I Brought You My Talons, You Brought Me Your Love Outline

Baron RegidarYesterday at 9:00 PM
Aight i think I’m gonna throw a story synopsis in here to get some thoughts
This is the first story of a series I’ve been wanting to write for a second so hopefully this doesn’t have too much stuff that can’t
Stand on its own
This series is an AU
as all good ones are
It’s set roughly a thousand years before the show start, a bit before Luna is banished
Baron RegidarYesterday at 9:19 PM
Celestia and Luna are still at the everfree palace, and the main bulk of equestria’s population lives in the everfree
Which, at the time, is more or less a peaceful verdant forest
The rest of equestria is not so lucky
Baron RegidarYesterday at 9:29 PM
Changelings occupy most of the rest of equestria
And they’re trying to move in on the everfree
Discord is also here
He’s the final deaconequus, the others having been wiped out by changelings (they weren’t super populous to begin with)
Alicorns have also been generally on their way out, scores of them lost from changelings and declining birth rates from a myriad of other factors put Celestia and Luna, as well as their parents and aunts, as the only remaining alicorns they’re aware of
The family rules over the everfree
Celestia is betrothed to an aristocratic unicorn, and she’s super not into this for a number of reasons
He’s kind of a slimy blueblood type, and additionally
She’s in love with Discord
Who, at this time, is a lot less
Dickish
He doesn’t even look like his show form, really
I was going to have it where draconequui are more symmetrical in their limbs and horns and features
With males having the lizard haunches and females goat ones, males with the lion arms and females with the bird talons
And so on for the other features
Discord and Celestia often have to meet in secret, since there’s all this fuss around her marriage
An aspect of the changelings I was going to introduce was a hemovore quality
And a pathogen that they carry in their saliva that mutates the afflicted into changelings
It would be magic based, related to their shapeshifting ability
But also pathogenic is its spread
So everyone is fucking on edge constantly
And this suits the changelings just fine
Emotions run high, easy food, easy pickings
Discord was in the last draconequus city when the changelings razed it
And he did not get out without sustaining some pretty heavy damage
Both physically and mentally
So the early part of the story is focusing on Celestia and discord sneaking out to be together
And discord being a drunk to cope
Alcoholism is one of life’s longest standing traditions after all
During this all, they still have to fight off changeling incursions
Discord is a militia leader
And Celestia and Luna often fight alongside him
Luna is super not cool with Celestia not adhering to the marriage properly but bites her tongue
This is a source of conflict in the early story though
Luna constantly chastising Celestia and battling the urge to tell their parents or the fiancé
Luna and Celestia get in a pretty big argument and aren’t speaking to one another after a point
Discord doesn’t really care, or at least tells himself that and drinks more
After a particularly bad night of raids, however
Luna gets bitten
And as she begins to turn (it’s a gradual, slow, and painful metamorphosis where the afflicted slowly starts growing chitinous plates and other changeling features, including the eyes)
She flees and disappears out of the edge of the everfree
Celestia is really shaken by this
She wants to go after her but several things stop her, at least in the moment
1. Her wedding is in two days
2. No one except her and discord know what’s happened to Luna
3. She’s still angry at Luna, but mostly at herself because she not only failed to prevent this from happening
She hadn’t really spoken to her since their fight
Celestia buckles down and weathers the inquisition from her family
She plays dumb and encourages discord to do the same
The wedding goes on as planned, but then sneaky lings have infiltrated the wedding
Celestia and discord notice this because Luna shows back up and appears to not know about what happened when she got bit
The changelings don’t seem aware Luna has been bitten yet
So discord and Celestia try to figure out how to deal with this as the wedding goes on
Can’t
And the changeling infiltrators spring their attack as planned
Celestia and discord were identifying as many impostors as they could so they could deal with them ASAP once they revealed themselves
But there is a lot
