Somewhere in the Frozen North, a griffon expedition has gone missing. As the only airship specifically designed for the frigid environment, the Aurora Dawn and her crew's first mission out of the shipyards will be to find and rescue this lost expedition.
If only they knew what the expedition was really out there to find...
Inspired by the collective works of H.P. Lovecraft, though familiarity with Lovecraft's works are not necessary to get this.
I experimented quite a bit with narrative in this story, specifically in using different narrative voices depending upon the perspective. I'll leave it up to the readers if I pulled this off effectively.
My thanks to JawJoe for the exceptionally helpful prereading and suggestions on how to make this story all the better.
Now with a Russian translation, courtesy Steel_Ranger!
I’ve been called a lot of things but an airship is new. :P
Love lovecraft inspired works. I will have to check this out.
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Second that! I'm getting Mountains of Madness spoilers just looking at it.
This is going to be good.
I was gonna say, the premise feels vaguely Mountains Of Madness.
Oo... Mountains of Madness is a good guess, but I'm thinking things'll go a different direction. Just gonna put on some proper music and start reading:
Remote expedition gone missing...Lovecraft influences...
...you have my attention.
I'll bet you can't...
I’m getting vibes of Shackleton here
“And who am I, once made pathetic and helpless under the yoke of that blight upon equinity whose name I dare not utter even in these writings, to refuse Her Highness, Princess Cadance, who rescued my race from said blight?”
This confused me for a bit, but he must be speaking of Sombra.
"Dear Billy. You ever look into a hurricane and decide 'maybe I should fly straight through it'? 'cuz that's what's about to happen!"
Ooh, ominous. Rusty Iron has hidden depths, just as I think the glacier may have...
Now this I can get behind. The suspense is building slowly but surely.
🍿
Well gee, this Gilderoy was just asking for it, wasn't he? At least the Miskatonic expedition of At the Mountains of Madness genuinely had no idea what they were getting themselves into.
Ahahaha, clever. xD
Totally not ominous at all…
Just off the top off my head, that color scheme strikes me as rather Sombra-esque; something connected to the umbrum, perhaps? Either way, looking forward to finding out!
Tekeli-li!
Pretty sure this is the third daily progress report.
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Good catch, thanks!
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No worries.
Captain, you literally live in Equestria. When someone suggests that there may be dark magic involved, you should at least take the idea into some consideration.
Ok, there's sticking to your duty in the face of adversity, and then there's being dumbass. Equus is a deathworld, with all sorts of monsters all over the place. It's pretty clear this is one of them.
Still don't believe in the occult now, bud?
And this is where he chose Fuck Around. All that’s left is to see the Find Out.
...welp, someone's officially gone loopy.
It took me a couple seconds to realize the fonts are going erratic the longer Captain Dawn writes...
...welp...guess this is the part where it hits the fan...
Ah, so now it's Alien starring an acidic shoggoth.
When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.
I...wouldn't say I have chills from this revelation, but something pretty darn close at the very least as the full weight of it sinks in.
The story isn't done yet, but I'm gonna say it now: well done.
Love the more erratic fonts of the Captainʼs notes. But it would appear as though you did not put them in quotes.
Ok yeah, I can appreciate what you were going for here, but too many people in succession were indeed hit with the idiot stick. It broke my immersion in regards to the admittedly creepy elements. I actually wrote something pretty similar to this last year, being a story of eldritch horror as told through a series of diary entries, and I made sure the buildup to the reveal of the creature's true nature was more insidious than overt. I know you have a huge backlog as always, but for the sake of comparing our respective styles, I ask you to review it.
- MLP: FiM
- MLP Gen 5
- Horror
Found in what remained of Ponyville XXXX years after the Event.I reiterate: well done. A wonderful piece of pony/Lovecraftian horror, and some of the most engaged I've been with a ponyfic on this site for a long time.
I somewhat suspected that our mystery entity was more just wanting to be left alone than having any sort of universe shattering goals in mind, though my theory for the shoggoth thing was that it was part of its immune system somehow, a kind of anti-body deployed when the acid hit the thing beneath the ice. Still, it's a nice spin on making it a genuine incomprehensible threat while not being flat-out evil. Sympathetic yet menacing.
All in all, very happy to have found and read this. Wonderful bit of eldritch spook for the season.
As a fellow Lovecraftian author, I have to give this one my highest applause. You, my good sir, have created a story that is very much in the vein of the master of horror himself while also fitting it into the world of Equestria and doing some phenomenal worldbuilding!
I especially enjoyed the slow buildup to the horror, with every sign that things went bad coming gradually, then quicker and quicker. The part where it turned from the captain as the narrator to Coxswain was particularly well-done, in that you made it clear that something terrible had happened just from the shift in narration, but didn't give us all the details.
My one real stumbling point was that I felt you gave away a bit too much with the author's notes. While I appreciate you giving an insight into what you were thinking and trying to say, as Lovecraft himself said, the oldest and strongest of fears is fear of the unknown. One must never pull the curtain back all the way, because they will almost inevitably disappoint the reader. Nonetheless, I was impressed by the depth of your worldbuilding and the design of the creature and what it did to the crystal ponies.
My applause again, my friend, this has been a much-needed jolt of invigoration from the fandom. As someone writing a Lovecraftian horror series myself, I might have to ask your permission to borrow some of your characters and ideas in the future!
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In other words, "I did it better, let me prove it!"?
Sure, I'll read yours. Might take a while due to my schedule being what it is, but maybe by then I'll have this out of my head.
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Glad to hear it! Your commentary was nice to catch throughout the release process.
My original thought for the shoggoth was that Gilderoy made it and the entity took it over as a means of pest control. It wasn't until the 11th hour that I decided that it was its own thing separate from any will of the entity.
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Many thanks, my ego enjoys the commentary.
As far as the Author's Notes go, it's a mixed bag. Some people don't want the truth revealed. Others do. As a reviewer I can appreciate both sides of that coin; sometimes I'll read whatever notes are available just because I feel clarification is needed, but in most cases I'll ignore them entirely for fear that they'll ruin the experience. That's why I included a note that there's a time to stop reading if you don't want to know the details. It's not my responsibility if someone chooses to read beyond that.
As long as credit is given for said characters/ideas, I won't mind at all!
this story was absolutely exquisite. the writing, the pace, the characters (even if there WERE only a few) and even the big reveal.
you NEED to do either a prequal or a sequel of this story, flesh out the world even more.
tho this is just my personal opinion. but anyway, this story was VERY VERY good.
The n and g in "iconographies" and one of the l's in "all" on this page are bigger. There might be more. It's freaking me out. Good job.
It'd be funny if it weren't so horrifying.
This impressive! Is the best pony horror I ever read!
Remarkably polite for an eldritch horror. It even asked nicely to be left alone.
So that's what happened to the crystal ponies. Delightfully disturbing.