Frozen Forever
History has many great tales to tell, some known and renowned for the glories they tell, some hidden behind a blanket of death and time. Before the ponies grew to prominence, conquering or befriending all the other races of the world, came the gryphons. Before the gryphons usurped the throne of dominance, came the dragons. The dragons took control from the wilds, taming them with writing and knowledge and magic. But History knows no limits, not even those of knowledge. And so history remembers the dawn of life, and the first beings to stride across its surface. And history remembers, too, their fall, both from grace and from dominance. History remembers the end of beings now known only as "The Forebears". But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Lets go back a bit.
In a land yet unconquered by ponies and gryphons, untouched even by the ancient dragons, there was a civilization. Before a hearth was first warmed, chaos was first spread, or fire was first breathed, the peoples of this civilization created mighty works. They built mountain-top fortresses whose ruins, untold thousands, or tens of thousands, of years later, would serve as the base of gryphon civilization. They crafted relics that Pony civilization would find and center themselves upon, forces of good such as the Elements of Harmony and the Crystal Heart, as well as ancient evils such as the Alicorn Amulet, so named only because of the level of power it granted.
They created, too, many feats of magical wonder. They made cities that soared high in the skies, huge sections of earth ripped from their wombs to host them. They created elixirs to cure any ailment, amulets that would cause lost limbs to regrow, and even mastered spells that could infinitely prolong life. Even their children toys would seem miraculous to modern races, plants with a sense of humor, ordinary animals on a scale so small they could be carried around, and telescopes that could create illusions identical to the object being viewed.
Their legacy was so great, their achievements so self-evident, that they would be venerated by races not to live for untold ages, and seen as gods. Ponies and gryphons alike would imagine them both merciful and wise, and hold them up as a standard to which all races should strive. Even when knowledge of them grew, fact rooting out fiction, they remained a mystery. Even their appearance was unknown, because despite countless ruins and cities and marvels, not a single fossil, or skeleton, or image was found to mark their existence. And so worship continued, because their virtues remained the most public and obvious aspect of their legacy.
Despite this veneration, however, they were no more than a powerful civilization. And, like any powerful civilization, they had enemies and they had flaws. Their enemies were themselves, different kingdoms of the same peoples, unpressed by outside forces and thus hostile to themselves. They sought a victory to end all wars, a weapon to bring peace, an unsolvable paradox. And yet, in time, it seemed they had succeeded. In weapons that could destroy whole nations, they found themselves with a war not unconscionable, but impractical. By the time a spell was cast or a weapon launched, the other nations would have noticed and responded in kind, and all would be destroyed.
Of course, instead of letting time run its course and show the foalishness of even conceiving of such weapons, they sought to improve them. They worked to make make the weapons faster, or to build walls against them, so that they could survive their use. Both succeeded, to ends, but the result of research into such things was that a faster activation was countered by faster detection of an activation, stronger shields meant stronger, or more directed, or more piercing attacks. In time, however, a true success, at least by their definition, arrived. One nation, unbeknownst to the others, created a spell whose creeping, deadly effect could go unnoticed by their opponents until it was far to late. a spell whose progenitor would be difficult to discover, and whose activation was impossible to stop, and whose effect could not be prevented with mere shields.
It is unknown if it was intentional that the spell, which created, rather than summoned, powerful ice spirits, focused upon those with hatred in their hearts and anger on their lips. It is further unknown if it was intended, by the maker if no one else, that the only possible defenses to the beasts were ancient tools of peace. It is possible, of course, that these things were no more than coincidences. It isn't hard, after all, for even the smartest of beings to fall for their own propaganda, to see their enemies as seething pits of hatred and anger, and thus assume that your creation, which focuses itself upon such things, will ignore you in favour of them. Avarice, or perhaps simply self-obsession, would then have condemned this mighty civilization to the dust.
For the creatures they created, and then loosed upon the world, froze their surroundings, feeding on the warmth and life around them, and were drawn to those whose hearts were filled with hatred, and whose lips allowed pure anger to pass. Kindness and Laughter would have been as poison to them, and perhaps some few of their progenitors realized that, perhaps a city avoided the walls of snow that covered so many others. But with an endless winter, the cold never needed to touch them for death to find its way among them. The cold destroyed crops and farms and cities with equal ease, and so any who survived the freezing and who fended of the spirits found themselves with an enemy not so easily defeated: hunger.
