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

[BirdBodhisattva]

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!

Spoiler: Or if you'd rather hear it from someone else

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)

 

[That-Random-Guy]

edit: AAAAAGH THIS WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE POSTED
edit 2: I think I've finished up this post. main edits in responses to @Earth-Destroyer and @ElMariachi

I have to say go with the lie.... while i do feel horrible lying to Cadance we NEED to heal our maluses or our Edge will just continue being garbage and we'll get eaten by something higher in the Mansus.

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About that: Keep in mind that Scarred is the Health one and Frightened is the direct Personal Combat one (not to mention the 'trauma' one with all the many semi-subtle narrative effects that carries). Also that it's not the Alicorns and others at the Bureau have known or will be knowing Velvet anywhere as deeply as her close family—close family being the ones described as 'will get pretty suspicious if this malus disappears' back before our conversations with Stormchaser.

It could even lay the groundwork for us getting the Bureau to subsidize materials for rituals to restore Twilight and Shining Armors horns as evidence of "yeah, we are dealing with something on a completely different level here and I'm the only one who has any idea of what is going on."

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Here's a important point people have been sleeping on. Once the lores are laundered through, we'll have the comparatively gargantuan institutional resources and manpower and not least of all talent pool of the Lunar Bureau on our side. There's a reason they've replaced the Cult benchmark, and this time, we're not fundamentally unaligned.

And you know what? I'm the absolute asshole who carried the Door vote. I am one hundred percent capable of turning off all my concerns about other people to do cool eldritch magic shit and I've wanted to see what a Forge's redemption ritual looks like for a long time.

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Hoooooooooooold up. I admittedly haven't been paying the closest attention to comparative bit-maths, but doesn't Forge's Redemption trade off against seeing the Rite of Raucous Birth looks like? Reagents cost money, and so on (let alone the less-likely case of failing it).
e: I am literally blind, see Eric's response

It amount to the same thing, turns spent setting up the Bureau, 1-3. Turns to find an reason to introduce the lores 3-5. Turns to research and develop having lore knowledge, and building up that knowledge at a reasonable pace 3-5, 7-13 turns of waiting.

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Pardon if you've already been quoted or pinged about this, but hasn't there been quite a bit of discussion laying out why it isn't going to take that long? Part of setting up the Bureau is spooling up its agents, there's no particular reason why Velvet of the Secret Histories and Bureau Head needs several months to 'find a reason' (put some where a agent will go given a coincidence or two, and bam, done), Lores Velvet can explain away a lot as someone with 4.5x the affinities of most peeps, such as having reagent-making 'click' (at which point Bureau funds can source ingredients), and taking the honesty option this turn also sets up a justification for why she'd 'rush ahead' on running Forge's Redemption.

I should all be for doing the right thing and not add more stress to poor Cadence, but the thing I'm afraid is that since we're set on summoning Mareinette, if the price to get lessons from her and/or keeping her under our control involves out blood and that it translates into giving one point of health each time, then we're fucked, because that would mean running with 1 health a not insignificant part of each turn, with the Mansus still to climb and some asshole trying to ritual snipe us.

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The ritual is phrased as 'binding her like a normal summon', and then finding a way to 'rebind' her after 3 turns, so we can be pretty confident we won't be taking that many extra Health hits from her. For the rituals, we have our Wrong Keys, and the fact that the Cult splintered very suddenly indeed and the splinters are gonna be busy getting their footing.

As for the Mansus, we have a few turns of options that aren't 'forge onward towards yet higher danger', and I simply don't see Bird's setup of the Mansus throwing two fights at us in a row. Next one would be a destination the next floor up, and it's fairly unlikely we'll succeed each roll on the way there and then get it in particular (and fail the possible rolls to avoid that fight) exploring.

Tbh, the first thing that comes to mind is, assuming the Luna Situation works out in our favor, is doing (a bit of) what Pittauro suggested in planting Lore evidence, have the whole "Lore investigation" thing stay in-house for a while under Luna's auspice and just... not tell Celestia for a bit while the Bureau studies it.

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Ima poke my head in here and add on that we are well along the process of doing every lesson in a sensible 'mental integrity then mental stress' ordering as well as doing the Knock-level research and giving a more conventional Lores family lesson (so she's been exposed and taught of the lores in that mode as well).

Let me know if I missed anything? Good day to us all!

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Off the top of my head, a lot of discussion was hinging on, like, any word at all on the possible unavoidable delays in laundering the Lores? I mean, thought process is risk to Velvet, but like waiting is risk of it's own...I say, knowing you've said 'no' to elaboration in that direction.

