Fanfic / Pony Age Origins

The Ponyspawn have invaded Equestria, and it is up to the newest addition to the Grey Wardens, Twilight Sparkle, to find the means to drive them back! With her friends and allies at her side, can Twilight defeat the evil tide before all of Equestria is devoured?

Pony Age: Origins by OmegaPony11 is a Dragon Age: Origins / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic crossover fanfic. As expected, the peoples of Thedas are replaced with ponies, donkeys, buffaloes and other creatures of Equus; your main cast has Twilight Sparkle as a Mage Origin Player Character, Applejack taking Alistair's role, Rarity in Morrigan's role, Fluttershy in Leliana's role, Pinkie Pie in Sten's role, Rainbow Dash in Zevran's role, Trixie in Wynne's role, Spike in Dog's role, and Shale and Oghren as essentially Equestrian-ised versions of themselves.

---

This fanfic contains examples of:

• Affably Evil: The Sloth Demon.
• Already Done for You: Artistic Finish, depicted here as Photo Finish taking the role of Marjolaine, isn't a boss in the main story, as Fluttershy kills her at the end of the Fluttershy's Song interlude.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Among other, more serious crimes, Fluttershy is also charged with loitering.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: Twilight passes out from one gulp of Oghren's booze.
• Composite Character: Pinkie Pie here blends both Sten and Hawke. She's the one found in the cage outside the village of Ponyring^note Lothering, but she's actually a resident guardspony there whose family fled to Geldwall^note Kirkwall.
• Driven to Suicide: Hespith killed herself by hanging rather than face becoming a broodmare.
• Due to the Dead: Oghren does this twice, with Ruck after Twilight mercy kills him and after he kills Branka when she shows that she won't be deterred from the Storm Forge. Both times involves burying them in stone and making sure the makeshift tombs solidly set.
• Egopolis: Orzamule was founded by Orza, who was a mule. A guard explains that, as he was a mule, there were no successors^note Most mules are infertile., leading to a hell of a Succession Crisis after the kingdom's founding.
• Eye Scream: How they kill the high dragon. It involves Applejack shoving a sword into its eye followed up by Twilight and Trixie shooting super-charged magic lightning at it.
• Fighting Your Friend: At the Storm Forge^note Anvil of the Void, the group finds themselves having to fight Shale and Caridin along with all the other golems when Branka takes control of them.
• Flaming Sword: Spike has one.
• Healing Shiv: With her piece of the Mane of Stars, Pinkie makes a healing grenade.
• Knighting: Applejack knights Spike some time after she reveals that she's a royal bastard.
• Locked into Strangeness: Twilight gets a streak of white in her mane after Branka almost turns her into a golem.
• Magic Antidote: The Mane of Stars, taking the place of Andraste's Ashes. So far, it's healed Trixie's crippled leg, Big Macintosh's poisoning, Apple Bloom's possession, and Rarity's taint.
• Magic Knight: Twilight sets out to be this after her staff breaks when fighting Branka and finds herself at a disadvantage against magically resistant fighter-type opponents like donkeys.
• The Magnificent: We have two: The Great and Powerful Trixie and The Mighty and Invincible Shale.
• Mercy Kill: According to the Chant, Luna was killed by a Unicorn Imperium^note Tevinter Imperium pony who took pity at her plight when she was being burned at the stake. This contributed to his becoming the first convert from worshiping the Old Ones to Celestia and Luna.
  • One we actually see is when Twilight kills Ruck, at the latter's insistence.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Happens thrice: The first is when the group replaces their worn out starter equipment with better stuff from Red Apple^note Redcliffe Castle's armory. After that stuff gets thrashed, they find some enchanted items from the high dragon's hoard in the Haven stand-in. And after that, Caridin gives them some new gear to help them along in their fight against the Blight.
• Miles Gloriosus: King Blueblood, unlike King Cailan, is something of a coward for all of his bluster.
• My Celestia, What Have I Done?: Spike goes through this when he hears about what happens to Grey Wardens, particularly the shortened life-span that ends with dying either of the taint or of fighting in the ^note Deep Roads. This is because he pushed for Twilight to join back in Unicorn Tower^note The Circle of Magi when Duncan was there for recruitment.
• Mythology Gag: Rainbow Dash complains that the health poultices tastes like "bleagh". Twilight points out that poultices are meant to be applied to wounds rather than consumed, as is the case in Dragon Age: Origins.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After Arl Macintosh^note taking the role of Arl Eamon is poisoned by a maleficar sent by Arl Maim^note Arl Howe, the Cutie Mark Crusaders try to help him by giving Apple Bloom a false horn so that she and Sweetie Bell can heal Big Mac. This results in Apple Bloom's possession and the town of Appleloosa^note taking the place of Redcliffe Village being besieged by zombies.
• No-Sell: When Branka takes control of all of the golems, including Shale and Caridin, the group finds that their weapons only barely scratch them. In the same fight, Twilight gets her tail handed to her by Branka, who's resistant to magic by default as a donkey, and that's boosted further by the lyrium she consumed while down there.
• Recruiters Always Lie: As with canon, Duncan still withholds all of the details from the recruits. This is subverted later with Twilight and Applejack, who tell Rainbow Dash what being a Grey Warden entails after the latter gets tainted during their fight with the broodmare^note the broodmother and urges that her Star Strand be used to heal Rarity instead; this causes Spike to go through the above-mentioned moment.
• Suicide by Cop: Twister the Dalish Pegasus from Fluttershy's Song. Dies after taking out Artistic Finish's goons, but it's revealed that she's actually a Seeker who was dying of a disease and chose to risk to take the mission of bringing Fluttershy to the convent bordering Equestria and, on the way, meet death on her own terms.
• Take a Third Option: Instead of crowning either Bhelen or Harrowmount, as the group can't stand to ally with either of them, Shale and Oghren crowns the Senate's Speaker, Cranky Doodle, as the new king of Orzamule.
• The Time of Myths: Princess Luna, according to the Diamond Dogs' version of the Chant, descended from Canterlot and fought the Old Ones. There are six of them and they're all dragons. They only ever came to stalemates until Luna tapped into the darker powers of the moon and became Nightmare Moon, after which she was able to kill five of them. Only five, because Asha'bellanar ran and hid.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Pinkie Pie's weapons of choice are explosives.
• Tragic Monster: The High Dragon living in the resting place of Luna's mane. It didn't even seem that bad; it only attacked them because it was driven mad by Lockjaw's horn.