A first-in scout from the Associated Worlds investigates a very odd star system.
A first-in scout from the Associated Worlds investigates the anomalous star system IGS 254672, expecting to find the home of a machine god. She finds herself making first contact with sophont ponies instead. A couple of them are weakly godlike ponies, but still...
(This is actually a crossover with the original SF that I write as my day job, which is to say with the universe of Vignettes of the Star Empire and The Core War and Other Stories, and if you like - although it should not be necessary to read this - you can read a whole selection of the nanofiction I write in that setting over at the Eldraeverse blog. I also have a Patreon which exists to fund my ongoing original writing, but if anyone wants to give me money for this instead - I'm not asking, in this case, but you never know - I surely won't turn it down.
The Eldraeverse also has a Discord, which has an #advancedverse channel specifically for this fic's AU; feel free to drop in at: https://discord.gg/SnzkKhf
As such, I should warn you in advance, gentle reader, that updates may be erratic, because I also have said writing-as-a-day-job to do and it has to take priority. I hope that won't put you off.
Timeframe-wise, it's safe to assume these events start sometime in the middle of S3, and continue from there. The situation will of course butterfly-effect away from canon with reasonable speed, and there may be a few changes needed in the course of the fusion, hence the AU tag.)
A massive object hung in space, cautiously – meaning barely – inside the orbit of Senna’s Belt, the mass of icy planetoids that marked the edge of the system. In form, it resembled a massive arrowhead: one end turned toward the distant sun, bristling with antennae; faint bluish light spilling from its midsection where a bulge wrapped around some hidden object; quadruple parallel arms reaching out towards the depths of space.
Quietly, with no more than a flicker of distortion to mark it, a tiny starship appeared from nothing only a few thousand miles away. Silver-gray in color, except for the twelve-pointed golden star emblazoned amidships on a field of blue, two small counter-rotating gravity wheels rotated around a central cylinder. A gold-glazed viewport surmounted its bow, and behind the gravity wheels a truss held quadruple strapped-on tanks and the paired radiators that shed heat from the stern’s fusion torch, currently cool and black.
Had there been any knowledgeable onlookers, they would have identified it as an Aval Cyprium-class microscout, and known from its markings that the Imperial Exploratory Service had arrived.
But there were no observers at all.
* * *
Some time later
“Log this and prepare it for relay back to the Orrery, copy to DEMIURGE ERRANT. Routine update from CSS Istry Lochran, Cordelia Vintar-ith-Vidutar Iriliselen commanding, insert timestamp here. I have now been present in the IGS 254672 outer system for three days.
“My presence does not appear to have been detected at this time, as no response has been made. The stargate appears uninfluenced and records no attempts to access it or traffic in its proximity. The majority of the system appears quiescent and undeveloped. The thick inmost asteroid belt manifests no signs of colonization or industrial development. Nor do either the first planet of the system, a greenish gas giant with multiple icy moons, or the second planet, a purplish ice giant. However, sampling by probe suggests that both these planets are unusually depleted of hydrogen and other light gases. I would presently ascribe this to a catastrophic past event for reasons to follow.
“There are, however, clear signs of an active Power, type unknown, within the system. I have confirmed spectroscopically the VLBO report that IGS 254672 itself is a ‘yellow straggler’; stellography suggests the presence of a number of organized masses at the boundary between the corona and chromosphere which could represent power generation and/or stellar husbandry equipment. Moreover, there are indications of previous stellar catastrophe visible on planets of the system.
“The anomaly is to be found in the third planet of the system, a light superlithic world with a large moon, provisionally classified as atypical sylithopaludial or postsylithic. This is itself extremely unusual, since it orbits at a distance of approximately 12,000 light-seconds from the system primary, which appears as merely an unusually bright star. However, there is some evidence that it may not always have occupied this orbit.
“Approximately three-quarters of its surface area is… seared, for want of a better word, with desert conditions, deep cracks in the planetary crust, and residual levels of radioactivity. The remaining quarter, a roughly circular area concentrated in one hemisphere, resembles a typical life-bearing garden world. Complex electromagnetic emissions are detectable emanating principally from this region of the planet, in particular from a mountain near the center of the region.
“This planet and its satellites – I hesitate to say ‘moons’ – is the source of the gravity-wave emissions detected by our far horizon probes. The natural rotation of the planet appears to be exceedingly slow, with a rotation period in excess of 400 hours. However, it possesses a day-night cycle of 22 hours due to its two satellites, one of which appears to be a relatively conventional, if large, moon. The other, however, seems to be a miniature sun, with an emission spectrum similar to that of the system primary or other Hearth-class star. While observation is difficult at this distance, as the planet is in opposition, there is some evidence of organized masses, possibly including exotic matter, within the coronal region of this body also. Mass estimates clearly indicate, in any case, that it is insufficiently massive to sustain gravitic-initiation fusion.
“Moreover, both satellites move in forced orbits, which is the source of the planetary day-night cycle; the moon appears to be partially synchronized with the sun in near-syzygy. I have detected emissions from both suggesting a mechanism analogous to vector-control technology is in use; however, needless to say, to thus manipulate objects of planetary mass on a continuous basis would require technologies of large angelic or weakly godlike potency.
“I have therefore copied this update to DEMIURGE ERRANT and will commence minimal-hazard god-bothering protocol within the next few hours.
“Cordelia Vintar, etc., append the detailed reports, encrypt and send, please. (2)”
“Message encrypted… Dispatched,” the ship said.
2. Also, as our protagonist will discover when she gets to spend some time in Twilight's library, the central star (i.e., sun-as-we-know-it) of the system is Phosphoros (the brightest star in Luna's sky), the gas giant is Epona, the ice giant is Rhiannon, and the superlithic is, of course, Equus. (At least if you're from Equestria. The griffons, zebras, etc., may dispute this point.)
The sun-as-we-don't-know-it and moon of Equus are Celestia and Luna, to astronomers, for obvious reasons. They may well have had other names before the era of the Two Sisters, but you'd have to go rump-deep in the Canterlot Archives to even find that much out.
Cordelia flicked red-gold hair back over the points of her ears, then scanned the navigational displays.
“When’s the next occultation coming up?”
“The outer gas giant will hide us from the target planet in 1.3 hours.”
“Lay in a course, assuming burn in 1.5 hours. Nice and easy, a slow arc across to planetary intercept. I want to hide our full drive capabilities behind the planet, but keep the torch warmed up just in case.”
“Plotted and on the glass.”
“Looks good; execute at discretion. Thanks, Istry. I’m going to get some sleep.”
* * *
Even later still
A dishevelled redhead floated into the bridge and strapped in as the shriek of the master alarm cut off, replaced by even louder silence.
“Talk to me, Istry. What have we got?”
“We have incoming from the planet on intercept brachistochrone course. On your glass now.”
Cordelia looked, blinked, and looked again.
“Double-check that.”
“Sensors have already passed two deep diagnostics. The target is closing with an acceleration of one hundred and twenty standard gravities.”
“Target profile?”
“Insufficient data for full analysis. Target is enveloped in a high-power vector-control field or equivalent technology, detected by gravity-ripple analysis. No further data.”
“Can we evade?”
“We do not have maneuvering capacity to evade a target of such superior –”
There was a pause, a machine hiccup.
“Additional data. Target composition appears biological, carbon-based. This data was gathered during a field lacuna as target appears to have switched to deceleration. On current course, target will achieve zero-zero intercept in one point four minutes, assuming we do not maneuver. Or even if we do maneuver.”
“Prepare for the major-hazard god-bothering protocol, then. Lock everything down. Make sure we’re not radiating anything that could even begin to suggest a hint of the possibility that we might maybe -”
“Safing protocol activated,” the ship interrupted. “Secure cognition systems engaged. Warm, nerve-calming brandy in the bulb at your left hand.”
Cordelia grinned, lifted the bulb to her lips, and took a long drink. “Thanks, Istry. Good thought. I –”
She stopped and looked up at a blue flash outside the viewport, and gaped at the sight thus revealed. That… was a sevdra. Except that they were mythologae, and didn’t exist, and didn’t have broad, feathered wings, and she was pretty sure that none of her childhood storybooks had mentioned them having midnight-blue coats or manes filled with captive stars, or wearing armor of some impossibly silvery metal, and yet there one was staring at her through the viewport (which shouldn’t be possible given the gold-anodized surface, and yet) with uncannily large eyes, spiral horn, and all —
“WHO AND WHAT ART THOU? AND WHAT ART THOU ABOUT IN OUR SKY?” (1)
The voice – and the communications panel remained confusingly empty of channel markers – rattled the consoles on the bridge, and Cordelia’s skull with them. She flicked open the standard hailing band, hoping fervently that it would be audible.
“I am Cordelia Vintar-ith-Vidutar Iriselen, an eldrae of the Imperial Exploratory Service. I’m on a mission of peaceful exploration, and intend no harm to any. May I know with whom I am speaking?”
“WE ARE THE PRINCESS LUNA, KEEPER OF THE MOON, QUEEN OF THE MIDNIGHT SKIES, AVENGER OF THE HERD, AND DIARCH OF EQUESTRIA… WHAT DOES THY EMPIRE SEEK HERE, ELDRAE OF THE IMPERIAL EXPLORATORY SERVICE?”
“We seek knowledge and friendship, Your Highness.” After a moment she added. “And possibly trade and other exchanges later on, but those first and foremost.”
“KNOWLEDGE AND FRIENDSHIP.” A blue glow began to encompass the horn of the – princess – outside the ship, quickly reaching intolerable brightness. “THEN WE WILL SEND THEE TO ONE WHO MAY HELP AND JUDGE THEE BEST. PREPARE THYSELF.”
“Alert!” The ship broke in, “We are encompassed by an externally generated vector-control field of increasing magnitude. Automatic core shutdown in progress.”
Oh, hells. “Crash shutdown, engine and reactor systems. Go to auxiliary –”
“Exponential field spike –”
“– scram and vent!”
Blackness.
1. The Royal Canterlot Voice sneers at mere vacuum!
Once upon a time, in a magical land of Equestria...
...a purple unicorn galloped into a clearing and, frankly, gawped.
The column of white mist gushing into the sky - a glance upward suggested thousands of spans, at least - was as it had been described to her. (Well, part of her mind footnoted, bearing in mind that it had been described to her rather incoherently by Ponyville's flower-selling sisters in full flutter, it probably wasn't an evil fog.) The weather team, Rainbow Dash in the lead, were already closing in around it to guide it away from the town.
(At least it had chosen to happen well away from Fluttershy's cottage. She had passed the yellow pegasus on the way out of town, trying to calm what looked like half the animals in the Everfree Forest.)
Beneath the column, though, was something she didn't recognize at all. A wide silvery-gray cylinder (which shimmered in the sun's light like the Crystal Empire's buildings, her footnoter supplied), big enough for a half-dozen ponies to walk abreast, sloped downward to a golden dome at the front of the thing in the dirt, propped on two spoked wheels just as wide behind. And behind that...
Its back was broken, she realized. The other end of the - vehicle, she guessed - was canted in the opposite direction, wings drooping and splayed out across the ground, and with the mist gushing freely from the fractured end of its lumpy body.
Twilight Sparkle tried and failed to restrain a grin. This was something new. She took one tentative step towards the front, and a panel blew out of the dome, through which shot a creature wrapped in blue light, dropping quickly to the ground. She'd not seen it's like before in any of the references: a biped, but much taller - nearly twice her height! (1) - and thinner than a minotaur, with oddly glossy skin. Or was that clothing? It must be clothing, she thought, since the gold bubble on its shoulders couldn't be its head.
1. 7' 1", if we're being picky.
It was also running towards her, shouting something she couldn't understand.
"Xaharisár! Xaharisár! Idar el tra-devassil leir andrár!" (2)
Words, she had time to think. Those were words. It must be sapient --
2. "Run! Run! The deuterium cloud will catch fire!"
And then the sky caught fire. Sheets of blue flame swept upwards, with a crash of thunder and a concussion that shook the ground. Twilight braced herself, projecting a shield bubble almost without thought as the shock wave passed, raising choking dust from the ground. She peered upwards, trying to check on the weather team. It looked as if they were all still flying, although scattered and stunned - all except Rainbow, who was already herding the nearest cloud over the flames that now roared from the midsection of the strange vehicle.
She turned to check on the creature, and her breath caught. The force of the blast had propelled it head-first into a tree, and it was lying crumpled at its base, clothing even smoldering slightly. The head - no, the helmet - had shattered on impact, revealing an odd, flattened face, reddish mane, and some deep blue liquid. Blood, perhaps? It smelled like blood.
There will be time to study it later, Twilight thought, and picking it up as carefully and gently as she could with her field, she headed at a fast canter towards the Ponyville Hospital.
Meanwhile, in Ponyville's Golden Oaks Library, a baby dragon was awoken abruptly by a loud belch, followed by a puff of flame and a scroll sealed with a crescent moon.
This night past We have observed a strange object moving through Our sky without and in defiance to Our command, having appeared in close proximity to the new star We have previously discovered, presently visible at declination 1 ° 22 ' 11", right ascension 5:33:10. Inasmuch as such a happening might pose a threat to Our little ponies, We sought a closer examination of this object, and have discovered it to be a curious conveyance - a sky-ship if We might indulge the term - bearing with it a stranger of kind unknown to Equestria, which named itself an explorer for its Empire, and spoke of seeking knowledge and friendship in Our Realm.
Rather than permit this stranger to wander freely throughout Our sky, or receive it here among the crowds of Canterlot and before the eyes of the world, We have dispatched this stranger and its conveyance to a location outside Ponyville. While We would ask this as a favor if We could, all matters of the sky - and so any travellers from beyond it - are within the purview of the Night Court, and so We must request and require this of you: satisfy this visitor's curiosity, to such extent as it seems prudent, and learn all you can of it and its intentions, and of any threat it poses to Us and Ours. Neither We nor Our Sister can think of anypony better suited for this task.
We enclose an amulet We have fashioned of the words We have gathered from the visitor's dreamscapes. We believe it may assist you in establishing communication.
Princess Luna, Keeper of the Moon, Queen of the Midnight Skies, Avenger of the Herd, Diarch of Equestria
Dear Princess Luna,
Unfortunately, I only received your letter some hours after the arrival of this visitor on the verge of the Everfree Forest.
The visitor's sky-ship seems to have been damaged at some point? Its back was broken where it was lying, and some flammable gas was venting from within it. (You may have seen this for yourself; the column of flame must have been visible from Canterlot before it was extinguished by Ponyville's weather team and assistance called in from Cloudsdale.) Luckily, the forest did not catch, and nopony was badly hurt, although several pegasi were singed when the gas first ignited.
The visitor is a biped, somewhat resembling a minotaur in shape, but much thinner and proportionately longer in the limbs, and as tall as two ponies, with a short red mane on their head only and no coat to speak of; only smooth pale skin. The face roughly resembles ours, but strangely flattened, with small eyes and no muzzle. And their blood is blue! I've never read about anything like it! I've sent a separate letter to the Canterlot Archives asking if they have any books that might mention such creatures, but have either you or Princess Celestia heard of anything like them before?
I have not yet been able to speak to them. They escaped their sky-ship just before the fire, and were injured in the initial explosion. I have taken them to Ponyville Hospital, but for now they remain unconscious, and beyond removing a most fascinating garment and bandaging their obvious wounds the doctors have little idea how to treat them.
Their sky-ship, whose front section remained mostly intact after the fire was extinguished, is being guarded by some of the local militia. I would like to ask if you could send some Royal Guards here to take their place? We've already had to pull three local fillies out of it twice!
Twilight Sparkle, Bearer of the Element of Magic, Daughter of House Twinkle
Cordelia, her muse(1) murmured in her thoughts. This would be a good time to wake up. Bodily integrity has been sufficiently restored. Also -
Ugh. Six more minutes.
- and also, you have company now, it finished, accompanying its words with a brief surge of epinephrine.
1. The implanted AI that serves most Imperial citizen-shareholders as companion, aide, assistant, and body manager.
Dismissing a collection of mesh-connectivity failure warnings, she opened her eyes to the sight of a ceiling painted a cool blue, while the phenolic scent of what had to be antiseptics tickled her nostrils. The not-quite-universal-but-typical signs of a hospital, she concluded. Probably. It could also be a laboratory, she supposed, but from what Princess Luna had said, it seemed unlikely that dissection was the next step on the list, and she could feel bandages wrapping her forehead and parts of her back.
Raising her head as subtly as she could, Cordelia looked around the room. It did indeed look like a hospital room. She was lying diagonally across two beds pushed together, and could see both a small table with a vase of flowers and some sort of monitoring equipment shoved back against the wall to make room. And, too, conversing in some breathy language that flitted up and down in pitch, were three of the strange sevdra - sevdramorphic exotics, she reminded herself. None of whom fit the pattern of the one she'd first met, nor quite of the same size: one cyan with a spectacular rainbow mane, hanging in the air with forelegs crossed and wings beating improbably slowly - where's the downdraft?, she noted to herself - but without the horn she'd noticed before; one white with mane pink and gathered up, wearing a white cap with a red symbol, but with neither wings nor a horn; and the last -
...running from the wreckage of the ship and the explosion she knew would come, seeing a figure at the edge of the trees, yelling a warning that wouldn't be understood...
"Romúrcé. Anan romúrcévár hál! Mekt..."(2)
Her words caught their attention, and all three of them turned towards her. It seemed, though, that that was all they did, no-one seemed to understand her words. Both White and Purple spoke to her in that breathy language, but she couldn't make any sense of it. Perhaps only Luna spoke Trade (3) (and how?), but then why send her here?
2. "Purple. You are purple! What..."
3. The Royal Canterlot Voice also sneers at the necessity for translation. At least when Luna's using it.
Back to the first contact checklist, then.
Cordelia lifted her arms off the bed, and positioned them carefully in front of her, clearly visible, and began to clap.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap clap.
Clap clap clap.
Clap clap clap clap clap.
Cyan and White didn't seem to be following her, but Purple looked excited, as far as she could tell. And then Purple stomped on the floor with one hoof, eight times in succession.
Perfect. Now we're getting somewhere. Okay, prime series next -
Cordelia's thoughts were interrupted as Purple's horn began to glow, and some small object - wrapped in a matching glow of that same purple shade - floated out of Purple's saddlebags and over to her, dropping into her lap. It was a small pendant, a finely worked silver crescent wrapping a cabochon-cut blue-black stone, strung on a fine silver chain. She reached to pick it up -
"- all that supposed to mean, Twilight?"
"It's the Fillinacci sequence! She's showing us that she's sapient, and asking us if we -"
Cordelia's finger jerked back from the stone.
Well. That's interesting. Especially since there's no way they could have a translation matrix for the language, especially since the only knowledge of it in the system is in... my brain. Or the ship's, if it wasn't completely destroyed. But - she looked up at a row of expectant faces - the only way to find out is to keep talking. So file this under 'big angelic powers', and worry about it later.
She picked up the necklace, and dropped the chain around her neck.
"- because it's one of the only things we might have in common, Rainbow! We don't know if -"
Cordelia coughed gently to interrupt. "Pardon my interruption, but - does this work in both directions? Can you understand me now?"
Purple bounced a little, and clapped her front hooves together. "Yes! It works!" Then, more calmly, she added, "I'm Twilight Sparkle. And you are?"
"First, if I may - my ship, the explosion, did it hurt anypony?" Cordelia blinked at hearing herself say that word, then carried on. "Is it still burning? There are some -"
It was Cyan who answered. "Nah. Just a few singed feathers and a couple of hard landings, but we got the fire out fast. How come you crashed, anyway?"
"I didn't exactly crash. Istry's a pure starship, and not supposed to ever land. When Princess Luna translocated her here - well, she can't support her own weight in this much gravity. Just sitting on the ground snapped her in half."
"Oh!" That was Purple - Twilight Sparkle - again. "I'm sorry. I'm sure the Princess didn't mean to -"
"Either way, that doesn't matter right now. But there's some dangerous equipment inside, if you're not familiar with it, and everypony should stay well clear of the rings at the back. Even with the drive off, they'll still give off dangerous radiation - does that translate?"
"We have guards keeping everyone away already, but I'll make sure they're told. So - you were going to tell us who you were?"
Cordelia gathered the top of the sheet up around her, and executed as a good a half-bow as she could manage sitting up. "I am Cordelia Vintar-ith-Vidutar Iriselen, first-in scout of the Imperial Exploratory Service, of the Empire of the Star. It is an honor to meet you, Twilight Sparkle."
"And what are you doing in Equestria, huh?" Cyan broke in. "Scouting for some sort of alien invasion? Because -"
"Rainbow Dash!", Twilight interrupted. "That's not -"
"What? She could be!"
