Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
“Son, I’ll ask you one last time: you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes,” answered Lex flatly, not bothering to look up from the food he was wrapping. This was the fourth time the engineer had asked him that in the fifteen minutes since he’d stated his intention to continue on to Tall Tale without the train. The idea that repeatedly asking the question would somehow elicit a different answer was enough to make him roll his eyes.
Before the engineer could try and talk him out of it again, Sonata exited the train and trotted over to them, balancing two trays of food on her back. “This is the last of it,” she announced, setting them down beside Lex. “I made sure to get extra sugary treats, so that we’ll have plenty of energy for the walk there!”
She grinned with pride at her reasoning, not noticing Lex’s wince. He much preferred bland food.
“Your stallion’s still keen on going through with this. What about you, little lady? It’s not too late to catch a ride back with us,” the older unicorn reiterated as he turned his worry-filled gaze on Sonata.
She smiled at his concern, but waved it off. “Don’t worry about us. We’re totes going to slay that dragon and become super-awesome heroes! You’ll be able to tell every pony about how you were there at the beginning of our adventure!”
The engineer made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “I still think this idea is completely daft, but if you two want to go walking along a hundred miles of empty track all by yourself with a dragon on the loose, I can’t stop you.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but a shout from one of his attendants that they were ready to go turned his attention back to the train.
Giving them one last backward glance, he slowly returned to the engine and climbed aboard. A moment later the train began to lurch backward, picking up speed as it began its impromptu return journey. Conjuring a soft light as the shine of the engine’s headlight began to recede, Sonata animatedly waved goodbye to the departing vehicle.
Lex ignored the departing locomotive entirely, placing the last of the food in his pack. Although his haversack was enchanted so that each of its pockets had storage capacity far in excess of what their appearance suggested – with the central pouch being notably deeper than its two counterparts on the sides – the multiplicity of items that he had already placed into it during his time on Everglow, where he had originally acquired this particular bauble, made it so that the five days’ worth of food that he and Sonata had bought for themselves had barely fit into storage.
Normally, Lex would have fussed over the placement of edible items alongside his myriad scrolls, gemstones, and other collections of materials. Concerns such as the food getting squished or staining his things would have caused him a great deal of consternation. However, the magic that allowed his pack to hold such a prodigious capacity of things without increasing its size or weight had likewise eliminated this problem.
Since the folded space within the haversack’s pockets was isolated from the world outside of it, accessible only by each pouch’s mouth, this meant that the contents of each pocket were not subject to jostling or bumping. Regardless of how delicately the contents were arranged, their placement would not be disturbed even if the wearer of the backpack were to turn cartwheels.
By themselves, these features were remarkable enough. But what Lex truly found ingenious about the simple-looking backpack was how it allowed for the convenient retrieval of stored materials. Even the most diligent packing job would be disrupted if you needed to dig through the stuff on top in order to reach what was on the bottom. But the way the haversack manipulated space cleverly allowed for even this inconvenience to be avoided.
Rather than having to root through the contents, whatever item was desired was always the top-most item, placed just under the leather flap as though eagerly waiting to be retrieved. Lex had experimented with this function several times, curious about how the pack was able to accomplish this without displacing any of the other materials placed in a given pocket. What he had eventually discovered was that the haversack was subtly rearranging the orientation of the opening of its pouches with regards to its contents every time they was opened. In this way, the “top” item was whatever the user wanted it to be.
It was, in other words, a device of truly impressive utility. To Lex’s mind, it perfectly underscored why Equestria needed his leadership. An item like this couldn’t currently be produced in Equestria without extraordinary effort; while creating minor magic items could be done without undue difficulty, such materials were extremely limited in what they could accomplish. Anything that approached the level of complexity exhibited by this pack was virtually unknown, relegated to the realm of near-mythical creations by the greatest of unicorn wizards, such as the sage Meadowbrook, Aponyus of Maretonia, or Star-Swirl the Bearded. Everglow, by contrast, considered this a minor item, a modest luxury that could be found in most magic shops.
The disparity was unsurprising, at least to Lex, who was keenly aware that the magic of Everglow was more advanced than that of Equestria. Indeed, knowing what he did about Everglow, such a discrepancy between it and his native world was only to be expected. Unlike his homeland, Everglow was a world where strife and chaos were the natural state of things, and civilization and security needed to be forcibly maintained. It was little wonder then that the magic used by the ponies of Everglow was so much stronger than that used by their Equestrian counterparts; it had to be, in order to stand up to myriad threats that were accepted as a natural part of their world.
