To New Horizons

The time passes with ease, a few early drinkers came in, got piss drunk, and left with little issue. At the end of the day the bar brought in around three hundred copper bits, the restaurant pulled in about a hundred copper bits and each of you earned about fifty bits copper each in tips. All around not a bad day. For a day cut short. A few folks even rented a room for the night. Another ten bits there for you guys.

Compared to other economy’s you always appreciated the lack of inflation in Equestria. By your calculations, it was about five, ten or fifteen copper bits a tankard, depending on whatever they were drinking. Ten copper made a silver bit, ten silver bit’s made a gold bit, and ten gold bits made a platinum. To pay for the bars expenses at the end of the month you’d need to rake in at least two platinum bits. Or two thousand copper bits. An extra five hundred copper bits for food and drink funds.

Considering it’s only the beginning of the month, and considering you only work Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You should make your marker by the end of the month. Assuming ponies spend this much every night your open. Then you had to factor in the two hundred copper bit guild subsidy and the fifty copper bit subsidy for running a business with friends clause in commercial taxation. You never really understood why the government would give you guys fifty bits each for running a business with friends.

You also wondered why there was no real residential taxation in Equestria. As long as you have a job they don’t tax your residence. It’s probably why they tax the Tartarus outta businesses and totally not because an external force got tired of doing actuarial math to try and work numbers around to make a story work. Nah, has to be a heavy reliance on business taxation.

Anyway ya, you’d easily make this month’s expenses. Any excess bits accumulated by the bar and inn are evenly distributed amidst the guild members, and if it can’t be divided by three, you’d subtract x amount of bits to make it so, and give those extra bits to the next traveling performer that doesn’t suck.

As your working out these calculations on a notepad behind your bar counter you hear a knock on the bar door. It wasn’t locked. Your guild was expecting company after all. You look up and notice that Starfire and Eclipse had already made their way up to the guild hall. Probably for the best, they never liked interrupting you while you handled financial junk. Another knock on the front door to the bar interrupted your thoughts again.

“It's open!” You yell as you finish up the last of your calculations and hide the notepad from sight. The door opens and Applejack peeks her head in while the four filly’s attempt to peer in through a window. “I…. hope we ain’t interrupting nothing.” Applejack states as her, Rainbow Dash, Twilight and the four filly’s walk into the bar.

“Nah, not at all. I was just finishing up boring accounting junk. Lock the door behind you and follow me, i’ll take y’all up to the guild hall.” You say as you finish up your work and begin cleaning the counter one last time. “Finally! I’ve been itching to get that whole waiting thing over with!” Rainbow Dash exclaims as Twilight uses her magic to close and lock the door behind them. You finish up cleaning off the counter and lead the way up to the guild hall. Whirlwind for some reason seemed a little more confident.

“So…. You guy’s travel a lot?” Twilight asks as you all begin to ascend the first staircase. “Oh ya me and Star have been all over the place. But the bar takes a lot of the guilds time, but we do shut the doors once we catch a lead on an adventure we know we can recoup our loss in bar revenue.” You state matter of factly, but still with a small sense of pride. “Oh, so you don’t do it just for the chance of discovery?” Twilight asks, her ears falling to her head a little. This prompts Rainbow to join in. “Or the thrill of adventure!?!”

“Well, of course, we do! It's just that we need to keep the bar and in extension the guild, well. Funded. So we try to sell to the Canterlot museums. Again we’ve mostly been doing local stuff and been getting paid that way. So we really haven’t been able to find anything in the way of artifacts.” You say, realizing just how new your guild really is around here.

You make it to the second floor and wait for everyone to make it up before locking the door behind them. “Well, if you ever come across anything interesting in your travels, feel free to drop by my library. I’ll gladly help you guy’s study it.” Twilight offered with a smile across her face. “I wasn't aware Ponyville had a library. We’ll have to take ya up on that. Where is your library anyway?” You ask as you start walking up the next flight of stairs.

“Oh, I live in the hollowed out tree at the edge of town. It's called the Golden Oak library, you can’t miss it.” She starts walking alongside you now. “Do you by chance have anything related to the basics of old ponish?” You ask, causing Twilight’s smile to grow even wider, she began to giddily hop about as the entire group made it to the top of the staircase. The door to the guild hall was closed and you decided to wait before opening the door.

