The Aetheral Plane was truly a wonder to behold. It existed separate from the normal physical world in a direction not quite covered by the standard six options.

There existed no matter in that place, no substance, just a vast and endless plain of hazy magical energy. A thin fog made of rainbow and starlight.

Nothing, that is, save one particularly bored alicorn.

Princess Celestia, High Ruler of Equestria and her Territories, was honestly surprised to learn just how bored she could become in a dimension where thought and memory held just as much substance as earth and stone. With an idle thought, she manifested a grandfather clock.

It was a beautiful thing, all lacquered wood and polished brass. The platonic ideal of what a clock should be, birthed into flawless being from pure thought. No greater clock would ever exist in the material world below.

It was also totally incorrect, seeing as it had come from her mind and she didn't know what time it was anyway. She allowed her focus on it to lax and it quickly dispersed back into glittering mist. Such was the nature of the realm.

Honestly, she wished she'd brought a book. Alas, that would have been a distraction when more than anything she needed to be ready and attentive when the moment finally came.

It wasn't everyday one could be present for the ascension of an alicorn, let alone one who held such a dear place in her heart.

Celestia herself could not make somepony an alicorn, despite the claims of old rumors and the belief of certain overly ambitious apprentices. Such power was left in the hands of forces greater than her; destiny, perhaps, or some fundamental force of nature, or perhaps the Will of magic Itself. In any case, it was out of her hooves. What she could do was sense when someone was at the threshold of achieving it themselves. It came as a sort of pressure on her horn, not unlike the feeling of holding a powerful spell at the brink of release.

She'd felt it before when her sister ascended to alicornhood a half-day after she had, then again centuries later when young Cadance (though she knew not her name at the time) had achieved a worthy enough feat of her own.

And now it was Twilight's turn. Long overdue, in the princess' private opinion. Her most dedicated and faithful student more than deserved it after all she had accomplished. Defeating Nightmare Moon and returning Luna to her senses. Resealing Discord in his stony prison after his brief escape. Preventing King Sombra from retaking and enslaving the Crystal Empire. All noble and songworthy feats... and yet despite all her accomplishments, for some reason the mare had been sitting on the brink of ascension for weeks.

Celestia manifested a slice of cake and a glass of wine. At least she could eat her anxiety away without worry. Only in this realm were there truly empty calories.

Twilight more than deserved alicornhood, as well as the elevation to Princess status that naturally came with it. In time, with her friends by her side, she would no doubt become a fair and just leader. The kind of princess that would bring nations together through the bonds of friendship and harmony, like she had tried to do for a thousand years... with middling success.

She created (and subsequently consumed) another slice of cake.

With such a worthwhile potential princess sitting on the sidelines, would anyone blame her for trying to... help the process along, just a bit?

Sending her the most potent of the legendary Starswirl the Bearded's unfinished spells was hardly even a risk. If anypony could complete it after a thousand years of frustrated researchers and puzzled scholars, it'd be Twilight. No doubt with the help of her friends; something Starswirl had always had difficulty accounting for in his calculations.

She had no doubt Twilight could solve the puzzle. No doubt that it would push her past the threshold. No doubt that Twilight deserved the honor.

The only question was what was taking her so long?

As in answer, Celestia felt a change in the pressure on her horn.

"Finally," she sighed as she vanished her chair and snacks. As the spike of magic down in Equestria continued to grow, she quickly set about shaping the realm as she'd planned in order to ease Twilight's transition as smoothly as possible. She worked the mist into a wide, starry road. Affixed an illusion of a distinction between "sky" and "ground". She plucked dozens of fragments of memories from her mind and displayed them along the path like paintings in a gallery, showcasing her student's finest moments and triumphs.

Just as she finished the final touches, the power bloomed and fired towards the Aetherial Plane like an interdimensional firework.

This was it. The moment she'd been waiting for. She mentally rehearsed her speech for the final time. Was it too much? Too ostentatious? Perhaps Twilight would be put more at ease if she were casual about it. No. Such a momentous event required proper gravitas. Formal speech it was, then.

A microcosm of magical power pushed its way through the boundaries of the realm, nearly knocking Celestia off her hooves with the force of its arrival. She hadn't remembered her own arrival to be nearly that rocky.

She pushed the thought from her mind and fixed a satisfied smile on her face as the web of magic that represented her student approached.

"Congratulations, my dear Twilight, I always knew you could— wait, what is this?"

There was another beacon of power approaching. It punched through the walls of their reality with as much force as the first, this time actually sending the alicorn tumbling to her hooves.

A second ascension? How?! She hadn't seen any signs of it! Perhaps... maybe... one of Twilight's friends? They were as much a credit to her successes as she was, and if they'd been instrumental in solving Starswirl's spell...

It wasn't impossible but...

Before she could gather her wits, her worldview was rocked once again as a third spirit entered the plane. She watched in slack-jawed astonishment as another presence followed that one. Then another. Then another.