Lex understood all of this, and yet he still found it to be a poor excuse for the fact that the native magic of his home-world was so feeble in comparison. Or rather, that it had existed in such a meager state for so long, with no change between the era he had been born into and now.
A pony that paid careful attention to their diet and got enough exercise had an excellent chance of living to see a full century, even if only barely. Those few unicorns that reached the highest tiers of Equestrian magic could learn a spell to manipulate aging that would let them have a lifespan three times as long as their fellows before its efficacy was expended. Lex, in comparison, was more than a thousand years distant from the time of his birth. But that millennium had not been one that he’d personally lived out; rather, he’d spent it locked away in stasis along with the Crystal Empire, the victim of King Sombra’s curse when the tyrant had been defeated by Princess Celestia and Princess Luna.
Upon his – and the Crystal Empire’s – return, Lex had been horrified to find that Equestria had virtually stood still in his absence, with no real change to speak of having occurred. While minor differences could be found in abundance, such as Celestia and Luna now ruling from Canterlot instead of maintaining a separate castle of their own, or how small towns and hamlets had risen and fallen in the interim, everything that was even remotely substantive had not changed in the slightest.
No new forms of magic. No breakthroughs in technology. No advances in culture.
Equestria, his beloved and beautiful homeland, had become stagnant.
Lex placed the blame for this squarely on the alicorn sisters who ruled the land. To his mind, one of the central responsibilities of leadership was to nurture the growth of new ideas and innovation. Progress should be encouraged even if there wasn’t some sort of existential necessity for it, the way it was on Everglow. There was a reason why the root of “leadership” was “lead”; to be a ruler was to chart a course forward, not to sit back and do nothing as everything ground to a halt.
Lex had attempted to share this wisdom with Princess Celestia, appearing before her six weeks ago and broadly outlining her and her sister’s myriad failures and how, if they would just abdicate in favor of his rulership, he would correct their mistakes and plot a new, better course for Equestria. But he had been denied, his ideas cast aside without any consideration in favor of her simplistic ideology of “it’s a virtue, not a vice, to let ponies govern themselves.”
He had been prepared for a vigorous debate, be it on politics, economics, or philosophy. He had not been prepared for such self-righteous simplemindedness. In the face of such willful incompetence, such deliberate intransigence that would neither correct its own flaws nor allow anyone else to do so, Lex had taken the only course left to him, and declared open rebellion against the alicorn sisters’ rule.
That he’d needed to flee Equestria immediately after doing so was a humiliation that still gnawed at him. But there had been no other choice; for all his fiery words about casting Celestia and Luna down by force, he knew that he had little hope of victory should he face them in battle. Retreating to Everglow, where the abundant magic and myriad dangers could serve as a crucible, was the only practical course of action to take.
Retreating to Everglow…and to Sonata.
Though he’d only met the beautiful sea pony – a breed of pony that was unknown on Equestria, but was apparently similar enough to an earth pony that the difference struck him as little more than academic – a short time before, they had, to his everlasting surprise, developed a rapport, even going on a date together. Since a misunderstanding had caused her to remain behind on Everglow when Lex had returned to Equestria, he had run to Sonata’s side without hesitation upon going back to that world.
He had been wise to do so. Although he had been intent on making plans for gaining power enough to wage war on Celestia and Luna, Sonata had counseled him otherwise. She was the one who had, again and again during their conversations, insisted that there was a better manner of getting what he wanted than by using force. Instead, she had urged him to limit his ambitions, to negotiate for a deal that was more amenable to both sides, even if that meant that he would receive less than absolute rulership of all Equestria.
He had strongly resisted her advice at first, but to his astonishment she won him over to her point of view during their time together. Not completely, of course; he was still firmly convinced that he could manage Equestria far more adroitly than Celestia and Luna, and was still intent on making that happen. But she’d somehow convinced him that it was better to reliably achieve something small, rather than potentially fail completely while trying to accomplish everything in one fell swoop.
That hadn’t been the only revelation she’d given him. The other had been that, at some point during their time together, his uncharacteristic appreciation for her presence had turned into genuine affection, which had shortly thereafter blossomed into love. He hadn’t even realized it at first. It was only when he’d thought she was in danger that he’d realized just how much he needed her, and that realization had pushed him to confess his feelings. Even though she had already admitted that she loved him too, telling her that he’d fallen for her had simultaneously been the most terrifying and most thrilling moment of his life.
Watching her now, as she kept waving goodbye to the train she had mistakenly gotten them onto in the first place, he was struck by how much his feelings for her and his ambitions for the future had become intertwined. But rather than upset him, he felt comforted by that. It seemed natural, and correct, that the most important things in his life had become so intricately bound together.
