The Tome of Exalted Ponies

The Celestial Water Dragon stylist commands the fluid of the soup, and the soup of all those around him. You only get to eat soup when the stylist permits it.

…

It took another week before Cash was heard from, a messenger spell of his heralding his return later that same afternoon. It made for a bit of a spectacle as Cash and Sully flew in, not on a yeddim, but on a badly bruised river dragon which Sullen Hoof summarily decapitated the moment they landed, bathing their landing area at the docks in an ocean of blood and spinal fluid.

With Cash immaculately clean thank to the magical artifact he owned which constantly kept him perfectly spotless, while Sully was absolutely soaked in blood, Speaker nearly had a heart attack when he arrived. The rest of the circle was quickly gathered, Shimmer flying in from Great Forks in her seagull form straight into the war room atop the golden pyramid.

Cash presented the circle with some very well-made maps him and Sully had drafted, revealing that the lands around Sperimin proper were completely overgrown, though at night Sullen Hoof and his amazing sense-enhancing charms, had spotted hundreds of camp fires and heard songs in tribal languages beneath the canopies around the city – so there was still a lot of ponies living down there.

“Alright, but no visible huts or structures from on high?” Fire Orchid wondered.

Sullen Hoof nodded: “No, not really – they all mainly live in burrows and can’t make anything more than stone tools and weapons. I snuck around most of the tribes around the city checking that. They’re all pretty heavily mutated too, living that close to the elemental pole of wood. They all worship Rakshi from the looks of it, but that wasn’t the worst of it: A few times I saw groups of large monkeys and apes approach some of the tribal villages. They actually wore clothes and had metal weapons – and spoke in their own language, but one of them, an officer or priest or something, also spoke the language of the tribal ponies. They were there to collect tribute I think, because every time it was a mother and her new-born or very young foal that was offered up and taken back to Sperimin”

“We know from… old Shimmer… that it’s not unheard of for lunars to use their charms to uplift or breed intelligent versions of animals to serve them out in the wild. I didn’t dare fly the yeddim too close to the city, since we didn’t know what kind of defences they might have, but one night at the camp I had made a few hundred miles from the city I was attacked by monkey soldiers. I killed them all before they could flee, but they managed to kill the yeddim before I got the last of them. That they were able to track me all the way that far from the city says a lot about how well they have their surrounding territory patrolled” Cash explained, sounding more annoyed than anything else – sure, he had set up a yeddim breeding ranch outside of Sunhill to keep him supplied, but still it was an expensive operation, so losing a yeddim was never fun, especially not when it stranded you in enemy territory.

Sullen Hoof nodded: “I actually found a report about that attack once I got into the city. No ponies live in Sperimin, only the various intelligent monkeys and apes. They were clearly specialized by breed. I don’t know the name of the different species, but each one was doing a certain kind of work. The large gorillas are the size of bloodhound demons, and they appear to make up most of the armed forces. Didn’t seem too clever to me, and seemed to fight a lot amongst themselves. The priests were orange furred apes, and I could from the look of their eyes, they’re smarter than the gorillas, they seemed to be in charge of the place. Finally, there were the apes doing all the menial labor, with brown and grey fur, bright red flanks, looked like baboons, they confused me…”

The rest of the circle looked at Sully quizzically. The solar culinarian explained: “Common logic would have it that menial work goes to the least intelligent – but these baboons were doing their work so much better than the orange ones, and way better than the gorillas. They have their smartest doing the lowliest of work, and my profiling charms kept telling me that they hated their silver mistress for it”

“Interesting. Did you get an estimate of their numbers? Can we exploit the discontent?” Fire Orchid inquired, looking as if she was already trying to cook up a plan in her head.

From what Sullen Hoof had seen, then the baboons were by far the most numerous of the intelligent creatures in Sperimin – but they weren’t the most numerous of creatures: “Around them were wild monkeys, like, perfectly normal jungle monkeys – and their numbers were legion. As for the gorrilas, I’m guessing some thousand, based on what I saw. Not sure about the orange ones, but I’d say four or five times as many baboons as gorillas”

“What about fighting capability? You saw the gorillas with weapons and armor, but also fighting among themselves?” Speaker inquired.

