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DoomSp0rk — Vial of Dragonfire

Published: 2014-04-24 10:56:05 +0000 UTC; Views: 2648; Favourites: 46; Downloads: 26
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Description Before the founding of the Empire of Equestria, even before the birth of pony civilization in general, the god Keris gave the gift of fire to each of the equine races.  This, Keris' first and greatest blessing to the ponies of the world of Equestria, was revered and studied by all.  With fire, the Earth Ponies were able to tame the wild, fey forests that controlled Equestria's lowlands.  With fire, the Pegasi were able to craft weather patterns with unparalleled precision.  With fire, the Unicorns were able to reach new levels of knowledge about the physical and magical world that surrounded them.  But for all this, it was the Zebras who mastered Keris' gift and brought the art of fire to a state of near-perfection.

Living as they did in the deserts and jungles of Zebrica, the Zebras had from the start been hard-pressed for survival.  Terrifying beasts of earth and shadow stalked the forests, while the mighty dragons controlled the open plains and mountains.  The Zebra tribes never stayed in place long, always dodging around the hunting territory of Equestria's most dangerous predators, always hiding and evading.  This changed when Keris, Goddess of Change, bestowed upon them the knowledge of fire and its uses.

The wisest among the Zebra immediately grasped the value of fire as a survival tool -- to keep warm in the winters, to rid food of diseases and parasites, to provide light in dark and dangerous places.  It was they who perfected the art of creating and maintaining fire -- the most skilled among them would carry a single ember in their mane or tail, using that one tiny spark to create fire wherever they needed it.

The most curious among the Zebra saw the value of fire as a tool for exploration and creation.  Fire could strip away tough exteriors to lay bare the inner workings of the jungle's mighty trees.  Fire could transform mundane plants and other ingredients into potent chemical brews, much more effective than chewing raw leaves as the Zebras had done for centuries.  In extreme circumstances, fire could even be used to cleanse and purify severe injuries, preventing sickness and disease.

But for all of this, it was the most aggressive Zebras who turned fire into the terrifying weapon that it is today.  Learning from the dragons, who had known fire since their first days, these brave warriors learned how to manipulate fire itself.  They learned to command it to burn brighter and hotter than it ever would naturally, to guide its ravenous, insatiable hunger as carefully as their own hooves, and most importantly, they learned how to absorb fire directly, supercharging their own bodies in the manner of the dragons.

In time, the Zebra tribes grew from a race of timid scavengers into proud and mighty civilizations willing to take on all comers in defense of their land.  Even the typically aloof dragons took notice of them, and respected the Zebra for their mastery of fire.  So it was that the chief among the dragons, Exakktus the Black, made a peace-gift to the Zebras -- two enchanted vials each containing a quantity of Dragonfire.

Dragonfire is not truly fire.  It is the physical manifestation of the magical singularity which powers a dragon's body, and it is one of the most potent substances in the known universe.  As long as a single quantity of the substance is smaller than a certain maximum mass, it will self-sustain an average temperature of 5000 degrees Celsius, comparable to the surface of the Sun, with light emissions to match.  In this state, the dragonfire is simply emitting the energy produced by the previously mentioned "singularity".  However, if the mass of an uncontrolled sample of dragonfire exceeds the "critical mass", the singularity will begin to reabsorb its own radiant energy, re-emitting it ten times over.  A cataclysmic chain reaction then occurs, and everything within several kilometers is turned to ash.

The two vials of Dragonfire together contain enough to start such a chain reaction.
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Comments: 10

BrutalityInc [2014-12-02 16:32:52 +0000 UTC]

"Now I am become death, the destroyer of - OH GODS, EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE!"

--- A Zebra researcher, when the blast-wave of Dragonfire sweeps over the bunker, far past the expected blast zone. The scientists and engineers of the Mwangamizi Project later admit to have grossly underestimated the yield of the Dragonfire mega-spell weapon they were testing, which turned out to be in excess of 30 MT.