Before the argument could escalate - and she noticed the white-coated near sevdra's ears had flattened - Cordelia held up one hand. "It's a fair question. As I told Princess Luna, I'm on a mission of peaceful exploration. I do want to learn all I can about your world - that's what the Exploratory Service does, seeks out alath ap dalínef, knowledge and friendship, among the stars. I can't prove to you that I don't have any sinister motives. I could give you my word, but we've only just met. So I'll just have to ask you to trust me a little, and hope I'll earn more."
"And you're just telling us all this?"
Cordelia shrugged. "Well, we could - if it hadn't been for Princess Luna sending me here, it would have been a proper follow-up team - sneak around and try and observe you stealthily, but that would just make us look like a bunch of devious alírvelv(4) up to no good. Then people get paranoid, and accuse each other of being spies," and here she was surprised to see Rainbow blush slightly (5), "and so on, and it all becomes very unpleasant. It's very hard to walk up and introduce yourself after that. I mean, we're looking for new friends out here, but even if we can't have that, we'd like to at least not make new enemies."
They looked at each other for a few moments. Then Rainbow nodded, once, and turned to Twilight.
"I'm gonna go make sure the guards know to stay back."
Then she turned, and flew out the door. There was an awkward pause.
4. A near-eel critter with the chromatophores of a octopus or chameleon. Its sneakiness is exactly the reason why you shouldn't go swimming in eel country.
5. Not least that it was visible through her coat.
"So, Cordelia Vintar-ith-Vidutar Iriselen," Twilight said, the translator fuzzy, as if her name was hard to pronounce in Equestrian, "... your name is very long. Is there a short form? And what does it mean - or do your names have meanings, like ours?"
"There is: Vintar-ith-Vidutar is my family name, Either of the other two will do for short: Cordelia's my personal name, and Iriselen my, um, who-you-are-right-now name. And meanings... Hm. About as close as you can get in current words would be 'Heart-keeper Glass-shaper Moon-gleam'. Use one of those if it's easier to say, if you like."
"Moongleam?"
"That'll work. A dear friend gave me that name when I joined the Service, so it's apt."
"I was going to ask you what sort of things you wanted to learn about?"
"Anything and everything, given the chance. Why your sun and moon don't behave like anyone else's, for a start. But then there's science and art and technology and culture and literature and... well, how for the sweet love of aerodynamics was your friend hovering like that!? And, of course, I'll answer any questions you might have about us, as well. It's only," Cordelia fumbled for the right word, "equitable."
Twilight's ears perked up at that. "Are you feeling up to walking? The -"
The white-coated near-sevdra coughed, which sent her ears back down again. "Oh. Sorry. This is Nurse Redheart, who has been looking after you here."
"Well. Never having seen any creature like you before, we couldn't do much for you but clean and bandage your wounds."
Cordelia offered another half-bow. "That will have helped a great deal. I am indebted for your care."
"Before Twilight takes you away, you need to come back here tomorrow to have those bandages changed."
"I will do that. And - I do not know if you are responsible for this here, but while I've been checked and treated to make sure that I don't accidentally bring any diseases from my world to yours, I wasn't originally supposed to land, so I didn't have the rigorous course of treatments. If you want to take blood and tissue samples to make sure that I'm safe to be around, I'm amenable."
"I'll tell the doctors that for tomorrow. You take care of yourself, now, and try not to have any more accidents."
"Princess Luna," Twilight said as the nurse left, "asked me to answer your questions and learn more about you. I thought" - she shuffled her hooves a little on the floor - "it would be easiest if you stayed with me for now, at the Golden Oaks Library. Is that all right? I -"
"Wait, you live in a library?"
"Um... yes?"
A beatified expression spread itself over Cordelia's face.
"Oh, you and I are going to get along just splendidly."
Our guest from the stars is now here in the library, or more specifically, asleep in my spare bed. I had a lot more questions to ask her, but apparently her "artificial immune system" makes her sleep a lot while it repairs her injuries, and she was looking very tired when we got here. If my assumptions about alien body language are correct, that is.
I did learn one thing: her people have a social rule restricting nudity, at least in public, which became relevant when it was time to leave the hospital. (It also seems likely that blushing in response to perceived embarrassment is something that our species share.) The garment she was originally wearing had been destroyed - it was necessary for the doctors to cut her out of it to treat her wounds, as it possessed no apparent fastenings - and so fortunately Nurse Redheart was willing to lend us one of the hospital's bedsheets, which she was able to wrap around herself to form a crude replacement.
Having established this, I asked her if it would make her uncomfortable that we, meaning ponies in general, do not wear clothing most of the time. She claims that it will not, citing a "Common Social Protocol" - the name of her people's codified list of social rules - that exempts those with fur from wearing clothing as already clothed in effect, adding that while she knew it did not apply here, it was something that she was accustomed to. It being very late in the evening when we left the hospital, though, I have not yet had the chance to observe her reactions to ponies en masse, or indeed their reactions to her.
Once I had her settled in here, I sent Spike over to the Carousel Boutique with the remains of her old clothing and a note. I hope Rarity will find dressing an alien an interesting project. One way or another, she'll be here for a while, so we'll have to find some way to dress her.
I can't wait for the morning to find out more!
Golden Oaks Library, the next morning
The sun rose, impelled by the touch of its mistress's magic; honeyed light poured down, touching the rooftops of Ponyville with its golden glow; and one beam fell through the drawn curtains of an upper window of the Golden Oaks Library and illuminated a visitor's face. Said visitor grmphed in her sleep, rolled over, found that the light chased her even there, and slowly opened her eyes. This, she thought, was a rather more pleasant awakening than the last one. Although there was something to be said for not having to curl around oneself to sleep, Twilight Sparkle's spare bed not being built for tall bipeds.
These pleasant morning reflections were all too soon interrupted by a whiff of smoke. Breakfast, perhaps, or -- no, that would be brimstone. Brimstone does not make for a good breakfast. In any case --
At that point, or thereabouts, Cordelia flung off the covers and leapt out of bed, expecting the worst. Looking around, though, the worst did not seem in particular evidence. Bright sunny morning, check. Non-spare bed... also check, although either Twilight is compulsively neat or else hasn't used said bed last night. Pile of books, check. Basket, check. Mythological green-and-purple-scaled aman(1) hatchling, snoring, in basket, check.
Wait, what?
1. Which word could be translated either as dragon, a mythological species, or as the name of one of the galaxy's more terrifying (2) Precursor races.
2. Less because of their incredible size, strength, ability to breathe fire, nuclear metabolisms, and so forth, or even their stupendous technology, and more because of their habit of bending reality like a pretzel just by existing in it.
Naturally, being equipped with an extensive sophontological education and the very best Exploratory Service training, Cordelia responded to this unexpected sight in the most appropriate manner possible.
Specifically, she said "wuh? blerk!"
The hatchling lifted its green-spined head for long enough to utter something that sounded like "gmmernin; dwnstrrrr" before falling back to the pillow, and resuming snoring with a tiny puff of greasy smoke, which presumably explained the brimstone smell.
Well. Okay, then.
When Cordelia had re-draped herself in her temporary sheet-toga, and found her way downstairs, the first thing she saw was Twilight, sitting on a cushion at a long table table, writing with a quill clutched in a field of purple light. The second thing was the other scroll on the table - indeed, running right from one end of the table to the other. As she stepped closer, she could see that it was a very detailed checklist, written out in small delicate script: although upside-down, it was easy to see that the first line read, simply, Arithmetic.
Upon walking around the table, and inspecting the other end of the scroll, the last line turned out to read Endochronic Properties of M,N-dimensional Undulance Knot Arrays in Massively Parallel Spellcraft, which was helpfully footnoted (Note: consult Canterlot Archives for other relevant unsolved research problems).
"Fair morning, Twilight Sparkle," she said formally, then abandoned that register. "Did you by any chance spend the whole night coming up with this list of topics?" She paused, then added, "And please don't tell me that this is intended to be today's list."
There was no response from Twilight, who kept on annotating her second scroll with focused attention.
Oh.
I know that look.
I've had that look.
Cordelia cleared her throat a little more loudly, then reached out and placed a hand over the inkwell Twilight was using. "Fair morning," she said again. "Ah - I am assuming you know and that it is perfectly normal that you have a dragon asleep in your bedroom?"
A quill descended, and stopped just before reaching quickly-withdrawn fingers, and amethyst eyes traced fingers to arm and up to visitor's face. "Oh! Moongleam! Good morning. Dragon? Oh, yes - that's Spike. He's my number one assistant. He's sleeping in today because he got up early to make breakfast - we didn't know what you might eat, so we've put together a little of lots of different foods."
"Assistant, really?" Cordelia rubbed her temples. "That... gives me about a dozen questions, but none of them are the most important questions right now, I suspect. And also, you said breakfast, and that probably is, if my stomach's anything to go by - and, I suppose, if it turns out that I can eat the food here."
"Let's find out. It's all laid out over here in the kitchen. Would you mind answering a few questions as we eat?"
"Not at all, I'd be more than happy to. We probably have a lot of the same starting questions, so maybe we can answer them for each oth -- well, huh. That's. Huh."
"Moongleam?"
"I recognize the food. This being a - so far as I knew - previously uncontacted planet, there is no way I should be able to recognize the food."
"So Sky Watcher's theory is correct? Life developed differently everywhere?" Twilight floated a plate over to herself, and began assembling a sandwich.
"That's what we believe, with only a few known exceptions. And yet," Cordelia said, pouring a glass of water while summoning an apple to her with her own blue-glowing psychokinesis, "this is a greenlife (3)rhaléth fruit, sure as I'm standing here." Moving on, she put some toast on a plate, and began to butter it. "This looks exactly like bread made with landesh flour." She took a bite. "Tastes like it, too. And while this doesn't quite have the feel of quebérúr butter, it's close enough to be it's kin."
3. Greenlife (or calenlethis) is what the eldrae of the Empire call what we would recognize as Earth-descended life. For more on this in background terms and how it's being handled in this fusion fic, see this blog post.
"An apple, wheat flour, and the butter's made with cow's milk," Twilight filled in. "And what does this mean?"
"I have no idea that's not blind guessing," Cordelia replied with a shrug, "at least until more data turns up. It does mean we might be distant cousins, though - since if this is what you eat routinely, you're almost certainly greenlife too, and I'm, oh, at least three-fifths greenlife."
"Three-fifths -" Twilight raised one hoof, exhaled, and pushed it out in front of her. "We're getting off track. I'm sure this will all start making sense later. But you can eat everything here?"
"Everything but the hay. Well, that's not quite true - I can digest it, because I've been modified to be able to. But it's not something I'd eat naturally, and the modifications don't give me the taste for it, so I'd rather not unless there's an emergency."
"And you don't need to eat meat? One of my friends noticed," and here she blushed slightly, "your teeth (4)."
4. Specifically, those canines, which are a bit more evident than the human version. See here.
"Can, yes, and would at home, but I don't need to." Cordelia paused. "Oh. I'm guessing from this food that you're herbivorous? Is that going to be a problem?"
"It shouldn't be. You wouldn't be the first carnivore to visit Ponyville, but meat isn't something you can find at the market. You can get fish, though, sometimes. Some pegasi like to eat it."
"That'd be great, but I don't think it'd be strictly necessary," Cordelia replied, expertly demolishing a bowl of carrot salad. "I'm adaptable, and this food is something I'm happy to adapt to. These are some amazingly delicious vegetables."
For a while, the kitchen was filled with nothing but the sound of eating, before Twilight broke the silence.
"You told us where you were from last night, but not - what you are? Or where you're from?"
"What - oh, species, yes. My species-name is eldrae; I'm from the Empire of the Star, which is a union of multiple species occupying roughly 275 star systems, um," Cordelia glanced around and waved generally, taking in three-quarters of the sky, "that-a-way. I could show you on a star chart, maybe, or - I saw a telescope here earlier? I might be able to point out my home star - my own world's one of the colonies, named Golden Groves - or at least in its direction. And, ah - same question? Well, where am I, rather than where you're from, I mean."
"We're ponies. And -"
"Regretting to interrupt," Cordelia said, "but all of you are? I have seen so far four different, um, clades?"
"Yes. There are three different tribes - unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies - but we're all ponies. I'm" - she pointed to her horn with a hoof - "a unicorn. The pegasi have wings, like Rainbow Dash whom you met yesterday. The others, with neither horn nor wings, are the earth ponies."
"And those with both, like Princess Luna?"
"The three Princesses have the traits of all three tribes."
"Okay. I think I follow. Enough for now, anyway."
"As for where you are, this land is called Equestria, and this town is Ponyville, in the Principality of Canterlot (5)." Twilight got up, moved to the window, and pointed. "Named after the city --"
5. Formerly the Kingdom of Unicornia, briefly the Platinum Palatinate, and even more briefly during the Discordant Era, the Pointy Pony Palace Place.
Cordelia looked, caught a glimpse of sunlight reflecting off spires of gold, purple, and white, and drew a sharp breath. "Oh, that's just beautiful. And I'm going to have to ask you some serious questions about civil engineering, later on. And that mountain, I've seen that before, I think..."
"The mountain? That's the Canterhorn. The city's named from it, and it's the capital of all Equestria. See the waterfalls it's built around? They're the Tears of Epona, and the Canterstream flows from there down the Cantervale, down to Saddle Lake here by Ponyville."
"I'm detecting a bit of a theme, there."
"Princess Platinum had a lot of talents," Twilight conceded. "But nomenclature wasn't one of them." She paused, then asked, "You said your Empire was a union of multiple species? How many are there?"
"Well, it's hard to say exactly. The Empire's just one small part of all the stars we can reach, you see, which we call the Associated Worlds, and there are a few hundred different species in them" - Twilight's eyes widened in fascination - "and since anyone of any of them can become a citizen-shareholder," she shrugged, "it's not really a fixed count. But there's probably a dozen or so most associated with the Empire - eldrae, ciseflish, kaeth, myneni, dar-bandal, esseli... I'm fascinated, though, that you've got two here. It's very unusual for there to be two sophont species on the same planet - not unknown, but definitely unusual. Homeworlds, I mean, not colonies."
"Oh, there aren't two. There are nine. Apart from ponies and dragons, there are buffalo, changelings, diamond dogs, griffons, minotaur, qilin and zebras (6)."
Cordelia choked on her water.
"NINE!"
6. (Slightly trimmed for this AU - ed.) It is acknowledged that this list may not be complete, if any other sophont species are lurking in the mysterious west, in the backcountry recesses of the Griffon Empire, or in the trackless jungles of southern Zebrica. There also also offshoots of the known species, whether acknowledging this in the manner of the crystal ponies or the Nocturne, or who would consider themselves separate were anyone to ask, ranging from the uniquely tall unicorns of Prance, through the Saddle Arabians and the merely reactionary unicorns of Unicornia Antiqua, to the water serpents ultimately descended from dragons.
Nonetheless, this is the list that a well-educated Equestrian savant would give you at this particular point in history, and since Cordelia is hearing it from Twilight Sparkle, that's the list she's getting.
And so breakfast passed swiftly, with questions being asked and answered, with occasional interruptions for bursts of excitement, incredulity, and the need to find additional paper and ink. But ultimately, with much food eaten, it was time to be about the business of the day, which for both Twilight and Cordelia - per the checklist of immediate issues to solve which Twilight had also made overnight - would begin with the acquisition of clothing for the latter not made out of a hastily knotted hospital bedsheet.
With one other interruption on the way, the very moment that they set foot outside the door of the Golden Oaks Library:
"Wha‽7 Ho- whe- tha-," Cordelia stuttered, and the translation amulet stuttered along with her. "I mean - wha‽ It's not -"
7. Like lojban and some other orderly constructed languages, Eldraeic is audiovisually isomorphic, i.e., all the punctuation marks it uses are also pronounceable words in the spoken language.
Interrobang, specifically, is pronounced 'squeaky WTF noises'.
"Moongleam?" Twilight stopped, and trotted back to where Cordelia had frozen mid-stride, and followed her gaze to where a cream pegasus with a cerise-and-mint mane was watering one of Lily's flower beds. "What's the matter?"
"But she- how- that can't- with‽"
Twilight looked around, a little uneasily - as Cordelia was starting to attract the covert stares of bystanders, all wondering what this weird not-pony would do - then poked her with a hoof.
"Moongleam!"
"This is a joke, yes? One of those hilarious pranks I am told people love to play on unwary exosophontologists?"
"No, I don't think so."
"She just tore off a chunk of cloud and pushed it over there. And is making it rain by jumping on it."
"Yes?"
"That - how can that even work - that's just -"
"Your people don't control the weather?"
"Oh, we control the weather." Cordelia giggled. "On a large scale, and with machines. We have giant space mirrors and smart haze and thermal boreholes and coherent light beams and all sorts of tools to do it. But this is -- I don't even know."
"Magic?"
Cordelia turned to look at Twilight, grinning like a maniac.
The back streets of Ponyville, about halfway to the Carousel Boutique
"Hi!"
Cordelia took a quick step back from the pink apparition that had arrived in front of her via... some method that didn't involve passing through the intervening space, whichever space that happened to be.
"I'm Pinkie Pie! I haven't seen you around before or seen anyone like you around before, and that means you're completely new! But not completely, because yesterday I got a twitchy tail AND a rumbly tummy, so I knew my Pinkie Sense was telling me something really big was going to fall from the sky but then nothing did! So I asked my friends and they said you fell out of the sky in your sky-ship, but that your sky-ship was all broken. And then I thought that'd make you all sad, and that made me sad, so I thought to myself, 'Pinkie, you need to help cheer her up!', so I started asking ponies to help me put together a 'Welcome to Ponyville!' party for you, and I wondered 'do aliens like parties?', but that was silly, because everypony likes parties, but some ponies were scared because of all the fire and crazy rumors around town, and that's not going to cheer anypony up, and then I was thinking 'But how can I make everypony happy and not scared?' so I told myself that I just needed to have an extra big super-duper 'Welcome the Not-At-All-Scary Alien to Ponyville!' (1) party and introduce her to everypony in town and then everypony will be friends and there'll be lots of cupcakes! And here's your invitation! Isn't that awesome?"
1. Cordelia would later discover that Twilight had included "Attend Pinkie's 'Welcome the Not-At-All-Scary Alien to Ponyville! Party'" on her checklist for the day all along. When Cordelia asked her about this, she just shrugged. "Some things are inevitable", she said.
Cordelia took a somewhat dazed moment to reflect.
"Um, I think so? But I'm not sure my translator caught all of that. If you wouldn't mind, could you say it again, a little slower?"
Grinning as if she'd been expecting that, the pink mare sucked in a deep breath and began repeating herself in a parodically slow and deep voice.
Rarity sighed. She had spent much of the night studying the clothing Twilight had sent over, with a frustrating lack of results. While it had been easy enough to piece together the rough shape of the alien garment, the fabric wasn't like any she'd seen before. It was stretchy, like elastic, a clear white with a faint silvery pattern of hexagons running beneath the surface and a spongy, slippery lining. While the hospital ponies had not found the seams, and had cut it apart in in removing it, her designer's eye had easily found the hidden spot at the neck that opened a seam from shoulder to hip, the fabric subtly unweaving itself only to rejoin into a single piece when pressed together.
Other parts, though, made little or no sense. Why was there a weave of fine metal threads woven into the middle of the fabric? What was the function of the soft, almost fluid blobs sewn into the joints of the forelegs, at the juncture of the hindquarters, high on the front and low at the back? Why did the fabric twitch on its own sometimes, especially at the touch of her field? It was maddening.
No, Rarity could not repair it.
On the other hand, she had an exquisite organza, imported from the qilin lands beyond Zebrica, one in which one silken thread in every gross was wrapped in fine golden foil. That might work. Not for something tight-fitting, like this one, but one, or two parts made to fit the same shape. And she could transfer the ornaments and embroidery from the old to the new...
Seizing carbon and paper, the unicorn began to hum as she sketched out possible designs.
Outside, shortly thereafter
“You’re attracting a lot of attention doing that!”
Cordelia looked over at her companion, eyebrow raised.
“More than the usual hairless alien biped walking through town wearing a bed sheet?”
“You’re not walking. You’re floating. And glowing,” Twilight said evenly.
“Lots of ponies have been floating or making things glow on the way here, so it can’t be that unusual.” Cordelia sighed. “I’m not trying to be difficult, Twilight Sparkle, but I’ve spent more than half a year under less than an eighth standard gravity (1), and I’ve got no shoes to wear. Walking on cobblestone hurts.”
1. Being a relatively small starship, the Aval Cyprium-class microscout’s habitat wheels spin only just fast enough to provide a down direction and simplify the plumbing.
