Hinterlands👁 Image
is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic by Rambling Writer.
In the far northern reaches of the world, the harmony of Equestria isn't as prevalent. Dark mages can lurk in the shadows, preying on the unsuspecting. But Equestria reaches just far enough to put bounties on those mages. A pegasus bounty hunter named Bitterroot is approached by another hunter, looking for help in capturing a dangerous necromancer named Amanita who recently destroyed the town of Grayvale. The bounty? Six hundred thousand bits. With a bounty that large, a crew quickly assembles and takes off across the Frozen North.
Meanwhile, a ranger named Catskill saves a hapless pony from a rabid bear and takes it upon herself to escort the pony to the Crystal Empire. The pony's name? Amanita.
Hinterlands was written and completed over winter and spring of 2019. A sequel, Urban Wilds👁 Image
, was published in November 2021. Another sequel, Death Valley👁 Image
, was published in April 2024. Neither can be easily discussed without major spoilers for the first story.
These fics contain examples of:
Hinterlands
- And I Must Scream: It's revealed partway through the story that, instead of being mindless reanimated corpses, thralls are powered by binding their original soul to the body. The standard necromantic process of doing this strips the soul of their free will in the process, preventing them from doing anything, including thinking, without their master's permission or instruction. This is presented as a horrific process that's invariably traumatic for the souls subjected to it.She couldn't scream. She couldn't want to scream.
- Anyone Can Die: Catskill, Trace, and Gale, half the main cast and one of the viewpoint characters, are all dead by the end.
- The Atoner: Amanita is trying to make up for the evil she's committed as a necromancer by turning herself in and handing over her master's phylactery to the authorities.
- Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: Our first introduction to Amanita is as a quiet, nervous mare who's out of her depth in the north. Then Artemis reveals Amanita is a necromancer. Shortly after, Amanita slits Polar Sun's throat when Polar refuses to let her run into the night. Subverted when the first scene turns out to be more accurate; Amanita had a Heel Realization, is running to keep a phylactery out of Circe's control, and took the time to resurrect Polar before leaving.
- Bears Are Bad News: While fleeing through the forest, Amanita is attacked by a bear rendered mindlessly aggressive by rabies. After the bear is killed, she turns it into an undead thrall and sends it after her pursuers.
- Bears Are Bad News: Catskill first runs into Amanita as the latter is running from a rabid bear.
- Boom Town: Mystic plays with it. It was originally a mining town that did decent business in iron and silver, but was too isolated to attract prospectors. After the arrival of the Crystal Empire, though, it was suddenly near a major trading hub and ponies looking for easy money flocked to it. It went through the usual boom-disaster-decline cycle, with the added "bonus" that the increased mining flooded the market with metals and decreased its value.
- Bounty Hunter: Bitterroot, Artemis, Leafy Trace, and Gale are all after Amanita for the six-hundred-thousand-bit price on her head. They can only work legally with a license. The story presents bounty hunting as something that gets painted as being a lot more glamorous than it actually is — the actual bounty hunters are essentially freelance detectives with some wilderness tracking thrown in, and mostly get by on catching low-profile crooks, returning runaways, and selling leads and conclusions on dangerous suspects to the actual Guard and police.
- Dead Person Impersonation: "Artemis" is actually Circe, Amanita's master. Gale is the original Artemis, killed and enslaved as a necromantic thrall. Circe needs to use the real Artemis's bounty hunter license for credibility.
- Dramatic Irony: Catskill is helping Amanita to get to the Crystal Empire, utterly unaware that she's a necromancer.
- Elective Mute: Gale got a wing paralyzed in the past and being unable to fly drove her out of her mind, to the point that she no longer speaks. It's actually to hide the way her neck is sliced open.
- Eye of Newt: In addition to inborn unicorn spellcasting, more complex rituals can also be done by using a variety of magical reagents and animal parts, which are mixed and consumed as part of the spellcasting. This requires the mage to carry around or forage for a lot of material, but it can create more complex feats and is accessible to non-unicorns.
- Foreshadowing:
- It's mentioned several times that Polar doesn't wear leg wrappings. When the bounty hunters find her corpse, one of her legs is bandaged. It's holding the resurrection stave to her body.
- Artemis and Gale are an earth pony and a pegasus, respectively, yet Gale is the one carrying their gear, rather than Artemis. Artemis is a lich and Gale is her undead thrall.
- Artemis comments that, after getting a wing paralyzed, Gale went nuts and stopped talking and sleeping, joking that it's only a matter of time before she stops eating and breathing. Gale is undead and has already stopped eating and breathing.
