BV 3.1 - The Golden Age of Apocalypse - Book I

 

1000 years ago - Sombra in the Crystal Empire. Sombra likes to talk to himself. He tells himself all about his cunning plan: he's knocked up a bunch of mares and sent them to Equestria, and now he's going to take the Empire into stasis. When he gets out, he'll have plenty of descendants running around to do his evil bidding.

 

Berry Sue destroys a pillow. Rarity wants Berry Sue to do dress-related stuff, for reasons which make less sense the longer Rarity keeps talking. A guard comes to get Berry Sue because an old friend of her showed up in town.

 

By the way, it's been like a year since the Tirek shit back in 7DSJ4, and Equestria's still a total wreck (thanks, Sunbutt).

 

Berry Sue and Twiggles go to visit some actors in jail. One's in jail for being a changeling, one's in jail for being Trixie, and the rest are in jail for guilt-by-association. But one of them is Berry Sue's friend (where "friend" here means "guy who let her crash on his couch for one night 12 years ago"), so the guards let them all go. He still remembers her, of course, because he knew the moment he saw her that she was the most important and special pony in the entire univers.

 

IT'S BLUEBLOOD TIME

 

Blueblood gets a letter from his sister, whose name I won't even write because it's such a fucking awful name for a pony OC. Instead I will call her "Peanut Butter". Anyway, this is where we find out that

 

 

 

Berry Sue tries to get lodging for her old friend What's-His-Face and his traveling performers, but can't - all the hotels are full due to the upcoming pool tournament. Though I'm not sure why she bothers when these assholes can just sleep in their traveling wagons, and that's what they end up doing anyway.

 

Since Trixie's in town, Twiggles has suddenly remembered that the Alicorn Amulet is a thing that maybe still exists. She decides to get it from Zecora so Berry Sue can check it out. So off they go into the woods.

 

Berry Sue notes that she's never actually met Zecora, and then explains why in just enough detail to make the whole thing seem utterly contrived.

 

They get to Zecora's place to see the Amulet. It promptly self-destructs, and shoots a giant dark magic laser at Canterlot. The laser hits Sombra's mirror and makes the back panel fall off. Underneath is an edgy poem about how Sombra's four "scions" will "on Canterlot's grave, stand!" (Berry Sue is one of the scions, to nobody's surprise.)

 

For some reason there's a park and a statue dedicated to Peanut Butter. I actually double-checked and she literally didn't do a damn thing in the war other than escort Berry Sue to the portal and get stepped on like a bug by Giant Tirek. But Berry Sue is the most important pony in Equestria, despite also not doing a damn thing to help in the war, so that's enough to get a statue and to be remembered as "the unstoppable juggernaut who gave all for Equestria".

 

Berry Sue gets bullied into having dinner at Blueblood's place, even though she hates the guy for the way he treated her when she was on trial (AHP2). Joke's on her, though - he was merely pretending to be a raging douchebag. They all have a good laugh and now get along fine.

 

 

 

 

IT'S BLUEBLOOD TIME AGAIN

 

Blueblood is a virgin.

Okay. Blueblood is a secret agent. His job is to provide intelligence on the Canterlot nobility. It turns out it's pretty damn easy to infiltrate the nobility when you're the legitimate son of the oldest noble family in Equestria.

But wait. The Agency needs more than that. They need someone who can infiltrate the nobles while simultaneously presenting the image of a womanizing jackass. Don't ask why. They can't turn a womanizer into a noble, because the Agency does not understand the concepts of "forging documents", "writing", or "asking the princess to lie on your behalf".

Instead they got Blueblood. He is actually a noble. But they can't turn him into a womanizer because his strict Christian morals won't permit him to sleep with a mare out of wedlock.

So they pretend. Blueblood pretends to fuck random mares all the time. In reality, he fucks nobody. Other spies pretend to fuck him. The risk and expense of providing an endless supply of fake fuckbuddies for Blueblood is no doubt mind-boggling.

Sometimes Blueblood takes a real mare home. He can't fuck them, of course - that would be immoral. Instead he just gets them really, really drunk. In the morning he tells them a clopfic he made up about all the sex they totally had last night. This works. It works so well he does it regularly. How in the fuck.

