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Terror of Tartaurus


Fhaolan

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Since I recently got my only MLP fanfic so far actually published (Doctor Whooves and the Terror of Tartaurus. It took a lot longer to get it through editing and proofreading than I had planned, but *shrug*.), I think I'll talk about the specific worldbuilding I dealt with in the story. This breaks down into some sub-topics:

 

Tartaurus

 

Tartarus is mentioned in 'It's About Time' as being guarded by Cerberus and containing many ancient evils, which is pretty much what Greek Myth tells us as well. What a lot of people don't know though, is that the actual Tartarus in myth was originally the name of a much older deity who gave his name to his realm, in the same manner as Hel (become Hell), Hades, and many other chthonic deities. In the oldest known Greek myths Tartarus is of the same 'age' as Chaos, Gaia, and Eros. The true primordial Greek deities that gave birth to the next generation, the Titans. Tartarus' realm became the prison of the Titans and other divine creatures that were the enemies of the Olympians, with Tartarus himself as their warden. It is *not* the afterlife, however, it is a prison for demi-god class and higher entities.

 

What struck me in this episode was the pronunciation Twilight used. She very specifically pronounced it 'Tartaurus' which triggered what little Greek I knew to make me think of Taurus (bull), and thus brought me right around to minotaurs, which I knew existed in the MLP:FiM universe thanks to Iron Will. Since calling them minotaur due to the story of Minos and Asterion wouldn't make much sense in this setting, the idea of the Men of Tartaurus becoming 'minotaur' just followed naturally. I believe some others have made this connection but they may have followed other paths to get there.

 

The difficulty here was how close Tartaurus had to be to Ponyville for the time took to return Cerebus to Tartaurus to make sense, and still be a location that the minotaurs actually come from as a race. This led to the idea of Tartaurus being an alternate plane of existence, which allowed it to be very far away, and yet very close at the same time. An excellent place to put a prison. MLP as a franchise has had similar alternate planes of existence before, with the Crystal Empire being vanished, and in older generations (G1 specifically); Tambelon the Lost City that was sent to the Shadow World.

 

As for the ancient evils, as mentioned by Twilight, it didn't seem to contain Discord, Nightmare Moon, Sombra.... So maybe Twilight was misinterpreting things. Evils doesn't necessarily mean creatures as such, but artefacts can count. Things like the Alicorn Amulet and stuff that should be locked away. A Warehouse 13 (for those watching that show), a Warehouse 23 (for those who follow Steve Jackson Games), or just 'The Warehouse' (for Indiana Jones fans), that slowly became a prison over time as ponies (and others) forgot about its original purpose.

 

So this is how I arrived at Tartaurus, existing on the other side of a portal guarded by Cerberus. A part of the Shadow World populated by minotaurs, guarding a prison that used to be a warehouse of ancient artefacts. The bell of Tambelon being used to maintain the portal between the worlds just for that added kick of G1 goodness.

 

I also referenced the Twin Kings of Mallus and Amoni. This is meant to parallel the diarchy of Celestia and Luna but in this case using the ancient Sparta model given Tartaurus and Minotaurs' Greek origins. Ancient Sparta was ruled by two Kings simultaneously, each descended from a different son of Hercules. In this case Mallus and Amoni are each descended from the same minotaur Hero that brought stability to the Shadow World, just through different sons (or daughters) of that Hero. The 'Twin' title refers not to the fact that they were brothers, but that they took the throne at the exact same time which is unusual.

 

Tirek and the Rainbow of Darkness

 

While Tirek makes a good villain and was surprisingly dark for a 1980's cartoon in the first MLP TV special 'Escape from Midnight Castle', a lot of his shtick is too similar to Nightmare Moon for coincidence. The whole 'the night will last forever' bit. However Tirek made an issue out of transforming *others* with the Rainbow of Darkness, while Nightmare Moon was a shapeshifter herself. This Rainbow of Darkness sounded a lot like an artefact that the ponies would lock away given the chance, and we had Tartaurus for that purpose as above. Tirek was basically vaporized and pulled into the clouds at the end of the TV special. No other centaurs ever showed up in that generation, and his appearance was really a more demonic thing, resembling more a minotaur crossed with a centaur. Which made me wonder about perhaps the Rainbow of Darkness *had* transformed him from a normal minotaur into this creature. Artefacts normally have pretty rough side-effects to balance their power, and the idea that the artefact was linked to a parasite creature that was attempting to manifest through its wielder was born. Thus Tirek became a prior incarnation of this parasite, duplicated when it got a hold of another minotaur.

