If you were to give the earth ponies "codified" magical abilities of some kind

[Unlikeable Pony 2,698]

Anyways, so here's my question: Earth pony magic is pretty vague, and all over the place. If you were to give them a few "definite" abilities that could be done by their racial magic, what would you give them?
This isn't saying erase what they already have, but solidify them as having the ability to 100% do certain things.



For example, I know the Daring do books occasionally used the descriptive term of "earth pony forged steel" a couple times in detailing things; what if they did a Dwarven kind of thing and said that metallic objects forged or made by earth ponies were inherently magically stronger due to their connection to the earth, not just by skill, but in the same way that a hot furnace is crucial to making a strong piece of metal, an earth pony's touch was required for certain attributes?

Edited August 1, 2016 by Unlikeable Pony

[ph00tbag 108]

Not all of these ideas are my own, but let me basically lay it out.

 

I was curious, one drunken evening, about what, exactly, unicorn horns are made out of. Traditional mythology would have me believe they are made of a substance called Alicorn, which was the name given to putative "Unicorn Horns" that were ground into powder which was sold for medicinal purposes back in the European Middle Ages. But that kinda falls flat when you realize that these so called horns were actually narwhal tusks. The idea of Unicorns having teeth sticking out of their heads was somewhat unsettling, and it struck me as evolutionarily unlikely that any living thing would ever need a protrusion of a substance as hard as dentin growing out of their skull. Basically, hardness doesn't really determine penetrative power--that's just a function of the fineness of the point. Dentin is used in teeth so that they don't get crushed under the pressure exerted on them by the jaw muscles. Teeth need to be as hard as they are. A horn doesn't need to be any harder than, well, keratin. Any cat owner can tell you how much damage keratin can do. And it turns out, most horns in the animal kingdom are simply keratinous growths on the head. So I concluded that unicorn horns are most likely bony protrusions with a pointed growth of keratin atop. Something about keratin in Equestria must make it a good conductor of magic for those who are attuned to it.

Which leads to the question, why can't anything made of keratin conduct magic. Well, the answer is, it must. Fur, manes, tails, hooves, feathers, even, too a lesser degree, skin... all would conduct a certain amount of magic, and when you look, all do. Cutie Marks are a magical discoloration of the flank. All ponies exhibit the "magnet hooves" phenomenon, and pegasus flight can really only be explained with the aid of magic. That leaves manes and tails, and if you look hard enough, you realize that actually, only Earth Ponies seem to have a particular control over these two parts of their body. So it seems using hair is a distinctly Earth Pony trait. I think Tommy Oliver was the first one to really figure this out, but I can't recall precisely. The kicker to that is that it predicts that Luna and Celestia's moving hair may be not be so mysterious--it would just be a specific manipulation of their Earth Pony power over hair.

I also recently read Earth Ponies are Overpowered, by Maran, which posits that Earth Ponies have a certain attunement to the magic inherent in all things, and can move it about via their hooves, which, as the title suggests, is pretty damn OP. It would certainly explain Earth Pony steel, in that they could imbue the steel with magical properties simply by touching it. It's too bad the fic is so good about excising excess exposition, because I would have loved a lengthy exploration of the ways in which this ability translates to the vague, "Earth Pony industriousness."