In any case that very likely isn't the only thing—like, these last few pages have been quite busy with discussion.


edit 3: oh, right, the Rarity option for introducing the Lores! totally forgot about that in the shuffle

 

[Greymere]

We gained Lore scraps from books we purchased from merchants. Do you imply they are connected to some evil cultists? Or may be there actually are some genuine sources of Lores in open circulation?

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Nah, it just means Velvet is Bullshit (as per usual) and is capable of gaining insight into the Lores from mundane topics under their auspice, like gaining knowledge of Forge from learning about chemistry.

 

[Byzantine]

We gained Lore scraps from books we purchased from merchants. Do you imply they are connected to some evil cultists? Or may be there actually are some genuine sources of Lores in open circulation?

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The lores exist but no one that isn't tainted knows about them, except Selene.

Anyway, the point is we need a way to introduce the existence of the lores that isn't obviously just us going "by the way I know this for unexplainable reasons". The 'easy' way is to have Luna be the one to introduce it, if she is willing.

Another option is to have Rarity come to us as a vaguely-new member of the cult that only just figured out enough to realize they may be involved in spooky shit. This has obvious problems depending on exactly how trigger happy Celestia is.

A third option is to 'incidentally' find the canterlot expedition site and seed it with what we want to Bureau to find.

Etc.

We aren't low on options. But they will all take time. And we need to be careful to not ever out that we knew the lores before whatever official inciting incident we come up with.

The Luna option is best because if the Alicorn Magic bonus applies to rituals we can literally just have her immediately do Forge's redemption and laugh in the face of the DC. And Luna will, once she proves it is actually her to Celestia's satisfaction, probably be given enough leeway to move the Sun. Literally. This probably won't work so smoothly in practice.

 

[Ericwinter]

Is not instant game over. Good or bad is a lot more complex.

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Point.

What I mean is, if there is some reason for Velvet knowing the Lores other than being connected to the people who attacked Luna, doing the ritual doesn't have necessarily the same outcome as it does now.

We gained Lore scraps from books we purchased from merchants. Do you imply they are connected to some evil cultists? Or may be there actually are some genuine sources of Lores in open circulation?

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Those were perfectly normal books purchasable by anybody and Equestria isn't overrun by people who read a normal book and gained eldritch secrets of the universe yet.

I think the implication is more that you need at least a little bit of lore knowledge to be able to get more from books.

Hoooooooooooold up. I admittedly haven't been paying the closest attention to comparative bit-maths, but doesn't Forge's Redemption trade off against seeing the Rite of Raucous Birth looks like? Reagents cost money, and so on (let alone the less-likely case of failing it).

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No, no. Several plans have been laid out for us doing both with money calculations. If anything is dropped it would probably be a scrying ritual, not the summoning.

 

[Starlit Horizon]

On "what we tell Luna" question:

Personally, I would 99% go "the truths we tell, the complete truths we tell and nothing but truths we tell".

If nothing else, because Luna, of all people, would understand just how much of a motivation the Worms are, and besides, Luna of all people knows exactly for how long we've been preparing to switch sides.

Really, the first really dubious thing we do (and to this day the most dubious one) is PTNing Luna, but Luna knows that immediately afterwards we've begun working on repairing the damage we've dealt.

Likewise, Luna knows what Lores are, and should understand just how capable Velvet is, and if Velvet goes "no, compared to Master I'm barely a foal trying to speak her first word" Luna would understand just how much gravity it carries.

Also, I'm reasonably certain we can ask Baldomare to show Luna a hint of what "being a Name" means.

All in all, I don't think we can hide much from Luna, as she already should know that she was attacked with Lores (or very soon learn that), and that Velvet knew about the Lores since at least a couple months later (because she was teaching them her, and also "Velvet doesn't dream, not like normal ponies do"), and that for some reason she didn't just go to Celestia, and that to Luna our explanations will sound like more than just excuses.

Also, if we fail to convince Luna we are dead anyway, we have no counters to her and no way in Tartarus Velvet will be able to fight her family.

From that position, with implicit, if not explicit approval on Lores, everything should become much easier, if nothing else. Even if Velvet can't control government decision on "should Lores be allowed", Luna should be able to.

 

[Shaper47]

I... can you please rephrase your question? I honestly am not entirely sure of what you mean by that.

