Sovereign Objection

“There is something that still perplexes me, sister.”

“Is there, now?” As Luna approached the table, Celestia pondered switching to decaf for breakfast.

“I have been reading into advances in natural philosophy...” Celestia sighed with relief. “And many of the modern comforts I have rapidly grown accustomed to are not at all as I first estimated them to be!”

“Is that so?”

“I had initially assumed that the energy that powered the automatic carriages and flameless candles, and this –“ Luna waved a tablet in the air, open to Encyclopedia Equestria’s article on the second law of thermodynamics. “- sorcerous device, was primarily arcane in nature, but that appears to not be the case!”

Celestia chuckled. “Yes, that was something that the philosophers of the Age of Reason discovered fairly rapidly. Magic, for all its surprising properties, is still a form of energy, and there’s only so much one pony can do with their magic before they become exhausted. You could have teams of unicorns pouring energy into, say, a train, but wouldn’t be much more effective than muscle power. Magic – at least the potency of an individual mage – is remarkably difficult to industrialise.”

“Which of course begs the question of where all this energy comes from.”

“I’m sure you’ve encountered this in your reading. The majority of it comes from fossil fuels. The remains of ancient creatures, compressed into an energy dense mineral. We use a lot of fossil materials! You’d be familiar with runelime, which is a core component of anything arcanotechnical these days.”

“Hm! What’s old is new again. I imagine the process is more complicated than inscribing lines with runechalk now.”

“Indeed. Scientists now believe runelime is the result of early arcane lifeforms, piled up in shallow seas and compressed in layers of sediment. Similarly, ancient dragon remains are believed to have created the tellurite and fire rubies that powered the industrial revolution.”

“This makes sense. That our world is much older than it seems is something I have learned.”

”The real game changer, though, was lithogel.”

“Lithogel? The foul tar of Tambelon?”

“In the late 19th century engineers developed techniques to refine it into more useful liquid fuels, as well as useful by-products like plastics. Liquids can be sent in pipes, and a liquid fuel can be used in engines that use the explosive force of the combustion itself rather than boiling water to turn a generator.”

Luna looked a little lost.

“Automatic carriages – cars – can use this fuel to have very small engines, instead of needing a whole train just for propulsion.”

“I see.” She looked like she didn’t.

“In fact the efficiency of lithogel fuels is so great that even heavier machinery like trains and ships and power stations use them, and it can be refined and processed to suit the needs of a variety of different applications.”

“Hm.” Luna nodded. “Interesting.”

“It’s amazing how many of the tools of modern society are just sitting in the ground!”

“So what happens when the lithogel runs out?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Well it’s a fossil fuel, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Lithogel is... ancient slimes I believe.”

“So there is, presumably, a finite amount of it in existence.”

“Ah. Yes. Astute observation, and you are not the first to notice this. In fact the concept of “peak gel” has been mooted as early as the 1960s, a point at which gel production will start declining as reserves run out.”

“And the modern age staggers to a halt.”

“Only if you believe the doomsayers. There are actually an abundance of alternatives that use renewable energy such as windmills and water turbines to turn generators, and new technology like solar panels and large storage batteries. Some of this technology is almost as old as the lithogel revolution itself –“

“I’ll say, windmills have been around for a very long time.”

“– so one of the tasks before our society is orchestrating the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy before it starts affecting us negatively.”

“That would explain this headline.” Luna spun the tablet around to show a headline reading, ‘Truck Drivers Blockade Parliament Over Rising Fuel Prices”.

“Well, that’s the stagnant economy, peak gel isn’t expected to be for another thirty years or so.”

“So production is supposed to go up for another thirty years.”

“Ideally not, but that under current trends, yes.”

“You may have to refresh my memory a little bit, sister, but wasn’t the Tar of Tambelon famously toxic? I seem to recall tales of poison swamps in Tambelon that irreversibly tainted everything they touched. You know, the Vale of Death, where the sky burns, the earth bleeds, and no beast great or small dares to tread?”

Celestia paused for a moment. She gave a couple of false starts.

“And the modern world is built on this.”

“So it’s not as bad as it was.”

Luna’s eyebrows rose.

Celestia sighed. “Yes, lithogel is very poisonous, which is why we are not drinking it. It’s processed to be as clean-burning as it can possibly be, and these days problems like smog and acid rain are a thing of the past in Equestria.”

“Acid what?”

“Tellurite and lithogel that have been burned incompletely has harmful byproducts that get into the air and contaminate the weather system. Tellurite creates a lot of smoke and ash, and lithogel byproducts dissolve in water and turn it acidic. The occupational risk to weather workers was one of the factors behind the Cloudsdale General Strike. It was actually observed in the 1950s that rainbows had turned a different colour - more brown, less vibrant. But, all that changed with the creation of the Office of the Environment in 1970. No more melting statues and blackened spires in Canterlot.”

“So now there’s no harmful side effects of burning lithogel?”

Celestia paused just a moment too long.

“I see.”

