Crystal Heart On Her Sleeve
Fish Eye worked on her ensign's uniforms, trying to watch what she was doing with one eye, while keeping the other eye on the sleeping ensign herself. She had found that watching another person sleep was remarkably restful, as if she was the one doing the sleeping, and deriving the relaxation and repose direct from the source. But trying to look at two things at the same time gave Fish a bit of a headache, and she wished she had independently directed eyes like those underseas creatures she remembered vaguely from her foalhood.
The fact that Fruits Basket was not an easy sleeper, and intermittently tossed and turned, didn't help any. The batpony was as active in sleep as she was in the waking hours, or in command, and the constant motion kept drawing the hippogriff's eyes away from her work.
Command had come easily to the batpony mare, as if she'd been born to lead a platoon of hard-squinting troopers in drill and on the march. Fish Eye had scrambled to keep up with her new officer, being so very, very new to military discipline, and to the march as batponies practiced it. It was all Fish could do, to merely not be underhoof. Never mind keeping up.
Ensign Basket had yet to send a harsh word Fish's way, although she'd rained curses on her corporals and her troopers at first. Fish had felt that this had been excessive, but remembering the master sergeant's words on the subject of contradicting your officer in public, had held her peace.
The ensign had nodded when Fish Eye afterwards had dropped a few words on the subject of noblesse oblige and how Canterlot would-be nobles competed in their passive-aggressiveness towards their servants. Well, a few words, of course, disguised among a great many others on the subject of Fish's former herdmates back at Furrow, many of whom seemed to be less individual ponies, and more the banner-carrying colour-guard of their own little troops of maids, valets, hoofstallions and grooms. All of whom were bullied into submission by their masters with innocent-eyed trills of perfect politeness and iron-eyed glares of command and control.
The next morning, the ensign had removed all profanity and insult from her instructions to the platoon and the NCOs, and Fish Eye had noted the slight surprise and growing approval in the expressions of both. The platoon wanted the best for their new ensign, after all, and were willing to give Fruits Basket the space to become the officer they all knew she could be.
Ensign Basket was cool that way. Hay, she was cool any way you looked at her. Fish Eye knew she had to be careful about that - she'd suffered through numerous schoolfilly crushes at Furrow, and it had hurt every time they'd come to their inevitable, embarrassing ends.
But the little bat pony was so intense, and commanding, and handsome in her glittering new fatigues!
Fish Eye meditated upon the wonders of pony technology as she whistled as she worked over those very glittering fatigues with the heart-shaped unit patch on the sleeves. Didn't want to iron over the patches! Even if you were whistling, they were still delicate and you could tear them off their thread.
The magic iron Fish Eye was using was hardly a revolutionary piece of modern technology, but the method for tuning it was something else. She didn't quite have the talent that your average pony possessed for impromptu musical accompaniment, but then, neither did the average pony in her admittedly limited experience.
Few rugby players could carry a tune better than they could a ball, and batpony troopers were no better. You'd think that night-dwelling nocturnal ponies with preternatural hearing and the ability to tune their voices through an aural spectrum vastly deeper and wider than Fish's own, limited range would be marvellous whistlers and singers, but she supposed that the EUP recruited for virtues other than those that contributed to really well-harmonized barbershop quartets.
She shook out the ensign's fatigue trousers, and folded them before laying them down to join their fellow fatigue blouse. The thaumoactive weave faded as she let go of the garment, the bright streaks of the active threads releasing their load of magic into the mundane fabric surrounding them, subsiding into that shimmering harmonious whole which was the uniforms in repose.
In five minutes, they'd be inert piles of clean clothes, as the manual claimed. Well, once you waded through the fruity, romantic, hyperbolic wording and teased out the substance of the use and care precepts hidden deep, deep underneath. Whoever had written it was clearly misplaced, and should have been a writer of bodice-rippers. If only the uniforms were as impenetrable as the prose of the manuals, never would blade touch the flesh of their wearers!
But anyways, the whistling wasn't an affectation, it was ritually vital to the care of the fabric. You needed to do it, if you didn't want to reduce the efficiency of the weave, or worse, mangle it entirely.