Finally convinced that the train was completely out of sight, Sonata turned to Lex. “So! What’s the plan?” she asked in a chipper voice.
He was quiet for a moment before answering. “Sonata…I’m glad you’re here with me, and…I love you very much.”
A look of surprise blossomed on Sonata’s face – it was the second time he had ambush-romanced her today! – before it melted into a smile. It wasn’t her usual cheerful grin, but rather a look of heartfelt joy. Closing the small distance between them, she kissed him before responding, “I love you too.”
Stepping back, her usual excitement returned full-force. “Now let’s go slay us a dragon!”
As they prepare to move forward, Lex reflects on where he's been, and what's been gained and lost along the way.
Page generated in 0.118 seconds
Total duration
803 users online
440,931 hits today, 2,020,241 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Don't slay the dragon. Charm it!
Forgive me for stating the obvious, but that is a really long sentence.
They don't call it "handy" for nothing. It may not be wise to call too much attention to Pathfinder's careless use of hammerspace luggage, lest you make it seem less like a story and more like a game.
This is a catch up chapter. The smooch at the end made it worth it, amusingly. To the dragon!
6606189 Having a story that's a sequel to a sequel means that virtually no one is going to come into the story sight-unseen. I wanted to have a chapter that put the major elements of the backstory front-and-center, so that on the off chance that anyone was giving this a shot without having read the previous two works, they'd have some idea of what the basic setup was.
6605771 Apparently the way to do that is to offer it a fake mustache; hey, it works on baby dragons and sea monsters, after all!
6605958
Long, but not technically a run-on!
Heward knew his stuff, even if his name doesn't get invoked too often anymore (darn legal restrictions!).
I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. I'm presuming you're warning against getting too bogged down in explaining game elements rather than plot and character advancement, right?
6607048
That's part of it, but I was mostly worried about the cheapness of time-lord bags. The reason they have things like that in the game is to reduce the amount of game time spent calculating the weight of your gear. It's an intentional sacrifice of realism for the convenience of the players. The logic quickly falls apart if you look at it too closely (why don't they use it everywhere?). It's similar to giving a technical explanation for Pinkie's ability to pull out the party cannon, or allowing a character to literally have bonus lives. Some game aspects don't adapt well to stories.
6607440 Thanks for clarifying your position. I've thought about what you said, and come to the conclusion that I don't agree (a surprise, I know).
There are some specific points I wanted to address:
It's entirely possible that the prevalence of extradimensional storage items was for entirely "gamist" aspects (I've read Playing at the World, and I don't recall that being in there, but it's worth a second look). That said, I don't believe that your second sentence follows the first. The use of magical "bigger on the inside than on the outside" storage devices is not a sacrifice of "realism" per se, where "realism" is a reference to the internal logic and consistency of the game world. That's because these have in in-game element to them that is entirely consistent with how D&D approaches magic. Ways of fiddling with space, whether for storage, movement, or other tricks, are part-and-parcel of the magic that has always been a part of the game. There's nothing "unrealistic" about them.
The idea of why and how magic isn't more ubiquitous when it's already so prevalent and can be used regularly with no particular risks involved is an issue that has long been with the game, but I don't see this as being specific to extradimensional devices. Rather, this gets into questions of how magic works in general, and even then there are some (admittedly prima facie-level) answers for this, usually in terms of costs, time, and personal talent.
There may be issues with the logic of magic (items) and the market economy in D&D, but that's no particular reason to single out bags of holding and their ilk above other convenient, cheap magic items that similarly aren't everywhere in the game world. (Something which is especially true for Equestria, which either is even more bizarrely lacking in magical conveniences, or is already overflowing with them, depending on how you look at it.)
I'm not sure what you mean by the "bonus lives" thing - I think that's a video game reference? - but Pinkie Pie isn't a comparable example of the point you're trying to make here. Pinkie's antics defy explanation because (more for the "sight gags" than for things like her Pinkie Sense) they make it difficult to determine if she's breaking the fourth wall or not.
When we see her walk off the left side of the TV screen while Applejack watches, and then walk back in from the right side of the screen and startle Applejack, who does a double-take, that's the sort of thing that's difficult to explain, because from an in-character point of view that shouldn't have been possible. Someone who was actually there wouldn't have had "tunnel vision" imposed by a TV screen, and would have seen how Pinkie could have been walking away from Applejack even as she also appeared behind her.