Six glowing vortexes of power—the mystical sum total of a pony’s magic, soul, and being—shot through the non-matter and not-quite-space of the Aetherial Plane. It was impossible! Unprecedented! Absurd! The number of alicorns in the world had just tripled.

The plane rocked again and then there were only five.

The nexus that represented Twilight was gone.

Then the second vanished and she managed to catch a glimpse of its departure.

It went beyond. There was no conventional name for the direction, but much in the way that the Aetherial Plane was beyond the material world, the spirits of six of her ponies were transcending to somewhere beyond the Aetherial Plane.

Some sphere of existence that even Celestia herself had never even begun to fathom existed.

In moments, she was once again alone, save for the looming existential knowledge that this was not the highest Plane.

"Well then..." her voice felt flat and underwhelming as her carefully practiced speech faded from her mind. "This might cause some unexpected changes to my long term plans."

Greetings everyone, and welcome to something a little bit experimental.

What we have here is a Celestial Forge story set in the MLP universe which, as far as I know, no one has attempted yet.

First, a little background for anyone who might not be familiar with the concept.

The Celestial Forge is a writing framework originally created as a variation of a Jumpchain story. In a Jumpchain, before you begin writing you allot yourself a certain number of points (often referred to as CP) and then use those points to "purchase" superpowers, technology, abilities, skills, and helpers from one of many pre-made documents (henceforth called "Perk Lists") listing a wide selection of such. Those powers are then granted to your protagonist (usually a Self-Insert of the author, but not always).

The Celestial Forge is a variation on this created by the author LordRoustabout. Instead of an initial budget of points, you start with a handful of default "starter perks" but gain 100CP for every 1000 words written for the story.

Whenever you reach the threshold for new points, you randomly select something from the perk list. If you have as many points as it costs, you buy it and your character immediately receives that perk at that moment in the story. If the perk is too expensive, those points are banked and added to the next roll.

The Celestial Forge Perk List is a combined document over three hundred pages long containing powers and technology and magic from dozens of popular books, films, games, and anime.

As you can imagine, this sort of power creep can often result in characters getting very powerful very quickly, but that's part of the fun.

For this fic, I'm tweaking the rules a bit to suit my own purposes.

Firstly, I'm using a modified edition of V3 of the CF Perk document. I've removed some of the Perks (ones from franchises I'm totally unfamiliar with as well as universe-breaking "you are instantly a god" powers) and added some new ones that I am familiar with and think will be fun.

Initially I'll by using the standard 100CP per 1000 words to get things rolling, but I may cut it back to 100CP per 2000 words since my prose tends to get a bit purple at times and I don't want to fall into the trap where the wordcount it takes me to explain a new power is enough to grant another.

In terms of how My Little Pony is going to play into this, instead of giving one character access to the Forge I'm mixing things up and connecting it to all of the Mane Six. In practice, every time I roll for a power and it's successfully purchased, I'll then roll a six-sided die to see which pony gets it. Perks which alter the Warehouse (their shared pocket dimension) can be used by all, while skill and ability granting perks will only affect the individual. So, for example, if Rainbow Dash gets a Star Trek medical degree and a medbay, any of her friends can use it but she'll have to teach them how.

I'm also going to be playing a bit fast and loose with the timeline. We're jumping in at season four, so some episodes I'll go into details about and others I'll skip past depending on if/how their perks would affect the situation. For those familiar with Celestial Forge stories, my plan is for this to be more like Doormaker Dog than Brockton's Celestial Forge. So hopefully frequent updates of relatively short chapters.

Descriptions of any Perks obtained therein will be presented at the bottom of a chapter in the author's note, copied directly from the reference document (this does not add to the wordcount as far as CP is concerned). I’m also not counting the words in the first few chapters, as they’re going to be a bit excessively wordy will I get us through the set-up stage.

THIS LINK leads to gdoc containing a listing of all their acquired Perks, but be wary of spoilers as it will be kept updated to the latest chapter and Perks are sorted by pony, not by which chapter they appear.

Why am I introducing the Celestial Forge (which is usually applied to the ultra-violence grimderp Worm franchise) to the mostly peaceful world of My Little Pony, you may ask? Well, for fun, but also another reason. In almost every CF story I've read, the recipient hides their powers away for fear of being targeted, conscripted, or otherwise abused. So that got me thinking: What if someone decided not to hide the power, but share it freely? And what better place than the town most used to crazy shenanigans?

Aside from that, the goal of this fic is really for me to have fun with silly power interactions and ponies reacting to things outside their worldview, as well as keep my muse engaged by writing something regularly. Probably won't get too deep or introspective (but who's to say where the muse will take me). Expect the POV to bounce around from chapter to chapter.

This prologue chapter also doesn't count towards any points, by the way. It's just a handy place for me to put this introductory spiel and offer a quick refamiliarization with the basic MLP premise for readers who aren't on Fimfiction if I decide to crosspost this elsewhere.

I hope you have fun!