And the One After That
Grateful ponies filled the throne room from corner to corner. The guards even had to step in a few times to ensure nopony got trampled by those too ecstatic to see where they were stomping.
Before the throne, the heroes of the realm knelt. The princess who’d fought alongside them brought her hiltless blade to each one’s withers one after the other, speaking their names and praising their deeds. And, finally, she herself knelt, and the custodian of the throne replaced her tiara with a crown.
“Fillies and gentlecolts!” he cried, his voice filling the room even amid their cheers. “I present to you, Queen Schmarity!”
And the cheers redoubled to deafening volume.
Garbuncle the Wise smiled and said, “And so, with feasting and cavorting through the night, the kingdom of Spiketopia celebrated, knowing that all was well and evil lay truly vanquished, thanks to the incredible efforts of four heroes.” By the time he finished his narration, the illusion had receded, leaving two ponies, a young dragon, and a draconequus sitting around the Cutie Map.
“Magnificent conclusion, Spike,” Rarity said as she scooped up her dice. “And thank you once more for allowing me to intrude on your ‘Guys’ Night.’”
“We were happy to have you! Besides, the party needed a healer.”
Big Mac nodded. “Eeyup.”
"Plus," Spike continued, "we should really be thanking Starlight and Sunburst for letting us play here even after Twilight and I moved out."
Rarity tittered. "Those two appreciating tabletop games isn't exactly surprising."
“Yes, wonderful work all around. So!” Discord poked his head out from behind Spike’s chair, eyes roving over the hidden notes. “What do you have planned for next week? I can only imagine how you might top this.”
Spike frowned at him, and not in the usual frustrated way he did when Discord looked behind the screen. This seemed much more confused. “Next week?”
“Of course! I admit, the whole ‘regular schedule’ thing took a while to grow on me, but I’ve come to look forward to O&O night almost as much as Tuesday tea.”
“Uh…”
“Oh, of course, spoilers.” Discord leaned in close and fluttered his lashes. “Though I don’t suppose you could give us all the teensiest hint?”
Spike shrugged. “I hate to say it, Discord, but that was the end of the campaign. I don’t have anything planned for next week.”
“What?” Discord flashed to the other end of the table, the better to take a pony in each arm. ”But what are our brave adventurers supposed to face?”
“Exactly. There’s nothing left. We’ve beaten the Squizard, the Octoprophet, even the Dread Cuttlemancer. Spiketopia is at peace.”
“Oh, please.” Discord dropped his load to give a proper dismissive wave. “There’s no such thing as everlasting peace.”
Spike crossed his arms. “Have you looked outside lately?”
“Meh. Give it a generation.”
“I feel I must interject,” Rarity said as she picked herself up off the floor. “Macintosh and I actually discussed this with Spike a few weeks ago.”
“What?” Discord looked to the stallion with anguish in his jaundiced eyes, which probably had something to do with all the daggers sticking out of his toga. ”Et tu, Maximus?”
Mac pawed at the floor, unable to meet Discord’s gaze. “Sugar Belle’s more’n nine months along. Ain’t gonna have much time t’ play after she foals.”
“Well, what’s family for if not a veritable army of foalsitters?”
That got a glare hard enough to peel paint off a barn. Or cloth off a draconequus, based on the evidence. “If I aim t’ be half the daddy mine was, I ain’t leavin’ my foal t’ play some game. No offense, Spike.”
“I'm the last guy who's going to complain about somepony acting like a responsible father,” Spike said with a sad smile.
Discord huffed out a breath. “Fine. What about you, Rarity? Running low on mane dye?”
Rarity’s glare could peel flesh from bone, though it thankfully didn’t. “Even if I were going prematurely gray, which I am not, that wouldn’t make me miss this lovely blend of improvisational theater and pure imagination.” She sighed. “No, I am afraid I have a new boutique opening in Abyssinia soon. I like to personally supervise each expansion until it can get its hooves under itself—or paws, as the case may be—and it will be enough of a struggle making it to the Friendship Council meetings.”
Discord rolled his eyes. “I can literally will you across the Celestial Sea. All you have to do is ask.”
“And I appreciate the offer, but I am afraid I must decline for now." Her gaze hardened. "I’m sure you recall what happened when I asked you to help with the Las Pegasus expansion.”
“That was…” He sputtered for a few moments before throwing up his hands. “Fine! Spike and I can have adventures on our own.”
Spike shook his head. “No, we can’t. Twilight needs me in Canterlot, and I’m studying to be an ambassador for a lot more countries than just the Dragonlands. I definitely won’t have time to make a new campaign.”
“But…” Discord looked around the room, at faces that reflected some minute fraction of his own sense of loss. “But what about game night?”
“You’re the Spirit of Chaos,” said Spike. “Are you seriously complaining about change?”
“I don’t like this change!”
Rarity patted him on his scalier knee. “Every story ends some time, Discord. Be glad this one ended well.”
“I don’t see why it has to end at all!”
