Princes @mlp_Celestia, ready to defend Equestria.
A threat from space draws Princess @mlp_Celestia into battle, but things don't go according to plan.
Time and Place
This RP arc began Wednesday, April 3, 2013. Main action concluded by 2:30pm Eastern time, Monday, April 8, 2013.
Players
These players participated:
- Princess Celestia
- Twilight Sparkle
- Spike
- Princess Luna
- Discord
- Dragon King
- Red Dragon
- Queen Chrysalis
- Ninja Star
- Wishing Star
- Silver Bullet
- Golden Bullet
- Goldsoul Bullet
- Firefly
- Twibot Sparker
- Cole The Pony
- Tunie Track
- Blacksoul
- BassDropp
- <Add your name above this line if you participated>
Overview
On her own, Princess Celestia flew from the Day Palace directly to outer space, well beyond the moon and even the inner planets. She wore her battle armor and carried her father's sword.
She encountered a roiling black cloud she recognized, and stood her ground against it. The cloud, pitch black with flecks of green, never speaks, but the Princess could feel its rudimentary intelligence. She told it to leave Equestria. The cloud only expressed fear when she indicated she'd brought the sword. "You won't feast on Equestria while I'm here," she cried in defiance. But the creature snuck a tendril behind her and caught her by surprise. Unable to draw the sword in time, the cloud absorbed her. Just before she was drawn completely in, she managed to send a message to Princess Luna, "Use water!" She vanished into the cloud.
Princess Luna set in motion a call, alerting guards and other royals to the problem. Princess Twilight retreated to her room to research the menace, not emerging for four days until she had discovered the nature of the creature.
Meanwhile, ponies across Equestria went into training, meetings, even quests to learn what way best to rescue the Princess. Discord took Spike on an impromptu visit to the Dragon King, who informed them the creature was a "Green Meanie," which consumed the color green, and that Celestia was still engaged in fighting it the whole time, but was unable to "draw her father's toothpick." The Dragon King, sensing an opportunity to put the ponies in his debt, sent Red Dragon to "guard" the Day Palace until Celestia's return, perhaps against Queen Chrysalis.
Princess Luna decided the best course of action was a massive assault on the Green Meanie. She would bring hundreds of ponies into space with her, each armed with a bucket of water (and one of Spike's sack lunches). Ponies around the country prepared.
Once Princess Twilight learned the purpose of the water, the attack began. Princess Luna built a protective space bridge that let ponies survive beyond Equestria and helped them gallop at tremendous speed to the scene of the battle.
Celestia had been fighting for four full days and both she and the Green Meanie were showing signs of fatigue. The monster managed to keep the sword in its scabbard, but Celestia managed to keep the creature occupied and even inflicted damage. The ponies arrived by the hundreds, and crowing that "the cavalry had come!" Celestia didn't notice a tendril of the cloud wrap around her wing. With a terrible "snap!" her wing was broken. She lost some feathers and one of her golden horseshoes.
At that moment, all the ponies threw their buckets, the water freezing to crystals, and light from the sun and Twilight's and Luna's horn cast millions of rainbows. The light dazzled and overwhelmed the creature enough for Celestia to draw the sword. "FirstLight," a sliver of the light from the creation of the universe, flooded the sky, visible on Equestria, and completely routing the Green Meanie, which fled the system in tatters. Triumphant, the ponies helped Celestia--exhausted more from weilding FirstLight than from the whole battle--back to the Day Palace for some rest.
<Add your contribution to the RP here!>
Afterthoughts
Thanks, everyone for a really fun RP arc! I'd wanted to do something more "epic," with higher stakes. As usual, I just put a character in trouble without knowing what would happen. It grew organically, as the best adventures do. I think everyone did a wonderful job!
I did want to talk about a couple of things I know are a bit controversial. First, the span: this RP began on a Wednesday and didn't end until Monday. That's unusual, and it came by accident. I'd already started it when Twilight's player told me they'd be gone Thursday through Sunday. This was after Princess Luna had already made Twilight an integral part of the RP. So we had a big gap in the middle where no one could really do anything except plan or practice or worry or scheme. And I think that's a great thing! Without intending to, we created space for anyone to react any way they wanted. We had changelings consider attack, we had guards of all kinds preparing for battle, we had mysteries to talk about, even a big meeting in a (not so) secret room, where several folks traded theories about what we knew and what we didn't know.
Second, the resolution. It's unusual for us to resolve a major RP between noon and 3pm on a Monday. We decided to go forward with it for two big reasons: first, this was the only time Twilight and Luna's players could be on at the same time this whole week! We couldn't just let it sit there until the next weekend, that would have been way too long. Second, I realized that Luna was key to this RP and had never, in all our years in #TwitterPonies, been around for a big RP, because her player is in a very different time zone. So we decided this time to let the "morning" ponies have some fun. Yes, it meant that a lot of you who were invested in this plot arc were asleep during the resolution, but hey, that's how folks active in the morning and afternoons on weekdays have felt for two years now. They deserve a chance in the spotlight too.
This also meant we had to make it quick. By 3pm, Twi had to go, people were going back to sleep, and the "afternoon and evening" crew wasn't yet in. So the resolution was pretty zippy. The only plan I had for participation was that everyone would get a chance to throw their bucket of water--perhaps not as interactive as it could be, but I didn't want to force the matter.
So those are just some afterthoughts I had. Please discuss in the comments how you would like to see "epic" and "high-stakes" scenes and RP arcs like this to flow in the future. I'm all ears for suggestions how to include more people in more time zones on weekends and weekdays and everything in between.
Thanks, hope you had fun!
--Spike / Celestia / Red Dragon / Dragon King