Actual gravity-manipulation technology is reserved for the much more important task of inertial damping – which, since it is only required when the main drive is in use, is much friendlier to the ship’s energy budget.
“They’re that soft?”
“Only because they’ve not had to bear my weight for that long, but yes. It’s” – Cordelia chuckled – “well, I’d say it’s like trying to walk everywhere on your hands, but that metaphor’s probably not going to stand up. As it were. Anyway, aren't we here?”
Twilight pushed open the door, and entered, Cordelia following behind her, drifting down and settling into the thick carpeting with a sigh of relief. “Rarity?”
Over Twilight’s head, Cordelia could see another unicorn, her coat so white it practically glowed in the dimmer light within the building, and with mane and tail of rich purple elaborately styled in a series of curves; and around her, the tools of her art; mirrors, ponyquins, bolts of fabric, screens, sewing tools placed to hand – or to hoof. Aesthant(2), Cordelia thought, and no mere apt.
“Welcome to the Carousel Boutique, where everything is chic, unique, and magnifi – Ah, good morning, Twilight! And you must be our visitor from the stars?” Rarity extended a hoof, which Cordelia bowed over, the precise 30 degrees of respect-from-a-professional-to-an-acknowledged-Excellence.
“So I’m called, indeed. It is an honor and pleasure to meet you,” Cordelia fumbled briefly for a generic title, “Lady Rarity”.
“So courteous! But just ‘Rarity’ would be fine, and I shall call you Moongleam, if I may?”
“Oh, certainly.”
A cough from Twilight interrupted the conversation. “So, Rarity, did you have any thoughts on clothing for her?”
“Oh, I have so many ideas,” the white unicorn trilled. “But first,” she continued, balancing her orange pince-nez on her muzzle, and leading the group over to the table where Cordelia’s former clothing had been dismantled, “you must tell me about this extraordinary fabric. And,” she made a moue, “is this typical of your clothing? It doesn’t seem to be, ah –“
“It’s not ugly, but it fails to have any other aesthetic qualities either?” Cordelia suggested.
“Well, I’d never put it quite like that, but… yes.”
“Sorry. But it’s fair to say – that was an emergency survival suit, designed to be tough and quick to don, and not for much else. That’s why it’s so elastic – to keep it skin-tight when there’s vacuum outside. Those dark blobs fill in all the hollows and crannies of the body so you don’t end up swelling to fit it.”
“And the geometric pattern isn’t just for decoration?”
“It lets all the – well, it’s got to keep you alive in hostile conditions, so there’s a lot of technology incorporated into it. It’s more like a very flat machine than actual fabric. That little mesh lets the different parts of the suit talk to each other. But,” Cordelia continued, “however intriguing it may be…”
(Twilight, at this point, being engrossed in poking at the material with her field, observing how the blobs conformed slowly to any pressure, and the fabric itself twitched in response to the field’s mere presence.)
“…not really my kind of clothing. Really, I’m dreadfully short of anything suitable to wear – even if my quarters are intact after the crash, all that’s in them is a dress uniform for particularly formal occasions and a suit of light field armor which – although it does come with a rather dashing cloak – isn’t really friendly enough to wear about town (3). Neither would qualify as any sort of couture.”
3. Originally, of course, she also had a self-cleaning shipsuit for on-board wear. The procedures for donning an emergency survival suit, however, do not include taking the time to remove your clothing in any sort of fashion that would let you put it on again afterwards.
“Not a problem at all, darling, that’s what I’m here for! I’ve made some preliminary sketches based on the idea of your shape that your suit gave me. Perhaps you can tell me what you think?” Rarity’s magic pulled a wide sheet of paper from the back of the workroom, and spread it out in front of Cordelia.
Cordelia gazed at the designs, carefully refraining from laughing even slightly at the interesting notion of her head Rarity must have got from Twilight’s note. That aside, she thought, the designs were impressive. The first one was the simplest: a close-fitting single-breasted tunic and trousers with silk slippers for her feet made up the ensemble. The second moved further away from the suit’s example, with a loose blouse and flowing skirt – presumably based upon adapted local fashion, Cordelia thought – replacing them, while the third was a variation on the second adding multilayered embellishment and ornament to the design.
“These are positively magnificent, Rarity!” Cordelia said, glancing up in time to see the unicorn’s nervous expression vanish swift as morning mist. “I don’t know how I’d be able to choose between them.”
“I’m so happy to hear that!” Rarity clapped her front hooves together in glee. “So now I just need to take your measurements, and we can get you out of that rag…”
One hour later
Rarity, Cordelia concluded as she stood behind one of the Boutique’s movable screens, was very good at her job, and especially the parts of it that involved attention to detail. Unfamiliar with the eldrae’s anatomy she might have been, especially when it came to digits – although, Cordelia would think in retrospect, Spike at least had analogous body parts – but the unicorn didn’t let that stop her for even a second. Cordelia had never been measured quite so thoroughly.
Although quite what use the length and diameter of every one of her toes would be was something of a mystery…
Two hours after that
Cordelia gazed into the full-length mirror and preened.
The past two hours had passed quickly, first in watching Rarity at work – it had proven fascinating to both watch and feel with her kinetic sense the expert way the designer split her attention, expertly manipulating thread, fabric, and tools in an aerial ballet of virtuoso needlework – and when that palled (or, she admitted to herself, when she made herself stop watching lest it be perceived as impolite), in a continuing discussion with Twilight contrasting weather control by satellite versus weather control by pegasus (4), tempered by the occasional annoyed glance from Rarity when enthusiasm for their subject overpowered their mutual volume control.
4. Along with some inevitable speculation about using the two together, and the adding of “Visit to Cloudsdale” to the revised checklist.
Even had they passed with miserable slowness, however, Cordelia decided, it had been worth it. Her new tunic and trousers fitted her perfectly. The green silk with its tiny golden glints harmonized with the red-gold of her mane – hair, she reminded herself, hair – beautifully. And the whole ensemble felt much nicer against the skin than the sheet did, not least because she felt fully clothed again.
She turned to Rarity, clasped her hands in front of her, and bowed slightly. “It’s perfect. I am most deeply indebted.”
“You don’t need to worry about that.” Rarity hoof-waved that thought away. “You offered me an interesting challenge, and I’m more than happy to help.”
“I really must –” Cordelia began.
“Moongleam. They are a gift. I insist –”
“Pardon me, but – it is my mélith, my… balance-of-self. I cannot perceive rightness in myself if I do not return generosity for generosity. It is,” Cordelia paused, thinking of a good translation, “instinct-and-custom-like-law. I must.”
The two unicorns looked at each other.
“Well, if you absolutely insist, maybe you could make some sketches for me of fashions from your world?” Rarity primped her mane. “A designer is always on the lookout for new sources of inspiration.”
“I’d be delighted so to do,” Cordelia replied, relieved. “I might even be able to do one better. If my library survived the crash, I can dig you up some books and such on the –”
“You have a library on your ship?” Twilight interrupted.
“Certainly. I never go anywhere without one.”
Amethyst eyes widened. “We have to go and make sure that’s safe.”
“Wasn’t lunch the next thing on the checklist?” Cordelia asked. “I’m really quite peckish from all the body-flying (5), and it’s not as if it’s going anywhere -”
5. Slang for “using psychokinesis to fly”. The trick is not to try to lift yourself; conservation of momentum will not be your friend. Instead, you stay still and push the ground away.
In this ‘verse, at least, one presumes this is also how Starlight Glimmer’s self-levitation works.
“But we don’t know what state the library’s in now. There could have been smoke, or water damage, or, or…” Twilight’s pupils and the surrounding irises had shrunk almost to pinholes, and one eyelid twitched. “…broken spines. Save the books first, lunch later!” Cordelia abruptly found herself surrounded by the sparkly lavender glow of Twilight’s field, and lifted gently into the air. “Thanks for all your help, Rarity! Got to go!”
“Wait, it’s not-”
And with a mid-sentence flash of purple light, they vanished.
The wreck of the Istry Lochran On the verge of the Everfree Forest
The discussion could be heard approaching long before those having it were in sight.
"...you really can't do that? I thought you used a similar technique to get here?"
"Yes, but I needed two stargates each the size of a small moon to do it. And they use wormholes, and you can't have been using wormholes because the drift equations get rapidly chaotic in bent space-time. Even a short distance jump on the planet's surface would have turned us both to quark fog. Give me the short explanation of yours?"
"Okay! So, the matter doesn't move at all. You define your departure and arrival volumes as fivespheres in sixspace encompassing the pieces of threespace you want to move, and then you can exchange them along the free axis at minimal energy cost, swapping the threespace volumes. The matter comes along with it. But there's more to it -"
The millimetrically raised eyebrow of one of the Royal Guards keeping gawkers away from the wreck was, had an onlooker been versed in the body language of these imperturbable gentlestallions who happened to have been stationed in Canterlot during a certain mentorship, a shared acknowledgement that this was a Twilight Sparkle full-flow explanation, of the kind that routinely caused headaches for anypony listening other than Princess Celestia (1) herself, and a speculative wager that that would be true for her current visitor, as well.
1. And while they were much less of a problem for her than for most ponies, the contents of the bottle of migraine pills in the lower left-hand drawer of the Glorious Solar Desk had dwindled somewhat more frequently on those days on which Twilight was feeling particularly creative.
"- and that compensates for the difference in energy density!"
"Wouldn't that let you travel in time just as easily as in space?"
"Oh, no, you have to use a completely different spell for that, because the universe is expanding and so the swapped fivespheres wouldn't fit."
"Argh." The Royal Guards watched as the unicorn in question and the alien came into view along the rough path leading back to Ponyville, the latter pressing her hands to her temples, and such a well-versed onlooker would have noted the tiny eye-flick on the part of the first guard's partner that acknowledged bits to be exchanged later. "I think we may have to come back to this later, somewhere we can have mathematics and paper. Probably lots of paper."
Then Cordelia looked up and caught her first clear sight of the wreck since the crash, her face falling as she stopped in her tracks. "Oh. Oh, bugger. Istry..."
The wreck of the Istry Lochran was a pitiful sight. The drenching the weather teams had given it to put out the deuterium fire had turned the ground to mud, and the great mass of the ship had subsided further. The forward section had leveled out, its weight driving the lower halves of the spoked wheels into the soft ground, which caved in again on top of them. The aft section had fractured again, the heavy, unsupported reactors of the torch drive sinking into the ground, canting the charred midsection steeply up into the sky, mirrored by the twisted wreckage of the magnetic nozzles on the far side. Metal stalactites dribbled from fractured pipes near the roots of the radiator wings, with matching stalagmites beneath them.
"I'm sorry." Twilight's ears drooped. "I'm sure Princess Luna didn't mean to -- I mean, this isn't how we'd want to --"
Cordelia closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, then exhaled, once, twice, and ended with an explosive exhale, coupled with a aching half-chuckle. "The average first contact with a worldbound (2) society involves being segregated from the public in some government facility, lots of interviews with people who've had their sense of humor surgically removed, and a laboratory or two - with suspicion, concealed information, and tedious politics thrown in for spice. A bad one involves lynch mobs and dissections. You made me breakfast, answered my questions, gave me some lovely new clothes, and are throwing me a welcome party tonight with what sounds like most of the town in attendance. I have not taken a poor impression of your hospitality, I assure you."
2. A pre-spaceflight society. Of course, the whole banished-to-the-moon issue will complicate that just a bit, once Cordelia hears about it.
Twilight's ears twitched, but didn't rise. "Even with your sky-ship destroyed, and you stranded here? You're not angry?"
"Well, I can't tell you that I'm happy about losing my starship like this, but I also believe that it was unintentional. Unless you're running a well hidden space program of your own, it wouldn't be obvious that Istry wasn't built to stand up to gravity, so Princess Luna could easily have missed it." She shrugged. "Getting angry over something that might just be a contact misunderstanding only makes it more likely that we're both going to lose out in the long run. And starships can be rebuilt much more easily than relationships."
"Really," she continued after a moment, "I'm not - oof!"
Cordelia staggered slightly as Twilight reared up on her hind hooves, hugging the eldrae with her forelegs, her horn about level with her neck. Cordelia returned the hug a little stiffly (3), brushing aside Twilight's mane to wrap her arms around her withers.
3. Although, in fairness to her, she was trying to figure out how to say "hugged by an adorable purple unicorn" on an Exoplanetary Biological Contact Report without the home office assuming that she'd found the planet of Really Good Drugs.
"I need to talk to the guards. I'll be right back!"
Cordelia smiled as Twilight headed over toward the ship, ears once more upright and bounce restored to her step. Then, while she exchanged a few words with the guards, Cordelia contemplated the wreckage. The spokes linking the gravity wheels were near-vertical, which was enough to give her an idea of the interior layout, even with the core hull's starboard list. She was sketching out the best route through the ship in her head when Twilight returned.
"Ready?"
"Ready. It would have been easiest to go in and out through the small craft bay - with some of the bigger items I want to salvage - but it ended up on the bottom, and now that it's sunk into the ground, that'll be a lot of digging. So," Cordelia continued, leading Twilight over to the starship, "let's try the main airlock."
Between the gravity wheels, an unblemished stretch of hull stretched in front of and above them, emblazoned with the roundel of the Empire, twelve-pointed golden star on indigo, to the left of a circular, windowed depression in the smooth grey surface leaning down towards them. Paired rows of symbols, larger above and smaller below, hexagons and part-hexagons - larger and smaller shimmered to its right in more inlaid gold, which Twilight examined with interest.
"CSS Istry Lochran," Cordelia said quietly. "Registered at Almea, Lorhalia Yards, hull number 1129".
"1129? But that," Twilight pointed with her horn, "looks like a three-digit number?" Her eyes brightened. "Different radix?"
Cordelia frowned. "This is why I actually need to learn the language soon. This translator is convenient, but it glosses over too many nuances. By digits, in our numbers, that's seven-ten-one. Seven dodecen (4), ten dodectave, and one. And in yours?"
"Two-one-five-one, or two octiad, one octcen, five octave and one. So you use duodecimal?"
Of course, this does imply that the rise of Nightmare Moon happened two octennia ago, and in this AU timeline in which everything doesn't happen at once, the Sombran Coup and the disappearance of the Crystal Empire approximately three octennia ago. The defeat of Discord and the end of the Discordant Era happened very roughly four octennia ago, although it's hard to tell precisely because of his playing around with time - which persisted for some time after his petrifaction, and involved a lot of hitting individual out-of-sync pieces of Equus with the Elements of Harmony.
They grinned at each other. Then Cordelia began reaching out with her psychokinesis, dragging rocks over from the nearby forest to form a crude ramp to the airlock door. A few moments later, Twilight joined her, her magic gathering more rocks, while binding and smoothing them into a solid structure, blue photon-discharge glow and lavender field entwining and working together.
The ramp built, they stood before the door. Cordelia poked at a small panel beside it, and a loud clunk from within suggested some mechanism uncoupling. The door itself rolled slightly to the right, with a brief hiss of inrushing air through the crack - wide enough to let Cordelia wedge a hand in the crack and roll it the rest of the way back into its recess. Stepping in, she held out a hand to Twilight.
"Welcome aboard!"
Twilight looked around, curiously. The airlock chamber itself was mostly rubberized metal on all sides other than the door behind them and the matching door in front of them, each painted with red-and-yellow warning stripes; lit only by curious glowing globes of pale liquid set into the room's four vertices.
Cordelia, meanwhile, had pulled a panel off the wall beneath the darkened controls that did break the bareness of the room, and was fiddling about with the contents.
"What's that?"
"We're going to want to get some fresh air in there with the life support not running. But usually, these two doors should never be open at the same time -"
"So you don't let all the air out?"
"So we don't let all the air out. And so to make 'em open, I've got to bypass all the interlocks designed to stop that from happening. (5)" Another clunk sounded from within the wall. "Got it!"
5. Specifically, she's making the emergency circuit lie and claim that there's a fire on board, which is one of those rare circumstances in space for which dumping your atmosphere into vacuum can be the right answer.
With that door rolled aside, too, the two of them moved on to a corridor, stretching off left and right. Plush indigo deep-pile carpeting covered floor, walls, and ceiling, save for a few signs inset here and there, illuminated by the ghost-pale light of more of the glowing globes. "The quick tour is," Cordelia began, "technical stuff's all in the aft ring. Engineering space up top, small craft at the bottom, lab and workshop in the middle. To our right, the for'ard ring. My cabin below - we should probably go there first - galley and 'fresher above, storage and the computers in the middle, which is where we'll find the -"
"Library!" Twilight broke in, but was looking at a niche in the opposite bulkhead, a rack of a few dozen spiral-bound booklets held carefully in place by individual snaps. "Bookshelf? I thought you had -"
"I do. But that's not it. These are just a few checklists and such-like that need to be accessible in emergencies, and printed on paper in case the power fails." Cordelia ran her finger along the spines, then pulled out a volume from the right-hand end of the shelf. "And here's the Least Useful Book."
Twilight fought a brief internal battle over which part of that sentence to pursue as they moved off, then picked the one that was less strange, but more offensive to her sensibilities.
"Least useful book?"
"Service in-joke, sorry. There's a group of retired scouts writing what they call 'hypothetical handbooks' - advice on situations that haven't come up yet, diplomacy with extinct species, what to do if you find yourself in the distant past, what to do if you meet someone from the distant future, martial arts with arbitrary numbers of limbs, that sort of thing. Or in this case, number 704, Building a Home from the Wreckage of Your Starship (6), which should never, ever be needed 'cause there's no way to land one of these in any shape to be salvaged. Well, until today. Now I get to put it into practice."
6. The paired volume, How to Construct a Habitat From the Wreckage of Your Starship, isn't part of the hypothetical handbook series, because that's much more likely to happen.
"You have somewhere to stay," Twilight pointed out.
"And I appreciate it very much, Twilight Sparkle, please do not mistake me. But I cannot think you'll want me sleeping in your spare bed forever - and apart from building a shelter, it tells me what useful equipment I ought to salvage and what I can do with it. I think you'll find some of that quite fascinating," Cordelia grinned, "judging by what I saw of that list of yours. And -"
She stopped, abruptly, as the floor and ceiling of the corridor gave way to open shafts leading up and down, lined with the same plush carpet, now striped in a pattern of interlocked blue-and-yellow arrows.
"Hm. This could be a problem, though."
Twilight leaned over, and looked down. "There's no ladder?"
"Never needed one. Istry's spin was slow enough that you could fall down slowly and jump right back to the axis, given a little practice. Wouldn't like to try that now, though." She thought for a moment. "Those rocks - how do you feel about a quick game of you-levitate-me, I-levitate-you?"
Flight Commander's Cabin In the wreck of the Istry Lochran
Cordelia leaned back against the bulkhead at the base of the floatway, watching Twilight, bright-eyed, grinning, and bouncing gently in place as she stared around the room.
The cabin was large, and quite decadently plush, the pale light of the same inset globes illuminating walls paneled in pale wood and thick carpeting in a deep shade of indigo; only a few badges set into the walls were a reminder that this was part of a starship. They stood at the nadir of the gravity wheel's curve, the floor curving upward and out of sight to left and right. Nearby, a pair of delightfully comfortable-looking chaises longue flanked the floatway they'd just descended, mirroring each other and angled towards a large, mirror-smooth sheet of smoky glass hanging on the far wall. A cabinet nearby held crystal decanters and drinking-bulbs, each nestled into a felt-lined hollow and held in place with buttoned straps, and atop which rested an antique brass sextant.
Looking back, paintings hung on either side of the floatway caught Twilight's eye. The first depicted a forest mansion, at second glance set among the branches of an improbably large tree, reddish walls of living wood wandering in and out among the foliage and melding with the larger, seemingly hollow trunks. The leaves themselves were rose-gold; not dying autumnal leaves, but a healthy, plump rose of spring, veined with yellow gold. Above one shaded window, an immense droplet of amber sap had been captured as it rolled down the trunk, dividing around the high, peaked canopy which was there, she realized, for that exact purpose.
The other depicted a shady garden, one built - from the details she could make out in the background - in some balcony courtyard of that mansion, or one like it. Flowers, both familiar and unfamiliar to the unicorn, sat in wooden tubs scattered around a central lawn, whose grass was mottled green and a curious pale blue, but her attention was drawn to the group standing at its center. Moongleam herself stood in the middle of the group, but --
"Is that your family?"
"Mm?" Cordelia looked up from the Least Useful Book, saw where Twilight was looking, and smiled. "Yes, that's them. My parents, Merété Idolos and Valéran Vintar," indicating the couple standing behind her in the painting, a tall blonde woman with coppery skin, and a pale man with hair red as Cordelia's own, touched with silver at the temples - although, Twilight thought, in other ways they looked no older than she did (1). "And that's my little sister, Filia, leaning on Rhúas, our bandal(2)."
