Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Canyon

"Some seven hundred years ago or so, someone actually proposed the use of enslaved dragons as military vehicles and war machines."

"That sounds made up."

"It's true. You can go look at the documents yourself if we make it out of here, they're all publicly available in Canterlot's library and I assume other places have copies too. To be fair the idea never got particularly far, and for all I know the pony who proposed it lost their military position after it, but it was a possibility at least someone considered."

"How would that even work?"

"Well I've looked at the sketches they had and it was basically airships, except with dragons instead of balloons. Either that or sometime structures on top of them, but mostly stuff below for the big ones. Easier that way I think."

"Okay, cool, how do you get the dragon to play along though? If you have it moving around it can just throw your ponies off. We're talking massive things. I'm pretty sure if it had scaffolding hanging below it one could literally just lie down and crush all the soldiers. You can enslave one all you want but if it has the degree of freedom needed to use it in battle it'll turn back on you."

"Well they thought about that. I don't think their proposed solution was that great, mind you, but at least they had one."

"And what was their brilliant plan?"

"I'm not completely clear on the details, since most of it was magical jargon beyond my level and it's all written in old style, but from my understanding it basically boiled down to performing brain surgery on the dragon by removing part of its skull to implant crystals in its brain to use as amplifiers for a mind control spell."

"That's messed up."

"So is planning to use a literal dragon to torch your enemies. I don't think this pony particularly cared about morality."

"What would you even need a dragon for? And how do you even catch one and keep it still long enough to do that to them?"

"I think the plan was to have Celestia herself help along with capturing one, and there are also mentions of stealing eggs to raise dragons as weapons across centuries. As for what they'd be using them against, no idea. But probably they would have had to use them against the dragons they'd piss off in the process of trying to get this stuff going."

"Right? That all seems like way more trouble than it would be worth, especially considering the consequences. And they were asking Celestia for help with it? I'm pretty sure Celestia could outdo what a dragon could do by herself if she wanted to, and the fact that she hasn't done anything like that is a pretty clear indicator that she doesn't want to do that kind of thing."

"Yeah, I don't think that pony got the memo. The whole thing ends with a spiel about providing Equestria with the means to conquer the whole world in due time with an army of dragons and who knows what other stupid stuff they had in mind. I think they got a little too into the idea of war and lost sight of the point."

"Sounds like it. Good thing we had a sane pony on the throne."

"Yep. Well, now we get to see what it might have been like if we hadn't been that lucky."

"I hope what we've seen is as far as it goes, honestly."

Comments

[Saix]

This is familiar.