Tabletop Game / Ponyfinder

Ponyfinder is a fanmade roleplaying game campaign setting created by David Silver, head of the indy RPG company Silver Games LLC and published through the DriveThruRPG website. As the name implies, it originally used Pathfinder rules; a version for the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons was later released bearing the subtitle Dawn of the Fifth Age. (A free conversion document for 4th edition D&D was also released.)

The game is set in the Equestria expy of Everglow, a particularly magic-rich world where, in addition to the standard array of humans, orcs, elves, dwarves, etcetera, a vast number of sapient fey animals have developed. The ponies of this world, under the reign of Queen Iliana, the first Alicorn, have founded the first and mightiest empire of the world. But this empire will not last forever... unless the PCs say otherwise.

The author of the game has started a series of crossover fanfics between Ponyfinder and Friendship is Magic, beginning with A Dangerous Sparkle.

This setting includes examples of the following tropes:

• After the End: The expansion book From the Ashes provides several additional rules as well as a vision of what is, essentially, the Everglow's version of Fallout: Equestria. The original rulebook also makes much emphasis in the state of the world once the Empire falls.
• The Ageless: Ghost ponies cease physically changing on reaching adulthood, and don't have maximum lifespans. Instead, elder ghost ponies are eventually drawn deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the Ethereal Plane, and one day simply vanish into the depths of its swirling mists and never return.
• All Your Powers Combined: Invoked, to reference Twilight Sparkle's ascension to alicornhood. The Unification sorcerer bloodline allows a pony to develop powers and physical traits from other pony tribes. However, it's averted in that it only grants the powers of two of the nine major tribes (earth pony, unicorn, pegasus, leatherwing, sun pony, gem pony, sea horse, antean, ghost pony); this explains why Alicorns in the setting are Winged Unicorns and not Mix and Match Critters of the various pony tribes.
• Ascended Demon: The war god Blaze used to be a demon who grew intrigued by mortals and frustrated by their seeming inability to defend or stand up for themselves, and became increasingly involved in trying to browbeat them into growing spines until their belief turned her into a deity.
• Booze Flamethrower: Some sun ponies can improvise a breath weapon by gulping down a mouthful of alcohol, igniting it with their internal heat, and spraying out the burning liquid.
• Captain Ersatz:
  • Most of the deities of the corebook are clearly based on the fan-accepted "gods" of the G4 cast; Sun Queen (Princess Celestia), Moon Princess (Princess Luna), Princess Luminace (alicorn!Twilight Sparkle), the Night Mare (Nightmare Moon), the Unspoken (Discord), and Kara (Queen Chrysalis — though Queen Chrysalis's insectile appearance is instead applied to Kara's agent Temptation and to her original Hive Queen aspect).
  • The Steelheart race are basically Eberron's Warforged in pony shape.
  • Doppelgangers are based more off of Eberron's Changelings than the show's, though the Doppelganger mini-splatbook makes them more like their show counterparts, including noting that Kara devotees turned into doppelgangers resemble the insecto-equines of the show.
• Cat Girl: Purrsian/human crossbreeds are a variant, being visually human (though sometimes possessed of cat ears) from the waist up and a bipedal cat from the waist down. Unlike most catgirls and catboys, though, they have wings.
• Charm Person: Short Legs and their Satyr descendants can do this through the sheer power of their cuteness, via the Shield of Innocence racial trait.
• Crapsaccharine World: Everglow may look shiny and happy, but there's a layer of grimdark beneath the surface. The setting explicitly includes most if not all of the various monsters from Pathfinder, the beloved queen is a Well-Intentioned Extremist responsible for the deaths of two pony tribes that we know of, humanoids in the "present" are subtly discriminated against, donkeys are openly and blatantly discriminated against, and the Empire is explicitly power-hungry and doomed to succumb to its own corruption.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • The Tribe of Bones, although now demonized In-Universe as evil necromancers, were in fact a sub-tribe of peaceful shamans who revered the spirits of their ancestors and followed the teachings of Soft Whisper (Madame Tris’do, as they called her), seeking only to ensure that the souls of the dead went peacefully on their way to the afterlife.