As a result, many of the troopers in the platoon had already ruined their new fatigues, not in training or on the march, but in failing to clean them properly. Simply tossing them in the machines, or grimly hand-worshi- hand-washing them in a sink was enough to denature the sensitive thaumoweave. Fish Eye had already noted various dead patches on her ensign's troopers' uniforms, and she suspected she'd be asked to do something about it sometime soon.
When the ensign and her corporals noticed the problem, of course. Batponies had, Fish Eye was discovering, many and varied admirable qualities and talents, but great visual acuity in the daylight was not among them. They might not notice that the dour diligence of their troopers was damaging their marvellous new uniforms… until the damage was too severe to be repaired.
Fish Eye was thinking about the problem of uniforms, and paging through the section of the uniforms' manual on repair and re-enchantment (phrased in fruity arias on the subject of three part harmony and encomiums on the loving kindness of the washer-mare), when her sleeping ensign jolted wide awake from a dead sleep.
"Gah!" Fish Eye squawked, inadvertently.
"Eye!" yelled her ensign, jumping up from her bed and grabbing the first pile of clothing to hoof.
Not the uniform Fish had just finished cleaning, but the still-dirty fatigues from that day. She winced in mortification as her bat pony shrugged into filthy clothing, with very little ceremony or consideration of the dirt she was putting over her coat.
"I forgot something, Eye. Go tell Vine Staff to wake up Rock Mellon and the second lance." The mare kicked her hooves into her iron-toed shoes, and ran out of the narrow little nook they called Fruits Basket's 'officer's quarters'.
Fish Eye didn't even bother shrugging, she just went to wake up their salty corporal, who had already told the hippogriff that he didn't care to be randomly awoken by 'a damned pink daywalker who don't know better than to be a-constantly whistlin' like it was Sunday in the bleedin' service', but officer's orders were officer's orders.
She went running back to find her ensign when she realized under Staff's gimlet eye that Fruits Basket hadn't told her what she'd needed a lance of ponies for. She found her ensign had disappeared, and upon interrogating the half-hypnotized, bored barracks-guard, was able to figure out in which direction Fruits Basket had disappeared off to.
Fish Eye caught up to her officer just inside the great doors of the squadron's quarters' foyer, with some sort of commotion outside in the courtyard in the chill night air. She followed her superior's bat-winged posterior as it emerged into said night air, and paused in shock at the scene of chaos and desolation.
Well, that might have been an exaggeration, but still, Fish hadn't expected to find a swarm of griffons tussling with - no, fighting with a talon's-full of batponies on the flagstones, and blood all over the place. The chaos had barely began to subside when Fish Eye started to make sense of the mess, and her ensign having joined the commotion when -
Was that Hawk Eye? What the buck!
Fish Eye's eyes watered, and she stood, confused, staring at her big sister standing over a horribly injured pony whose red, red blood was spraying all over everything - including Fish's big sister, whose talons were closed around a terrible wound in the afflicted, horribly burnt pony's barrel.
Fish checked out a bit, watching the emergency surgery right in the middle of that garrison courtyard, and listened to her sister ordering about some poor tom Hawk Eye had found to play nurse for her.
It took several minutes for Fish Eye to tear her attention away from the specter that had risen up out of her day to day life, to shock her with the betrayal she'd initially felt over her bloody-taloned sibling, and the guilt she'd felt more recently over having run away from Hawk Eye in visceral, shameful response to that bloody shock.
Why is it that every time I see you, Hawk, you have some pony's blood on you?
Fish Eye's ensign was standing over another bat pony, held prisoner by another pair of griffons in crystal camouflage. On the flagstones beyond that, a third bat-pony, badly disfigured like the first, was lying insensate beneath the talons of - oh, hey, it was Giles.
"Hey, Giles!" Fish Eye heard herself saying, as if she was listening to a play back at Furrow. "What's up, haven't seen you in a while!"
This play sucks, give me my bits back!
The arguing ponies briefly looked her way in disappointment, before returning to their argument.
"No, I'm not kidding, those aren't monsters, those are matrons," her pony was saying to the other officer. Oh, look, officers. Hello, there, master sergeant! Fish Eye managed to not say to the big griffon.
