Should the Equestria au for the boys to fight villains should it be through
Send votes in comments or asks
A) battling through music (think like the Equestria girls movie with the sirens)
B) Go completely feral (magic weapons, magical girl style...warning option would contain moments with a bit of blood and like actual stakes of injuries. Not like excessivly but yeah)
Or C) mix of both (gotta sing/ make music to use weapons/abilities to fight)
The town of Woodtrot is a small town up north where simple ponies live, living their quiet, simple lives from the day of their birth to the day of their dead, working quietly in the small, simple jobs such small, simple place has to offer. Thats usually just how it would seem to most.
Christopher Carlyle Chestnut Oak was one such pony; grown in his family’s tree farm and raised to breed mighty trees strong enough to rival those in fine greenhouses in cities, he was a hardworking young stallion. Never one to leave the job undone, he would rarely ever actually leave the fields (especially seeing as the tree farming business was flunking due to locomotives shifting to use the power of coal and steam, not wood anymore, damn ‘em technological advances), and if it hadn’t been for his idiotic friends dragging him away from them and to one of the town’s pubs, he would have never met Elizabeth Rees Ruby Carver.
Believe it or not, back then was a time in which Elizabeth was wild and carefree, a filly in her prime with an indomitable spirit and a face so pretty like the precious stones she carved herself, rebellious like a rock refusing to crack under a pickaxe and attractive like the treasure found inside it, and thats what drawn Christopher to her so badly. They began a heated, whirlwind of a romance as young adults, and this made for his only reason to stop working at the end of every day, meeting each other before curfew would arrive and sometimes even after it, drinking and dancing at their favorite pub, sneaking around the town’s alleys, and hiding in the tree-farm’s fields with a few silver charms to protect themselves from the ghosts.
Then Elizabeth came out pregnant. Her parents, unimpressed and unhappy with the situation, kicked her out, to which Christopher responded by proposing and moving her to his farm with him to have their first daughter, Margaret Butternut. Money was scarce, enough to keep them on their hooves, but it didn’t stop them from spending time with their filly, or from bringing their second daughter, Alice Gingko, into the family, and a few months later finally got married.
With how things were increasingly harder around the farm what with the market for fine wood decreasing, Christopher had to get a job at the closest train-station of New Canter, and Elizabeth took a part-time job as a laundrymare to the town’s hotel while still tending to her two daughters and looking after the trees in the farm. She began to insist they sold the farm away, that they could get some decent money from it and get a better house for them and their daughters, however Christopher refused to let that happen (’tree farming is family tradition, Eli!’) and decided that what they needed was more helping hooves - a strong colt.
With this decision came years of trying out for a foal or two that would help around the farm that would be met with a string of pure daughters - Judith Red Cedar, the twins Rebecca Witch Hazel and Grace Black Birch, then little Mary Tuliptree, who would be the end of their parents’ patience. They were scrapping for money constantly; for food for them and their fillies, for their daughters’ education, for repairs that had to be done around the house, to pay their bills, the fortify and repair any and all wards against ghosts, and their jobs barely gave them enough for it all; the farm’s wood wasn’t getting sold, the job Christopher had at the station was low paying, even Elizabeth’s two full time jobs as laundrymare in two different hotels only just about gave her enough to bring food to the table, and with only two of their daughters having good enough Talents to make it into the Night Watch, there was never any time for them to spend with each other, and there was always a reason to argue.
Thus, it was no surprise to anypony that Christopher’s and Elizabeth’s marriage fell apart with time. They blamed each other for the lack of money, they blamed each other for not spending time together, Christopher blamed his wife for their lack of foals, and Elizabeth blamed her husband for the loss of her free spirit and change into a strict, miserable mother. They could no longer stand the company of the other and would constantly fight about whatever topic was at hoof, wether it be the state dinner was served, the lack of money, or the fact that Christopher was now arriving home way after curfew and stinking drunk more often than not. At least he was still providing, was what Elizabeth would think to herself as she dragged him upstairs to bed whenever he couldn’t properly do it himself, but this thought brought her no comfort.
One such particular night, long after curfew while she was still up waiting for him to arrive, she would receive a call from the pub to which they used to go in their youth, telling her Christopher had passed out drunk and that she’d have to go get him, which she begrudgingly did. However, to drag a fully passed out stallion was far more difficult than simply nudging him in the correct direction when he was unsteady but still on his hooves, and soon she felt the weight of all that stress and all that resent she carried with her for years break inside her like a dam and she stepped into the pub for the first time in years, intent on getting herself something to drink.
As she finished her glass she was approached by a changeling who offered her another, stronger drink and the option to elope for a night. Hurt by the path her life had taken, she took the chance, hoping to get a glimpse of what she once had and had lost.
Eleven months later she would give birth to a large, colorful egg, from which a few weeks later would emerge the final, definite proof of her shame and last daughter, Lucy Weeping Willow.