Sully couldn’t really say. He had seen the gorillas with crude bronze spears and the orange ones carrying symbols of office, like whips or fans or staves – he had not seen enough of the place before another lunar sniffed him out. They apparently do not permit ponies in the city at all – only apes, monkeys and other creatures.

“Well, against a couple of thousand armed gorillas, a few extra lunars – honestly, I think we can take that. The main problem will be dealing with Rakshi” Cash said, sounding confident.

Shimmer quickly cut in: “Oh we’ll face more than that if it comes to open battle. You’re forgetting about the tribes you mentioned around the city. They might not be much more than auxiliaries and skirmishers, but they’ll know the surrounding jungles by heart – they’ll have ambushes everywhere. And the wild monkeys in the city would also be something Rashi and the other lunars can herd around like a swarm of wild predators – and Rakshi is a sorceress, so summoned demons, even summoned second circle demons if she has any around, can’t be ruled out”

Fire Orchid nodded to this, adding: “I wouldn’t put too much stock in the lesser apes. If they’re nothing more than wild animals herded around, then they’ll be very easy to break – and fighting a sorcerer isn’t difficult, just keep the distracted so they can’t shape any magic”

“Just keep her distracted? Right, because a lunar who’s what… several thousand years old, is just an old fuddy duddy right? It’d probably be easier to fight her sorcery, rather than fighting her combat charms” Shimmer shot back, not sounding terribly impressed at Fire Orchid’s analysis.

The circle continued discussing how to best wrangle Sperimin and deal with Rakhi well into the night. Food was brought in, and the midnight oil was burnt. By morning they had some basic ideas, though depending on what they could work out, then there were still a few unanswered questions.

The primary issue was that Sunhill, on its own, simply didn’t have that many troops to deploy, even with Fire Orchid and Speaker training new troops as often as they could. This was compounded by Sunhill’s bad standing with the guild, since that meant that hiring guild mercenaries was out of the question. Fire Orchid would have to check with Lookshy, for whether Sunhill could rent a field force, but if that didn’t work out then the circle would have to find support somewhere else.

The secondary issue was dealing with Rakshi. A powerful lunar, even if she wasn’t all that combat focused, then she was bound to know how to fight far better than any one of them, even if only by the sheer might of her essence. The only ally the circle had to match Rakshi would be Lilith, but according to Cash then she was off exploring Creation and reconnecting to pony-kind after her millennia of self-imposed exile, now that she was satisfied that Cash wasn’t evil. Other options discussed were things like simply dog-pilling her, trying to exploit the circle’s numerical superiority combined with Rakshi supposedly not being all that martially inclined… well… supposed not.

As if to remind the circle of why they sort of were in a bit of a hurry, then the next morning they all found themselves awoken just before dawn by the sound of alarm bells ringing. Another corpse barge had arrived, though this one had run aground along the canals just before reaching the city, hundreds if not thousands of zombies spilling out into the plantations south of the city.

After a clean-up operation that lasted well onto noon, the circle reconvened to check their notes from last night. Fire Orchid wasn’t impressed: “If Thorns manages to sneak another barge into the harbour, if we’re not here to help contain it… what if we’re off at Sperimin or somewhere else?”

The rest of the circle agreed. Cash noted that the ideal solution would be to send out messengers into the surrounding territories, issuing a call for recruitment to raise a proper army – but… “Our neighbouring warlords still hate our guts. They’ll dice any messengers we send like that. That I’ve talked them into accepting our merchants is a miracle already”

Everyone agreed that this state of affairs was far from optimal, but Cash looked as if he had a solution in mind – because he wasn’t frowning: “Come now, our solution is obvious! We expand the light-rail network and recruit from those points. We don’t need to recruit locally once the network starts growing”

“Now that sounds viable” Fire Orchid said, noting that she would like Speaker to draft a proper military encampment. An army would need space to train. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, then Speaker said he already had that kind of plans ready: “Then the only thing I’m missing for the encampment is a proper geomantic flair for it. Anyone can design a small fortress. I want it to be able to do something special”

Shimmer pointed at the map on the table with the marking for Sperimin: “You said this place was a first age university that had all knowledge in creation. Wouldn’t what you’re looking for be in there?”