“There are less acute effects, yes, but they can be managed. The carbon dioxide emissions from all burned fuels cause the atmosphere to retain heat, which places a greater demand on the weather service – but Equestria has the best weather service in the world, and we’re exporting our services to countries that don’t have a homegrown weather service. Lithogel also has a distorting effect on the aether and exposure to emissions are connected to cases of dysmantia and paramantia, which means we try to keep large industrial combustion away from population centres.”

“This sounds like a lot to put up with when alternatives exist.”

“It’s not that simple, though. Dropping lithogel entirely would require rebuilding the whole country’s infrastructure – the whole world’s infrastructure. Renewable energy sources aren’t portable like lithogel is. Goodness, the way cities are built would have to change. There are cars that run on electrical power, but they’re expensive, limited in range, they take a long time to charge – very inconvenient.”

“Did not Equestria have an extensive train network for decades before the personal motor vehicle?”

“Trains can be electrified much more easily, but it’s not always suitable. A lot of the rail network was built pre-Grail, when the population distribution was different. San Palomino and Mane are extremely poorly connected for their populations, never mind how more remote provinces like Olympia and Everfree are entirely car-dependent. You can’t build a train to every farm.”

Luna frowned. “That was not what I was asserting. Would it not be preferable to have some progress over none?”

Celestia caught herself, and brushed her fringe aside. “This is true. Still, this is a massive undertaking we’re talking about.”

“So the sooner we start, the better, right?”

“Yes, obviously. But there are a lot of stakeholders to consider when making any such plan. Lithogel extraction is a major industry that we’re talking about ceasing entirely. It may take decades! There are hundreds of thousands of jobs in Equestria alone tied up in the industry, never mind downstream industries like plastics and vehicle production.”

“They’re skilled workers, can they not be offered jobs in new industries?”

“Well... that’s not the government’s call. Lithogel is produced by private companies like PalOil and ELG. Many countries had state-owned gel companies, like Capra’s Kozlit, that have since been privatised. So this is something with a lot of business interest tied up in it.”

“Have I charged headlong into another unbreakable pillar of the economy?”

Celestia pulled... a face. “I wouldn’t call it unbreakable. But... if the lithogel industry had its way, we wouldn’t have any renewable projects.”

“That sounds... short-sighted. When the gel runs out, so do their profits, unless they find a new business.”

“Well, from the perspective of an investor, you want a return on your investment, which means profits now, not later.”

“Oh joy, this again.”

“Now if you want to talk about unbreakable pillars of the economy.”

Luna groaned, and shook her head. “On a slightly different subject...”

“Please.”

“How is it that it gets to here from Tambelon?”

“Oh.”

“The last I remember of Tambelon is that it was a shadowland of monsters and barbarians.”

“That is how it was characterised a thousand years ago, yes. Unfortunately its reputation has not really improved since then. For several hundred years the Storm Kingdom ruled much of the region, uniting the various tribes of creatures that lived in the area. It even held dominion over Mt. Aris for a few periods. It was one such conquest that instigated the Great Storm War in 1905, which ended in the dissolution of the Storm Kingdom into a collection of fragmentary republics, none of which have been stable since.”

“I have seen mentions of the Great Storm War as a contributing factor to Sylvanian Independence.”

“Tangent time?”

“Oh, I do love a good tangent.”

“So Mt. Aris as a city-state dates back to antiquity as you’ll know, and was in a decline period when last you remember.”

“Yes.”

“The Storm Kingdom didn’t emerge as a force in the region for a few hundred years after that, by which time Mt. Aris was more of a symbolic capital of the dispersed hippogriff people, and was a relatively easy conquest. Control of Mt. Aris flipped back and forth between the Storm Kingdom and Equestria for a while, since the island’s location meant it effectively controlled the Bay of Storms. The Treaty of Hockenberg in 1730 created the neutral state of Mt. Aris under a Sequestrian royal house to control the bay independently. This was something of a turning point for the region, because after this, trans-oceanic trade became more important, most of which went out of Trottingham, so the Bay of Storms became less strategically useful. Mt. Aris itself wasn’t the most stable either, and they spent a lot of the 19th century in a cycle of revolution and restoration-“

“Oh goodness.”

“- but in that time the Storm Kingdom was turning more towards internal matters. It also had to deal with the colonial projects of the relatively new Capran Republic.”

“Do mine ears deceive me? Colonialism undertaken by a party other than Equestria?”

“You hear correctly! There have been others. After the Great Northern War, Grifreich set out to legitimise itself with colonial projects of its own in Yakyakistan and some Levantine Islands...”

“A lot of these wars seem to be ‘Great’.”

“You should really pay a visit to the Storm War museum in Las Pegasus. Industrialised warfare is...” Celestia gazed into the syrup remnants on her plate for a long moment. “Far beyond any ancient conflict in its intensity.”

Luna looked aside with a sober glance.

“Anyway. The old kings of Capra were overthrown in a revolution in 1780, which led – after some turmoil – to the rise of an industrious republic to our west. And not unlike Grifreich, the young regime sought greatness in amassing colonies. However, Capra is mostly landlocked, so they started at their southern border, with territories at the fringes of the still-feudal and ethnically heterogenous Storm Kingdom. It could be argued that the spread of nationalist ideas from Capra is what ultimately broke the Storm Kingdom apart. But they were incentivised to do so because lithogel refining was first discovered by Capra.”