And the casualties are high
Unfortunately for Celestia her new hubby was not one of these casualties
Appletank [Ethan]Yesterday at 10:15 PM
stab "Oh no, the horror, sob sob"
Baron RegidarYesterday at 10:15 PM
Lol
I’ve been debating
Whether I should have Celestia kill him
Or use this as an opportunity to get rid of him
Or whether I should save him for later
Regardless, Celestia then sets off to look with her sister with discord
Using the premise of the Luna changeling killed st the wedding as evidence she’s been “kidnapped”
Additionally, the whole time there’s been talk about a way to deal with the changelings a bit more permanently
Several powerful artifacts still exist in the ruined draconequus city
Crystalline structures that have incredible power
According to discord, the draconequui were experimenting with ones that drew on natural reserves of energy and focused them on a a final stone that allegedly had the ability to alter reality
These precursor stones channeled energy from solar, lunar, arcane, and emotional sources
So Celestia and discord’s mission is two fold
Find these artifacts, and find Luna
Figments is Pretty CoolYesterday at 10:28 PM
Sounds pretty epic
Baron RegidarYesterday at 10:29 PM
Thanks fam
Only about halfway through
Celestia and Discord being along a small and skilled group of individuals from around the everfree
One of whom is a unicorn mare named Andromeda Sparkle
Or actually, maybe Twilight Andromeda
Yes that’s far better
Anyway
They set off past the pale of the everfree and into changeling territory
As they progress towards the ruins of the draconequus city
They’re beset upon by just
So many fuckin changelings
Hordes of them
Casualties are high
Morale is low
To the point where they’re down to just Discord, Celestia, and Andromeda when a message is sent to them
Thinking through some magical means to get around knowing where they are
It’s a distress call from the everfree capital
They haul ass back but by the time they get there it’s too late
Changelings have flooded the everfree and the palace is burning
Ponies scatter into small villages and enclaves around the forest
Celestia is devastated
Her whole family was wiped out in the palace attack
She can confirm most of their deaths by their bodies, and the missing ones don’t hold much hope in them
Only Luna could have survived this, and she doesn’t even know if she’s alive or not fully transformed into a changeling
Discord and Andromeda set to work
Discord in comforting Celestia and Andromeda in researching a different way to get to the draconequui ruins
In the remains of the everfree library she discovers the fragments of a map that tells about underground passages from the everfree palace into the foothills and eventually mountains that span to the draconequui city
Discord comforts Celestia during this, we get some good relationship and emotional development
Huzzah woohoo that’s all fine and good
Except discord starts getting weak as the days go on
Paler, fur falling out, losing scales, horns become so brittle they snap
They’ve gone a bit through the tunnels at this point with more or less no trouble
But they’re at a stop where there’s an exit to the outside, at the intersection of the foothills and the edge of the everfree
Discord collapses here and Celestia and Andromeda discover he was bitten when they returned to the palace initially
But as a draconequus and not a pony
He’s not contracted the transformation pathogen
He’s just
Dying
Celestia and Andromeda try their best to save him but there’s nothing really to be done
Celestia makes him comfortable and stays with him until he stop breathing
Buries him in a shallow grave in the foothills and leaves with Andromeda to continue forward
At this point, they start meeting changeling resistance in the tunnels
Apparently they discovered them in the draconequui ruins and used them to attack the everfree
They make it into the ruins after sneaking through the tunnels with a few assassinations now and again
And find that the tunnels lead directly into the ruins of the royal amphitheater of sciences and arcana in the draconequui capitol building
They search around for the crystals, and find where they were
But the solar, lunar, arcane, and resonance crystals have all been yoinked
The only one she finds, partially broken, is the emotion stone
When she questions this, Andromeda posits that the changelings can channel emotional energy just fine on their own
Upon exiting the royal amphitheater they’re ambushed by nine other than the current hive Queen, whom I’m probably gonna make chrysalis?