 

OKAY. Someone tell me if I've totally lost it here. But this whole setup (which is Agency-approved, by the way) just seems like a really, truly, spectacularly BAD IDEA. Like, someday one pony is going to leak one detail to one tabloid, and this whole operation is just going to BLOW THE FUCK UP. And when it does, it's taking every scrap of Blueblood's credibility with it, along with the covers of half the female agents in the Agency. How in the BLUEBERRY FUCK did this nonsense get approved, either in-universe or in the Berylverse authors' chat?

 

 

 

All right, what the fuck chapter was I even on? Oh, right

 

 

Berry Sue gets a book, one of Sombra's old journals.

 

Back in the day, Sombra traded a random maid for Cavalcanti's wife. He thinks this is a great deal, until he realizes she doesn't speak "Inglish". He beats her for that, and beats her more for begging him to stop beating her. Then he sees a rose on her dress, which reminds him of Amore, so he pins this random girl against the wall and fucks her until her neck breaks. (Don't worry, she gets better.)

 

The girl's name, by the way, is Crisalide della Lucca. I'm sure this detail is entirely irrelevant.

 

In the current year, Twiggles and Berry Sue visit MJ-12's black site, where they keep the humans they've extraordinary-renditioned. Divine Right's there, of course, as is some random rapist from some side story I guess. They bully DR a bit, including threatening to turn him into a grill so his cellmate can rape him and knock him up, but in the end, all they get is that the maid Sombra traded away to Cavalcanti was a virgin (rather inexplicably, given Sombra routinely fucks anything in his vicinity that has a vagina). From that, they conclude that none of Sombra's descendants are on earth.

 

 

Day 17 in Sombra's journal:

 

Sombra tries to conquer the yaks, but the yaks are actually changelings. So Sombra tries to conquer the changelings so he can experiment on them.

 

Crisalide, who Sombra has renamed Broken Rose, is still alive. He sends two members of his harem to take care of her. One suggests that he provide some clothes, so he skins her on the spot and leaves her pelt for Rose to use as a blanket. The other harem member, by the way, is Musica Allegra, Octavia (Human Edition)'s distant ancestor.

 

Edgelord McWerewolf (the original) brings Sombra Amore and her daughters. Sombra kills Amore, then gives the daughters to his guards as sex slaves.

 

Some stuff happens in the current year but it's all stupid and boring.

 

 

 

 

Berry Sue is sent to investigate a crashed airship, possibly caused by a changeling attack. She and Twilight agree to send Rarity, Applejack, Lt. Rainbow Dash (REN), and a bunch of guards too. Rarity and AJ, however, have elaborate excuses for why they absolutely must go on this mission for reasons totally unrelated to the crash. (RD doesn't have any reason to go - aside from, you know, the vital search-and-rescue mission - but nobody cares about her anyway.)

 

To nobody's surprise, the airship was, in fact, taken down by changelings, sent by Chrysalis to set a trap for the M6. The mysterious "She" is the lone survivor of the crash, and "She"'s now trying to survive in the wilderness until help arrives.

 

 

Day 49 of the Edginomicon:

 

Sombra's war against the changelings is going well, but all his troops are total klutzes who keep killing immature changeling queens by accident instead of capturing them. Oops!

 

Sombra raped Musica Allegra last night. Weirdly, she didn't see it as a great honor like he expected. He goes to visit Broken Rose in the morning, and rapes her too. (At least he doesn't break her neck this time.) Then he rapes Musica again, just for good measure.

 

In the current year, the party arrives at Nightshade, a batpony town near the crash site. They meet up with their army liason, Lt. Skyracer, and have a nice chat about how he looks almost, but not quite, exactly like this other pony they all know who also happens to be named Skyracer. They talk about recovering the black box, and find a random OC who can cast "the unlocking spell" on it for them.

 

The whole time they're in Nightshade, all the townsponies are acting very suspiciously. Then Skyracer, who wasn't acting suspicious in the slightest, turns out to be a changeling - a rival queen, who's got her drones disguised as Chrysalis's drones disguised as timberwolves, as part of some plot to get to Canterlot and kill Chrysalis, who is currently in the Badlands.

