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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Man, Copper's gonna be weird. Unless she can tank rituals like us, she took a PtN from the Master in his specialty, and then another fairly high-powered one from Velvet. She might have honestly gone a little crazy by now.
 
Frickin Fedora said:
My advise would be to reread the entire story over again, and while you are doing it fix any typos you are missing. Sure, it's ridiculously long in word count, but in my experience it's great to go over what you've done and see how far you've come.
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Already did it once for this:

forums.sufficientvelocity.com

Esquestria: The House of the Sun - A pony cultist experience Crossover - Mature - Users' Choice!

You are part of a cult. In Equestria. What started out as a very interesting book club meeting finally crossed "that" threshold when you realized the ceremonial knife on the wall wasn't just ornamental. But by then, you had already started agreeing with their point of view. The only thing you DO...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com forums.sufficientvelocity.com

So i'm really just looking to continue it from where i left, rather than do a full rework.
Keeping my ambitions realistic and such. Telling myself to reread everything, typo-fix it, and rewrite sections i think could be better would just make me feel overwhelmed to the point of discouragement.
 
A bit late, was quite busy IRL, but good to see you again, Bird!

As for any plot threads, arguably Cadance sanity, but it is not like we are going to undermine it again in the near future, right? Right?

On another note, a couple of mysteries and background details that we've picked up at different times, just in case and as a reminder to everyone on players' knowledge.

-Comet Feet weirdness
--What's up with Comet Feet, it is not very pony-like name, isn't it? (was highlighted by QM)
--How he knew Shining was important, and how he knew it so quickly? There were just three days between "someone from Guard has arrived, but we are not sure who" to him offering Shining to Master. Less, even. What is the source of his knowledge?
-Cadance issues
--Already mentioned sanity
--Harmony overrode her Cutie Mark - what are the implications? What is the true story of her ascension?
--Implied that after our promise not to leave her, we are now (kind of like Shining) fate bound, in a sense, to Cadance
---Also, again, just to remind everyone: Cadance remembers that "we all do our best" speech
-Master didn't mention Windy in their "you all are doing your part" speech. Why?
-Not exactly a mistery, but Midday Dew, his institution, and probably ~2 more.

Also, @BirdBodhisattva, spiderhellian already mentioned their omakes, but here's five seven more in no particular order:

In which the child stays at its mother's side by Kadath
part 2 by Kadath
In which the war ends by jelloloaf
In which a brief on Lore of The Prison is provided by permeakra
For Harmony and Love! – A Princess Cadance Quest by Artemis_Fowl_2nd
In which Standard Operating Procedures are made by quantum lurker
In which Velvet needs a hug by Void_510

There might be more, but still, I believe these will be of use.
 
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Oh, there's also the familial lessons on Lores. I believe we can do it again once we get All-4? Probably not All-5 though, since LOL at a ever managing that in the first place.
 
@BirdBodhisattva not sure how relevant keeping shining armor leashed is anymore. But we are doing that.

And the whoooole mess with twilight. She said she wants nothing to do with us but she is still a colossal loose end. She knows we were involved with the cult and we have been pushing people to interact with her more.

We also annihilated the entire woods. So. I have no idea what the larger ramifications for that might be.

Keeping Celestias faith... Somehow.

Oh our Husband has complex feelings about the return. But we kinda split the difference on that one...
 
Wasn't the Leash supposed to come off and just never got updated? I could have sworn it was mentioned that we really didn't need it now or something.
 
Nae we are still using the Leash to push him to propose.

I would also like to free the daughter of Axes but no one worked on making that a priority... and the Baldomare.
 
BirdBodhisattva said:
-Your ongoing occult war with Cooper herself
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With a note of the realization on velvets end that copper and velvet were played by the master.
BirdBodhisattva said:
Comet Feet having given Shining to the Master?
--You can just not confront him, really.
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The question of comet feets situation/loyalty.
Now that we realize the stand-off ishness was probably related to the masters plot.
Chance to clear the air?
BirdBodhisattva said:
Does anyone remember any other loose threads we have out there? Im sure they exist, with varying degrees of importance. Stuff from Flower Serenade to DoA's doomed quest. But still, does anyone think im forgetting something that is particularly important?

