DM: The moment you ink the period at the end of the spell...
(An explosion of light and lasers from the Elements of Harmony converges on Twilight)
DM: ...leaving only a smoking, star-shaped scorch mark in the middle of the library.
Fluttershy: Oh no!
Rainbow Dash: On the plus side, obliteration power!
Pinkie Pie: Oh my Celestia, WE TPK'D TWILIGHT!
DM: Um, you know I'd never just instagib you in this campaign, right?
Pinkie Pie: Yeah, we know. That's why it's funny to act like you did!
...Maybe it's because I was a little tired and under the weather when I wrote this, but I still kind of like the idea of ironically using "TPK'd" as a verb to describe everything except what a TPK actually means.
I don't think we've ever seen it again. You'd think they'd preserve it for historical commemoration, as the point of Princess Twilight's apotheosis.
As usual, Spud, your thought process in the author notes is the same as mine! On the other hand, since she represents the whole party at this specific point in time... it still works.
Haven't noticed the leftover magical twinkles before.
Reminds me of an episode (also short) from Fallout is Dragons, I believe it was fighting Smaug and there was a mild argument over whether they could "take him" or not.
IIRC, it went something like this...
"Can I say this roll worked, even though we all know it didn't"
SPUD "Why would I do that?"
"We're all going to die"
SPUD "Why would I want to avoid that?"
"Because then you won't have a podcast if we all die."
SPUD "oh"
SPUD "The dragon falls over, immediately dead"
I know it wasn't quite like that, but I think I got the gist of it.
One popular theory is that Twilight the unicorn was actually destroyed here, and after the "dream" sequence, she was reborn in a new body as Twilight the alicorn.
In all my old Pony campaigns, set long before the show, Alicorns were unique compared to the other races, in that they were physically composed of Magic itself, which made them as powerful as they were, and failing to become an alicorn would result in physical destruction... Although success had the same effect, but the subject persisted in a pure magical form.
...sort of how daemon princes in wh40k work, to be honest.
A fun fact, in this campaign Ponies lived by a cruel cast system, earth ponies at the bottom, followed by Pegasi, the Unicorn noble caste, and the Alicorn Royale Caste... They were few in number, but functionally all in the low Epic Levels... The Party was a bunch of rebels infiltrating higher society, lead by Harvest Moon, a Earth Pony who had, In his foal hood, swiped unicorn horn shavings from several Salons, and heated and pressed them into a Disk, an arcane Focus, to allow him to become the FIRST earth pony to practice a form of real magic...
He would take a guise as a new Unicorn student of the Royal Cities greatest academy, with the other members as his servents(yeah, that posh of a school), and would uncover mysteries, schemes, and gather Intel to find a way to vanquish the Alicorns and bring equality to Ponykind...
The fake unicorn student, Harvest Moon, went by an alias during these deep cover missions...
That alias was Starswirl. Player knew I would not say no, and the player did it even knowing I was a proponent of a certain theory regarding a certain chaos God...
His Sister, Cloverleaf(the clever) was a rogue/arcane trickster, and her main cover was as his scribe, and a lower level unicorn.
A lot happens, the party accidentally creating The Everfree, killing a Windigo using Hideous Laughter, causing a time-warp and learning of a ancient technologically advanced race of Earth Ponies that created the other two as slave races and were tore down when the rebels mass sacrificed themselves to create Faust, the First Queen...
...I swear I didn't know jack about wh40k at the time.
...and Most interestingly, learned how Alicorns reproduce... They don't, they either take someone who was found worthy, or someone who won't be missed, and put them through a extremely painful, body-destroying process... That erases the memory and identity of the latter unwilling victims...
Celestia and Luna, in their previous lives, were Puddinghead and Smart Cookie, a pair of earth pony bakers(and soulmates) who lost their lives and families to the Alicorns tyranny, and lead the most successful open rebellion since The Alicorn Authority was planned... Publicly they were turned to stone to decorate the Unicorn Graveyard, but in truth they were dragged down beneath the castle for a much crueler, and ironic Fate... Tho their relationship is different, they are still very close, and while trust is rare amungst the scheming Alicorns, these two had it...
...even when Luna, under the guise of Sunny Skies, Was the current rebel leader behind Harvest Moons efforts.
I have a fun story about TPK in a different context. I work for the New Zealand government, and one of New Zealand's government agencies is the Ministry of Maori Development. All New Zealand government departments have a Maori name as well as an English one and the Ministry of Maori Development is referred to exclusively by its Maori name, Te Puni Kokiri. Since it's normal practice to refer to an agency by its acronym, this means that meetings in the New Zealand Government have more references to TPK than you might otherwise expect: