Gallus came back home for a summer break. Griffonstone is changing, friendship is slowly growing and with it, comes prosperity. Thanks to him, Gilda and the friends they made here, his home is no longer the worst backwater in central Griffonia. But he's not the only one who noticed this sudden change in Griffonstone, and some griffons have questions...
(Some minor Equestria at War references, like names of countries, but takes place in main MLP canon and no knowledge of EaW is required to read it).
Edit: Featured on the day of publishing, 23.12.2022! My first MLP story ever, and first to be posted on FiMfiction, and an instant featured? Thank you!
(...it's 24.12 (and now 25.12) and it's still in featured? Don't know what to say, thank you everyone!)
And now has a Sequel!
Damn, tbh didn’t expect a wholesome EAW story. Wholesome Grover bringing peace and harmony to the old imperial heartlands with Gallus at his side.
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Thank you! I'm happy to see so many views and a comment so quickly after posting this. I honestly expected that an EaW-inspired story (of which there are only a handful on this site), including Gallus (who isn't the most popular character, either) wouldn't get much attention. Turns out I was wrong :). Thank you for the comment.
I always wanted to see more of Student Six applying what they learned to the places they came from, to spread Harmony to the world - that was the original purpose of the school, after all. And then, I thought to myself, "wait, but how will the world react to this?'. And that's how this story came to be.
Here we see Grover having a big realization. Instead of a Great War, militarization, millions of deaths, Eqeustria managed to ally with Changelings (and buffalo, and Yaks, and dragons, and hippogriffs...). And, despite becoming a superpower spanning more then one continent, their ridiculous harmonic ways and fanatic pacifism made everyone else not scared of them, and did not lead to crazy arms race.
In the meantime, the Griffonian Empire ended up surrounded by nations paranoically arming themselves, getting ready for a horrible, continent-spanning war of unification that, even if somehow Empire won, would end up with the continent desolated and millions of dead griffons.
Then, ponies came to Griffonstone, one of the biggest backwaters on Gryphus, and it started changing. And when Gallus arrived, suddenly this poor and underdeveloped country starting to reform at breakneck pace and got out of the economical depression. What's more, upon reading more about that griffon, the Emperor found out he also used the harmonic 'superweapon' to defeat an enemy who almost conquers Equestria, despite not even being a pony, and was and important person in Equestria, with direct access to the Princess.
So now we have a citizen of Griffonia who can use the pony super-magic, and also came to a backwater country and changed it into a more and more prospering place faster then it took the Emperor to reform even half of just his bureaucratic system.
Obviously, seeing all this, Grover VI could only have one reaction. "I want to know how he did all this, and if I can apply it to my Empire. And having one of the defenders of Equestria on my side would be amazing politically, let alone the fact he can help defend the Empire against supernatural threats. Get me that griffon!"
I hope you don't mind a small look behind the scenes of the story. I won't lie, I'm so happy to see both the views and feedback this story starts to get. Thank you again for the comment!
Well then their intelligence is rather cruddy, considering I can't exactly call the Castle of Friendship "impenetrable" when you could probably just walk through the front door without much issue, and I would hardly call the Treehouse of Harmony "well-hidden" considering it can be easily seen from afar by air.
Still, I can see the problem Gallus faces here--these griffs are looking at it with a warfare spin when it's really the exact opposite. They have much to learn, then.
...yes?
Oh, everybody's a critic.
Altogether a nice little fic.
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Well, there is a difference between comfortably spying on Princess from Griffonia with divination magic, and waiting months for spy report to be delivered, risking it being found and spy network compromised. And they were thinking more in case of a need of assassination when it came to teleporting inside - teleportation ensures they won't find someone like Glimmer on her way to Princess Twilight' chambers. Starlight lives there, and is a) powerful and dangerous, b) able to raise an alarm quickly if she notices group of armed griffons.
But yes, the person interrogating Gallus had many, many doubts. But it's their role in this, while Grover is the more optimistic ruler he does need someone to look everywhere for whatever may be hiding there.
XD Well, funniest part of this is that in general, it is always easy and complicated at the same time. Easy answer is that it was just powerful Equestrian magic, in form of ancient artifacts, and blind luck. The longer answer being, if Twilight and her friends weren't available, these relics would fail regardless. We saw that in Cutie Re-Mark already (and in my another story on this site). These mares do have something special,. Determination, bonds of friendship, whatever it is it's the sum of its parts that makes Equestria safe, not some single superweapon, and Student Six only proved it more now when they defeated Cozy Glow.
Which, coincidentally, was the main thing that tipped Griffonian Empire from 'can we make our own superweapons somehow' to 'wait, can we learn how to use that power?' instead.
Can you blame them? Like, this person was seeing absurd claims in said book, and even ponies who literally live in Ponyville had their... reactions to it. Not even mentioning the fandom's reactions ;). A person who is very analytical, intelligent and suspicious isn't going to actually believe in all this so easily, even if it takes a lot of mental hoops to find any reason for this book's existence.
But it is still hilarious, even if fully rational from that point of view.
Thank you! Still can't believe that my first MLP fic is doing so well, featured, many views, now comments. Amazing. Not my first fanficiton ever, but first in MLP fandom posted here, so it was a very pleasant surprise to see it work so well.
