Memories of Days Long Past

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The history of Equestria is shrouded in myth and mystery. However, Twilight Sparkle uncovers a spell that lets the caster witness it firsthand through the eyes of their ancestors. Eager to learn more, she recruits her friends and casts the spell for all of them. But what she hoped would be an educational experience quickly goes awry, for the past is far darker than any of the little ponies have ever imagined...

Memories of Days Long Past is a Dark Fic for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Taking heavy cues from Assassin's Creed, it follows the heroines as they discover uncomfortable truths about the time before Celestia and Luna's reign. They learn this through the lives of their ancestors -- Midnight Star, Skyline, Cinnamon Apple, Amethyst, Pastel, and Lily, all of whom seem quite similar to their present-day counterparts...

Tropes used in Memories of Days Long Past include:

• All Of The Other Ponies: Midnight Star gets this treatment after she's blamed for The Collection visiting Ponyville.
• As You Know: Played with; even though she has access to her ancestor's memories, she's frustrated to discover that while Midnight Star knows what things like the Goddess and the Quota are, she doesn't think about them enough for Twilight to find out. This is significant later.
• Awful Truth: Several have been revealed, such as the nature of The Collection and The Quota, and several more have been Fore Shadowed, like the real reason everypony is expected to pray to the Goddess.
• Big Bad Wolves
• But Thou Must!: Or rather, But Thou Can't, as Applejack discovers when she keeps trying to help her siblings only to keep desyncing and get kicked back to the start of the sequence.
• Complete Monster: Fang.
• Crapsack World: The past is not a happy place. There's The Collection and The Quota to worry about, for starters.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Fritter, no...
• Dark Fic
• Darker and Edgier
• Death by Childbirth: Vega, Midnight Star's mother.
• Diplomatic Impunity: In theory, the treaty with the wolves ultimately protects the ponies so long as The Collection stands. In practice, the wolves gleefully abuse its terms, openly trying to provoke them into reacting so that they can claim the ponies violated the treaty.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even the Wolves were disturbed by Vega's parents abandoning her and her brother to the Collection.
• Evilly Affable: Fang.
• Foreshadowing: Twilight can't glean information about subjects she doesn't understand, like the Collection and the Quota, from Midnight's mind, and has to piece information together as she goes. This is because praying to the Goddess numbs one's memories of painful things.
• Four Is Death: In Session 4, we learn what The Collection is, Sundae is abducted, and Fritter made an example of.
• Generation Xerox: Not only are the ancestors of the mane cast quite similar to their present-day counterparts, but Cinnamon has a big brother and little sister who map to Big Macintosh and Apple Bloom.
  • This appears to extend to friends as well in some instances; Skyline has a griffon friend called Revy.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: As a fervant believer in the Goddess, Midnight staunchly asserts that everyone must pray to Her, or else the Day of Ascension may not succeed. It's implied that isn't the real reason, however.
• Happily Adopted: Midnight Star was adopted by King Thermis and Queen Ambrosia and has been raised as Celestia and Luna's foster sister and future advisor.
• Heroic BSOD: All the girls go through this to varying degrees after their first session ends with The Collection.
  • Cinnamon goes through a series of these after the above, progressively getting worse and worse.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Twice in Session 11.
• I Am Who?: Occurs in Session 11 after Midnight Star takes what looks to be a fatal wound.
• Ignorance Is Bliss: A running theme.
• It Got Worse
• Jerk With A Heart Of Jerk With A Smidget Of Gold: Gnosis. Maybe.
• Large Ham: Rarity.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Praying to the Goddess gives ponies the strength to deal with the horrors of everyday life by numbing their memories of tragic events.
• Les Yay: Several jokes are made about 'fillyfooling', mainly concerning Skyline and Amethyst/Lily. Whether or not any of these proceed beyond jokes remains to be seen.
• Light Is Not Good/Good Is Not Nice
• Lonely Rich Kid: Past-Luna, to the point of a deep seated fear of being left behind/alone. This happens around Celestia as well, whom Luna believes treats her like a child, which just leads her to act more childish in response. Her belief that Celestia hiding Midnight's impending death from her ended up triggering her corruption into Nightmare Moon. She does cheer up nicely when allowed to be around others in a situation not involving her position.
• Modest Royalty: Luna, ohsoverymuch.
• Moe: The Princess Luna of the past is turning out this way, as is Fluttershy's ancestor Lily.
• Mood Dissonance: In Session 8.5, Twilight acknowledges and discusses this with Rainbow Dash, wondering how they could be joking about fillyfooling so soon after Sundae's abduction and Fritter's death.
• Near-Death Experience: This is required for obtaining a Destiny Mark.
• No Infantile Amnesia: The first thing Twilight witnesses in the past is the first moments of Midnight Star's life, including her mother's Death by Childbirth.
• OC Stand-In: King Thermis and Queen Ambrosia serve as Celestia and Luna's parents.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Pastel Lollypop, Skyline & Lily Blossom and Vega, Midnight's mother.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: The ponies' faith in their Goddess and the Day of Ascension is roundly mocked by Fang and his pack.
• Reincarnation: Part of why Generation Xerox is in effect.
• Sadistic Choice: Fang loves these. First with The Collection, then when he tells them they can only trade Midnight for two of their three captives.
• Senseless Sacrifice: As touching as Revy's brave sacrifice was, it didn't actually fix anything.
• Shoot the Dog: To protect Skyline, Revy abducts Midnight so they can't attempt their trading plan.
• Shout-Out: Pinkie provides most of these; in the prologue, upon hearing the setup, she directly references Inception, then asks if their ancestors were assassins.
  • Skyline's griffon friend is named Revy.
  • Luna has an Abacus named Abacus.
  • One of the Summer Triangle ponies is named Altair.
  • Vega talks to midnight in the golden land.
• Silly Pony, Idealism Is For Fillies!: Midnight is repeatedly called sheltered and overly idealistic, such as when Revy forces her to face how poorly thought-out their plan to rescue Sundae is.
• Stepford Smiler: Many of the ponies of the past come off as this, as they go about their lives trying to ignore matters like The Collection and The Quota.
• Stepford Suburbia
• Tragic Keepsake: In Session 12, Skyline takes Revy's red scarf with her.
• Unsound Effect: DESYNCHRONIZATION
• Villainous Breakdown: Fang suffers a brief one after Midnight's near death and the chaos immediately following.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: As Session 12 reveals, King Thermis let Cinnamon and Skyline attempt their plan in hopes that Midnight would unlock her Destiny Mark, and was going to throw them in jail afterwards.
• Wham! Episode: Session 4.
• X Meets Y: My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic meets Assassin's Creed. Lampshaded by Pinkie Pie making a Shout-Out to the latter, as well as mentioning Inception.
• You Can't Fight Fate: As in Assassin's Creed, the present-day ponies can observe the past and minorly influence their ancestors, but can't force them too far out of character without desyncing.
• You Can't Go Home Again