 

 

 

Holy fuck this was confusing. Not sure if I wasn't paying enough attention or if the fic is just badly written.

 

Anyway, here's the brief rundown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, the TL;DR is that everyone's a changeling and everything's a lie. I don't think I explicitly mentioned it but Fake Skyracer is a changeling, Thorn and Thistle are changelings, the mayor is a changeling collaborator, and I think the other military leaders could also be changelings (no idea desu).

 

I'm pretty sure the mayor kept the survivors in the cave on changeling orders. As for why the guards (or were they militia? idfk) and townsponies went along with it, no idea. Also no idea how this is useful for the changelings. Also not sure by what logic he was able to convince the entire town to beat up on four national heroes (and Sandalwood) or to forcibly take two "crash survivors" (Thorn and Thistle) to the hospital. Actually I have no idea what went on with Thorn and Thistle - they were with the non-Berry-Sue group that got jumped, but were gone when they woke up, but somehow wound up in jail (where Actual Skydude's dudes discovered that they're changelings), but escaped.

 

Oh yeah, and the changeling queen specifically wanted to replace Coco as part of her evil plan, which is why the powers of plot contrivance arranged for her to be in the forest where she can be plausibly kidnapped.

 

 

 

Berry Sue and her cousin Lockbox bully some bugpones. They get the usual talk from Queen Mandible, then snatch Coco out from under her and run away. On the way out, they crash this hive with no survivors, except that everyone survives and sneaks out the back exit.

 

Lockbox is Scion #2, but she's a good guy now that she knows Berry Sue isn't a "witch hunter". Also, Rarity gives Coco a job.

 

This is the end of the Nightshade arc, so everypony gets the fuck out of there and goes home.

 

I have extra space in this post so I'm gonna bitch about this stupid thing that BlueBastard and Shinzakura both like to do. Namely: having two distinct characters with the same name and/or identical appearances. Like how Zephyr Breeze (the one who's screwing Human Edition's mom) has a sister named Fluttershy, who is totally unrelated to the actual Fluttershy. Or the example from this arc, where it turns out that the guy named Lt. Skyracer who looks almost, but not quite, exactly like the Lt. Skyracer that so-and-so already knows (from offscreen, by the way) isn't a shitty changeling impersonator, he's actually just a totally different character. (Oh wait, turns out he really is a changeling impersonator, who replaced the real other Other Skyracer. Fuck everything about this.) Even if I actually liked this fic, ain't nobody got time to deal with authors being deliberately confusing over trivial shit because they think it's "clever" or "realistic" or whatever.

 

 

 

 

Sunset comes through the portal a few days early to prepare for her coronation. Everyone promptly forgets about the coronation thing and goes to Ponyville to watch the pool tournament. I've read five chapters now about this stupid fucking tournament and I still don't understand why the author chose to make a pool tournament, of all things, the centerpiece of a major plot arc.

 

By "everyone", I mean Sunset, Berry Sue, the triplets, Twiggy (Pony Edition), and Cadance, who blames herself for Sunset leaving and is being all weird about it. The trips, by the way, spend the whole time running around trying to be super cool military badasses and generally making fools of themselves, like pulling weapons on anyone who breathes funny in Sunset's vicinity. (In case you were wondering: yes, each of them picked out their own special and unique weapon to use while in pony form.)

 

INFODUMP TIME. You know how Sunbutt has a secret army of ninja maids to do her nefarious bidding? Well, they're all sirens, as in magical singing fish-horse-people. Sirens are all female, and back in the day, ponies avoided them due to rumors of cannibalism, so they could only reproduce by kidnapping sailors to fuck. They always let the stallions go afterward, yet somehow those rumors of cannibalism never got countered by rumors of wild fish-pony sex. Then someone went to war with someone over some bullshit, Celestia wins at everything, and since the sirens turned out to be all oppressed and shit, she decided to help them by promoting sex tourism to Sirenia. Now, I'm not entirely clear on what's common knowledge among ponies at this point, but I'm pretty sure there are quite a few stallions with half-fish kids running around that they know nothing about. Anyway, as thanks for Sunbutt saving them from whatever, some sirens decided to swear their undying loyalty and kill people and/or clean for her as needed.