Filia, caught by the painter laughing at some unheard remark, Twilight noted, was in many ways a miniature version of her older sister. But the creature - the bandal - she was leaning on was familiar, in almost every way but one.
1. She may be 126, but in human terms, looks no more than 25 or so. Human terms are probably unhelpful.
2. Picture an Australian Shepherd. Now picture one whose ancestry is as much dire wolf as gray wolf - i.e., a couple of hundred pounds of muscle, maybe 2' 6" at the withers, and, given the size references for this 'verse, hypothetically almost able to look Twilight (3' at the eye-line) in the eye. That's a bandal, or more specifically, an Alatian Upland Herder, which this one happens to be.
"Those creatures, the bandal - are they all that big?"
"Rhúas is fairly average, for his race. Why do you ask?"
"There are similar animals here. We call them dogs. Your Rhúas looks very like Winona, my friend Applejack's - you'll meet her tonight - herd dog. But she's" - Twilight gestured with a hoof, about a foot and a half off the floor - "and he's" - a rather higher hoof-wave.
"Hm." Cordelia thought a moment. "Interesting. Some lifeforms almost identical, others different. Maybe some comparative genetic testing, see if we can establish a point of divergence. What's the variation li-- ah, yes?"
But Twilight was distracted, having caught sight of what hung above the entrance to the floatway: a carved and painted ceramic crest, a shield, depicting Istry Lochran in flight, superimposed over a yellow-green ringed planet. A scroll surrounded the base of the shield, holding a short phrase written in unfamiliar flame-like letters, and on either side it was supported by -
Well, on the left, it was supported by some strange flying creature (3), a diamond of smooth leathery wings dwarfing a tiny, otherwise-limbless body, but on the right -
3. An airthia, if you were wondering, which rather resembles a giant airborne manta ray.
"A unicorn?", Twilight gasped.
Cordelia twisted to follow her gaze, then chuckle-sighed. "A sevdra," she replied. "Which are believed to be entirely mythological. Symbols of the perfect marriage between power, beauty, and wonder in the despite of Entropy, don'ch'know, as found in ancient legends, less ancient alchemy texts, and improving stories for young ladies, certainly not a creature that actually existed. Although -" she tilted her head, studying the carved sevdra's smaller eyes, more pronounced muzzle, and differing proportions compared to the actual unicorn in the room "- I have to admit, the family resemblance is striking. Between that, 'dogs', and breakfast, maybe I'd better start saying probably mythological."
"I don't," Twilight said wryly, "feel very mythological."
"That's... probably a good thing. On the other hand - would you know offhand if there are any ancient unicorn fossils that looked, well, more like that?"
"I don't. We could check the Canterlot Archives," and Cordelia could almost hear the sound of items being added to a mental checklist, "and the Museum of Natural History. And Professor Pot Sherd at the School for Gifted Unicorns might know. I'll send him a letter. But for now..."
"But for now," Cordelia agreed, and they shared a glance of perfect understanding, "...best get packing."
"What's first?"
"Well, hm," Cordelia thumbed back a few pages in the book, "Most of the start of this is taking hull panels off to use for construction, and it's getting a bit late in the day to start with that -"
"You've got somewhere to stay," Twilight interrupted, "and there's probably even room for your equipment. The library has a big basement - I use some of it for a lab, but a lot of it's empty right now after, well... (4)" She trailed off, then rallied. "Anyway. There's lots of space, and I'd be close to hand if you needed anything."
"And I'd be close enough to keep an eye on?" Cordelia chuckled, and Twilight grew slightly purpler. "It sounds like an excellent idea. So, let's flip forward to the equipment checklists," she continued, suiting the action to the word. "Here we go."
4. "Why is so much of our magic dangerous? Why not marry safe magic if you love it so much! I'm Twilight Sparkle. We're done here."
"Okay," Cordelia continued. "First up: field kits. Good for all circumstances." She knelt by the bottom of the floatway, and pulled open a cupboard built into the panels at its base, then dragged a heavy-looking gray bag out of it, marked with the Exploratory Service's brass sextant-and-star. "Survey kit. Port-a-lab, sample jars, hand scanners, test kits, everything you need to do a groundside survey. Or at least a small one."
"I thought you weren't expecting to land?", Twilight queried.
"I wasn't. But I wasn't expecting what I was expecting, either."
"That makes no sense."
"You're right, it doesn't. But you get used to that."
As she spoke, Cordelia dragged another, matching, bag - save for the yellow sun replacing the sextant-and-star - out to sit next to it. "And the medical kit. Synthskin patches, sprays, drugs, tools, everything you might need to stay alive until you can get back to the vat."
"Vat?"
"...it's a bit further down the checklist."
✓ field survey kit ✓ field medical kit
Standing up again, Cordelia gazed up the height of the floatway, then back at the bags. "There's some cable in storage. I can rig a hoist..."
With a quick flare of light from Twilight's horn, both bags disappeared in a flash of pale purple light. The unicorn looked at Cordelia, and shrugged.
"...you don't have to go along with them. Huh. Well, that's going to make this a lot easier." She clicked her tongue. "And then there's the screen, here, that could be useful."
"And we should take these paintings, too," Twilight said. "It gets damp out here at night."
"Good thought - and I have an idea. Let's test something. Can you... feel this?" Cordelia's psychokinesis flared to life, wrapping the smoky-glass wall-screen in a blue glow, gently easing it off the wall, and leaving it propped on one of the chaises.
"Yes," Twilight agreed. "Just like with the rocks, outside. Why?"
"One more thing first - can you try it with the paintings? Just pull them gently but firmly away from the wall; they should come loose."
Twilight, in turn, enwrapped both of the paintings in her lavender field, then tugged - and in turn again, they slipped free, and were left propped next to the screen. "So what does that prove?"
"The grip pads that held them to the wall? They're programmed to respond to eldrae-style psychokinesis, to slip free when that takes hold of the painting. That it also responds to your, ah, magic is interesting in all kinds of ways, about which I mostly have no idea."
✓ wall screen ✓ paintings
Further along the cabin, the two of them now stood in front of Cordelia's giant (by Twilight's standards, at least) bed, a sturdy frame of that same pale wood used to panel the walls, with plush quilts held down by straps; or rather, a frowning Twilight did, behind the blue-and-gold patterned folding screen that concealed it from the rest of the cabin. Cordelia, meanwhile, had crawled mostly underneath it with a bolt key (5) taken from the survey kit, and was unfastening it from the deck.
5. For those not familiar with the term, this is genuine NASA jargon for "electrical spanner that can operate in microgravity".
"You seem" - the bolt key whirred intermittently - "a little disappointed, Twilight Sparkle. Is anything wrong?"
"I'm sorry. It's just that this isn't what I expected a sky-ship - a starship - to look like. I've read stories about them - Coldback, "Dynamite" Smith, Heinrein, Vanner - and they all imagined them as sleek and minimalist, all machinery and scientific instruments, stripped down to save weight. This looks more like one of the guest suites in Canterlot Palace! If I hadn't seen it from outside, I wouldn't know I was aboard a starship. Except for the curve in the floor."
"They used to be," Cordelia replied. "Back when we first went into space. And a lot of the other - more functional - rooms of this one are still built to that style, but we've been out there a long time, now, and have much better drives than we had back then. And when you're sending people out in these ships for months at a time, it's worth the mass to keep them comfortable. But also..."
The bolt key whirr-clacked a final time, and fell silent.
"...try lifting the bed."
Twilight's field reached out, encompassed the bed - then flickered out briefly as it shot ceilingward, before catching it again and stopping it before it bounced off the deckhead.
"Whoa!"
"I should have warned you," Cordelia said, standing and dusting herself off. "But that's, its strength and lightness is, why we use that particular wood, even when building luxury in. The need may be less, but the tradition remains: every grain counts."
✓ furniture: bed
Two tall cupboards near the bed held Cordelia's wardrobe, laid out neatly on two standing mannequins. On the left was her dress uniform; a single-breasted, buttonless jacket of twilight-sky blue trimmed in brass over a black silk shirt, with matching trousers of heavy wool with brass piping. Four thin gold rings wrapped the sleeves, while a planetary knot in gold cord, surmounted by a silver rocket pin with a single wing, adorned the left breast of the jacket, mirrored by a thin strip of colored ribbons on the right. An embroidered badge of the ship's crest rested on each shoulder. A matching tricorne completed the ensemble, with the sextant-and-star circled by a cockade, and a long feather tucked into the band, shimmering white touched with crimson at the tip, while a dress sword, a cutlass, hung by the mannequin's side.
Cordelia stooped, and began pulling off the slippers Rarity had made, exchanging them for the low black boots that came with her uniform. To Twilight she explained, "They're space-boots. The soles interlock with the floor gratings, and hold on magnetically. They'll be handy once we get into the more angled compartments --"
✓ uniform
Twilight, though, was distracted by the armor (6) stored in the right-hand cupboard, an intricate mesh of interlocking, body-hugging plates, down to the tiny scales of its gloves, topped with a teardrop helmet, all in a shifting pattern of mist grays - or, more accurately, by the cloak that half covered it, once more in the twilight-sky blue of her uniform, but with an endlessly shifting pattern of tiny stars, nebulae, and even whole galaxies floating, by some optical trickery, within its surface.
"Oh, my," Cordelia interrupted herself. "That's going to be an interesting coincidence for a formal occasion, isn't it?"
"Let's see now," Cordelia said, rummaging through the drawers of what looked like a heavy, but obviously was not, wooden desk, with an inlaid surface, further down the cabin. Basics -"
In turn, she pulled out a gauntlet the length of her arm, fashioned from twisting arabesques of intertwined colored metal, strung with gleaming gem-like nodes; another slab of the smoky glass, the size of a book but much thinner; and a pale white sphere the size of a hoof, with a single golden lens and a pattern of silvery lines radiating from it. She pressed her arm into the gauntlet, and watched the mesh shrink until it hugged her arm and the back of her hand perfectly, concealing itself in the fabric of her tunic. A brief flash of bright lines outlining it hovered in the air for a moment, before vanishing just as quickly, and a previously invisible tension seemed to flow out of the eldrae.
✓ nanolathe
Twilight tapped her hoof on the deck, and tilted her head in obvious query.
"Sorry," Cordelia said. "This -" she held up her be-gauntleted arm, "is what we call a nanolathe. It's sort of a universal tool - fabricator - sensor - calculator - and a dozen or so other things all in one. I've been feeling quite naked, metaphorically speaking, not having one. Much as I suppose you'd feel if you somehow had to go out without a horn."
Twilight shivered, having a rather clearer idea of what that was like than Cordelia could know.
"But, wait," she said. "Outside, and earlier, you could move things --"
"But that's close to all I - or any eldrae - can do barebrained," Cordelia replied. "A little farspeech," she tapped her forehead, "with compatible minds, and light psychokinesis. Anything else, we need tools for. It makes us a little twitchy when we don't have them. Anyway, this," she now held up the glass slab, "is for you."
Twilight took it in her field. "What is it?"
"That's a slate. It's a... portable computing device. It's got a lot of functions, but I dare say the first one you'll want to know about is that - once some of the other stuff here is set up - you can use it to call up any book in the on-board library, any time you like. Or image, music, watchvid -- uh, film, simulation, anything."
"Any book? That's amazing! How many books are there on board?"
7. That would be just under 36 million in base 10. When data storage is cheap enough, and you aren't sure what books might be needed, it's easiest to just send along a copy of the Repository of All Knowledge's main collection and have done with it.
The ensuing squee could be heard in Ponyville. (Meanwhile, correctly assuming that this would take a while, Cordelia quietly slipped the sphere into her pocket.)
✓ slate ✓ bytegeist
"I don't think we can get this 'cornucopia' today," a now-calm Twilight said, looking around at the next item, a fat cube of machinery with cut-off corners mostly hidden beneath a long counter. "Especially if it needs that much disconnection. It's getting close to time for the party, and you never want to be late to a Pinkie party. Ever. How badly do you need it?"
"Now I have this," Cordelia patted her nanolathe, "it can wait. A night or two out here won't hurt it any. That or the healing vat. And then," she shuffled through the book, "I need to grab one of the auxiliary reactors to power all this stuff, too, but that's heavy - and the way the ship's lying, hanging from the ceiling. I know I don't have the strength to bring it down safely, and teleporting it... the book suggests using it where it lies, but we're a long way from the library."
"How heavy is heavy?"
"Units," Cordelia shrugged. "I'd say around 35 slabweight, but what that is in your measurements -"
"Is it as heavy as a house? One of the ones you saw in Ponyville?," Twilight asked.
"I wouldn't think so, no. Why?"
"Big Mac!," Twilight clapped her forehooves together. "Applejack's brother. He dragged an entire house across town last spring. I'll ask her tonight if they can help us move them. I'm sure they'd be willing to help."
✗ cornucopia ✗ healing vat ✗ thorium reactor
"Then we'll call that a plan. We surely can't move them on our own tonight, anyway. So - let's just get the library and a couple of other widgets blinked out of here, and we can be on our way."
Computational/Avionics Compartment In the wreck of the Istry Lochran
As they clambered up the steepening slope to the entrance to the next compartment, and levered the door to what would be their final stop open, the dreadful acrid scent (8) of charred nanocirc came wafting out, borne on a mist of thin bluish smoke. Two noses wrinkled as one.
"That's not a good smell," Cordelia muttered. "Something must have overloaded when she crashed. Still. Most of the equipment in here is just needed to interface with the ship. With luck, what we actually need will be intact."
8. If you've done some electronics - mix the scent of a popped electrolytic capacitor and the magic smoke coming out of a failed IC, then turn it up a bit. If you haven't... it's like the smell of a PC power supply that died in a power surge, only more so, and if that reference fails, well, best ask someone who has had the experience. It's a very distinct smellsation.
Waving the smoke inside, she stepped through the doorway, boots clacking as the magnets hooked the grating beneath her feet. This compartment, Twilight thought, was much more like the starships in the novels: racks of equipment from floor to ceiling; mysterious boxes with a few scattered, blinking lights, emitting a quiet hum; neat bundles of cable and the occasional pipe running along the deckhead and down into the racks. Cordelia prowled along the racks, checking codings printed on the boxes against the book, then stopped, clicked aside clamps at its edge, and pulled one fat gray box smoothly from the rack nearest her.
"One information furnace," she said, "complete with library database." She tapped the end of a thick rod protruding millimetrically from a port in its front panel. "Looks intact to me. And next -"
✓ library
She repeated the action with the clamps, and pulled another box from the rack, steel-blue this time.
"- and this is the ship's brain. Its cogence core, as we call it. So that's the two most vital parts, and then to make your slate work, we just need -"
✓ cogence core
"-this!," she finished, pulling a slim white hemisphere from the side of the rack. "One wireless microcell router, coming up."
✓ microcell
"You are," Twilight said, "going to explain this all to me at some point?"
"I'd be purely delighted to, my word on it," Cordelia replied. "But really, it's going to be a lot easier to do that when we're setting it back up, than when we're taking it down."
Moving closer to the far end of the room as she spoke, Cordelia suddenly yanked a small flat module from one of the machines, crying, "A-ha! Found it!". The thin smoke eddied around the module as she gestured with it. "Here's the failed one. Nothing too vital, I don't think, it's just the -- oh, waste heat. It's the tangle channel. That could be a problem."
"The what now?"
"Tangle channel - it's the communications device that lets me send in my reports and so forth. Trouble is, Istry also uses it to send routine updates automatically, and by now he'll have missed one. If another two are missed, they'll assume something's happened to me, declare me overdue, and send a recovery expedition. I don't know what - Princess Luna? - would think about having one of those stomping about, especially since our civilizations have barely met. Could you, ah, let her know and find out? If she'd rather not, I might be able to send a signal waving them off."
"You'd do that?" Twilight asked. "You don't want to be rescued?"
Unicorn and eldrae, this time, shared the precise opposite glance.
"Well, eventually, I'd like to go home. But, Twilight Sparkle, this is what I do. And since I've arrived on this planet I've discovered two entirely new sophont species - and heard of an unprecedented seven more - and seen at least that many novel technologies, at least one of which definitely has the potential to revolutionize physics as we know it, just while walking down the street (9). That's before we even mention the highly unusual sun you have here, or the increasingly likely possibility that you and I might be distant cousins. Not that first contact isn't already a big deal, but even one of those makes it a lot... bigger."
9. Well, in a manner of speaking.
"And all of them?"
"All of them? Well, if we make everything go well, you and I, they're going to need to invent brand-new extra-awesome titles to put on the plaques underneath the statues they're going to build to us, and then underneath the statues they're going to build to our statues. It's not so much 'names on scientific papers', it's 'names on entire multi-volume encyclopedias', with whole conferences just to hear us speak," Cordelia elaborated on her theme, happily sweeping Twilight up in this burst of assumed collaboration, "and then more conferences to discuss those conferences. Entrées (10) to the Court of Courts, almost certainly, and I wouldn't be surprised if the patents of a lathlé(11) came along with them! Scientific immortality!"
10. Also entrées at the Court of Courts (i.e., the court of Their Divine Majesties themselves), but that goes without saying.
11. lit. "holder of special privileges"; an exultant title roughly the equivalent of a knighthood.
She coughed, then blushed faintly blue at Twilight's somewhat alarmed expression in the face of this sudden outwash of enthusiasm.
"Well. It's the knowledge that's the important thing, of course. But to answer your question more directly, even if it wasn't for all of that, I'm a first-in scout. Discovering new civilizations, learning and sharing - this is what I live for. The odd... inconvenience along the way is nothing. But when you do take all of that into account as well, the sheer magnitude of it - there's not a lever in the galaxy big enough to pry me off this planet. Short of your people deciding that you want me to leave and ordering me off it, at least, but apart from that, nothing."
Twilight thought.
"I'll ask them. But you should send a message either way, to let your people and your family know what happened." She paused. "How are you going to send it? If that," she pointed with her horn at the still-smoking tangle channel in Cordelia's hand, "doesn't work?"
"Under ordinary circumstances, there's a communications laser on top of the ship I can point at the stargate and use to send a message. These," she waved the module, "are limited-use, so that's the main signaler, but it won't work through this much air, even if I could point it right and power it. But I've got some signal buoys in storage that can orient themselves and resend a recorded message, if I can get them high enough - almost out of the atmosphere."
"And you're going to do that how?"
Cordelia grinned widely.
"I may have an idea, if you and your friends could lend me a little assistance, and depending on the answer to one question. Namely... what is the operational ceiling of a pegasus, anyway?"
Over the course of the last day, I have had many conversations with our visitor from the stars - thanks to the amulet you supplied, Princess Luna - and we have already started to learn much about each other.
Moongleam - as she lets us call her in Equestrian, a translation of the last part of her full name, "Cordelia Vintar-ith-Vidutar Iriselen" - has been friendly and courteous throughout our exchange and to others she has met, despite the wreck of her starship - which she has been kind enough to presume an accident, assuming that we did not know that it was never designed to land - the fortunately minor injuries which she sustained in the crash, and the stress of her current circumstances. I am confident we need have little fear of any hostility on her part.
I have as yet learned little of the Empire from which she comes - an incredible multi-species union of nearly 300 worlds - but it's clear from those devices I have seen myself, as well as their ability to cross the stars, that they are technologically far ahead of us. On the other hand, they don't seem to have - or only have very limited - access to magic. Moongleam seems fascinated by Equestrian magic and its possibilities to revolutionize their understanding of the world, as fascinated as I admit I am with their machines, and she seems entirely willing to share their knowledge - beginning with giving me free access to the library she brought with her, a library of millions of books!
Others of Moongleam's revelations, however, are both inspiring and terrifying - especially since they seem to come as as much of a surprise to her as they did to me. The food, and many of the plants and animals of our world, are familiar to her, and from a depiction in her ship, her people have legends of creatures very similar to unicorns! The existence of some connection between our worlds, possibly even common ancestry, seems inescapable.
This could be the greatest opportunity in Equestria's history - or the greatest disaster, if things go badly. I'm not sure I should trust my judgment about this; I want it too much. Could I talk to you both, either here or in Canterlot? I really need your advice.
Twilight Sparkle, Bearer of the Element of Magic, Daughter of House Twinkle
X. You Must Attend Your Party Before Venturing Forth, Part I
The sun was lowered almost to the horizon by the time the two of them returned to Ponyville, teleporting back to the library to check on the safe arrival of the teleported items, and then setting out through the quiet streets to attend Pinkie's - as the hastily-painted banner put it, lettered in silver over midnight blue - "Welcome, Spacemare!" party.
