Lost in a shattered world.
A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic by PK; can be found here
or here.
Set in the far future after Celestia and Luna mysteriously vanished and the sun and moon froze in the sky, Antipodes is the story of two ponies thrust out into the harsh new world on an adventure to uncover what happened to the world so long ago.
Antipodes was first published in March 2011 and was completed in October 2012. It has a sequel, Lodestone, which hasn't been updated since 2014.
This Fan Fic contains examples of:
- After the End: The story is set ten thousand years after the cataclysmic disappearance of Luna and Celestia, the ceasing of the sun and moon's motion in the sky, and a series of desperate resource wars that destroyed most of surviving civilization. Much of the architecture built before the disappearance of the princesses were either lost to the elements, destroyed in warfare, or inactive for extremely long periods of time.
- Apocalyptic Log: Lodestone opens with an excerpt from Spectrum's journal as he cowers in hiding from unknown monsters, after which he begins to tell the story of how he got to where he's now.
- Audio Adaptation: The author-directed one begins here.
- The Beforetimes: The old world — the time of Friendship Is Magic — is only dimly remembered by the ponies of the present, who know of it mostly as a distant age of advanced technology and hospitable conditions, before the Princesses vanished and the world nearly ended, which passed away into legend long ago.
- Beneath the Earth: The survivors of Equestria's collapse who were stranded outside of the twilight zone, where the surface eventually became wholly uninhabitable, survived by going underground and hiding in vast bunkers shielded from the extreme elements. Jigsaw and Tiptoe come from one such base on the day side, connected to an immense cave system that it draws its water from. Subterranean networks of this sort are implied to run beneath a great deal of the world, but to be too dangerous to travel through due to the monsters inhabiting them.
- Big Bad: Rubidium was portrayed as the absolute evil during Jigsaw and Tiptoe's time at Stalliongrad. Tantalus seems to have taken up the mantle after the former was killed.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Princesses are revived, Tantalus is defeated, and Equestria can begin rebuilding, but all this came at the cost of Jigsaw's life.
- Breath Weapon:
- Tantalus can breathe out torrents of green fire.
- The sea serpent that lives in the lake below Jigsaw and Tiptoe's home bunker can emit a powerful laser beam from its mouth.
- Butch Lesbian: Incendia is a mare who is the leader of a rebellion, has been self-trained in combat, can definitely take a hit, and develops a strong crush on the more feminine Tiptoe.
- Chaos Is Evil: Chaos is described as a predominantly negative force that seeks destruction and dissolution. Tantalus, the story's villain, is the primordial personification of chaos and ultimately wishes to destroy the universe in order to revert it to primordial formlessness.
- Cliffhanger: Most chapters end on a sudden dangerous situation or with a dramatic revelation, which is only resolved in the next chapter.
- Cool Airship: The Lunar Battleship that Jigsaw finds and repairs is an immense, high-tech Zeppelin armed with powerful energy weapons and protected by a magical shield.
- Cue the Sun: Inverted. The last chapter before the epilogue ends with Celestia setting the sun for the first time in ten thousand years, signifying the resumption of the world's natural day-night cycle.
- Defector from Decadence: Cerulean defects after Rubidium drains away most of her life for allowing Jigsaw and Tiptoe to escape.
- Demonic Possession: In the second-last chapter, it's revealed that Tantalus, the primordial spirit of chaos, lost the ability of forming his own bodies and relies on possessing other living creatures — such as he did to Luna, Twilight and Spike — to interact with the world.
- Distant Sequel: The story is set ten thousand years after the time of Friendship Is Magic's first season, long after the fall of Equestria, and the events of the show are remembered only as faded myths of a bygone age.
- Dystopia: Stalliongrad, the city that Rubidium has come to rule for 10,000 years, is a strict police state dominated by Rubidium's enforcers and whose machinery and magical shield are powered by draining the life from captive unicorns.
- Evil Versus Evil: The 10,000-year-old dragon Tantalus (who has very understandable motives) versus the similarly old unicorn Rubidum (who is a power-mad tyrant). Tantalus wins this one, thanks to Rubidium's stupidity.