 

 

The sex tourism part is over, and that was about the only interesting thing in these seven chapters.

 

Oh wait, I guess it's time for a LOVE TRIANGLE. Corner Shot, one of the pool players (and Scion #3, according to the cover art), has a Ponk-tier psycho-stalker crush on Berry Sue. Coco also has a crush on Berry Sue. Corner Shot is a huge bitch and eventually tries to murder Coco, but Coco kicks her ass because she's a secret agent or some shit. Versatile, the changeling with the "Four Footed PerFormers" (yes, it really is capitalized like that) develops a massive crush on Coco at first sight.

 

Some shit happens with the pool tournament. Corner Shot wins a lot. Sunset develops a sudden interest in pool: "Like, holy shit I’m a Goddamn alicorn and I can’t believe half that shit that you just did in there!"

 

Nineball, another pool player, stalks everybody and takes lots of photos. For some reason, in all of the photos, Coco is blurry, as are Corner Shot's wings.

 

That stupid cult is doing the same stupid cult thing over again, hoping for different results. They have an agent in Ponyville, who could be Nineball, or Coco, or literally anyone else because these fuckers love their red herrings.

 

Sunset tries to get the trips to take a fucking chill pill and act like actual people instead of caricatures of Seal Team Six. It doesn't really work, so she plans to get Twilight involved. Then everyone forgets about it because the trips think Corner Shot is a black-ops badass who may or may not have Tomahawk missile launchers hidden under her wings.

 

Coco tries to murder Berry Sue in her sleep, but it doesn't work because Berry Sue is a light sleeper and also a badass.

 

This shit's already at 128k, and we've seen nothing at all related to the contents of that old teaser blogpost. Not a good sign, since I was kinda hoping the fic would be over by now.

 

There's meanwhile... chapters too, by the way, but I'll save those for another day.

 

 

 

For context, that's from GAOA. [Dark][Adventure][Thriller], if you're wondering.

 

In the scene in question, it's two in the fucking morning and the M6 are interrogating Coco, who just got caught breaking into Berry Sue's room, under the assumption that she was plotting to kill her. Coco's just revealed that she's a changeling-pony hybrid, by the way, and has been all along (pic related). It's implied she was sent by Chrysalis to secretly defend Berry Sue from some threat - probably either the Sombra cultists, Corner Shot (crazy scion, currently being monitored by our favorite Canadian assassins), or a rival changeling queen.

 

Speaking of queens, the scene just before this has Chrysalis take over a rival queen's hive (with significant losses on both sides), snap the other queen's neck in cold blood, and demand fealty from all her drones. [spoiler]They literally change colors when they switch sides. WOLOLO[/spoiler] Then she starts planning her campaign against another rival (Queen Mandible, from that town with the airship crash, the werewolves, and Lt. Skyracer and Lt. Other Skyracer).

 

So yeah, I wouldn't say that 4th-wall randomness really fits with the overall themes of the fic.

 

Also, fuck it, I basically summarized the whole chapter just now, so I might as well tag it for the archive

 

 

 

These chapters have a lot of Coco, so before you go on, watch this clip as a refresher on how Coco behaves in canon: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x21a9iz?start=40

 

The chapter begins with an expo dump on Coco's origins. (She's half bugpone, remember.) It's both predictable and irrelevant. Then Coco goes on to explain how "that bitch" Chrysalis [spoiler]go on, just try to imagine the pony from the video calling someone a bitch[/spoiler] sent her to be Berry Sue's bodyguard and warned her about Corner Shot, the Sombra-worshipping cultist and pool player extraordinaire.

 

Also:

 

Anyway, everyone makes a plan to deal with Corner Shot. It goes like this:

 

The finals of the pool tournament happen, I guess. We don't actually get to see any of it. Instead there's just a long scene of Corner angsting about whether it's okay for her to have the hots for Berry Sue (or something like that), interspersed with lines like "Score: 4-5."

 

Corner lures Berry Sue into the woods with a weak-ass ruse. I don't know what she was actually planning, but Berry Sue confronts her about working for the cult, and she just falls apart. Then she pulls two knives out of her wings, both coated with "a fast-acting anesthetic that would make a victim fall asleep in seconds", and attacks "the pony she’d dearly wanted to not use those knives on".

