Eyes for Staring, Teeth for Tearing, Flesh for Wearing
Case No. 0019, File No. 0000
Starry Night had always been a profound young unicorn constantly on the hocks of something new and exciting. Science fairs always resulted in jealous classmates and envious parents, tests and quizzes produced the same results. Though he was not well liked in the socially competitive city of Canterlot, his so-called 'friends' learned from their parents to flock to the pony that held the power.
Blissfully unaware, Starry's companions never once betrayed him or talked ill of him, not to his muzzle, anyway. As a young colt, Starry was scatter-brained, socially inept, and mind-numbingly brilliant to those around him. To himself he was busy, too busy for social posing, and much more intelligent than his dear friends. Time passed on as he continued to impress and astound the nobles of Canterlot, even attracting the attention of Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. As a test, they gave the fifteen-year-old Starry one decade and eight-thousand bits to earn himself a free education.
Starry Night set to work, intending to wow more than a few headmasters.
Six years passed him by, and in that time he had set himself to studying runesmithing, alchemy, and advanced thaumaturgics. He used a combination of the three, attempting to develop alternative power sources to magical crystals, lightning, and water power. It was this fervent tinkering and fiddling for those six years that awarded him with the ash-spark accelerator, an ingenious device that ran a variety of powdered chemicals through three rings, each corresponding to a different task.
The first charged the powder amalgamation with latent magical energy that was found in the air of the world itself. The second slowed the particles' acceleration using a weak time spell, allowing the charged powder to clump for an instant, letting the magical energy arc about the powder. The final ring peeled the layered magical energy from the powder and propelled it forwards, repeating the process.
When he presented it with four years to spare, he also coupled with it the remaining six-thousand nine-hundred bits left over. This feat had thaumaturgic researchers from Equestria and beyond scrambling to attain the manufacture rights to what was–essentially–an eternal source of weak magical energy. With the right scale and enough tweaking, entire cities could be powered by Starry's device.
Word of the twenty-one-year-old colt that had achieved boundless magical energy brought the Princess of Magic and Friendship into play. Twilight Sparkle herself, the budding Princess of Equestria, took special interest in the colt. With permission from Princesses Celestia and Luna, Twilight Sparkle placed the brilliant colt into an intermediate magical engineering and spell production class.
Five years of skipped classes, seventy-eight arcanomechanical breakthroughs, and three previously uncompleted spells resolved, and Starry Night had graduated at the top of his class. Accolades and awards poured from several international Arcane Universities, but all praise paled in comparison to the offers he received from Princess Twilight Sparkle herself: the position as Head Researcher for the Emerging Magics Division of Arcane Science, and as a Professor of the Exotic Arcane Arts at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.
The young stallion immediately accepted, taking immediate steps to assert his position as a respected individual in both his roles as teacher and scientist. Bridging the gaps between his experiments and his lessons, Starry Night pushed the idea of magic from beyond Equestria's borders being taught in the prodigious School.
His methods and topics caused many Unicorns to drop from his classes and several more Professors to shun him from their circles. The stallion was not swayed from his path, however, and continued to delve into the details of Zebrican rites, Griffonian invocations, Minotaur summoning chants, and, most controversial of all: Thestral hemomancy.
However, despite the practices of the occult and strange, Princess Twilight Sparkle continued to fund and back Starry Night's extremely interesting experiments. Healing spells, defensive and offensive incantations, and simple arcane machines of various sizes and purposes constantly landed on the Palace's doorstep, each with a letter attached. The letters were always brief, never punctuated correctly, and scarcely used 'dear' or mentioned the Princesses names. They were signed with an 'S' and an 'N' and nothing more.
Such was the stallion's style, lacking flair and decorum and instead cutting right to what needed to be said. He wasn't very well-liked by the nobility, but with financial support being provided by the Royal Treasury, he had no need for such friends. So it was that he became a figure none even attempted to approach by many of the middle-class nobility, while the lower tiers fumbled about naively trying to impress or woo him while the upper crusts struggled to utilize his close position with the Princesses to further their own agendas.
To say Starry Night was an elusive and extremely desirable social resource in Canterlot was an understatement.
However, he could never be bought out, persuaded, or caught in a noble's mad lies, and this fact did so infuriate them. So it was that he lived like a noble, yet never associated with them–or anyone else, for that matter. His friends slowly fell away as months went by, and he buried his deep-seated loneliness and bitterness in experiments, studies, and the classroom. His students were his last outlets for his need of conversation and companionship, and because of this, he became quite popular among them. The void became full, and teaching became a treat to him according to Princess Twilight Sparkle.
It went on like this for some time, with Starry Night experiencing nothing but mindless surveying of magic with bright spots provided by his students. However, after a discovery the Professor claimed to be revolutionary, he disappeared. His excitement became great in the last few days before he vanished as he ranted of impossible beings and outer worlds, and of the powers they held. He became determined to unlock their secrets, and so he had hidden himself away to focus solely on his research.
The disappearance of such a treasured figure has brought Princesses Luna and Twilight Sparkle to seek me out. They're offering me quite a hefty sum of bits to investigate the professor's disappearance, and they want it done quietly. No publicity, no tracks, no paperwork... No Princess Celestia. A deposit of thirty-thousand bits and the "national security" excuse convinced me to go along. They won't ask questions, they won't impede my methods, and Princess Luna has assured me that I'll have enough bits to buy an island and the affections of some pretty mares?
I'm sold.
I'll be combing over Starry Night's office and home beginning tomorrow, and I've been granted full access to the School as well as any personal effects and research belonging to the missing victim. Caution is paramount, this is a sought-after professor with a lot of enemies in Canterlot.
I think I'll buy an island off of Griffonstone, land's cheap over there.
Sliphoof signing off.
