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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Iustus Vitae said:
Yep this one, there might be more stuff after this or it might just be convo about it and not something Birb said. How'd you find it btw?
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I just found the post from Shaper you were talking about and scrolled a little further down the page

Edit: Also Shaper's hypothetical ritual wouldn't actually reduce the number of Wolfspawns, since it would cause another Stain to be created (and another Spawn to be born).
 
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Vote closed
  • Voting
    • Scheduled vote count started by BirdBodhisattva on Nov 18, 2023 at 3:37 AM, finished with 236 posts and 23 votes.
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  • Voting
    • I legitimately thought the other option would win.

    Not that this is something bad, of course. But I really thought that keeping Ponyville small would gain more traction.

    Anyways, next update should be up in maybe an hour.
     
    I mean it was not like the town would stop growing just that we would have no input on it's growth wich usually is bad news.
     
    I honestly just didn't care either way, but I'm not really sure why keeping it small would seem more palatable. Unless everyone just failed to notice that we would have to spend AP or something. Which I don't think we do.
     
    Depends on how you define risk. Keeping Selene a secret from everybody was a pretty big risk, admittedly. As is climbing the Mansus. And working for someone with ample reason to turn her into ash at the drop of a hat.
     
    Ericwinter said:
    Depends on how you define risk. Keeping Selene a secret from everybody was a pretty big risk, admittedly. As is climbing the Mansus. And working for someone with ample reason to turn her into ash at the drop of a hat.
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    We tend to go damn the torpedoes and bend our morals when we are focused on protecting someone else.

    We have taken some enormous risks though.
     
    The thing is, it's really not something Velvet has to "handle". We're not the mayor, and even if we were still the only noble in Ponyville who doesn't, you know, have a job with a much wider scope--none of which will be true anymore, with Pride coming to town--having a direct hand in the town was not her responsibility regardless. We took a step in a moment of crisis, but that was neither required nor something that can be easily continued.

    Mayor Mare asked our advice on what she should do. Not what Velvet would do.
     
    It is also very interesting that she is asking Velvet her opinion on this. It seems Velvets presence is looming large in ponyville.

    Which is understandable but I wonder if Velvet will realize she is becoming a household name.
     
    Hello! I binged (nearly) all 750k words in an embarrassingly short amount of time last week. Thank you BirdBodhisattva for putting so much time into this; I enjoyed reading it a lot! I meant to vote for the first time and also post a summary of my thoughts on the quest so far, but got lazy when I saw the "grow fast" option (which I would've voted for too) winning by a landslide. ;)

    BirdBodhisattva said:
    I legitimately thought the other option would win.

    Not that this is something bad, of course. But I really thought that keeping Ponyville small would gain more traction.
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    Leaving that summary for later, if I had to say why that option won...
    Ponyville will begin to grow quickly, and many more ponies will benefit from it.
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    ...this note probably does it, given people's benevolent preferences so far. If I might reference real-world politics for a moment in a hopefully enlightening way (I hope I don't regret this... :V), this is the basic question behind NIMBYism versus YIMBYism: keep the town the same as you've always known it (i.e. the "neighborhood character"), property values high, and new people out; or welcome more people in but be inconvenienced by construction, more traffic, and new neighbors. Since we aren't worried about selling our house when we retire, or about new (next-door, at least) neighbors, since we live in a mansion on an estate, why not help more ponies?

    Maybe the QM was thinking people's sentimental attachment to Ponyville as a quaint town would be stronger. :V

    I guess in terms of in-character reasons for/against growing faster, the main reasons I see are:
    • For: more ponies = more opportunities and amenities.
    • For: more ponies = more ponies in the protective bubble we exude against the "paranoia" global effect. Basically:
      jelloloaf said:
      I missed most of the discussion around the Ponyville vote, but here's my two bits. Velvet is a good person. Growing Ponyville will help people. Even if there are unforeseen side effects, I think that this is the direction that we should go in, for the sake of morality if nothing else. If we can cover both Canterlot and a new metropolis with our "go away Paranoia", then a lot of people will benefit.
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    • Against: more ponies = harder to keep secrets (mentioned during game creation as "anonymity")... how much harder is hard to say though.
    It'll be interesting to find out later what negative consequences the QM may be imagining, if there are any negative ones.
     