  • Soft Whisper, Goddess of the Dead, is a gentle-natured deity who only wants to make sure that souls pass on peacefully to the afterlife. She has been forgotten since ponies hate and fear her for her connection with death, and because of the demonization of her former primary worshippers.
  • Leatherwings, though being carnivorous bat-like pegasi, are actually a very shy and timid people who prefer to hide rather than fight.
• Deity of Human Origin:
  • The Unspoken used to be a mortal pony scholar who sought to halt the rapidly ongoing fragmentation of ponykind, fearing its eventual dissolution into millions of unique beings with no ties to one another. He managed to stop it but found that the chaos behind these changes was somehow redirect into him, turning him a god of chaos, change and disorder.
  • Princess Luminance began life as a regular unicorn, but earned a place among the gods after a life of noble struggle against the forces of evil and chaos.
• Destroyer Deity: Apep revels in spreading death and destruction for its own sake; he spent centuries on a continuous rampage when he was summoned to Everglow in the ancient past, killing or destroying everything he came across and causing the total collapse of all civilizations in existence at the time. He still plots to return to the Material Plane and pick up where he left off, but notably does not actually want to completely destroy everything — after all, if there were no order, life or structure anywhere, what would he look forward to destroying in the future?
• Ethnic God: While most deities are worshipped widely by ponykind and Everglow society as a whole, Soft Whisper and Lashtada were worshipped almost exclusively by the tribe of bones and the short leg ponies, who saw them as their primary deities and cultural patrons. This had a considerable effect on their respective societies — the tribe of bones were almost solely preoccupied with helping others prepare for death and caring for the deceased, since Soft Whisper is the God of the Dead, while short leg society revolved almost entirely around love and romance, due to Lashtada being the Love Goddess. However, this ended up backfiring for both deities — the tribe of bones and the short legs were both exterminated centuries before the setting's present, costing Soft Whisper and Lashtada the near totality of their worshippers, influence and power (Soft Whisper squeaked by because she gets a bit of power whenever someone dies, but Lashtada is nearly dead). The other pony gods, which much broader and widely-scattered followings, are instead all doing just fine.
• Everybody Hates Hades:
  • The ponykind death goddess, Soft Whisper, has been almost forgotten since her primary worshippers, the Tribe of Bones, were wiped out, and continues to exist only because pony souls still need someone to send them on and no other deity has arisen to usurp her role. Despite this, she's a world-weary, gentle yet firm goddess who only wants to make sure that the spirits of the dead go on to their proper place in the afterlife, and who abhors necromancy.
  • Averted with Koidon/White Talon, the griffon death goddess; she's not a nice goddess, but she's not as actively shunned as Soft Whisper is.
• Fantastic Racism: Donkeys receive abysmal treatment in pony society. They're seen as half-formed, ill-favored prototypes to ponykind and as carriers of disease and spiritual taint, and typically find themselves the designated scapegoats to be blamed whenever anything goes wrong — anything from a bad harvest to a monster attack is likely to be blamed on any donkey living in the area. During the collapse of the empire of Everglow, this attitude escalated into open mob violence and attacks, forcing many donkeys to flee the empire's lands altogether. This is most prominently reflected in the name given to them in Everglow — the impure.
• Forced Transformation: In addition to the base spell, chaos hunters can permanently transform chaotic creatures into ponies of a random tribe if they can pin them down with a grapple.
• God of Chaos: The Unspoken is a god of chaos, change, and whimsy. He favors and fosters all forms of disorder, ranging from revelry and humor to the destruction of civilization and its works, and is chiefly worshipped by comedians, anarchists, and some artists and poets.
• God of Darkness: The Night Mare is a goddess of darkness and the night. She began as a monstrous deity embodying the half-seen terrors in the shadows and the predators lurking outside the campfire's glow, and bitterly opposed the Moon Princess, a protective lunar deity. In the modern day, she has become more associated with tyranny and control, and seeks to usurp her old enemy as the primary deity of nighttime and the moon.
• God of Evil: Apep is a deity of chaos and wanton destruction, and delights in nothing more than spreading misery and death throughout creation. Nobody worships him except the insane and a few people with great ambition and no morals.