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There's been a lot of debate about how long it would be till we can heal our scar if it is revealed. A lot of people here are under the impression that the wait would be two turns as when Luna wakes up she can excuse it. Or maybe 6 turns at absolute maximum if Velvet needs to launder the lores.

Me and some other people disagree and think it will be 10 to 15 turns before we can possibly heal our scar if it gets revealed now at best.

Basically how risky does Velvet think it is to launder the lores? What does Velvet think the chances are that she will be part of the investigation of the lores and have access to knowledge relating to it (the 2 to 6 turn people think it will be totally under our control while me and the other think Velvet's a bureaucrat and Celestia has magical masters not busy running the pony FBI)? What does Velvet think the risks of her casting the ritual once the lores are known to Celestia are, I.e. can Celestia tell what Velvet's Lore Levels are and will they be given away if she casts such a thing straight away (I.e. we could sense Lore Levels back when we were first starting could Celestia?) Or do we need to wait for a year to pretend we've been studying the lores in that time?

Which time frame does Velcet think is more likely?

 

[jelloloaf]

Luna was attacked in the space between Turns 4 and 5. Almost a year ago. So "the party that attacked Luna" did something way back then.
Did Celestia investigate it in the meantime? Does she have any clues about it that you are not aware of? You do not know.
But IF Celestia learns of the Lores, she will also learn how to cast The Path Through Nightmares the same way you do, as well as every other ritual that is not Reflection of the Tapestry.
And IF she connects the dots, she will know for sure that Lore Practitioners attacked her sister all the way back in Turn 4. Consequently, she will know there have been Lore practitioners running around for at least a year, and probably far longer than that.
And IF she also realizes you were able to use Lores BEFORE you had a credible, untainted source of knowledge, she will assume you were one such Lore practitioner.

That is what I have in my mind. If you can break that chain of logic, you are golden.

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Okay, this is something we can do. This is being sneaky, something that we are notably good at. I see two possible paths here; one where we show off Lore knowledge and one where we don't.

First; the path where we don't reveal lore knowledge. We don't ever say that we are Lore practitioners, which slows down the Bureau's Lore development greatly. But, I feel like we might be able to make them more excited to get a hold of it, by telling Cadence about the Forge's Redemption.

Step 1: Show Cadence the scar. Based off of Rarity's reaction, it looks very bad, and we know that Cadence considers us a friend, so she will almost certainly be very sympathetic.

Step 2: Tell her that we found this very old book at an auction with our Uncle Steppes; it mentioned an obscure ritual called "The Forge's Redemption" that might be able to heal us. Of course, we've been looking into this; why wouldn't we want to get healed? It's only been academic so far, we don't have the ability to actually perform it. We just know that it exists, and it doesn't use regular magic, somehow.

Step 3: Say that we'd especially like to continue looking in to this. In addition to being a big thing for us personally, it might work on Shining's horn! Perhaps we could get a few of the Bureau researchers to look at it, as we'll probably be much too busy doing administration. (We already know that Cadence is willing to pull rank when it comes to Shining, as seen by him not going and searching the dangerous areas for Luna.)

At this point, we have told Cadence that the ritual exists and that it would probably be helpful, but we have lied about knowing how to perform it. We need to get the Lore knowledge to the Bureau somehow. That could be done in a lot of different ways, but I feel like planting Lore manuscripts somewhere that we already want to search would be best. If it was obtained through a cult raid, it would probably be treated with a lot more suspicion.

However, that's just one possible path. What if we did reveal lore knowledge? How would we do that without suspicion? I think we might be able to use our higher education as a lever for this. We know that most ponies don't go to a university, so the fact that we did, combined with our "Well Read" trait gives us a verifiable history as an academic. And what do academics like? Researching things. We've been spending the last few months (Notably; less than a year) looking into this strange system of prehistoric magic. We can even show her an old book we found and translated (Uncle Steppes carrying again ). This hopefully gives us a somewhat trustworthy reason to be aware of the Lores. Even if we have to turn everything over to Bureau researchers, they get a big head start from all of our notes. As for why we never came forward with information about The Path Through The Nightmares, I believe that almost nobody actually knows what happened to Luna, other than that she disappeared. Why would our first reaction to learning about this ritual be to report it when there's no evidence of it ever having been cast in the last thousand years?

 

[Earth-Destroyer]

Honestly the best thing we could do for selling the lores is have Mareinette recreate the true hearth's warming eve ritual. Depending on how intricate it is potentially anyone with a bit of lore knowledge could figure out the ritual just from having seen incomplete version that exist today, everybody knows just from living.

