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.
By the time the train arrived, everypony had gathered around the station in anticipation.
The bulk of the crowd had split into two groups, one on either side of the building, watching in nervous excitement as the train slowly pulled into the station. The remaining few were perched on the roof of the place, having flown or climbed up to gain a better vantage point for what was about to happen. Even Aria’s face could be glimpsed peering out from between the closed shutters in the station’s windows.
The one place that wasn’t occupied was the platform out in front, where passengers would normally embark or disembark from the train itself. By Lex’s order, that had remained clear except for himself and Sonata, the two of them standing in the center of the open space. Both were silent as the train came to a stop in front of them, steam hissing as it was released from the engine.
A moment later the door to the engine car swung open, and Lex tensed. Although he knew that it was unlikely that whoever was operating the train was hostile – trains were the major mode of inter-city transit in Equestria, which meant that it was more than likely other ponies on board – there had been too many unpleasant surprises in the last few days for him to take anything for granted. After all, Xiriel had been involved with the trains ceasing to come to Vanhoover in the first place, and the exploding scroll had made it quite clear that just because the devil was dead didn’t mean that its schemes were undone.
To that end, Lex had initially tried to order everypony to stay far away from the train when it arrived. But that had proven to be impossible to do; despite it being a complete assumption on their part, everypony was thoroughly convinced that the train’s arrival could only be a good thing. More than that, Sonata had intervened when he’d tried to press the point, all but begging him not to waste the goodwill he had (to hear her tell it) finally acquired from everypony. Instead, she’d convinced everypony to hang back while the two of them received whoever was on board, an alteration to his order that he’d reluctantly signed off on.
Even so, Lex had taken as many precautions as reasonably could. He’d worked out with Sonata ahead of time that, in the event of a battle breaking out, she’d use her magic to enchant the crowd and get them to retreat in an orderly fashion without leaving anypony behind. Likewise, he’d conferred with Aria so that she’d lash out from her position of concealment inside the station – hopefully catching any potential enemies by surprise – if things went bad. For some reason, that had made Sonata grumble…
As for himself, he’d placed his gemstones in orbit around himself, taking preemptive advantage of their enhancements. Unfortunately, that was the only preparation he’d been able to make. Although he’d managed to renew a few of his defensive spells earlier in the day, he hadn’t cast them; their limited duration meant that using them prior to an immediate outbreak of hostilities would run the risk of them expiring when he needed them most. Likewise, he’d left Severance on his back instead of keeping it readied, aware that a drawn weapon was itself an act of aggression that justified attacking in retaliation. If whoever was on that train wasn’t hostile, there was no need to antagonize them.
His thoughts were drawn back to the present as a unicorn mare with a blue coat and blonde mane and tail exited the engine car. “Alright!” she bellowed. “You guys had better-” Her voice caught in her throat as she looked at Lex, eyebrows rising as she took in his appearance before glancing at Sonata, then at everypony gathered around the station. “…the heck’re you all supposed to be?” Sonata opened her mouth to respond, but the other mare didn’t give her a chance, shaking her head. “No, you know what? I don’t care. You just better be ready to buy all this stuff!” She jerked her head back at the train. “It needs to be sold, and I’m not taking no for an answer!”
Sonata blinked, quite clearly taken off-guard by the belligerent mare. “Uh, what stuff?” Beside her, Lex was silent, having activated his circlet to let him see into the magical spectrum. So far so good; there were no unusual auras on the newcomer.
“I’ll tell you what stuff!” The blue mare’s horn glowed as she took out a shipping manifest, waving it at Sonata aggressively. “Eggs! Milk! Oats! Honey! Corn! Peanuts! And a lot of other things too!” She stomped a hoof on the ground. “We’ve been trying to get this here for over a month, and every time we tried something-” But she didn’t get to finish as everypony suddenly started cheering, stomping their hooves and prancing in place with joy. The sight left her looking around, a dumbfounded expression on her face. “Huh…okay then.”
“That’s good news, right?” came a new voice as an earth stallion timidly peeked out from the engine. But he’d barely gotten the words out when he looked at Lex and Sonata, his jaw dropping even as his eyes widened. “You’re-”
Sonata looked only a little less surprised. “Oh my gosh! You’re the guy we met when we were going to Tall Tale! Ticket Scrub!”