Good day to us all.
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The effects of wolf-ing the forrest.
We got the Baldomare explanation, but we haven't seen its actuall effects.

Like the "fear of the unknown as motivator to learn" being replaced by pain bit.
I remember the twice used nose becoming that die to a foal not knowing to fear the monsters of the everfree forrest and that causing great pain.
Will ponykind itself now get such tragedies to hurry its development along?
 
Hey Bird! Nice to hear from you, and I'm glad that you're still planning on continuing the quest :)

(shhh I'm totally not late to the party)

In terms of spinning plates... yeah I think playing Name keep-away w/ the other two splinters (but mostly Copper let's be real) is the only other major one I can think of?
 
@BirdBodhisattva

I only remember another potential concern beside what has already been mentioned.

well, 2, but one we know NOTHING of IC.

1) Discord's statue. It disappeared, and all we know of it is that it was some kind of Nexus in the histories I think, and whatever was IMPORTANT there was missing.

2) Sombra might or might not be about to happen. More of a reminder for you that something Velvet would actually know about.


That's all I can think of right now
 
Okay, been preparing for months a (very)basic path for the future.

Personal stuff:
Reach All-4, give family lessons, level up Confidantes, work on sacraments(SH and Winter are the best ones currently), meet the rest of the Elements(Pinkie and Rainbow) both to avoid accidental Winter Sacrament kill and for possible support for Twilight, work on the Mansus like crazy.

Former Inner Circle:
1. Try to tell Copper the truth and hope that will unfuck reality from its old ways, if that isn't possible murder and Name stealing shall follow.
2. Windy and Starry should be brought to our attention and be either recruited or used as target practice for the Bureau.
3. Scream at Comet Feet's face till Velvet's voice is hoarse for NOT TELLING US ABOUT THE MASTER(yes, I am still angry about that) and after that we will have a reasonable conversation about WHY DIDN'T HE TELL US ANYTHING where we try to convince him to work with us.

Family stuff:
1. Selene will go away so we might need to plan what to say since surprisingly Princess Luna was our daughter all along and how to deal with the fallout from that.
2. Pride's crush on a snakemare he just met.:V
Best to stop that, neither of them are mature enough for a relationship(and there is a lot of other stuff that could go wrong).
3. Hill can go die on a hill, whether we are responsible for that or not is irrelevant.
4. Soft Sweeps WILL be kept away from her wolf side(no more Regrettable Actions people we already broke the world TWICE with those).

Name stuff:
1. Find a way to kill Mareinette without having a Fourth Son.
2. Keep the strategy to befriend Baldomare.
3. Summon DOA and Biedde and keep them with us no matter what(I had something in mind for this that worked but I don't remember it now).
4. Get the last Name before anyone else.

Bureau related stuff:
1. Finish the Canterlot Expedition and plant basic Lore knowledge there. Remember when Velvet was looking for the two-circle rituals and there was an option to look for them in books in Canterlot? We would have an excuse to be super advanced in lore stuff if we launder them early on and say we progressed because of the information if we can get that access.
2. Get Luna and Cadance in our schemes. We are well on the path to have Cadance as a Confidante but Luna is still a wildcard so it is better to wait.
3. Contact the other organizations to see the bigger picture.

Victory Conditions:
I'm going for Harmony. No other choice for me.

I just can't bear to look at what happened to Equestria because of us and think "Huh, maybe Velvet should go for Glory. She can fix it all since she will be the only Hour around." because it won't go like this.

All it will do is reestabilish the status quo of the Mansus and get others to reach for Glory, and then what will happen to Velvet? Will she manage to kill any aspirants who dream of immortality and remain the God-Empress of Ponykind? History says that no, that other ponies will become Long, then Names and finally become proper rivals for Velvet as Hours, and that is without mentioning the Names that are still alive. Then all of the bad things that happened in the past will happen again, because History loves its patterns.

