Alright, I’ve had some ideas, feel free to use anything and modify it however you want to write your fic.
Daring Do awakes on the last day of the conference. She’s tired from all the work she’s put into it for her curator, to ensure that the conference is a success. There are ponies from all over Equestria and far beyond as well as Yaks, Buffalo and Griffons in large numbers. The scope of the conference was of some great significance to all of the species of the world:
“Intelligent life and civilisation predating recorded history.”
Daring Do rolled off of the blankets she had piled onto her floor as a makeshift bed and stood up, stretching the stiffness out of her legs. She had planned to go home to her bed last night, but there had been a commotion with the storage facilities of some of the relics that had been brought to the conference, so she had stayed later than she had intended to move the big boxes into a storage cupboard where the door had a lock.
She buttoned the shirt that she had slept in, retrieved her pith helmet from the floor where it had fallen and scraped her tools from the neat layout on her desk into her satchel. She would be running a talk explaining the safest ways to uncover artifacts from a variety of locations; sand, mud, rock; both from sedimentary layers and from ancient concretes. It was an important part of archaeology, why find something if you are only going to destroy it?
The conference gives you the option of bringing in, or inventing, any character you want. You could have any Daring Do character because they all have at least some interest in archaeology, some ponies could be there for security, catering, organising, recording(photography and scribing), as well as teaching techniques that aren’t solely archaeological, but apply to the field in some way. For example, Raritys gem finding spell.
Daring Do found that she had a gap in her scheduled, at least she thought so. Her artifact recovery talk began at ten thirty, and she would want some time to prepare the rock and sand samples with her assistant. What was her name, Daring Do thought to herself, Sandstone? Sandblast?. She shrugged off the thought, the assistant wasn’t very good, always asking questions and tripping over things. She reminded Daring Do that she preferred to work alone.
It was coming up to nine for the first round of talks. She checked the list of talks starting at nine. “Finds uncovered by natural disasters” by Doctor scriptwrite, “Hoofshoes through the ages” by Doctor Thrownshoe and “How pyramids pertain to deep space telemetry.” marked as being held by “Dr. C”.
Daring Do blinked at the title, she’d never heard anything so absurd and she hadn’t seen it there yesterday, or when she was helping organise which talk was held in which room. Deep space was a very new area of science requiring technology and magic that was so newly developed that the techniques hadn’t been refined. Pyramids, however, were so old that much of the techniques used to build them had been forgotten twice over. She thought as if it were science fiction mixed with fantasy. There was no way it could be related.
She had to listen to the talk.
Stargate fans are probably laughing right now
She sat down in the chair closest to the door. If anyone needed her she would be visible from outside the classroom. She had been called out of several talks already over the week, not least of which to deal with a cat that had broken into a packing container full of mummified scarab beetles.
Daring heard a clatter at her hooves as someone knocked her bag over and her sand brushes scattered around the chairs. The pony didn’t stop, or even say sorry, leaving miss Do to collect her brushes herself. She tucked her re-packed bag underneath the chair so it wouldn’t be knocked again just in time to see the pony who had knocked it trot up on stage. She recognised him instantly.
Doctor Caballeron!
End of writing.
I’ve run out of time, but this was fun to write and intro for you I have a couple of ideas of what the actual story could be.
IDEA ONE
Caballeron found an artifact that splits his personality. It was originally a magical alternative for prison used on criminals. It separates the violent, greedy or otherwise negative aspects of a pony, leaving them as a good citizen afterwards. Unfortunately the negative aspects don’t just disappear, because a second pony is created containing only the negative elements. The reason why the artifact did not become widely used is because it creates one good pony and one evil pony, the civilisation that created it tried to destroy them all but one survived to be found by Caballeron, who did not uncover it properly, and activated it by mistake, splitting himself into two ponies.
The ‘Dr C’ is the good half of Caballeron, come to the conference to seek Daring Dos help and made up his talk about pyramids and deep space as a cover up.
During the story you can do all sorts of cool stuff, but Daring Do must have the artifact used on her at some point, creating a goody two shoes Daring Do, and an evil greedy Daring Do who would probably side with caballeron.
I could see a funny or quite scary (depending on how it was written)sequence of meetings between the two Daring Dos and her assistant Sandy, who wouldn’t realise that Daring had been split.
IDEA TWO
Doctor Caballeron has come to the conference to bait Daring Do into a trap. After the talk, Daring would confront Caballeron, possibly try to have him arrested for previous misdeeds, but he would ultimately escape.
Daring Do would search through the notes about ‘Dr C’s talk, lots of ramblings about pyramids and telescopes, much of which doesn’t make sense, but Daring would read it and find things that link together and she would set off for a remote pyramid to stop Caballeron. Unfortunately Caballeron had deliberately put those clues into it to draw Daring into a trap.
Once at the pyramid, Daring is captured and Caballeron forces her to open the tomb. Luckily for the citizens of the area, Sandy had followed Daring and rescues Daring Do so that she can defeat Caballeron and re-seal the tomb!
IDEA THREE
Caballeron has crossed Ahuizotl, and is fleeing. He used the conference as a way to ‘hide in plain sight’ given that Ahuizotl wouldn’t even go to an archaeology conference, it seems plausible.
Daring Do has Caballeron arrested, so Ahuizotl attacks the prison and Do needs to get Caballeron to safety.
She will have to put their differences aside to prevent a much worse disaster at the hands of Ahuizotl!
So what do you think?
I don’t sleep, but I do come up with some interesting premises.