- Fire Keeps It Dead: Killing someone with fire makes it impossible to raise them with necromancy.
- Forest Ranger: Catskill helps manage the ecosystem in her part of the north. In these remote areas, this involves a lot of spent patrolling the wilderness alone, dealing with poachers and tracking down dangerous or rabid animals.
- The Gadfly: Trace frequently nettles Artemis and less frequently Bitterroot (but only because nettling Bitterroot isn't nearly as fun).
- Ghost Town: When an anti-necromancy squad arrives at Grayvale, all they find is the aftermath of a massacre.
- Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: One of the outwardly defining traits of thralldom is that the eyes, or eye sockets, glow with blue light.
- Grim Up North: It's cold, settlements are few and far between, the landscape mostly consists of mountains and steep cliffs, the weather is uncontrollable, and many Equestrian ideals are absent. The Frozen North is not a nice place to be.
- Healing Factor: Liches have powerful regeneration as part of the immortality, and will rapidly repair even the most grievous injuries — total dismemberment will only keep one down for an hour or two, although it does give one time to tie the lich up.
- The Hermit: Polar Sun is an old mare living alone in the middle of nowhere.
- Jerkass: Artemis is gruff, abrasive, domineering and argumentative, and quickly gets on everyone else's nerves.
- Kick the Dog: After killing and enthralling Trace, Artemis forces her to eat glass out of pure pettiness.
- Made of Indestructium: Circe's Soul Jar has enough strengthening spells to make it very hard to damage. It's not totally indestructible, but this far from civilization, it might as well be.
- Mayor of a Ghost Town: Catskill is the only pony left in Mystic after the mines went bust.
- Meaningful Name: Bitterroot and Catskill are both named for mountain ranges.
- Mind Rape: Enthrallment works by binding the souls of the dead to a necromancer's will and is explicitly compared to rape, primarily because the summoner's power over the spirit is total and extends to all parts of the summoned spirits' minds, so that they cannot even think of anything expect obeying their master. It's part of the reason necromancy is considered so morally repugnant and what triggered Amanita's Heel Realization. Best shown when Circe enthralls Gale/the real Artemis:She couldn't scream. She couldn't want to scream.
- Minimalist Cast: Only six characters for the majority of the fic.
- Mortality Phobia: Trace speculates that the ultimate reason why liches become what they are is because they're deeply afraid of death, which she finds a little ridiculous.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: As Amanita points out, murder is a necromancer's default method of problem-solving and it's easy to reverse.
- Necromantic: Amanita first turned to necromancy to call up her dead marefriend's spirit. When she realized the process was a Mind Rape for any summoned spirits and her master didn't care, she had a Heel Realization and fled.
- Necromedic: Necromancy can't be used to heal per se — strictly speaking, it interacts with the soul rather than the body directly. However, Amanita worked out that if you use necromancy to bind the soul to a person's body in the manner normally used to create a zombie, and then layer on regular healing spells or medicine on top of that, you can "force" a person to stay alive long enough for otherwise fatal injuries to be healed, at which point the body's normal processes can start again and the necromantic spell can be allowed to decay.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
- Polar Sun gives shelter and food to a lost pony. By way of thanks, she's murdered when she refuses to let that pony attempt to climb down a dangerous cliff in the middle of the night. Although it turns out Amanita had very good reasons to want to keep moving and she still takes the time to resurrect Polar.
- Catskill attempts to save a pony from a bear, only to nearly die in the process and get unknowingly roped into a bounty hunt.
- Our Liches Are Different: Liches are necromancers who keep their souls hidden inside phylacteries, in order to make themselves immortal; as long as the phylactery is intact, they cannot die. From the outside, liches aren't visually recognizable as such and resemble living ponies in all respects, and will rapidly regenerate even the most grievous injuries.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Thralls are necromantic zombies animated by unscrupulous sorcerers as minions, laborers and disposable grunts. It's revealed that the process works by binding the original soul to the body, since only a soul can give flesh independent movement and direction, while stripping it of all free will.
- Precision F-Strike: Amanita drops an F-bomb, the only obscenity in the story, when she realizes that Circe escaped the cave-in and is chasing after her.
- Pull Yourself Down the Spear: Circe impales Bitterroot with a spear, who pushes it further in to get close enough to grab her attacker. Justified, since she's already dead.
- Raising the Steaks: After descending from the mountain pass, Amanita reanimates a grizzly bear's carcass and sends it after the bounty hunters.
- Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: One of the bounty hunters is named Artemis, after the Greek goddess of the hunt. Later, it's revealed that her actual name is Circe, after the legendary sorceress, mirroring her nature as an evil magic-user.