 

As a note, the G1 Rainbow of Light became associated to the Elements of Harmony by the characters in the story, but that's not necessarily true. It's just what the characters thought. One of the principles I hold to when building settings and campaigns is that what is written as History is just what the people of the time thought happened. There is no guarantee that is *truly* what occurred, just what they believe occurred. Which brings me to:

 

Batponies & Sombra

 

Now the batponies are a hot item in the fandom. They've only made it on screen once, "Luna Eclipsed" and basically they were just props that were discarded once Luna made her awesome entrance. However they've caught the imagination of many Bronies. They could be written off as costumes, but their wings and eyes point to some kind of transformation magic. We know that the Canterlot Guards appear suspiciously uniform in their armour, so the idea that the armour magically makes them all look like the same three ponies is perfectly valid. However, this is kind of an extreme change in appearance, and nobody before or after has that look.

 

Recently M.A. Larson and Lauren Faust have both said in twitter than their headcanons have the batponies as a separate race. It's not been confirmed in show, but it's pretty safe bet they're a separate breed of pony because of that.

 

Calling them batponies is a bit off, because bats don't have eyes like that. Like a lot of things, sometimes the wrong name sticks, and it makes people go places in their assumptions that they woudn’t normally. Those eyes indicate something *else*. More draconic than anything. The interesting thing is that we've seen those eyes before on ponies. Nightmare Moon and Sombra.

 

Nightmare Moon has a bunch of her own problems, but Sombra... there's a possibility there. He has the eyes, and a weird curved horn unlike any other unicorn. In truth, he resembles the Dungeons and Dragons version of a creature called a Kirin, an oriental-style dragon-unicorn with a curved horn, wreathed in flame & smoke, and so on. This is a vague mix of actual Qilin/Kylin/Kirin myths from China, Korea, and Japan that have a variety of different descriptions for this creature.

 

It's this 'dragon-unicorn' that catches my interest. Combine with 'dragon-pegasi' of the batponies, and we have something interesting here. Not just a sub-breed of pegasi, but an entire alternate set of ponies based off of the originals. Kirin, Batpony, and likely an earth pony variant we haven't seen yet. Throw in the transformational powers of 'Dark Magic' (see the Rainbow of Darkness above), and you have something to work with. Connect it somewhat with the mythology of Nightmare Moon and the existing fanon around the battle between Celestia and Nightmare Moon, and you have a ready-made origin. Putting them in Tartaurus, and you've got an explanation as to why we haven't seen many the same way we've only seen one minotaur.

 

Oh, and as I mentioned in my last author's note of the story, the name Sdukʷalbixʷ is a straight lift from the Snoqualmie Indian tribe local to the Pacific Northwest where I'm currently living. The odd spelling is their interpretation of Roman letters, and it’s not *quite* pronounced Snoqualmie, but that’s how it’s been Anglicized. It does in fact translate to Children of the Moon, and I couldn't resist. While others have called the batponies thestrals, and other names, most of them are lifted from modern fiction (Harry Potter) or constructed new out of pieces of Latin, so I felt no connection to those names.

 

In any case, the Sdu aren't necessarily connected in truth to Nightmare Moon. As I said before in this essay, it's just what their 'history' tells them, so it's what *they* believe. Even the oldest Sdu in the story is too young to know what really happened, so the only ones who can affirm or dispute their origins are Celestia and Luna.

 

And we know how much they like talking about the details of the past, don't we? They're not the types to do broad stroke history, aren't they? wink.png

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The theories on batponies are interesting...

 

Batponies themselves are interesting. That big entrance, and then nothing. Given the effort necessary to make those puppets for the couple of seconds of animation, I'm kinda surprised they haven't shown up in the background somewhere.

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