Esquestria: The House of the Sun - A pony cultist experience

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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Dear reader! Whether you are new here, archive-reading and whatnot, or you are already someone who has been with us for quite a while, I would like to say a few words that I believe are best kept close to mind.

-This is an MLP quest. And more importantly, none of us are gratuitously cruel. So good things will happen on this quest, and I hope that enough good things have already happened to prove that.
-This is also a horror quest, so bad things will happen. Bad things might happen to good characters if you are not able to protect them, and you most certainly will not be able to intervene if you lack the tools to do so.
-And finally, this is a quest in which you jostle with powers greater than yourself, with all that it entails.

Please, do keep those things in mind as you go forward. But ultimately, this is also a quest in which it is hoped we all have fun! So if any of the above points is not exactly your cup of tea, or somehow make the experience as a whole "not worth it", then this quest might not be for you. Which is fine! Individual tastes are a thing, so don't think any more about it if you don't want to read anymore. And regardless, I hope you have a lovely day!

Kaelor said:
PSA for whoever needs to hear it:

Readers should take their own mental health into consideration when voting and not subject themselves to triggering narrative elements like rape or constant mental torture of a friend just for the Greatest Good of a world that doesn't exist.

If those are fine for you or Regrettable is even more triggering, then GREAT! More power to you. But you aren't a bad or selfish person for picking the option that keeps the characters you've emotionally connected with safe. [REDACTED for spoiler warning]

This is a high intensity quest that doesn't hold back when it comes to horror and negative consequences. Take care of yourself.
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(Quote slightly edited to avoid spoilers)
 
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Shaper47 said:
I'd say the main problem is its an inferior replacement.

Using Windigo's as an example. Ponies now are helpless against them, ponies in the old days could protect themselves.

I mean sure you can just have the princesses take over protecting ponies instead of allowing ponies to defend themselves. But that's being shown to be a total fail as seen with how Luna got Wormed and Celestia got Chrysalis'd and had to be saved by the Master.
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I will not fight you that.
At least keyblade wielders can back up their power of friendship stick with massive amounts of ultraviolence.

Harmony kinda suffer of the start trek problem when sure its a nice idea, but the reason a society does not work like that it's because is retarded to try... Looks at the starfleet vessel carrying kids to wild space.
 
Shaper47 said:
Using Windigo's as an example. Ponies now are helpless against them, ponies in the old days could protect themselves.
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Oh please, anything short of a winter/edge adept would be crushed in moments by a Windigo. They got their asses kicked in the end by Harmony, not regular ponies using Lores.

Sure, a small number of the most talented and lucky could handle them. …but that's a small number of the most talented. The situation has, if anything broadened.
 
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Byzantine said:
Oh please, anything short of a winter/edge adept would be crushed in moments by a Windigo. They got their asses kicked in the end by Harmony, not regular ponies using Lores.
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I'm not talking about a straight up fight I'm talking about heart wards protecting cities from becoming mass graves.

Your talk of Harmony vs Windigo's seems pretty baseless to me. I haven't seen any evidence supporting it.
 
I mean Harmony had an pact with 2 alicorns on their side while the society that was guided by the lores was it's on worst enemy and may had had an apocalypse when the mansus broke.
It was not an "fight".
 
Shaper47 said:
I'm not talking about a straight up fight I'm talking about heart wards protecting cities from becoming mass graves.

Your talk of Harmony vs Windigo's seems pretty baseless to me. I haven't seen any evidence supporting it.
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It's MLP canon that the windigos got their asses kicked and driven away by the merest touch of Harmony.

And yeah, so relying on a few of the very best to keep things from falling apart constantly.
 
You know on thing, sombra may actually make an interesting character in the quest, since you know one of the few things he could never be was be a pony. Well in this quest Alicorns are not ponies.
 
On the Hearthswarming creation story, I could see it going either way as to whether it was a Lore or Harmony thing, given that it seems to take place in the time between the fall of the Hours and the rise of Harmony to replace them.
 
Byzantine said:
It's MLP canon that the windigos got their asses kicked and driven away by the merest touch of Harmony.

And yeah, so relying on a few of the very best to keep things from falling apart constantly.
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...

This is a crossover.

Besides we don't know what the heartswarming story was/is. It could go that Harmony came down and did some smiting (which is heavily unlikely given how it was helpless against all the other issues later). Or it could be that the current tale is a lie of Harmony propaganda and the truth is that the old ponies used heart wards to protect themselves against Windigos (an entirely possible truth).
 