• God of Fire: Blaze, the god of the sun's destructive power, is primarily associated with fire. She radiates heat like a bonfire, and grants her worshippers the ability to temporarily shroud their weapons in flame.
• God of Light:
  • The Sun Queen is the goddess of the sun, and represents its nurturing, life-giving side.
  • Blaze is a secondary sun goddess, mainly associated with the sun's scorching flames, its heat and its destructive potential.
• God of the Dead: Soft Whisper watches over and judges the souls of the deceased, sending them to their proper afterlives or taking them under her care if they have nowhere else to go. She is patient, emotionless and impartial, and wholly concerned with the dead — she has little time for the living and has very little interest in visiting the mortal realm, and only the dead who still linger there are ever granted her direct appearance. Unlike most death gods, she is not entirely opposed to the undead; she has no tolerance for wanton necromancy and the forceful tearing of the dead from their rest, which her followers regarded as blasphemy, but does not object to the raising of willing individuals and actively sends back deceased souls if they have Unfinished Business to handle before they can move on.
• God of the Moon: The Moon Princess is Everglow's lunar deity, manifesting as a protective entity who wards away the terrors of the night. She typically visits her faithful in their dreams; when she appears in the physical world, she manifests by seeming to descend from the lunar orb itself. Her main rival is the Night Mare, a goddess of darkness and tyranny who wishes to take her role as the primary deity of nighttime and the moon.
• Going Cosmic: The expansion book Beyond Everglow provides the stat-work necessary to add the setting to a Starfinder campaign.
• Half-Human Hybrid: "Satyrs" in this setting are the result of a pony, a purrsian or a ruminant having a child with a human. The result is a being who is human from the waist up and a bipedal non-human from the waist down, with extra traits like wings or horns depending on their precise ancestry.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Two In-Universe examples.
  • The Tribe of Bones are depicted in the corebook as a depraved and power hungry tribe of evil necromancers whom Queen Iliana destroyed because they attempted to enslave ponykind, which reflects the opinion of "modern ponies". The e-book splats on Forgotten Gods and The Tribe of Bones reveals they were actually a gentle and good-natured tribe of ancestor-worshipping, ghost-quelling shamans who were suspicious of Queen Iliana's bloody methods for forging her empire and requested she come to them for ceremonial cleansing, to prove she was not a powerhungry tyrant, before they would surrender to her leadership. In response, she destroyed the tribe, erected her central kingdom upon the ruins of their lands, and demonized them as evil amongst the other ponies.
  • The Seekers of the One Herd receive this after the fall of the Empire, in part because their desperate efforts to find a new ruler to take Queen Iliana's place fueled the wars of succession that ultimately killed the Empire.
• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: Intertribal romance is common, explaining the flexibility of the tribe/sub-tribe ruleset. Interspecies Romance is rare, but not unheard of, and can happen among species with considerable physical differences from one another. Viable hybrids available as player options include pony satyrs (human/pony hybrids) hippogriffs (griffon/pony), and the children of purrsians (quadrupedal winged felines) with both ponies and humans.
• How Do I Shot Web?:
  • Sea Horses can't actually breathe water unless they take the feat "Return to the Sea".
  • In-Universe, this is actually a problem that the Ghost Ponies have to deal with; they have adapted to live in the Ethereal Plane, but they have no innate magical ability to step between worlds and it's not safe for their foals to live or grow in the Ethereal. So they create magical items to allow them to walk between.
• Humans Are Not the Dominant Species: During the default present age, humans are scattered barbarians mostly living in small tribes and villages on the periphery of Everglow, and are otherwise only found in the Empire itself in small numbers as a result of their least pitiful settlements being absorbed within it. Averted, however, in the default future setting, where Everglow has long since crumbled and humanity has moved into the vacuum to become a dominant power.
• Hunter of Monsters: Chaos hunters are ponies who develop a powerful compulsion to fight the forces of chaos, alongside supernatural powers that help them do so. They sacrifice all other drives, passions and interests for this, becoming totally dedicated to a neverending quest to hunt and battle all creatures that would spread disorder or attack civilization.