- Fallen Hero: Tantalus, aka Spike, is much more menacing then in the main series. Having the one he loved be tortured to death by a real monster to solidify his rule probably didn't do wonders for his sanity, nor is the fact that he was a victim of Demonic Possession by the force that caused the Great Cataclysm.
- Fate Worse than Death: Attenuation, a process by which gifted Unicorns are impaled with rods and used as a medium to convert raw power into usable power, which essentially tortures them for their entire life.
- Fetch Quest: After escaping Stalliongrad, the group goes on a world-spanning quest to find and acquire the fragments of Celestia and Luna.
- Freak Out: In the ruins of Canterlot, Tiptoe, Jigsaw, and Incendia separate and encounter mysterious entities that make them doubt themselves and each other by impersonating their teammates and forcing them to relive traumatic past experiences. However, this doesn't have any negative long-term effects and ultimately only strengthens their trust in each other.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Jigsaw's special talent is working with machinery. He tends to intuitively understand how machines work, and is very good at fixing them.
- Gaia's Lament: When Celestia and Luna disappeared, the Sun and Moon froze in place. This turned one side of Equestria into a barren desert that incinerates anything living, and the other into a frozen wasteland. Only a narrow strip of temperate land between the two celestial bodies is capable of supporting life.
- Glowing Flora: In the depths of the forest of zap apple trees, the canopy blocks out most of the light and illumination is mostly from a thin layer of blue-green, luminescent moss.
- God of Chaos: Tantalus came into being as the primordial embodiment of chaos, and seeks to cause all existence to collapse into the formlessness that gave it birth.
- God of Order: Celestia came into being as the primordial embodiment of order, although over time she drifted away from her original elemental nature as she became more and more like mortal ponies.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In the climax, Jigsaw allows Tantalus to kill him, in order to power a magical ritual that will allow the princesses to instantly reincarnate.
- Lost Technology: Old-world tech, advanced beyond anything the scattered survivor holdouts are capable of now, are occasionally uncovered. However, a lot of it has become inaccessible due to being located in barren wastelands where life cannot exist.
- Love Confession: Twice by Incendia. First to Tiptoe, and the to Jigsaw about her feelings for Tiptoe.
- Love Epiphany: Jigsaw progressively develops feeling for Tiptoe, but holds anything off until he realizes for certain that he truly is in love with Tiptoe.
- Love Triangle: Between Jigsaw, Tiptoe, and Incendia. Jigsaw and Tiptoe being together, but Incendia having feelings for Tiptoe, which are also reciprocated. But because Tiptoe and Jigsaw are happily together, Incendia steps back. Surprisingly, very few of the typical romantic comedy/drama tropes appear.
- Magical Eye Streamers: During the final battle, Tantalus' eyes become pits of green flame that leave fiery trails behind them as he moves.
- Magitek: All of the advanced technology is based on arcane principles and powered by magical crystals.
- Man-Eating Plant: While exploring the forest of zap apple trees, Incendia is attacked by a carnivorous plant of the sort consisting of a fanged, mouth-like bulb on a snakelike, moving vine."What in Celestia's name was that?" [Tiptoe] said.
"I have no idea," Jigsaw said, "but I think we had better get out of here. Even the plants are trying to kill us." - Meaningful Name: Jigsaw is the mechanic, Tiptoe is the stealth expert, and Incendia is the fire specialist.
- Mundane Utility: Incendia often uses her powerful pyromancy for a variety of mundane uses, such as cooking, lighting up dark rooms, and creating fuel-less campfires.
- Naïve Newcomer: After living underground their entire lives, when Tiptoe and Jigsaw travel to the surface they know absolutely nothing of its dangers, nature and societies.
- Out-Gambitted: Rubidium kills the Attenuator for Stalliongrad, banking that Jigsaw will give himself up to save the city before Tantalus realizes Stalliongrad is defenseless. However, Tantalus sent Jigsaw and Tiptoe to him in the first place, banking that they would lower the shield somehow, and was ready to attack at a moment's notice.