"'Spacemare', is it?" Cordelia snorted. "Well, I've been called worse."
"And it's easier to fit on the banner than 'Not-At-All-Scary-Alien'", Twilight pointed out dryly.
"A point, a very good point." Quicksilver, Cordelia subvocalized, go up and get me a picture of that, would you?
Twilight startled slightly as the little white sphere shot up from Cordelia's pocket, golden lens glinting, then dropped to hover over her shoulder, spinning back and forth in place, with only the faintest glow to suggest how.
"So that's - she's - your muse? The assistant you mentioned?"
"Not... exactly. She lives in" - Cordelia tapped her temple - "my brain, or the lace wrapped around it, rather. This is her bytegeist (3); it's a sort of portable body that lets her do things on her own, when she needs to. Say hello, Quicksilver."
"Fair evening, Twilight Sparkle," the sphere said politely, eye-light flickering.
Twilight's ears flattened dubiously. "You implanted a machine in your brain?"
"Not implanted. It grew along with me," Cordelia explained. "It's more like a symbiote than a machine, really. And a very efficient one; I have an assistant who knows everything I need just as soon as I do, or even before."
"Please accept my assurance, Twilight Sparkle," Quicksilver said, "that I would never do anything which might cause harm to my principal. I exist only to be of help to her."
"Thank you, Quicksilver. And I'm sorry if I implied otherwise. It's just... very strange."
"And it looks like we're here!" Cordelia interrupted the awkward moment. "At least, if I had to imagine a building to go with the name Sugarcube Corner... well, I wouldn't have imagined that," she continued, looking up and down the gingerbread façade, "but it does seem to suit the business perfectly. Is that really a cupcake cupola with candle minarets? If the food is even half as tasty as the building looks, I'm going to enjoy this. And -"
Reaching the doorway, they entered the brightly lit bakery, to the limited extent to which that was possible given the crowd. "- it looks like absolutely everypony is here," she finished.
Indeed, that seemed to be the case, from the size of the crowd, now glancing around at them from listening quietly to the grey-maned, pale beige earth pony at the front of the room, whose speech their entrance had evidently interrupted.
"Ahem," she continued, straightening a bright green cravat. "As I was saying, Princess Luna has written to me to ask us, as one of the friendliest towns in Equestria, to host an unusual guest - the first visitor to Equestria from another world. I know that we're all honored to have been chosen by the Princess, and that you'll all do your best to make her feel welcome. And with that, I'll let her introduce herself..."
The crowd turned back as one to face them. Cordelia (whose previous few months had been spent alone in space) took a brief moment to thank Quicksilver for suppressing a sudden surge of social phobia.
“Ah… hello,” Cordelia began, with a half-wave, as she gazed out across the large crowd of expectant large-eyed faces. “I’m Cordelia Vintar-ith-Vidutar Iriliselen, but Twilight Sparkle calls me ‘Moongleam’, and I hope you’ll all do the same. My people - the eldrae - sent me to find new worlds, new knowledge, and new friends out in the depths of space, and, well, here I am, and here you all are, and I certainly hope we can be friends!
That got her a brief stomp of what she supposed was the local version of applause.
"I'm sure many of you are as curious about me as I am about you," she went on, "and that such a sudden and unfortunately spectacular arrival" - a snicker ran around the room -"is likely to have raised some concerns, and so I'd be delighted to answer any questions anypony has about me, my people, my mission, or anything else.
“I’d also like to thank everypony for the wonderful hospitality I’ve been shown, and - oh – and if I might ask a favor of you all - though I’m here to learn, I’m afraid that right now, I know almost nothing about your culture or customs, so I’m almost certain to say, or do, something horrifically offensive at some point without realizing it. Please tell me straight away when I do, so that I can be sure not to do it again. I’d very much regret to hurt or offend anyone by accident.
“That’s about all I can think of —”
“— so it’s time to PARTY!” Pinkie pronked up next to them, adding in a clearly audible whisper. “This is the right kind of party, right? I know you said you liked parties and so I made you this party but then I thought you might only like some strange kinds of party like rocket parties or science parties or space parties in space —”
"I like those too, Pinkie Pie," Cordelia grinned, "but trust me. This is going to be the best kind of party."
A short while later, in a brief moment of calm and cupcake-nibbling, Cordelia was interrupted by a voice from behind:
"Are you an Ancient?"
Turning, she found herself standing eyeball-to-golden-eyeball with a mint-green unicorn, with a disturbingly wide grin and what appeared to be little sense of personal space (4).
4. This may have been slightly unfair on Cordelia's part, given that she'd already noted that ponies tended to stand much closer together than her people and had adjusted her social distance expectations accordingly. On the other hand, Lyra was standing really close.
"Well, I'm a hundred and twenty-six," Cordelia replied while stepping back, "but I've never thought of that as being particularly ancient. Not even old, really."
"No, not an ancient, an Ancient! They came from the stars in ancient times according to legend - before Equestria, before Discord, before the Three Tribes left the old homeland - and grew huge cities of living crystal and steel. All lost now. We learned so much from them! Some say the old gods were made from stories about them. Are you one?"
"No, not as -"
"Lyra!" An exasperated earth pony with a bicolored mane trotted over to them. "Don't bother the visitor with your wild theories."
Lyra's ears were flattened to her head. "But Bonnie, she might be -"
"Here to study Equestria today! She's not here to listen to your old mare's tales and wild conjecture! And besides," the newcomer's voice softened, almost too quiet for Cordelia to hear, "I don't want you to be disappointed again."
"Actually," Cordelia coughed, "I'm very interested in the theories of - I'm sorry, I didn't get your name?"
The unicorns ears perked back up, and the impossible grin, if anything, widened. "Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings, amateur archaeologist. And the grumpy one is Bon-Bon, of Bon-Bon's Bon Bons."
"Well, Lyra Heartstrings, I - wait, seriously?"
Bon-Bon smirked. "No-one ever forgets it."
"Hah! Anyway, what I was saying was that while I'm not one, I'm pretty sure you're right about the existence of the Ancients. Because the first thing I noticed at breakfast this morning was that I recognized the food, and many of the plants are the same, and if no-one had been to both our worlds in the past, that should be impossible - and we definitely had Ancients of our own, the Precursors. So I'm going to go out on a limb and hypothesize that our Precursors and your Ancients might be the same race, and even if they aren't, I'd love to hear what you've got (2)."
Lyra was now practically prancing in place, glowing with glee. "Yes! Yes yes yes! Wonderful! I'll get my notes for you -"
"- after the party."
"Oh, horseapples."
2. "In this universe, the role of Daniel Jackson will be played by Lyra Heartstrings."
1. This is a SERAPH BLUE ALERT, origination point IGS 254672 III. Event footprint includes OVERLOOK HIGH, PATTERNED EM, and DIRECT ENCOUNTER class indicators. Contact event type INTENTIONAL and INTERPLANETARY.
2. I regret to report the loss of CSS Istry Lochran, hull number 1129, in the course of the contact event. Contact was NOT, repeat NOT, HOSTILE. Negative casualties; souls and substrates intact. Negative loss of small craft. Severe impact on starside mission readiness; minimal impact on groundside mission readiness.
3. Planetary civilization contacted is WORLDBOUND (special anomaly) and MULTIPOLITAN. Landing-local civilization is preliminarily profiled as FRIENDLY (indeed, here friendship seems ubiquitous) and EXOCURIOUS, with governance within the parameters of diplomatic acceptability. Technological level based on preliminary profile is ANOMALOUS (estimate Gwyath 5+ (1) in general use, varying to big angelic, possible SKYSHOCK BLUE-equivalent.) Probable PRECURSOR FUGUE DAWN.
1. The Gwyath logarithmic development scale is an attempt to wrap a whole bunch of different indicators of technosocial progress, acknowledging the non-linear, fractal, branching nature of these things, up into a relatively simple number. In technical terms, a Gwyath 5 would be roughly equivalent to Earth in 1890-1920, but like the lady said, it's anomalous.
4. Communication has been established successfully. I detect no signs that my interlocutors have been in any way mendacious. While current communications depend on big angelic translation technology provided by the autochthones, I anticipate becoming quite polyglottal.
5. PROVISIONAL NEGATIVE on CASE DEMIURGE DREAMING. However, I advise readiness for CASE GOLDEN SUNRISE.
6. Nomenclature designations follow:
Star IGS 254672 :: PHOSPHOROS (system designating entity)
Planet IGS 254672 I :: EPONA (moons pending designation)
Planet IGS 254672 II :: RHIANNON (moons pending designation)
Planet IGS 254672 III :: EQUUS
Moon IGS 254672 IIIa :: LUNA
Anomaly IGS 254672 IIIb :: CELESTIA
7. Open sophont species file as follows: PONY (pl. PONIES), homeworld EQUUS. Note: species may be polytaxic (three primary subspecies); also note additional sophont species share homeworld. Details to follow.
8. Open contacted governance file as follows: DIARCHY OF EQUESTRIA, throneworld EQUUS. Note: no single planetary governance exists. Based on limited data at this point, suggest listing system under this designation as space-capable governance (see special anomaly above).
9. Suggest provisional hold on transfer of all systems within two links and all golden worlds within Adjunct Constellation 219 to Accord administration, pending further evaluation. In absence of other contact reports, suggest preliminary designation of Adjunct Constellation 219 as EPONIAN CLUSTER.
10. For confidence of local governance, request that you discontinue overdue response and send no further vessels into Phosphoros System until further advised.
11. Revised mission continues according to standard IES first contact protocols. Mission status is shiny-optimal. Request bounce transmission of mission codeword redesignation and secure pad to gate relay for postal hold.
(Current to the most recent - or occasionally next - chapter at all times.)
IMPERIALS
* Cordelia Vintar ith-Vidutar Iriliselen, a.k.a. "Moongleam", a first-in scout of the Imperial Exploratory Service * Quicksilver, Cordelia's muse
Cordelia's family:
* Merété Idolos-ith-Idolos, mother * Valéran Vintar-ith-Vidutar, father * Filia Vintar-ith-Vidutar, younger sister * Rhúas Vintar-ith-Vidutar, bandal
* OPERATION DEMIURGE ERRANT, the Empire's working group for monitoring seed AI superintelligences and other "gods" * OVERSIGHT*, AI managing Exploratory Service operations in the local region * Istry 0x9912A637, the non-sophont AI of Cordelia's starship, the CSS Istry Lochran
EQUESTRIANS
Royalty
* Princess Celestia Invicta, Keeper of the Sun, Queen of the Bright Zenith, Guardian of the Herd, and Diarch of Equestria * Princess Luna Versuta, Keeper of the Moon, Queen of the Midnight Skies, Avenger of the Herd, and Diarch of Equestria
Element Bearers
* Twilight Sparkle, Bearer of the Element of Magic, Daughter of House Twinkle, personal student of Princess Celestia, and Ponyville librarian * Applejack, of the Apple Family, Bearer of the Element of Honesty, freeholder of Sweet Apple Acres * Fluttershy, of the Wind Clan, Bearer of the Element of Kindness, Ponyville animal caretaker * Pinkamena Diane "Pinkie" Pie, Bearer of the Element of Laughter, party planner, journeyman baker, and possessor of an unusual relationship to reality * Rainbow Dash, Bearer of the Element of Loyalty, Ponyville weather team manager, and fastest pegasus alive * Rarity (Belle), Bearer of the Element of Generosity, and proprietor of the Carousel Boutique
Other Present-Day Characters
* Apple Bloom, Cutie Mark Crusader, and younger sister of Applejack * Berry Punch, vintner and distiller * "Big" McIntosh Apple, tremendously strong older brother of Applejack * Blossomforth, pegasus on the Ponyville weather team, and amateur tinkerer * Bon Bon, confectioner, and marefriend of Lyra Heartstrings * Cheerilee, teacher at the Ponyville schoolhouse * Cloud Kicker, polyamorous pansexual pegasus par excellence * Daisy, flower seller and professional terrified pony * Ivory Scroll, mayor of Ponyville * Lily Valley, flower seller and professional terrified pony * Lyra Heartstrings, musician, amateur archaeologist, and marefriend of Bon Bon * Professor Pot Sherd, lecturer in equinology and paleontology at the School for Gifted Unicorns * Nurse Redheart, nurse at the Ponyville General Hospital * Roseluck, flower seller and professional slightly-less-terrified-than-her-sisters pony * Scootaloo, Cutie Mark Crusader * Spike, young dragon, and #1 assistant to Twilight Sparkle * Sweetie Belle, Cutie Mark Crusader, and younger sister of Rarity * Winona, Applejack's herd dog
Mentioned Only
* Coldback, speculative fiction author * "Dynamite" Smith, speculative fiction author * Heinrein, speculative fiction author * Sky Watcher, astronomer and theorist about extraequian life * Vanner, speculative fiction author
Historical Figures
* Princess Platinum Blueblood, ruler of Unicornia at the time of the foundation of Old Equestria, approximately eight octennia (4,000 years) before present, and the distant ancestor of both Prince Rhodium Blueblood of Canterlot and King Palladium Blueblood IX of Unicornia Antiqua.
(Current to what is known by the latest chapter. Events may have occurred that aren't in the timeline yet. Spoiler markings indicate minor things to be revealed later in the fic, but not major spoilers. Errors and omissions excepted. Void where there isn't matter.)
Y.H. (Year of Harmony)
2097 (Summer): Pinkie Pie clones herself. A lot (3x03).
CSS Istry Lochran arrives in Phosphoros System, and is sent to Ponyville by Princess Luna. Our story begins.
2097 (Spring): Return of the Crystal Empire, now ruled by Princess Cadance as the rightful heir to its former dynasty, and Shining Armor as Prince Consort (3x01-02).
2096 (Winter):CSS Istry Lochran, Cordelia Vintar-ith-Vidutar commanding, is assigned to investigate the anomalous star system cataloged as IGS 245672, in a newly opened trailing constellation.
2096 (Autumn): Equestria annexes much of the Badlands Plateau as a protectorate under military governorship; surviving changelings, including other hives, go deep and hide from Equestrian patrols.
2096 (Summer): Queen Chrysalis of the changelings attacks Canterlot and is defeated by the Bearers, Shining Armor, and Princess Mi Amore Cadenza ("Cadance"). Shining Armor and Cadance are married (2x25-26).
2096 (Spring): The Bearers suffer the aftereffects of Discord's magic (continued): Party of One (1x25).
Episodes: Hurricane Fluttershy (2x22), Hearts and Hooves Day (2x17).
2095 (Winter): Episodes: Hearth's Warming Eve (2x11).
2095 (Autumn): Discord briefly escapes imprisonment in the code-lock inflicted upon him by the Elements of Harmony. More mass panic everywhere as the day/night cycle is disrupted again, even if most of the other chaos is confined to central Equestria. Equestrian diplomats take to drinking heavily. (2x01-02)
The Bearers suffer the aftereffects of Discord's magic: Lesson Zero (2x03), Somepony to Watch Over Me (4x17), Putting Your Hoof Down (2x19).
2095 (Summer): The bearers attend the Grand Galloping Gala for the first time. (1x26)
(Unknown Ponyville-demolishing incident.)
Episodes: The Last Roundup (2x14).
2095 (Spring): Pinkie Pie becomes a journeymare baker.
Episodes: Sweet and Elite (2x09)
2094 (Winter): Episodes: Winter Wrap-Up (1x11).
2094 (Autumn): Episodes: Suited for Success (1x14), Green Isn't Your Color (1x20), Fall Weather Friends (1x13), Swarm of the Century (1x10), A Bird in the Hoof (1x22).
Princess Luna attends Nightmare Night for the first time. (2x04)
The Cutie Mark Crusaders are founded (1x12).
Episodes: Stare Master (1x17).
2094 (Summer):Twilight Sparkle moves to Ponyville.
Return of Luna, and defeat of Nightmare Moon by the new Bearers of the Elements. Mass panic across most of Equus as the day/night cycle is disrupted; Equestrian diplomats work overtime trying to calm everyone down. (1x01-02)
Episodes: Griffon the Brush Off (1x05), Look Before You Sleep (1x08), Boast Busters (1x06), Bridle Gossip (1x09), Dragonshy (1x07), Feeling Pinkie Keen (1x15), The Ticket Master (1x03).
Rainbow Dash successfully recreates the Sonic Rainboom (1x16).
2089: Pinkie Pie leaves the rock farm to apprentice with Cup and Carrot Cake in Ponyville.
2088: Fluttershy moves to the ground, just outside Ponyville.
2083: Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo born in Ponyville. Rainbow Dash performs the first Sonic Rainboom; as a consequence, all the future Bearers receive their cutie marks. Twilight Sparkle hatches Spike while taking the entrance examination for Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, and as a consequence, becomes Princess Celestia's protégé.
2082: Princess Cadenza meets Shining Armor for the first time.
2076: Pinkie Pie born on her parents' rock farm.
2075: Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash born in Cloudsdale. Cordelia Vintar-ith-Vidutar joins the Imperial Exploratory Service.
2074: Twilight Sparkle born in Canterlot.
2073: Applejack of the Apples and Rarity Belle born in Ponyville.
2066: Shining Armor born in Canterlot.
1994: Princess Celestia grants land to the Apple family (specifically, Applejack's great-grandfather Calvados) at the far end of the Cantervale, west of Saddle Lake, and on the northern fringe of the Everfree Forest. They build Sweet Apple Acres on the edge of the forest, and the town of Ponyville grows up around the nearby railroad junction.
1983: Neigh Orleans founded south of Baltimare, by earth pony prospectors seeking to cultivate the unusual plant life of the Haysead Swamp.
1971: Cordelia "Moongleam" Vintar-ith-Vidutar born on Golden Groves (Principalities).
1410: Equestria colonizes Saddle Arabia, or rather, one eccentric noble with a taste for nostalgia and a minimally active sense of self-preservation, along with his followers, colonizes Saddle Arabia. The world gapes in either or both of awe and incredulity that anyone would try, and then that anyone could succeed.
1394: Dragon Lord Flammifer struck down by Princess Celestia in response to his deliberately negligent enforcement of the Diet of Trottingham. Torch becomes Dragon Lord.
1254: Emperor Gallivant the Grasping of the Griffon Empire plots an assassination attempt against Princess Celestia. After revealing this to his court, he is plucked and hung naked from the Grand Eyrie to die from starvation and exposure, since his plan notably failed to include means to keep the solar cycle functioning.
1194:Great Griffon War. Inspired by Equestria's seeming weakness, the Griffon Empire attempts to invade pony lands to its west, beginning with the then-independent Island Duchy of Trottingham. This proves to be a terrible mistake, as when rumors of the griffon invaders enslaving the population and going so far as to eat some of their prisoners reach Princess Celestia, she shrugs off her lingering depression and rises in fury. The invasion collapses in disarray and is driven back to and beyond the Griffonic coast by Equestrian forces - principally, although minimized in later Equestrian histories, by Celestia's open use of weaponized sunfire.
Trottingham annexes itself to Equestria.
Diet of Trottingham, signed later in the year, formalizes the accord by which all sapient species of Equus agree not to use each other as food or slaves.
1183:Second Lunar Rebellion.
1069-1070:Lunar Rebellion. Princess Luna succumbs to madness and possession, becoming Nightmare Moon. After various skirmishes, Nightmare Moon is brought to battle in the city of Everfree, and is personally confronted by Princess Celestia in the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. Celestia is forced to use the Elements of Harmony against her sister, banishing her to the moon, but her internal conflicts in using the Elements against her sister shatter her connection to the Elements, rendering them useless to her.
579: Stalliongrad refuses an offer of help to evacuate. Celestia's envoys report "vast plumes of smoke and steam" rising from the city.
Cargo Pants, a prosperous tailor from Canterlot who opened his stores and warehouses freely to clothe the refugees from the killing winter and in doing so saved many thousands of lives, is ennobled by Princess Celestia, creating the Noble and Ancient House of Pants.
578: The Princesses defeat and discorporate King Sombra, but Sombra's failsafe spell shuffles the Crystal City out of phase and into stasis along with himself. With the capstone now knocked out of the geomantic infrastructure that kept the northern belt ice-free, glaciers and storms rapidly sweep down from the Crystal Mountains and render the region uninhabitable. Refugees flee southward into Equestria.
576: The Sombran regime begins a series of raids and conquests among the Crystal Empire's old provinces, including thaumaturgically-enhanced (i.e., non-pegasus) use of military weather; some of these probing raids reach down into northern Equestria proper.
571: The amnesiac Princess Cadenza, having spent the last two years wandering the northern wilds, is taken in by a religious order in the small coastal town of Reduit, which cared for their "filly goddess" while keeping her existence secret for octcen to come.
