Twilight of Equestria is a Grimdark My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic play by post roleplaying forum. It is set in an alternate universe, Refuge, whose residents regard the original Equestria as a myth. Most of the plot (and by connection, most of the characters) are drawn, one way or another, to a village located in the dead center of Refuge, Nexus. Nexus has plenty of weirdness to go around, with a mysteriously long-lived mayor, an odd-eyed sheriff, and members of the Mafia running around. And they're hardly the weirdest folks in Nexus...
It can be found here
This site provides examples of:
- Ambiguously Evil: Big Picture isn't evil, but, he basically started a zombie apocalypse (see below).
- Animal Eye Spy: How the 'eyebugs' work.
- Anti-Villain: Gramayre (at least, before he took on the guise of Dolus)
- Anyone Can Die: Being a named character won't save you. Just ask Sugar High. Or Chromosome. Or Evening Primrose.
- Artificial Limbs: Sprocket's specialty, which is going to come in handy because Glitz happens to need one.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Acheron has shades of this; he seems to be all over the moral spectrum at times.
- Booby Trap: Cromosome retreated to an abandoned hotel and filled it with these after killing a large portion of Nexus' youth. It didn't save him.
- Cool Old Guy: Teskivel, the leader of the Fadeborn demons. Sky Dust classifies as a Cool Old Lady despite her lack of physical aging.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Angel Dust is a harsh, ruthless, and merciless mare at the head of the OPP corporation. She has ties to political corruption and the organized crime rings of New Manehattan.
- Cursed with Awesome: Just skim the active characters.
- Dark and Troubled Past: You could do a sweep for this, too. Just keep a box of tissues handy.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Patchy Part is a genuinely innocent, eager to please young foal who has the misfortune of being made of corpses. Demons also can fall under this category, given that one of them is the sheriff of Nexus.
- Darker and Edgier: Oh so much. Pony-trafficking, illegal drugs, organized crime, demons, undead, and all kinds of amorality.
- Dark Magical Girl: Sky Shadow in a nutshell.
- Ditzy Genius: Sprocket, who often gets lost in familiar settings and can't remember where she put things because she's constantly thinking about her latest engineering project.
- Drugs Are Bad: "Mana" is a unicorn-specific drug that boosts magic — at a serious cost. Some unicorns eventually can't do magic without it. "Hype" is another world-specific club drug with exaggeratedly bad side effects.
- The Aggressive Drug Dealer: Vlad the Inhaler. (Yup.)
- Empathic Environment: As Sunnydaze and Black Suit are discussing their past it starts to rain.
- Elective Mute: Axe Evergreen can speak, but doesn't. He occasionally will go so far as to write what he wants to say.
- Eye Scream: Five Eyes' 'eyebugs' can crawl in and out of eyes- his own, or others. It is harmless, just looks terrifying.
- Fantastic Racism: Demons are frequently responded to with mistrust and, at times, outright hostility. Also a character specific example, Five Eyes has something of a chip on his shoulder against magic-users.
- Starstruck is also horribly racist towards non-unicorns.
- Frost Breeze comes from a northern village populated entirely by unicorn supremacists
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Along with earth ponies, pegasi, griffins and unicorns, there are vaguely insectoid demons, flesh golems, a pegasus with mechanical wings, and... a head in a jar?
- Fight Clubbing: Nexus has a Fight Club, which acts as its crime hub. Formerly lead by a mare by the name of Ghost, Angel Dust and Black Suit now control its activities.
- For Science!: Chromosome does things For Biology!
- Gadgeteer Genius: Kestus is not quite a mad scientist, but he is certainly mad, and a scientist. He has saved himself on at least one occasion with an implausible gadget that noone should have.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Capricorn had some pretty clear shades of this from flashbacks by the demons.
- Current plot developments imply that Celestia banished the ancestors of Refuge's population to their present location, and given Refuge is slated for destruction at the summer solstice, she may well not have stopped there.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: Acheron and Aries have both exhibited these. If they glow, expect imminent maiming.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Sprocket has a surprisingly evil scar given she's a pretty nice pony- it runs jaggedly across the top of her head and looks like someone attempted to scalp her in the past. And on the topic of scars:
- Covered with Scars: Balmung the ex-biker griffin, and Gallager the blacksmith with abuse in his past
- Scars Are Forever: Glitz missing a leg, Caramel Corn (three bite scars), Azamonra (claw-raked scars)
- Good Wings, Evil Wings: Ross's cybernetic wings lend him a slightly sinister edge, not to mentioned Acheron's above-stated draconic ones. Ironically Teskivel, who has huge black bat wings, is quite amiable and friendly.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: The Church of Laughter could be an example of this.
