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The tale of Starswirl (1)

By Cliffordwriter
Created: 2021-03-14 07:12:04
Expiry: Never

  1. >Be Top Cunt
  2. >Brainiac is nattering on about her perfect horsebandu again
  3. >An almost certainly withered up cock from the era of unification
  4. >Starscream or something like that
  5. >'A wizard of such undeniable prowess that he's remembered as the premier spellcaster from an age where Stallions get even less respect than they do now.'
  6. >And of course she's such a sunhat tipper that she wants to respect him so hard she's even cosplaying as him, complete with perfectly dorky bell-addled hat.
  7. >Why does she have to be so cringe?
  8. >Sure, Celestia appears to be used to it, and doesn't even flinch, but this new Princess, Luna, is rolling her eyes so hard you can hear it.
  9. >"Twilight Sparkle, beware emulating Starswirl too closely, lest you fall into the same trap he did, in the pursuit of knowledge."
  10. >"Wait! Princess Luna! You mean you know Starswirl's story? I can find so little in the archives! Librarians in the past were far more concerned with his spell work than his life, and very little remains! Please tell me about him!"
  11. >"The life of a Pony, Twilight Sparkle, takes as long to tell as it does to live, but I can tell you a few stories, ere duty bid us part. Starswirl was born of the court wizard of Princess Platinum, a stallion when Augury and Preference demanded a daughter who could be groomed to take her mother's place. Failure to provide an heir, or to conceive a second foal in a timely manner meant that Starswirl's mother lost so much prestige that it was demanded of her that she share her secrets with a rival and groom a peeress to take her place."
  12. >"How awful!"
  13. >"At the time, it was considered highly rude to interrupt a storyteller, because fame was judged by deeds remembered and interruption was a signal that the audience did not consider the deed worth remembering, Twilight Sparkle... So Starswirl's dam took the grandam of Clover the Clever into her tower, and revealed her secrets, in her shame, but she also spilled her secrets to her son, Starswirl, despite such spell work being considered too complex for the minds of colts and stallions. Starswirl was an adept student, far more adept than the mare that was to replace his mother, and so when the last of his mother's secrets had been spilled, her replacement prevailed upon Princess Platinum to give the colt a position as a page, and a bed at the base of the sorceress's tower, ostensibly to provide for him a comfortable position until he could come of age and be married off to a minor house, but in actuality so that the new chief sorceress could have a walking reference guide to the secrets she could fain comprehend, and so that she could marry Starswirl into her own house when her own daughter came of age, in order to enhance her own bloodline.
  14.  
  15. >"But it was not to be, Lady Sparkle. Starswirl was irreverent, snarky, rude, cold, and acerbic, but worst of all, he was almost always right. The combination was insufferable to the ladies of the court and especially to the sorceress, and so, before her plans could come to fruition, Starswirl was stripped of his position, stripped of his rights of residence, and cast out into the cold.
  16. >"The adolescent stallion made his way in life on grit and competence and with no small amount of guile and deception. But he made no friends. His most effective defence against the machinations of other ponies is that none of them could stand him long enough to perform a confidence scheme, and by the time he matured, he had become the ultimate example of the stallion you pay in order to make him go away. Sister met him on the road one day, and instantly her heart broke for the poor tortured soul, and she took him in. At first, as a reclamation project, in an effort to help him find a better path in life, but as she grew to know him, he gained a true purpose in refining her abysmal spellcasting. In those days, Celestia was a hammer, not a scalpel, and it worked for her, because of her immense personal power. Under Starswirl's tutelage, her power refined. If she needed to be a hammer, she was still peerless, but her control grew until she could choose not to be a hammer. Perhaps not yet the scalpel she is today, but at least as subtle as a large knife. He was proud of her accomplishments, but stifled the workload the pace of her training demanded of its teacher, and would tend to take long leaves of absence periodically, to pursue his passion for original research. On one of these absences, he met an independent coven with deep pocketed benefactors who shared this passion, lead by his exiled mother."
  17.  
  18. >"His mother was a broken mare, one who'd consumed her own former brilliance in her obsession to reclaim her prestige, leading several competent younger mares in the pursuit of her paymaster's goals, but while they had found several promising lines of inquiry, ultimate success had so far evaded them. With Starswirl in a journeyman position, however, they soon found themselves making great progress.
  19.  
  20. >"However, there was never enough fame to satisfy the egos at stake. Starswirl felt like he deserved the lion's share of the credit for ending a months long quagmire, no matter how much work had been done before him, and Starswirl's mother needed every scrap of credit she could get if she was to reclaim her former glory, and finally, their benefactor was actually Clover's granddam working through a cutout and giving no credit at all to the coven of researchers.
  21.  
  22. >"It all came to a head some months of growing tension and recrimination later. A magical plague swept into Princess Platinum's kingdom, and the court looked to Clover's granddam for salvation, and she looked to the research coven for results, and Starswirl, in a fit of petulance at the realization that neither he nor his mother would ever see any credit, sabotaged the Coven's research and fled into the mountains with the spell the kingdom sought, intending to make them grovel before him in order to receive it.
  23.  
  24. >"The epidemic grew worse and worse, but hoping sought him out. No pony knew how important he was as a researcher, except his mother's coven, and they were beset with the plague and in no position to pursue him. And nopony knew of the importance of that coven, except for Clover's granddam, but she feared her position might be lost if she admitted to paying others to do her research for her. No one knew that Starswirl had the key to ending everypony's suffering, except for Starswirl, and anger had hardened his heart. Eventually the court sorceress was waylaid by the plague, and in her fevered ranting, her grandfoal heard the truth. Clover found her granddam's secret, and sought out the coven, and from the coven, found out about Starswirl. But while the coven knew not where to find him, they pointed her to Celestia, and Celestia confronted Starswirl in his mountaintop shack. With Celestia to show him the error of his ways, he was too ashamed to take credit for his spell, and so Clover received the credit, and the nomen 'the Clever' for being such a resourceful filly."
  25.  
  26. >"This isn't the end of Starswirl's tail, and not all of the stories end so happy as this one, but some are much happier indeed. Perhaps, one day, we can share another tale, Lady Sparkle, but for now, our time is at an end, for duty beckons us both. Good Night."
  27.  
  28. >Be Top Cunt again.
  29.  
  30. "Did I just fall asleep again? What's with the long face, Twiggles?"

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