Thus the greatest, and perhaps most foolish, civilization to walk this world passed from history, leaving behind a legacy that would wait a hundred thousand years or more to continue its work. With no sentience left upon the world, nothing remained that was capable of hatred, at least not in the capacity that the spirits' creators had forced them to prey upon. Without a source of food, they went into a sort of hibernation, allowing life to bloom once more, and, in time, new prey to appear. Like so many other aspects of this story, it is unknown what reawakened them, or how they came to prey upon ponies when gryphons made war and dragons fought each other constantly. Perhaps the other races fought without anger and hatred, but with honour and joy. But they fed on the anger and life of ponies, and so they came to resemble them, although larger and stronger. It was then that they received their name, Windigos. And it was then, though separated by a wall of decades, that they found their destruction. When the ponies found their protection from the windigos, they also found a weapon against them, and, as warmth spread throughout the land once more, the windigos found themselves poisoned, the destroyers of gods brought low by a species barely beyond infancy. Sometimes, history is poetic. Other times, it simply is.
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A nice little story, I liked it. It was quaint and could in fact be expanded upon, but I liked the concept and for a simple 1000+ words you did well. Your description however left me in a state of doubt, so in reading I'm happy to say I was wrong. If you want I could draft up a more in depth description for you.. perhaps find an image? All authors must stick together! I will only help if you want, of course.
~Edward
1931631
If I'm bad at anything(besides writing in general, XD yay self-depreciation!) it's desctiptions. If you have any good ideas, I'd be glad to hear them. Though the idea of History as a force is something I'd like to still focus on.
And yeah, I think I'm just gonna grab an image of the Windigos.
Also, the idea is that it can be expanded on, but isn't. It's world building- it gives you background, but not details. The details are for you to fill in. I know what the creatures focused on for most of the fic are(the forebears), but I'll never tell you that, because that stops you from getting your own ideas about it.
1931644
I see.. that's kind of like what I do in the Monoverse.. my own universe of Equestria. I got a feature for it.. so you know, guess we're good eh?
New description:
Hope that's what you wanted my fellow.
~Edward
1931669
Oh, that is good. You captured basically all the themes of the story perfectly. BROHOOF
/]
1931754
Hey thanks man, it's what I do best. I indeed looked to include what your fiction incorporated, a sense of mystery and ages old. The knowledge of the past and it's sheer greatness. In both the ability to create goodness, and corrupt all people.
Now.. warning.
SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION
Would you kindly read my work? I mean... if you liked that, you'll like my 11000 or so words of mindset and world building.
~Edward
Seems legit. Giving it a read.
Really interesting idea, and well written.
That read quite a bit like a history book. And you did well on writing it as such, so nicely done, overall.
1934255
Thanks, I was going for a combination history book/ fairy tale feel. I'm still disapointed I couldn't make it longer, but to be honest I struggled to get it this long. It just wanted to be short.
1934280
It is perfectly fine at being short. Descriptions and everything is just enough.
I was happy someone posted this story somewhere (I forgot where).
I don't know why, but it feels perfectly fine at being short.
Nothing more and nothing less should be said. That feel.
Let's see if I can be constructive with this.
I think that you came up with an amazing history for the Windigos. I enjoyed reading it, but there were a couple little things I noticed.
First off, grammar time!
Replace it's with its.
Early on, you mention that there are no images or fossils remaining of the 'first' species. Yet they either froze or starved to death, correct? I'm pretty sure that freezing a body allows it to stay intact for great lengths of time, certainly long enough for dragons or griffons to come along and find them.
I feel you had some sentences that, while they make sense now, could be described as run-ons. At some points, I felt overwhelmed by the number of commas and had some difficulty following along. For example;
This sentence makes sense, but could easily be turned into this:
Small things like this go a long way toward helping the story flow.
I think that's all I have to offer in terms of constructive criticism. Once again, this is a very well done story. Short, easy to read, but it provides an amazing backstory to a rather one-dimensional species. Thank you.
-Quylaa
P.S. Did I do good for my first official-sounding review?
1937627
They froze to death, but they didn't live in cold locals, and the world went back to as it was when the Windigos hibernated. It is not particularly kind to maintaining corpses for them to freeze, and then thaw. Add to that the fact that the cities presumably didn't contain a ton of vegetation and soft mud to allow fossils, and any that died outside the cities wouldn't necessarily be connected with the mysterious species, and you have a recipe no knowledge of what they look like.