"You know, I managed to live my entire foalhood in Canterlot, and never once lay eyes on a matron of the Night Shift," the major herself said, looking down at the unconscious, badly burned - wait, no, that wasn't burns.
What the buck is that?
"Are they all like this?" asked Master Sergeant Gilda.
"Mostly? Ma'am, sergeant, I'm hardly an expert on-"
"Look, we can't do this in the middle of the courtyard," objected the Major, looking around at the ponies emerging from the other parts of the garrison whose own entrances let out into the rather public space they were standing in - and Hawk Eye's patient was bleeding all over. "Captain Eye! Can you move that into somewhere indoors?"
"Not if you don't want her dying on the way inside, Major!" Fish's sister yelled back, not looking up from her cutting and stitching. A bloody spear was discarded beside the improvised open-air operating theatre.
"Fine, we can at least take the other two prisoners indoors, right? Captain Eye, is this unconscious one going to die if we move her?"
"No idea! Probably not a good idea, her spine might have been damaged, let me tie this off and I'll look at her!"
The major looked at the last batpony, the only one in custody who wasn't injured in some life-threatening manner.
"Well, buck it, we'll take this one inside. Gilda!"
"Yes, major ma'am!"
And the tide of chaos receded inside as the officers decreed.
Trixie sullenly stared at the other officers who'd dragged her out of her workshop. Trixie had been working with Totum on a new type of rocket mortar based on a crummy patent system they had in the arsenal inventory. They had been so close to ironing out certain technical problems... she didn't have time for this horseapples. Whatever it was about.
"Ensign Basket and Gilda are interrogating the conscious prisoner," Sparkle said, looking remarkably composed given the hour and what Trixie had gathered so far about the crisis, whatever else it was about. One bat pony had attacked two others, and there was some sort of mess as a result.
Nopony was dead, and supposedly, if their new surgeon was any good, nopony would be dying. That seemed like a nonevent to Trixie, but nopony ever asked her about her opinion on these sorts of things.
Except she was up here because somepony had, apparently, decided this was an all hooves on deck officers' conference thing.
Not that the ensigns had been called out, but if Trixie had been in charge, she wouldn't have dumped this sort of thing on the provisionals, either. Trixie's section ensigns were cack-hoofed enough as it was, they could use their beauty sleep.
One of the other ensigns emerged from the room they'd gathered in the hallway outside of, along with Sparkle's right-hoof hen.
"What's the word, Gilda?" Sparkle demanded.
"It's definitely Trooper Bob, major ma'am. As to why he just up and tried to murder two ponies, well…" the big hen's eyes turned to the much smaller batpony beside her.
"He had a dream, Major Shield," said the batpony mare. Trixie knew this pony's name. She'd seen her at the commission ceremony. What was her name? Something fruit-ish. All batponies had fruit-themed names. Except the ones who were all 'grr, ponies of the night, boo!'"
"A dream." Sparkle could do deadpan with the best of them, Trixie had to give her that.
"Dreams are very important to batponies, Major Shield," the batpony whose name Trixie couldn't remember said. Oh, hey, there was that hippogriff behind the mare, making googly eyes at her. That made her… well, the one with the hippogriff servant. Damnit, on the tip of Trixie's tongue.
"So he dreamed something, and went charging off to stick a spear in the nearest odd-looking pony he found?"
"It's because you gave him a Name, Major," the thestral said, reluctantly.
"What?!"
"Giving names is a big deal in the colonies, ma'am. Traditionally, even the matrons themselves only get new names when they are accepted by the Concordat, and generally speaking, they pass along the same traditional names, generation after generation."
"You said you had an ancestor in the Night Shift named Witching Hour, Ensign Basket," Gilda said.
Ahah! The Basket mare! What basket… what basket… Mango Basket maybe? No…
"Yes, master sergeant. The sixth Witching Hour," Ensign Basket agreed.
"The one laid out with a concussion or worse out in the courtyard said her name was Witching Hour," observed Captain Big Bell.
"Is that so?" asked 'Basket'. "That'd make her the ninth Witching Hour, assuming they haven't replaced the old one. I haven't been keeping up on the bulletins from home."