569:Sombran Coup in the Crystal Empire; Crimson Quartz takes the title of King Sombra. The Bucephalan Dynasty is wiped out except for the younger sister of the Emperor, Princess Amore, and her daughter Princess Cadenza, who flee southward towards Equestria. Amore dies on the journey; Cadenza, in a moment of rage, loss, grief, and terror, undoes herself, destroying her own memories and transforming herself into a blank-flanked alicorn filly, which state she would remain in for over three octennia.
567: Princess Cadenza, of the Crystal Empire, daughter of the Emperor's younger sister, ascends to alicorn status - to much rejoicing and a new sense of hope. Equestria sends its congratulations.
553: Princess Mi Amore Cadenza born in the Crystal Empire.
292: One of the rare natural-born alicorns suffers a magic surge only a few minutes after birth; the resulting conflagration levels the nascent city of Hoofston and creates Horse Shoe Bay.
5-130: Efforts to reunify the Crystal Empire fail, with the majority of its provinces now enjoying their independence and having little use for the capital that failed to protect them; eventually, lacking its former military might and exhausted by the effort of shielding itself during the Discordant Era, the Bucephalan Dynasty resigns itself to leading a mere city-state, although popular discontent at this decision continues to rumble. Equestria absorbs a few of the southern provinces, especially in the vicinity of the Cantervale, but most remain independent.
47: Princess, self-named Queen, Selenium Blueblood II, elder sister of Prince Palladium Blueblood, sets sail with a group of highly traditional (and disharmonious) unicorns disenchanted with the direction the new Equestria is taking, along with those beholden to them, and founds Unicornia Antiqua, deliberately hearkening back to the ancient unicorn kingdoms, on an island in the southern Great Celestia Ocean, displacing the qilin who formerly occupied it. Prince Palladium rejects his sister's path, reaffirms his loyalty to the Diarchy, and accepts the role of Prince of Canterlot.
3: Reharmonization declared complete: all of Equus is now at least proceeding in the same time-frame, although stubborn pockets of Discord's chaos remain, surrounded by wards and warning signs.
2: The world now has minotaurs, apparently. The minotaurs remember existing before the Discordant Era, but sadly, no-one else remembers the minotaurs existing before the Discordant Era. This confuses everyone, but since Discord could have done any number of things with this result, everyone just has to live with it.
DISCORDANT ERA
There are no years given within the Discordant Era, mostly because Discord's playing around with reality (whether subjectively or objectively) resulted in the perceived flow of time during it being all over the place. Interviews with ponies alive during the Era report durations ranging from "23 seconds" (Red Tape, former Tricamareon bureaucrat) to "a million years under a cold sun red as a burning coal, while scaly crabs skittered across the parched earth and nameless filth (1) roiled in the deep, ahahahaha <breaks down sobbing>" (unnamed unicorn, presumed to have been an artist on the basis of his cutie mark)(2).
The mean estimate for the length of Discord's reign is on the order of 600 years, which is close to the (non-identical) durations given by Celestia and Luna, and also to the best estimates Equestrian astronomares have been able to come up with using changes in star positions, but there're wide error bars on that.
1. The Smooze and Friends, shoggot'im, Precursor tramoc jaqef(3), potato, potahto.
2. Your take-away here is that it was a really bad idea to be "interesting" enough to catch the draconequus's eye during the Discordant Era. Incidentally, while he did recover enough to start producing art again, most of his subsequent works are kept safely locked up in the "Things Ponies Weren't Meant To, Or At Least Really Don't Want To, Know" section of the Canterlot Archives.
3. lit. "blob servitors".
P.D.E. (Pre-Discordant Era)
-789: Bucephalus the Great dies early from severe magically-aggravated pneumonia, secondary to his many battlefield injuries. Rule of his Empire passed to his talented nephew and general Balius, who held the Empire together with a combination of military talent and his alliance with the unicorn sage Meadowbrook, whose creation of the geomantic infrastructure that tempered the northern climate proved a fine carrot to go with the Empire's stick.
-811- -789:Bucephalus the Great and his followers, leaving the Republic of Equestria in search of military glory, conquer the petty realms and wild regions of the north, establishing the Crystal Empire as a realm sweeping from the site of modern Vanhoover in the west to Stalliongrad in the east, and reaching almost as far south as the Cantervale.
-1,128: Republic of Equestria (i.e. Old Equestria) officially founded in the southern regions of modern Equestria, based on a three-by-three governmental system, in which each of the three classic branches of government has an element from each of the Three Tribes. The executive, for example, is headed by the three Triumvirs, a unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony - each selected according to their own kind's traditions: the first Triumvirs being, therefore, Princess Platinum Blueblood, Commander Hurricane, and Chancellor Puddinghead. The legislature, the Tricamareon, was a tricameral system, made up of the unicorn Council of Lords, the pegasus General Staff, and the earth pony Cakething (4).
4. The original form of earth pony government was simply the Thing, a popular legislative assembly composed of everypony that could be bothered turning up, with certain rules to ensure that it was quorate - something that it often wasn't, due to most earth ponies being quite busy enough with their own affairs, thank you, and not all that inclined to mind everypony else's business in any case. Its transformation into the Cakething was one of Chancellor Puddinghead's many contributions to successful and eccentric governance: namely, the observation that ponies would be much more likely to attend legislative sessions if there was, well, cake.
(As a side note, while the genealogical records necessary to establish it no longer exist, it would probably not surprise anypony to learn that Chancellor Puddinghead was the direct maternal-line ancestor of Pinkie Pie.)
~-1,300 Approximate era of birth of the Royal Pony Sisters - Celestia and Luna being born as a unicorn and a pegasus, respectively, of earth pony parents, in one of the rare mixed-tribal encampments along the Long Walk.
~-327,000: As Precursor population dwindles, the artifacts later known as the Canterhorn and the Tree of Harmony are constructed to manage the health of the planet without requiring direct Precursor intervention.
~-329,000 - ~-328,000: Surviving Precursors partially uplift Equus ferus, creating Equunculus sapiens (or, as the Imperial taxonomic system will eventually call them, Esevdra alathis(6).)
6. But in either case, it means the same thing: "wise little pony".
~329,000: Precursor civilization collapses, violently. Phosphoros System severely damaged by warfare, including weapons causing the sun to flare, sterilizing much of Equus by burning off its surface. Extinction of the Zebrican plains ape (5). Surviving Precursors move the planet into a distant solar orbit, protect the remaining life within a shielded "crater", and create the artificial sun and moon.
5. Along with any chance for humanity to evolve in this particular worldline.
~482,000: Equus first discovered by the Precursor civilization of the trakelpanis trakóras amán. Specimens of the Zebrican plains ape, later known as Pseudoeldrae archaea, removed from Equus for experiments elsewhere.
For the Advancedverse I've redrawn the conventional map more than a little. (Both for conventional fusion-fic worldbuilding reasons and because as you may remember from the Prologue, I'm setting the entire habitable area of Equus inside a giant astrobleme on a superterrestrial world.)
So what does the map look like now?
Equestria
Everything revolves around Canterlot, they say, and that is truer than most know, because the Canterhorn, that tall and symmetrical spike upon which the city is situated, lies in the exact center of the crater that is the known world, where the Tears of Epona spring forth from the rock and fall into the Canterstream, which flows south-west down the Cantervale to Saddle Lake by Ponyville, at the northern verge of the Everfree Forest. This, and the other temperate and fertile lands surrounding the mountain, all form part of the Principality of Canterlot, the first and oldest of the twelve regions of Equestria.
Equestria as a whole occupies the middle of the northern half of the main Equine continent, which runs right down the middle of the crater from wall to wall. It is bounded to the north by the Crystal Mountains, separating it from the Withered Wastes; to the east by the Great Celestia Ocean; to the west by Luna's Sea in the far north, and by the Drakenridge Mountains which run almost directly south below that until they disappear into the plains of the Mild West; and to the south by the Badlands Plateau that occupies the center of the continent, separating the eastern Haysead Swamps from the western San Palomino Desert - each formed when the rising Plateau pulls the water out of the moist winds off the Celestia Ocean.
And, as has been said, it is divided into twelve major regions, of which the Principality of Canterlot occupies the center. (Unlike the others, it is a Principality because its titular head, currently Prince Rhodium Blueblood, is a lineal descendant of Princess Platinum.) As for the others, starting by going directly north and then going clockwise, we have:
2. The Crystal Empire. This used to occupy the entirety of Equestria's northern belt, i.e., that area immediately south of the Crystal Mountains, and reached down in parts almost as far as the future site of Canterlot proper when it was first conquered by Bucephalus the Great, back in the pre-Discordant Era. Unfortunately, after the Sombran Coup first weakened its influence and then the multi-octennia disappearance of its capital - which knocked the capstone out of the thaumaturgic infrastructure that kept the northern belt habitable, leaving almost the entire population to decamp southward with alacrity, or freeze - it has been reduced to the level of a city-state. It still claims and administers much of the central and western parts of its old territory, mostly because no-one feels like contesting its hold on vast amounts of icy wasteland.
3. The Sovyet of Stalliongrad, directly to the east of the Crystal Empire close to the coast - but not a port city, because floating ice closes the sea that far north to shipping for much of the year. Founded by those too stubborn to leave when the ice came south - and even today no-one outstubborns a Stalliongradder - it sustains itself on coal mining, strong drink, and mighty feats of earth pony engineering holding back the glaciers. It's also notable for governing itself using what they call "a refinement of" and most others call "a throwback to" earth pony governance in the days of Old (i.e., pre-Discord) Equestria.
4. Moving down the coast, we then have the Duchy of Manehattan, the major port city in the north, a center of trade - and, indeed, the recognized commercial capital of Equestria. Off its coast, and a little to the north, can be found...
5. ...the Island Duchy of Trottingham, a large, peaceful, and mostly agricultural island, notable for its cool, misty, and wet weather.
6. Further south, at approximately the same latitude as Ponyville (i.e., just south of Canterlot), can be found the Duchy of Fillydelphia, which is another - the Fillydelphians would say the other - center of industry and earth pony engineering.
7. And then southmost on the east coast we have the Duchy of Baltimare, another coastal port city on the notable inlet Horse Shoe Bay - an inlet particularly notable, for those aware of its peculiar history, for being the consequence of one of the most recent natural-born alicorns. Other cities in this Duchy include Neigh Orleans, at its southernmost extent, which places it in constant danger of sinking into the Haysead Swamps.
8. Skipping briefly over the little-populated central region south of the Everfree Forest and north of the Badlands Plateau, in the west we enter the Appleloosan Marches, which extend from the southern tip of the Drakenridge Mountains into the San Palomino Desert, and have a more-or-less fuzzy western border with the plains of the buffalo. The capital, such as it is, is of course Appleloosa itself, although it has no jurisdiction over the buffalo who continue to stampede over much of its territory.
9. North of that, and with the cities it is named for typically resting just inside the southern tip of the Drakenridge, can be found the Polis of Los Pegasus and Applewood, twin skybound and earthbound capitals of this western region.
10. North of that in turn, and fully behind the Drakenridge, extending east as far as the borders of the Principality of Canterlot, is the sparsely-populated and mostly rural Freehold of Mustangia, which extends north not quite as far as the tip of the mountains...
11. Where lies the Duchy of Vanhoover, Equestria's port on Luna's Sea, a relatively small region squeezed in between the Freehold and the icy wastes to its north, nominal territory of the Crystal Empire, but in practice, nopony's land.
12. And finally, there is the Polis of Cloudsdale, which can generally be found... up. It tends to avoid intruding on the airspace of Los Pegasus (which in turn tends to stay within the bounds of the region it shares with Applewood), but apart from that, it can be found... "over Equestria". Being a cloud city, it can be moved wherever happens to be convenient - which is quite important when you're the center of the weather industry.
These are the major regions. There are also lots of minor regions under local independent jurisdiction (such as Maretonia, say), along with certain special cases, such as:
Quarantined areas left over from the Discordant Era, complete with wards, fences, and large signs warning of the consequences of ignoring large signs;
The Everfree Forest (administered by the Diarchy because it's ridiculously lethal and the buck always stops at the Thrones);
The northern San Palomino Desert (administered by the Diarchy because no-one wants it), its southern regions generally being considered Zebrican, although the actual border is a mite uncertain anywhere if you leave the road;
and the Badlands Protectorate (administered by the Diarchy since the events of "A Canterlot Wedding" because it makes it a lot easier to justify having the Equestrian military scour it routinely for trouble).
Outside Equestria
Of course, there are other creatures on Equus, and also, Equestria isn't the only pony realm, due to some turbulence during the course of its founding and history. Again, starting in the north and going clockwise, we have:
The Withered Wastes, one of the two dragon realms. (Yes, two: the Great Dragon Migration is in fact to somewhere, from somewhere.) This big chunk of icy wasteland north of the Crystal Mountains is essentially uninhabitable by anyone else, so no-one feels the urge to contest the dragons' right to it. The dragons, meanwhile, don't mind the harsh weather, assuming they even notice it.
(It used to be a temperate pony land before the events commemorated by Hearth's Warming and the Long Walk. Now, not so much.)
To the north-east, on the northern of two roughly tear-drop shaped continents abutting the crater rim, is the Griffon Empire, ruled from the Grand Eyrie. The known part of the Empire is between the western coast and the mountain range in the middle of the continent; the griffons claim all the land back as far as the crater wall, but explorers from Equestria haven't gone that far in to confirm it. A small splinter kingdom, Griffonstone, occupies an island off the southern coast of the Empire; splinter kingdoms actually happen fairly often in griffon lands, but Griffonstone so far appears to be unique in its staying power.
To the south-east, on a continent practically the mirror-image of its northern twin, is the Heavenly Jade Kingdom of the Qilin. Knowledge of this realm is extremely limited, since traders (who are welcomed) are generally restricted to the foreign quarters of a few coastal trading ports. It is very probable that they got a bad impression of the outside world from their neighbors...
...the unicorn separatist realm of Unicornia Antiqua, a large island kingdom off their coast founded by the other direct lineal descendants of Princess Platinum, who are, not to put too fine a point on it, the ponies who heard the good word of inter-tribal cooperation and Harmony, and decided that it really wasn't for them. Comes with a fine line in caste systems and extreme snobbery, and at its worst produced rulers mad enough to consider the degenerated Heartspire (1) a good social model and who were only restrained from putting that into effect by their awareness that that would be the last straw before the Unconquered Sun and Cunning Moon came over there and wrecked their shit.
Saddle Arabia is also located on an island in the Great Celestial Ocean; it's a mostly-independent former Equestrian colony, with a hot climate, and Australianesque wildlife that will try and kill you in eighteen separate ways before lunch. Colonizing it was only a short step above colonizing the Everfree in terms of good-idea-ness, and the Princesses still wonder quite how it came to pass. Still, the Saddle Arabians seem to like it...
And finally, a few other tropical, mostly-volcanic islands in the Great Celestial Ocean are claimed by the dragons as their other, southern, homeland. Identified on most maps simply as "here be dragons".
South of Equestria, the Haysead Swamps and Badlands give way to the tangled masses of the Forgotten Jungles (mostly uninhabited, or at least the inhabitants hide very well if there are any), which do however offer a fine line in ancient ruins, of which the Valley of Tenochtitlan is only one. They also offer a fine line in unusual creatures, of which Ahuizotl is only one. Further south still, these jungles and the San Palomino Desert each give way to the endless veldt: Zebrica, home of the semi-nomadic zebras, which ends in a peninsula before the southern crater wall is reached; daring sailors with very well-built ships could sail around it to reach the Southern Ocean, but if any have, they aren't telling.
To the west of Equestria, south of Luna's Sea and to the west of the Drakenridge Mountains, is the earth pony realm of Gildeddale(2). Unlike Unicornia Antiqua, the ponies of Gildeddale are civilized folk, if given to unusual customs by Equestrian standards; they just don't see any particular need to unite with Equestria. To the west of them, and to the west of the Appleloosan Marches to the south, stretches the Mild West, the domain of the buffalo tribes.
It's not called the "Mild West" because of the weather, please note. It's called the Mild West because the buffalo in that region are friendly, and as you progress further and further into the "Unexplored West", they get progressively less friendly. That's because the further west you go, the closer you get to the "Holy Horsefeathers What The Hay Is That AAARGH IT'S GOT MY LEG Far West", where there be monsters. Lots of monsters. The buffalo of the far western regions are dour, battle-scarred, and would be thanked daily by pretty much everyone else on Equus if their endless hunt was better known.
And finally, in the north-west, an island in the northern regions of Luna's Sea houses the pony kingdom of Prance, blessed with unusually mild weather thanks to a defect in the crater wall that lets warm (and slightly radioactive, but let's not worry about that) winds down from the highlands. It's not a separatist realm, strictly speaking: it's descended from groups of the Three Tribes that got separated, found the sea, and build rafts during the Long Walk to found Equestria.
And then there are three unusual cases. Namely, the independent pegasus city, or cities, that are believed to be out there over the ocean somewhere. If anyone could find the blasted things, which is tricky when you consider motile cloud cities that don't want to be found.
There are the diamond dogs, who claim their realm to be "underground, everywhere, or at least everywhere where there are gems", who virtually everyone else with rocky terrain available consider to be squatting on their territory. (Especially rock farmers.) And grudgingly tolerate. (Except the rock farmers.)
And then there is the minotaur realm of Mazein, which is composed of many scattered city-states across the known world, each of which is built in the form of a mighty fortress-labyrinth... which are the same labyrinth. At least, if you're a minotaur. Everyone else just gets hopelessly lost, but minotaurs have been observed by reliable sources walking into one of their cities and walking out of a different city on a completely different continent without any visible means of transport or sufficient time for travel between the two. No-one knows how this works.
For your convenience, individual entries are labeled as Imperial (I), or Equestrian (E).
ab imperium condita (I) The Imperial calendar, counting from the founding of the Empire ("Year Zero"). Years start at the spring equinox, and contain 333 1/3rd days (orbital year; the calendar has a leap day every third year) of 26 of your Earth hours each.
The year of Cordelia's arrival, 7240 AIC, is equivalent to 2097 Year of Harmony.
aesthant (I) One of the eight eldraeic darëssef (perhaps best translated as "functional social roles"), which concerns itself with art, both fine and applied, and the creation of beauty as a general principle. In their own words:
The soul of the Empire is in our keeping.
For beauty is our calling, and beauty is the language of the soul. Beauty inspires, uplifts, and enlightens. It comforts the sore at heart, and gives ease to the weary. As the word of Lanáraé proclaims, beauty, like love, calls the divine fire, the lincál, down to earth. With it, we dwell in a civilization of enlightened souls; without it, in mere hovels of scurrying beasts.
And so we must shape all things accordingly. The pure artists among us strive with song and sculpture, with book and game, with edifice and performance, to show the world what it could be. Others work elsewhere, with technarchs and plutarchs to make elegance walk alongside functionality; with runér and hearthmistresses to build shining cities where no shadows fall; even with sentinels, as they strive to preserve and restore beauty in the wake of ruin. So shall we work, until all the world reflects this harmony, and neither ugliness nor darkness lies in wait to cast gloom upon the heart and shadow the soul of its beholders.
Thus is our Heaven built.
- Kynar Cendriane, Lyceum of the Frozen Flame
AIC (I) See ab imperium condita.
airthia (I) A creature from eldraeic mythology which rather resembles a giant airborne manta ray.
alicorn (E) To digress for a moment, in the Equestrian language, the term alicorn can refer to any of, first, the thaumatically-active substance making up the core of an alicorn (sense 2) and certain other bony structures; second, the bony spiral horn of a unicorn or alicorn (sense 3); or, third, the rare sub-species of pony manifesting the combined traits of the three major sub-species, notable for possessing thereby the largest alicorns (sense 2) and the largest proportionate quantity of alicorn (sense 1).
What this means is that over the course of centuries of magical research, many someponies have had to, at some point, utter the phrase 'the alicorn of an alicorn's alicorn' without cracking a smile or bursting into a fit of the giggles, something this researcher has found herself entirely unable to do. How this has never led to any change in these various usages is a mystery probably exceeding the grasp of even the Department of Pinkieology.
- from an unpublished draft of the notes of Cordelia "Moongleam" Vintar-ith-Vidutar
alírvelv (I) A near-eel critter (the "sneaking eel") from the eldraeic homeworld with the chromatophores of a octopus or chameleon. Its sneakiness is exactly the reason why you shouldn't go swimming in eel country.
amán (I) The eldraeic mythological dragon, possibly inspired by the trakelpanis trakóras amán precursor species. Typically depicted, to draw an analogy to Earth civilizations, much more like Eastern dragons than Western dragons: there's a reason why the modern eldraeic word translated as "eikone" or "deity" is lin-amán.