“Oh yes, we were talking about lithogel and how it’s destroying the world.”

“... The Tambelon Tar is only a part of the Tambelon gel field. Small parts of it are north of the border in parts of Capra and San Palomino.“

“I’m guessing this played a role in provincehood.”

Celestia acknowledged the observation with a nod. “But Capran industrialists saw the potential of lithogel sooner than anyone, and acted to take control of as much of the field as they could from the Storm Kingdom before they could capitalise on it themselves, which instigated its decline.”

“This also explains why you mentioned Kozlit earlier.”

“Which brings us to the Great Storm War. By 1905, lithogel was beginning to replace tellurite as the fuel of choice for the world, and the Bay of Storms was about to become more of a strategic concern. Knowing that his kingdom was in decline, the last Storm King attacked and occupied Mt. Aris, which prompted a response from Equestria to guarantee Mt. Aris’s independence. Such an occupation should have been easy work for the Navigators to deal with, especially in friendly Seaquestrian waters, but the Storm King struck a deal with Agniskar II – who was still the Dragon Lord at this point and had a score to settle from the Great Northern War a hundred years previous – to make it a war on two fronts should Equestria join. What followed was a half decade of brutal air-to-sea battles, fruitless marine invasions of Mt. Aris, trench warfare so close to Las Pegasus that they could hear the artillery, firebombing in Sylvania...” Celestia rubbed her forehead.

Luna thought carefully about what she said next. “I do not know how personally involved you were, and I understand this is likely one of your more difficult memories...”

Celestia looked up apprehensively.

Luna inhaled. “There is one link in the chain that you had the power to break.”

Celestia looked aside. “I think about the decision not to object a lot. The parliament of the time demanded war. None of them remembered the last great war, their idea of conflict was Kwadube’s independence conflict. Most of them thought the matter would be settled by the end of the year. None of us could have predicted the horrific waste of life that was to follow. The conflict didn’t stay contained either, Grifreich got involved on our side, so there was a northern front with dragon attacks on Himmelheim and Trottingham, and this catalysed revolution in Yakyakistan... The strategic importance of Mt. Aris is one thing, but – and I know this is mildly hypocritical – allowing a people to be occupied, to leave my personal friends in House Margot to their fate, is another. At least, that’s how I thought at the time.”

Luna’s hoof had found Celestia’s. “I cannot say with certainty that I would have done otherwise in your position.”

Celestia was impassive.

“So how does the war end?”

She sighed, and nodded. “The war was effectively feudalism’s last stand. It was the ideological thread that connected the Storm Kingdom and Draconia. They lacked any other serious allies, and Equestria’s colonies allowed it to weather the storm until it blew itself out. The goats initially remained neutral, with both sides making territorial offers, but they bade their time until it was clear which way the wind was blowing, and when it became clear that there was nothing to be gained, Agniskar sued for peace, and the Storm Kingdom collapsed entirely.”

“As I expected.”

“Capra made some small territorial gains, and much of the former Storm Kingdom was placed under protectorates to assist in rebuilding – though the result has not been the most successful. Lithogel interests had a significant hand in drawing the boundaries of the protectorates, which compromised any ambitions of national self-determination in the region, and since then... well it’s fairly common for there to be some conflict or crisis in Tambelon. It’s a shame, because the perception of the region from our youth was highly flawed, and there are a lot of rich cultures in the region that have been marked with the legacy of conflict and destruction.”

Luna frowned. “The gel still flows, though.”

“That it does. It plays a major role in the politics of the region. There’s something of a neo-colonial project in the way that Equestrian and Capran gel companies will try to stifle the development of an indigenous state company so as to prevent a rival from arising. To say nothing of the environmental consequences – lithogel pipelines and tankers are easy targets for attack, and when they do get hit, well... those tales of toxic swamps are hardly fantastical. ”

“The Vale of Death is hardly unusual anymore, then.”

“True, but we know more about these phenomena now. Tar spills can be cleaned up.”

“That they happen at all feels like a testament of hubris.”

“This is the way of civilisation. There are many achievements of science that could be interpreted as an offence to nature. Powered flight, for example. When an aeroplane crashes, the results are devastating, because those on board are travelling at speeds that our bodies are not made to withstand – but this is mere physics. Assigning these tragedies mystical properties does nothing but cultivate fear, and fear does not help with their mitigation or prevention.”

“This is true. However, this poetry still fills a need that bureaucratic calculation does not. When a village is rendered unliveable because it is flooded with poison, the statesponies and actuaries I have become familiar with will find ways to accept the unacceptable. To consider it the least worst option, or a cost of ‘business’.”

“Unfortunately ours is the business of deciding the fates of millions, and every decision we make has its price. We do not have the luxury of saving everyone.”

Luna hesitated, then dryly chuckled. “The realm of dreams and the realm of daylight.”

“We do indeed need to dream.”