- The Reveal:
- Catskill died and Amanita resurrected her as a revenant.
- Amanita is The Atoner after realizing the depths to which she'd sunk in necromancy and is heading to the Crystal Empire to turn herself and her master's phylactery in.
- Artemis is actually Circe, Amanita's master, chasing after her to kill her and retrieve her phylactery.
- Revenant Zombie: Catskill, thanks to Amanita's resurrection process. Later, Bitterroot briefly becomes one by choice.
- Slashed Throat: Frequently. Amanita kills Polar by slicing her throat open and Gale's scarf hides the way her own throat is cut open. Polar's death is messier than usual for this trope, with blood trickling into her lungs.
- Soul Jar: Liches cheat death by extracting their souls and storing them inside enchanted objects known as phylacteries. This will let them live indefinitely as long as the phylactery is intact, but this isn't a once-and-done process. Bodies are the only things built to house souls; consequently, even the best-prepared object can't hold a lich's soul forever. Phylacteries thus need periodic maintenance, which is why liches carry them around with them instead of just burying them somewhere remote. The issue is that, in this context, "maintenance" tends to involve considerable amounts of sapient sacrifices.
- Switching P.O.V.: The POV alternates between Bitterroot's and Catskill's.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Catskill died after falling off the cliff. Amanita turned her into a revenant to save her life.
- Unreliable Expositor: Artemis claims Amanita is responsible for destroying Grayvale, when that was actually done by Artemis herself.
- Unreliable Narrator: When Bitterroot and Catskill fight in Mystic, each one's narration describes themselves as barely managing to survive against a more skilled foe, even though the actions are the same.
- Winter Warfare: Amanita is nearly cornered in Mystic, but a blizzard throws a wrench in everypony's plans.
Urban Wilds — All previous spoilers unmarked!
- Aristocrats Are Evil: The Mearhwolf is a collection of aristocrats, headed by Viscountess High Gloss, attempting to kill Twilight to put Celestia back on the throne.
- Asshole Victim: A variant. Bitterroot needs to get some information from a guard. He's quickly established as an arrogant, hotheaded egotist so there's no qualms about her getting him drunk to weasel out what she needs.
- Autopsy Snack Time: Escharia the mortician sucks on a lollipop while at work. She says it helps suppress the gag reflex.
- Badass on Paper: Ponies who only know Amanita as a necromancer are terrified of her. Ponies who know what she's really like are not.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Amanita is a necromancer. Her first necromantic act in the story is to resurrect a victim of a serial killer and she later helps families of other victims find closure. By the end of the story, she's prepared to start researching necromancy under the Royal Guard, so it can be used for good.
- Beware the Quiet Ones: Amanita is meek, socially awkward, and lacks self-confidence. She's also a very skilled necromancer and when two ponies working with the Mearhwolf attempt to kill her, she instead kills them in her panic.
- Calling Your Attacks:Amanita: You don't need to scream "egg" every time you throw one, you know.
Code: EGG! (*throws an egg in Amanita's face*) I do know. What I don't is care. - Candlelit Ritual: Amanita uses candles for her resurrection ritual, but performs it under the light of ordinary bulbs. The candles are necessary ritual components, with their color, position, and lighting order all playing a role in the ritual's magic.
- Chekhov's Gun: The fic takes place in the days before the autumnal equinox. The symbolism of things dying in autumn makes it a perfect time to perform a death ritual.
- Connect the Deaths: Subverted. The deaths were so disparate that the Guard tried this, thinking it might be a ritual, only for them to have no ritualistic pattern. Double subverted when it turns out it's supposed to be a pattern, but is so poorly-designed that no ritual would work with it.
- Evil Gloating: Discussed when Amanita, after coming down from the emotional high of figuring out a difficult problem and getting to explain in precise detail what she came up with and how, ponders that monologuing about your cleverness is very satisfying and it's not really that surprising that villains are so prone to doing it.No wonder villains monologued; what was the point of being clever if you couldn't tell anypony?
- Fantastic Legal Weirdness: One of the spirits Amanita calls up writes her own will postmortem.
- Flashback B-Plot: Amanita frequently flashes back to her time as Circe's apprentice, following it from start to finish, including her Heel Realization.
- Genre Shift: From a Stern Chase across the wilderness to a serial killer crime drama.
- He Knows Too Much: After Amanita resurrects one of the Mearhwolf's victims, Gloss panics and sends two ponies to kill her. It doesn't work out.