 

[Byzantine]

Step 1: Show Cadence the scar. Based off of Rarity's reaction, it looks very bad, and we know that Cadence considers us a friend, so she will almost certainly be very sympathetic.

Step 2: Tell her that we found this very old book at an auction with our Uncle Steppes; it mentioned an obscure ritual called "The Forge's Redemption" that might be able to heal us. Of course, we've been looking into this; why wouldn't we want to get healed? It's only been academic so far, we don't have the ability to actually perform it. We just know that it exists, and it doesn't use regular magic, somehow.

Step 3: Say that we'd especially like to continue looking in to this. In addition to being a big thing for us personally, it might work on Shining's horn! Perhaps we could get a few of the Bureau researchers to look at it, as we'll probably be much too busy doing administration. (We already know that Cadence is willing to pull rank when it comes to Shining, as seen by him not going and searching the dangerous areas for Luna.)

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Plan: Refuge in audacity.

It's actually workable, though it would help if we had actually read that Lantern book first, lol. Easier to have proof that we 'just happened across it'.

But this doesn't excuse us being too deep in the lores now, so in practice this isn't too different from seeding an expedition site. We know that just the two-circle ritual is enough to derive Forge's redemption from first principals to anyone with any lore knowledge, so we don't need anything too specialized for that.

 

[Shaper47]

and then finding a way to 'rebind' her after 3 turns, so we can be pretty confident we won't bbextra Health hits from her

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There's only so many ways to interpret that she would like to barging for our blood to drink and that she gave us a wound by drinking our blood.

We can even show her an old book we found and translated (Uncle Steppes carrying again

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Translated how? Because we translated it though Lantern hax which runs straight into the issue of us knowing the lores beforehand.

Tell her that we found this very old book at an auction with our Uncle Steppes; it mentioned an obscure ritual called "The Forge's Redemption" that might be able to heal us.

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Does the book even have such a reference? Making something up when they can just check the sorce material at hand is a bad plan.

 

[jelloloaf]

But this doesn't excuse us being too deep in the lores now, so in practice this isn't too different from seeding an expedition site. We know that just the two-circle ritual is enough to derive Forge's redemption from first principals to anyone with any lore knowledge, so we don't need anything too specialized for that.

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It's not meant to convey the Lores to the Bureau, it's to put the idea in Cadence's head that it can be used for good things. If her first encounter with rituals is an angry Celestia screaming about how they hurt her sister, she will understandably be less excited about doing one.

 

[w34v3r]

I just don't see why we can't lie about when/where we get the ritual we want to use? We can just 'find' a copy in one of our investigations. Just slip it into some evidence or whatever and then 'copy' it because it looked neat and there's no rules against it.

We don't need to explain that magical rituals are a thing, we don't need to explain being good at finding wierd magic stuff, we're getting hired because Cadence already knows we have a strange knack for this stuff.

 

[jelloloaf]

Does the book even have such a reference? Making something up when they can just check the sorce material at hand is a bad plan.

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We don't need to show off the same book we bought, we just need proof that we got it legitimately. Steppes saw us buy an old book - he was there with us. But, he didn't read it. He doesn't know what it says. We can say that it was about whatever we want.

 

[Shaper47]

We can say that it was about whatever we want.

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That still doesn't change the fact that when Celestia demands that we hand over the book we're fucked.

 

[jelloloaf]

Translated how? Because we translated it though Lantern hax which runs straight into the issue of us knowing the lores beforehand.

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The same way anyone translates things; hard work and determination. If they want us to show off our translating skills, we can go ahead and do so. There's no neon glow that comes from Lantern translating, so for all they know, we really do know a little of how this language is written.

 

[Ericwinter]

Mm, the way I see it, Luna's return has one of four outcomes.

A: She retains her memories, Lore levels, and believes the Lores are usable.

B: She retains her memories and Lore levels, and doesn't believe they're usable.

C: She doesn't retain her memories and Lore levels.

D: She retains her Lore memories and Lore levels, wants to use them for herself, but for some crazy reason doesn't want to use them on Velvet or any of the other people who could use a Redemption ritual.

B through D means we have much bigger problems than low health. A means I can't really see a reason why we couldn't do the ritual because the issue isn't the Lores themselves, it's that anybody else knowing the Lores before they are made public might be connected to Luna's attackers.

 

[Mage of Eyes]

We don't need to show off the same book we bought, we just need proof that we got it legitimately.

