The Tears of Gaia. An artifact of unmeasurable magical power from the Ancient Days, when the Others ruled the land. If found, they would be the discovery of the century! At least, those are Twilight Sparkle's thoughts. But something is stirring in lands to the south. Soon she will find that she and her friends are not the only ones who are after the legendary Tears. And so what starts as a simple research trip is soon to escalate into the greatest journey of the young ponies' lives, filled with new friends and foes, incredible danger and great adventure!
This is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction written by Redback Spino
. It can be read here. It has an audio book here.
This fanfic contains examples of:
- Back from the Dead: Starswirl the Bearded was revived by Celestia to aid the Mane Six in recovering the Tears of Gaia.
- Blessed with Suck: Tharos, the dragon guarding the way to the Tears, had a spell placed on him that granted him Resurrective Immortality — he can't die, but sees this as a curse, as he's forced to live with the shame of all the times he's been defeated. The curse is eventually broken when Tharos is defeated, but Fluttershy chooses to spare his life. He dies, permanently, by sacrificing himself to save the ponies from a Blight ambush.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: The Blightlings. They are corrupted by the Blight and are ordered to convert the other races to their side or, if they don't want to be converted, kill them mercilessly. Some do have a certain degree of free-will, especially among the higher ranks though.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Rowanoak does this at the end of chapter 4, addressing the readers directly....But not before she paused briefly to turn back again and look at you:
"Don't look to me for explanations, dear reader. Ye best get after those ponies, see what happens... They got plenty of troubles ahead... If'n only they knew."- She then does it again in the epilogue, addressing the readers and thanking them for reading.
- Combat by Champion: The 3 F's, created by Gellert to determine who's worthy for his respect. They are Flyt, Feast and Fight. Only the griffin king and Rarity managed to beat him yet.
- Flyt involves an insult contest. You heard that right, the combatants just hurl insults towards each other until one of them loses his temper.
- Feast involves feasting. The combatants have to eat without stopping until one stops.
- Fight is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. No claws, no wings, no magic, just a down-and-dirty brawl.
- The Corruption: The Blight. It is an Eldritch Abomination that corrupts an unsuspecting mortal (sometimes even immortals such as the Draconequii from the Creation Myth) by putting part of its essence inside the body to possess. It can also mutate and decompose the living body horribly. And depending on how intelligent the corruption's host is, it can sometimes leave them with nothing but a desire to spread the Blight further.
- Culture Clash: While staying in the griffon city, Twilight, Starswirl, Rarity and Pinkie Pie indulge in a delicious dinner from a nearby foodstall. Turns out the griffons are omnivores, and the food was chicken and mushroom soup. Also providing a bit of a culture clash between the ponies an the griffon town is their more modern technology. For example, while they have no magic of their own, the griffons have devised muskets that shoot lightning, powered by magically-imbued gemstones in place of cartridges.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The ponies go through being constantly hounded by the Blight, attacked by various different monsters on the journey, fighting a dragon, being kidnapped by the Blight, having to deal with a bigoted griffon commander, and even being swept up in a war, but in the end the Mane Six manage to destroy the Blight, find a solution for the problem of the Tears, and save the world. Fluttershy also manages to get Yarrow to move in with her.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Draconequi in the Creation Myth in the first chapter have them as having mixed body parts from all races because they have no preferences to any race. The Blight made them more so, as well as driving them insane.
- The Blight. Is it a disease? A hive mind? A spirit?
- There was one after our heroes took the Tears of Gaia coming out of the rip from the sky in a parallel dimension. All we find out is that it has a booming voice, tentacles, and the ponies mistook one of its eyes for a planet in the sky above them. Oh, and it turns out it's a female as well.. Yikes.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: On the middle of Burzkala's crater, there is a very tall black tower. Inside the very top of the tower is inhabited by the Blight.
- Expy: The author admits that the fanfic contains expies of many old high fantasy stories such as The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and Redwall.
- Starswirl the Bearded is a clear expy of Gandalf.
- King Gideon is basically Prince Vultan as a griffon.
- Rowanoak seems to be based on the myterious mole Polleekin from the Redwall book, Martin the Warrior.
- Fantastic Racism: Gellert the griffin to the ponies. He does improve over time.
- Going Native: Fluttershy is becoming this in Cervidas. Applejack suspected as much.Applejack: C'mon, best leave her to it. She's kinda gone native, Fluttershy has.
- Going to Give It More Energy: This is how Twilight defeats the Blight, she throws the Tears at it, causing it to go into power-overload, exploding and releasing the energy it had absorbed.