Harmony is the only way the world will be better after we are done with this Quest.

Sorry for all that, but like I said I had that on my mind for months.
 
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Thank you all! This has all been really helpful.

A few of the things you mentioned aren't really on my "plates" list because they are self-executing. I mean, Names will be befriended only if you want to.
But other things, some subplots that need to run on my background, are stuff I gotta get back into my mental list. And you guys did remind me of a few!

Also, again, I will get around to those aphocryphas that were helpfully linked. Thank you kindly! I just don't have the time that those deserve right now.

Steady Gaze said:
No promises, but if it strikes my fancy, I was thinking about doing a typo pass/copyedit for the earlier parts of the story and sending it to you @BirdBodhisattva 🤔. But that would take a really long time, and if it's after the migration, you'd have to update things in two places.
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And about this, do you (or anyone else) happen to know if the other site has a... I don't know how it's called. A "co-writing" thing? I think this site allows for collaborators and whatnots.
I ask because I wouldn't mind giving you editing powers, if that is possible. No pressure on you, of course, but I wouldn't mind cutting myself as a middle man given your much sharper eye for english grammatical mistakes.

Anyhow. Good night to us all. I'll start working on a few things over there.
 
BirdBodhisattva said:
And about this, do you (or anyone else) happen to know if the other site has a... I don't know how it's called. A "co-writing" thing? I think this site allows for collaborators and whatnots.
I ask because I wouldn't mind giving you editing powers, if that is possible. No pressure on you, of course, but I wouldn't mind cutting myself as a middle man given your much sharper eye for english grammatical mistakes.

Anyhow. Good night to us all. I'll start working on a few things over there.
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If the other site is QQ then yes, if SB then last I checked no.
 
SB does I think. I remembering seeing something on another quest recently over there where the QM gave permissions to someone who proceeded to mess things up. Or something, I wasn't keeping too much track, but I'm pretty sure they at least have the ability to let other people manage threadmarks.
 
Notice of Emigration
  • Threadmarks
    • Dear reader.

    If you are reading this, then thank you for your time and attention! Thank you for reading this story until this point, and I sincerely hope you are enjoying it.

    I would like to inform you that the rest of this story will continue to be written in another site. Please, do not worry, there will be no payment barriers or other inconveniences. This is merely an administrative change following certain occurrences.

    The main page of the story can be reached by clicking HERE.

    Or, you can go to the next post of the story, and continue reading as if nothing happened, by clicking HERE.

    Just a small note, though. The site where this will continue has its background as a white color in default. So, in order to have an easier time reading our delightful colored text I would advise you to click the "style chooser" on the very bottom of that site's screen, and to choose another theme that suits you best.

    Thank you for your time, and have a wonderful day!

    Sincerely,

    The Author

    This will be the last threadmark posted in this thread. I will not request the deletion of this quest, or the locking of the thread, for the sake of archiving and posteriority. However, no aphocryphas posted after this post will be threadmarked. Kindly direct yourself to our new thread to continue our discussion.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Also, quick question, does QQ have an automatic invisitext detector? Last I checked it didn't, but if figure I should make sure.
     
    About that.

    I don't have any experience at all over there. So I wouldn't be able to tell. However, I too have heard that a lot of users here have accounts there as well. So I wouldn't be surprised if we kept the majority of the wonderful crowd we already have over here.

    There are some things I'll have to get used to, like the site not having a vote tally. But I already found a link to a program that other quests seem to be using to cover that.

    Also, I am delighted to inform that the plain copy-pasting of the BBcode is making a perfect transition. Of colors, letter size, and apparently even alignment.
    So, since there will be no need for a manual check of everything, and since I won't have to individually color every single word during transfer, transfer of the quest should proceed much faster than the (currently paused) transfer to FimFiction.

    In other words, soon. I'm already doodling how Cadance's marriage will go down.

    But that's more than enough for today. Good night to us all.
     
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