Twilight of Equestria (roleplay)
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 and an odd-eyed sheriff, plus a self-proclaimed "Mistress of Death Itself" living in an abandoned farmstead near town. And they're hardly the weirdest folks around...
It can be found here
Tropes used in Twilight of Equestria (roleplay) include:
- Age Without Youth: Last Breath is almost 200, and looks pretty much like you'd expect a 200-year-old mummified corpse to look.
- 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: Last Breath is either Type I, Type III, or Type IV, depending on the reader.
- Also Gramayre (at least, before he took on the guise of Dolus)
- Artistic License: Biology: Chimera's right head is female, while the other two are male. It's probably best not to dwell on it.
- Also Liltlilly. See below.
- Asshole Victim: The trio of bullies that pick on Axe get theirs at the hooves of Patchy, who arguably delivers a lot more than they deserved.
- Badass Preacher: Chimera is a worshipper of Pinkie Pie. Yes, that one.
- Bi the Way: Caramel Corn is comfortable mentioning she's into mares and stallions to Sunny Daze
- Blue and Orange Morality: Acheron has shades of this; he seems to be all over the moral spectrum at times.
- Booby Trap: Cromosome retrats to an abandoned hotel and fills it with these after killing a large portion of Nexus' youth
- Cool Big Sis: Victory's cousin Chimera was this. Well, technically only the right head would qualify as "sis".
- 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 Is Edgy: Acheron.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The necromancer Last Breath has promised (and carried out) unspeakable fates, but she's pretty much benign to the fellow residents of Nexus. Her cohorts Aries and Patchy Part are even less malicious.
- Darker and Edgier: Oh so much. Reference is made to pony-trafficking, illegal drugs, organized crime...
- Dark Magical Girl: Sky Shadow in a nutshell.
- Deductive Reasoning: 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.
- 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.)
- Easy Amnesia: Acheron can't remember his past. He also has leathery wings, which can't bode well.
- 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. Averted, though, as 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, a proto-lich, cyborgs, undead...
- Fight Club: 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!: Victory. To quote her bio: "She works tirelessly to expand both her own knowledge and the knowledge of ponykind as a whole... regardless of how they feel about it."
- Chromosome is this way, but with biology. And much less plausibly altruistic motives.
- Fun with Acronyms: Order of Horribly Grotesque Others and Destruction-Wreaking Harbingers of Yuckiness, in reference to Last Breath, Patchy Part and Aries.
- 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.
- Genius Ditz: Sprocket is a legitimately good inventor, she's just also spacey, loud, and easily distracted.
- 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)
- Grey and Gray Morality: The Church of Laughter could be an example of this.
- Also 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 is a half-pony half-dragon. Despite dragons being gem-eaters in the MLP canon/fanon, Litlilly can eat meat.
- 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
- 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.
- Kill It with Fire: Fire is explicitly fatal for Patchy.
- Kill It with Water: Water is explicitly harmful (possibly fatal?) for Brimstone
- Sunseeker is also terrified of water
- Large Ham: Chimera's central head.
- Also Sprocket Spark.
- Little Miss Snarker: Chimera's right head.
- Magitek
- Morality Pet: To a certain extent, Patchy Part for Last Breath.
- Multiple Head Case: Chimera is a Mutant with three heads.
- My Brain Is Big: Victory's mutation caused her brain to grow to a larger capacity, at the expense of every other part of her body.
- Necromantic: The magician Gramarye fulfilled this trope after attempting to resurrect his dead daughter, Trixie. However, bringing back the dead is impossible.
- Never Live It Down: In-Universe example: apparently, a portion of Nexus' population thinks Last Breath is an Omnicidal Maniac due to this one time she stood up on a table and started monologing.
- Nice Hat: Five Eyes' fedora, which got eaten by zombies.
- No Endor Holocaust: Averted hard, along with Infant Immortality, during the zombie attack.
- Non-Indicative Name: Five Eyes has five independent irises, but only two eyes. He can shift the irises from eye to eye.
- Oh My Gods: The Mane Six of the original show are worshipped as deities, along with Celestia and Nightmare Moon, the latter admittedly by Necromancers.
- Our Demons Are Different: They go through an insectoid 'larval' stage and differ drastically from case to case.
- Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Last Breath's ghoul-ponies are fast, agile, and inequinely strong, and have enhanced senses, but aren't very bright. Mitta is an exception to that last part.
- Our Liches Are Different: Last Breath is a proto-lich; while not technically immortal (yet), she's nearly two centuries old.
- 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.
- Repeating So the Audience Can Hear: Mitta, being The Unintelligible, is forced to have Last Breath do this for her.
- Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Last Breath will say "sigh" instead of actually sighing. Justified in that she's a protolich, so she doesn't really breath like living ponies do.
- Shout-Out: Last Breath's ghouls are all named after characters from Story of the Blanks.
- Silent Snarker: Mitta has shades of this.
- 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: Sprocket's inventions. Also Circuit Sketch, and his inventions. And Crown Gear.
- Super Intelligence: Victory again. Again, the bio says it best: "Saying that Victory is a fast learner would be like saying that a leech enjoys drinking blood from time to time."
- Also Kestus. Perks of being a Time Lord
- The Napoleon: Victory's a little sore about her height.
- The Spock: Chimera's left head.
- The Unfavorite: Victory was this, in contrast to her younger sister Overmare.
- 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?: Victory's parents had this reaction as Victory was growing up; being earth ponies, they expected their kid to have the standard earth pony Super Strength.
- Glitz's parents also 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.
- Zombie Apocalypse: A recent site-wide plot.