The smile on Speaker’s face as he looked at her, made Shimmer’s heart flutter.

It thus came to be that the two of the four state owned construction companies of Sunhill were given new orders to start clearing a large plot of land north of Sunhill in preparation for making a fortress to defend the city. The two other ones were tasked with starting to haul out the warehoused light-rail column pieces and prepare their tools and materials for transport.

The next day the circle sallied forth, Cash flying a yeddim south with the very first rail-column to be set up outside of the city. Next to the two canals going up to Sunhill, Speaker played his singing staff to create a solid stone foundation on the shores of the yellow river. The pillar they set up was particularly tall, for its reach had to be a lot longer than a normal pillar. Cash, controlling his flying yeddim, used the beast like a living crane, making the construction of the column surprisingly fast.

By noon the pillar was up and running, its glowing top showing that a viable link to the Sunhill network had been established. The next pillar was called in via the network, and Cash flew it across the river to Great Forks. At the harbour outside the city walls, on a large square that had been cleared in anticipation of the construction project. An absolutely massive crowd gathered to see the flying yeddim hoist stone pillar segments into place, and the cheers that rang out when the column lit up were deafening.

The three ruling gods of Great Forks even came to officiate the opening ceremony of the Great Forks to Sunhill light-rail connection, the city putting on its grandest fanfare. They knew quite well that this would turn Great Forks into a much more attractive trading location, since now over-land goods could be moved almost instantly across the yellow river from there. Cash looked pleased as punch. Speaker found the ceremony touching just the same, his old dream of restoring first age infrastructure to creation finally starting to come true.

The next day the project continued, though the pillars set up south of Great Forks weren’t nearly as big – they didn’t need to have their reach stretch across a massive five-mile-wide river and be tall enough that the light-rail would flow above the masts and sails of passing ships. Instead, the pillars only had to reach above the canopies of the everfree forest, and even that was quite easy, since the path of the pillars laid out followed the sandy river, which had famously sandy shores along its length, making for nice open spaces to set up pillars upon, especially when shored up with stone foundations.

The small river-side kingdoms along the sandy river, just like Great Forks, had been contacted well in advance by Cash about the pillars. Sure, not all the sites had been cleared in advance, but that was quickly handled by the construction crews coming along on the flying yeddim, or via Cash bribing the odd fisherpony to haul his nets down the beach a bit.

Shimmer found it hilarious to see Cash throwing around money like that: “Why even bother paying ponies to move over? He can buck that fishing boat a hundred yards down the beach”

“Sure, he could – but he isn’t here to make enemies. Vengeful locals make projects like this very difficult” Speaker noted.

Furrowing her brows, Shimmer considered the counter-argument. Her own tribal mentality was still very much that if you could take it, it was yours – so this idea of kindness to strangers, diplomacy… they were still alien to her. The dull thud from the pillar segment as Cash lowered it into place barely registered to her.

Over the next week they expanded their light-rail network south for hundreds of miles. It was slow work, since each time they ventured into a new territory or hold they had to clear things with the local rulers – and on several occasions then the lords or princes that Cash had brokered a deal with had been killed, conquered, or in some other way been replaced – and their replacements didn’t always play ball.

In the meantime, Sunhill and Great Forks saw a huge influx of merchants from the places that the circle connected. A week of travel down-river could be replaced with but a few hours zipping over the jungles on a sunhill-made transport carriage, dodging river pirates and the likes. The system Cash had developed for how others could use the system was as simple as it was ingenious: With the push of a button on a crystal panel at the base of a pillar, a pony could request a small currier pod. These small rail-pods moved at blinding speeds, reaching anywhere on the network in minutes. On these a pony could deposit payment and mark off what they were requesting, the pod zipping back to sunhill to drop off the money at rail-network control. Depending on what was paid for a suitable carrier would then be sent in return, which would be pre-programmed to work for one or more journeys, again depending on what you had paid for.