- Humanoid Abomination: No humans, but the Blightlings (mortals corrupted by the Blight) are horribly rotted and disfigured versions of their former selves. The Allfather itself is an even worse version of this.
- Jerkass: Gellert the griffin. At first, anyway.
- MacGuffin Delivery Service: Maugoth decides that it'd be safer to let Twilight and her friends find the Tears of Gaia for him, rather than risk any of the potential dangers himself.
- MacGuffin Guardian: Tharos the dragon is the only one other than the Princesses who knows how to open the way to the Tears of Gaia's resting place, and he'll only open it if defeated in battle, but spared by the victor. Said resting place is apparently guarded by some... thing.
- Mass Super-Empowering Event: Downplayed: The destruction of the Tears frees the energy within, which the diffuses over the planet and slightly boosts the magic of all magical beings. Of course, this being the MLP universe, where every creature has at least some sort of passive connection to magic, it makes sense that the energy would be so thinly distributed.
- Mordor: Burzkala. It is a blackened extinct volcano, heavily fortified and inhabited by the Blightlings devoid of any plant-life.
- No Man Should Have This Power: How Twilight solves the problem of the tears. By destroying it in the process of stopping the Blight, the energy is distributed across the entire world, keeping any one being or country from using it for evil.
- Noodle Incident: The Marmalade Incident."Let's just say," Twilight replied, "that it involved a flight spell, a pumpkin, and the fiercest flamingo you've ever seen."
"And marmalade," added Pinkie Pie with a shudder. "So... much... marmalade." - Not So Above It All: Starswirl chastises the others for starting a snowball fight in the middle of their quest... then gets hit with one, and joins in.
- Physical God: According to the Creation Myth, the Alicorns and the Draconequii are all this. But by the time the Blight had been imprisoned, the Draconequi had been turned into insane twisted monsters, and all the Alicorns except Celestia and Luna left the world forever (And Gaia, though she was essentially dead, having become one with the earth itself).
- Power Crystal: The Tears of Gaia. According to the Creation Myth, it is a gem created by Gaia with her own shed tears and the powers of the six Alicorns are stored inside the Tears. The power found inside can be enough to wipe out most of the world. Most nations and the Blight want it in their possession, the other nations for defence and the Blight to expand its influence faster. So much power, in fact, that Twilight's ultimate solution to who should get all that power, is to destroy it, releasing its energy so that everyone in the world gets a bit of it.
- Proud Warrior Race Guys: The griffins. They are also better equipped for warfare than the more peaceful ponies of Equestria.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: Dushtala, one of the Blightling officers from Burzkala who came to watch over the Blightling army in Maudhul. Every Blightling is afraid of him, since he has a record of being brutally efficient in his work.
- Shout-Out: Oh so very many...
- The whole thing feels very much like a Tolkien high-fantasy story, complete with a group of friends led by an old wizard going on a journey, based around a mystical artefact, and ensuring a dark power that has been gone for centuries from getting it.
- Many of the characters are very clearly based on classic fantasy characters, see Expy up above...
- When King Gideon discovers that his son Gordon is alive and in the midst of the battle between the Deerfolk and the Blight, there is only one thing he could possibly say:"GORDON'S ALIVE?!"
- Gellert's Three Challenges are very clearly based on the Challenge of King Bucko Bigbones from the Redwall books.
- The Diamond Dogs that Rarity encounters in the woods have a similar conversation to the three trolls in The Hobbit.
- Two Diamon Dog commanders are named Ziggy and David, in refernc to David Bowie
- In the epilogue, Rowanoak visits Ponyville, and in a moment when she is on her own, she delivers a final monologue to the readers that is very similar to The Stranger's final monologue in The Big Lebowski:"Sure am glad to see she's doin' alright after all this time," she said to you. "She and her friends went through quite a bit, and come out stronger and wiser than ever. Well, that about does it, wraps the whole thing up. Things seemed to work out pretty good fer Twilight an' her friends. Not to mention it made for a pretty decent tale, eh? Now I'm not sure she's aware of y'all out there, hearin' this story. But if she did, I'm sure she'd appreciate ye stickin' around as long as ye have. Takes alot of dedication to wanna stick by her, find out where she'd go next, what adventure she'd run into..." Rowanoak paused a moment and chuckled. "Oh look at me, ramblin' on like the old coot I am. Heh, s'funny, when ye've bin goin' as long as I have, once ye got an attentive audience ye don't wanna stop talking. But I'll let y'all be on yer way now. I hope you've enjoyed yerselves. See you out on the trail." Rowanoak then turned to Mrs Cake as she passed. "Say miss, be a dear and get me some more o' that good sarsaparilla..."
