With the bugbear finally vanquished, Bon-Bon is ready to put the past behind her and never speak about Canterlot's anti-monster agency ever again. However, the same cannot be said for her former colleague, Special Agent Fleur de Lis. After reading a story in the paper about mysterious disappearances taking place in the snowy mountains of Coltlat, she starts spreading the news to the other former agents. She firmly believes that this anomaly is connected to the agency's last mission before it was disbanded, and she wants to investigate in order to finish what they started.
After some unintentional emotional coercion, Bon-Bon agrees to help Fleur. This prompts Lyra to tag along for the ride, as she is reluctant to leave Bon-Bon's side. Minuette also joins in both out of obligation to her friends and to the agency, and she manages to convince a befuddled Moondancer to lend a helping hoof as well. With the motley crew suiting up and preparing for a dangerous excursion, it's starting to feel like old times.
Well, maybe it feels too much like old times. For once Bon-Bon starts treading over familiar ground, she begins to experience flashbacks from that last disaster of a mission. A mission involving ancient demons, an alleged rogue agent, and an inter-species conflict which brought the entire agency to its knees...
Rated Teen for disturbing imagery, intense action, sensitive subject matter, some strong language, and minor sensuality.
Cover art provided by the amazingly talented enti0.
Considering you're also using the other recent background pony characterization-building episode for this story, I'd say it has that to offer.
Lyra and Bon-Bon are best friends. Beeeeest frieeeeends. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEST FRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENDS.
And what's Colgate's doctorate in?
I like White Lie. Can't he shape shift the scar away?
I know of this book and those demons. Why is it the 'Lesser' Key, though? Isn't there a Greater one?
That's a pretty cool spell.
Wait…Night Glider? She used to be a spy?
Minuette is AWESOME. Why wasn't she in the field more?
The arch drone is a moron. He should watch his back...
6368571 Well, in real life, the original book the demons appeared in was called "The Lesser Key of Solomon." I didn't feel like using a Solomon pony pun, so I just went with the Lesser Key.
Also, I don't think there was ever a "Greater Key." At least, I've never heard of it.
6368584 This is just my interpretation of what Night Glider did before getting wrapped up in Starlight Glimmer's cult. Funny thing is that in one of the original drafts of this story, she had a much bigger role, but I couldn't quite make it work. I may expand on this headcanon in a later story, though.
6368616 Well, now we know why she fled to Starlight...
6368603 Yes, I was aware of the Solomonic book. Just wondered why there wasn't a Greater Key.
I know that reference…
God I hate Fleur. Is she like this to Changelings only or to other species?
6398202 It's very clearly indicated throughout this story that Fleur's prejudice is directed solely at changelings due to how often she's had to contend with them in the past. And considering the sinister tactics changelings usually employ, both in the show and the comics, you can't really blame her for thinking this way. She certainly isn't right to think this way, and it doesn't really excuse her actions, either. But the key thing here is that her bigotry doesn't exist in a vacuum.
I feel like I should hug White Lie for what happened.
Anybody with me on that?
Maybe some sort of randomly furry hecatonchieres?
6417248 That actually would make a lot of sense, seeing as many of the Goetia demons take on a human form. Maybe if Snatcher was at full power, it would look something like the idea you proposed. But again, if I went that route, you'd have to slog through a wall of text just to get a solid description of the creature. I don't know many people who'd want to read that.
Error noticed quickly-
6435239 Whoops! Thanks for catching that, mate.
I don't know, even though the Elements have returned, it's always better have a fail-safe, which is the HUB.
Great story. Really done well and actually kept me looking for more. Well done.
Though was it on purpose you called it the HUB in memory of, well the HUB?
6440835 Yep, that was totally intentional. I honestly can't believe no one pointed it out until now.
6441135 Perhaps people thought it was already noticed and didn't feel like saying anything.
This plot was pretty flimsy.
- The mysterious disappearances that prompted the new Coltlat mission never come up again. We never learn why they happened, and no one expresses any concern for possible survivors.
- White Lie had no real incentive to play along with Nihilmodo when the other agents were captured.
- Running off to Tartarus was a horrible move. Nothing he could have done at Tartarus would have cleared his name, especially since he left the other agents to fend for themselves.
- Snatcher releases two of the demons in the flashback. There is no indication that they are returned to the book, and they express a strong aversion to returning. Yet, years later, Snatcher has not managed to release any more, and no one seems to remember that any were released, let alone worry about more that could have been released in the meantime.
- White Lie's letter is extremely unconvincing and offers no new evidence regarding his loyalties. Everyone immediately believes it anyway, including Fleur (who hates changelings) and Bon Bon (who said in the flashback that she would need proof to trust him).
