Something is happening in the hallowed streets of Canterlot. A madpony hunts for those he believes responsible for his disgrace, urged on by a mysterious force that gives him terrifying power. Captain Shining Armor of the Royal Guard is in a race against time to apprehend this felon before blood is spilled and lives are lost. And in order to do so, he must turn to an ally that may be more threatening than than the very pony he is pursuing. A story from the Lunaverse, it follows the consequences of Greengrass's Night.
Chapters (6)
A minor point: In the Lunaverse, the Equestrian flag is different in Luna's Equestria as opposed to Celestia's:
i41.tinypic.com/a0ihau.png
1014778 Did the flag ever look like the one from the Maneverse?
1014857
Maybe once, but not in recent memory - certainly not in the past 1,000 years, so I doubt shining Armor would be familiar with it. It's supposed to be a yin-yang, right? You could just call it that, there is a China equivalent somewhere in the world.
Anyway, as to the story itself:
This is much darker than typical Lunaverse fare...as a result, I don't think it can be canonized. It can, of course, be inserted into the list of non-canon Lunaverse stories.
I like chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. They're all creepy and spooky and horrifying and dark, just what I was expecting. Scorpan comes across as deliciously malicious, and I'm definitely set to learn more about Him (who's name, I'm assuming, beings with "T" and ends with "irek").
But, here we enter the problem...I'm not a big fan of chapter 5. While I appreciate in theory the idea of showing us someone who can easily take on Greengrass and leave him in a cold sweat, well, I feel much as I did after reading Lord of the Rings and encountering Tom Bombadil. I *hate* Bombadil with a fiery passion, because he completely ruins the impact of the One Ring, how it's supposed to be this all-corrupting force.
Shadowlight is basically Tom Bombadil here. Greengrass isn't supposed to be indefatigable by any means, but Shadowlight doesn't just overcome Greengrass, he does it effortlessly, leaving Greengrass looking like a fool rather than the viable threat that he's supposed to be as our Season 1 villain.
Now, since this is going into the non-canon list anyway, you don't have to change anything, but I just wanted to give my opinion on the matter.
1015201 The ultimate point of the confrontation between Greengrass and Shadowlight was that they play in different arenas. Greengrass crossed some boundaries with his scheming, which is what led to the confrontation. Part of the point is to show that, however much power and influence he has in the Night Court, that power only counts for so much in the right areas and under the right circumstances. Shadowlight has a lot of a very different kind of power and Greengrass put himself in the prime position to get a taste of it. But otherwise, Shadowlight can't touch him. It also sets up that, in his own way, Shadowlight has a way of understanding the world that is rather alien to how most ponies see it that can, at times, be as unnerving and threatening as someone like Scorpan.
It doesn't help that Greengrass does not come off as being quite as clever and subtle as he likes to think he is. He has his moments to be sure, but mostly comes across as too heavy-hooved for his own good most of the time. On top of it all, he views politics as The Game. And it's generally pretty upsetting when somepony drives home the notion that it isn't all fun and games and that real lives are in the balance, one of which is his own.
Oh, and for the record, Tom Bombadil is my favorite character from Lord of the Rings. Oh well, to each his own.
1015352
*Hate* Bombadil. It's a testament to how pointless he is that he was excised from the movies without impacting the narrative in the slightest. But I could deal with a pointless character in and of itself; my problem is that he is actually detrimental since he completely undermines the threat of the One Ring.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the jolly and happy nature spirit/hermit/Yahweh/whatever he is, and if Tolkien hadn't had the scene of him going "One Ring? Bah! Who needs it?" and tossing it around like it was something from a gumball machine, it'd be fine; if he was just supposed to be something like the last friendly face that Frodo and crew see for a long time without ever bringing the One Ring into it, then that'd be one thing. But as it stands, where he's apparently so friendly that he can play horsehoes with the One Ring? He's the worst part of the book from a narrative standpoint.
Again, I understand the point you were trying to make - it's just a point that really, really didn't need to be made, and in fact is detrimental to our ongoing plot since it completely undermines the impact of Greengrass as a villain.
1016324
You mean other than resulting in the removal of the part with the barrow wrights where the hobbits get the magic Nazgul slaying short swords? Where Bombadil has to rescue them?
The bit about the One Ring having no power over him is to show a bit about how the ring's corrupting powers works; Bombadil simply lacks any darkness for it to work with showing that it is subversion rather than straight up mind control.
1017212
I don't recall a single Nazgul actually being slain by a hobbit in the books. The Witch-King was momentarily injured by Merry but actually killed by Eowyn, while the remaining eight died with the destruction of the One Ring (okay, technically sort of that's hobbit-inflicted, but no barrow-blades are involved). The only reason we know that Merry could only do that because of the barrow-blades was because Tolkien told us; even still, Eowyn is the one who actually slays the Witch-King with, if I recall, a perfectly ordinary sword - meaning we have no particular reason to think that Merry needed anything other than a perfectly ordinary sword to bring the Witch-King to his knees.
So, in short...yeah, I stand by my point: Bombadil had negligiable impact on the narrative.
That's nice. It still undercuts the impact and fear of the One Ring. We get that it does its thing through subversion and suggetion rather than straight-up mind control; Tolkien was already quite good at getting that point across in the narrative as it stood. So, again: no purpose at best, and actually detrimental to the impact of the One Ring through any meaningful examination of the text.
1017267
The sword made the Witch King vulnerable to normal weapons so that he could die as I recall.