Not sure though
They attack immediately, and Celestia notices that there’s a very familiar changeling there with her
Because it is not, in fact, a changeling, but a midnight-blue alicorn halfway through metamorphosing into one
Celestia subdues Luna and flees immediately, Andromeda offering herself to hold them back
She collapses part of the amphitheater wall onto the changelings and teleports herself away while Celestia tries to find a place to deal with Luna
She knows that the stones are going to be the only chance
But she tucks Luna away in a small alcove in the tunnels for the time being, restrained
Andromeda, meanwhile, reveals to Celestia that she managed to discover something from chrysalis during the battle
She doesn’t know where the stones are either
Someone else must have taken them
The changelings burst back into the amphitheater, this time with far increased numbers
Celestia and Andromeda fall back behind some rubble piles and procure crossbows from draconequui corpses nearby
Both being unicorns, they can use them quite easily
And the bolts are enchanted
Since these were weapons being developed in the amphitheater
So they do all sorts of damage to the changelings but can’t hold out for very long before they’re completely surrounded
And that’s when Celestia notices a figure on the mezzanine above them
It’s discord
When he was killed by the disease we’ll say he arose as a revenant of sorts due to the sheer determination he had to get these stones for Celestia
We can also bullshit some stuff about the illness affecting him differently
So maybe he wasn’t actually dead
Just close to it when Celestia buried him
And in this fractured yet determined state, followed a single minded goal of getting these rocks before anyone else
However, he didn’t manage to get the emotion stone simply because it had fallen from its pedestal during the original decimation of the amphitheater
And walked right over it
Understandable, he’s basically a husk
Celestia and Andromeda teleport their way to discord
Andromeda collects the stones while Celestia catches a collapsing discord, drained now that his task is complete
Celestia does her best to give him a bit of tenderness but the changelings are just about on them
So she and Andromeda activate the stones
This breaks everything.
Day and night: happening simultaneously
Sun and moon are hanging in the sky next to one another and they both look like they’re being smeared and funneled
The stars are going out
Intensive magical arcs of energy are bursting from anything that has arcane reserves in it
Including celestia and Andromeda, and the changelings
Same deal with emotions
It turns out the draconequui creates the changelings the first time they activated the stones and went into this insane reality crunch
(Although Celestia and Andromeda don’t know this)
The two of them do their best to try and exert any form of control of direction of what the absolute flipping fuck is happening
But it’s insanely difficult
However, a third force starts to pull on it
Discord has managed to throw himself into the ring
And boy howdy
Is he good at it
Already the stones react better to him because he’s a draconequus
But he’s also just very skilled at manipulating the energies
Not skilled enough though
He’s able to accomplish the two most pressing things on the three of their minds
Eradicate the changelings, and save Luna
After these two things, the energy flow is too powerful and courses through discord like he’s filament
Which breaks him
He shatters into a ghostly, flicking form
Caught between the two genders of his species in appearance
So thus, his show appearance
And becomes the spirit of chaos
And sort of just flickers and winks away and is gone
And leaves Celestia and Andromeda in the ruins of the amphitheater
The changeling fix was not perfect
Most of the changelings are gone, but some of them are only
Partially erased
Seeming to suffering a similar Fate as discord in their fading, flicking forms
It seems exceptionally painful
Celestia still has the sun, moon, and arcane crystals
The emotion crystal cleaved from the force of the energy channeling
Into a shape reminiscent of a heart
Strangely enough the only emotional frequency it responds to now is strong feelings of affection, attraction, and love
Appletank [Ethan]Yesterday at 11:37 PM
oh nice. i like this origin story
Baron RegidarYesterday at 11:37 PM
Anyway that’s “I brought you my arrows, you brought me your love”
Part one of My Little Romance
glad you liked it tank
I’ve been working on it since 2012, looooots of draft revisions lol
This is part one of five (?)
Oh yeah brief follow up
Celestia gets the sun stone, Luna the moon stone
They get fashioned into their jewelry
Andromeda declines the arcane stone as something she controls but claims that all daughters of Twilight will guard it
This leads into the plot of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge
Which happens 980 years later
I’m probably too tired to throw down more atm and I daresay this is already quite a bit to read lol
Any thoughts are appreciated on this, I glossed over some stuff
Just tried to hit the main plot points and exposition
MrNumbers, UnfortunatelyYesterday at 11:45 PM
mother of God
Appletank [Ethan]Yesterday at 11:50 PM
heh yeah, I got my own old fic in planning years ago, I purposely avoid talking about the alicorns because I couldn't settle on an idea
Baron RegidarYesterday at 11:50 PM
Write all of them
“The Many Fractured Origins of Alicorns”
A collection of myths
There’s bits of truth in all of them
The real story can be found by the shrewd eye
(their horns and wings are glued on and all their “feats” are elaborate practical effects)