• Lady Land: A subtle variant. Ponykind are explicitly called out as being matriarchal in the corebook, which explains why their divine pantheon is based around goddesses rather than gods. This causes some Cross Cultural Kerfuffle with Sun Cats, who are patriarchal and, among other things, worship the Sun King rather than the Sun Queen.
• Light Is Not Good: Blaze is a goddess of light and the sun; she's also a brutal Chaotic Evil deity of warfare, destruction and rage.
• Liquid Courage: Sun ponies can take a feat that allows them to down a bottle of booze to shrug off fear-based status conditions.
• Loads and Loads of Races: A huge amount, especially when one takes into accounts that the standard D&D/Pathfinder humanoids (humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings, at the least) also exist in Everglow.
  • Ponies, to begin with, are split between numerous tribes and sub tribes. As the subtribes are technically originally normal ponies who underwent some sort of alterations in the past, it's possible to mix just about any sub-tribe with any tribe, allowing for oddities like clockwork unicorns, antean pegasi and chaos hunter zebras.
    • Pony Tribes: earth-bound, unicorn, and pegasus are obvious enough. There are also sea horses (aquatic ponies), leatherwings (bat-winged cave-dwelling pegasi), ghost ponies (mystic ponies adapted to live in the Ethereal Plane), sun ponies (heat-tolerant desert-dwelling ponies), zebras (striped ponies obsessed with learning and understanding) and the lost/extinct tribe of short legs (chibi ponies who worshipped Lashtada and were wiped out by gnolls)
    • Pony Subtribes: these are more spiritual/mystical offshoots to the "main" tribes. The current subtribes statted are chaos hunters (born with the power and compulsion to fight Chaotic creatures), clockworks (cursed ponies transformed into beings of living clockwork mechanisms), doppelgangers (equine shapeshifters), gem ponies (crystal-pelted heirs to a lost kingdom), anteans (giant ponies who reach 14-16 feet in length), the tribe of bones (necroticially infused ponies with a connection to the dead) and unspoken spawn (Chaos-infused or corrupted by aberration genetics).
  • Pony satyrs, a pony/human crossbreed. These come in basic (earth-bound/sun/zebra), winged (pegasus/leatherwing), unicorn, sea horse and short leg variants, and can belong to any of the pony subtribes.
  • Griffons, a race of avian/feline hybrid quadrapeds. They received a basic profile in the corebook, and then a splatbook of their own, which reveals they divide themselves between a number of different aspects, which affect their avian traits, feline traits, or both. Default griffons are Predator aspects, whilst other aspects include Cheetah (more ground focused, faster running speed), Cursed (crystalline growths across the body that cause great pain and weakness, but enhance endurance and psionic ability), Prey (less adept in melee, but better spellcasters and more charismatic), Pride (more socially focused and diplomatic), Scavenger (more focused on cunning), Sea (otter back half, adept in water as well as land and air) and Snow (adapted for cold environments). Unlike ponykind, griffons can only have one aspect.
  • Hippogriffs, the halfbreed spawn of griffons and ponies. They can belong to any of the griffon aspects, and also be part of any of the subtribes as well.
  • The impure, donkeys believed to have been a rough draft for the creation of ponies and who are treated with scorn and distrust by Everglow society.
  • Cloven, quiet and gentle-natured sapient goats.
  • Sun cats, a race of arrogant fire-worshipping felines.
  • Purrsians, a race of winged cats whose love of gems and other treasures makes them greedy merchants found across the world.
  • Purrsian satyrs are the the result of crossbreeding with either humans (winged Catgirls) or ponies (winged cat forequarters, pony hindquarters)
  • Phoenix wolves, fiery wolves descended from magically redeemed hellhounds.
  • Steelhearts, artificial beings in pony shape.
  • Flutterponies, colorful butterfly-winged ponies who evolved from smaller, almost mindless "pony fairies" called Flutters.
  • Ruminants, elf-like mystical deer who are literally the ancestors of the cloven and possibly of ponies as well.
  • Luminous dragons are descendants of a draconic servitor of Luminace, the Pony Goddess of Knowledge, making for smaller and far more sociable dragons.