“Uh…it’s, um, Ticket St-”
“Nopony cares,” interrupted Lex irritably, also remembering the annoying train attendant. But there were more important things to focus on, and Lex was already thinking of them as he turned to Sonata. “Have the money I retrieved from Vanhoover brought here.”
“Gotcha!” nodded Sonata, turning toward the crowd to find some volunteers. But she’d barely taken a step before she turned back around. “Wait, what’re you going to do?”
“I’ll inspect the train,” answered Lex. “I want to make sure everything is what it seems like before we start unloading its cargo.”
The words seemed to snap the blue mare out of her surprise at the cheering crowd, and she turned to Lex with a scowl. “Listen buster, I don’t know who you think you are, but-”
“Um, Coal Hopper, can I talk to you for a moment?” interrupted Ticket Stub nervously. Coal Hopper looked ready to argue, but Ticket Stub managed to usher her back toward the engine, where he started talking to her in low tones.
Sonata didn’t miss her opportunity, glancing back at Lex. “Okay, awesome. While they’re doing their thing, I’m gonna go find some ponies to bring all those coins here, and as soon as I do I’ll wait for them right here with you. So don’t go inspecting without me, ‘kay?” She didn’t wait for a reply as she dashed off towards the edge of the platform. “Hey guys! Who wants to do everypony a solid?”
Lex watched her go, fighting the urge to sigh in relief. A train full of food was a welcome change from just how calamitous the last few days had been, particularly since it didn’t seem to be accompanied by any problems or hardships that needed to be resolved. Hopefully that would remain the case for the foreseeable future…
“This isn’t enough.”
Outwardly, Lex showed no reaction to Coal Hopper’s announcement, fighting down another sigh, this time of exasperation. But the unicorn mare seemed to take his lack of a response as some sort of slight, frowning deeper. “It’s not even close to enough,” she reiterated, gesturing to the large pile of bits that had been stacked nearby. “What you have here is enough for maybe one car’s worth of food, but that’s it. All of the other cars still have to be paid for.”
Sonata sent a worried glance at Lex. They’d just toured each and every one of the train cars at his insistence, accompanied by a visibly-nervous Ticket Stub, while Coal Hopper had stayed behind to start counting the bits that several of the camp ponies were bringing onto the platform. The inspection had gone well enough, with Lex staring at the contents of each car for a little while before declaring them to be fine (she’d eventually asked him, via his whisper-spell, what he was doing, with him saying that he was checking them for unusual magic or possible poisons).
The only snag had been when they’d found four ponies tied up in the caboose. That had almost turned into a thing, before Ticket Stub had hastily explained that they were a group of ponies who had tried to stop the train at someplace called Windigo Way, and who had eventually had to be forcibly subdued when they’d refused to listen to reason. The four ponies themselves had spoken up at that point, swearing that they hadn’t been in control of themselves, and that they’d finally snapped out of it sometime yesterday. To Sonata’s mild surprise, Lex had believed them, though she’d started to understand why when they’d said that they’d lost control of themselves after meeting somepony who matched Block Party’s description. Since they didn’t look enchanted to Sonata, and Lex said he didn’t see any lingering magic on them, they’d decided to release the four over Ticket Stub’s uneasy protests.
Everything, in other words, had been going great for a change. Except now Coal Hopper was being a big ol’ Scrooge about things. That was enough to make Sonata uneasy, since she was sure there was no way Lex would let all this food go. “Listen,” she began, hoping to head off a fight before it started. “There’s a lot of really hungry ponies out there-”
“And there’s going to be a lot of really poor ponies at home if we don’t get paid for this,” growled Coal Hopper.
That was enough to make Ticket Stub frown. “That’s a little cold, don’t you think? Miss Dusk was telling me about what’s been going on here while Mister Legis was inspecting the cargo, and it sounds like everypony’s had a really hard time.” Of course, it had been obvious that she was talking up her boyfriend, going on about sea monsters and zombie armies and all sorts of unbelievable things, but just one glance at the crowd of dirty, ragged-looking ponies gathered outside, along with the torn and filthy tent-city behind them, made it clear that something awful had happened here.