It's also kind of disappointing that the Arse Guys are hyped up as super-convincing, but the few times we get to hear them talk, their persuasion isn't very good and doesn't persuade anyone. Also, despite Bon Bon's flashbacks taking substantial amounts of out-of-flashback time, and despite the story repeatedly drawing attention to the flashbacks, they never amounted to anything. It was never an issue that Bon Bon kept spacing out, and it didn't turn out to have any hidden significance.
6616297 Alrighty then. Let's see if I can address your points.
1. The mysterious disappearances are the changelings Snatcher managed to convince to be part of his army.
2. White Lie was trying to bide its time so the Nihilmodo wouldn't get suspicious.
3. You're right about this one; that was a bad move on White Lie's part. But you can't say for sure that it was thinking straight at the time.
4. The Ars Goetia have taken refuge inside Snatcher's mind. It could summon them again if it wanted to; it just never had a reason to.
5. I might be inclined to rework this part. How would you make White Lie's letter more convincing?
6. It's heavily implied that the Ars Goetia are incredibly pretentious. They're only persuasive if you don't think about their arguments too much, which is why Moondancer managed to save White Lie.
7. The flashbacks themselves were supposed to be the point. Bon-Bon was trying to balance her life of peace and her life as an agent, and the stress was too much for her. She was experiencing shell shock, and she refused to let anyone help her until the very end.
I hope I managed to answer your questions, and I thank you for the candid review.
6616696
1. The characters completely forget the issue, though. Celestia expresses no concern for her missing subjects. No one asks Snatcher about the disappearances. The mission plan has nothing in it about learning about the disappearances. If, say, the mission team found a starving, injured hostage they had to lug with them, I get the impression they would've been blindsided. For all they know, there could still be a closet full of injured, starving hostages in the building when they leave.
2. It's not clear what suspicion White Lie is trying to avoid. Nihilmodo already knows White Lie isn't on his side. Or was the idea that White Lie had to choose between either dying, or burning his bridges with HUB and returning to the hive in disgrace? I guess that might've worked.
4. Supposedly, Snatcher has been trying to "unleash their full power" for years. At least, that's what the changeling from Unforgotten Grudges says, and Snatcher's behavior supports the claim, particularly the part in Identity Crisis where it tries to use Lyra and Bon-Bon's love to "wield the full might of the Ars Goetia". It sure seemed like the idea was to summon all of them, but maybe unleashing their full power could be done from inside Snatcher's head. In any case, the protagonists just assume that they got all the Ars Goetia in the final battle. They don't consider that some of them might have been out and about. They don't even check the book to count the demons, since they're so worried about getting convinced into the Ars Goetia's service. In theory, they could have counted how many demons they hit with resealing spells, but that would've been quite difficult. There were 72 demons, it was a hectic battle, and multiple agents were firing reseals.
5. The letter would need to have something in it that wouldn't be there if the letter was falsified. Perhaps some tool of great use in combat against changelings, or physical evidence that White Lie had been working against Chrysalis in the intervening years, or immediately verifiable information of some sort that lets the mission team solve a problem they were having. If you want it to get the immediate, total reversal of opinion it did in the story, it'd probably have to be really strong from both an emotional and a logical perspective.
So many of your stories are the kind of story I want to read, but then when they get into the details, I just can't buy them.
6619742 I did a bit of tweaking to the letter scene as well as White Lie's final argument with Fleur to give things more weight. However, there are some implications that you missed with your other critiques:
1. The changeling army Snatcher managed to amass are not Celestia's missing subjects. They're Chrysalis's missing subjects. That makes it the hive's problem, not Celestia's.
4. Snatcher was biding its time so that it could free all of the Ars Goetia at once. It only summoned Prince Stolas and Marquis Andras temporarily to appease/punish Nihilmodo. In order to summon them all at once, it needed a lot of energy, hence its plan to use Lyra and Bon-Bon's love. But it couldn't do that because White Lie syphoned some of it away.
6620325
1. Celestia doesn't know that. No one bothers to learn that! For the disappearances of those changelings to make it into the pony news, they must have had disguised identities that mysteriously disappeared. Those apparent pony disappearances would be of serious concern to the good guys, but no one thinks about them. They don't ask any questions about the disappearances when they interrogate their captive in Unforgotten Grudges. They keep trying to find the Key, but they never think about finding missing ponies. They might be able to make an educated guess that the missing ponies in the paper are the changelings that the mountain rescue patrols started noticing, but they don't have enough information to exclude other possibilities, such as the possibility that the changelings showed up from elsewhere and abducted the missing ponies. Even if they made that guess, they never communicate about the issue to make sure they're all on the same page, and they never try to gain information to confirm their guess.