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SomeRandomMinion In reply to BrutalityInc [2014-12-02 21:52:34 +0000 UTC]

===Later===

Zebra Scientist: [Comically scorched, covered in burn marks and bandages] "So...this is the part where we get a lecture on 'overstepping our bounds' and letting our 'hubris' lead us into things we 'weren't meant to know', right?" -_-

Dragon: "What? No; what kind of regressive tripe is that? All I was going to say was that you should have done some more testing before you made the full-size bomb. If we'd thought you were breaking some sort of rule with weaponizing the stuff, we'd never have let that gadget leave the drawing board."

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BrutalityInc In reply to SomeRandomMinion [2014-12-02 22:51:24 +0000 UTC]

Zebra Scientist: "Oh well, at least we now know it's good enough to power Quantum Tide."

Dragon:   "Quantum what?"

Zebra Scientist: "Quantum Tide, the final word in anti-monster weaponry. It's a joint project with the Kirin of neighpon and the Ponies of Equestria, the culmination of our arcane weapons research, a backup for the Elements of Harmony and Rainbow Power. We're going to assemble a giant projector cannon in orbit that can fire a magically-generated micro-singularity at any point on the planet, which needs a lot of power - power that a Dragonfire power-plant can provide. Colleagues said that a blast from that thing can take out an Ursa Major in one shot. If shooting a miniature black hole at those monsters, evil overlords and mad gods doesn't get them off our planet, then they can have the damn place."

Dragon: [Suddenly feeling very scared] "Okay... I wish you luck, then..."

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SomeRandomMinion In reply to BrutalityInc [2014-12-02 22:59:34 +0000 UTC]

[ I love how casual the Zebra Scientist is about it! When word gets out, those 'monsters, evil overlords and mad gods' are gonna be sleeping with teddy bears...]

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ghostcrab311 [2014-04-26 20:29:15 +0000 UTC]

cool stuff!

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tentacals [2014-04-24 14:18:46 +0000 UTC]

just 1 sciency problem with your awesome headcanon: a self-amplifying magic positive feedback loop that was already comparable to the surface of the sun before exceeding critical mass, and the only thing that happens is stuff becomes ash for a measly few kilometers around? try "wipes out several star systems"

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DoomSp0rk In reply to tentacals [2014-04-24 19:49:13 +0000 UTC]

The center of an atomic bomb explosion can easily reach tens of millions of degrees, comparable to the center of the sun.  However, this only occurs for a few seconds at most, and although the heat emitted is intense, it dissipates quickly due to lack of continued fueling of the previously mentioned nuclear reaction.  There just isn't enough there to do any "real" (on a stellar scale) damage.

When I said that a dragonfire singularity can reabsorb and amplify its own radiant energy, I never said how long that process could go on before the singularity itself collapses.  The actual lifespan of a singularity in this state of positive feedback is only a few microseconds, the end result being that the explosion remains comparable to the average nuclear weapon.  Also remember that the surface of the sun is 10 million times larger than the earth, so an object the size of a small jar that burns as the same temperature as the sun's surface is really nothing in comparison.

However, there is a theory which states that under certain conditions, a Dragonfire singularity that is undergoing positive feedback can be stabilized, allowing its mass to continue to grow to the point that its own gravity becomes sufficient to keep its outward expansion in check -- a perfect balance of radiant, transmutative, and coagulant forces that results in what the ponies of Equestria call a "star".

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tentacals In reply to DoomSp0rk [2014-04-25 03:05:31 +0000 UTC]

so basically the singularity is stable until reaching critical mass, at which point it triggers a reaction that exponentially converts the magical energy to kinetic and heat energy until its magical mass is spent? (and also a zebra and a dragon can birth universes?)

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DoomSp0rk In reply to tentacals [2014-04-25 22:10:50 +0000 UTC]

Yes to the first question, no to the second.  A dragonfire singularity is in theory capable of birthing a star, but no pony, zebra, or dragon has ever accomplished this feat.  Universes are entirely out of the question.

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CinderScript [2014-04-24 11:34:05 +0000 UTC]

Amazing lore: Check
Awesome picture: Check
Science: Check

Yup, this is going into the favorites.

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