Moreover, this sort of thing is tough to explain because it flies in the face of what Pinkie "should" be able to do. Putting aside explanations of "party magic" (e.g. every pony has some magic to help with their special talent), Pinkie acts in complete defiance of what her capabilities and limitations should be as an earth pony; that is, she casually transgresses the internal logic and consistency of the world, including what little we've been told about how magic works in Equestria (leaving aside the whole "it's part of her special talent" idea). Magic items that allow for extradimensional storage don't do that, because they're entirely in compliance with what magic, in D&D, does on a regular basis.
As such, I think that they adapt just fine to stories.
6607579
Both are examples of something that never even pretends to make sense, and is offered without any explanation. Trying to explain it just calls attention to how absurd it is.
I think D&D dropped the ball when it comes to extradimensional spaces. It is possible to make a wizard that fills all of their daily slots with those spells (daily slots is another game mechanic that sounds really dumb in a story). Said wizard will do just fine in combat, but the DM will spend a lot of time figuring out what happens if you stick a portable hole in a bag of holding and all that nonsense. My point is that, while it may be completely legal, that kind of magic use is heavy on the gaming and light on the story-telling.
6607729
In terms of storytelling, the idea of having "multiple lives" in a video game indeed does not make sense. But then again, it's not expected to. Having extra lives is a non-diegetic part of the story, usually to the point that when a character "dies," the "extra life" has them starting that particular section of the game all over again, literally making it a "do-over" in terms of the narrative sequence of events; the instance where the character "died" is literally retconned out of existence.
The absurdity with Pinkie Pie is altogether different, since it has her effectively straddling the fourth wall. Whereas issues with video game 1-ups are explicitly outside of the narrative (at least presumably, since the narrative usually doesn't address them), it's ambiguous as to how Pinkie Pie's antics are perceived by those actually within the context of the story. Clearly something is happening - hence the other characters' reactions - but it remains unknown exactly what that is or how it works.
They're not the same, in other words, save only for being meta-contextual elements that have some level (albeit very different ones) of interaction with the narrative.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a wizard that fills all of their spell slots with extradimensional spaces will do fine in combat," though from your comment about the DM, I suspect you're referring to a wizard deliberately overlapping extradimensional spaces in order to use the catastrophic effects those tend to cause as an offensive tactic.
Leaving aside issues of viability, I'll admit that it can be burdensome to look up the rules about what happens when various extradimensional spaces overlap. That said, this - once again - is not so much an issue of extradimensional spaces as it is with having myriad rules to the point where there needs to be such a high degree of referencing the books. This would be true for any outre magical tactic; for that matter, it's true for plenty of common tactics also, just look at the grapple rules.
I'll also add that "spell slots," while not narratively intuitive, are in fact something that was invented in a story first and then ported over to D&D. There's a reason why that particular spell system is called "Vancian," in that it originates from the works of Jack Vance in his Dying Earth series of books (though, to be fair, several of the details are different). I'd need to double-check that, but I believe that D&D used that particular system since it was one of the comparatively few examples where the limits on how much magic could be used (leaving aside old pulp instances of magic requiring burdensome components and rituals, such as specific places, times, and unique components to cast), and so made for easy adaptation to a game.
To look at the broader point, though, there's a lot of instances of magic - and other parts of the game rules - being heavy on gaming and light on story-telling. That's because a lot of players tend to focus on gamism over narrativism, and if they find an effective combination will tend to spam it over and over so long as it remains useful. That's not conducive to creating a story, certainly, but D&D wasn't created to be a writer's aid; that said, using it in that way doesn't create particularly large problems that need to be overcome in terms of a sequence of events happening with any sort of narrative credibility, at least to my mind.
6607814
It has been happening to me in the game I run. A single pit spell turned a near-invincible lich into such a minor threat that the party could take a break to discuss strategy right in front of him. It was embarrassing. And that's one of the weakest of that kind; some spells let you make whole pocket dimensions with customizable physics to banish your enemies to.
6607896 Those pit spells can be annoying against enemies that don't have much in the way of special movement options, but how does a "near-invincible lich" not have a fly spell (or magic item) on tap for exactly this sort of thing? (And for that matter, if the tactic is so supreme, why wasn't he using it to begin with?)
Heward's Hoofy Haversack!
