Daring Do and the Griffon's Goblet

Chapter 1

  "What do you mean you don't have ParaSprite!?  How do you not have ParaSprite!?!  You're a luxury zeppeline airliner!  Certainly you've got a case of them somewhere!"  Doctor Whooves was currently having some sort of a small tantrum over the lack of his favorite soft drink for an entire three days on the flight to Prance aboard the Pegasus Airlines Liesure Suite First Class Zeppelin Speedy Transport.  It didn't last very long until he was kicked in the shin and told to get over it by his Pegasus Airlines Liesure Suite First Class Zeppelin Speedy Transport partner, Daring Do.

  "Oh, get over yourself," she said, and kicked Whooves in the shins.  He got over himself.

  "I'm sorry, ma'am, but you'll have to excuse him.  He's been on a rather strict diet lately," she said.  The stewardess just walked away, thinking about how little her job paid and why zeppelin airliners even existed when they had blimps and why she had dropped out of college so early.  Daring went back to reading her Traveler's Guide to Prance: All the Sights You Want To See and Some You Don't!, and Whooves was researching the cultural habits of the inhabitants of Prance whilst simultaniously attempting to learn Prench.  That's about it for anything they were doing in first-class.

  Of course, what's going on in first-class isn't always the most interesting thing on the zeppelin.  I know, my metaphors aren't the best.  One time I used this metaphor: "The paint can just sat there, like an inanimate object."  I got rejected from the writing school I had applied for and am now stuck at my house writing fanfiction.  Not really.  I'm only ** years old.  That's what would have happened, though.

  As I was saying, there was something much more interesting transpiring in another passenger's head over in business-class.  Of course, usually the more interesting things on the zeppelin usually transpire in the lower classes anyways, where there aren't a bunch of snooty rich ponies sitting and sipping tea.  Very good tea.  Well, in this certain business-class passenger's head, there was a plot forming.  Now, it wasn't a normal business-class passenger's type of plot that normally has to do with business-class transactions involving money, no this certain plot had a lot more to do with taking-over/desroying-the-world/some-piece-of-the-world than it did with acquiring valuable currencies in the art, if boring art, of trade.  This certain plot was the kind of plot where the plotter was plotting to destroy not the world, but a small chunk of the world, although it was still a part of the world nonetheless, which still classified it as a "bad" sort of plot.  This plot also included stopping somepony who could interfere with their precious plan (I have stopped using the word 'plot' in the hopes that it isn't too late to keep your minds out of the gutter).  This certain somepony is a certain now-famous somepony as well, and this eing your typical novel, I can guess that you can guess who this certain somepony is, and can also guess that she is sitting in first-class learning Prench things.  She is, of course, accompanied by another somepony, a stallion.  But let's steer away for the second time from the boring happenings of the ponies taking first-class and get back to the plan, or as I will now begin to describe, the planner.

  You should be able to remember this planner from the end of the prologue, and that he had clawed hands, or to correct an earlier writing error, clawed paws.  His name was Etienne Julien.  He wasn't necessarily Prench, even though he and his people lived in Prance and that is where he was born; Etienne, was, in fact, a decendant of the old griffon empire described earlier, and so he should have an old-griffon-empire-ish sounding name, but his people had gotten so accustomed to the native culture and names that they all had forgotten what old-griffon-empire-ish sounding names sounded like.  Now, by saying that they grew accustomed to native culture, that they left their secluded and magically hidden environment and mingled with the locals, no, I am only saying that when groups of them left said secluded environment to go hunt for food, then they ran into locals, and the locals wanted to mingle, and every time they did that, the hunting parties returned with a little more Prench knowledge, and over the large amount of time this has been happening, eventually the griffons became a little more Prench than they were ancient griffon.

  Now, I do realize that I should get back to Etienne and his plo- planning in the business-class seating on the zeppelin, but as I have already spent a rather long paragraph explaining some things, I might as well take the rest of the chapter and explain the rest of things as well, and just turn this from an eventful chapter to an informative chapter.  Oh, relax yourself, I was already going to make the next chapter an informative chapter explaining the background anyways, as I am not the sort of author that explains nothing until the end and keeps the readers thinking "WHERE THE HAY DID THAT COME FROM!?" the entire story.

  So, I should probably start by explaining why there is even still a magically protected Griffon Empire when they were all economically wiped out years ago.  Well, that's the thing... They weren't.  I lied.  You can't get angry at me, though, I am an author, after all, and you know how authors are!  We're evil.  We're completely diabolical.  Who else but a diabolically evil person would take a lovable character and have the audience bond with them for a while, and then put them through a dangerous, life-threatening journey that puts them through a lot of pain and then usually kills off some of their friends/family (the previous statement was quoted from the book 'Alcatraz Vs. the Evil Librarians.').  Exactly.  Another thing I should warn you about, is that authors are insane.  Completely mentally challenged.  The prime example of this would be Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).

  Well, anyways, after the Griffon King, who's name is unknown, used up their last four gems on a fancy goblet, and later on the entire Empire just fell apart, all of the griffons dispersed and joined just-starting pony communities around the world and became an active, if economically challenged, part of the beginnings of a civilized society.  Well... Almost all of them.  One group of griffons remained at the site of the fallen Empire.  This group consisted of thirteen griffons.  These griffons consisted of what little was left of the already-small royal family, which was the Griffon King, his wife, and his single son, plus seven loyal royal guards and advisors and three citizens that stayed in the thoughts that they could rebuild their Empire into something new, something better than it was.  One of the royal advisors did what they did best and advised the King that they needed a protection, something to keep them safe from the outside world, at least safe enough until they rebuilt the Empire.  So the King sent out a couple of guards to go and capture a powerful unicorn and bring it back to them.  They did what their ruler commanded, of course, except they did a little bit more than that.