4. Again, the characters don't know that. They just act as if they know it. As far as the characters can tell, Stolas and Andras could have been permanently released in No True Changeling. As far as the characters can tell, they might have been elsewhere during the final fight, and they might still be hiding out somewhere.
I'm focusing on how the characters don't know these things, but it's also an issue that the story never gives any of this information to the readers. Even if, for example, some of these issues were resolved off-screen, the characters still look like they don't care, and the off-screen resolution doesn't resolve things for the readers.
6622553 You're glossing over some major bits of dialogue.
1. Remember in the chapter Awkward Reunions, when Minuette asked why Fleur was making such a big deal about the news story about Coltlat? Rumors of that mountain being haunted have been going on for generations; it's not like Snatcher was the cause of such rumors taking place. But on the off-chance that Snatcher was abducting ponies, Stalliongrad does have a rescue service, as detailed in The Hunters' Last Hurrah. It's their job to find those ponies, not the HUB. They're just there to retrieve the Lesser Key and stop Snatcher's evil plans.
4. In No True Changeling, Marquis Andras states that Snatcher is reconvening the council. At the time, no one knew what that meant, but when they discovered that Snatcher was storing the Ars Goetia in his brain, they can easily infer that that's where they went.
6623712
I saw those dialogue sections, but I don't think they address my concerns.
1. The chapter doesn't give the impression that the newpaper article is just about rumors. The chapter gives the impression that there have been specific, recent disappearances adding new fuel to the rumors, and that Fleur thinks the disappearances are actually being caused by changelings. I could buy them deciding that investigating the disappearances is secondary to investigating the Ars Goetia - in particular, if they had discovered the disappearances and the Ars Goetia were unconnected, I would expect them to leave the disappearances to mountain rescue - but the way the story reads, the disappearances seem to be directly connected to the primary mission objective. It looks like the changelings have some sinister purpose for causing the disappearances, and figuring out the disappearances seems like an important step towards figuring out the Ars Goetia's plans. Also, if the changelings are holding the missing ponies, that's not a job for mountain rescue.
The disappearances seem like a really important, mission-relevant issue that just disappears. If the intent is for them not to be an issue, it'd be better for the chapter to introduce the changeling issue in a way that doesn't involve unresolved pony disappearances. For example, the newspaper article could be about mountaineers coming back with wild tales that bear the signs of changeling involvement, or there could be signs of mysterious activity in the changelings' library.
4. They can make that inference, but not with any confidence. The mission team's observations are the following:
- Snatcher's minions claim the Ars Goetia are in Snatcher's head.
-- His minions may not be fully informed or fully honest.
- Snatcher talks to the Ars Goetia without the Ars Goetia being visible.
-- This suggests some of them are in his head, but there's no visible difference between Snatcher talking to 72 demons in his head and Snatcher talking to 60 demons in his head. Also, the mission team saw some form of long-distance communication between Snatcher and the Ars Goetia in No True Changeling, so they have reason to suspect the Ars Goetia don't need to be in Snatcher's head to talk with him.
- When Snatcher hulks out in Identity Crisis, the Ars Goetia do not seem to fly into him from somewhere else.
-- Similarly to the previous point, it's hard to tell the difference between Snatcher being empowered by 72 demons inside of him and Snatcher being empowered by 60 demons inside of him. Prior to the point when the binding spells hit Snatcher and work, it's also hard to tell the difference between Snatcher being empowered by demons inside of him and Snatcher being empowered by demons somewhere else.
The observations are consistent with the hypothesis that all the Ars Goetia are in Snatcher's head, but the observations are also consistent with the idea that only some of them are in Snatcher's head. The team also cannot rule out the possibility that even if the Ars Goetia were all in Snatcher for the final battle, previously-unbound demons could have teleported out or fled in the confusion when it was clear they were going to lose. Given the apparent ease with which Snatcher summoned the Ars Goetia before, the team should be more worried about the possibility that the Ars Goetia are not as bound as they appear.
Man, these posts are taking a long time to write, and I still feel like I'm not presenting things as clearly or analyzing things as thoroughly as I could. I need to cut things off at some point, though, because I think I'm spending more hours on these posts than it took me to read the story.
6368560 I'm guessing Dentistry?
NEVER question Pinkie Pie!!
> Chanticleer Hegemony
Someone a fan of Dr Ashens? :P
6997821 I was honestly waiting for someone to get that.
6997904
I'm looking forward to the next story, featuring the evil Dr. Antonio Stella Bottom Tile.
7140174 Tempting, but I already used that joke in another one of my stories.
7140228
Orly? I must have missed that one.
EDIT: Found it. Google is my best friend.
"Not that anypony really cared, mind you." <-- Thank you for that. :)
The "bitch" I could have lived without, but I'm hooked for the story. ^^