  • Protoponies are an almost extinct intermediary stage between sea horse and land-dwelling pony. Resembling ponies with fluked cetacean-like tails, they are amphibious, but less adept in the water than true sea horses. The ponyfication of the first land-walking fish, most protoponies evolved into the modern tribes, leaving a few scattered communities in the coastal regions. Even these protoponies can be highly mutable, with individuals developing unique racial traits. They're pony enough that they can crossbreed with humans to create Pony Satyrs, which sport the iconic tails and often have a Neanderthal-like cast to their features.
  • Vulponies, whilst often mistaken for a pony/kitsune crossbreed, are actually an entirely separate race of fey fox-ponies who evolved alongside both races.
  • Big Mao are a race of humanoid bears from Jinshei, the "China/Japan" analogue of Everglow, and resemble different species of bear based on their fundamental elemental affinity, although art-wise the panda appearance is favored, for obvious reasons.
  • Drakehooves are a collective of pony/dragon hybrids, which themselves are divided into the subraces of Dancing, Eastern and Elemental Drakehooves. Also Kirin, which are a subrace of drakehoof, but shuck the naming convention. All drakehooves are able to shift shapes from a pony form to one that bears more visibly draconic traits.
  • Nedjes sphinxes are a diminutive sphinx offshoot race that inhabits Everglow's underdark and relies heavily on interbreeding with other races, to the point they can bear the heads of deep elves, dragons, humans, ponies or ruminants.
  • Krava are a race of sapient cows who, similarly to ruminants, may have been a failed draft of ponykind created by the Author. Never an ambitious race, but similar enough to ponies in appearance and mannerisms that they were ultimately viewed by their pony neighbors as just "funny-looking ponies", they were quietly assimilated into pony culture. Whilst they can crossbreed with humans to produce Krava Satyrs, matings with other races will randomly produce effectively pureblooded children of both parent's races, a trait that furthers their ability to blend into pony society; if a unicorn's wife has produce three unicorn foals, then surely she must be a unicorn too, even if she does have two horns and an unusually pronounced udder.
• Love Goddess: Lashtada is the goddess of love and passion, and perceives all of life through that lens. She is firmly neutral in alignment as a result, as she cares very little for the struggle between good and evil or order and chaos, as love rarely discriminates between one's allies and foes anyway, and likewise only cares about mortal morality and philosophy insofar as it affects the ability for love to thrive — in a choice between a tyrant who nonetheless allows people to pursue their own romantic lives and a fair ruler who insists on arranged marriages, Lashtada would always support the tyrant.
• Machine Worship: The steelhearts mainly worship the Maze, a god they perceive as a universe-spanning system of physical and metaphysical machinery that contains and orders all natural processes in creation — everything, from the smallest spring and tendon to the movements of the sun and moon, is simply a greater or lesser component operating within the god-machine's transcendent whole.
• Mage-Hunting Monster: The flutterponies descend from the flutters, insect-like fey that fed on magic and descended in swarms to devour any source of it that they could find, including living beings.
• Magic Hair: The manes and tails of ghost ponies are swirling clouds of ethereal mist.
• Matriarchy: Ponies are naturally matriarchal, which most clearly shows in their almost-entirely female pantheon. Big Mao share this trait, which is one of the reasons the races get on so well. Dwarves are implied to be a rather cruel matriarchy as well.
• Mechanical Lifeforms:
  • Clockworks are ponies made entirely out of gears, cogs, pulleys and sliding plates. They were once flesh-and-blood ponies, but magic and hubris cursed them into bodies of living metal. They reproduce normally, due to the gods granting them bodies of flesh for one day of every year.
  • Steelhearts are a borderline case, consisting of cores living wood surrounded by mechanical shells. They are not born, but manufactured in factories by a pair of "parents" with the aid of priests.
• Mix-and-Match Critters:
  • Griffons, obviously. It's actually noted in the griffon splatbook that even in families, it's rare that two griffons will look alike, they are that prone to diversity in which avian or feline they resemble. Certain aspects do have certain species associated with them (snow owls and snow leopards for the Snow aspect, vultures and ravens for the Carrion aspect, lions for Pride aspect, sea eagles and otters for the Sea aspect, etc), but even then it's not guaranteed.
