She was tired of being a joke. Tired of being a failure.

Experimental neurosurgery seemed like the best option.

Now, for the first time, she can see the world as it truly is.

Since the dawn of Equestria, the Agency has protected the realm from every manner of hideous magical creature. Largely by putting them various places where ponies probably won't go.

Forcibly recruited via a burlap sack, Fluttershy is assigned to inventory a site that has become a center of magical gastropod evolution--only to have her plane shot down by a mysterious unicorn.

Injured and trapped in the Forest of Snails, she finds that there was far more in those swampy, moist lands than she was led to believe.

Investigating primitive radio transmissions detected on a long-range Federation listening post, the Enterprise investigates a planet far in the unexplored border space of the Alpha Quadrant. There, they discover a primitive planet just starting its industrial revolution--a planet complete with extensive lunar colonization and in the process of launching its first warp-capable ship.

The failure of the alien ship initiates first contact--with a race of adorable talking horses. A first contact with some unique diplomatic idiosyncrasies--and hints of a more sinister plot behind the warp-vessel's destruction.

Shortly into starting her well-earned retirement, Celestia begins to develop unusual symptoms. Twilight, Starlight, and Trixie investigate, only to find that the Princess is dying.

And it is not the first time.

Celestia and Luna package and box Cozy Glow for her final trip to eternal torment in Tartarus.

Starlight shows up and becomes displeased.

Daring Winifred Do, the youngest daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Equestria, is dispatched with her elder sister to oversee an archaeological expedition deep on the farthest edge of Southern Equestria.

Deep in the Red Desert, archaeologists have unearthed a strange and ominous pyramid. A pyramid that the locals desperately fear--even as they refuse to acknowledge its existence.

Its purpose was forgotten millennia prior. It was abandoned and forgotten, lost to the sands.

And Daring Do quickly realizes that perhaps it was better off left that way.

This story is a sequel to Daring Do and the Hand of Doom

A story of the first seven months of the life of Penumbra Heartbreak, the alicorn daughter of King Sombra.

A strange hole opens up outside of Ponyville.

Nopony is sure where it came from.

Or where it goes.

Derpy, the muffin mare of Ponyville (a tiny, pointless town on the backside of nowhere that nopony at all cares about) suddenly finds that she has fallen pregnant with her second daughter. With no means of supporting herself (let alone a foal), she begins trying to find an alternate source of non-muffin income.

Fortunately, Spoiled Rich offers her a position. A job killing ponies that displease her. And when it comes to Spoiled Rich, there are a LOT of ponies that displease her.

Derpy accepts the job, and performs about as well as would be expected.

The Exmoori: a mythic race of ancient warrior ponies who, according to legend, once ruled Equestria not by use of magic but by unspeakable technological creations. All legitimate archaeologists, of course, are aware of the fact that the Exmoor ponies are nothing more than a hoax or fairy tale.

Other entities, however, believe they were very much real.

A pair of mysterious albino Pegasi arrive at the ancestral home of Doctor Caballeron, bringing with them images of a carving in the ancient language of the Exmoori- -and promising him riches beyond his wildest dreams if he can bring them the artifact it mentions.

Simultaneously, a young and discredited academic arrives in Southern Equestria, bearing an ill-gotten fragment of the same text. He presents it to none other than Daring Do, who sets out to prove his theories true- -and to recover an artifact of profound and unknowable danger.