On the other hand, if it had stayed frozen(perhaps a far north city? *shrug*) then they don't have the technology to find and excavate it to discover what they looked like. Ice and snow in the levels that Windigos create would make it nigh-on impossible to see what was down there. Why do you think so many people try to argue that Atlantis was in Antarctica? (And yes, they have magic, but the same problems apply- how would anyone know how to find something they don't know exists?)
And I made a few changes based on your concerns. I couldn't get rid of all the run-ons(half of them the second half wouldn't work on it's own, or such things), but I found a few and fixed them as I could.
It was good, and helpful! seeing what confuses people, and mistakes(god the it's-es always get me somehow. I guess my mind just latched onto the "add 's to add ownership bit, huh?) is the important thing too. Just remember- most writers think critically about the content of what they write. It's best to assume they had a reason for something that seems unusual, then try to figure it out for yourself, hmm?
1938256
I can follow that logic. Thanks for clarifying.
Whenever it comes to contractions, I mentally substitute that word for the words it combines, to see if the sentence still makes sense. So "it's" would become "it is". The sentence "I had it's tail in my hand" would become "I had it is tail in my hand", which makes no sense at all. But I agree, it gets annoying and confusing at times.
I'm glad I could be of some assistance. I'm trying to be more helpful to writers, instead of just saying something like "I loved this story!" or "That part was hilarious!" Not that there's anything wrong with those types of comments, but they don't really provide much helpful feedback.
1938762
Heh, noone's hurt by people misunderstanding my story but me.
Yeah, those are the most annoying comments to recieve short of trolling, and people who just say "this sucks." Give me something to look at, you know? People on this one have been commenting on the length, the way I made it sound like a story, etc. and those are so much better than if they all just told me it was good.
Nice little story. Deserves more attention.
1957821
I promise that in my mind they weren't humans. I just let the reader insert what they want into the role.
Alrighty. Bear in mind that this comment has little-to-no relation to whatever rating I award this in the competition
With that in mind...
IT'S REVIEWIN' TIME
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Technical stuff and things
Spelling seems to be spot-on, so far as I can tell. Grammar is also pretty good, though a couple things could be improved upon:
First, it's unusual to indent the first paragraph. Hardly something that'd scuttle your ship, but EqD pre-readers would send you to the moon for something like that.
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Secondly, there are a couple of oddly placed commas dotted around too. For example, the sentence "For the creatures they created, and then loosed upon the world, froze their surroundings, feeding on the warmth and life around them, and were drawn to those whose hearts were filled with hatred, and whose lips allowed pure anger to pass" is much longer than it should be. Could do with some breaking up instead of the commas. But again, this is nothing really major.
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The big thing with this story is the prose is almost beyond purple. Like "Their legacy was so great, their achievements so self-evident, that they would be venerated by races not to live for untold ages, and seen as gods", for example. At times it's like I'm drowning in a sea of lavender.
Speaking of which, there's the slightest hint of Lavender Unicorn Syndrome when you talk about these mysterious creatures which bear absolutely no resemblance to humanity at all. Nope, none. Nuh-uh.
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The bit with the story and stuff
Alright, let's just get this out of the way. I know it's never mentioned in the story (plausible deniability and all that), but you'd have to be blind to ignore the similarities between the Forebears and humanity. The story plays out like a parallel Cold War if
Harry actually was a Wizardmagic really existed.That aside, it's not all that bad. I love the idea of Windigoes being living WMDs. Seriously. If it wasn't for the disturbing relationship mentioned above, I'd be happy to try and fit this in my headcanon somewhere (maybe something about a rebellion, or maybe Discord/NMM released them? Meh)
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General Doohickeys
The style of writing was rather interesting. Reminds me of a fireside story or something similar. Whatever it was, I enjoyed it.
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Overall hoojamaflips
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A fun one-shot with some interesting ideas, tarnished ever so slightly by an over-abundance of adjectives.
I would've written more, but there's not a lot you can say about a 1150 word story.
Still, not bad at all.