  • Hippogriffs are slightly more stable, in that their rear half is always clearly an equine, but their forehalves are just as variable as their griffon parents.
  • Purrsians look like cats with wings, so they're a less drastic version of this trope.
  • Purrsian/pony hybrids have the forequarters of a purrsian and the hindquarters of a pony.
  • The famous historical figure Shifting Wind is a magically transformed hybrid of pegasus and kitsune, leading to a somewhat vulpine-looking pegasus with multiple lashing fox tails. The race known as vulponies have a similar appearance, resembling pony-sized foxes with hooved hindlegs and, in some cases, multiple tails.
  • Satyrs are human with some extra traits from the waist up and a pony, purrsian, ruminant or krava from the waist down.
  • It's unclear if certain ruminants are either partially cloven or pony, or if their blood bears mystical impurities that will lead them to evolving into either race. Either way, ruminants with the Cloven Creator or Pony-Touched impurities are visually a blend of deer with either goat or pony, so much so that they can actually pass themselves off as members of the other race to a casual observer.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Two of the playable races are sea horses and flutterponies, based upon creatures from the G1 era.
  • Though the doppelganger subtribe are portrayed as ordinary ponies with unusual grey and white coloration, a racial feat allows for ponies to have the more insectile appearance associated with G4's changelings.
  • Luminous dragons, introduced in Princess Luminace's Guide to the Pony Pantheon, are clearly based on the continuity-spanning character of Spike, most blatantly the G4 version, to the point that he is instantly identifiable as a Luminous Librarian Dragon by the game's rules.
• Nice Is Not Good: This is why neither Soft Whisper (the death goddess) nor Lashtada (the love goddess) from Forgotten Gods of Everglow is Good in alignment. Soft Whisper is a gentle deity, but she will also brook no arguments; a soul must accept that their time is up and move on, lest they become an undead monster. Lashtada, meanwhile, values love over all things and so cares only that it is allowed to bloom; the sourcebook explicitly notes that Lashtada will support a tyrant who at least allows their people to love freely over a kind ruler who nonetheless insists upon enforcing the policy of Arranged Marriages, as the concept of "forcing love" in such a way offends her.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Seekers of the One Herd are directly responsible for the Empire's collapse after Queen Iliana died, as their desperate and disorganized efforts to find a true heir to the throne promoted civil conflicts that devastated the empire's infrastructure and scattered its populace.
• Our Dragons Are Different: In addition to the basic dragons of Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, the setting has a few original dragon varieties.
  • Luminous dragons are the descendants of a dragon who was friends with Luminance and who became a divine guardian of her realm after she became a goddess; they originated in the Outer Planes, and were brought to the mortal realm as a trick by the Unspoken. They are fairly small, resembling the wyrmlings of other species even when adult and never growing much larger than a pony, and can be of any color. They're typically more friendly, sociable and even-tempered than other dragons, but lack the ties to destiny that ponies have and consequently aren't intrinsically drawn to lawful alignments. Depending on the individual, they may be flightless or winged and may or may not possess strong claws or horns.
  • Rift dragons are tied to, and believed to be born from, areas of elemental imbalance. They gravitate to areas where the elemental planes bleed into the material world, which they fiercely defend from interference and attempts to dissipate and pacify. They're highly resistant to divine magic and metal weapons, making them seem created to counter civilization as a concept. Their breath weapon changes nature based on the primary form of elemental influence in the area where they currently live; outside of such areas they cannot use it.
• Our Gryphons Are Different: Griffons and hippogriffs are playable races:
  • Griffons are divided between several aspects, which affect their avian traits, feline traits, or both. These are the Predator aspect (basic griffons), Cheetah aspect (more ground focused, faster running speed), Cursed aspect (crystaline growths across the body that cause great pain and weakness, but enhance endurance and psionic ability), Prey aspect (less adept in melee, but better spellcasters and more charismatic), Pride aspect (lion feline traits, more socially focused and diplomatic), Scavenger aspect (vulture and raven avian half, more focused on cunning), Sea aspect (otter back half, sea eagle front half, adept in water as well as land and air) and Snow aspect (usually resembling snow owls and snow leopards, adapted for cold environments).
