• Member Since 30th Jun, 2012
  • offline last seen Sep 12th, 2012

Durandal


E

Hearthfire, unicorn adventurer, and her intrepid cat, Cas, are left stranded deep in the Saddle Arabian desert after crashing her plane. There, she is rescued by a band of nomadic pegasus ponies, who offer her passage back to civilization.

To pass the time on their journey, Hearthfire tells stories of the places she has seen, from the ever-changing floating city where the enigmatic sea ponies co-exist with their terrestrial cousins, to the frozen wastes at the edge of the world where the hardy cow-folk do battle with the elements and terrifying monsters, to the high castles of the mountain-dwelling griffons, and even to the ephemeral city of spirits.

* * *

This is my attempt at National Pony Writing Month. I'm intending to post each day's content as it comes, so we'll see how that works out, I guess. Unfortunately it means that each chapter likely won't stop or start in very sensible places, so I apologise for that in advance.

Fifty-thousand words in one month, so the target word count per day is 1,613.

If I can be bothered, I'll see about throwing together a cover image this month as well. Until now, have a semi-unrelated bit of art from the previous version of this character.

Chapters (33)
Comments ( 18 )

Oh pony, the shame. Sanctae (Who I edit for - good to know he's got my back, too) just pointed out that I forgot to remove a note-to-self from this chapter. It's gone now. Do not look for it. :pinkiecrazy:

At least it was only an embarrassing note, not a super embarrassing note.

I was giving this a quick once over, the import function had cut a line out from the middle of the chapter. I couldn't see anything else missing, but I suppose there might be.

Woah. Had a couple of bad days, I managed 500 words combined between Friday and Saturday. Fortunately I had a solid buffer to absorb a lot of that loss, but I've still got a few hundred words to make up over the rest of the month. I'm sure it won't be the last time I fall behind.

Think someones been getting ideas from the Icelandic sagas :) Bulls and cows as the norse men. well norse cattle :)

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Definitely :D The notes for this section in my plot outline basically go, "NORSE COWS SO AMAZING THIS IS THE BEST IDEA EVER". I really liked The Saga of Erik the Viking as a kid, that was probably my single biggest influence here. By which I mean, I am working so hard right now to not just straight up steal stuff from it...

I really appreciate knowing that people are still reading this :yay:

Oh dear. Draugr? Or something worse?

Bigger update today because I was travelling yesterday and could only write in my notepad with a pen like an animal. Only managed 700 words, putting me even more behind again, woo! Still, got almost 2,000 done today. I'm at that tantalising bit where I'm almost ready to just blitz the rest of the 50,000 in a couple of days, which is what I usually do with my NaNoWriMo novels. Maybe I'll do some 5,000 word days over the weekend and win on Monday. Haha, not likely, but a man can dream, right?

I'm not going be nearly finished at 50k, of course, but I'll be super happy if I can finish the third section by that point. Then another 10-15k for the final section and some miscellaneous amount for the epilogue.

...This is practically a blog post. Maybe I'll start one of those someday.

PS. Today I realised that the Whinnycia section had like a chapter heading thingy, it was in italics and everything, but none of the others is going to get one unless I can come up with something good. Sucks to be them.

PPS. Thank you, everyone still reading my fic.

Well, yesterday I got caught up on word count (not by FiM's word counter, but by Gdoc's slightly more conservative word counter). So obviously that successful state of affairs couldn't be allowed to continue. I might have had a little too much of the ol' Apple family cider.

Guess I'm writing extra words again to catch up starting tomorrow. So much for doing a big final push and finishing today, eh? :pinkiesick: At least I got part three of the story finished today.

Robot telemarketers are evil. I think magical ones are probalily even worse.

I'm sure they're lovely people robots magical entities really. You just have to get to know them...

Why's there never a Liarjack emote when you want one...?

Hahaha! Fifty-thousand words. I win! I'm sleep deprived and running on energy drinks and padding the word count with excessive exposition (for that, and all the other stuff I have inflicted on my readers, I am truly sorry), but I win anyway!

I'm going to optimistically say one, probably two more weeks to actually complete this, for what that's worth. I have no idea how many more words this is going to take, I've been thinking another 15,000 or so but I honestly have no idea.

I'd like to thank my readers, and my parents, and the cat I wish I had, and my many, many writing mascots, you've all been great, I couldn't have done it without you all. Even thank you, random person who downvoted my fic, I love you anyway.

Even if long ago, crystals were once thought to be petrified ice, I don't think that makes it his. Unless there more to it than just being magic.

Congratulations on your victory over NaPoWriMo.

Now finish the story anyway.

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Thanks :yay: I've had myself a day off, but I'll be back to writing tomorrow, and I'm going to try and keep up the pace to the end.

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'Unless' indeed... :trollestia:

Be careful. I think this is like dealing with the Fae. She might in fact doing so. Be careful. There are rules but they will not tell you them.

I want to say, "Hey, I'm not outputting as much word count as I was during NaPo, maybe I shouldn't be posting a new chapter every day; they're getting pretty darn short at this point, and not much is happening to a chapter."

On the other hand, forcing myself to post every day is helping to keep my momentum going so far, so whatever. Maybe it'll pick up, maybe it'll trail off. Time will tell, I guess. Sorry for the tiny chapters :applejackunsure:

They no not of pain so I guess they weren't expecting that.

I have no idea why this hasn't received more attention. Even the long hiatus doesn't really explain that.

Ah well, fun story, and if it's ever continued I will be more than happy to read on. So cliffhanger! :twilightoops:

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