“Look, I’m not saying we won’t sell them the stuff,” protested Coal Hopper. “I’m just saying that we can’t walk away empty-hoofed.” She turned back to glare at Lex, since he was obviously the guy in charge here, even if his red horn and wire-wrapped hoof and weird shadow and especially those trick gems flying around him made him look like he was in a weird Nightmare Night getup. “What do you plan on doing about this?”
Lex didn’t hesitate before replying. “Start unloading the food immediately.”
Coal Hopper looked ready to explode. “Are you kidding-”
But Lex wasn’t interested in her temper tantrum, turning to Sonata. “Begin distributing it among the camp ponies. Make sure to only pass out modest portions. This isn’t like what I conjured earlier; this food needs to be carefully rationed. It’s not going to just sustain everypony here; it’s also going to be how we start getting the farmers in the surrounding villages to begin engaging in commerce again.”
“We need to engage in commerce!” howled Coal Hopper indignantly. “You can’t just-”
“Shut. Up.” Lex hissed the words softly, but his eyes changed colors as he did, sending a green-and-purple glare at Coal Hopper, stopping the mare in her tracks. Seeing that she’d quieted down, Lex’s eyes returned to their normal color a moment later. “While the cargo is being unloaded, I’ll retrieve funds sufficient to pay for everything. You’ll have them before the end of the day.”
“Oh… Well, you should have said that before.” Coal Hopper’s response lacked her usual fire, trying to fight down the sudden fear that had gripped her just then. Up until right then, that Lex guy had just looked outlandish. But when he’d rebuked her, her perception of him had changed. All of a sudden his ornamentations and oddities hadn’t looked bizarre anymore; they’d looked like an intimidating panoply of magical might, the sort of thing that only a powerful wizard could wear so casually. His dour voice had suddenly been brimming with strength, as though just the sound of it could flatten her where she stood. And his eyes…
Coal Hopper knew that she was a tough mare. She’d grown up with four older brothers who had seen to that. But the way Lex’s eyes had started to glow when he’d glared at her had been more than enough to make it plain that she did not want to try his patience. As such, it was only after he’d turned away from her that she managed to ask through suddenly-dry lips, “Where are you going to get the money?”
Lex was already leaving the platform, heading westward and not bothering to glance back as he said a single word in reply.
“Vanhoover.”
The train arrives at last!
Everything seems to be in order for once, as Lex goes to procure the funds necessary to purchase the food. Will his next trip into Vanhoover go more smoothly than the previous ones?
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ok i will be the first to admit i had totally forgot about the train working it's way to Vanhoover
Of course it won't. In fact, now that the ghouls are gone, I'm willing to bet odds that he's going to run into the remains of Piggy's or the other former ruling families who'll try to pull some self entitled rich people crap on him.
Interesting. Shouldn't be that hard for Lex to retrieve the money, I can't imagine there are many monsters still inside Vanhoover with the ghouls cleared out. He just needs to sweep through the other banks.
I do wonder what hands-off Equestria would say if Lex had just taken the rest of the food without compensation though. The train is inside Vanhoover city limits (I think) so he's got jurisdiction, but interstate commerce is often a protected area by governments. Of course, seizing food during a crisis is pretty understandable, but getting Lex to pay up after the fact is probably something the train operators would take directly to the Princesses.
Wonderbolts sure have a lot of followers. Personally I blame Second Lifes code restricted pallette selector.
They got a lot of food coming in, but the farms have got a lot of food they want to get out? Or do they still use a greater ppart self sustainable local model with excess and luxuries trading?
Is Lex going to take another day now they have food to rest up fully and work up his extra level gains? that way he gets a clean run, to whatever extent, at the City?
Coal Hopper had no idea how right she was about Lex at the end...if he was at full strength though Sonata could probably do something somewhat close if Coal had been too aggressive with Lex.
Still I am actually relieved by who were on the train since mentioning Severance on Lex's back rang some alarm bells for me. I suppose this gives Lex, the opportunity to assess if Vanhoover is safe or not though I wonder how many ponies(aside from Fencer, potentially) would volunteer to join Lex given the loss from the last excursion. I'm sort of hoping that Ticket would join them as well to help out the poor ponies who had suffered so much and to see for himself how bad the situation is since an outside witness would be useful in Lex's defense if the princesses jumps to conclusions.
choo choo, pay up! It's always good to have visitors. This should, in theory, be an easy task. But how often do things go as planned?