- Imperfect Ritual: The Mearhwolf's victims are supposed to form ritual circles, but they're too ill-placed to mean much. It's so inaccurate that the Royal Guard wrote it off as a possible motive. When Code takes a look at it, she's livid at how poorly-constructed it is.
- In Vino Veritas: Bitterroot notes that cheap beer is more reliable than truth potions. She gets a possible lead drunk to convince him to spill any beans he knows about.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Several guards just give up when Code and her ritualists raid High Gloss's manor.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: Amanita is The Atoner and turned herself in at the end of Hinterlands.
- Literal Metaphor: Canterlot's "shady underbelly" is a motely collection of structures hanging beneath the platform, constantly cloaked in shadow. The narration even suggests that this is where the terms came from.
- Mundane Utility:
- Changeling shapeshifting makes them excellent fly-on-the-wall informants.
- At one point, Amanita enthralls a dead raven to send a message.
- Oh, Crap!: High Gloss's guards have this reaction when they realize that the pony they're holding captive (Bitterroot) is a necromancer's best friend.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: Amanita's reaction when she hears that Bitterroot is dead.
- Only in It for the Money: Defied. Bitterroot keeps the obituaries of the murder victims on a cork board to remind herself of the real reason to stop the Mearhwolf.
- Proj-egg-tile: Code's main ranged weapon is throwing eggs. Her justification is that it's demoralizing for whoever it hits while the egg's rebirth symbolism makes it potent against death magic. Also, she likes throwing eggs.
- Put Down Your Gun and Step Away: High Gloss threatens to kill Bitterroot if she's not allowed to leave. Code points out that she's in an impossible position with no way out, and if she does follow through, all she's doing is adding murder to her list of charges. Then Bitterroot kills herself, rendering the whole thing moot.
- Revealing Cover-Up: While investigating a lead on the case, Bitterroot is given a bribe to stop poking around. She immediately knows she's on the right track, because the only reason to bribe somepony is if there's something you really don't want them finding.
- Ritual Magic: Explored extensively. Most of Amanita's skills in necromancy come from rituals, while Restricted Code is the Royal Guard's High Ritualist, Equestria's foremost expert in rituals.
- Serial Killer: One is loose in Canterlot, dubbed the Mearhwolf of the Mountain.
- Shoot the Hostage: Bitterroot cuts short a hostage situation by killing the hostage, herself. Death doesn't mean much when your friend is a necromancer.
- Shout-Out: Cadance's wedding and Chrysalis's invasion is referred to as the "Pink Wedding".
- Wunza Plot: The story follows a professional bounty hunter and a reformed necromancer with a colossal guilt complex, who team up to track down a serial killer.One's an impulsive bounty hunter with a thirst for adrenaline. The other's a reformed necromancer given a second chance at life. Together, they fight the necromancer's self-doubt (and also crime).
Death Valley — All previous spoilers unmarked!
- An Arm and a Leg: Amanita loses one of her legs in a train crash near the end of the story.
- Call-Back: Again, Code uses eggs against a dark mage. Specifically, against Varnish. Because of how vampirism works in Equestria, this kills him.
- Chain Pain: One of the homunculi uses a thick chain as a weapon against Code when attacking her. She manages to turn the tables and steal it away to attack them instead.
- Company Town: A variant. Tratonmane was founded over two hundred and fifty years ago as part of an initiative to mine for coal to fuel Equestria's railroads, complete with a noble being granted a dukedom over it. However, it avoids many of the negative stereotypes; they still explicitly use bits rather than scrip and Tallbush is more like a regular townspony who happens to be the duke rather than a Tyrannical Town Tycoon.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Amanita is worried about this happening to her; she's currently valued because she's a necromancer, so she feels that the moment someone who's a necromancer and also something else comes along, she'll be discarded.
- Cult: Deconstructed. The Deormont's cult isn't remotely malevolent, but they're aware of how it would look from the outside, with a remote village worshiping an eldritch entity beneath a mountain. Because of this, they keep to themselves and remain just as secretive as more evil cults. Once it gets cleared up, Code is adamant that Tratonmane be left alone, free to practice their religion as they've been doing.
- Dissonant Serenity: Amanita never has much of a problem with bodies or blood. When she cuts open a dead bear and literally digs around inside its chest cavity, everyone else is horrified, but she's unfazed.Whippletree: What in the nation are ye doin'?
Amanita (holding a heart and dripping in blood): Hmm? What's it look like? I'm doing an animal autopsy.
Whippletree: Ye're- covered in-
Amanita: It's just blood! Everyone's got it! Sheesh... - Don't Go in the Woods: Midwich Forest is home to all sorts of hostile animals and even the trees can be dangerous.