- Acheron vowing to slaughter an entire pack of wolves without investigation into their crimes.
- Also Sugar High (the girly, giggly thug for hire who has never killed — only stabbed)
- Hybrid Monster: Litlilly Stratum, a half-dragon half-pony who can eat meat (despite dragons in MLP being gem-eaters)
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Sunny Daze is a painfully shy filly who would love to make friends, but is scared to do it thanks to her old "friends" being jealous jerks. She also Apologises a Lot.
- Caramel Corn and Sharp Focus have shades of this too
- Incoming Ham: Sprocket Spark. "BRILLIANT!"
- Sprocket pretty much does this all the time with her lack of a concept of 'quiet'.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Mayor Dust feels uncomfortable with certain morally ambiguous decisions her position requires.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Refuge's equivalent of "bullsh**" is "horsesh**". It's funny because they're all ponies.
- Kick the Dog: Black Suit's reaction to Caramel's fate may even be a Moral Event Horizon.
- Kill It with Water: Sunseeker is terrified of water
- Kill the Cutie: Caramel Corn has officially joined the list of the dead. Well, brain-dead, at least.
- My Beloved Smother: Atropa Thallium. Her affections border on a rather sinister variant of And Call Him "George", given she killed her own mother out of love.
- Necromantic: The magician Gramarye fulfilled this trope after attempting to resurrect his dead daughter, Trixie. However, bringing back the dead is impossible. His attempt had tragic consequences, though neither of them actually got to him.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: There was an Al Coltone.
- Oh, My Gods!: The Mane Six of the original show are worshiped as deities, along with Celestia and Luna. In particular, the Cult of Loyalty is focused on considerably.
- Our Demons Are Different: They go through an insectoid 'larval' stage and differ drastically from case to case.
- Posthumous Character: Capricorn, the Queen of Demons. Her death sparked the collapse of the demon's home dimension, causing them to flee to Refuge.
- Promotion to Parent: Sunseeker began taking care of eight year-old Apple Pie after her parents were killed by zombies.
- Punny Name: New Manehattan, along with others.
- Raised by Wolves: Sprocket's marked lack of tact might be accounted to her early childhood being spent alone in a scrapyard.
- Red Right Hand: Half of Ross's face is horribly scarred, and he has an a-bomb cataract in one eye. He's a scientist trying to engineer Alicorns with particularly brutal methods.
- Sherlock Scan: Tidy Queue didn't know anything about you; until he met you face to face, that is. With Queue, everypony wears their heart on their sleeve. Also, their political opinions, honesty, relationship habits, line of work, Habits, favorite flavour of cake, and social security number. Well, maybe not the last two. For those, we'll need five minutes' conversation.
- Shout-Out: A half ghost character had her ghost and living halves separate in a way very similar to Youmu.
- Tidy Queue's narration frequently references or alludes to BBC's Sherlock
- Split Personality: Story First/Bifolio is a half-zebra, half-pony. Neither ponysona seems to be wholly aware it shares a body with the other.
- Steampunk: Circuit Sketch's inventions, as well as Crown Gear. New Trottingham is a steampunk city.
- Super-Intelligence: Kestus. Part of the perks of being a Time Lord
- Super-Strength: Patchy likes to be helpful.
- Taking You with Me: In the chapter 2 finale, Teskivel uses his last moments of life to rip the throat out of a unicorn zealot.
- The Grotesque: Patchy Part, for all of his sweetness, just looks fundamentally wrong.
- Unfazed Everyman: The civilians of Nexus have seen so much weird that they're hardly impressed any more.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Cult of Kindness has made New Ponyville into a utopia, by brainwashing anypony who moves in.
- Why Couldn't You Be Different?: Glitz's parents had this reaction when he did not display unicorn aptitude for magic.
- Younger Than They Look: Mayor Sky Dust purposefully dyes her mane gray and acts older than she is to hide her slow aging, in a way making her also Older Than They Look.