  • Hippogriffs are the hybrid children of griffons and ponies. They can belong to any of the griffon aspects and have the associated avian traits, and can have the hindquarters and nature of any kind of pony (regular pony, zebra, crystal pony, etcetera).
• Our Hippocamps Are Different: Sea horses resemble regular ponies with fins around their hooves. They were the first ponies to exist and ruled a vast civilization on the ocean floor, which collapsed before recorded history due to the attack of an ancient, nameless terror. The survivors fled onto dry land and mostly diversified into the modern pony kinds; a few sea horse communities still endure along shorelands, but they have diminished greatly as a people and lost most of their ancestral abilities, such as their ancient talent for water magic and the ability to survive the crushing pressure of the deep ocean. They are also one of the only two pony tribes to eat meat as well as plants.
• Prongs of Poseidon: Gentle Ripple, the goddess of the sea, has the trident as her favored weapon.
• Resurrective Immortality: Earth-bound ponies get a racial feat that allows them to reincarnate into a new earth-bound body one week after dying, so long as their body is on the Material Plane when they die, or is brought back to it at some point afterwards.
• Shout-Out:
  • The griffon splatbook mentions a "paladin" named Lord Rust the Arrogant, infamous for his inability to change his mind upon deciding a course of action, his complete and utter disregard for the lives of those under his command, and his unfailing ability to pick the plan of attack so bloody and costly that other military leaders considered him an arrogant idiot. As if further proof of the connection is needed, the same article explains how he always led from the front, had an uncanny ability to avoid ranged attacks and spells, and managed to actually win several (costly) important victories by surprising enemy commanders who truly believed nobody that stupid or reckless with the lives of their soldiers would be given command.
  • The expansion book From the Ashes provides an alternate vision of how Everglow falls and how the world keeps going after such a bloody prologue — it's pretty clear from the get-go that it's an homage to Fallout: Equestria.
• Sinister Scythe: The Night Mare, a goddess of tyranny, darkness and monsters, has the scythe as her favored weapon.
• Snakes Are Sinister: Apep, the most dangerous, feared and evil of the gods, takes the form of an immense cobra.
• Stubborn Mule: The impure have a reputation for being ornery, willful and stupid. In practice, they have great mental fortitude and determination, and can be very difficult to beguile, trick or sway. In game terms, they also have a natural resistance to magical compulsions and charms and feats that allow them to better carry heavy burdens, endure damage, ignore harmful effects and soldier on in overwhelming odds.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Some impure succumb to the distrust and negativity given to them by pony society, reasoning that if they will always be viewed as evil and dangerous regardless of what they do there's no point in trying to fight it, and become bandits and outlaws.
• Top God: The Sun Queen is the eldest and greatest of the pony gods, and is almost universally recognized as the ruler of the pantheon.
• True-Breeding Hybrid: Gem trolls originated as the hybrid offspring of gem gnolls and trolls, but can breed amongst themselves and have successfully established a stable and expanding population of their own.
• Vestigial Empire: After Queen Iliana's death, the Empire quickly decays into this, expending itself on numerous futile internal conflicts and power grabs before utterly collapsing in on itself, to the point that the humans who take its place mostly don't believe it ever existed.
• War God: Blaze is a deity of protective and retaliatory war; she calls for her worshippers to be able and willing to defend themselves regardless of the cost, and believes that threats should be dealt swiftly and with such overwhelming brutality that nobody who hears about them will even consider harming her children again. On those rare occasions where she manifests in the flesh, she appears on the eve of battles to signal that her followers will achieve victory at a terrible cost.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Queen Iliana was one. On the one hand, she did unite the formerly scattered pony tribes and forge them into a mighty Empire. On the other hand, she destroyed the Tribe of Bones for questioning that her intentions were less than noble and who asked she prove her good intentions by being ceremonially cleansed for all the deaths she had ordered before they surrendered to her leadership, and when the Short Leg ponies politely turned down the idea of joining her empire, she stood back and allowed them to be wiped out by an army of gnolls.
• Writing Around Trademarks: It's a commercial game without Hasbro's authorization, so Everglow isn't quite Equestria, but the rules are designed to make it easy for fans who so choose to use it to play My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

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