 

 

 

Corner Shot attacks Berry Sue, but Heliodor distracts her with a perfectly timed fire blast. Berry Sue inexplicably teleports home instead of even trying to fight back. The fight is over.

 

Lol jk. The tripfriends were hiding in the bushes, and jump out to attack Corner. Corner takes a moment to appreciate the fact that they each have one sword, one dagger, and one unique weapon.

 

Then they fight. Corner's fighting style is based on throwing knives all over the place and then running around the battlefield trying to pick them back up without getting murdered. The tripfriends' fighting style consists of tripping and falling a lot because they can't into hooves. Eventually Aria manages to shoot Corner in the ass (with her crossbow, which is her own unique weapon that she personally chose), but all that does is activate Corner's rage mode, and she busts out the dark magic and kicks all their asses. The fight is over - Corner wins.

 

Lol jk. Coco's changeling senses pick up Corner raging out, and she goes to investigate. Mild-mannered fashionista Coco Pommel, who by the way hadn't had contact with any changeling for about 15 years, is somehow a kung-fu ninja badass. She turns invisible with the changeling magic that she previously said she couldn't really use, and then kicks the shit out of Corner Shot, taunting her all the while. But Coco's magic use wears her down, and Corner Shot manages to knock her out with a lucky punch. The fight is over - Corner wins.

 

Lol jk. Berry Sue decided to come back. She wins the fight effortlessly by encasing Corner in dark crystal.

 

Berry Sue takes off Corner Shot's hairclip, revealing her dark secret: her "wings", in place of feathers, have some kind of fucked-up knife holders made from "refined changeling chitin". I wish the author had commissioned art of this like he did for changeling Coco. I have no idea what it's supposed to look like, but I'm sure it's pretty stupid.

 

Oh yeah, and Corner Shot is scion #3.

 

 

 

This wraps up the pool tournament arc. We got Scion #3, and we never have to hear about pool-playing horses ever again.

 

The tripfriends are in the hospital after getting stomped by Corner Shot. Following a complete inventory of each girl's injuries, they agree that they really need to stay in human form in the future, since they can't protect Sunset effectively as ponies.

 

Corner Shot is in the dungeon, wearing enchanted hobbles, and being guarded by the pony equivalent of a SWAT team (ponies in "impenetrable armor", who "had been rumored to not been seen in over a decade and were only called out to deal with super extreme dangers normal guards wouldn’t be able to handle"). Sunset swings by for the usual chat: your evil plan is finished, no prison can hold me, etc. Sunset fails all her intimidation rolls, so she cuts the lights, shifts to human form, and sneaks up behind Corner to shout "BOO". Nat 20 on that one, I guess, because Corner completely loses her shit.

 

 

Now, if you recall, there were three ponies acting shady in this arc: Coco, Corner Shot, and Nineball. Coco's half changeling, Corner's half knife-launcher, and now it's time to reveal Nineball's dark secret: why was he sneaking around, taking covert photographs of Berry Sue, and developing them in his bathroom in the dead of night?

 

Turns out, he's just a normal stallion, and there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for his role as red herring. You see, his daughter really loves birds. Heliodor is the specialest and most unique bird in the whole world, so of course Nineball had to get photos of him to take home to his daughter. The problem is, Nineball is deathly afraid of Berry Sue! So instead of politely asking if he can photograph her super amazing and wonderful pet bird, he spent the week stalking her like some kind of psychopath. See, it was all just a big misunderstanding!

 

Nineball fucks off, and now it's time for Sunset and the tripfriends to go home too. They'll be back in a couple weeks to do the coronation thing, but in human form this time.

 

That's all for this arc. There's a special Berylverse event later this week, and then the third arc of GAOA should begin next Wednesday. My best guess is that it'll involve the Four Footed PerFormers, who have been sitting around doing fuck-all since they were introduced at the start of the fic.

 

 

 

 

Corner Shot is on a prisoner transport to Las Pegasus. Since she's so dangerous, the Guard has taken a unique "security" "precaution": one of her guards has been enchanted to explode if she escapes the train.