For merchants this meant no longer having to spend money on paying mercenaries and caravan guards to watch over their goods as they travelled, because they could zip around from market to market – and indeed, many principalities wisely set up markets and new harbours near their pillars. For the lords of the territories and holds with new pillars they similarly found it much easier to move troops around – both for good and for ill. It was only four days after the network had been expanded south that an enterprising princeling sent six hundred armed troops up the network towards Sunhill… well, she tried to – only to find that rail-network control monitored all rail traffic, leaving the force stranded up above the trees as their carriages simply stopped shortly after leaving when it was detected that it wasn’t freight being moved about.

After a while the circle reached the point where it wouldn’t make sense extending the network further south – they had to start going inland, in the deeper parts of the untamable everfree jungle, away from settled territory.

Here the circle split up, in accordance with Speaker’s plan to connect their network to the dead city of Denansdor. Cash took yeddim and the construction crews, flying east, leaving Speaker and Shimmer to head south.

“Are you loaded up?” Speaker said, watching as the flying yeddim shrank into a dot in the sky.

Shimmer caught her breath and shook herself, her warformed body’s feather quivering all along her length: “Yup, finally got all the pillar pieces put elsewhere – those things are heavy”

“Big chunks of solid stone will do that to you. How are your mental defence charms?”

Nodding, Shimmer said that she had a few options: “…but I’m not keen on staying in Denansdor for too long. I’ve seen too many ponies back home west who got caught at sea in wyld storms”

Speaker could see his lunar mate’s point, to which he simply stated that the faster they hurried, the faster they would be able to leave: “Plus we only need to reach Denansdor’s own rail-network – and we don’t have to work slowly like Cash did so the construction ponies could keep up”

“That was working slow?”

It turned out that it was. Conjuring his flying cloud, Speaker flew the two of them south. From the cloud, Shimmer was able to drop pillar pieces out of her elsewhere stores like one, two three – raising pillars with lightning speed.

A few days later, quite a distance further south, the jungles began to thin out. Shimmer quickly found the cause: “The insects… there’s no bugs here. Is that Denansdor’s miasma doing that?”

“It most certainly is. On the plus side, this open terrain will let us space the pillars out even more – so we can do this even faster” Speaker said respectfully, understanding Shimmer’s unease at the unnatural quiet.

With no birds or other wild animals, the landscape was stilll wild – but at the same time without insects then very few plants were able to grow or at least polinate properly. A few patches of trees here and there grew… and that’s when they felt it: The wave of unnatural fear and terror. It was a powerful impulse to simply drop everything and run away. The ancient magical weapon that had been activated deep within the city, to ward off an oncoming swarm of changelings… at the cost of the sanity and life of every living thing in the city.

Speaker stood firm up on his cloud, using his illusive dream defence. The wave of magical terror crashed upon the shores of mind, but achieved nothing. Shimmer handled the experience differently, a visible shiver racing down her spine to her tail, then back up again, until she twitched and turned to face in the direction of Denansdor, shouting: “No!”

“You feeling, ok?” Speaker inquired, finding Shimmer’s response somewhat odd-looking, worried that she might fall off the cloud if she made any sudden moves.

Shimmer shook off her jitters, taking a deep breath: “I think so – not running away or going insane, right?”

Satisfied, Speaker motioned for his magical cloud to start flying towards the city, when Shimmer put a hoof to his shoulder. “Hold up – something’s coming”

Unsure of what she was talking about, but none the less trusting Shimmer’s judgement, Speaker looked around. Without the sensory enhancement charms she had, Speaker couldn’t hear the distant sound of galloping hooves – but after a bit she pointed to the horizon: “There, someone or something is galloping this way”

It took a bit of squinting, but Speaker finally saw something. A small plume of dust in the distance. Whatever it was did not appear to be running towards the two, but it was beelining out of the city.

It was a strange sight that came to, as the dust plume approached. There were a lot of shades of green, some red… it looked an awful lot like a stampede of vines and flowers.

“Ok I know we were supposed to put pillars up, but… lets go have a look at what this is” Speaker said quizzically, directing the cloud to descend.

