Grand Strategy Sparkle

by DmitriTheWriter

Equestria Universalis

Twilight Sparkle sat at her desk, penning yet another chapter of that ever-growing romance novel she hoped to publish one day, when she ran out of page on the page she was working on. No problem, she thought as she went to grab another piece of empty parchment. Only, there were no extra pieces of parchment left in her stack. Odd, she thought. She looked back at the pile of finished pages she kept stacked to her left, only to find that those had vanished as well. Odder, she thought.

"Spike! What happened to my parchment pieces?!” she called out. No response. Annoyed, she teleported down to the front room of her palace. “Spike!” she called out again. Still no response.

Twilight trot through the halls, calling Spike’s name at every room she passed until she finally spotted him in the grand library. “There you are, Spike! What’s going on here?!”

Spike stood motionless, completely flabbergasted by what he was looking at."W-w-where did all of the pages on the books go?!”

Twilight glanced at the shelves of her library, only to find the bound covers of her books stacked against each other like rows of fallen dominoes. She began to feel lightheaded and short of breath. “Okay, okay, no problem. This isn’t a problem at all. I’ll just write to Princess Celestia and, wait no…”

“Twilight, are you okay?” Spike asked.

Twilight fell to the floor and groaned in a way that said she was very clearly not okay. "What in the wide world of Equestria am I supposed to do all day now?!" she said. "I can't write anything, I can’t read anything, I can’t do anything! Augh!"

"Well, there's always that political simulator Princess Celestia gave us. She said it's really easy to get sucked up in playing with that. Maybe it can help pass the time until this is fixed?" Spike said.

"I guess..." Twilight slowly got back on her hooves again. "Aw, what the heck? I guess I'll try it out while somepony figures out what went wrong with the parchments. I mean, how long can one simulation take?"

---

Twilight walked into the room she set aside for the political simulator, which sat on a table in the center of the room. The simulator took the form of a thick tome, larger than any single book Twilight had on her library. The book was titled ‘Equestria Universalis’, and engraved in a circle on the book's cover were beautiful gilded glyphs depicting a piece of parchment and a quill, a dove in flight, and two crossed swords.

Twilight lifted the cover up and looked at the first page. "Welcome aspiring statespony. Choose a nation." She then flipped to later pages, where she began to see the full extent of the table of contents. Before Twilight’s eyes could fully glaze over, however, she flipped back to the front of the table of contents and caught sight of an ‘Influential Nations’ list, consisting of only ten countries.

"Umm...let’s see here. Equestria, Prance, Trotstria...umm, let's go with Trotstria. Why not?"

All of a sudden, Twilight's vision went dark and she fell to the ground, unconscious.

---

When Twilight came to again, she awoke atop a palatial bed, buried beneath a mountain of comfortable, ornate blankets. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a beige-coated stallion, holding a clipboard and a quill in front of him with his magic.

“Good morning, my Empress,” he said. "Allow me to introduce you to your new realm. You currently hold the Archduchy of Trotstria as a personal fiefdom, as well as carry the position of Empress of the Sacrosanct Empire. Your greatest enemies on the world stage are as follows: The Grand Northern Union of the Three Kingdoms, the rising Empire of Kurtlaristan, and the Kingdom of the Bison. What do you wish to do, my Empress?”

“Uhh…” Twilight's eyes dilated as a truly massive heads-up display of the Sacrosanct Empire popped up right before her eyes. There were just over fifty princes in the empire, each with their own flag and coat of arms, along with the free cities, prince-electors, imperial reforms…

"Uhh, umm…" Twilight sputtered once again.

"Is something wrong, my Empress?" he asked.

Twilight struggled to get up from the sheer weight of her numerous comforters. "It's just that, there are so many options and so many little things to consider. How am I even supposed to know what to do?"

"I suppose that's why it's called 'grand strategy', my Empress. May I suggest reciprocating hostile relations with our enemies, building up our military forces for future wars, convening with the country’s estates, and improving diplomatic relations with each of the prince-electors?"

All Twilight heard from the stallion’s mouth was the sound of a muted trombone. “Uhh, yes. Yes, do all of what you just said.”

“Certainly, my Empress.” the stallion scribbled some notes on his clipboard, tucked it into his saddlebag, and teleported away. About a few seconds later, he popped back in. "If there is anything else you need assistance with, please do not hesitate to ask, my Empress."

Twilight, meanwhile, had just figured out how to close the giant 'Sacrosanct Empire' banner in front of her, and was now poring over the vast, multicolored world map laid out on her bedsheets. "Oh, trust me, I'm going to need a lot of help," she said nervously.