- Pieces of God: One of the story's driving points is that the ancient cataclysm that ended Equestria shattered its two goddesses, Celestia and Luna, into three "pieces" each — or, more properly, into three clusters of magic and soul. These ended up scattered across the world, some carefully hidden away while others were found and used as means to power and protect surviving holdouts of civilization. After Jigsaw finds and accidentally absorbs one of these fragments, the characters set out to track them all down and bring them together so that the ancient goddesses can be whole once more.
- Playing with Fire: Incendia is the prime user of fire and fire-related abilities, such as using fire as a weapon or creating light sources. And cooking.
- Power Crystal: The majority of the setting's Magitek is powered by spell-fixing crystals, such as the ones mined beneath Totemhoof. These are described as being crystals whose structure gives them a natural affinity for magic, allowing unicorns to enchant them with a variety of stored spells.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Even after a global cataclysm and 10,000 years of exposure to the elements, the ruins of the old world — even the wooden, thatched cottages of Ponyville — are nothing more than run down and somewhat broken up, and the Lost Technology is still mostly in working order.
- Sadistic Choice: Rubidium offers Jigsaw a choice. Become the next Attenuator and save the city, or refuse and the city is destroyed. Tantalus interrupts his choice.
- Sea Serpents: A large sea serpent lives in the lake from which Jigsaw and Tiptoe's home bunker draws its water from, and attacks them when they head to the lake to repair the bunker's pumps.
- Sealed Good in a Can: After the fall of Equestria, Celestia and Luna were left as scattered fragments hidden in numerous hidden locations.
- Soul Jar: Tantalus stored the soul of his current body inside a crystal. He cannot be killed permanently as long as the crystal is intact, as he will simply reform even if utterly annihilated, but if the crystal is broken he will die instantly.
- Superpowered Evil Side: Tantalus, for lack of a better term, is Spike's, though he's long since become the dominant side.
- Spanner in the Works: Within days of coming to Stalliongrad, Jigsaw and Tiptoe have inadvertently ended Rubidium's 10,000 year reign and caused the city to be destroyed.
- Tidally Locked Planet: An unusual fantasy version. Equestria became the geocentric equivalent of this after Celestia and Luna, who had been responsible for moving the sun and moon, vanished ten thousand years before the story's events. This left the sun permanently stuck over one hemisphere and the moon over the other, causing one half of the world to become a barren desert hot enough to kill anything on the surface while the other froze over. A few communities survived in the twilight zone, while those stranded outside of it either hid themselves underground to escape the worst of the elements or perished.
- Time Abyss: Tantalus, Celestia and Luna began life as the living embodiments of chaos, order and the void between them and predate the formation of the world. Rubidium was also alive during the fall of civilization, making him over ten thousand years old and the oldest living non-divine entity in the story.
- Time Skip: Lodestone takes place several decades after Antipodes.
- Voice of the Legion: Rubidium's soldier have masks that causes their voices to be deeper and intimidating.
- Volcanic Veins: After Jigsaw is stung by a manticore, the veins around the puncture wound become engorged, blue and glowing.
- Weird Moon: The moon, in addition to being permanently frozen in one spot above the world, was badly damaged in the cataclysm ten thousand years in the past, leaving it a dull grey color and visibly shattered and broken.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Although they're probably long dead by the time the story begins, the story doesn't say what happened to Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash during the cataclysm.
- World-Wrecking Wave: Rubidium unleashed the Sealed Evil in a Can Tantalus, making the Princesses and Twilight disappear and locking the Sun and Moon in place, causing the End of the World as We Know It. As two sides of Equestria become increasingly inhospitable, the country becomes engulfed in a Civil War over the last parts that will be able to support life.
- Writers Have No Sense of Scale: 10,000 years is a span of time over twice as long as the entirety of written history. It would be long enough for languages to evolve beyond recognizability, for societies to develop into distinctly new cultures, for ponies to be well on the way to developing into a distinctly new species, for the old world's ruins to have all been eroded down to long-buried foundations, and for almost every piece of Lost Technology to become eroded into nothingness. Jigsaw and Tiptoe also seem to travel hundreds of miles over Equestria on foot in days, either that or Equestria is much smaller than the Earth.