1017324
But note how the only reason we have to think that is because Tolkien told us rather than showed us. I don't think we ever saw the Witch-King really throw down and shrug off hits from Aragorn or Boromir or something.
Actually...that's not true. There was one point where the Witch-King and his heterosexual unlife partners threw down against a mortal man (albeit an abnormally long-lived one) armed with nothing more than a normal sword (for that matter, a broken one at the time if I recall) and a piece of flaming wood. And they ran away.
No, going by what Tolkein showed us in Fellowship, the only other time when they actually fought one-on-one, the Nazgul are most certainly vulnerable to mortal weapons. The only reason we suspect otherwise is because of the Bombadil scene. Excise that scene, and the fact that Merry and Eowyn took down the Witch-King with what appears to be normal swords (since we don't know that Merry's sword is enchanted without the Bombadil bit) still makes sense without needing any additional explanation beyond:
"No man can slay me!"
"I'm a hobbit."
"And I'm a chick."
"Well...shit."
Bombadil just undercuts the One Ring as a villain...much as Shadowlight undercuts Greengrass as a villain. Heck, I had an entire blog post about this.
1017324>>1017372?...
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Wow, what have I done?
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Oh well, this is kinda fun too. Carry on.
If there was ever a question that was a recipe for disaster all by itself, this is it.
1017392
Opened a can of creative differences. I seethe at Tom Bombadil. I'm sorry, Tolkien was a great writer, in his own way, but he wasn't wtihout his flaws, he's not the composite of Chaucer and Shakespeare that I've seen people try to make him out to be. He made mistakes, and I feel, at least, that his single biggest one was including Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings. There's a reason why most adaptations of that book - into movies, plays, radio dramas, whatever - leave him out.
Shadowlight has a Yin-yang cutie mark and knows acupuncture? Cool!
1017399 It's right up there with "What could possibly go wrong?"
I like Scorpan. He's the kind of villain that doesn't really care what state the world's in so long as he can 'play' with others.
Okay, let me break down how I feel about Shadowlight in this context:
First, I love a good situation where a character like Greengrass learns that all their money, power, and political influence has the collective value of used toilet paper. Were this some other 'verse where Greengrass was on the decline and a new villain (*cough*Tirek*cough*) was moving in I would term it brilliant.
However, I agree with RDD that in the Lunaverse as displayed it does serve to undermine Greengrass's threat potential as the primary season 1 antagonist.
I'm going to throw out a suggestion for a possible re-write of chapter 5, knowing that it could have its own problems in the greater narrative. What if after the treatment Shadowlight simply acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred? Perhaps he could say that sufficiently stressed individuals are known to have lucid dreams (i.e. hallucinations) during treatment. A blatant lie, but Greengrass doesn't know enough about the process to really call him on it. Any anger on Greengrass's part he waves off as post-treatment disorientation.
Maybe not a perfect solution, but it is a thought nonetheless. Use or discard as you like.
1017737
Nah, that's just a challenge letter to the universe.
The thing with 'reasonable' concessions is that if you make enough of them you eventually end up making decidedly unreasonable concessions and you have no idea when you became willing to do so.
you guys have silly arguments XD
1017437 Chauser did toilet humor and never finished his book. Shakespeare wrote about sex, violence, and idiot comedy. In other words, they were their times equivilants to Comedy movies and Action flicks. There veneer of "high art" is only cause they are so old. Heck, most play writes of the age considered Shakespeare a "populist charlitain, fit only to write for the dimmest of minds".
Shadowlight confirmed as creature of chaos somewhere between eldritch abomination and a disciple of an eldritch abomination.
1015352
I entirely agree with your post. At the end of season 1, Greengrass showed how pathetic could be when brought entirely out of his "confort zone" and the Game stopped being funny.
And nice showing of "Earth Pony magic". I would like if more authors bothered including non unicorn magic more often.
1017372
I'm late to the party, but the Nine Nazgul fought Gandalf at Weathertop, and their battle was visible as fire and lightning miles away.
As for Aragorn, the Nazgul didn't need to fight him. As far as they knew, their job had been done, and Wraith Frodo would have delivered the One Ring to them. Why bother engaging Aragorn when they could just chill?
3689959 Not to shit all over you but it might be because their only concern is "The Ring isn't in my hand right now and I must have it right now to give it to my master." XD
4931748
As far as the Nazgul knew, their job had just been done. They could simply wait a day or two, and the Ringbearer would be their slave. They had no way of knowing that Frodo would resist the Morgul venom and have the strength to invoke Varda's name to spite them.
That was when they panicked and ended up being willing to take on an Elf-Lord of the First Age to regain the Ring.
4942209 Yeah but they have very little freedom of mind and the way they're said to be unquestioningly loyal sort of implies to me that they'd sooner burn the forests along the way than give up even for a second
4947338
The Nazgul are fully loyal to Sauron, but are unique among his agents that they have full agency to carry out his orders in whatever manner they see fit. They can't and won't go against the spirit or word of his orders, but they're pretty free otherwise.
Like the Witch-King stirring up the Barrow-wights, placing the shadow of fear on that dude in the inn, and so on.
4947553 fair enough
It's an inherited office. Some of them are undoubtedly idiots.
I've read and reread Savage Skies, and until today, that was the only one of your stories I've had any experience with. I can see how this influenced a lot of what you would later write, I see the DNA that became Arkenstone and Earl Flint. This, while not perfect, is wonderfully intriguing. moguera, I hope you come back and see that we still appreciate you. But if you never log back on, well, we still love you.