Shimmer kept her ears peeled as they closed in on the strange phenomena, but it didn’t slow down: “Just be careful – this is not natural. Could be changelings”

“The miasma was set up to ward off changelings – I don’t think they would ever come here willingly”

Closing in on the strange tangle of moving plants, the two trailed the floral procession to the edge of Denansdor’s miasma. There the plant tangle slowed down, revealing a pony who had been riding atop the pile of highly mobile plants.

Landing next to the strange thing, the duo found the pony atop the pile of now immobile plants asleep, snoring loudly, fully entangled to the point that one could barely see a few tufts of mane poking out of the leaves and vines.

Speaker looked to Shimmer, unsure if they should try to wake up this strange pony on its bed of moving plants. Shimmer in turn carefully examined the plants, Deep Wave tentatively poking the seemingly dormant vines it’s with own moonsilver tentacles: “I think he’s hibernating… which is really clever when you think about it”

“Hibernating in Denansdor? How does that make sense?” Speaker said, finding it hard to wrap his head around such an odd move.

With a clever smile, Shimmer nodded: “I’m pretty sure this pony is a lunar. I know this kind of hibernation, it’s a lunar charm. If he was leaving Denansdor and didn’t want to deal with the miasma, then shutting down like this is really smart, assuming that he had something or someone to carry him out of there”

The pony stirred, and the vines drew away as if they had a mind of their own, revealing a brown-coated pony replete in moonsilver tattoos. He was a broad-chinned squat stallion, not particularly tall, but with thick and muscular limbs, a short-cropped mane and eyes with that extra fold that marked him as either a westerner or from the blessed isle. With a yawn, the stallion looked at Shimmer, clearly seeing her own moonsilver tattoos. With a smirk, he spoke to her in sea-tongue: “Well now, a young-blood from back west. Is someone looking for me?”

Shimmer was quite surprised to hear the lunar speaking sea-tongue: “I… no, we just saw you come out of Denansdor and wanted to see what it was”

With a quick glance and a flash of silver in his eyes, the lunar nodded at Shimmer: “A lunar and a solar in faded red? What’s Sunhill doing here then?”

It didn’t surprise Speaker much that the lunar had heard of him. Cash hadn’t exactly been subtle in using his likeness to promote Sunhill, even less so after what they had talked about with Speaker’s new memory-loss inducing martial arts: “Bright Machine Speaker, twilight caste, good to meet you. We’re rebuilding creation. We’re setting up a new light-rail network, and we’re trying to connect it to Denansdor”

The stallion smirked at Speaker: “You want to open up first age mass transit into crazy town? You trying to kill a lot of ponies or something?”

Speaker glanced at Shimmer, chiefly to check that she wouldn’t start saying too much. Revealing that they were building a light-rail connection to the dead city was probably bad enough, but they already had dozens of pillars further north up along the sandy river, so it wouldn’t have been difficult to figure out what they were doing – it was the why they were doing it that shouldn’t necessarily be shared. Cash might still claim that Speaker hadn’t quite learned to shut up and let better speakers do the talking, but he had at least learned when to shut up: “No, this line of the network is closed to the public – but it will let us get into Denansdor very quickly, so we don’t have to waste essence protecting our minds simply getting into the city”

“Easier looting? Can’t argue against that – but I do have a request to make: Don’t touch the Evergrowing Lotus commune. I’m doing important work there” the lunar said, his words firm as to underscore that it wasn’t really a request, but a warning to stay off his turf.

Eyebrows raised, Shimmer stepped up between Speaker and the lunar: “Shouldn’t be a problem, but how about you tell us who you are and what you’re doing there?”

“Sunhill doesn’t need to know about me – you don’t use slaves” The stallion replied, not sounding smug, more disinterested.

Speaker shrugged: “A project about slavery? Are you working with Iron Will of Many on something?”

The lunar smield, clearly recognizing the name of the somewhat infamous bull-totemed slaver-killing and slave-freeing lunar: “He has supplied me with a lot of resources for what I’m working on. I used to be like him, but I’m looking for a different solution”

“Something with strange plants that can move around on their own?” Shimmer asked, examining one of the vines from the lunar’s tangle of dormant mobile flora.