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Do note that Celestia only got Chrysalis'd because of our driving Luna insane.and her subsequent disappearance.

And that Harmony cured a worm-hosting that had lasted centuries.

Also note that Harmony has previously defeated Chrysalis, Tirkus, Discord, and so forth; almost every confrontation in the show was a rematch.

Also note that Equestria has yet to lose any Worm Wars, which is a better track record than canon cultist simulator.
 
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Shaper47 said:
...

This is a crossover.

Besides we don't know what the heartswarming story was/is. It could go that Harmony came down and did some smiting (which is heavily unlikely given how it was helpless against all the other issues later). Or it could be that the current tale is a lie of Harmony propaganda and the truth is that the old ponies used heart wards to protect themselves against Windigos (an entirely possible truth).
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It's rare for me to agree with Shaper here... but I agree with Shaper.

the past, especially the extremely distant past from BEFORE the Alicorn sisters, is suspect by definition.

We don't know WHEN the transition from lores to Harmony actually happened. We don't know WHEN the Unicorns stopped raising the sun by sacrificing people to distract the Sun-in-Rags from his sadness.

We don't know WHEN the Alicorn princesses appeared, not exactly. If canon still applies, it was more or less at the same time the Pillars of Equestria, kind of the older version of the Element Bearers, became a thing... but again, we don't exactly know when that was.

We don't even know if the Pillars actually were closer to being bearers of Harmony, or if they were actually Lore practicians even.
 
Shaper47 said:
That's not really very impressive given how we could use The Forge's Redemption to cure such a worm-hosting much much quicker.
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I normally don't chime in this suddenly, especially when I am busy.

But I just had to come here to let you know how incredibly inaccurate and innocent this statement is.

Carry on. I'll be back much later.
 
To be honest, it should be noted that while the (in-universe) source is dubious, there is information that it is possible to cure worm-infestation.

It's just so happens that humans - and probably ponies - can't survive the process.

Alicorns, as it was established, are not ponies.

So it is not exactly clear to whom belongs the merit of deworming Luna.
 
Shaper47 said:
That's not really very impressive given how we could use The Forge's Redemption to cure such a worm-hosting much much quicker.
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As a player of Cultist Simulator, not really. The only thing that can cure the early phases is the direct attention of a Heart Hour (level 15 Heart Influence). Any later, and the person has to be mercy-killed and burned into the finest ash; any larger fragments must be burned again.
 
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BirdBodhisattva said:
I normally don't chime in this suddenly, especially when I am busy.

But I just had to come here to let you know how incredibly inaccurate and innocent this statement is.

Carry on. I'll be back much later.
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Yeah, I… I'm not even sure where the fuck that idea came from. The only thing even in canon CS suggested to be able to beat a Worm possession without killing the victim as well is a max Heart Influence, and how that works is incredibly unclear. It's also very much a "only works if you catch said possession very early".
 
Shaper47 said:
That's not really very impressive given how we could use The Forge's Redemption to cure such a worm-hosting much much quicker.
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In CS you need an Imminence to clear out a worm that is in the process of taking you over, and if you become a full host it's Game Over.
The Tantra of Worms supposedly gives ways of curing fully hosted entities, but they all seem to be lethal to the host in question. It's definitely more complicated than applying one rainbow-laser to the face.

Pittauro said:
It's rare for me to agree with Shaper here... but I agree with Shaper.

the past, especially the extremely distant past from BEFORE the Alicorn sisters, is suspect by definition.

We don't know WHEN the transition from lores to Harmony actually happened. We don't know WHEN the Unicorns stopped raising the sun by sacrificing people to distract the Sun-in-Rags from his sadness.

We don't know WHEN the Alicorn princesses appeared, not exactly. If canon still applies, it was more or less at the same time the Pillars of Equestria, kind of the older version of the Element Bearers, became a thing... but again, we don't exactly know when that was.

We don't even know if the Pillars actually were closer to being bearers of Harmony, or if they were actually Lore practicians even.
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The Master explicitly sets Discord's reign after the fall of the Mansus and the fucking off of the Hours. He also casually rattles off Sombra and Tirkus as threats that arose during Harmony's reign. Celestia, when fighting Chrysalis, personally recognizes the queen she had sealed in a volcano. It's pretty unambiguous that those are things Harmony handled through its agents, seeing as Equestria is still here.
 