Fun Facts:
All Carlyle-born family members have tree related names
The changeling Elizabeth had a one night stand with actually still lives in Woodtrot, has actually done for a long time
After marrying Christopher, Elizabeth took his last name, Carlyle became Ruby Oak instead of Carver
The Carlyle daughters are all aware of how their mother conceived their last sister, which Margaret, Alice and Judith hold against her and is why they treat her differently
Names of the Carlyle sisters are from Old Ghosts, New Family by @thegirlfromthesea, go give her fits lots and lots of love!
Guidelines:
Black Line: Descendant
Red Line: Romantic Relationship
Blue Line: Legal Guardian
Green Line: Sibling
Golden Ring: Married
Broken Heart: Ruined Relationship
Flame: Affair
Celia Baker Wild Lilly was new to the ways of cities. Gypsy ponies never stayed long anywhere, no city, town or village ever became home for them as their nomad lifestyle prevented from settling down in ways and places that would stop them from ‘properly connecting with their natural roots’, but still the young pegasus mare had eagerly decided to leave her family and herd behind and take on the challenge of living in one place long enough to finish her university studies. Alone in a cart crowded to the brim with towers books and strong wards against the unnatural, Celia did her best to adjust to the harsh environment of Foaldon, taking her classes and working hard as a gardener to earn her living, after all charms of dried lavender and rosemary sold very well around fellow horny college-mates.
Having been recommended by one of her usual clients, one spring afternoon Celia merrily pulled her wagon along her to where her present shopper lived, a beautiful Ponictorian home surrounded by an iron fence, a front yard between the house and the fence that spoke of little care. She was greeted there by a young stallion named Patrick Lockwood Golden Sunshine, colt friend of the filly who hired her, and who shows her the two gardens and what his marefriend had in mind for the house, to which she quickly gets to work. While she was planting seeds and bushes on the front yard a new stallion came to the house, and while she took a moment to notice him and how he lingered longer than needed before the door, she made no interactions.
She would meet that stallion again many days later at the college she attended, taking precisely the same lecture she was taking. He introduced himself as Donald Lockwood Dusk Shadow, and soon they engaged in a conversation that quickly drifted to the topic that was always on everypony’s minds; ghosts. They bonded over their fascination for the supernatural and quickly developed a friendship in which they traded opinions, books and personal research, sitting together in whichever lectures they shared and helping each other out with homeworks, until their feelings began to grow and they became closer to each other, spending hours just sitting at the library with their snouts buried in books or at the gardens laying on the grass with their wings just barely touching.
It took them finishing their studies and graduating and a lot of pushing from his brother Patrick for Donald to finally dare to ask Celia to be his marefriend, and from there spent most of their time together, even as they began to work as researchers for Foaldon’s Museum of the Problem, marrying each other before they embarked on their first ever trip to faraway lands beyond Equestria. Always on the move, following leads, visiting and befriending tribes of all sorts of species, they were both happy to spend all their time together as Celia taught Donald the wonders of living on the road.
They were so immersed in their work and travels that for years they never considered the possibility of ever starting their own family. But fate had it its way.
After a night in which they shared one too many glasses of wine in celebration for their latest successful discovery, Celia turned out to be pregnant. Unexpected as it was, and after a long talk, they welcomed the new member of their family with open hooves, receiving their little filly Jessica Lockwood Sundancer into their home. They spent some time back in Foaldon with Patrick and their daughter while Celia recovered, but soon enough had to go back on travel, leaving their filly in the care of her uncle.
With little chance to come back home, Celia and Donald treasured the time they could spend with their filly, giving her all their attention and spoiling her whenever they were around, saddened by how much they missed her during their travels but knowing they couldn’t just give it all up. And it was with the same conflicted feelings that they found out about Celia’s second pregnancy.
How would they handle this now? If right now they could barely spare time for the child they did have, how would they manage with the second? It was painful enough as it was to think that their filly was in the hooves of another stallion, trusted as he was, raised by somepony that wasn’t them, could they handle the hurt of handing their next progeny away as well?
All their doubts were at once forgotten once their little Anthony Lockwood Sword Shine was born. They knew the importance of their work and why they couldn’t just abandon it now, but they also knew just how close they were to completing it, they just needed the final proof to confirm their theories and then they’d be able to be with their family.
With that goal in mind, Celia and Donald returned to work with renewed vigor, spending as much time as they could in finding anything that was of use to their work, all the proof they could gather, all the evidence to how they Problem began and how it could be stopped. It took some painful years of barely seeing their foals but finally they gathered everything they needed and scheduled a meeting with the members of the Orpheus Society. It would be this meeting that determined the fate of their work, that sealed the doors on everything they had spent their lives fighting for, that opened the doors for a life with their family.
Then their cart fell to the depths of the Thames river on their way to the meeting.
Fun Facts:
Patrick Lockwood was his niece’s and nephew’s legal guardian
Celia never did find her herd again after leaving it for college
Some names were taken from Reminisce Before We Forget by Lockwoodstie go give their fic lots and lots of love!
Guidelines:
Black Line: Descendant
Red Line: Romantic Relationship
Green Line: Sibling
Golden Ring with a Heart: Married and In Love
