FimFiction Link - Short ID: 296185/child-of-order
Published: Feb '16
Oh boy, what to say about this one. Child of Order is a 340k word story. four years following the events of "To devour the Seventh World" Rainbow Dash, With Twilight's help attempts to break the light barrier. She fails spectacularly. Which actually was a good thing as if she had succeeded she would have killed all of her friends.
The aftermath of that failure had Twilight and the rest of the gang see Rainbow dash create an explosion, and they never see Rainbow Dash again. Assuming that she was vaporized in the blast. This has far reaching consequences for Twilight, Shining Armor, and the fate of Equestria,
What actually happened is that Rainbow skipped time to 450 years in the future, where she is happened upon by "Five", and her Demonpony girlfriend/mother/sister Bluntforce Gelding. unlike the previous two stories from unwhole whole, this one at the very least deserves its rating. Five is a special kind of pony that is the current host to Nightmare moon, and is fated to die when she creates a clone of herself to pass on that legacy. Bluntforce Gelding is a demon pony with a castration fetish. Equestria as a whole industrialized to a ridiculous degree, and ponies are numbered in the trillions. Ponyville, and Canterlot are in ruins and all the alicorns are dead, barring one that came out of nowhere calling herself "Thebe". The story follows Five as she tries to collect the bodies of the dead Elements of harmony so that she can be freed of her fate. Meanwhile in a significant distance away, some alien parasite crash lands in a frontier city, which then infects a pony called "Epicenter" and kills everyone else.
What follows is a failed quarantine as Thebe, curious about these new parasites actively sabotages it and spreads the parasites all across Equestria, where she can study them
Thebe, vastly underestimates them and, as powerful as she is, dwarfing even celestia and luna at their heights, gets her ass handed to her, and she responds by trying to purge them, she fails but kills trillions.
After stealing an important trinket from a museum, Five and friends piss off the government and drive them underground with the help of the robot who has the trinket, where they manage to make a clone of an Exmoor pony, which ill cover in my character breakdown.
The parasites, or vandrare, are killing billions as they largely ignore what thebe sends at them, who also happens to be killing billions.
Spike tries to rein in Thebe but ultimately fails.
5 and the gang's search bring them to the north, not as far as Hyberborea but to the crystal empire where they pick up their last party member, a lich who tried to save it.
Lets go over the charachters really quick.
Rainbow Dash: She's ostensibly the main charachter, after finding out that all her friends are dead, 5 telling her that Twilight, who should still be alive at this time killed herself in grief goes on a downward spiral, sticking to the group at least to start off because she has no idea what this new world is. She goes out of her way to foster a drinking habit to dull the pain that all her friends are gone, and only pulls herself out when she meets Brown, and her surviving friends
Anhelious 5: She is a horribly cold, soulless charachter. She has no qualms about killing, barely any emotions, and is incredibly violent and pragmatic. When she discovers rainbow the only reason she gives for letting her live is that she might be more powerful as a part of the elements of harmony alive rather then as a skull that the others get to be. Her goal, is to become her own person, to divorce herself from her destiny of being Anhelious, the host of Blackest Night/Nightmare Moon. As far as I can tell the only reason Rainbow sticks with her as long as she does, was that she had literally nobody else, and 5 gave her robot legs.
Bluntforce Gelding: She, surprisingly, grounds 5, and her death at the hooves of one of thebes robots is when 5 finally goes off the deep end and manages to force rainbow dash to leave her. Shes a crass, overly horny demon pony. If you like the juvenile humor you'll like her. I didnt.
Brown: He is the Exmoori Clone. An immensely powerful and extremely fluffy brown pony. Think Flufflepuff. He was an infant when 5 found him and used magic to grow him to be an adult, and then enslaved him. The rest of the exmoori clones are literally, and unironically, the fluffy ponies from that trend of people drawing overly poofy retards that speak in the uwu language. Fortunately, the author knows that would get old really quickly and Grown-up Brown largely dismisses it. Brown and Rainbow Dash end up as quick friends, and then romantic lovers. The fact that Brown is barely a few months old is played for laughs, but theres not a lot else going on with that.
The Lich King of the Crystal Empire: Its shining armor. After Rainbow dash's "death" He sets out on a research project to try and make sure that he can persist to live with his immortal wife and sister. He fails, and kills his wife in a fit of rage after she leaves him when she finds out what kind of a monster hes become. He spends most of his time helping 5 get rarity's skull and serves a useful purpose at the climax but doesnt contribute much aside from helping to drive home how depressing this world is from that.
Charachters Continued.
Thebe: Thebe is the Godddess of Equestria, and is largely Celestia's opposite. Where Celestia was kind and loving, Thebe is cold and distant. Celestia took an active role in her people and cared about them, and committed great atrocities in their name, whereas Thebe views them like the stereotypical immortal does, the whole "Oh it doesn't matter if i kill them or if old age does, they're still going to die. in ten seconds or sixty years, there really isn't that much of a difference" Her turning out to be a Twilight Sparkle driven mad by the loss of her friends and her mentors who were supposed to be immortal is actually one of the better written parts of this story. She realyl does fit the bill for the current Equestria, and hides herself away where Celestia used the finality core to become a god.
Vale: Vale is the other ruler of Equestria, she safeguards the tree of harmony and what little nature there is left. She has a signficant hatred towards ponies because of how they've treated nature. She's a yellow demon pegasus with red hair, bright red eyes and massive feathery wings, and has the king in yellow, and Discord by her side. It's pretty obvious shes a corrupted fluttershy, and her hatred of ponykind is laregly because of Twilight's integration of the demon population following "To Devour the Seventh world"
Toxic Shock: A Cyborg, the one who recognized the threat that the Vandrares posed and is imprisoned on the orders of Thebe because she wanted to see what happened.
The Vandrares. Corrupted Humanity. They have ridicously absurd magic and technology, only one showed up, and they infect ponies with things that make them like them. For some reason they are related to the Aurasi, the gold Cenorians from the previous story, of which Rainbow dash becomes part when she tried to break the light barrier, and is the only reason why they don't slay her. Characterized as having this intense hatred for anything that isnt them, they are bound to construct something on the planet once there is enough of them.
Overall the story has excellent pacing and was rather interesting for what turned out to be just a Crapsack Equestria. There are a ton of inspiring moments. Despite this, while it wasnt as bad as the previous story, it needs an an editor. On top of that, the climax was rushed to an absurd degree, Basically the entire thing was pointless. The humans win, 5 gets hit with the elements of harmony after twilight, and it turns out that humans just were building a monolith that then proceeded to do nothing killing all the humans in the process. The next chapter is the epilogue 6 year time skip where nothing actually happens. It was blueballing, the story was great but the ending was super abrupt
If it weren't for the super abrupt and unsatisfying ending, this would have a 7/10, and thats despite the editing issues and the yoyoing between funny and serious that the previous story had done so well. Unfortunately it does have that, and it was an immense dissapointment. 5/10.