Ok, but seriously, there has been some progress since the days of the Crystal Empire. Trains, hydroelectric dams, refrigerators, I really doubt those were around in Lex's time. Yeah, progress has been a lot slower than it would be for earth (I'm guessing the Crystal Empire had middle ages technology, and modern Equestria has early 20th century tech, so ~600 years advancement in 1000 years?) Mostly explained by the lack of warfare which is one of the primary accelerators of technology. Magical development, however, is woefully underdeveloped. No magic trains, no magic communications (unless you count Celestia and Sunset's journal, but that shouldn't count if there's only like 1 copy). Part of the reason technological growth is slower compared to humanity is that the smartest unicorns invent new spells instead of new machines (think Twilight Prime versus Equestrian Girls Twilight), and Celestia has this established school of unicorns that should have formed a magical tech cluster centuries ago. The fact that it didn't is an indictment of Celestia's economic stewardship.
6611849
You're making that assertion based on what, exactly? Because the only thing I can think of that would support this is the presumption of parallelism with Earth, and I don't think that idea has any credibility at all...not when Equestria and its ponies are so radically different from Earth in terms of cosmology and biology that any assumption that "it was like this on Earth, so it was probably like that on Equestria" strikes me as hard to believe. It's far more likely that any parallels in technological/cultural advancement are coincidental (or even just cosmetic) in nature.
There's some very, very anecdotal evidence to suggest that pony civilization on Equestria was at medieval levels during the events depicted in the Hearth's Warming Eve play (which seems to be long, possibly very long, before the events with Sombra and the Crystal Empire), but beyond that there's absolutely nothing that makes even the slightest intimation regarding the level of progress, nor the pace at which that progress was achieved at.
Personally, my take on it is that, once the three tribes came together and Equestria was founded, things advanced rapidly until they reached their current state, at which point things simply stopped advancing simply because life was already so idyllic that there became no real impetus to do more. If necessity is the mother of invention, then Equestria is a land with no mother. Outside of catastrophic incidents like Discord's (presumably brief) reign, there hasn't been any major threat to pony civilization that we've seen that would spur innovation or change, and even that only went so far as to prompt the discovery of a new artifact (the Elements of Harmony).
While Sombra's takeover of the Crystal Empire, and Luna's corruption, were both tragic, neither seemed to have any lasting impact greater than the formation of the Wonderbolts...and if one-half of the ruling diarchy betraying her family and attempting a coup can't do more than inspire the creation of a minor air force-turned-stunt team, then it's hard for me to believe that Equestria has much, if any, impetus for change.
Somewhere in Everglow, busy watching over a pair of brats, Pinkie Pie sneezes violently
What’s kind of ironic about this is the fact that I recall one of Celestria’s reasons for not doing the whole Divine magic thing was to prevent this from happening
Yeah, even in the show the most innovation seems to come from Twilight. It does make some since that Celestia wouldn’t really be the most innovative ruler, as A, she wants her ponies to do their own thing which goes against Lex’s beliefs; and B, she’s immortal, so her sense of time is different from her ponies.
9447103 We can only imagine what would happen if Lex and Pinkie ever met...
9447182
Lots of yelling, singing, and confetti and dark magic everywhere
9447105 I'd have to go back and re-read that. The question of how close Celestia and Luna are to becoming fully-fledged gods - as the d20 System defines the term - is one where David Silver and I have very different opinions. He sees them as being on the cusp of that transition, with only their lack of will to do so keeping them from making the leap. I disagree, and see them as being very far from having anywhere near that level of power, nor having an easy route to it. That creates a bit of a "soft" retcon where this fic is concerned.
9447109 Celestia's desire to be a "do-nothing princess" in terms of political policy is one that's only mildly exaggerated. Even Twilight's innovations never really catch-on to the point of changing pony society. They're all just personal things that don't make any differences in the larger scheme of things.
9447185
I sort of see it as Celestia and Luna have all the power of proper Gods, but they can barely use any of it through their Avatars or whatever you’d call their phyical bodies. Kind of like trying to force a ocean of water through a pin hole. Which is why I see them as being able to have a lot of followers, their just poking more holes to draw the ocean through.
9447187 I look at it through the lens of Occam's razor. Within the context of the show itself, there's no real indication of any sort of greater power at work. Almost everything they do, in d20 System terms, can easily be accomplished by a character of 10th level with power to spare.
The only exceptions are their agelessness, and their ability to move the sun and moon. The former, however, simply isn't worth very much in game system terms. Lots of creatures are functionally immune to the ravages of time, and that simply isn't worth much in terms of overall power as the game rules measure things (hence why I use them as a yardstick for this story). The latter is quite clearly an issue of local cosmology, hence why the unicorns used to do that collectively, as per Hearth's Warming Eve (season two, episode eleven)...even if Horse Play (season eight, episode seven) threw a monkey wrench into the works by utilizing elements from that awful "Journal of the Two Sisters" book.