In fact, I got so hyped by the good reception of it, I am now writing next part instead of sleeping (kinda close to 3am here XD). I can already see that next story in this series (Student Six getting in trouble in the wider world, basically) is gonna be split into two chapters, since it's so long. Already around 6 000 words, and I think I'm around 1/3 to 2/3rds of the story, so it will definitely be split and posted as two chapters. Hopefully tomorrow.
You can guess who's gonna get next story in this series, I can say she's a girl and will have to deal with definitely less nice place then Gallus did, although also close to her home.
Wow. Really good story, writing, and EaW country names. These names should be canon.
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Thank you! I am so happy to see all these comments right now :).
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You're welcome! :)
Fantastic . A fic of Galus transforming The Empire in Griffon Equestria would be cool.
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Uuuuf, that's... a little ambitious, I won't lie XD. It would be an amazing fic, but also would be a long and ambitious journey.
I'll put in in the back of my head, but for now I want to finish both this series and my Starlight story, and even then I'm left with a long work on another site that's still unfinished.
... but it's tempting, I won't lie. It could be absolutely amazing.
Why aren't there any genre tags?
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Huh. I was sure there was a tag here, but it seem I did not put it in for some reason. Thanks for the comment, fixed.
Well you learn how to be more prepared and organized just like Twilight so don't worry you got this kid
Super weapons there's no super weapons I mean they have weapons and all but nothing to ordinary but where the heck did they get this information from
“I did. And it was as unreal as adventures of Darling Do. Both are obviously fictional, with such absurd claims.
Daring Do
And you don't know the half of the story what these ponies went through my good sir
Well this was pretty unexpected for Gallus never thought he would start out his summer vacation it was going to start out pretty normal until one of the Royal Guards asking him to come with them but of course Grandpa Gruff kind of escalated the situation but Gallus told him to stop and he will go with them so they won't be no incident and Grandpa was pretty impressed with him after that they went to the kingdom he is pretty nervous about talking with the kingdom but he has confidence that he can do this without making a fool of himself and apparently this Griffin was asking about super weapon he had no idea what he was talking about but all he can say is all the things that Twilight and her friends explain and even the ones that he also explained on his experience and with that he went to the room and waiting for somebody to come he was not expecting to see the king Grover VI and he wants to reassure the young Griffin that nothing is going to happen no war or anything he really wants to become peace with other countries he just needs to know how and apparently he wanted Gallus to help him with that which that's a pretty huge honor for him but also stressful because he's just a kid but I got to say this was pretty interesting I wonder how the other kids are doing but either way keep up the good work
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That... is a LOT of comments :). I'm gonna answer them here, one by one.
Comment 1.
Gallus is definitely much better at diplomacy then he thinks, as we can see here. Like everyone out of Student Six in this series, he is surrounded by people amazing in many things, and his teachers are flat out amazing in terms of their abilities. But absolutely has it in him, just like his friends, and every story here only confirms it.
But yes, Gallus here wants to be as smart as Ocellus and as charismatic as Silverstream, while in their stories both of them wish they were as brave as he is. All of them are quite amazing :).
Comment 2.
I mean, from the Empire's perspective, Equestria defeated: Ancient Centaur who could lay waste to entire countries by himself, Sombra who had a full-blown empire once, rebellion where one of the two rulers became so powerful she took control of sun and moon (and almost fried Gryphus). The we have Storm King, who controlled almost entire Zebrica and was more powerful then the Empire itself.
Imagine being a low-ranking intelligence analyst in the Empire, and trying to explain it to your superior. Will you tell him 'friendship'? Of course not. Either you yourself don't believe n something so absurd, or you don't want to get fired for saying something so absurd. So it must be ancient supoerweapons! The Elements of Harmony must be some king of magical wunderwaffe. XD.
Comment 3.
Typo fixed, thank you! And yes, it was really funny part of the story, just showing how much the Empire misunderstands the ponies sometimes. One day, Daring Do will find the Idol of Boreas, and the poor intelligence officer who dismissed her books is going to eat her report.
Comment 4.
If you wonder how they're doing... well, they have quite the adventures of their own. 4 out of 6 are already published here, and other two will be soon when I get to writing them. I just finished Ocellus's story, and will soon get to the other two.
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Gallus is definitely much better at diplomacy then he thinks, as we can see here. Like everyone out of Student Six in this series, he is surrounded by people amazing in many things, and his teachers are flat out amazing in terms of their abilities. But absolutely has it in him, just like his friends, and every story here only confirms it.
But yes, Gallus here wants to be as smart as Ocellus and as charismatic as Silverstream, while in their stories both of them wish they were as brave as he is. All of them are quite amazing :).
Yeah I remember the episode uprooted I knew that Gallus is a pretty smart kid especially he even got some of the permission slips just to come prepared or something like that
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Yep. He's really smart, and it's easy to underestimate him.
I had this tab put aside for HOW LONG?!? And there are now EIGHT stories in this setting?
...
Time to officially add these to my Read Later pile.
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Well, there was a small (or not small) hiatus in the meantime, but now my health is a little better so I am back :). I hope you managed to catch up in the meantime!
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Um... Haven't even started yet.
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... well, you must have an impressive pile of things to read ;). Worry not, I am not going anywhere yet, and this story will continue for a while longer still.