"Assuming she wasn't lying about being a matron, either," Sparkle observed.
"They certainly looked like the real deal, Major," Basket replied. "I don't know them, but that's… well, that's what being a matron does to you. Eventually. It's a hard life, working the Night Shift. It is a dangerous profession. You wouldn't believe the things they see, patrolling the dreamworlds of the leadership of Canterlot."
"Just the leadership?" asked Gilda, suspiciously.
"Well, that's the big part of it, but you know evil, it's attracted to power. The matrons spend a lot of themselves, getting into a position to protect the sleeping day, and doing the fighting when they get there."
"All this is new to me, darlin'," said Big Bell. "Explain it again to me like I'm a foal. Those two demonic-lookin' ponies-"
"The matrons, unless some crazed cultists decided to pretend to be matrons, and ritually scarred and mutilated themselves to just look like veteran matrons," Basket corrected her superior.
"Right, OK, these matrons just wandered off from their posts in Canterlot, crossed half the known world, and set up shop in our courtyard, demanding to see the Major, here, and promptly got curbstomped by one of our own, out of the damn blue?" The big, burly pegasus looked outraged at the irrationality of the scenario she described.
"Because Trooper Bob had a dream saying he had to do it, yes."
"What was this dream, Ensign Basket?" asked the Sparkle.
"The Mother of Dreams-"
"Th' wut?" interjected Bell.
"The great dream-mare, Captain. The Mother of Dreams is a batpony deity. It's not especially uncommon for thestrals to dream of the Mother of us all, but in general she doesn't speak unless it's echoing important."
"How do you keep bad actors from just pretending to have a dream of this mother?" asked the Sparkle, with a note of curiosity in her voice.
"Social pressure, and there are Elders of the Colonies who can extract memories - especially dream-memories - out of the minds of the accused."
"That sounds like something that the sheriffs would kill to have access to," Bell noted.
"Yeah, they try to limit the use of that particular trick, it's exactly the sort of thing that produces - well, you saw what the matrons look like. You don't play with dream-magic without consequences. Especially something as brute-force as ripping the living memories out of a pony's skull."
"And you grew up wanting to be that?" asked Gilda, skeptically. "It sounds wind-blasted horrible."
"More than anything else, master sergeant," said Basket. "But I'm ten more years in the service, and two grown foals away from even applying to the Concordat for evaluation."
"So all these grannies patrol the dreams of Canterlot's very important ponies, and it makes them monsters?" asked Big Bell.
"More or less. The older, more experienced thestrals are supposed to be less susceptible to dreamwarping, more stable, more truly themselves."
"If that out there is what protection age and experience gets you, I can't think what youngins might look like, then, playin' around with this stuff," Bell said.
"You're not wrong, Captain. The Plain of Jars is full of thestrals who thought they could be heroes, and intruded into Night Shift matters."
"Plain of wut?" asked Captain Bell.
"Plain of Jars. Kind of like Tartarus, except not set up to torment its prisoners. The guardians of the Plain put an afflicted pony into stasis, and they don't feel a thing."
"For how long?" Trixie heard somepony say. Trixie looked around, puzzled.
That sounded like me?
"Forever, Lieutenant Lulamoon," the batpony ensign said, turning to look Trixie in the eye. "Or until the Mother of Dreams returns to redeem the dreamers. So, effectively the same. In theory, if there's a breakthrough in the treatment of dark magic and dream corruption, they might be able to decant some of the inhabitants of the Plain of Jars and restore them to Equestria. In practice, I've never heard of it happening."
"Are we going to have to worry about Bob?" asked Sparkle, looking vaguely guilty.
"That'll be up to the agents of the Concordat. Whom we need to contact, immediately," said Ensign Basket.
"And these are the bosses of these matrons?" Bell asked.
"Sort of," equivocated the ensign. "With as dangerous as working as matrons is, they need somepony to keep a close eye on them. You don't want corrupted matrons playing around in the unconscious dreams of a minister of state. Or worse, the Princess herself."
Trixie saw ponies' eyes' pupils grow enormous as they all thought on the possibility of evil, mad thestrals thrashing around in the vulnerable dreams of the sovereign herself.