---

Ten hours later, Spike finally managed to track down the source of the parchment disappearance to a small cottage in the middle of a field just outside of Ponyville. He knocked on the door and waited patiently on the front porch. A few seconds later, a stallion with a coat the same color as a fresh sheet of paper opened the door.

“Why hello there, young one! What’s up?” he asked.

“This is Paper Vellum’s house, isn’t it?” Spike asked.

“Indeed it is! What can the Parchment Master do for you today?” Vellum said.

“I have to ask you something,” Spike said. “All of the paper in Twilight Sparkle’s library just disappeared earlier today, including the pages of all of her books. Do you possibly know why this is?”

“Oh! Yes, I’ve been getting a lot of complaints about that recently, come to think of it. Let me just fix that real quick for you!” Vellum dashed back into his house. Spike could hear pots and pans clash with the floor, and Vellum swore with a mixture of pain and annoyance. Then, with a click from deep inside the cottage, Spike could feel a surge of power rush past him, and the parchment pony returned to his front door not long afterwards.

“Sorry about that, young one. Hope it’s all fixed now!” he said.

“Thank you so much!” Spike said.

“No problem! Ta-ta!” Vellum waved goodbye to the young dragon as he ran back to the outskirts of Ponyville excitedly.

---

When Spike burst through the front doors of Twilight’s crystal palace, the first thing he did was make his way to the grand library. Sure enough, the books on the shelves had pages again. Spike sighed with relief and elation.

Spike then ran through the halls to the simulator room. “Twilight!” he called out. No response. “Twilight?” Spike tread cautiously to the simulator room. As he slowly creaked the door open, he could see Twilight standing in the middle of the room as the simulator book flipped wildly from page to page. She was laughing like a madmare, and yelling odd sentences at the wall to boot.

“Yes, yes! Revoke the privilegia! All the princes shall now answer directly to me!"

"...What do you mean half of the princes refused to swear the oaths, that's nonsense! Bring them to heel with the might of our military!"

Spike shook his head. “I’m not even going to ask.” he knocked on the door. “Twilight! The parchment's back!"

"Huh?" Twilight looked up from her power-and-magic-induced stupor.

"It’s all returned! You can get back to your writing now!" Spike said.

"Ooh!" In an instant, Twilight teleported out of the simulator room and back to her own room. Sure enough, every scrap of paper that was on her desk previously had returned to their proper places.

---

Spike ran up to Twilight’s bedroom, only to find the aspiring writer staring dejectedly at a finished page of hers, having written a grand total of zero new words in her excitement to be able to write again.

“What’s the matter, Twilight? I thought this was what you were waiting for,” Spike said.

“I know, but it’s just-” Twilight sighed before rising from her desk. “I’ll just be a few more minutes. I have something I want to finish real quick.” She teleported out of her bedroom and back to the simulator room.

---

Twilight sat atop her mighty throne, adorned with the finest gold, jewels, and fine silks her vast realm could provide. Down below her, the beige-coated stallion walked up to her throne, holding a clipboard and a quill in front of him with his magic.

“It has been done, my Empress,” he said. “The Renovatio Imperii reform has just passed through the Imperial Diet. Now, all of the lands of the Sacrosanct Empire have been fully united under your rule.”

Twilight smirked. “Excellent.”

Author's Note:

So this is basically what I did during the Fimfiction shutdown, just played a bunch of Europa Universalis 4 and united the Holy Roman Empire for the achievement back when even the noobiest of noobs could do it by the year 1500. Oh 1.30 Austria update, why were you so broken at launch?

Anyways, a huge thank you to the site staff who fixed the site up so I could post nonsense like this again. Much appreciated!

One final thing, isn't this song awesome?

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

So is Paper Vellum a squire of the Knight of Parchment or a disciple of dread Xa'quseg, the One and the Zero?

Lovely ponification of a tale of the blackout. I just hung out in the Fimfic Discord channel.

[Fetch]

EUIV is a very good game.
However, the name of the company that makes it might sidetrack Twilight's thinking a bit: Paradox Interactive.

[Leondude]

What ho? A new story by DmitriTheWriter?

[Oklahoma]

lol I'm playing it right now

[Commander Joe]

Next time go Artillery Only

[JustFalcon]

Ah yes, abuse that Austria update! Abuse it!

[DmitriTheWriter]

10294539
Oh believe me, I did. Sadly, the newest patch nerfed the HRE considerably, so I'm glad I got the A Kaiser not just in name achievement when I did.

[HB_DS2013]

What difficulty is Twilight playing EUIV in anyway!?

[Diokno44]

10294550
A Paradox Interactive crossover dealio...kudos for being the first. Have you tried the Ponies at War mod?