9100270 A lot of people seemed to. Don't worry though, Celestia and/or Luna are coming...
9100290 Well, you have to figure that Lex's luck needs to change at some point, right?
...right?
9100372 It's hard to say what would have happened if Lex had simply seized the money without offering any sort of compensation. We know the princesses do get involved with domestic issues other than some attack on the nation: Princess Celestia went to Fillydelphia to stop an infestation there, for instance (Swarm of the Century). Given that this was a rather large shipment of food that represented a great deal of money, it's not impossible that they would have gotten involved.
Fortunately, Lex didn't push things in that regard; he's quite knowledgeable with regard to economic theory (to put it lightly) and so wanted to avoid any sort of negative market impact from taking the food without paying for it.
9100547 Farming communities tend to produce a surplus of food, which is typically sold/bartered for other goods and services, with cities being a major point of sale for what farmers grow (since cities, having high population density, can't otherwise feed themselves). The problem is that Vanhoover's collapse prevented it from offering any such goods and services (and, in fact, became a danger zone), which is what Lex is trying to reverse. By alleviating the problem of feeding everypony, Vanhoover's population can start focusing on actually producing things again, which will attract farmers looking to sell their goods and buy other things, restarting the economy. (Some of what they buy will be foodstuffs that can't be grown locally; there are no apple trees in the region, for instance.)
9100565 Lex has moved far beyond your average pony in terms of personal power, and although he's not gotten any better at being personable he's able to cut quite the intimidating figure when he wants to. Fortunately, Sonata has gotten better at figuring out how to mitigate his worst impulses and trying to help him improve his public image...and if the last few chapters are anything to go by, it's working.
I should note that, from the train's vantage point at the station, the field of dead ghouls can't be clearly seen, but it wouldn't be difficult to spot if you got just a little bit closer...
9101044 For Lex? Not very often. But then again, no one has such terrible luck forever; there are only so many monsters that can converge on a disaster area.
Presumably.
9102166
We'll just send a lone troll to keep him on his hooves.
That's fair. You have to admit, it's fairly tough to get and keep lots of converts when your stated end goal is "destroy everything."
And the Demiplane of Antimatter!
I really loved these paragraphs. I agree that the Wheel was by far the best example of a cosmology, because, as you pointed out, every major plane seemed to double as a physical equation, matter and energy etc. That said, it sounds like some demiplanes got pushed into service here, and perhaps the takeway is that in the Golarion cosmos the Akashic record should have been a full-fledged plane, given how inconsistent they are about demiplanes.
(Last night I was playing in adventure where we went to a demiplane of Hell, but not actually Hell. I promptly labelled it the demiplane of Heck.)
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this point.
Sure, only the basic non-controversial stuff, like Zecora and Spike bonding over being introverts, or Starswirl and the Sirens dueling in a beatboxing competition.
I'm imagining an adult Lex designing an efficient, centralized education system, and that night the Tulpa appears as a teenage Lex saying "what happened to you man, you sold out! You used to be cool."
Put me down as on the "she went mad" side. One minute she's not willing to kill a dog, then she gets the magic and like a minute later tries to murder a bunch of people with a fireball.
I generally agree on the sirens, though if say Equestrian magic just makes you insanely aggressive, it's hard to imagine how it could really change their behavior from how they were acting anyway.
That's fair.
I think we're in agreement on this then. A Pedestrian native can handle a little bit of magic ok, but past a certain threshold they blow up. Given the correlation between physical transformation and complete insanity, at this point I feel comfortable operating on the assumption that anything anyone does when they have not transformed they are basically still in their right mind, though the reverse of this, that anyone who has transformed is no longer mentally in control, is obviously not always true.
I will point out though, that the only beings we've seen in EQG world handle a large amount of magic and not go mad are one of Equestria's most gifted unicorns, trained by Celestia in handling magic, and the Sirens, who have evolved to suck up huge amounts of magic. If pony Rarity or Cheerilee had stumbled through the portal and gotten that much magic, would they also have gone nuts? Maybe not, maybe yes.