"Yeah, like that," continued the thestral ensign. "So the Concordat sets a watch on their watchponies. That's the agents. If these matrons have gone off the deep end, we need their watchers here to collect them. Soonest. They could be very dangerous. Bob may have saved us from a great deal of trouble."
"Is it possible that they're totally innocent, and it's Bob who's 'gone off the deep end'?" asked Gilda.
"You've met 'Bob', haven't you, master sergeant? Do you think somepony as gormless and single-minded as that trooper is even capable of finding the deep end? There's nothing deep about that pony at all."
The Sparkle closed her eyes in mortification. Yeah, that's what you get for playing around with fools like this Bob, you pompous so-and-so…
"Where is Ping?" asked Gilda, suddenly looking around. "This is a thestral matter. Technically, the corporal's a batpony, right?"
The batpony ensign's eyes twitched, and Trixie was suddenly alert. What was that?
"I have no idea why he'd be relevant, master sergeant," the ensign said, smoothly, as if she'd not reacted at all to that sally. "Ping's a clerk, and a stallion. This is a matter for the marefolk."
"No stallions in the Night Shift?" Gilda asked, looking a bit riled.
"No, of course not, master sergeant. Dreamstuff is beyond the intellect of stallions. It's why I don't think it will turn out that Bob was materially affected by whatever this mess was, or is. We should just put him in the stockade, and keep the matrons under close, watchful eyes until the Concordat agents arrive to collect the two of them."
"Not Bob as well?" asked Sparkle, looking stern.
"Well, that's up to the agents of the Concordat," the batpony said, grudgingly. "I doubt they'll want him. For good or ill, Bob is probably our problem."
"Well, we'll see what they have to say. Fruits Basket, where can we find some Concordat agents?" asked Gilda.
Ha! Fruits Basket. Wait, really? What kind of a name is Fruits Basket?
"I have no idea, master sergeant. I guess we could track down Ping and find out if they have an office here in the Isles, but most likely, we'll have to summon them from… I don't know, Baltimare or Manehattan."
Trixie's eyes didn't leave the back of this Fruits Basket's head. The rest of the officers seemed satisfied with the decisions as made, but something was tickling at the back of Trixie's mind.
She hated it when distractions took her away from her work.
Very little of which got done that night.
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Fruits is divulging an awful lot about the Night Shift. I suppose it's technically not a secret, but it's still surprising given the air of mystery. Of course, such an open book obviously isn't hiding anything...
Also, Rarity clearly needs to come in and give a presentation on proper uniform care... and the sharp, metallic consequence of not providing it.
Oooh, Trixie's catching onto Ping's shenanigans. You like raising the stakes don't you?
This is why you surround yourself with a company of diverse individuals with diverse experiences and diverse viewpoints:
Someone is bound to notice something the others don't.
If stallions aren't in the Night Shift, then what does that make Ping?
9929836
A myth. A rumor. An impossibility.
The tune that darkness whistles to herself as she hurries past the steep and shadowed approaches to the Plain of Jars.
Two pings return from a cave where there shouldn't have been any.
The Plain of Jars. I wonder if they do put ponies in jars to contain them. I heard it was a very shocking sight. (Shocks/jars...
sorry nor sorry.) Or I hope it's not full of gooses either (Jars being a male goose in french).
We got a better definition for the Concordat, basically being the watchdog of the watchdog. They basically have the job to watch over who watch out for dream Cthulu. Cherry ambiance at the workplace I am sure.
Is it me or they are really harsh on stallion in this universe? It's no where near a GRR story but still, I feel it's an underlying theme of Good Trooper Gilda and The Princess's Bit.
Fish Eye seems to have very confused feeling about her sister and did not expect to see her here. In fact she doesn't seem to want to be anywhere near her.
Trixie is working on experimental rockets (foldable stabilizaters? Multistage? Multiple loads? Multipurpose?), is still bad with names and can't give a fuck about the rest of the world. At least she is good at spotting when somebody is trying to pull something over somebody eyes. Hard to fool somebody who lived with someone whose job was doing that.
And Ping is... quickly trying to salvage the situation in the background. Maybe he worry about what the Concordat might say about so many bat ponies concentrated in the same military body.