Ancients (E) In the words of Lyra Heartstrings, possibly the only pony to take the stories about them seriously as our story opens:
"They came from the stars in ancient times according to legend - before Equestria, before Discord, before the Three Tribes left the old homeland - and grew huge cities of living crystal and steel. All lost now. We learned so much from them! Some say the old gods were made from stories about them."
artificial immune system (I) A system consisting of varieties of in-body nanomachines whose purposes is to eliminate toxins and pathogens, and speed repair of injuries.
Associated Worlds (I) A loose association (notably looser than, say, the United Nations) of 10,000 or so star systems and a couple of hundred polities occupying the locally explored region of the galaxy.
The IGS 254672/Phosphoros System is on its rimward frontier, approximately 2,100 light-years from the eldraeic home system. The region of space it's in is provisionally designated Adjunct Constellation 219, but if the name doesn't end up being Equestria-related somehow after her discovery, Cordelia will eat her dress hat, feather and all.
Aval Cyprium-class microscout (I) The typical starship of first-in scouts, the Aval Cyprium-class is a small starship (usually crews two, can fit up to four, can be operated by one) used for initial assessment of newly opened star systems and investigation of anomalies. In form, it has paired counterrotating gravity wheels attached to a central spine (the for'ard wheel containing living quarters and avionics; the aft wheel containing engineering systems and a bay for a single Elyn-class microcutter) sitting atop a fusion torch drive.
bandal (I) A canine from the eldraeic homeworld; essentially the equivalent of the Equian dog, except that the bandal is descended as much from Canis dirus, the dire wolf, as it is from Canis lupus, the gray wolf, making them both big and smart. If you picture an Australian Shepherd that's a couple of hundred pounds in mass and maybe 2' 6" at the shoulders, you're in the right ballpark.
body-flying (I) Imperial slang for “using psychokinesis to fly”. The trick is not to try to lift yourself; conservation of momentum will not be your friend. Instead, you stay still and push the ground away.
(Some unicorns - Starlight Glimmer being the obvious canonical example - can also do this, although they don't call it by the same name. It is, however, much more difficult to achieve than pegasus flight - specifically, it's like trying to achieve a series of stable rocket trajectories with a thrust axis balanced through your horn and without a flightfield to clean up your aerodynamics - and so a rather rare talent.)
Bucephalan Dynasty (E) The ruling dynasty of the Crystal Empire since it was first carved out by Bucephalus the Great. Its sole remaining scion in the modern era is Princess Cadance.
(King Sombra, né Crimson Quartz, was notably not a member of the Dynasty.)
bytegeist (I) An independently mobile housing for part of one's muse (q.v.), used for interfacing with other machinery, analyzing and manipulating nearby objects, communicating with other people, and generally dealing with the physical world. Most bytegeists look like small geometric solids with a lens that hover over their owner's shoulder when not actively in use.
Cakething (E) Under both the Tricamareon of Old Equestria and the modern Diarchy, the Cakething is the third part of the tricameral legislature that belongs to the earth ponies. It is a thing in the technical sense; a gathering of the free ponies of a community (or at least those with an interest in legal affairs who can be bothered to turn up; its size, when dealing with Equestria entire, tends to be reduced by the use of layered proxies), presided over by a lawspeaker.
The name, of course, dates back to Chancellor Puddinghead's original notion that the best way to get ponies to want to turn up at the Thing was, well, to serve them cake. This is reflected in their symbols even down to the modern day: the unicorn Council of Lords have the scepter of Canterlot's ancient royalty; the General Staff of the pegasi rally around a wreathed spear dating back to Commander Hurricane; and the Cakething has its dessert trolley (1).
1. Well, technically, the Cakething's symbolic object is a wooden spoon (which is at least as rich with history as the others, once belonging to Smart Cookie before the Chancellor grabbed it to make an impromptu point with back in the day). But what everypony thinks of first is the dessert trolley.
Canterlot Archives (E) The largest library in Equestria, under the personal patronage of the Diarchy. The Archives are divided into four sections:
1. the Royal Library and Museum of Canterlot, containing the books, et al., which anypony is allowed to read at any time - and that means all of them, since it's Equestria's library of legal deposit and receives a copy of every work published in Equestria (yes, this does include every issue of the Foal Free Press - Gabby Gums lives on! - and for that matter Fillyfoolers Fortnightly(2)), plus anything else the Acquisitions Department can get their grabby hooves upon. It's huge, and goes back quite a long way under the mountain on several levels. As a filly, Twilight was once lost in here for four days straight (3) and only complained when the librarians wouldn't let her finish her book before escorting her back to the Princess.
2. the Service Archives, containing the books, et al., kept for the benefit of the Royal Service, including millennia worth of tax rolls, census returns, and petitions to the Thrones.
3. the Special Collections, containing the books, et al., which somepony might be able to read sometime with special permission of one kind or another (this includes, for example, the Star Swirl the Bearded wing); and
4. and buried deepest of all, the Shadow Stacks, containing the books, et al., which nopony is allowed to read, ever. Examples include books similar to that volume from "Inspiration Manifestation", many of the works of a certain artist who survived the Discordant Era, and if a certain scientific paper titled "A Hypothetical Simple Method For Exploding the Sun" were actually to exist, it would be here too.
2. For serious research purposes only, naturally.
3. While Spike was as yet too young to perform his most essential job function of shoving food under Twilight's muzzle so that her subconscious mind could eat while her consciousness was... otherwise occupied, it was the first of several incidents that caused Princess Celestia to impress upon him, at a later date, the importance of that particular responsibility.
CASE DEMIURGE DREAMING (I) IES codeword for "I found God a weakly godlike superintelligence and hopefully haven't woken it up; please respond appropriately".
CASE GOLDEN SUNRISE (I) One of a series of Imperial cross-governmental response cases to first contact. Typical examples include CHIMERA SUNRISE (primarily diplomatic with a staged precautionary military alert), segueing into either ROSY SUNRISE (stand down and move to friendly diplomacy) or BLOODY DAWN (rapid mobilization to a war footing). GOLDEN SUNRISE, quickly summarized, is "no precautionary alert, go straight to diplomacy, maybe throw them a party, bring presents".
ciseflish (I) One of the species of the Empire, resembling hexapedal, trisexual star-nosed moles perhaps 4' in height. They breathe ammonia, dwell on cold worlds with high-pressure atmospheres, and metabolize hydrocarbons into polymers which serve as their equivalent to proteins.
cogence core (I) A specialized quantum computer serving as the housing for an artificial intelligence.
Common Social Protocol (I) The standardized set of social rules and etiquette which define polite interaction among the various different species of the Empire and beyond.
cornu acutus (E) A rare genetic condition afflicting unicorns (and, theoretically, alicorns) in which the tip of the horn comes to a sharp point, rather than the more typical rounded point. While not affecting a unicorn's ability to perform magic, cornu acutus tends to be problematic for the sufferer due to the risk it poses to those nearby, especially spouses, lovers, and pillows.
While no corrective treatment is available for cornu acutus, except for contraindicated and medically unsound procedures involving docking or filing down the tip of the horn - which can dangerously affect magical capability, causing backlash and/or uncontrollable surges - a degree of palliation is possible by means of a prosthetic safety device. Specifically, a cork, to be worn at night.
cornucopia (I) Simplistically, a nanotechnological assembler system in a box, capable of making anything it has a recipe for out of supplied molecular components.
Council of Lords (E) Under both the Tricamareon of Old Equestria and the modern Diarchy, the Council of Lords is the third part of the tricameral legislature that belongs to the unicorns. Membership in the Council is determined by a bewildering series of precedents, rules of protocol, and genealogical charts, but notably includes the remnants of the old unicorn nobility along with the gentry and selected rising young families; its membership correlated only poorly with those unicorns who hold one or another office elsewhere in the government.
Court of Courts (I) The Court of Their Divine Majesties, the rulers of the Empire of the Star (q.v.). Receiving an entrée here isn't quite a distinction without peer, but it comes damned close.
Cunning Moon (E) See Unconquered Sun.
dar-bandal (I) One of the species of the Empire, essentially dogs/wolves uplifted to intelligence; resemble a larger version of the regular bandal, except for greater size, a higher forehead, and more manipulatory ability in the forepaws. Unlike canine uplifts in various other universes, they retain their quadrupedal body plan, Imperial sophoncy engineers having no desire to turn every upliftable species into imitation monkeys.
Day Court (E) 1. One of the two branches of the Equestrian executive branch, that centering around Princess Celestia. The various governmental responsibilities are distributed between it and the Night Court (the Day Court, for example, holds dominion over the treasury, settlements, and confectionery-related issues), although since the Diarchy works closely together, the divisions are often fuzzy and serve primarily as a tie-breaker.
2. The hall of Canterlot Palace in which Princess Celestia holds court (which includes a secondary, smaller throne for Princess Luna), and its associated facilities.
3. The open court which Princess Celestia holds on one day each moon, allowing anyone to approach her directly to petition the throne (on topics associated with the Day Court), for arbitration of a problem, or for any other purpose - which covers everything from gifts and artistic performances (welcomed, unless too extravagant for the giver's own good) through sudden declarations of love (let down as gently as possible) to the odd unusually polite coup attempt (taken as seriously as it deserves (4).)
4. For example, the attempt to reinstate the old pegasus Commandry in the wake of the Second Lunar Rebellion received a full military response from the Royal Guard, while the attempt by Golden Key, aged 9, to overthrow the government so that her mother - a senior civil servant in the Foreign Office during the recent turbulence - could work fewer evenings each week was resolved over tea and cookies.
DEMIURGE ERRANT (I) Code name for the Empire's intelligence service's operation to monitor seed AIs and equivalent elder-race Powers (in the Vingean sense) throughout accessible space for potential existential threats and other high-risk issues.
Diet of Trottingham (E) The accord, signed in the aftermath of the Great Griffon War, by which all sapient species of Equus agree not to use each other as food or slaves.
Since the signing of the Diet, the only notable defectors from the Diet's "food" clause have been occasional dragons, who have been known to feel powerful and arrogant enough to get away with it. The current Dragon Lord, Torch, enforces the Diet (6) with two traditionally-gotten-away-with informal exceptions, namely:
1. Any other species that comes wandering into the Dragon Lands without his token of passage is asking for whatever they get; and
2. Wherever, whatever, and whoever you are, attempting to steal from a dragon's hoard qualifies you as "lunch".
The "slaves" clause has been broken a little more frequently, typically by the diamond dogs. It doesn't often work out very well for them, either - usually in ways worse than ending up on the wrong end of Rarity's finest whining, for all that the Unpleasable Demon-Pony of Eight Octiad Demands is rapidly becoming a major figure in diamond dog mythology.
6. To some degree, this is because Torch remembers the previous Dragon Lord, Flammifer, who operated on the basis of "Any dragon dumb enough to get caught by someone who can do something about it deserves what he gets, and it's not my problem if they can't do something about it."
Remember the Flamecano? The reason it's not a plain old volcano is because it's powered by Flammifer, who learnt a fairly harsh lesson about draconic immunity to flame, and how it means exactly zilch when you're buried up to the eyeballs in molten glass which is then flash-frozen. The irony that this was pretty much in accord with his own policy didn't escape anyone smarter than, say, Garble.
DIRECT ENCOUNTER (I) Contact classification indicating personal meeting with a member of the contacted civilization.
dodeciad, dodecen, dodectave (I) Translation convention for numbers expressed in the Imperial system, which uses duodecimal/base 12. The numbers are:
* dodectave - equivalent to decimal ten, means 12. * dodecen - equivalent to decimal hundred, means 144 * dodeciad - equivalent to decimal thousand, means 1,728 * sur-doceciad - equivalent to decimal ten thousand, means 20,736 * grand dodeciad - equivalent to decimal million, means 2,985,984
Similar constructions are used for time measurement, most commonly the dodecade, dodecentury, and dodecennium.
dreamscapes (E) The realm of dreams presided over by Princess Luna. Every sophont individual on Equus (or within the Phosphoros System, although until recently those were the same thing) generates a personal dreamscape during sleep, which in turn connect to a shared realm populated with common elements and lost figments.
Elsewhere (I, E) A term independently adopted by unicorn theoretical thaumaturgists, eldraeic ontotechnologists, and Pinkie Pie to designate the not-space/not-time that teleportation moves through, that pocket claudications exist in, that the universe keeps its metadata in, and so forth. Not really a where or a when, inasmuch as it contains only the space and time that you bring with you (mistakes in this area often prove embarrassing), the term is mostly a shrug that saves explaining "Star Swirl's Third Theorem of Omnipresent Amiability in Aetheric Lattice Functions" or "Janiris's Sixfold Mapping of Mass-Energy Event Nodes onto the Sexternial Data-Space Metric", respectively, to laysophs.
(Those curious for more information are referred to Everything Enthusiastically Explained for the Enthusiast, Sparkle etal., pub. S.I.T. Press, 2139 YH.)
Empire of the Star (I) A multiple-species star nation approximately 2,000 light-years coreward of the Phosphoros System, encompassing roughly 275 star systems and 2.57 trillion embodied sophonts; top of the list of Great Powers of the Associated Worlds, and Cordelia's home. Has as its motto "Miríë, Idaharis, Jírileth" ("Order, Progress, Liberty"), and means every word of that; critics would add "richness, wildness, and smugness," which in all honesty few of its residents would actually disagree with.
Epona (E) 1. The large gas giant in the Phosphoros System.
2. An ancient equine goddess; while her worship is not entirely extinct in the modern day (although limited to cults even smaller than those of the Solarists), now considered largely mythological. The Tears of Epona, the waterfall Canterlot is built around, was named for her weeping at the internecine wars of the Three Tribes before the foundation of Old Equestria.
Equus (E) Third planet of the Phosphoros System, and its most anomalous, being a light superlithic (7) world with a large moon, provisionally classified as atypical sylithopaludial or postsylithic (8), and orbiting at a distance of approximately 12,000 light-seconds from Phosphoros, the system primary (10), which appears as merely an unusually bright star. However, there is some evidence that it may not always have occupied this orbit.
Approximately three-quarters of its surface area is seared desert, cracked into canyons, and suffering from residual levels of radioactivity and cosmic ray bombardment. The remaining quarter, a roughly circular area (a very large crater) concentrated in one hemisphere, resembles a typical life-bearing garden world. On her way in, Cordelia detected complex electromagnetic emissions emanating from this region of the planet, in particular from a mountain near the center of the region. For more details about the geography inside this crater, please see Appendix C.
Equus has two satellites: one (Luna) is a relatively large (11) conventional moon; the other (Celestia) seems to be a miniature sun, with an emission spectrum similar to that of Phosphoros (i.e., a Hearth-class star (12)); on her way in, Cordelia detected some evidence of organized masses within the corona of this miniature sun, suggesting that it's artificial. It definitely doesn't have sufficient mass to fuse hydrogen naturally. Both move in otherwise-impossible forced orbits, which is the source of the planetary day-night cycle, its rotational period being much longer; the moon is partially synchronized with the sun in near-syzygy (13). Emissions from both suggest, according to Cordelia, that they're being moved using some mechanism analogous to vector control - save that doing this for objects of such high mass on a continuous basis would require technologies of large angelic or weakly godlike potency.
7. i.e., a significantly-larger-than-Earth planet, but one whose gravity remains Earth-like due to a composition notably heavier in light elements and lighter in heavy elements, along with a smaller, less active planetary core.
8. These are terms from the Imperial Grand Survey's planetary classification system. A sylithopaludial(9) world is - to summarize dramatically - an Earthlike world with less tectonic activity (whether due to age or other reasons), and often thereby less surface relief. A postsylithic world is an aged example of an Earth-like world that has started to lose its surface water (often due to its sun moving off the main sequence, although not in this case), which tends to create vast deserty areas with water remaining principally at the lowest elevations. Equus doesn't really fit either, but it's about as close as the system can get.
9. If humans had made the system, they would probably have called them gaiapaludial and postgaian. Since they didn't, the garden-world classes were named for Sylithandríël, eldraeic deity of nature, forests, silviculture, and gardens.
10. i.e., if Equus were in our solar system, it would be between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.
11. In the same sense in which Earth's moon is big by the standards of other rocky planets we currently know about.
12. i.e., a G2V main-sequence star, like Sol.
13. The "near" is how Luna produces phases for Luna. As it were.
esseli (I) One of the species of the Empire. Masters of biotechnology, their original forms are long since forgotten; modern esseli resemble big fleshy blobs with eyes and tentacles, making use of plug-in modular organs and symbiotic bodies as the mood strikes them or occasion requires.
Excellence (I) An Imperial courtesy title awarded for excellence or acts of excellence in a particular field. The traditional standard is "one dodecentury of mastery", but in practice, sufficient awesomeness also works. Or sufficient fabulosity.
exocurious (I) Curious about exotic (q.v.) life and foreign cultures; the second point on a scale running EXOPHILIC, EXOCURIOUS, EXONEUTRAL, EXOAPATHETIC, EXOPHOBIC.
exosophontology (I) See sophontology.
exotic (I) Of a species other than one's own, or an individual of a species; considered much more polite than "alien", which is considered mildly derogatory or at least impolite (implying xenophobia).
far horizon probe (I) An artificially intelligent, relativistic-flight-capable probe used by the Imperial Exploratory Service to investigate the regions of space at the fringes of, and beyond, the stargate network; one of the purposes of these probes is to prioritize directions for future expansion of said network (towards existing civilizations and interesting astrographic phenomena). It was the detection of the gravity-wave emissions caused by the forced motion of Equus's sun and moon that initially drew the IES's attention to this region of space.
farspeech (I) Telepathy, eldrae-style - which amounts to organically (neurally) implemented WiFi, sending and receiving neural gestalts over plain old electromagnetic radiation. Given its nature, only works to send and receive between those equipped with the appropriate transceiver.
feel (E) The term for a pony's sense of their own race's magic, either in active use or, in some cases, lingering traces. The term is generic, since each race can at least loosely sense the use of the others' magic, even if the "spectrum" (for want of a better term) is different enough that cross-race sensing doesn't amount to much more than that (14), while intra-race sensing is much more accurate; some specialized terms ('airfeel', etc.) do exist, but are chiefly used in scholarly works. Like other senses, in terms of range, detail, and rare conditions equivalent to - for example - "color-blindness" or "tinnitus", the ability to feel varies between individuals.
14. "I suspect that Pinkie's abilities, while certainly magic of a very unusual and hitherto unstudied school, are found within a spectrum or spectra sufficiently different from any of the known several to be virtually undetectable in use, whether by natural field-sense or current instruments. Establishing a means to reliably detect these spectra will be a necessary precondition for advances in the study of what I shall call pinkieology."
-- Twilight Sparkle, unpublished paper, circa 2094 YH
field (E) The aura of magic within and around a pony's body, and manipulated to create magical effects. Ubiquitous and constant, its precise form varies by race: in unicorns, it is concentrated and focused around the horn; in pegasi, strongest around the wings and at a distance away from the actual body, strongest at the front and weakest at the back; in earth ponies, skin-deep and for the most part evenly distributed around the body, with concentrations at the hooves, especially the forehooves.
When the field is being actively manipulated, it may become visible, most typically in the case of unicorns, whose fields frequently radiate light (the characteristic corona seen around the horn of a unicorn and objects being manipulated or powered by their magic, for example). In the case of pegasi, the field is more often seen as a simple ripple in the air, similar to a subtle mirage, which often is obscured or blends with other phenomena, such as the shock cone of high-speed flight. No consistently visible effects have been observed with regard to earth pony fields.
The term itself is primarily used by unicorns, but see also flightfield; compare photon-discharge glow.
Fillinacci sequence (E) Equestrian name for the Fibonacci sequence. The unusual name comes from the Maretonian dialect.
first-in scout (I) That specialty in the Imperial Exploratory Service whose job is to go boldly where no sophont has gone before and [do initial surveys|make first contact|be devoured by space monsters|explode] (delete as applicable) before appropriate follow-up teams are sent in. A bold and daring bunch of sophs, chosen for interest in new cultures, boundless curiosity, and what the personnel branch refers to tactfully as "chronic insensitivity to caution" (15).
15. And which everyone else refers to as "the complete inability to notice personal danger".
flightfield (E) The specific term for the field of a pegasus, responsible for providing mass-adjustment, thrust, and aerodynamic shielding during flight and interaction with cloud matter, and, when deliberately manipulated, for effecting pegasus techniques. Curiously, the term is little used by pegasi - since the former are instinctual, and pegasus techniques are primarily controlled kinesthetically, pegasi tend to regard their flightfield as an extension of themselves. The term originated with unicorns studying pegasus magic, and is mostly found in scholarly works.