  You see, the unicorn they brought back with them wasn't exactly a unicorn...  The royal guards foalnapped a filly alicorn.  Not only that, but they had, in fact, foalnapped a princess, the Princess of the Dawn, Solice.  They had come acrost the filly rolling around in a field far from her parents and two regal sisters and giggling to herself over something that fillies who roll in fields like to giggle about.  But her giggles weren't meant to last very long at all, as the two guards unsuspectingly pounced and sacked her, easily carrying her all the way back to their fallen empire.  You may picture the filly as a young filly with not much experience with life, but being an alicorn blood princess, she is immortal, of course, and so even though she was the size of a seven-year-old foal, she was, in fact, already ninety-three years old and was rather knowledgeable in magic and knew how to use it well.  When she was jumped, though, the guards had the element of surprise on their side, and actually used so much of it on Solice that she just passed out inside the bag.

  When they got back to the King, then he took the sack off of her head and left her in a dungeon (remember that the Empire had not fallen physically, and that the temple and everything was still standing) bound, though not gagged, and with her horn wrapped in a sort of leaf that stopped magic flow from the horn to anything outside the horn.  It grew native to the Empire and they had discovered it's purpose once when a solitary unicorn had accidentally teleported straight into the temple and had to be taken care of immediately.  Later, when Solice woke up, she was taken to a room and forced to cast a spell that placed a magical purple dome around the temple alone, since there were only thirteen current residents, and they all lived in the temple, which had been outlined with bushes full of the magic-stopping leaves while Solice was asleep, keeping her from reaching her magic out any farther than it needed to be for the protection, and left her locked in the room and chained against a wall to prevent physical escape, and kept her alive by feeding her food and water once a day.  This continued for a short about fifty years, with the thirteen growing into thirty-two, the King's and Queen's physical health at its worst peak, the magic barrier being expanded to included houses that were built around the temple, which had run out of space to house thirty-two griffons, and Solice being kept and forced to renew the spell every month.

  Eventually, though, the Prench started expanding and exploring their own country, and the griffons were forced to move to avoid being discovered.  Of course, by the time that the Griffon King realized that they would have to pack their things, it was much too late too demolish their temple and leave without a trace, and so they just took their small possessions and transferred everything, including the now-144-year-old Dawn Princess, deeper into the forest and also, so as to not run into the problem of discovery again.  They did, though, at least have Solice lift the barrier from the temple before they left.  All except for one area.

  There was one chamber that they had underground.  It was a very secret chamber, as most underground chambers that need to be proteced are, and was guarded with a rock.  The rock was guarded with a hall in front of it full of dastardly traps worse than some things you could imagine (although that would be because you are not, of course, cruel enough to imagine these traps as the Griffon King was).  The chamber itsself contained a chest with three locks.  Each of these locks needed to be opened with a key.  The Griffon King, Queen, and Prince all had one of these keys.  Inside the chest there was a locked box.  The locked box could only be opened when the Griffon King himself inserted his left thumb- talon into a hole located beneath a hidden removeable panel on the bottom of the box (though it was only when the King was on his death-bed when he realized that there would be no way to open the box in case of emergency after he was gone, and so he cut his talon off himself and gave it to his son, telling him to pass it down only down the direct bloodline).  So obviously, whatever was in this box was extremely important to the Griffon Empire.  By this point in the explanation, you probably forgot about the Griffon's Goblet, didn't you?  Well, that's what was in the box.  Solice was made to cast the same protection spell over the room except with an extremely long-lasting duration.  When she feebly attempted to protest that she A. didn't know that kind of magic and B. couldn't perform it anyways under her condition, they of course threatened her with death*.  The spell she actually performed, though, was a normal protection spell that was the same one she had been using on the temple for the past fifty years.  The griffon's didn't realize that, though, since they had left to a new location before the spell could have worn off.  The Prench found the old temple, though they never even found the trap hallway guardin the Goblet.  Of course, they were excited enough finding an ancient temple in a forest, and naturally preserved and displayed it and sent parts of it to history museums, so everything's OK there, really.

  Well, That's about it for the past, so let me snap back five hundred more years to the present and quickly state that at this moment in time**, the Griffon Empire isn't doing very well.  As a matter of fact, it only consists of the present royal family, with the young King and Queen.  The Empire had been running out of resources to feed 1,243 griffons (the Empire's peak population), and the forest around them was dwindling because of the lack of the resources they had been using.  Despite what his advisors were telling him, though, the King insisted on sticking with the traditional survival ways, so nearly all of griffons just left and joined the community, just like the first time the Griffon Empire had fallen.  So, there wasn't really even a Griffon Empire... Just a couple.  An extremely desperate one.  And they were at the point where they were willing to do anything to save their civilization.

  Well, there's an extraordinarily long bavkground on this story for you.  I think I'm done here.  At least for a couple of days.  So... *insert funny/dramatic cliffhanger ending here*.