“Your studying old ponish too!? I never thought ANYPONY in town would be interested in researching anything outta interest! It…. is out of interest. Right?” Twilight asks, causing Rainbow Dash and Applejack to roll their eyes. “Why of course! We’re probably going to run across a lot of old languages in our travels. It's best we be prepared unless we want to….” You almost begin your own little nerd tirade, but a loud cough from Applejack with a distinct, hurry the buck up glare stops you.

You look back at Twilight and then you both look back at the group with an uneasy smile. “Sorry. Let's get this going, shall we?” You apologize as you place a hoof on the door and push it wide open. “Finally.” Rainbow Dash murmurs as you all walk into the guild hall.

Upon inspection, Starfire and Eclipse were sitting around the war table. They were playing cards and already gambling their tips away from today. You can’t really tell who’s winning but your sudden entrance gets them both to look up at you, and with a nervous smile they slide their bits back into their respective coin sacks. You roll your eyes as you notice they both are already in their adventuring outfits.

Starfire was wearing her reinforced leather armor. Instead of tanning it like most ponies did, your guild reinforced your armor with steel and dyed the leather to give each set a unique look to it. This way it allowed for a perfect balance of mobility, protection, and comfort. Starfire’s armor had a little bit of a personal touch to it. She had an emblem painted of the sun on both of her shoulder plates while also having her own cutie mark painted into the steel guarding her flank. The blue dyed leather bordered every steel plate across her body.

On her back she carried her bolts and quiver, her crossbow was left on the table, seemingly being lightly maintenance. At her side was her shortsword. From your sparring matches together you knew the lower part of the blade had an engraving of the sun as well. Eclipse however preferred an even lighter option. He generally traveled while wearing nothing more than a jacket and an assortment of bags to carry back his findings from your adventures.

Luckily this time he’s only wearing his satchel bag. Eclipse didn’t own anything substantial for weaponry, he was the group magician after all. But ever since you gave him a dagger for his last birthday, he’s never let it leave his side on adventures. It’s always made you feel good that he finds it so useful or he’s at least appreciated it so much.

Once inside you shut the door behind you all. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Whirlwind all ran over to Starfire and began badgering her with questions. You chuckle at this remembering the lessons you promised them, you’d have to keep it brief. Applejacks issue took priority for the moment, perhaps tomorrow you can really teach these filly’s something.

You look over to the three mares who were now staring at you, looking a little lost in your guild hall. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to get my adventuring gear. Make yourselves at home.” You say as you gesture toward the table. Eclipse being the gentlecolt, used his magic to pull out some chairs for them. “Applejack gets the chair at the end of the table since she is the one who called us all here.” Eclipse states as you make your way into your guild room.

You carefully shut the door behind you as you enter, giving the room a quick once over to make sure nobody’s been going through your stuff. The room was relatively small. The door out was tucked into the left corner of the room. On the left wall was your bookshelf. Where you kept a few Daring doo novels, and a couple trinkets from Cloudsdale. Nothing really special over there. On the opposite side of the wall, you had a desk with a cloud chair overlooking a window out to the horizon.

On the desk, you had a few books about early Equestrian history and another book about Ponyville constellations. After a long day of adventuring, you’d tend to either fly about or relax and watch the stars go by, contemplating why the universe is, well…. The way it is. Nothing truly revolutionary. To the right of that in the corner is really what you're here for.

Your armor on its stand and your shield on the floor nearby. The armor was nearly identical to Starfires minus a few personal touches, first off the flank plate had your cutie mark and the shoulder plate had a crescent moon painted into it instead of the sun. On top of that, you had the leather for your armor dyed red, and you bought a red bandana to easily complement it. Plus your armor had two slits in the back big enough for you to slide your wings in and out of.

Your shield was a small steel cavalry shield. Big enough to provide yourself a little bit of cover, but small enough to not be an uncomfortable burden when you put it on your back during flight.

You trotted your way over to it an looked over to the right side of the room, making sure your cloud bed was truly undisturbed. It wasn’t, your sword was even where you left it too. Leaned up next to the wall mostly in its sheath. It stook out just enough for you to see the crescent moon you had engraved into the blade near the handle. With enough time wasted you decide to gear up.