• Member Since 20th May, 2021
  • offline last seen 13 hours ago

Captain Neckbeard


Creating prose through the power of majestic facial hair (Hey/Dude)

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Tasked by the mysterious alicorn tribe, a young Celestia and Luna must leave the safety of their home and venture into the world beyond to uncover their kin's sacred artifact, the Teardrops of Creation. Blinded by urgency and tradition, it is only during the mission that they realize what they're searching for is something far more important than a mere artifact.

Throughout their journey, the estranged Sisters must face hardship from within and without, as they also try to discover the source of a strange sort of magic plaguing Equestria. Unaware that their adventure plays right into a gambit between gods and demigods, vying to shape the future of the world.


The story is complete, and will update every week.

Here's a big shoutout to the Fimfiction thread of /mlp/, which unwittingly or not, but helped create this story.

Also a big thanks to Reviewfilly and The Psychopath for additional help.

(Comments and feedback are always welcome!)

Chapters (19)
Comments ( 20 )

11830185
There is no original greentext. If you're thinking about /mlp/, their contributions were more in an idea-bouncing capacity.

Already love it and it's only the intro!!! You get a like :heart:

11842921
Thanks! I can assure you, you're in for a ride.

Cuuuuute!!! Can’t wait for more!!! :heart:

Discooooord I'm howling at the moon!!!

Now we wait for next chapter...

>A Fellow of Infinite Jest
DIVEGRASS.

11856815
I've put my best scholars on deciphering this comment. I'll report back when they find something.

Welp, I’ve got some chapters to catch up on heheh. Great so far!!!

I'd say this is so far the best chapter in the story yet. Luna finally trusting Celestia and herself and pushing off her indoctrination is a sweet victory. And I really like that this is the moment they got their marks. It's very fimmy. Good job, dude.

11881792
Thank you, I'm glad you liked it. :twilightsmile:
With that said, this was probably the hardest chapter to write.

Oh, Clover and Starswirl, this should be interesting.

"How?" Discord repeated in mockery "Well, how I couldn't? When it was she who came to me in Tartarus, and set me free!"

Feels like Discord is lying since Arcana only cares about the Teardrops, and having a chaos god running around just makes it harder for the sisters to retrieve them.

And, from Chapter I, it seems like Arcana considers him an obstacle, and is only confident because she think Celestia and Luna can overcome him:

"He won't take them seriously enough to put up any fight. The Sisters will just snatch the artifact from under his nose, and bring it to us."

Though maybe it actually all ties into some master plan?

11891082
Your continued readership is appreciated

Though maybe it actually all ties into some master plan?

Oh, you might never know with these alicorns. Or with a chaos god...
All I'll say is that everything will clear up in the end.

Mad Starswirl is pretty hilarious, but I gotta say, I find the characters' reasoning here dubious. Clover seems awfully certain there is nothing he could tell that she for some reason doesn't know and C&L are awfully quick to accept the idea that leaving the apparently greatest mage in Equestria a babbling idiot, instead of taking him with them for support and knowledge.

Also, I wouldn't have originally mentioned this, but this is the second time you call Starswirl a "her". It happened in the last chapter too.

11895634
Initially, the idea here was that Starswirl would take over from Clover, but I realized I just liked writing Clover more, so she stayed at the Sisters' side. Also, from a narrative standpoint, having a third really powerful magic user was unnecessary, in my opinion. Henceforth, Starswirl stayed as some comic relief, because I already wrote those scenes when I realized these things.
And yes, they are a bit too quick roll with "let's find the Artifact, then whatever happens", but at this point, I thought the wordcount was building up rather fiercely (originally, the whole story was meant to be around 40k), so I just wanted the plot to move forward. Although the next chapter might give you second thoughts about that...

>her
Oh yeah, thanks for catching those. Damn gender pronouns are rather hard for me to get right. Firstly, it's MLP fanfiction, so I'm used to mostly writing about female characters, so "her" is the default. Secondly, my language has no gendered pronouns, so this makes it harder to pay attention to the distinction of "his" and "her" and such.

11896300

I just liked writing Clover more

Understandable, she has good energy.

Henceforth, Starswirl stayed as some comic relief

I would've personally had him fixed, but then him saying some shit like he'll stay back and try to figure out a plan B to mass heal Canterlot or research the artifacts more. It's not really a big thing either way, just felt like a much more noticeable bump compared to everything else in the story.

Although the next chapter might give you second thoughts about that...

I'll see!

Secondly, my language has no gendered pronouns

I'm starting to think your "Hungarian friend" might actually be just you :ajsmug:

The action is a welcome change of pace, though after the two great monsters, it felt more like a de-escalation than a raise of stakes. Unless, of course, the point was to show just how bloody dangerous and indiscriminate C&L are in which case, it worked pretty well.

I was originally going to make a negative note about Discord, saying I really can't put my finger on him and that he seems to behave differently in each chapter he appears, but then I realized this is probably more than intentional and really fits him after all. I like his smugness and find it interesting that apparently he's not entirely in the loop either about what's going on.

Celestia's "future memory" of the cave was probably the moment I liked the most about the chapter. It's a great way to utilize information the reader knows, but the characters don't. I would've probably spelled it out less, so that the realization can hit that much harder, but it still works very well.

All in all, I have some reservations about the pacing, but I'm very interested to see how you'll wrap up this story. There's a lot of loose ends that need to be handled.

Unless, of course, the point was to show just how bloody dangerous and indiscriminate C&L are

Yes, that was exactly the point. This fight wasn't supposed to have big stakes. I just wanted to have a fun chapter before the big things happen. Fun to me, at least

is probably more than intentional

Your take is again correct, I aimed to write him throughout the fic as this sort of unhinged schizo, who isn't just some jokester who doesn't know better, but a Chaos God. He knows he's bad, but doesn't care, and his own godly nature makes him sort of a "mess", who is outright threatening one moment, but then just reverts back to having fun the next.

I would've probably spelled it out less

It would've been better that way, yes, but I'm always unsure about how much my readers would "get" what I write

but I'm very interested to see how you'll wrap up this story.

Hopefully you won't feel it's been a waste of time upon reading the final words.

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