- Fantastic Racism: Varnish, as a unicorn, is disdainful towards other pony tribes. And as a vampire, he's disdainful towards mortals.
- Fantastic Science: Ley sanitation is well-known and widely practiced, making it a perfect project for Amanita to gain some field experience with ritualism.
- Grave Robbing: Amanita digs up Pyrita's grave to use her body in a spell.
- Grim Up North: Midwich Valley is deep in the North, made worse because its depth means it's even colder and darker than usual.
- Heroic BSoD: After withstanding a day of increasing hallucinations and the resulting stress, Bitterroot finally breaks down after being forcibly turned into a timberwolf and wanting to kill the others, lying unable to sleep in bed for hours and crying in the bathroom.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Amanita consistently acts like her spells could be done by anyone, even the ones she just recently invented or the ones no one else has the stomach for.
- Hidden Elf Village: Played with. Tratonmane's existence isn't a secret, but it's still so small that few ponies have heard of it. It still has the isolationist bent.
- Ley Line: Tratonmane is situated at the start of a ley line. Earth ponies can use it to grow plants very reliably in the cold weather. The plot gets kicked off when the energy sours and Twilight sends a group of specialists up to fix it.
- Loophole Abuse: Amanita can't resurrect someone who's been dead for more than three days and assumes the soul doesn't want to leave the afterlife. However, she can resurrect people who've been dead for far longer if their soul isn't in the afterlife. She uses this to bring back Midwinter and Fuligin.
- Lovecraft Lite: Tratonmane is an isolationist town on the fringes of society worshiping an otherworldly abomination beneath the mountains... that has no ill intentions and simply wants to be left alone, while the Deormont responds to its worship with protection from illness and bountiful harvests. The real danger is regular people: necromancers using Tratonmane as a source of ponies to experiment on.
- Mad Scientist: All of the vampires qualify, but Arc Fault fits the mold the best, being very focused on his work of homunculi and potions.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Amanita reveals herself as a necromancer and offers to resurrect Pyrita after she unexpectedly commits suicide. For no reason she can tell, the ritual doesn't work, turning most of Tratonmane and particularly Arrastra against her.
- Non-Human Undead: Amanita uses necromancy to animate a tree during the final battle.
- Our Vampires Are Different: The vampires in Midwich are necromancers, coming at lichdom from a different direction than Circe had. Because of their status as undead, they can be resurrected by other necromancers. However, they still have the same strengths and weaknesses as classical vampires, such as being unable to go out in sunlight and living on blood.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: As part of their experimentation, the vampires turn Whippletree and Bitterroot into timberwolves. Because of the association of loss of control with night, the transformation magic is easier by the light of the moon.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Tallbush is the Duke of Tratonmane, but far from being a Small-Town Tyrant, he's highly respected and even handles the town's weekly shipment of coal by train. He's a bit suspicious of the Canterlotians, but no more or less than anyone else in town. And that's mostly in an attempt to keep the Deormont a secret.
- Stress Vomit: Bitterroot vomits into the toilet during her Heroic BSoD.
- Suicide by Sunlight: Fuligin doesn't want to live with the numbness of being a vampire and decides to see the sunrise one last time. Amanita convinces him to keep living and cures his vampirism.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Code kills Carnelian a bolt from a massive ballista. But as the narration notes, a wooden stake to the heart is a wooden stake to the heart.
- Town with a Dark Secret: The Canterlotians occasionally joke that Tratonmane is this. They're partially right. The worship of the Deormont isn't dark, but looks that way from the outside, so Tratonmane keeps it a secret anyway. There's also the vampires, but Tratonmane doesn't know about them.
- Uniqueness Value: Deconstructed. Amanita suspects she'll be forgotten the second another moral necromancer comes along.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Somehow, in spite of being a coal mining town, no one in Tratonmane has black lung or has even heard of it. The town's been protected by the Deormont for most of its existence.
- Walking Spoiler: Talking about the Deormont requires spoiling not only that Tratonmane is a Town with a Dark Secret, but that its "dark secret" isn't really that dark.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Because of their association with life, raw eggs can kill vampires.
- When Trees Attack: Midwich Forest has an unusual amount of "night trees", regular trees that are hostile and aggressive in the dark. Because Midwich Valley is almost always dark, the trees are always hostile and the forest is considered dangerous.
- You Are Not Alone: Amanita and Bitterroot both say they'll be there for the other at different points in the story: Bitterroot to Amanita after Pyrita's failed resurrection, and Amanita to Bitterroot after Bitterroot's transformation into a timberwolf.