General Staff (E) Under both the Tricamareon of Old Equestria and the modern Diarchy, the General Staff is the third part of the tricameral legislature that belongs to the pegasi. Under the Commandry of ancient Pegasopolis, the General Staff was composed of the most senior military commanders from each clan's forces which served, collectively, as an advisory body to the Commander; in later times, it has become a body made up of the heads of family and clan, although given pegasus culture, there are still a lot of military and ex-military officers to be found on the General Staff.
Glorious Solar Desk (E) The (solid, wooden, practical, and by now, antique) desk in Princess Celestia's office, dubbed such in a whimsical moment as a partial rebuke towards certain ponies' tendency to dub virtually everything associated with her the "Glorious Solar Something". Every time someone uses the term non-ironically, the Royal Facehoof is invoked.
(This is looked upon by the residents of Canterlot Castle in general and the Royal Service in particular with the same sort of bemused tolerance as the moments of diarchic whimsicality that gave rise to, for example, the Ambiguously Blue-Green Room and the Hall of Slightly Asymmetrical Pillars.)
god-bothering protocol (I) Applied theology jargon; the collection of best practices and rules of thumb which offer one the best chance to communicate with an ascended seed AI, elder race, or other Vingean Power-like being or beings, get a useful response that leaves you alive and a reasonable approximation of sane, and get away in something resembling one piece.
Golden Groves (Principalities) (I) Cordelia's homeworld, an Imperial colony. Known for wide grassy plains set as clearings among the megaforests: the temperate and tropical zones of the world are dominated by tree-analogs mature examples of which can grow over 1,000' tall in a complex, intertwined and multilayered canopy. Most of the planet's cities are built in the canopy (where light and air penetrate) rather than on the ground, which also makes it easier to deal with the amber sap the trees naturally exude in large quantities in early spring, and which nourishes ground-dwelling commensal species.
greenlife (I) Greenlife (or calenlethis) is what the eldrae of the Empire call what we would recognize as a subset of, and/or descendants of, Earth-descended life. (Although to them it's just one of three distinct classes of life found on the homeworld: bluelife, greenlife, and silverlife, as detailed here.)
Relevantly, the life on Equus appears to be compatible with, or to actually be identical to, greenlife.
Which is, of course, impossible - at least, naturally.
Hearth-class star (I) See Equus, especially footnote 12.
House Twinkle (E) A unicorn clan prominent among Canterlot's minor gentry, being a proud cadet branch of the aristocratic House Light. Well-known families numbered among House Twinkle (designated here by oft-repeated name components) include the Twilights, the Gleams, the Shimmers, the Glows (a family notable for the high proportion of pegasus intermarriage in their lineage), and the Glimmers.
Imperial Exploratory Service (I) An arm of the Empire's loosely-organized governance tasked with exploring new regions of space, star systems, and worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, going boldly where no sophont has gone before - then establishing diplomatic and trade relations, making friends, effing such ineffable as presents itself, etc., etc., and going home and writing books about it. Their somewhat hopeful motto (16) is alath ap dalínef, "Knowledge and Friendship"; their symbol, a brass sextant-and-star.
16. Which conveniently doubles as their Prime Directive.
information furnace (I) A highly powerful computer, with large processing and bandwidth capacities, but lacking an interface of its own; used to add serious processing power to an existing network.
kaeth (I) A species of the Empire: big pseudosaurian/draconiform carnivores with metal-impregnated skin and an interlocking, bony backplate. Extremely tough and resistant to damn near everything (a requirement for survival on their homeworld); their first fission reactors were serviced by hand. Good-natured, but enjoy fighting and have a very kinesthetic culture.
landesh (I) A grain essentially identical to wheat.
large angelic (I) See weakly godlike.
lathlé (I) Literally "possessor of special privileges"; an Imperial title of distinction roughly equivalent to a (modern) knighthood.
mélith (I) Literally "balance and obligation", mélith is both a fundamental of Imperial culture and an innate instinct/need in the eldrae species. On a simplistic level, all obligations must be met and all debts must be paid. One's word is one's bond, an offhand promise is a binding contract, and in the long term, all exchanges must be balanced: a favor for a favor, a slight for a slight, and no exceptions.
moon (E) As a measure of time, the thirty-day Equestrian month; a full cycle from new to full and back again.
See Year of Harmony.
multipolitan (I) Descriptive of a planetary civilization including multiple independent polities rather than a single planetary-level governance.
muse (I) A networked companion/aide/assistant AI that runs on implanted hardware; a muse has typically been a lifelong companion to its host, and is able to make them considerably more effective and their life very much easier.
See also: bytegeist.
myneni (I) A species of the Empire, silicon-based, resembling colorful, amorphous blobs of gel-like crystalplasm 3' to 4' across.
nanocirc (I) Nanocircs ("nanoscale circuits") are the ultimate solid-state computing devices, small blocks of polymeric optronic circuits built up from a deformed crystal lattice of individual atoms doped atom by atom to form circuit elements the size of single molecules. They form the standard building blocks of Imperial computational systems (optronic molecular switching has replaced solid-state semiconductor gates, allowing for a multiple-orders-of-magnitude increase in processing speed, while consuming far less power; utilizing this optronic architecture and multi-layered holographic data storage technology, small yet powerful central processing units can now be worn like jewelry). Data storage uses holographic bulk media, with multispectral lasers storing hundreds of terabytes per cubic centimeter of crystal medium.
Quantum computer-implementing nanocircs use the same fundamental structure in a diamond medium to create nitrogen-vacancy qubits.
nanolathe (I) The emblematic device of Imperial engineers, technicians, and scientists (although, really, just about everyone probably owns at least one), nanolathes are handheld devices that build into a gauntlet-like frame a microframe computer, a nanofac assembler/disassembler, a supply of nanoslurry, a universal interface, and a range of highly miniaturized tools, sensors and sensor analysis packs, and effectors.
Versatile and reliable, controlled by a synnoetic AI, a nanolathe is a multipurpose diagnostic and manufacturing tool that can be used to analyze and perform service and adjustments on virtually all common devices. The fabrication capabilities of the in-built nanofac can be used to rapidly assemble a range of parts and components – from common, reusable industrial plastics, ceramics, and light alloys – using downloaded recipes, allowing for field repairs and modifications to most objects, as well as a large number of entire small devices, and recycle broken components back into nanoslurry.
Night Court (E) 1. One of the two branches of the Equestrian executive branch, that centering around Princess Luna. The various governmental responsibilities are distributed between it and the Day Court (the Night Court, for example, holds dominion over the military, the fine arts, and gambling), although since the Diarchy works closely together, the divisions are often fuzzy and serve primarily as a tie-breaker.
2. The hall of Canterlot Palace in which Princess Luna holds court (which includes a secondary, smaller throne for Princess Celestia), and its associated facilities.
3. The open court which Princess Luna holds on one night each moon (typically exactly one fortnight away from the Day Court), allowing anyone to approach her directly to petition the throne (on topics associated with the Night Court), for arbitration of a problem, or for any other purpose. It receives rather fewer petitions than the Day Court, mostly because Princess Luna has a reputation for a certain impatience (5) with things she perceives as stupid, corrupt, or mean-spirited, which tends to be reflected in her decrees and judgments (6).
5. Or, at least, for allowing it to show.
6. Which is not to say that they aren't just. The Night Princess is always just - but is more often pointed than her sister. Or worse, ironic.
octiad, octcen, octave (E) Translation convention for numbers expressed in the Equestrian system, which uses octal/base 8. The numbers are:
* octave - equivalent to decimal ten, means 8 * octcen - equivalent to decimal hundred, means 64 * octiad - equivalent to decimal thousand, means 512 * sur-octiad - equivalent to decimal ten thousand, means 4,096 * grand octiad - equivalent to decimal million, means 262,144
Similar constructions are used for time measurement, most commonly the octade, octcentury, and octennium.
the Orrery (I) More formally designated CSS Eledíë's Orrery, the headquarters of the Imperial Exploratory Service, a space station located in the Almeä (Thirteen Colonies) System.
OVERLOOK HIGH (I) Contact classification indicating signs of civilization visually detected from beyond planetary orbit.
PATTERNED EM (I) Contact classification indicating information-bearing EM signals detected.
Phosphoros (I, E) The actual primary star of the system containing Equus, a yellow straggler. At the orbital distance of Equus itself, it is merely the brightest star in Luna's sky, occupying a position in pony folklore much like the Morning Star/Evening Star references to Venus in ours.
Thus, its star system - although previously known as IGS 254672, its index number in the Imperial Grand Survey's stellar catalogue - is officially designed the Phosphoros System. Or will be once Cordelia files a report with the Orrery, anyway.
photon-discharge glow (I) The bluish glow that surrounds an eldrae (and the object she's manipulating) when she uses her implanted vector-control effectors; the glow itself is a product of the effectors discharging as much accumulated entropy as possible as photons to minimize internal waste heat.
ponnequin (E) The equine equivalent of a mannequin.
postsylithic (I) See Equus.
PRECURSOR FUGUE (I) PRECURSOR FUGUE is an IES codeword for "a Precursor or elder race has been mucking about on this planet". PRECURSOR FUGUE DAWN is the subcode for "and I think their children are still here".
quebérúr (I) A large evolutionary cousin of the Earth bison, used by the eldrae for meat and milk.
rhaléth (I) Eldraeic-language term for apples. Exact same fruit (although the varieties obviously differ), different planet. Most curious. See greenlife.
Rhiannon (E) 1. The smaller ice giant in the Equus System.
2. A minor ancient equine goddess, hoofmaiden of Epona. Now also largely mythological.
Royal Canterlot Voice (E) An alicorn language/vocalization trick that gets the point you wish to make across VERY FIRMLY INDEED. Sneers at distance. Sneers at soundproofing, and also vacuum. Sneers at deafness, and may well sneer at the complete lack of auditory organs once someone has time and occasion to test it. And unlike the fine Trottingham tradition of attempting to communicate with foreigners by speaking loudly and slowly at them, the RCV actually does sneer at the necessity for translation.
Royal Guard (E) The primary military force of Equestria, with some police functions. Compared to its predecessor, the EUP Guard, it is a small, specialized, and professional force. It does not make up the whole of the Protective Pony Platoons, although aside from certain specialized units such as the Wonderbolts and Equestria's small navy it is the entirety of the standing military; the rest of the PPP is made up of local militias of varying degrees of effectiveness (17) which attend to local defense, mainly against creatures that may wander in from the wild, but which can be summoned if a larger military force is required for national defense.
The Guard itself is divided into three sections:
The Day Guard, which is the relatively conventional section of the force, 18 thousand-pony regiments strong; and
The much smaller Night Guard, which apart from the all-Nocturne ceremonial and bodyguard units attached to Princess Luna is, for the most part, a collection of interesting characters focused on intelligence, espionage, and special operations; and
The Borderers, also known as the Long Patrol, which patrols Equestria's borders, extensive wild areas - or, in some cases, like the Everfree, the edges of those wild areas - to keep the Sisters' Peace and hunt down any dangerous monsters or other threats that might endanger civilized areas. The Borderer regiments have the most actual combat experience of any of the Guard, although very little of it is in what one might call formal battle.
17. The Canterlot Cavaliers, for example, have all the native talent and experience they need to be magnificent magical artillery, but have barely seen any actual fighting for centuries; the Ponyville First of Hoof has less magic on its side (18) but is considerably more practiced (19), due to things that come wandering out of the Everfree; and while the Cloudsdale Air Cavalry is very well staffed and equipped thanks to the pegasus military tradition, most of its actual action is more along the lines of emergency response than battle.
18. Although it could theoretically call upon Twilight, when she's at home, but for most things that might come wandering out of the Everfree that's like solving your gopher problem with a tactical nuclear weapon. Besides, the First of Hoof doesn't want to get used to relying on a Bearer when the most likely time for serious problems to show up is when the Bearers have bigger problems of their own to deal with.
19. And it quite definitely has Big Mac, who is worth a long squad or a short platoon on his own.
Royal Service (E) The civil bureaucracy that actually runs Equestria day-to-day, while the diarchy rules it. Its head, who reports directly to the Royal Sisters on governmental affairs, is formally known as the First Secretary, and informally known by a variety of epithets of which "Celestia's Iron Hoof" is one of the most printable examples.
(Not to be confused with the Princesses' Principal Private Secretaries - in Celestia's case, that would be Raven Inkwell - who organize the affairs of the diarchs themselves. Or with any of the secretaries who do actual secretarial work, several steps down the ladder.)
Senna's Belt (I) Imperial term for the Kuiper Belt, the belt of ice asteroids, comets, and dwarf planets extending 0.15 to 0.3 light-days from the central star(s) of typical star systems. Named after Senna Marasi, the astronomer who discovered the first objects in the homeworld's Belt in 1843 AIC.
SERAPH BLUE ALERT (I) One of a fairly large number of Exploratory Service codewords used to report first contact. SERAPH implies a non-hostile contact with an advanced civilization; BLUE, in this context, implies ongoing contact and that the first-in scout believes their mission should be prioritized highly by the IES.
sevdra (I) A mythological creature - which is to say, no fossils or other non-mythological evidence has ever turned up - in eldraeic legend, resembling the classic unicorn of Earth myth (i.e., much more closely resembling the Earth horse than the Equestrian pony, and yet...). Symbolically, considered to represent the perfect marriage between power, beauty, and wonder in the despite of Entropy.
SKYSHOCK BLUE (I) The SKYSHOCK series of codewords refers to "excessionary-level events", or what Banks, et. al., call Outside Context Problems. SKYSHOCK BLUE is the unusual case of an Outside Context Problem that might, if everyone plays their cards right and no-one does anything stupid, actually be an Outside Context Opportunity.
slate (I) A portable, multifunctional personal digital assistant, a greatly advanced future's version of our tablets and smartphones, but much more powerful and flexible - while, in its own context, being vaguely archaic, albeit still useful. Also, thanks to being made of smart matter, can be flexed, stretched, and reshaped at will (some people wear them as bracelets (20) when not in use, for example).
20. It won't take Twilight very long to discover the "book" setting, I think we can all reasonably suspect.
sophontology (I) Like anthropology, but less racist. Exosophontology is the same, only in space.
stargate (I) The Empire's (and the Worlds') means of moving between star systems without all that tedious subluminal travel. Basically, it uses a entangled singularity and a bunch of fancy exotic-matter lenses to inflate a wormhole leading to the space near its counterpart - they come in matched pairs, necessarily so - around your ship, which moves through it, the wormhole collapsing afterwards. There are various complications involved with surviving, staying locked to the common time-frame of the network, and not accidentally using the system for time travel in ways that the universe doesn't like, but that's the essential principle.
The most common type of stargate in the Empire and the Associated Worlds is the Ring Dynamics Mark III, resembling an unusual arrowhead; the sun-facing end of the stargate is ellipsoid in cross-section, studded with various sensors and antennae. This cylinder then splits into four curving arms, which surround a spherical volume, narrowing on the other side to the size of the original cylinder, then extending straight and parallel to each other for as far again (21).
21. Or, to put it another way, it looks like what happens if you take two mass relays from Mass Effect, rotate one through 90 degrees, and superimpose it on the other.
stellar husbandry (I) The techniques and practice, among advanced species, of managing your local star to best effect. The most common techniques ease the sunspot cycle, and smooth out the stellar wind, and mix envelope material down into the stellar core to prolong hydrogen burning. This latter is the most relevant, because when carried out over a sufficiently long period of time, you end up with a yellow straggler - an atypical G-type star that's much older than it "should" be.
And Phosphoros, Equus's true primary, is a yellow straggler.
sylithopaludial (I) See Equus.
tangle channel (I) The first and only known method of superluminal communication, short of beaming subluminal communications through a stargate, the tangle channel is essentially a pair of black boxes containing a fixed amount of bandwidth in the form of entangled qubits (tanglebits) stored in qubit reservoirs; each of a mass of particles within one box paired individually with those in the other.
Together, they provide an instantaneous communication channel from the location of one box to the other at any distance; a channel instantaneous in terms of empire time but incapable of globally violating causality, and with a total capacity limited to the number of qubits it is created with. Each bit of data transmitted across a tangle channel uses up one qubit; as the entangled qubits are used for communication, they decohere and become useless.
Trade (I) The lingua franca of communication, trade, and diplomacy in the Associated Worlds predating the ubiquity of machine language translation, still used in some regions and in scenarios in which automatic translators are not available. Functionally, Trade is a simplified Eldraeic pidgin (hacked for simplicity), incorporating a significant number of words and grammatical features from other languages of the Worlds. Trade exists in many mutually-mostly-comprehensible dialects, as regional versions have drifted over the centuries.
trakelpanis trakóras amán (I) A precursor race (the "ancient forceful dragons", or the "Great Drakes" for short) that once dominated significantly-sized pockets of the local galactic arm. Draconic in form, from what archaeology has to tell, and very likely the source of the eldraeic mythological amán.
Apart from leaving the usual quantity of interesting technology and weird artifacts around that various precursor races tend to, the trakelpanis trakóras amán are best known for (a) being solitary creatures, mostly due to a certain difficulty in understanding that anyone else's will actually signified anything relevant, (b) bending reality around them like a pretzel, and (c) tearing down their own civilization in spectacular internecine warfare.
Tricamareon (E) 1. The tricameral legislative body of Equestria, composed of the unicorn Council of Lords, the pegasus General Staff, and the earth pony Cakething.
2. The equivalent body back in the days of old Equestria, pre-Discord.
The most notable rule of the Tricamareon, in both eras, is the Threefold Rule: any piece of legislation - to be considered harmonious enough to become law - must be passed by all three chambers independently.
Unconquerable Sun (E) Neither Celestia Invicta ("Unconquerable Sun") nor Luna Versuta ("Cunning Moon") are formal names or titles for the Royal Sisters; merely epithets given to them in the early, rough-and-tumble years of Equestria in which they perfected a certain double-act in both diplomacy and war, involving its subject battering uselessly at Celestia's defenses while Luna slipped around, literally or metaphorically, to take them out from a position of maximum advantage.
The epithets are slipping back into usage as various foreign heads of state are consulting their ancestors' memoirs and realizing just how damnably effective said double-act was -- and as "I must consult with my sister" is once again becoming the "My words are backed by NUCLEAR WEAPONS." of Equestrian diplomatic parlance.
the Unpleasable Demon-Pony of Eight Octiad Demands (E) A diamond dog title for Rarity, being woven quite rapidly into the mythology of the race. Best not mentioned anywhere word might get back to her.
vector control A family of Imperial ontotechnologies permitting the manipulation of the vector scalar field (22) and related forces within the standard physical model, without requiring extreme energy levels. All particles get their mass from the interaction between the vector field, particles, and the background vacuum; if this is modified, apparent mass – either inertial mass, gravitic mass, or both – and space-time curvature, which is to say gravity, can be modified.
Vector control forms the basis of a very large number of technologies, from techlekinesis to paragravity.
22. You can think of it as the Higgs field, if you like.
weakly godlike (I) Strictly speaking, a weakly godlike entity is one capable of doing anything possible within the physical laws and metalaws of the universe, but which cannot violate them, unlike a strongly godlike entity, which is not bound by law. Even the former is somewhat hypothetical, although the term is often used inaccurately: thus, the term large angelic, and variations, has come into use as slang describing otherwise inexplicable sufficiently-advanced capabilities.
worldbound (I) Descriptive of a species or polity which has not yet developed any kind of crewed spaceflight.
Year of Harmony (E) The Equestrian calendar, which counts from the end of the Discordant Era. Years are 360 days long, having been rationalized by a Diarchy that didn't feel like dealing with odd numbers since the calendar was essentially independent of Equus's much longer orbital and rotational periods anyway, and start at what might otherwise be called the winter solstice but is actually just the halfway point between Fall Finale and Winter Wrap-Up), and are divided into 12 moons of 30 days each. The lunar cycle corresponds precisely to these moons not only in length but also in synchronization; the new moon is always on the first day of the month and the full moon on the 15th, special occasions notwithstanding.
(The Equian day-night cycle is approximately 22 hours long, as Cordelia noted, but those are Imperial hours, which makes it approximately 24 of your Earth hours. Meanwhile, the Equestrian timekeeping system divides into 16 hours, using a common 8-hour clock. Isn't interstellar horology fun?)
yellow straggler (I) See stellar husbandry.
YH (E) See Year of Harmony.
zero-zero intercept (I) In astrogation, an intercept with a target (rendezvous, orbit, station, other ship, etc.) computed so as to reach zero relative velocity at zero distance; a perfect interception.