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'Yeah sure I totally have a reason to know lores before! I... read it in a book, yes. No, I can't show it, but my uncle saw me buy it?"
Look, this is 100% suspicious.
Like, making our summon write it and planting it in the past with SH6 shenanigans is more likely than this working.

There's no neon glow that comes from Lantern translating, so for all they know, we really do know a little of how this language is written.

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Do we, or anyone from this era for that matter, even know what language this is? Where could we have learned that?
That would need further research.

 

[jelloloaf]

That still doesn't change the fact that when Celestia demands that we hand over the book we're fucked.

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Good point. This is just the first way of putting the idea into Cadence's head that rituals can be used for good that I came up with. Perhaps someone else has a much better one. But I feel like we need to move fast if we want to have the first impression.

 

[jelloloaf]

'Yeah sure I totally have a reason to know lores before! I... read it in a book, yes. No, I can't show it, but my uncle saw me buy it?"
Look, this is 100% suspicious.
Like, making our summon write it and planting it in the past with SH6 shenanigans is more likely than this working.

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Perhaps I'm too deep in Moth right now, making needlessly complex plans. Anyone got some Lantern to subvert it?

 

[Starlit Horizon]

Mm, the way I see it, Luna's return has one of four outcomes.

A: She retains her memories, Lore levels, and believes the Lores are usable.

B: She retains her memories and Lore levels, and doesn't believe they're usable.

C: She doesn't retain her memories and Lore levels.

D: She retains her Lore memories and Lore levels, wants to use them for herself, but for some crazy reason doesn't want to use them on Velvet or any of the other people who could use a Redemption ritual.

B through D means we have much bigger problems than low health. A means I can't really see a reason why we couldn't do the ritual because the issue isn't the Lores themselves, it's that anybody else knowing the Lores before they are made public might be connected to Luna's attackers.

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We can also include "E: Luna can't introduce them to Celestia because Celestia is that unreasonable."

It isn't very likely, practically speaking, but it is technically a possibility?

And if Celestia is that much of Angry Sun Horse that even her sister can't reason with her we too will have bigger problems, thought.

 

[w34v3r]

We investigate things, plant some of our lore writings, edited to disguise our style and voice, maybe run them through the daughter, baldomare, copper, or something, and then say we're learning from them. Hell we could 'hire' a summons to act as a consultant on this stuff so we can just claim we've been pestering them.

 

[Mage of Eyes]

Perhaps I'm too deep in Moth right now, making needlessly complex plans. Anyone got some Lantern to subvert it?

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We plant some lore (about alchemy, probably. maybe in an ancient but known to ponies language if we make baldomare write it ), in a "cult cell", our agents discover it, we make an excuse for us researching it (for example, being a mare of expert learning who likes mysteries and knows a lot about history), we present that as how we started learning. Then, over the months, draw some parallels with normal science and whatnot (our manifests — how we understood it deeper).

 

[Alex Sol]

Can't any of summoned Names cast Forge Redemption instead of Velvet? If Celestia finds some issues with it we can pretend to arrest them, allow Celestia to immolate them, or sacrifice them in any other appropriate fashion to throw suspicion off Velvet. Like say we summon Marenette, arrest her, have her claim to have Lore knowledge, then have her perform ritual to verify her claims.

 

[BirdBodhisattva]

We gained Lore scraps from books we purchased from merchants. Do you imply they are connected to some evil cultists? Or may be there actually are some genuine sources of Lores in open circulation?

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No?

You gain Lore scraps from regular books because you have additional context. You know about Knock, then you read a book about a thieve, and then you gleam another practical way of using Knock. Or you know about Forge, and you read a book about machines, and then you understand why machines work better because you know an eldritch secret that the author didn't.

Which time frame does Velcet think is more likely?

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Ah, I get it now, thank you.

Unfortunately, she has no idea.

Anyone got some Lantern to subvert it?

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Of all the plans I have seen so far, just seeding Lore knowledge somewhere and having your agents find it seems to be the best.

It just has a glaringly large problem that some of you have already pointed out.

 

[That-Random-Guy]

There's only so many ways to interpret that she would like to barging for our blood to drink and that she gave us a wound by drinking our blood.

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Dude.

-Upon successful completion of the ritual, Mareinette will be bound and obedient like a regular summon.
-However, her bindings will only last for three whole turns. It will be necessary to rebind her, somehow, once that time is up.

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Like a normal summon. That's Minion-type control.

Shaper47, holding aloft every comment or thought someone has in favor of your desired path is not, actually, good argumentation. There is a reason why people keep getting angry at you.