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    If I had to guess at likely negatives, the best I could imagine is that with so much being done to progress Ponyville, there will be a lot of holes that the remnants of the Cult can slip through. Whether starting their own splinter groups, just plain leaving, or infiltrating the new infrastructure and communities from their birth.

    More people and more projects simply means more opportunities. On the other hand, they just got shattered, so there won't be many looking to take those opportunities, and growth does have its own advantages.
     
    Honestly the biggest issue with more ponies is that 3 circle rituals may be even harder to hide.

    Frankly we may want to have a chat with fluttershy to see if she knows a place we can do two/three in the everfree forest or so.

    Though the canterlot expedition is likely to unlock a two on the next level.

    Bits are going to be tight, otherwise we could use the growth to have a house built on the extreme edges of ponyville that we actually use for rituals.
     
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    My main concerns with the faster expansion revolved around how all the suggestions seemed to revolve around environment destruction and pollution, which have led to very bad things for communities in the long-run; especially in the context of a bunch of the stuff in said environment (mainly the Everfree) being able to wipe out entire towns if sufficiently angered.
     
    We should really see if we can find the Castle of the Two Sisters. It's a freaking castle, there's gotta be enough space for a three-circle ritual in there. Plus it probably has goodies in it. Maybe find an artifact or two.

    There's the teensy problem of it being in the Everfree, but tbh, I half expect that Velvet can just Moth her way past all the nasties once we know the route.

    Edit: Is the castle even a thing that people know about? I mean, I guess we could always ask Rarity. But there isn't really an IC reason to do that.
     
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    Greymere said:
    We should really see if we can find the Castle of the Two Sisters. It's a freaking castle, there's gotta be enough space for a three-circle ritual. Plus it probably has goodies and stuff in it.

    There's the teensy problem of it being in the Everfree, but tbh, I half expect that Velvet can just Moth her was past all the nasties once we know the route.
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    Honestly it's currently… unclear how dangerous the everfree actually is. Because Comet took out his Edge influence's extra time on the locals.

    But yeah that definitely has space, but is also almost certainly a low-level expedition. At which point the one in canterlot may be a better pick for our time/bits, depending on specifics.
     
    Byzantine said:
    But yeah that definitely has space, but is also almost certainly a low-level expedition.
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    I mean, I'd say that'd be a good thing? Yeah we'd probably get lower level loot, but also having a three-circle ritual site we can use without suspicion is pretty valuable by itself.

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    Byzantine said:
    At which point the one in canterlot may be a better pick for our time/bits, depending on specifics.
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    Main problem w/ the Canterlot expedition tho is that we don't actually know if it'll give us a three-circle site, and 70 bits minimum is a lot to spend on a maybe if we specifically want a ritual site.
     
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    Limabot said:
    My main concerns with the faster expansion revolved around how all the suggestions seemed to revolve around environment destruction and pollution, which have led to very bad things for communities in the long-run; especially in the context of a bunch of the stuff in said environment (mainly the Everfree) being able to wipe out entire towns if sufficiently angered.
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    While true, it's also worth noting that Equestria is a place where the Ponies actively manage their weather, seasons, and just generally the entire natural world around their settlements. I imagine they know how not to go overboard. There will be planning put into this, not just willy nilly expansion.
     
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    Something I noticed recently -- none of the updates in Chapter 16, so far as I can tell, have involved any rolls.

    I guess it makes sense? It's mostly been narrative development (some of which are a culmination of really long-developed threads) and a lot of the interactions are with characters (Celestia, Shining, the Father) where diplomacy isn't really handled 'normally', for good reasons. In other cases, we just have more tools to avoid the risk of rolling a die (the Wrong Key). Maybe it's always been like this, and I just don't recall? But certainly Velvet Covers has come a long way from having to roll Winter to write a letter!
     
    spiderhellian said:
    Something I noticed recently -- none of the updates in Chapter 16, so far as I can tell, have involved any rolls.

    I guess it makes sense? It's mostly been narrative development (some of which are a culmination of really long-developed threads) and a lot of the interactions are with characters (Celestia, Shining, the Father) where diplomacy isn't really handled 'normally', for good reasons. In other cases, we just have more tools to avoid the risk of rolling a die (the Wrong Key). Maybe it's always been like this, and I just don't recall? But certainly Velvet Covers has come a long way from having to roll Winter to write a letter!
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    Bird does also occasionally roll in the background. Though... im not sure we have talked any tasks that were outside of our ability so far. Or that would require great exertion from Velvet Covers.
     
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