 

She escapes the train. The guard explodes, derailing the train and injuring most of the other guards. Corner Shot gets away.

 

She finds some dude's cabin in the woods. He offers her food and shelter. In return, she murders him and steals his kitchen knives.

 

Corner Shot makes it to the nearest town and meets up with a fellow Covenant agent, Barkeep the barkeep. He sends her to kill a heretic who recently left the cult and is planning to skip town.

 

The heretic is Corner's old mentor from when she first joined the cult. He regrets teaching Corner to blindly follow orders instead of thinking for herself. Blindly following orders, she strangles him.

 

Barkeep the barkeep reveals that it was a test. Corner failed to recruit Berry Sue (just like the last guy they sent), which suggests that she might be a traitor. But her willingness to murder her friends without question proves that all is well.

 

 

All the good guys go to Canterlot to get ready for the coronation. Divine Right (Pony Edition) stops to warn his sister not to piss off Sunset during the coronation. Sadly, his sister is a standard-issue Berylverse turbo-bitch with no sense of proportion or self-preservation.

 

 

Edginomicon update: Edgelord and the Werewolves have rebelled. Somehow, they manage to kill most of Sombra's officers in a single battle lasting less than a day.

 

Sombra "fixes" the problem by drafting every single pony age 10 or older. Then he starts a war with Equestria over some piece of shit village nobody even cares about. It's clearly in Equestria territory, but Sombra doesn't know how to read a map, and now that he's claimed it, he's unwilling to back down.

 

Pony Mengele makes some progress on turning Crisalide into Chrysalis, but isn't done quite yet.

 

 

 

Barkeep and Corner Shot visit the cult's boss to make plans. Combining the power of the four scions and the Alicorn Amulet will let Sombra's spirit be reborn out of his mirror. He'll need a body to possess, but the boss is perfectly willing to volunteer Corner Shot's. The boss also points out that Sombra will of course need to cast a sex change spell on his host body, since the author of this fic is too much of a red-blooded American to comfortably imagine Sombra getting pseudo-R63'd.

 

Berry Sue (Scion #1, who's got the Amulet with her for safekeeping), Lockbox (Scion #2), and six background ponies head to Canterlot, where Sunset will soon be arriving via Sombra's mirror.

 

With two days to prepare for Sunset's coronation, Celestia gets the schizophrenia ball and instigates some pointless fucking drama.

 

She starts by bringing the taxidermied corpses of Mr. and Mrs. Edgelord McWerewolf to dinner. She plans to put them on display to show off how good she is at protecting her daughter. (Please disregard her failure to protect Sunset at almost every opportunity, and her total lack of involvement with the fight against the werewolves.)

 

Twilight asks Celestia what the fuck she's smoking. Celestia replies that she just wants to make sure there are no mistakes, unlike with the previous coronations. Twilight and Cadance decipher that statement, revealing the hidden message: Celestia thinks crowning Twilight and Cadance was a mistake. Twilight and Cadance flip out and ragequit dinner. Luna bails too because she doesn't want to deal with this bullshit. Celestia's left sad and alone, with only two stuffed werewolves for company.

 

Everyone makes up a page or two later.

 

Twilight has donuts with Pony Divine Right and lets him walk her home. Everyone under the sun (including the author) is shipping those two, despite DR having even less of a personality than EqG1 Flash Sentry. (Just end my life, Pete.)

 

 

 

Two boring chapters of coronation setup.

 

Sunset's invited basically everybody that knows her secret: the whole 11M8, Twilight's family, the principals, Edgelord, and Cadance and Shining armor (hope I haven't forgotten anyone). Night Light wants to bring a gun, but Cadance won't let him because he doesn't have a concealed carry permit. Instead, Cadance and Shining Armor both bring guns, while the tripfriends bring multiple crates of "WEAPONS SYSTEMS".

 

On the horse side, the M6, Berry Sue, Lockbox, Twiggy's parents, Pony Cadance and Pony Shining Armor, the princesses, and changeling-hybrid Coco are all at the portal to greet them. Mayhem ensues, in a perfectly predictable manner.