Shaper47 said:
Well a being Wormed is a body-affecting malus. So I thought it was kinda implied.



With the general idea that you'd have to be an Alicorn to survive because of outsider toughness shannigins.
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…Okay, I can see the logic, but uh… Worms are a lot more than just body affecting. That's, like, wounds and scars. Eldritch abominations crawling into you skin and making you deader than dead as they walk around in it probably has a fair amount of mind and/or soul affecting nastiness as well.
 
Talon TigerDino said:
The Master explicitly sets Discord's reign after the fall of the Mansus and the fucking off of the Hours
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Where's that. Like, I remember the Master mentioning that Scorpan and Tirek came after Discord but I don't remember them giving a date on when Discord came from Nowhere. In fact given how they were stuck in the Woods and unknowing of what was going on during the wake during the Harmony era it would imply that those threats are much older, and were weakened by the previous order. Chrysalis for example is directly mentioned to have been cursed as fuck.
 
Recall that Discord ruled for an unknown amount of time. And Discord ideas of how to run a world, would not permit thing like lore rituals to work, far to structured and orderly. Lore knowledge was pretty much already lost when the Alicorns where born, or they would know about them.
 
Shaper47 said:
Where's that. Like, I remember the Master mentioning that Scorpan and Tirek came after Discord but I don't remember them giving a date on when Discord came from Nowhere. In fact given how they were stuck in the Woods and unknowing of what was going on during the wake during the Harmony era it would imply that those threats are much older, and were weakened by the previous order. Chrysalis for example is directly mentioned to have been cursed as fuck.
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They could have learned of those events by browsing through a basic history book or ten minutes of talking to his first cultists, him being out of the Wake doesn't stop him from learning about it the years he had building up the cult prior to quest start. Her entire speech at the first cult meeting is how Harmony has left the doors open to all of these horrors and flat out says it's because they were attracted to the Fires of Harmony and magic the Alicorns are stoking. It's allegedly their entire reason for starting the cult.

Also Chrysalis was cursed with being ugly and having to eat people, but in typical Mansus fashion was given powers to facilitate her eating of people; the whole lying to reality so hard you can become anyone thing. And she was running free in the Wake until Celestia sealed her.
 
Shaper47 said:
Well a being Wormed is a body-affecting malus. So I thought it was kinda implied.
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that's like saying that both having a broken nail and being possessed by a demon are body problems.
Talon TigerDino said:
The Master explicitly sets Discord's reign after the fall of the Mansus and the fucking off of the Hours. He also casually rattles off Sombra and Tirkus as threats that arose during Harmony's reign. Celestia, when fighting Chrysalis, personally recognizes the queen she had sealed in a volcano. It's pretty unambiguous that those are things Harmony handled through its agents, seeing as Equestria is still here.
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The master is explicitly not always right. Also sometimes he lies.

Still, Discord is also after the pillars and Starswirl's time, so the timing isn't that precise.

Tirek is presumably from before Discord, as Starswirl was still around, while Sombra is presumably after Discord but before Nightmare Moon.

And Chrysalis... well, if the canon thing is canon to the quest, she's from AFTER Luna's banishment...
 
Talon TigerDino said:
Also Chrysalis was cursed with being ugly and having to eat people, but in typical Mansus fashion was given powers to facilitate her eating of people; the whole lying to reality so hard you can become anyone thing. And she was running free in the Wake until Celestia sealed her.
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Tbf, the Lie to the World wasn't an innate Ability of the changelings, it was a property of the Moth Artifact they had (iirc, it was the Moldywarp's Stone or something like that?). And I believe it was implied in the interlude that the Velvet must have took pity on them or something and let them keep it after they stole it from her. And then they just held onto it for however long it's been until Baldomare subverted and destroyed it.
 
Greymere said:
Tbf, the Lie to the World wasn't an innate Ability of the changelings, it was a property of the Moth Artifact they had (iirc, it was the Moldywarp's Stone or something like that?). And I believe it was implied in the interlude that the Velvet must have took pity on them or something and let them keep it after they stole it from her. And then they just held onto it for however long it's been until Baldomare subverted and destroyed it.
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It was less pity and more that since they were using it for its intended purpose, it wasn't too offensive to leave it with them. Or at least that's what the Master and Baldomare theorized.

And yes, it was the Moldywarp's stone.
 
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