Sadly, Gleaming now know about Thestral name traditions. It would have been hilarious if she kept giving ridiculous names at random. But maybe now when she will give one, it will be with meaningful. Hehehe... I bet this will be revelant later and Gleaming will give names to all her batponies to piss off someone.
Good chapter once again it helped define this extended universe a bit more.
9929464
Excess cruelty is actually against Lawful Good - minor offenses are usually dealt with by undoing what was done and an apology (followed by a scolding). But if you're pulling major offenses in a party with a paladin (murder of the innocent, consorting with demons to spread their evil into the world, etc.), you kind of have to expect being killed or locked up forever if discovered, and depending on them never noticing is more metagame-y than realistic.
After all, they are absolutely sworn to uphold law, order, society, and justice. Whether they're a person or a flowchart, if you get caught by them the consequences are yours as is the responsibility for the crime.
Now, that said. A Lawful Practical (smart but LG) paladin will allow minor crimes for the sake of the greater good. Stealing a key to open the door allowing them to reach the corrupt governor to save the city, that sort of thing = good Rogue, you contributed to the greater good! Exalted Rogues are a thing, after all, and if you're Exalted you're beyond reproach even from a paladin, so clearly there are cases where thievery and skulduggery are actually useful divine tools! So the stuffy Lawful Stupids don't have anything to say!
... Anyway, how about this story? Isn't it the tits?
And immediately I think of this:
Which seems fitting, considering its Fish Eye we're talking about.
Well, that's an interesting bit of lore...I'm not so sure that makes the fabric that ideal for a military uniform though, dress fatigues or no, especially given there's already problems with the troops keeping up with this vital quirk of the care.
But then Rarity was the one who designed them, and she always did have a problem with balancing practicality with the wowing pizzazz...
It's Hawk Eye. She's darn well not going to just stand by and do nothing when she can do something to help treat the injured, no matter how messy it might get. That's her job, and darn it, she's darn good at it--that's why Gilda wanted to recruit her in the first place, but Fish Eye doesn't know that yet.
Well darn, because I sort of wanted to see what the reaction would've been if you had. I'm sure Gilda would've had some great zinger at the ready for it, as she usually does.
That is a very Trixie sort of line, and it pleases me that despite everything else she's been going through, that part of her isn't lost.
The kind of name you give a pony who's fruity. Which may be me stereotyping a bit, but I can't help but think that of the good ensign every time I see her name.
Anyway, now that I have better context for just what his cover-up scheme for these events are (and bat ponies in general, which was very interesting and much appreciated), I'm starting to think Ping's plans, while clever and daring (especially when done on the fly like that), ultimately aren't going to play out as hoped and the truth will still come to light in the end. It's not just Trixie being suspicious that's the problem, either--there are far too many other observant creatures throughout this whole group that I know are going to see through the parts of this that don't add up still eventually, and I already see signs of such member taking note that there are spots that don't totally add up. If anything, Ping's only delayed the inevitable at best--which might have been the point, so to buy himself more time to devise a better method of covering things up, but still...I don't think this scheme of his is going to fly for long. Especially as I fear Fruits Basket might just be the weak leak...but we'll see.
9929857
That explains so much and yet so little about Ping.
You're good at that, you know that, right?
9924700 9924788
I think it was less purple prose and more just that the chapter covered a lot of lore-related subjects that it had--quite deliberately I might add--neglected to explain fully to the reader, but still presents them as if it expects the reader to fully understand what they are when they don't.
The next chapter gives background for a lot of that which was previously missing, and I'm finding that, knowing this now, it helps this chapter to read much more clearly.
So you've got a willing, or unwilling body puppeteer. Sorry there, but yeah, at that point, its getting the heavy flamer time.
There's so much that can go wrong with that on a good intention, on the bad, its recipe for traitors everywhere.
The level of wrong here is very, yeah, Possession capable mal-aligned bats is a conflagration just waiting to. Pinkie pie runs a normal 1 of 10 by comparison.
9930019
It is indeed the tits.
>Witching Hour and Wolf Time
Every time, I picture
"Whoops, just a couple of very lost metal frontmares, nothing to see here."