 

Sunset planned to carefully introduce the ponies to Human Edgelord, who is a cool dude and not a serial killer. Instead, Pony Luna blurts out "HEY IS THAT SABLE LOAM??" about five seconds after he pops out of the portal.

 

Sunset planned to carefully introduce the humans to Pony Divine Right, who is a cool dude and not a serial killer. Instead, they randomly bump into him in the hallway on the way to their rooms, and everyone recognizes him by his voice.

 

The humans are in town for a week or two, I think, but it's not all fun and games. The tripfriends, Edgelord, Sunset, and I guess some pony admirals have to meet to get the SIRENs established as a proper branch of the Royal Equestrian Navy. Also, Human Octavia will be seeing some pony shrinks, in hopes they can magic the crazy out of her.

 

So like I said, pretty boring. No sign yet of scion #4, or any cultist activity. All we've got is a hint that Pony Blueblood's sister is probably going to make an ass of herself at the ceremony.

 

 

 

Oh yeah, I guess that happened too.

 

 

Thanks to Sombra's inability to read a map, his empire is now at war with Equestria.

 

Fortunately, Pony Mengele is done with Rose/Crisalide. A dose of her "Compulsion" potion can force Rose to shapeshift into any form and go on a murderous rampage. This tends to cause massive collateral damage on both sides, but Sombra isn't smart enough to realize that it's a bad idea to let Manticore Rose massacre his troops.

 

Sombra demonstrates his evilness by promising his top generals with a night with Rose when they do well. They can have her in whatever form they want (even the princesses, because what red-blooded male could turn down the chance to rape an alicorn?), and nothing's off limits short of death or permanent mutilation.

 

A month later, disaster strikes: Pony Mengele dies, the victim of a freak accident that conveniently doesn't leave a body. Sombra doesn't mention needing a replacement alchemist to keep the Compulsion flowing, but I don't know if that's because he doesn't think it will be a problem or because he is stupid.

 

Aside from that, the war is going pretty well. Sombra's smiths have finally finished integrating the Alicorn Amulet into a suit of armor, which I'm sure will make him literally unstoppable for at least one or two paragraphs. Sombra's not even that worried about the rumors of a human (or maybe just a bald minotaur) on Equestria's side. [At this point, Berry Sue finds a random note between the pages, which helpfully points out that this is one of the oldest written references to The Megan.]

 

 

The only useful thing I've seen come of it was the backstory for La Musica (Octavia's ancestor) that got randomly jammed in there a while back. Aside from that, it's just bad Sombra and Chrysalis headcanons. I don't think it's informed the present-day characters' actions in any way.

 

 

 

BORING

DON'T CARE

 

Oh wait, the bad guys are doing things. Still boring, but likely to be relevant later on.

 

Chrysoberyl (cultist, who may or may not be the pony counterpart of Human Octavia's shrink) seems to be in charge of the Canterlot operation. Skystreak (Wonderbolt) really hates Sunset for undisclosed reasons, so she commits literal treason by telling Chrysoberyl all about the defenses for the upcoming coronation.

 

Later, Lt. Dive Bomb (generic tribalist jerk) and Silver Pan (cultist) meet up at a bar to discuss their attack on the coronation. Silver has doubts, but the barkeep turns out to be Barkeep (exceptionally unhinged cultist), who gives them a lecture on the value of faith.

 

Now, if you aren't into that set of badguys, here, have a different one: Highfalutin' (Pony Divine Right's sister, and raging unicorn supremacist) meets up with a griffon, who's in Canterlot to "recover" (kidnap) the "bride" (random mare) of one Lord Geralt. HF plans to help by creating a bureaucratic fuck-up with the appointment of Princess Twilight's seneschal, so she'll be extra super-duper busy.

 

Edginomicon update: Sombra gets rekt, but three of the 50,000 mares he's fucked are now pregnant. He does some shit with a potion to ensure his descendants will always be ready to retake his throne if needed. The end.

 

HOLY SHIT IT'S FINALLY OVER

 

Yes, that's right, BV3.1 "The Golden Age of Apocalypse - Book I" has finally ended. This story has dragged on for 206,900 words, but at last, BlueBastard has mercifully handed the reins back over to our favorite madlad, who is shifting this ride back into HIGH GEAR.