~ScreenedPlum, WRITE’s Drunk Demoman
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1970070
humm. I'll have to go through and try to fix those minor errors. Where I can(some of the really long sentences are so long because I couldn't seem to split them up)
Yeah, I considered explaining who the "forebears" were (among ideas that I considered was Draqueni, an ancient race of ponies, possibly alicorns, deer(because there's that whole wierd elf thing going on there in the fandom) and horrible monstrosities that, when I wrote up a description of them, quickly turned disturbing and made me root for the Windigoes) but it ruined part of the feel I was going for. Which is unfortunate, because I swear to GOD the "well geez this is basically the cold war" thing is incidental. I got the idea of them being intentionally created by an ancient civilization for use in a war and then they just sort of destroyed EVERYTHING, and I got half way through and went "fuck. Everyone's going to think it's humans." But I'd written half of it, and I loved the idea too much to just drop it. Like you said- it's a great idea, but the resemblance to the cold war+magic is rather unfortunate.
And the purple prose was intentional, specifically because it was designed to be a sort of fireside story thing. Seriously, go read some ancient mythology- when they describe things, they get pretty damned flowery. Either that, or we get the opposite problem of only a single descriptive phrase, when we're dealing with an oral tradition(see- Le Morte de Arthur. it's all "he smote him" and "he was smote by" and "he was greatly affeared of being smote")
1970824
Aye, I've got to agree that it would. Their mystery is part of their charm
Hmm...
If you're willing to go that far, then there should be a fairly simple (yet time-consuming) way to play down the parallels with humanity.
Edit the references to their great technology to yet more magical things.
Because, lets face it, whenever someone mentions cars/planes/whatever in fics, our minds are drawn to the only species we know to have invented them.
But if you were to put down such miraculous apparatus to their earth-bending magical prowess, then there's less of a connection between these creatures and us.
Fair enough, I suppose
Also, it's always nice to have an author respond to comments like these. Cheers
1971032
Any comment longer than three lines just feels like it DESERVES a response. I'm writing to try and spread some joy and happiness
(Seriously, my life goal is to make people happy. I'm like Pinkie, but a touch more serious
), so the only "important" thing is that my readers enjoy it. If someone spends the time to say something about the story, i should take the time to listen and respond.
And that's a really good idea! I think I'll go try and edit that around... maybe talk about floating cities and the like..
The only real problem is that it's rather harder to come up with amazing magical things that people won't just go "so it's an x" than it is to just say "they made an X!"
Well thought out and really well written. Precise, concise, perfect pacing and revealing just enough to leave it all in a sense of mystery. Wonderful.
I found this simultaneously fascinating and frustrating: it felt like the (really interesting) prologue to a really beefy Windigo-focused story, in the same way that the storybook bit in S1E01 is to the show itself. As such, it did feel very short as a standalone story. I don't particularly mind the purplish prose, since that suits epic mythology rather well. I still have very mixed feelings about "foalishness", though: I don't hate the term, but I don't know that it entirely works here.
4924809
It was written for a short-story contest, and the intent was to be an almost campfire-style story, the kind of thing that you tell to kids late at night. And, unfortunately, the end is fairly definitively the end of the Windegos, so even if I wanted to, I'd find it hard to find any longer story to link to this that wasn't just treading the same ground again
4926850 More than fair response, and my analogy with S1E01 was a rather poor one. I guess what I meant is that it would be a "this is what happened" prologue, then a bigger story going into more detail about aspects of what happened. Sort of like Columbo, in that you'd know the ending from very early in the "episode".
I enjoyed the story as it is, let me stress. It's all a case of personal preference. Odd, when my preference is usually for short fics, but there's no accounting for (my) taste! :P
But on reflection, I don't think my initial comment was really fair. My apologies for that.
4927859
I didn't mean to come off as standoffish, I found your comment to be quite well-worded! I actually spent some time considering what you said about length, hence the comment about how it's closed off, and re-treading the same ground.
Criticism is good, and yours was well done- you started by saying what you found good, while explaining what frustrated you.
And I can kinda get what you meant- that your primary concern was in wanting more, tells a lot about how much you enjoyed it. I might consider coming up with something to build on the foundation this thing sets up. Hee hee, tempted to use it to craft a story not dissimilar to the kind JRPGs tend to build off of- it fits almost a little too perfectly, doesn't it?
4928533 Oh, no offence taken at all. And yes, I would have been interested to read more -- which considering that the Windigoes are not really my favourite Equestrian creatures, tells a story of its own.