9929857
The one Ping to rule them all...
9929857
Your taste for the ominous makes my heart chime eldritch tunes. I approve.
Ok, Ping's always been an odd part of this story, but Fruits Basket(isn't that an anime?)'s reaction to Gilda asking about him was...odd. I don't think they've interacted yet, have they?
Also lol "technically a bat pony". What do you mean by technically, Gilda.
Rarity would approve
I'm thinking Trixie is going to wind up as the Sixth's unofficial (unbalanced) internal affairs pony. She seems to have a knack for noticing when things are off around her and when others are lying. Which means Ping is going to hate her.
Also, the Plain of Jars sounds like one hell of a honeypot for NMM, whenever she gets around to getting back.
I always figured that was the plan with the original script for the series, where she Rita Repulsas for a season or so: Go around uncorking all the bottled evils to prove Celestia can't protect jack, and wouldn't you like to bow to The Moon instead.
Where do you think is the Plain of Jars? Is it a physical prison like Tartarus? Or since it's something that deal with Dream-magic user, it's a metaphysical place in the dream world? But if it's the later, where do they put all the bodies of the Matrons? And what happens to the bodies? The mind is put in stasis permanently, but do they die at some point or there is a giant prison containing almost a 1000 years of sealed mad batponies?
The later would be more impressive and provide for a future threat! One problem they would face if they awaken is that languages and custom evolve over time so the ponies from a thousand years ago wouldn't be able to really understand the ones from current time. They would need to place all the ponies in order of when they were put into stasis and make a Chinese Telephone to relay orders across.
9929711
Best way to tell a lie is in the middle of previously unknown truths.
It was explained why the older the better when being a Matron but the two grown foals part intrigue me. Why doe being a mother twice a requirement? Does being a mother give batpony mare some kind of preposition to being a Matron? They are called Aunties... there is connection with family there.
Or maybe it's a requirement for the colonies that any mare must have two children in her lifetime and that obligation prevail over the right/privileged of becoming a Matron?
I wonder what "grimly hand-worshi- hand-washing them" meant...
9939154
Extremely obscure dialect joke. Sorry, I come from a very silly linguistic corner of English.
9939166
Oh, well thanks. :)
9939228
You don't wash your hands in the eastern Midlands, you 'worsh up'. And variants thereof. Mostly in Pittsburgh, but also parts of eastern Ohio and parts westward along the northern bank of the Ohio River.
9939232
Ah! Thanks!
(I was thinking it was leading into "hand-worshipping". :))
I wonder where Fish Eye picked that up?
9932172
population preservation
Matron is one way road
Mayby new Matron receive live funeral
Ping is in the deep end. Hopefully he can talk his way out of this one.
Trixie Lulamoon, P. I.
Just when you think your plan is working, Trixie comes along and is Inconvenient.
Which would make him the PERFECT patsy for an enemy with dark powers, or a dream monster to use to attack two matrons coming with a warning about something.
Or, that's how a cunning person would see it in such circumstances.
But, ya know, yer either perfect, or you're not me.
Way to Bob.
Oh boy, someone's smitten
Yea, that's not really a fair assessment when she's saving said ponies' lives
Remarks and corrections:
> was laying insensate beneath the talons of
Once more, "lying", not "laying".
> but if Trixie was in charge, she wouldn't have dumped this sort of thing on the provisionals, either.
Shouldn't that be "if Trixie [had been] in charge"?
10464887
Fixed, thanks.
First off... Rarity.... these are military grunts, one if the key reqs for their day use uniforms is being durable, and easy and simple to care for. Make the dress uniforms elaborate, the stuff they are running through the mud in and need to care for every day, keep it simple.
So, mostly elaborating on what was already hinted at. I'm guessing this is all public record information about the Night Shift, or at least available to somepony in Twilights position if she went looking.
And we also know there is a lot more going on not in the public record, right Ping?
Plus, more little hints of Trixie noting the truth of things, or at least seemingly being the one most able to notice something is being kept hidden.
10848961
I think it was unicorn bias speaking in Rares. After all, just channel some magic in uniform by whistling, no washing, no ironing, nothing - sounds like a great deal to me.