The lunar nodded, and began to mount his strange flowery creation: “Not unlikely – and who knows, maybe we’ll meet one day”

Speaker pondered furiously what the secretive lunar was doing. The Evergrowing Lotus Commune? Denansdor had a lot of artist colonies around its periphery. What kind of artists had gathered at that commune? It took a bit of essence to plumb the depths of his first age memories, but the instant he made the connection it not only made sense, but the solar saw an opportunity: “You’re using the old genesis labs! Flowers that walk, a project about slaves? You’re trying to make plants that can move on their own, to replace the need for pony slaves!”

Looking impressed, the lunar bowed his head to Speaker: “Exactly – and that’s why what I’m doing isn’t relevant to Sunhill”

Looking from the lunar to Speaker, to the lunar again, Shimmer’s mind raced: “But it is. We can connect the commune to the network, make it easier for you to get there – and we’re looking to make a move on Sperimin. The old libraries there are bound to have all kinds of information on what you’re trying to make. Help us free Sperimin, and you can get all the information you need on genesis workings”

The lunar stopped his climb up his tangle of vines and leaves, instead quickly jumping down to Speaker and Shimmer: “You have my attention”

A brief but energetic discussion on the potential contents of the Sperimin libraries followed, concluded by the lunar finally pointing out that going against Rakshi was suicide.

“A bit over a year ago we stormed the underworld and destroyed a deathlord. By we, I mean the circle I’m part of – we’re five solars and Shimmer” Speaker pointed out, carefully observing the lunar’s expression to judge his reaction.

A deep breath and a thoughtful expression from the lunar convinced Speaker that the stranger at least believed that their plans on Sperimin might be possible.

Five light-rail pillars later saw the weatherworn remains of the northern-most pillar of Denansdor’s own light-rail network link up with the network of Sunhill. Crashing Wave, the lunar stranger, also finally revealed his name during that process, as he managed to talk the duo into linking up the artist colony he used to the new network – not that he needed to ask very much to make it happen. As Cash would have put it, then it was cheaply earned political capital.

Once it was all over Crashing Wave offered to host Speaker and Shimmer at his lair, to show them his work. They gladly accepted, Speaker because he was too damn curious about the lunar’s strange plant experiments, Shimmer because she saw a potential new teacher and ally in the lunar.

The lair, dug deep into the eastern jungle, far from any river where other ponies might take notice, Crashing Wave had set up a crude but very functional laboratory focused on breeding special plants. Speaker found the lunar’s approach to various simple laboratory solutions incredibly novel, like the strange breed of lizards the lunar had bred to lick everything clean with a special saliva that left everything sterile and perfectly clean. Where dozens of servants would normally be needed, Crashing Wave had bred animals or developed new strange sort-of mobile plants to do the work instead. His work was by no means finished, but the lunar had clearly spent years on some very interesting work. There were plant-ponies acting as servants, butlers, waiters, dish-washers... all of them doing simple menial work, though none of them able to switch between tasks either. They could only perform the one duty they had been made to do – that was the limitation of them not really having a mind one could oppress.

Shimmer rejoiced in seeing how Speaker found it all so interesting. Crashing Wave enjoyed the scholarly sparing, Speaker drawing on his memories from the first age of working all kinds of strange and exotic genesis projects. It made for spirited and constructive discussion. Oh, how her elders would have loved to see her having finagled her solar mate into aiding a lunar project – well, that’s how she would present it in her report to her western elders.

Several days later, with Speaker feeling that his mind had grown many times over on the topic of how to create raw life out of primordial soups and various flavours of essence, between Crashing Wave’s homebrewed hooch and various strange experiments in plant grown and floral or fungal quasi-intelligence, a magical message fluttered into being before Speaker:

“Hey, we’re at the outskirts of Sperimin. We need you here. There are other lunars with Rakshi. Shit is going down” the message read, Cash’s voice being quick and succinct, with no punchlines or jokes, as if to hammer home how serious the situation was.