Fair point. I'll assume that the design of the helmets then is required to hold their enchantment.
That's true, Lex is smart enough to want the next train to come as well.
9102397
Was that ever actually in a game book? I couldn't seem to find a straight answer anywhere.
In meta-contextual terms (at least as I see it), demiplanes serve a function of allowing you to have a specialized planar region without having to worry about the extant cosmology. Since they're too small (for lack of a better term) to affect the overall planar structure, they give you design space in which to create whatever plane you might need for a given narrative. But from an in-universe perspective - at least insofar as the classic Great Wheel went - demiplanes (being found within the Deep Ethereal) were essentially possibilities that had been (at least partially) actualized.
I'll reiterate again that the idea of the Deep Ethereal being the plane where matter was essentially in a state of possibility wasn't one that was explicitly spelled out, but was there if you read between the lines. Not just about demiplanes, things like ether gaps represented "failed possibilities," which is why they were said to be large ones when Krynn entered the Fifth Age (as mentioned in The Planewalker's Handbook), and why the illithids' ultimate plan was to invert an ether gap that represented a cosmos where their empire never fell.
Even then, the AD&D Great Wheel cosmology had more to it, if you knew where to look. For example, the dividing line between the Border Ethereal and the Deep Ethereal was a "curtain" of colors that was actually the Region of Dreams, where your mind went while you were asleep. But you'd only know that if you read A Guide to the Ethereal Plane or, more in-depth, The Nightmare Lands. This latter product categorized that reality itself had four "levels," with ordinary dreams being reality level 1, lucid/waking/stable dreams being reality level 2, standard existence being reality level 3, and "hyper-reality" at reality level 4. This fourth level was only seen in once in the game, in the adventure Doors to the Unknown, and was the home of the mercurials.
Plus, of course, the "Temporal Prime" from Chronomancer, which essentially acted as an overlay for each plane of existence. There was also the Spirit Realm, from Shaman, which had an interesting twist to it, that being that it didn't exist at all, being entirely imaginary, and the spirits that were "from" there were the result of collective beliefs about them.
All of which is to illustrate, trying to portray something that acts as the record of all existence as being tucked away in a demiplane strikes me as not only inappropriate for it, but a failure of imagination. Personally, I much prefer the version given in The Immortal's Handbook sourcebooks, which posits numerous higher dimensions (and pantheistic incarnations for them), wherein the Akashic Records exist as the blueprint for a given reality unto itself (essentially being the in-character representation of your RPG books!).
I don't agree to that.
I suppose there's room for suggesting that Sunset Shimmer and the Sirens just happened to be exceptional in that regard, though I'd like to point out that A) the Equestria Girls series has done a very bad job of making Sunset Shimmer look like she was a magical prodigy on the level of Twilight, to have been Princess Celestia's student prior to fleeing to the human world, and B) the Sirens didn't absorb magic (that was Tirek's thing), but rather absorbed negative energy to power their own magic, though for some reason they apparently needed the negative energy from people with Equestrian magic in order to reach the full heights of their power.
What's interesting to consider is that the Equestria Girls series has been fairly consistent in what it's shown about magic overload (i.e. no Equestrian natives have suffered from it in that series, only native humans, and only if they use too much...and it can be any magic, not just "dark magic," that drives someone mad). By contrast, MLP:FiM tends to be all over the place; Twilight explicitly calls what drove Rarity mad in Inspiration Manifestation "dark magic," but that term is never used for Trixie's having fallen victim to the Alicorn Amulet in Magic Duel, and Celestia and Twilight use dark magic themselves in The Crystal Empire - Parts 1 and 2 with no ill effects!
But that still doesn't address the issue of how they were made. My guess would be the show (were it ever moved to try and answer that question) would just wave the issue away, probably saying that King Sombra just conjured them up out of thin air, enchantments and all, but that wouldn't be an answer I'd find satisfying.
She will sell it, but only for it's price, after saying it all has to go. Huh.
9221599 It's not a contradiction. Rather, she's invoking the Anna Karenina principle: all of those things need to happen in order for this venture to be a success.