The royal archmage, Dusty Tomes, and his four companions - the pegasus Rouge Rogue, the unicorn healer Mercy, the earth pony archer True Strike, and the earth pony warrior Clever Cleaver - managed to infiltrate the Helix and confront Eldritch at the top of her citadel. The citadel disappeared from Equestria mysteriously shortly thereafter, and was not see again until 1833 AE when it appeared near Pebble.
Notable Royal Relief Corps attackers in 704 AE, who were not Slimed:
Dusty Tomes
b. 493, d. 704. Archmage of the Royal Court, 677-704.
8th baron Vanhoover. Major, Royal Relief Corps.
Yellow unicorn stallion with gray (formerly coffee-brown) mane and brown eyes, a long
goatee, and a wizardly monocle.
Dusty was born in the Royal Age to unicorn nobles in Canterlot. He received an excellent education, including several years as an advanced student at the Arcane Helix. Always playing things by the book, Dusty advanced through the ranks of the established hierarchy of magi mainly through quiet competence, careful not to step on too many hooves. Eventually, after his predecessor retired due to magical senility, Dusty Tomes became Archmage of the Royal Court. He married late in life to Mercy, a talented healer 149 years his junior, in 692. (She noted that he was a major stallion, as confirmed in the biographical information above.) Dusty personally lead several of the RRC’s finest paramilitary agents on a mission to arrest Eldritch Lore, a former student of Dusty’s. Dusty was mortally wounded in his epic final battle with Eldritch Lore (stricken with a rapidly fatal magical pestilence, The Itching Death, specifically; he protected his comrades with an area-of-effect shielding spell, but was outside its area of effect himself) and died soon after driving her from the Helix. Believing (correctly) that his soul would be trapped in the Dread Dimensions by Eldritch’s parting curse which bound him to her throne room (cast to prevent him pursuing her when she fled), he asked them to come back for him, but they never did.
(When, after some years of wandering, they finally found a way back to Equestria from the Dread Dimensions, it was only a transient opportunity and they were in a bad way; they made the decision to abandon Dusty - they did not know that he was eternally trapped in the tower, and thought they were only leaving behind a dead body.)
The magical pestilence killed Dusty within days of his friends’ departure. His soul, bound to the tower by Eldritch’s curse, could not depart for the little pony afterlife. Unfortunately, over the decades, Dusty Tomes became angry and embittered, renouncing the power of friendship and his life of apparent selfless goodness, as his trust in his friends had now apparently condemned him to a bleak, lonely eternity. He used his magic to animate his own skeletal remains and inhabit them, becoming a fearsome undead mage, although his influence in the Dread Dimensions was limited by the fact that he could not leave Eldritch’s throne room at the top of the Arcane Helix. Still, through his minions, he became known as a local power, and all inhabitants of the Helix now regard him with awe and dread, as “the Deathless One.”
(Hinds: Dusty Tomes’s immortality has not caused the usual memory problems partly due to the nature of the magic binding him, partly due to his own knowledge of life-extending magic, and partly due to him simply not making a normal millennium's worth of new memories. “So where did I go yesterday? Why, the Helix’s throne room! The same as yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that, and...” While he has still had new thoughts and received new information, much of his millennium+, including pretty much all the visual data, can simply be summed up “I was here the whole time”. He also may have dropped some of his earlier memories, particularly happy ones about love and friendship.
edit: Given Bryce’s addition of the throne having magical visualization systems, this may no longer work. Hm… He probably knows enough of life extension magic to deliberately drop memories of nothing much going on, though, so still, I think, no problem here.)
Rouge Rogue
b. 680 d. 717.
Red pegasus mare with rose mane and green eyes. Rouge Rogue was born into a life of petty crime in Manehattan before being caught and sent to Princess Celestia’s Reform School for Very Naughty Fillies in 694. Her talents for sneaking and burglary were channeled to constructive ends by the government, and she became part of the Royal Relief Corps Special Operations unit. She was chosen personally by Dusty Tomes for the raid on the Arcane Helix in 704; they had known each other previously as she was often on plainclothes security detail when the royal court traveled outside Canterlot. Rouge Rogue never publicly spoke about her time in the Dread Dimensions, and the transcripts of her debriefing are locked in the Canterlot Archives. She died in 717 in a terrible crochet accident which also maimed two others.
Mercy
b. 642 d. 710.
Pale green unicorn mare with white mane, blue eyes. She was a talented physician in Canterlot, who had a flair for adventure and a position in the Royal Relief Corps. She married the Royal Archmage, and insisted on accompanying him on the expedition to the Arcane Helix. Mercy was instrumental in finding a way for the surviving members of the party who defeated Eldritch Lore to return to Equestria, but she was always regretful about having been unable to bring her husband’s body back to Equestria for a proper burial. At midnight on the winter solstice, she died of being struck by a runaway fruitcart on an alleyway near the Bearded Wing of the Canterlot Library. Her singular (and extremely unseasonable) fate baffled investigators.
True Strike
b. 678 d. 706.
Grey earth pony stallion with black mane, green eyes. An archer from a fine Trottingham heritage, True Strike was renowned as an archer when he came to Equestria to open an archery school in the capital. He joined the RRC specifically to aid the attack on the Arcane Helix, as a childhood friend of his had been killed in the Squamous Horror attack on the Crystal Empire library. Sadly, True Strike died in the Dread Dimensions, dying in sight of Mercy, who could not divert her magic from opening the portal that would lead the party home.
Clever Cleaver
b. 680 d. 708.
Pink earth pony mare with red mane and eyes. Cleaver hailed from the Frozen North, and was highly adept with dual-wielded cleavers. (How exactly an Earth pony dual-wielded cleavers is left as an exercise to the reader, but my imagination suggests several possibilities.) Although strong and swift, Cleaver defied melee fighter conventions with her motto, “Fight smarter and harder.” She became well known for her feints and bluffs, a fact which annoyed her and caused her briefly dye her mane chartreuse so that enemies wouldn’t recognize her and expect her clever tactics. Sadly, Clever Cleaver was never quite the same after her excursion to the dread dimensions, and turned to drink. She died young of complications therefrom.