Mac sighed. “Everything does.”
“Except…” Spike rubbed his chin as he considered the sourcebooks. “Maybe it doesn’t.”
Discord popped out of the Adversary Anthology. “It doesn’t?”
“I mean, yeah, the campaign’s over and there’s no point trying to stretch it out.” Spike grinned. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a new one.”
“You think I can?”
“Sure! I mean, you’ve basically been my backup Oubliette Overseer every time you bring us into the game. And there was that time you, you know, split up everypony and drove them crazy.” After a moment, Spike added, “Just go a little easier on your players than that.”
“And don’t curse any of them with infatuation for inanimate objects.”
“Or thinkin’ they’re dogs.”
“Oh, take away all my fun, why don’t you?” Discord couldn’t hold the scowl. Indeed, chuckles soon filled the room. “I do like the idea, but who will I play with if you’ll all be too busy?”
Rarity grinned. “I think I know a few ponies who might be interested…”
“Spiketopia. A beautiful, bountiful realm that has known peace and prosperity for decades. But the sages see dark times ahead, and the champions of old are too frail to fight, too far to contact, or too few to matter. The last available hero, Wuzz Parsnipclaw, leads you to an opulent throne room, where the gray-maned but still beautiful Queen Schmarity awaits you. For you have answered the call to take up the mantle of saviors of the realm.”
The three fillies—nearly mares now—looked around in wonder at the elaborate chamber.
“This is way cooler than Big Mac ever said!”
“I thought this was just gonna be math and egghead stuff, but if this is how we’re playing, I’m totally behind it!”
The last paused as she looked at the figure on the throne and turned to their escort, eyebrow raised. “‘Queen Schmarity’? Really?”
General Wuzz coughed into his namesake root vegetable of a hand. He never did break that curse. “I have been assured that it is an entirely normal and completely unsuspicious Spiketopian name.” He beamed at his new party. “So. Who are you?”
Rarity continuing to play after the events of "Dragon Dropped" seems reasonable to me. To say nothing of the logical evolution of Discord's socially acceptable means of twisting the world around him to his will.
Granted, using the terms "reasonable" and "logical" may undermine my argument, but still. 
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As somebody who has never concluded, but often been a part of ended tabletop games, I understand that groups disband, and real life events stop game-play. I enjoy how you have made the God of Chaos encounter a struggle not of magical origin, but rather something rather mundane, which is to say, something he isn't used to. All in all, it was a very fun read. Thank you for writing it!
Another good metaphor for the show ending.
Shoot, it's incredibly rare in my experience for a campaign to end with an actual ending, rather than just fade away because of "real life"
Anyway, I made Clover the Clever an npc in my D&D game, and I approve of this story.
Beautiful
Awesome as ever
A great metaphor for the end of the show and for the community fimfiction has.
As someone whose RPG group recently finished up a long-running trilogy (as in the first of the three started in November 2012 and they ran near-continuously weekly after that), this had some personal relatability for me in addition to its other positive qualities. :)
(They weren't our first games, or the only ones we played during that period, or planned to be our last, but it is still the end of an era and the start of a new one. It's also just me and one other person (our main but not only GM; it was another member GMing this trilogy-concluding pony campaign, for instance) in the group who were in at its founding and have been in until now; others have slipped away, though mostly still on the mailing list, and others have joined.)
Thanks for writing!
Oh wow!
Just. Wow!
...
And nice callback, that the curse was never lifted!
Nothing specific beyond dangers on the horizon, but this is an end and a beginning, so it's totally fitting!
Wait, campaigns can finish? They don't just stop happening as people lose interest? Weird.
Oh, you!
A nice, bittersweet little tale. Exactly the sort of thing I needed at the end of this era. And it's something I can relate to on a personal level, too. I am lucky enough to have actually reached the end of a campaign exactly once in my years of tabletop gaming. It wasn't quite as triumphant (everyone was killed and/or brainwashed by a Naga), but sense of finality was all the same. Where one story ends, another surely begins, though. Thanks for the story!
And thus the game continues...
9898565
Protip: if people lose interest and your campaigns derail or grind to a halt it means your campaigns suck and you're a bad DM. I've had every campaign I've run end successfully.
9958170
Alternatively, life happens. The party would praise my campaigns, but that didn't stop logistical issues from creating so much time between sessions that we just stopped trying to make it work. (When someone has to Skype in from her college two time zones away when everyone else is meeting in person, that pretty much sounds the death knell.)
9958179
Well yes, but "not being physically present" isn't quite the same as "no longer want to be there"
9958170
Bold of you to assume I've DM'd.
9960395
It is a singularly thankless task. You're responsible for other people having fun and have to create your own. My biggest success was creating a DMPC, so everyone expected her to be a living God who would carry the party down the railroad. She had a homebrew Trait that meant any skill check where she was observed would Nat 1. They were given opportunity to see this but chose not to. Cue them giving her q gun and her immediately shooting one of her partymates in the leg.