Shadowbolt: Origin

by Recovery15

Nightmare's Army

Chapter Two: Nightmare's Army

About five thousand before Princess Luna became Nightmare Moon, a large population of pegasi rebelled against Princess Nebula, the ruler of Equestria at the time. Among them was Captain Shadow and his stunt team, the original Wonderbolts. They recruited more and more followers, eventually becoming a large force ten thousand strong. These rebels began attacking villages in the dark of night, burning them to the ground. Any and all attempts at negotiations were met with blades, and the rebels continued burning villages and towns. Their leader was actually Nebula's adviser, who made a failed attempt on her life and fled when it failed. In her fury, she turned them into pony-bat hybrids and ordered her armies to slaughter any they found. Over six thousand were killed, and the rest fled to the wastelands. Princess Nebula, thinking that they were all dead, simply sat on her throne and did nothing. About five hundred years later , Nebula abdicated the throne to her children, Princesses Celestia and Luna. Soon afterward, she moved from Equestria to the beautiful city Constallioninople in Saddle Arabia, a booming town on the Marediteranean sea. She had spent the last couple of years of her rule attempting to root out any remaining bat ponies from the Wastelands. When she left, Luna ceased all hunts into the Wastelands, deeming them too dangerous for search parties. However, this didn't stop her from taking interest in the old stories. One day, after a heated argument with Celestia over extending the night, Luna went hunting for them, slowly coming under the influence of dark magic.

For two thousand years the bat ponies hid, biding their time and preparing for revenge. During this time, they had destroyed several major Changeling hives and one or two Griffon settlements, earning the eternal anger of both species. Still, they waited for revenge to come. Finally, it came in the form of a black alicorn who showed up at their door. Introducing herself as Nightmare Moon, she proposed a plan to overthrow the rule of Princess Celestia using the army that the bats had raised. However, due to their mistrust of the Equestrians, they initially refused. To convince them, Nightmare Moon performed her royal duty of raising the moon. Now convinced, the bat ponies devoted themselves entirely to her cause and prepared for war. Two weeks later, Nightmare Moon, masquerading as Princess Luna, revealed herself and initiated the attacks on Equestria. Celestia, who had read bits and pieces about the previous war with the bats, contacted Nebula, who pulled some strings and sent Saddle Arabian soldiers to help the cause. But Nightmare Moon had given the bats a critical tool: special armor, emblazoned with a dark blue eye, that gave the wearer with limited battle magic abilities. The body count continued to rise, the civilian towns cowering in fear of the very real possibility of eternal night. After months of brutal and total war, Nightmare Moon was overpowered by her sister. Before she had attacked, though, she laid a spell on the bat pony lands that hid the bats from Celestia's searching gaze. After her defeat, the bat armies retreated to their lands with very important items: slave that they had captured from towns that had been obliterated.

The story soon fell into legend, and the bat ponies declared Nightmare Moon a goddess. Utilizing the spell Nightmare had placed on them, they began enslaving nearby pony civilizations. However, the ruling family of their culture was descended from the first rebel leader who had attacked Nebular. His descendants were vicious but well liked rulers, despite their major jerk factor. King Camazotz was no exception, but his brutality was known throughout the kingdom. He once executed a guard for spilling his morning coffee all over his wife's new rug. Under him, the bat ponies flourished and became a great nation, albeit an unknown one. They continued to attack Changelings as well as many pony towns, but Changelings proved to be unreliable as slaves. Eventually, the Changelings found a period of peace they hadn't seen for years. The Griffons, unable to find the lands of the bat ponies, simply continued to live and prosper in peace.

In Equestria, the bat ponies were regarded as little more than myth. Starswirl the Bearded took increased interest in them, searching the archives for info on where they might be. Combined with his Amniomorphic spell research, his court duties, stress, a failing marriage, divorce, custody battles, and this weird little blue plant that talked to him eventually drove him insane. Not just insane, but psychopathic to the point of attempting to threaten Celestia for what she knew while using a butter knife and toast. He was arrested and placed in a mental ward for several years, where he wrote three books, a journal, and several research papers. Upon his release, he resumed his duties as court mage and fell in love with a young mare named Starburst, and together they opened Starswirl Coffee and Donuts in Canterlot. Eventually, it branched out across Equestria until Starswirl's death, when it re-branded itself as Star Bucks coffee. Before her death, Starburst created candy she named after herself. Due to a strange spacial rift, the candy vanished and caused Starburst to die of a heart attack

By the time Nightmare Moon returned to Equestria, her anger and need for revenge made her forget all about her waiting army, which allowed her to be defeated by six acquaintances wearing sparkly jewelry. Upon reverting to Luna, she continued to not remember the creatures who worshiped her. King Camazotz heard about it from his court servant, Sparkler, who had been in town that night. His initial reaction was of rage, but he realized that the Elements were probably manipulating the goddess and began hatching a plan to use magic given to his family to resurrect his true queen.

Author's Note:

Ok, this chapter has been edited with a suggestion given to me by Shadow_Blaze. I decided to move the character descriptions to the next chapter. Thank you to all of you who at least try to enjoy this, and the next chapter will begin to be written tonight.

Comments

[Izarra Kiania]

King Camazotz heard about it from his court servant, Sparkler, and her five friends: Twilight Whisperer, Twilight's sister Firefly(A pink Pegasus with a blue mane and a blue lightning bolt cutie mark), Surprise(A disrespectful white Pegasus with a blonde mane and a balloon cutie mark), Poesy(His wife's gardener, an earth pony with yellow fur and a pink mane and three roses in a triangle as a cutie mark), and Butterscotch(An orange earth pony with a brown mane and seven butterflies as her cutie mark, despite the fact that she was a hard worker).

This sentence is too long, it's pretty much a paragraph. Also, there should have been spaces before the open parens, like this:

Twilight's sister Firefly ([...]), Surprise ([...])

I would suggest moving the descriptions somewhere else, so as to avoid paragraph-length sentences. Additionally, try not to use parens too much. They disrupt the flow of the sentence. In most cases, you can reword the sentence to use commas instead. If you already have commas seperating items in a list, I would suggest changing them into semicolons at the same time, to remove confusion. However, don't just use semicolons as item seperators everywhere; they're closer to a conjunction (and, or, but, etc) than a comma.

If you do use parens in a sentence, make sure it's NOT something that a character is saying. That's not very good practice.

One last thing, try to keep the content short, like I did with the highlighted parens two paragraphs ago.

[Recovery15]

>>Shadow_Blaze
Thank you for pointing those out. I will fix them when i have more time. And thank you for the offer. I'll email you some time soon ( Probably tommorrow )

[Word_Smith]

I don't know why but I read this and thought of the sweetest gem by the rarispy. Weird