallout the board game?
8934001
Sure, I love those games.
you had me at "eve"
Hehehe, that was great. Also, that opening line tho.
8934077
I know the story is ultimately just the long lead in to a Shaggy Dog joke, but I was legit proud of that hook.
Behold. Like the mighty Kraken, I emerge after untold slumber, emerging from the murky waters of fimfiction to say this was a pretty fun story. Can't wait to see what you do next.
An interesting beginning. Would love to see chapters on Prey (2017) and X-COM.
A bit too much method-acting there rarity, do you have something you want to tell us?
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A chapter of Shining Armor loling at supposedly elite badass marines who can't hit the side of a barn at 3 meters and Twilight going off on how the computer is such a blatantly cheating bastard. That would be nice.
Jesus a one planet strat. Rarity you dirty girl.
Nice! Can I hope for HOI 4 and Europa Universalis?
If you can make it work (and it might need a spoiler tag) I'd love to see one of the princesses or shining armour playing spec ops: the line
This makes me want to play Stellaris oh-so badly
Eve
Looking forward to it.
8934003
how about civ v? with these civs celestia twilight sparkle queen crystalis starlight glimmer saddle arabia cadance and shining armors crystal empire griffion empire canada (steven harper) state of new york yoda of the jedi arnagorn lord of the rings jon snow of the north game of thrones adolf hitler sailormoons silver millenium north korea skyrim california republic fallout quebec confederate states of america acadians state of texas dragonlord ember the dazzlings (the sirens race) map earth true start locations these are actual civs by the way on steam maybe the main 6 and or the princessces could play the pony civs starting from the ancient era to future era city states from lord of the rings hogwarts and diagon ally from harry potter pokemon city states pallet town cerulian city viridian city game of thrones city state kings landing nintendo city state yoshis island you can use some of these civs if you ever do a civ v chapter
8934320
hell yeah, played like that couple times, glorious) though is it still crazy?
plus loved The last hope reference
I'm struck by the idea for a story: a portal has opened between Earth and Equestria, but due to a poorly calibration archetype filter the only items it allows through are board games. Communications, diplomatic relations and trade all occur through the medium of board game exchanges.
Rarity: Let us end this charade
I can just imagine an enchanted Monopoly. The girls just walking around in squares and filling out metric tonnes of paperwork to purchase all the buildings and the houses & hotels on top of them.
quick question since I'm not able to read this right away.
What is EvE, or do you mean Eve as in Eve online.
HERETIIIIIIIIIICS!!!!!
Ah yes, lesser beings do have to be taught like the animals they are.
If this is what it's gonna be like, I wonder how the Command & Conquer chapter will go. Which game specifically are you gonna go with by the way?
haven't read this yet, but them play monopoly like a video game you can jump into sounds fun, also the game of life heh heh
Enter Stage Right: Prethoryn Scourge.
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HEY GUYS ARE YOU ENJOYING YOUR INTERSTELLAR DOMINION AT THE MOMENT HERE'S A CONTIGENCY OH WHAT'S THAT YOU'RE GOING FOR SYNTHETIC ASCENSION HAHA WHAT A FUNNY COINCIDENCE ALRIGHT CYA
8934424
but can you displace xenos and stop any of the inferior beings from entering your sacred lands with your 500k fleet and planet crackers, that's the real question
I think youbshould do Hearts of Iron 4
8934317
Theres a Stellaris board game?
I'm curious how they are gonna play EvE, the most merciless game ever.
8934760
Seconded
Only One!
Only One!
Only One!
How about Halo and Aassassin's Creed?
8934849
Well they don't have desktop computers, so...
8934849
Well they don't have desktop computers, so...
8934424
Do it! We believe in you! or... I believe in you!
...
That still counts, right?
That was good!
I'm curious what ideas you have for the other games.
8934436
I see what you did there.
[01_EMBASSY_PROPOSE]
8934424
The movie "Arrival" actually briefly touched upon that
DANG RARITY, YOU SCARY!
8935244
Then Rarity chased down an antelope and tore out its throat with her teeth.
They’re playing board games?
Good lord...
I couldn’t bear the thought of them playing that terror of terrors.
That inescapable horror.
That thing that would make even the Devil weep in fear...
...Candyland...
Not going to lie, the pony mod is really the only reason why keep playing stellaris. I'm either playing as the ponies or their protectors. Can't wait to see what you have in store for the command and conquer game.
dwarf fortress
8935592
NEVER
8935616
but losing is !FUN!